General knowledge: Russian military chiefs, the Russian public and Ukraine and China

Former army general Ivan Popov was recently sentenced to five years in a penal colony. How do ordinary Russians regard senior members of their country’s military?

Institutionally, Russia has few domestic political constraints, including around major questions such as its war goals in Ukraine. Russia has a super-centralised executive with overwhelming control over the media landscape, strong repressive apparatus and an atomised civil society. Moreover, the majority of Russians declare that they support Vladimir Putin and negotiations about the war.

Despite this powerful set-up, Putin still has to acknowledge the views of Russian elites, especially in the military and security services. New research shows that opinions held by Russia’s military and security leaders are respected by the public—even when those opinions diverge from the official government position.

The Kremlin is extremely sensitive to the public appeal held by representatives of the military and militarised formations like Wagner. However, to date, no one has robustly tested the extent to which Russian society is actually receptive to opinions expressed by such individuals. To fill this gap, we launched a series of survey experiments to understand the extent to which military elite opinion is influential on the Russian public.

This survey of Russian citizens took place in summer 2024. It asked respondents to consider opposition from the military elite regarding two topics—peace talks with Ukraine and deeper economic and military ties with China. It found that support for these hypothetical policies significantly declines compared to scenarios with no such military endorsement (when survey respondents were simply asked for their view opinion on the peace negotiations or ties with China). These effects remain robust even after controlling for such factors as gender, age, support for Putin, TV consumption, support for the war with Ukraine and having family members deployed in Ukraine.

The results suggest the Russian public is sympathetic to messages from military figures when those figures oppose government policy, especially in the security sphere. This is also in evidence with regard to relations with China: while Russians are willing to view China as a close partner, this support falls if it seems senior military figures disagree with the policy. However, when Russian military figures merely affirm the government position, this has little effect, either to strengthen or weaken citizens’ support for a policy.

Senior military opposition that could reach the public domain must be a factor in the Russian leadership’s calculations

These could be dynamics Putin has to take into account when considering security elites’ views on the future of the war in Ukraine. Of course, if faced with senior-level opposition, the Kremlin may be able to push on regardless or simply replace recalcitrant individuals. But opposition that could reach the public domain must be a factor in the Russian leadership’s calculations.

Influencers à la russe

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to a surge in support among the Russian public for the country’s armed forces, security agencies and government institutions. Historically, trust in the Russian military has long been (and remains) high, which likely reflects its symbolic role as a guarantor of national security. This strong trust may explain the public’s receptiveness to military leaders’ views on policy questions.

The war brought the military closer to ordinary Russians. Pro-war “Z-bloggers”, some of whom were active combatants, built large followings on Telegram. Their frontline updates sometimes include complaints about poor supplies and incompetent leadership. Criticism of the conduct of the war intensified in early 2023, when Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin posting numerous attacks against senior military officials. Prigozhin died in a plane crash two months after his mutiny. In July 2023, Popov criticised the military leadership in a leaked voice message to his fellow officers, lamenting inadequate equipment and high casualties. Popov was arrested in May 2024. His supporters claim the charges were politically motivated retaliation for his outspoken criticism.

It is possible that the amplifying effects of Z-bloggers—who are much more vocal and unfettered in terms of expressing their views about the war—may be very strong. Our survey presented only a single written line describing military disagreement with policy. Russian online influencers deploy an array of tools to influence their followers across different social media platforms.

What this means for Europe

European policymakers can use this insight to understand that the Russian leadership needs to consider the positions of the military and security leadership on any post-conflict settlement—or risk losing support from a key pillar of the regime. These leaders have the potential to influence the public if their demands are not satisfied. What those demands might be go beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that any negotiation which secures something short of late Putinism’s maximalist demands regarding European order and security may meet with opposition among military as well as other elites. This is potentially good news for Western negotiators, as they can use this knowledge to expand the negotiations agenda to many other Russian concerns about the regional security in exchange for Russian concessions in Ukraine.

Note on methodology

An online survey of 2,500 Russian respondents aged 18 and older was conducted between June 28th to July 25th 2024. The researchers conducting the survey were Risa Brooks from Marquette University, Margarita Zavadskaya from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and Kirill Shamiev from the European Council on Foreign Relations. The survey using randomised text vignettes to examine the extent to which Russian citizens are susceptible to military agreement or objections on various foreign policy topics proposed by the government. The second wave of this survey is currently being finalised.