The overwhelming victory achieved by President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in last weekend’s parliamentary elections was not merely expected; it was meticulously planned and engineered. Compulsory voting mandates implemented within budget-dependent organizations and major corporations, combined with standardized voting protocols enforced across the military, law enforcement agencies, and the newly annexed territories, ensured a predictable outcome. The electoral landscape was further shaped by mechanical voting driven by a public desire for political detachment, the rapid expansion of electronic voting infrastructure, and the strategic pre-election removal of Yabloko, which remained the only anti-war party operating legally inside the country. These combined mechanisms guaranteed an unquestioned supermajority for the ruling party, while even the votes cast for other nominal parliamentary parties amounted to implicit support for the government, given that those opposition factions ultimately remain under Kremlin control.
Nonetheless, for the Russian president, this refreshed legislative mandate offers renewed political legitimacy for his ongoing "special military operation" in Ukraine. It projects a clear message domestically and internationally that Russia maintains a position of unwavering strength and is prepared to pursue its military objectives with intensified resolve. The Kremlin’s primary objective is to manufacture the illusion of a total, commanding majority, conveying to the public that virtually everyone supports Putin and, by extension, must endorse the government’s military policies, relentless suppression of domestic dissent, and strictly anti-Western geopolitical course. Under this framework, individuals who oppose the administration are branded as outcasts and pariahs, reinforcing a political reality where citizenship since 2022 has been essentially redefined as active support for the war.
The underlying social and political reality, however, is far more complicated than the official electoral results suggest. Since April, public polling conducted within Russia has consistently signaled that public confidence in the government’s direction is wavering. Data from the independent Levada Center, which tracks these trends regularly, indicates that the percentage of respondents who viewed the special operation as a success fell to 50 percent in July, representing a decline of nearly 20 percentage points compared to the previous year. The same polling data revealed that the proportion of citizens believing the country was moving in the right direction dropped by ten percentage points year-over-year to 54 percent. Furthermore, between July 2025 and July 2026, President Putin’s personal approval rating declined by 12 percent—a highly significant drop within the context of a personalist autocracy.
Alongside these shifting metrics, general public morale has experienced a steady and palpable decline. Citizens face constant anxiety regarding the protracted nature of the war, the persistent threat of further military mobilization, persistent inflation, far-reaching internet restrictions, and an ongoing fuel crisis. Levada Center surveys conducted in August revealed that two-thirds of respondents encountered regular problems accessing mobile internet services and messaging applications, alongside widespread gasoline shortages. These fuel shortages directly disrupted the daily lives of one in three respondents, while internet restrictions impacted one in five. Massive military spending and rising fuel prices have served as the primary drivers of domestic inflation, and additional economic pressures are anticipated as a spike in utility rates takes effect.
Many Russians harbored fears that the conclusion of the parliamentary elections would trigger another wave of military mobilization. While the Kremlin remains wary of disrupting the illusion of normalcy—particularly as the war has reached the Russian mainland via drone attacks—it appears to favor selective and covert mobilization tactics over a broad, general call-up. Yet, other pressures cannot be dismissed. As long as Putin operates under the conviction that time favors his administration and that the public remains willing to shoulder the burdens of the conflict, he will continue the war effort. Continuation under these circumstances inherently means further escalation, both abroad and at home.
The Russian president has already rejected a newly launched U.S. diplomatic initiative and accelerated the frequency and intensity of military strikes within Ukraine. Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin foreign policy analysts openly discuss various non-nuclear and nuclear strategies Russia could employ to escalate the conflict further, particularly during the winter months when the Kremlin reportedly plans to target Ukraine’s energy grid to paralyze infrastructure. For Putin, escalation has solidified its role as a principal mechanism for maintaining internal political control.
TAKE IT UP A LEVEL
For weeks, numerous indicators have suggested that Putin is preparing for a new and more intensive phase in the conflict with Ukraine and the broader confrontation with the West. The Kremlin has consistently stoked a pervasive sense of emergency, amplifying threats in a dynamic that the late Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky termed the "Russian conflict conveyor belt"—a political machine designed to run continuously without stopping. Simultaneously, the government has imposed a siege mentality on the public, demanding absolute unity, a psychological state reinforced by the intensification of long-range Ukrainian airstrikes deep inside Russian territory. This deliberate amplification of external threats helps explain the sweeping crackdown on the Yabloko party ahead of the parliamentary elections. Beyond being barred from participating in the vote, party members faced arrest, and one of its leaders, Lev Shlosberg, was sentenced to an 11-year prison term. In an environment demanding a unified national mindset, legally sanctioned anti-war voices cannot be tolerated.
In parallel with these domestic measures, Putin has maintained an unusually high frequency of domestic travel, high-level meetings, and public addresses. He has engaged directly with military personnel, children, scientists, and business leaders, and even visited a disputed island in the Sea of Okhotsk—known as Iturup in Russia and Etorofu in Japan—with the clear intention of provoking Tokyo. Throughout the summer, the Kremlin also intensified efforts to keep the civilian population emotionally and spiritually mobilized around the war effort, drawing upon virtually every aspect of Russian culture, society, and history.
