The title of the Profs and Pints lecture, “What will happen when Vladimir Putin is no longer Russia’s president?” was intriguing so I decided to go to the event. Profs and Pints takes place at Penn Social, a bar and event space in northwest DC, and it usually features an expert of sorts expounding on some current topic while attendees pound down a few drinks and maybe some food. Last night was my first Profs and Pints event and I had no idea what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was well-attended — all the cocktail tables clustered around the stage were taken — and the food was halfway decent. I ordered a cocktail and a grilled chipotle sandwich and was almost finished eating by the time the featured speaker got up to talk. Sam Greene is a professor of Russian Politics at King’s College in London, and while I already knew much of what he said about Putin’s Russia, he was able to clear up one mystery for me: why so many ordinary Russians seem to support the war in Ukraine (on the surface) and why Putin’s poll numbers haven’t fallen drastically despite his disastrous foray into Ukraine.
To begin with, Greene noted, most Russians get their information about the war from state-controlled television and so they have no idea how badly Russian troops are performing in Ukraine or about the atrocities those troops have committed against Ukrainian civilians. Putin persists in calling the war a “special operation” and as we all know, has used mostly prisoners and other mercenary forces in the heavy fighting that’s taken place. As a result, many Russians aren’t directly affected by the war and even when they happen to see pictures of brutal atrocities in Ukraine, they often don’t believe them. They’re just western propaganda, after all.
Secondly, even though a majority of Russians seem to support the war and Putin (in some polls as many as 70 percent of Russians say they’re in favor of the war), there is some evidence that Russians are lying to pollsters, Greene said. And that’s because they distrust the pollsters who are calling them. They fear that if they say they don’t support the war, they might get into trouble with the government. In addition, to many Russians, Putin is a stand-in for their country and if they criticize Putin or the war, they feel as though they are criticizing their country, Greene contended. (Postscript: if anyone doesn’t understand why many Russians are genuinely afraid of speaking out, you only have to look at today’s news involving the crash of a private plane carrying Yevgeniy Prigozhin; he’s the warlord who aborted a short-lived mutiny against Putin).
Greene also noted that since Russians by and large don’t trust their own government, they usually don’t turn to government officials for help. Instead, they rely on friends and colleagues if they need help, so they tend to place much greater emphasis on maintaining close ties within their own social circles. Greene speculated that a large continent of Russians fear being ostracized by their friends and colleagues if they speak out against the war.
There is, of course, a minority of Russians who are opposed to the war in Ukraine and have participated in protests against it. But many of those protestors have been arrested and bullied into silence, and many others have left the country. So the question Greene posed at the end of his talk, will there ever been enough Russians who can envision a future without Putin and war and who will band together to end the ongoing nightmare in the Ukraine. The answer, as Greene made clear, remains to be seen.
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