Hello and welcome to Vlast! We are now back after our summer break and taking a look at whether it’s true—as many in the West seem to believe—that Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian retailers and oil refineries bring peace closer.
We also look at new gasoline shortages, the Kremlin’s use of the relics of a medieval prince in its war effort, and Putin’s summer trips to Siberia and the Far East.
⏳ This newsletter contains 1,605 words and will take about 8 minutes to read.
How serious is public unhappiness over Ukrainian drone strikes?
Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in Kyiv on Tuesday that strikes deep inside Russia are the only way of bringing Moscow to the negotiating table. Unsurprisingly, this was met with criticism from the Russian side: President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman expressed “surprise” and ex-president Dmitry Medvedev opted for his usual barrage of insults, calling Stubb an “idiot,” and “moral degenerate.”
Stubb claimed 65 percent of Russians want the war to end, and that attacks on the warehouses of Russian online retailers had increased that figure by 10 percent (he did not specify where he got the numbers). Clearly, this is the official position of Ukraine and its European allies: both Stubb and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used this logic to justify Ukraine’s recent summer “40-day influence operation.” In their view, attacks by Ukrainian drones and missiles on Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon, combined with continued strikes on oil refineries, will fuel public discontent in Russia and force Putin to make concessions to end the war. But does Russia actually work that way?
It’s true that Wildberries is Russia’s biggest e-commerce company and a symbol of the Putin-era consumer boom. Wildberries and its nearest rivals, Ozon and Yandex, are estimated to have generated 5 percent of Russia’s GDP last year. It’s also undeniable that Ukrainian drone attacks this summer have had a huge impact on the company. Eight of Wildberries’ ten largest warehouses are currently closed, while the company’s owner and Russia’s richest woman, Tatiana Kim, has reportedly seen $2 billion wiped from her personal fortune. Earlier this month, Ukraine began similar attacks on Ozon, the country’s second-largest online marketplace.
Polling by Levada Center at the end of July suggested that strikes on Wildberries and gasoline shortages (caused by Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s oil refineries) were among the news items of most interest to Russians. And Russian officials are also concerned about rising levels of general anxiety, according to a source close to the Kremlin. “This is not something that will stop the war. But it’s a problem,” he said. According to the Kremlin-linked Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), anxiety rose above 50 percent in April and has not eased over the summer.
However, there is no convincing evidence that the number of Russians who want to see peace negotiations has actually increased. Indeed, support for negotiations might even have fallen. Polling shows more anger toward Ukraine in tandem with growing unhappiness with the Kremlin, according to a source at one of Russia’s political parties that is conducting focus groups as part of its campaign for upcoming parliamentary elections.