The overwhelming victory of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in last weekend’s parliamentary elections was not only expected, but meticulously planned. Across the country, the mechanisms of control ensured a predictable outcome: compulsory voting in budget-dependent organizations and major corporations; standardized voting in the military, law enforcement agencies, and the newly annexed territories; and mechanical voting carried out in the spirit of "take my vote and leave me alone." Combined with the rapid spread of electronic voting and the pre-election removal of Yabloko, the only anti-war party still operating legally, these measures guaranteed a comfortable supermajority for the ruling party. Even the votes cast for other nominal parliamentary parties amounted to de facto support for the government, as they, too, remain tightly controlled by the Kremlin.
Nonetheless, for Putin, this refreshed mandate offers a renewed veneer of legitimacy for his "special military operation" in Ukraine. It serves to project domestically what the Kremlin is eager to show the international community: that Russia is operating from a position of strength and is fully prepared to pursue its military objectives with even greater abandon. The Kremlin’s primary goal is to project the illusion of a total, commanding majority, regardless of the messy reality on the ground. The official narrative asserts that everyone supports Putin, and therefore, citizens must also support the country’s military policies, the relentless suppression of dissent, and its firmly anti-Western course. Anyone who opposes him is cast aside as an outcast or pariah. Indeed, since 2022, elections in Russia have effectively redefined civic loyalty, making support for the war the ultimate test of citizenship.
Yet reality is far more complicated beneath the surface. Since April, public polling in Russia has consistently signaled that things are not going smoothly for the government. According to the independent Levada Center, which has tracked public sentiment through regular polling, the percentage of respondents who considered the special operation a success had fallen to 50 percent by July, marking a sharp drop of nearly 20 percentage points from the previous year. In the same survey, the number of people who believed the country was moving in the right direction fell by ten percentage points year-over-year to 54 percent. Furthermore, between July 2025 and July 2026, the president’s personal approval rating declined by 12 percent—a very significant drop in the context of a personalist autocracy.
Alongside this polling shift, general public morale has steadily deteriorated. Citizens face constant anxiety over the protracted nature of the war and the looming possibility of further military mobilization, compounded by soaring inflation, far-reaching internet restrictions, and an unending fuel crisis. Levada Center surveys conducted in August revealed that two-thirds of respondents faced chronic problems with mobile internet access, messaging apps, and gasoline shortages. Gasoline shortages have seriously disrupted the daily lives of one in three respondents, while internet restrictions have directly impacted one in five. Massive military spending and rising fuel prices have served as major drivers of domestic inflation, and the pressure is set to mount further with a sharp spike in utility rates scheduled for October.
Now that the elections have concluded, many Russians fear another wave of military mobilization. Although the Kremlin appears to prefer selective and covert mobilization over a general call-up—largely wary of undermining the illusion of a somewhat normal life amid a war that has increasingly reached the heart of Russia via drone attacks—other new pressures cannot be ruled out. As long as Putin remains convinced that time is on his side, and that the public—seemingly hypnotized by what the Kremlin terms the "unity" demonstrated during the elections—is willing to bear the heavy burden of these troubles, he will continue the war. And in the calculus of the Kremlin, continuation inevitably means escalation, both abroad and at home.
Already, the Russian president has rejected a fresh diplomatic push from the United States and accelerated the pace and intensity of attacks in Ukraine. Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin foreign policy experts have openly discussed the various non-nuclear and nuclear avenues through which Russia can escalate the conflict further, particularly during the coming winter months, when the Kremlin reportedly plans to systematically target Ukraine’s power grid to freeze the country into submission. For Putin, escalation has firmly entrenched itself as a principal mechanism for maintaining political survival and power.
The Conflict Conveyor Belt and Manufactured Urgency
For weeks, indications have multiplied that Putin is actively preparing for a dangerous new stage in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and the West. The Kremlin has consistently stoked a sense of emergency, peddling threats through what the late Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky termed the "Russian conflict conveyor belt"—a political machine designed to never stop moving. At the same time, the government has imposed a siege mentality on the public, demanding absolute unity. This dynamic has been powerfully reinforced by the intensification of Ukrainian airstrikes deep inside Russian territory.
This deliberate amplification of external threats helps explain the sweeping crackdown on the Yabloko party in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. Not only was the party barred from taking part, but its members were arrested, and one of its leaders, Lev Shlosberg, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. In an environment where the state demands a unified national mindset, no anti-war voice can be permitted to be heard legally.
Concurrently, Putin has maintained an abnormal travel and public speaking schedule, addressing the military, children, scientists, and businesspeople, and even visiting a disputed island in the Sea of Okhotsk with the clear intent of provoking Japan. Known as Iturup in Russia and Etorofu in Japan, the visit underscored Moscow’s defiant posture. Since the summer, the Kremlin has also amplified efforts to keep the masses emotionally and spiritually mobilized around the war effort, leaving no corner of Russian culture, society, or history untouched.
