Coronavirus pandemic hits Putin’s popularity: survey

MOSCOW: The coronavirus pandemic has created problems for countries around the world, but it seems it may hurt Russia in particular, creating new and complicated challenges for President Vladimir Putin.

Findings from a new study conducted with the independent survey company Levada Center show that the conditions created by the pandemic have seriously undermined the Kremlin’s ability to deliver economic growth and public goods—two key historical bulwarks of Putin’s stability, foreign media reported on Monday.

Put together with other long-term trends, such as the growing importance of civil rights and urbanisation, a surprisingly bleak picture emerges for the man who has led Russia for the past 20 years.

Since the early 2000s, Putin has drawn support from two main sources. First, the Kremlin won over middle-class professionals with promises of booming economic growth. Second, it attracted the support of lower-income social groups—including public sector employees and retirees—dependent on state support and nostalgic for the Soviet era through a mix of populist promises and great-power rhetoric. Russians historically prioritised the state’s ability to provide social rights over civil rights—a reflection of a paternalistic orientation common for societies with communist legacies—and this played into Putin’s broader strategy.

Over the last 20 years, the biggest blow to this system of support came after the 2008 financial crisis. The economic stagnation that followed led to a significant decline in support for the government, which culminated in a series of countrywide protests starting in 2011 and the dramatic electoral losses of the pro-Putin United Russia party in the Duma elections that year.

The ongoing pandemic will probably hit Russia even harder than the 2008 financial crisis. First, a precipitous fall in oil prices combined with a virtual halt to economic activity will cause long-term structural damage to the economy. Twice as many Russians have reported wage delays, cuts, or layoffs in May 2020 as compared with October 2019. This has led to the sharpest drop in Russians’ assessments of the economy since the 2008 crisis: By March, before most Russian regions introduced social distancing policies, the Levada Center recorded a 20-point decline in its consumer sentiment index.