Putin's Approval Ratings Suffer First Fall Since Start of Ukraine War

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered the first fall in his approval ratings since he launched the invasion of Ukraine, according to new figures from a non-governmental organization that assesses public opinion.

The Levada Analytical Center found Putin had an approval rating of 77 percent in September, while 22 percent disapproved of the Russian president and 2 percent provided no answer.

That's a fall of five points since August, when approval of Putin stood at 83 percent and 15 percent disapproved. A further 2 percent didn't provide an answer.

Putin's approval rating has been consistently high for months. In February, the Levada Center found his approval was 71 percent and disapproval was 27 percent, but in March Putin's approval rating reached 83 percent, while those disapproving fell to 15 percent.

In April, his approval rating was 82 percent and the Levada Center's figures show 83 percent approval of Putin in every month from May to August this year. Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24 in what Putin described as a "special military operation."

The recent figures also show that approval of the Russian government has declined over the past month and now stands at 63 percent, with 34 percent disapproving and 3 percent providing no answer. In August, approval of the government was 68 percent, while disapproval stood at 28 percent and 4 percent gave no answer.

Newsweek has asked the Levada Center and the Russian foreign ministry for comment.

This chart, provided by Statista, shows the share of Russians approving/ disapproving of the performance of President Vladimir Putin.

The Levada Center is an independent pollster, but the quality of polling in Russia has been called into question in the past, particularly in surveys carried out by state-controlled pollsters.

In March, Maxim Alyukov, a research fellow at King's Russia Institute at King's College London, wrote in analysis for openDemocracy that in "autocracies, citizens are often afraid of answering pollsters' questions in general, let alone questions about politics."

"This generates a distortion known as social desirability bias—citizens lie about their real preferences, which inflates survey results," Alyukov wrote.

It isn't clear to what extent the war in Ukraine has affected Putin's popularity. On September 21, Putin announced the partial mobilization of his country's forces, which aims to call up 300,000 reservists. It has been fraught with difficulties, including widespread protests against the move and videos showing recruits behaving in a disobedient and allegedly drunken fashion.

Thousands of young men have also fled the country in an effort to avoid being called up. Putin appeared to address some of the problems with mobilization in remarks on Thursday.

"In the course of this mobilization, many questions are coming up, and all mistakes must be corrected and prevented from happening in the future," Putin said.

"For example, I'm thinking of fathers of many children, or people suffering from chronic diseases, or who those who are already past conscription age," he said.