In August, the Russian Orthodox Church announced the unexpected "discovery" of the remains of Dmitry Donskoy, the 14th-century warrior-prince who defeated the Tatars of the Mongol Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo, at the Cathedral of the Archangel in Moscow. Putin promptly visited the burial site, and portions of the historical figure’s relics were dispatched to the front lines to spiritually reinforce Russian military units. With the war dragging on indefinitely, many Russians have begun pinning their hopes not only on the advanced weaponry touted by the state, but also on divine intervention. During the parliamentary elections, thousands of Orthodox Christians lined up in Moscow to view the relics of Saint Spyridon of Trimythous, behaving almost as though they were participating in a civic ritual. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of believers have also taken part in state-backed religious processions designed to bolster support for the armed forces, culminating in a large ultra-nationalist "Russian March" in Moscow in early September.
The central question remains how the conflict might ultimately find resolution, as most citizens define a miracle simply as the end of the war. Sooner or later, Putin will need to find an exit strategy from the conflict, and analysts suggest that only the United States possesses the diplomatic leverage to assist him. The Trump administration appears to be making renewed attempts at negotiations, moving beyond the framework of the Anchorage summit or the tourist-style diplomacy that characterized its earlier diplomatic efforts. CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s blitz visit to Moscow in August appeared to signal an effort to pursue a more clandestine, back-channel form of diplomacy reminiscent of the communications established during the era of détente. Although a permanent mechanism to steer both sides toward peace remains difficult to envision, President Donald Trump faces domestic incentives to secure a foreign policy success amid his own challenging midterm political landscape.
CONFIDENCE MAN
For the time being, the Kremlin remains convinced that it possesses both the time and the resources required to sustain the conflict indefinitely. Putin displays no public doubt regarding the righteousness of his course. Alongside the tightly managed Duma elections, the systematic eradication of anti-war rhetoric from the public sphere is intended to grant the leadership an unhindered mandate for future actions. However, the critical unknown is how much longer the Russian public will remain willing to sustain this legitimacy.
Citizens have thus far been left to cope independently with burning oil refineries, destroyed supply warehouses, empty gas stations, malfunctioning internet services, and the daily risks of drone strikes. Chronic inflation and a widening budget deficit have compounded these difficulties, with Russia’s GDP and industrial production hovering just above zero. While arms manufacturing previously maintained these economic indicators at moderately high levels, that stimulus is no longer sufficient to offset broader structural decline.
Despite these mounting challenges, the population continues to endure the system. Interestingly, public opinion surveys indicate that while satisfaction with the special military operation has declined, a growing number of respondents favor intensifying military strikes rather than offering concessions to achieve peace. More than half of the participants in an August Levada Center poll expressed the belief that the war would likely continue for at least another year, with the proportion of those certain of this timeline increasing steadily. Driven by exhaustion, many citizens view escalated military activity simply as a means to bring a definitive end to the conflict closer.
However, if the Kremlin demands another large-scale mobilization of the male population, it risks provoking significant social backlash. Although rumors regarding such a move have circulated for weeks, deploying additional men to the front lines threatens to drain an already strained domestic labor force and worsen demographic challenges, including a declining birth rate. Nevertheless, such measures cannot be completely ruled out.
Putin continues to frame Russia’s actions as a historically just defensive campaign of liberation, drawing parallels to Soviet historical precedents such as the 1939 Winter War against Finland. Yet, for a conflict marketed as a "people’s war" to maintain domestic cohesion, it must ultimately culminate in a perceived victory defined on Moscow’s terms. Under current conditions, an exhausted public appears willing to accept virtually any version of victory, provided the state declares its objectives met.
In practice, however, the conflict has assumed the characteristics of a deeply personal war waged by the head of state, which has progressively enmeshed ordinary citizens through direct combat participation, political restrictions, and systematic repression. Decades of conditioning have prepared Russians to live in a perpetual state of war readiness, a militarization of society and economy that ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet system. While Putin has revived this governance model to pursue imperial ambitions, the long-term sustainability of maintaining an indefinitely militarized society remains an open question.
NOWHERE TO GO
Escalation within Putin’s Russia currently manifests on two distinct fronts: on the battlefield and across the domestic sphere. The domestic manifestation is visible in the continuous and increasingly brutal arrest of political dissidents, the expansion of restrictive legislation targeting designated "foreign agents," and an unsustainable tax burden necessitated by wartime financing, including the recent increase in the value-added tax from 20 to 22 percent.
International strategic analysis frequently overlooks the home front, yet domestic pressure is inextricably linked to external actions; the regime cannot ratchet up its foreign operations without tightening internal control. Manufacturing continuous crises has become the operational foundation of Putin’s governance. Yet, as evidenced by the diminishing returns of recent diplomatic maneuvering and increasingly hysterical official rhetoric—such as parliamentary figures openly advocating for strikes against civilian populations—the psychological impact of state-driven hostility wears thin over time.
The Kremlin’s reliance on continuous escalation reflects structural weakness rather than enduring strength. While the electoral process successfully bound participating citizens to the prosecution of the war, it simultaneously risks exacerbating underlying public frustration. Many citizens have chosen passive compliance over active protest, creating a political atmosphere reminiscent of the late Soviet era, where the imitation of normalcy masks deep systemic fatigue. Trapped by a distorted war economy and an ideology built on conflict, the regime’s most profound crisis remains its inability to define a viable future, leaving it dependent on the prolongation of war as its primary mechanism for survival.
