Putin’s approval rate at home soars one month into Ukraine invasion

Western critics say his war is going badly, his economy is staggering and his advisers are misleading him. But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval numbers at home are shooting up just over one month into his invasion of Ukraine, according to a new poll.

The independent Levada Center found that Mr. Putin’s domestic approval rating shot up more than 10 percentage points in March to 83%, up from 71% in February.

Analysts caution some of the numbers reflect a natural rallying around a leader in wartime, as well as the strict new limits the Kremlin has put in place on independent reporting by domestic and Western outlets inside Russia.

The Russian government, for example, has officially acknowledged only 1,351 of its soldiers have died in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine — a tally that the Ukrainian government, the Pentagon and outside experts say is far below the real toll.

Mr. Putin got a similar bump in popularity after his 2014 decision to annex Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, but Levada poll director Denis Volkov said the Ukraine conflict could be different as the war drags on, Western sanctions begin to bite and the body count rises.

“In the future, [we] may see figures go in a downwards direction,” Mr. Volkov told the Moscow Times. “There is no big euphoria, people feel the seriousness of the situation.”

The Levada poll also found that some 59% of Russians now say their country is “heading in the right direction.”