War has once again become the top concern cited by Russian citizens when asked to name the most pressing issues facing the country. In a May survey, the conflict was cited by 33% of respondents, followed by low wages (24%) and high prices (18%), more traditional concerns, but both linked to the four-and-a-half-year full-scale invasion.
The return of war to first place indicates a significant shift in public sentiment about the “special military operation” and its impact on everyday life. And it is especially important because respondents were asked an open-ended question about what worries them, with no prompt for possible answers.
It was unsurprising in 2022, the first year of the full-scale invasion, that war came to mind first for Russians, and the first wave of monitoring conducted by the Institute of Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia found that 50% cited the war as the main problem.
But by 2023, complaints about low wages, high prices, and other “traditional” problems began to increase as mentions of the war receded.
The war slipped from the top spot in early 2024, a trend that continued into 2025. This reflected the “routinization” of the war for most Russians, its limited impact on the majority of the population, and the lack of obvious physical consequences for them.
The Kremlin’s rejection of mass mobilization and use of cash to attract men to fight also played a role. They were lured with large payments for signing contracts, along with promises of freedom for those in jail. Participation in 2023-2025 was still a matter of choice for many Russians.
For the majority of society, their own financial capacity and the economic situation were far more pressing, so low wages and high prices occupied the top spots.
In late 2025, the war began to impact the daily lives of Russians in new ways. Ukrainian drone attacks led to widespread gasoline shortages, and restrictions on internet and social media use, justified by security concerns, affected the majority of people.
The discrepancy between the official discourse and the personal experiences of Russian citizens is not new, but with the growing impact of the war on ordinary people, this dissonance has become even more pronounced.
The war has moved from being a background event to playing an increasingly significant role in daily life. There are queues at gas stations, a lack of a stable internet connection, and accelerating prices in stores.
The conclusion Russian society appears to have drawn is that most of its problems cannot be solved until the war ends. First, the fighting must cease, and only then can the authorities be expected to address their most pressing concerns.
The war is going nowhere and has dragged on, undermining the concept of the “Special Military Operation” as some kind of low-impact distant colonial exercise.
The surveys suggest Russians want the Kremlin to solve their problems, and it’s equally clear that all the tools the government has so far tried have been unsuccessful.
At the same time, the remaining tools — nuclear weapons, mass mobilization, or a full-scale war against NATO — have very little support, as they would create new challenges without solving the current ones.
The Kremlin is constantly at odds with itself and its population. While gasoline shortages have affected tens of millions of Russians from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk, Putin seems to prefer discussing the tactical battles over the streets in an obscure village in Donbas,
He alludes to the fuel crisis in his speeches, but spends much more time emphasizing claimed advances at the front.
In another contradiction, Russian propaganda still refers to the invasion of Ukraine as a “Special Military Operation,” but Kremlin officials are increasingly using the word “war” when they talk about it.
If this is part of a softening operation to prepare the population for martial law and mass mobilization, the survey findings suggest it will be hard for the Kremlin to win over the people’s support.
Dr. Oleksandr Shulga is the head of the Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia (IKAR), the only institution in Ukraine conducting monthly sociological monitoring in Russia. He has 20 years of advanced experience in the field of quantitative and qualitative sociological research. During these years, he has been a supervisor, consultant, and expert on a variety of projects, including areas of potentially escalating tension and instability.
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