Ukraine’s cross-border incursion challenges Moscow’s war narrative – but will it shift Russian opinion?

On Aug. 6, 2024, Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border into Kursk province, marking the first invasion of foreign troops into Russian territory since World War II. In the days since, Russian television viewers and social media users have been confronted with images of burned-out houses and captured Russian soldiers.

The attack caught the Russian armed forces by surprise, and they have struggled to eject the Ukrainians from Russian territory. Meanwhile, over 120,000 Russian civilians fled the conflict zone.

The development not only challenges Russia’s military, but it also challenges the Kremlin’s narrative that everything is going to plan, that victory is within Russia’s grasp and that President Vladimir Putin is able to protect the Russian people from foreign threats.

The Russia-Ukraine War has devolved into a brutal and dispiriting war of attrition. Each side is struggling to come up with the money, arms and men needed to maintain operations along a 600-mile front.

With fighting seemingly at a stalemate, the outcome of the war may well depend on the willingness of the public in Russia and Ukraine to bear the economic costs and human sacrifices needed to keep the war going. Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk may shock the Russian leaders – and public – out of their complacency and disrupt the status quo.

An overconfident Kremlin

Russian government propaganda throughout the war has been strangely ambivalent. On the one hand, state propagandists claim that Russia is engaged in an existential struggle with the West. In this heightened state of war-footing, military spending has more than doubled to over 8% of gross domestic product, and military training has been introduced in all schools.

At the same time, most Russians are being told that life can go on as normal. Moscow refuses to call its invasion a war, claiming instead to be conducting a “special military operation.” Russians calling it a war risk being jailed for spreading false information.

Similarly, there has been no general mobilization of all draft-age young men – unlike in Ukraine. A partial mobilization to recruit 300,000 in September 2022 caused some public unrest.

Instead the army is relying on generous pay of around US$2,000 a month and bonuses up to $20,000 to attract recruits from poor regions.

Gauging public opinion

So, what is the Russian public’s attitude toward the war?

Putin’s approval rating, as measured by the government-aligned Levada center, went up from 60% to over 80% after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – just as it did after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Beyond that crude “rally around the flag” effect, however, the Russian public has not shown any great enthusiasm for the war. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, polls have consistently found that about one-quarter of Russians express support for the war, about 15%-20% are opposed, and the remaining majority are somewhat indifferent.

Even if they don’t agree with the decision to invade Ukraine, the majority of Russians accept the government’s narrative – that the West is to blame, and that Russia must not lose the war.

The latest Levada poll in July found the proportion of Russian respondents wanting to start negotiations with Ukraine had increased to 58%, versus 34% wanting to continue war without talks.

When asked in June what feelings they had about the military actions in Ukraine, 48% expressed pride in Russia, and only 33% chose anxiety and 10% anger. In that June poll, 65% blamed the West for starting the war, 11% blamed Ukraine, and only 6% blamed Russia.

But knowing what ordinary Russians truly think is not straightforward. People are afraid of giving the “wrong” answer to pollsters for fear of reprisals. And even before the war, response rates to pollsters in Russia were low – a problem shared with advanced democracies. Levada claims a response rate of 25%, but the actual level may be much lower.

To better gauge the temperature of Russian opinion, the independent Public Sociology Laboratory sent young researchers to embed themselves for a month in three remote Russian regions, observing the impact of the war in the local community. In the small town of Cheremushkin in Sverdlovsk oblast, researchers found few visible signs of the war. There was one priest who kept up patriotic, pro-war propaganda, but otherwise indifference was the norm.

This accords with the finding of journalists who talk to ordinary Russians and monitor anonymous social media chat rooms, such as the Latvia-based reporter Kristaps Adrejosons. Adrejosons has found that indifference and acquiescence are the prevailing mood in the Russian public.

Most Western media have shut down their offices in Russia, as it is simply too dangerous for Western journalists to try to report on the war. But in July 2024, Francesca Ebel of The Washington Post made a trip to the Urals city of Kirov, under the protection of the local Duma deputy Maria Butina. Despite the constraints on Ebel’s reporting – official minders were always present – Ebel found that the war has only modest local support, focused on volunteers helping the soldiers and families.

The role of Putinomics

Russian public attitudes toward the war are doubtless influenced by people’s sense of the state of the economy. The Russian government has gone to great lengths to try to maintain a sense of economic stability and to preserve living standards.

Contrary to predictions that Western sanctions would cause the Russian economy to collapse, GDP grew 3.6% in 2023 and real incomes increased by 5.4%. Indeed, real wages have risen 14% since the invasion, and unemployment is down to 2.6%.

Russia continues to run a trade surplus from oil exports: $120 billion in 2023 and $41 billion in the first half of 2024. That money is now trapped inside Russia, fueling a consumption and real estate boom.

Meanwhile, increased spending on arms procurement has fueled growth in Russia’s rust-belt industrial cities, as defense factory workers spend their wages on consumer goods and services – a textbook example of “military Keynesianism.”

Most Russian recruits signing contracts to fight in Ukraine come from Russia’s poorer regions, where their families spend their army wages – and the $90,000 cash payments in the event of a combat death. It is estimated that Russia has suffered over 400,000 casualties, dead and wounded combined.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation recently released a gloomy prognosis for 2025, with GDP growth stuck at 1% as a result of labor shortages, lack of investment and the increased costs associated with evading Western sanctions.

But there is only a slim chance that this economic slowdown will trigger public unrest. Living standards show no sign of collapsing, and in any case, state repression is a strong deterrent to organized dissent.

Marching to a new tune

Autocratic regimes characterized by harsh repression and relentless state propaganda face a dilemma when it comes to understanding public mood: They can’t be sure what the public really believes.

As a result, autocratic leaders can feel vulnerable, afraid that some unexpected development could trigger a mass mobilization during which true, hidden sentiment of distrust manifests. This presumably is why the Kremlin has shied away from mass mobilization of draft-age men, while pumping money into the economy to maintain living standards.

Nonetheless, threats to the Kremlin do exist. A little over a year ago, in June 2023, the Russian state got a scare when renegade mercenaries from the Wagner Group marched on Moscow, seemingly supported by many Russians in the towns they passed. Putin faced down that challenge, absorbing Wagner into the state apparatus after its leader was killed in an aircraft explosion.

But now Putin faces a new problem – how to keep his war narrative on track in the face of a different army on the march, this time Ukrainians on Russian soil.

Peter Rutland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.