New Poll Finds 78% Of Russians Say Putin Is Doing A Good Job — But There's A Catch

With Russian troops bogged down in a war in Ukraine, and the country economically isolated by the West, a new poll of Russian citizens indicates overwhelming public support for President Vladimir Putin.

What Happened: The poll, administered by the state-run polling firm VTsIOM, finds that 78% of respondents support Putin, which is up from 70% when the poll was conducted in February, as reported by the Daily Express.

Many observers are questioning the legitimacy of the results, considering that VTsIOM is a polling unit owned and operated by the Kremlin.

There have been multiple recent polls taken by VTsIOM to gauge the confidence Russian citizens have in Putin. One of which purportedly found that 61% of Russians are confident in the direction their president is taking the country. The highest level since 2005.

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Another VTsIOM survey asked Russians if they believed the main objective of the war in Ukraine was to “protect Russia, to disarm Ukraine and not to allow NATO to deploy military bases in Ukraine.” The results found that 40% of those polled agreed with that sentiment, while only seven percent viewed the invasion as an attempt to make Ukraine part of Russia.

While the results may bring some insight into the thinking of the Russian public, they are ultimately unreliable, given the surveys were conducted by the Kremlin itself.

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