Putin’s societal support is soft and declining. Public opinion polls show he still enjoys popular support. But these polls in Russia have high refusal rates, which should not be surprising in a country where you can go to jail for 15 years for “public dissemination of deliberate false information about the use of Russian Armed Forces.” The minority responding to these polls supports the regime, but the majority who choose not to respond likely do not. And even these highly flawed polls show little enthusiasm and declining support for the war, and a solid majority ready to support Putin if he ends the invasion. Anxiety about the conflict is growing. And the demographics of his support are clear: The older, more rural, less educated and poorer support Putin in greater numbers than the younger, more urban, more educated, wealthier Russians. Putin is losing the future.

Other indicators look equally grim for Putin. Organic mass movements in support of Russian imperialism have not emerged over the past year, but antiwar protests have. Before the war began, Putin arrested Russia’s most popular opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who continues to denounce the war from his jail cell. Since Putin invaded Ukraine, almost 20,000 people have been detained and arrested for protesting the war, including most recently opposition leaders Alexei Gorinov and Ilya Yashin, who received seven- and eight-year sentences respectively for telling the truth about Russian war atrocities in Ukraine. If the war was truly popular, why would Putin’s regime need to arrest these allegedly marginal, unpopular critics?

Glory to Ukraine!