Please join us for an online discussion of the CSNS Ukraine and Russia Programme’s paper, How Has the War Reshaped Russian Views?, with its three authors.
This is the first event in a new series from the CSNS Ukraine and Russia Programme focused on Russia itself: its economy, its social and political dynamics and the way its past shapes its decision-making.
Sentiment inside Russia is often assumed to be opaque. In fact there is more evidence than is commonly thought, and it allows a detailed picture of how Russians view the war more than four years after the full-scale invasion.
The paper we will discuss draws on ten rounds of telephone polling between December 2022 and May 2026, together with in-depth interviews with Russians. Its central finding is that Russians have adapted to the war’s costs much faster than they have revised the beliefs behind it. Tiredness is at its highest since polling began, and in May 2026 81% of respondents said they would welcome an end to the war. That tiredness has not turned into opposition.
The session will cover how the polling is done and what it can and cannot tell us, what the interviews reveal about how views have changed and what this suggests about the Kremlin’s options in the next phase of the war, including further mobilisation. It will be chaired by Daniel Sleat, with time for questions on the paper and the wider situation in Russia and the war.
About the Speakers:
Dr Jade McGlynn is a Fellow at CSNS and a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her research since 2014 has focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine, particularly identity, propaganda and memory, and she now studies Russian occupation policies and Ukrainian resistance. She is the author of Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia and Russia’s War.
Kimberly Metcalf is a PhD researcher at King’s College London. Her doctoral research examines how Russia produces and securitises national identity, drawing on in-depth interviews with Russians in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Georgia, Serbia, Montenegro, Israel and Russia. Before her PhD she served in the US Army as a Special Operations Civil Affairs Officer and then led analytical teams in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Dr Alexander Shulga is head of the Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia (IKAR), an independent Kyiv-based think tank that has polled Russia by telephone since December 2022. He has 16 years of experience in quantitative and qualitative sociological research.
Daniel Sleat is a Russian specialist at King’s College London, where he works with Dr Jade McGlynn on the Ukraine and Russia Programme. He has spent 17 years in politics and policy, 11 of them at the Tony Blair Institute, where he was special adviser to Tony Blair and most recently senior policy adviser on geopolitics. He previously advised Jack Straw. His work focuses on how economic, political and fiscal constraints shape Kremlin decision-making.
To register to attend, please click here.
