The death toll among Ukraine’s soldiers: Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC that between 100 and 200 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed every day — the highest death toll any Ukrainian official has yet acknowledged publicly during the war with Russia. The main reason for the significant losses, he explained, is Russian superiority in artillery. To reach parity with Moscow, Podolyak said, Kyiv needs “hundreds of advanced artillery systems” and as many as 300 missile systems.
The Kremlin is planning to annex the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine and combine them into a single federal district within Russia, three sources close to the Putin administration told Meduza.
“The district should appear after referendums on joining Russia are held in these territories. Ukrainian territories will not accede to existing districts [in Russia],” one of these sources explained.
Sources also told Meduza that Kremlin official Boris Rapoport (the deputy head of the presidential directorate for State Council affairs) has been tapped to supervise the creation of this new federal district. Rapoport was involved in the Kremlin’s Donbas policymaking back in 2014, working alongside Putin’s aide and Donbas point man Vladislav Surkov.
Inside the Putin administration, Rapoport is referred to as a “crisis manager,” best known for working on the electoral campaigns of Kremlin-back candidates. According to Meduza’s sources, Rapoport played a key role in salvaging Alexander Beglov’s run for governor of St. Petersburg in 2019.
Meduza’s sources say the Kremlin plans to annex occupied Ukrainian territories and merge them into a new federal district in Russia
The Kremlin is planning to annex the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine and combine them into a single federal district within Russia, three sources close to the Putin administration told Meduza.
“The district should appear after referendums on joining Russia are held in these territories. Ukrainian territories will not accede to existing districts [in Russia],” one of these sources explained.
Sources also told Meduza that Kremlin official Boris Rapoport (the deputy head of the presidential directorate for State Council affairs) has been tapped to supervise the creation of this new federal district. Rapoport was involved in the Kremlin’s Donbas policymaking back in 2014, working alongside Putin’s aide and Donbas point man Vladislav Surkov.
Inside the Putin administration, Rapoport is referred to as a “crisis manager,” best known for working on the electoral campaigns of Kremlin-back candidates. According to Meduza’s sources, Rapoport played a key role in salvaging Alexander Beglov’s run for governor of St. Petersburg in 2019.
The state-owned pollster VTsIOM published a survey on May 30, after a long hiatus. It said that support for the “special operation” was “stably high” at 72 percent. The most recent poll on the same subject from the independent Levada Center was published on June 2, and according to that one, support for the war rose insignificantly during the month of May, hovering around 47 percent. The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) has stopped putting out these polls altogether. When there is no consistency among these data, no shared started point, how can we draw any conclusions about the mood among the population?
We have to seek out more independent samples from different polling companies. If these samples more or less align, than this data can offer guidance. What’s going on for now? VTsIOM has said that its results haven’t changed after almost two months of hiatus — their second most recent poll had come out at the end of March/beginning of April. “Stably high” or just “frozen” is just a matter of phrasing. Very recently, Extreme Scan, an independent project, concluded that the fixed proportion of support for the war hasn’t changed since the beginning of March. At the very least, they say, it hasn’t increased in the past two months. This is the first trend that we can use as a point of departure.
The second one is that compared to the end of February/beginning of March, declared interest in the subject of Ukraine has been visibly decreasing. The number of people who say they are closely following this subject, and believe it’s the most important event of the week, is decreasing.
What other changes have taken place in society over the past 100 days?
There are actually relatively few of these. The matter of whether people support or do not support the war is a long-term factor that’s difficult to change. The proportions we see now are very similar to the ones we saw in 2014 and early 2015, during the acute, hot phase of the conflict in the Donbas.
Some factors that were set into motion in 2014–2015 have shown themselves now. The most important of these is the value judgment regarding who is right and who is wrong. This is a normal thing for a civic assessment — when it’s completely unclear what’s going on, people assume that their country and government must be doing the right thing.
For over two-thirds of Russian citizens, back then and today, Ukraine and the West are the ones to blame for the situation to varying degrees. First and foremost, and to the greatest extent, it’s the West. It’s unlikely that much will happen with this indicator. There are two variables: “Who is to blame?” and “What is to be done?”. “Who is to blame” is a stable variable. “What is to be done” is much more mobile. We need to watch this carefully.
The expectations that the military operation will end very quickly, in a matter of weeks, must have declined considering the fact that it’s been going on for 100 days already and there are absolutely no signs that it might suddenly end.
We have to seek out more independent samples from different polling companies. If these samples more or less align, than this data can offer guidance. What’s going on for now? VTsIOM has said that its results haven’t changed after almost two months of hiatus — their second most recent poll had come out at the end of March/beginning of April. “Stably high” or just “frozen” is just a matter of phrasing. Very recently, Extreme Scan, an independent project, concluded that the fixed proportion of support for the war hasn’t changed since the beginning of March. At the very least, they say, it hasn’t increased in the past two months. This is the first trend that we can use as a point of departure.
The second one is that compared to the end of February/beginning of March, declared interest in the subject of Ukraine has been visibly decreasing. The number of people who say they are closely following this subject, and believe it’s the most important event of the week, is decreasing.
What other changes have taken place in society over the past 100 days?
There are actually relatively few of these. The matter of whether people support or do not support the war is a long-term factor that’s difficult to change. The proportions we see now are very similar to the ones we saw in 2014 and early 2015, during the acute, hot phase of the conflict in the Donbas.
Some factors that were set into motion in 2014–2015 have shown themselves now. The most important of these is the value judgment regarding who is right and who is wrong. This is a normal thing for a civic assessment — when it’s completely unclear what’s going on, people assume that their country and government must be doing the right thing.
For over two-thirds of Russian citizens, back then and today, Ukraine and the West are the ones to blame for the situation to varying degrees. First and foremost, and to the greatest extent, it’s the West. It’s unlikely that much will happen with this indicator. There are two variables: “Who is to blame?” and “What is to be done?”. “Who is to blame” is a stable variable. “What is to be done” is much more mobile. We need to watch this carefully.
The expectations that the military operation will end very quickly, in a matter of weeks, must have declined considering the fact that it’s been going on for 100 days already and there are absolutely no signs that it might suddenly end.
Over three-quarters of respondents have said and will continue to say that the conflict will end with Russia’s military victory. After that, it gets complicated regarding how people define victory, and what result they would consider right.
When neither the television nor official figures give obvious hints regarding what to think, people tend to decide for themselves that “our people” are right, that the Russian side is fighting for its righteous cause and that it will win in the end. But what is our righteous cause? Officials have given too many different versions of an answer to this question on TV and so people are forced to determine the central significance of these events for themselves. Aside from some general words, it’s completely unclear what the end goal is. People have to make it up. The most common personal understanding that respondents choose for themselves is that Russia is conducting a defensive campaign to protect itself from Western countries and NATO. While the Ukrainian side, including those “evil Nazis,” come in second place in terms of purported cause.
What does it tell us that people don’t have a single, coherent understanding of the purpose and significance of this war?
We know where that comes from. This has been one of the main activities for journalists in the past three months — watching [Russian] officials make their statements, and observing how the official stated goals of the military campaign shift. When officials are saying different things all the time, people have to choose which of the stated objectives seem the most justified and worthy to them personally.
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