In August, for instance, the Russian Orthodox Church announced that the remains of Dmitry Donskoy—the legendary 14th-century warrior-prince who defeated the Tatars of the Mongol Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo—had been unexpectedly "discovered" at the Cathedral of the Archangel in Moscow. Putin promptly visited the burial site, effectively conscripted the historic prince into military service, and ordered parts of his relics sent to the front lines to "spiritually strengthen" Russian combat units. When a war drags on indefinitely, the populace is encouraged to pin its hopes not only on the "miracle weapons" boasted about by state media, but quite literally on divine intervention.
Even as the parliamentary elections took place, thousands of Orthodox Christians lined up in Moscow to view the relics of Saint Spyridon of Trimythous, behaving almost as if they were participating in a civic ritual. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of believers have taken part in government-supported religious processions aimed at rallying public backing for the armed forces. Among the most prominent of these displays was the large, ultra-nationalist "Russian March" held in Moscow in early September.
The central question remains: what constitutes a miracle for a war-weary population? For most ordinary Russians, it is simply the end of the war. Sooner or later, Putin will need to find a way to extricate himself from the conflict, and analysts suggest that no external actor other than the United States possesses the leverage to help him do so. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be making a new attempt at negotiations, ideally employing a strategy distinct from the Anchorage summit or the "tourist diplomacy" that characterized the administration’s first year.
Yet a clear replacement model has yet to materialize. CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s blitz visit to Moscow in August appeared to signal an effort to forge a new diplomatic channel, perhaps akin to the backchannel established between U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin during the Cold War détente era. Thus far, however, it remains difficult to envision how a genuine, permanent channel might emerge to steer both sides toward peace and ease tensions between Moscow and Washington. For Trump, who faces a series of foreign policy hurdles and tough upcoming midterm elections, finding a diplomatic success story has become an urgent domestic necessity.
Internal Pressures and the Illusion of Normalcy
For now, the Kremlin remains confident that it possesses both the time and the means to continue fighting for as long as necessary. Putin exhibits absolute conviction in the righteousness of his course. Along with the stage-managed Duma elections, the systematic purging of any trace of anti-war rhetoric from the public sphere is designed to grant the president an unchecked mandate for whatever actions he deems necessary. A lingering question, however, is just how far into the future ordinary Russians are willing to extend this legitimacy.
To date, citizens have been left largely on their own to cope with the burning oil refineries, destroyed warehouses, empty gas stations, faltering internet infrastructure, and the constant, life-threatening risks of drone attacks. Compounding these physical dangers, chronic inflation and a growing budget deficit have severely strained the economy, with Russia’s GDP and industrial production hovering just above zero. This stagnation persists despite the fact that, until recently, heavy arms production had artificially kept these indicators at a moderately high level—a prop that is no longer proving sufficient.
Despite these mounting challenges, the population continues to tolerate the system. Interestingly, the same surveys showing a decline in public satisfaction with the special military operation also indicate that a growing number of citizens prefer intensifying military strikes over making concessions to achieve peace. More than half of the respondents in an August Levada Center poll expressed belief that the war will likely last at least another year, with the segment expressing certainty in a prolonged conflict steadily growing. Exhausted by the protracted nature of the struggle, many view escalated military activity not as a threat, but as the only remaining pathway to bringing a decisive end closer.
Yet, if the Kremlin demands another sweeping mobilization of the male population, it risks provoking a dangerous domestic backlash. Rumors regarding such a move have circulated for weeks, even though the changing character of the battlefield makes pouring more raw manpower into the conflict an increasingly questionable strategy. Furthermore, mass mobilization threatens to severely drain the domestic labor force needed to keep the civilian economy functioning, while accelerating already alarming demographic declines.
Putin continues to frame Russia’s actions as a historically just defensive campaign of liberation, drawing parallels to how Joseph Stalin portrayed the 1939 Winter War with Finland or the Red Army’s incorporation of western Belarus and Ukraine. Yet for a conflict to genuinely be embraced as a "people’s war," it must have a finite timeframe and culminate in a recognizable victory. Under current conditions, an exhausted Russian public has signaled it will accept virtually any version of victory, provided they are told that state goals have been met on Moscow’s terms.
In reality, the operation has transformed into a deeply personal war waged by the head of state, one that forces ordinary citizens into compliance through physical participation in combat and strict political regimentation. Having been conditioned for decades to live in a state of perpetual readiness for war, Russian society is once again bearing the crushing weight of systemic militarization—the very dynamic that ultimately caused the Soviet system to collapse. Whether the public can indefinitely sustain this militarized normalcy in the face of ongoing mobilization and domestic infrastructure strikes remains the central uncertainty facing the regime.
