Russians are growing increasingly skeptical of the Kremlin’s bombing campaign in Syria, according to polling data from Russia’s Levada Center.
While support for the intervention is still high, with 52 percent of those polled saying they support the attacks, the percentage fully supporting the bombing campaign dropped by 5 points in the last year, from 21 to 16 percent.
“On the whole, most people are still positive about the Kremlin’s role,” Aleksey Grazhdankin, a sociologist and deputy director of Levada, told the Moscow Times.
The data also shows that a large segment of Russians are uncertain about the Syria campaign; undecided respondents rose from 19 percent last year to 23 percent by the first week of October. Another 28 percent feel Russia should discontinue its interventions in Syria completely.
The results of the poll are surprising given the Kremlin’s strict control of Russian media, especially regarding foreign policy issues. Russian leaders tightly control information on the country’s foreign interventions. Russian officials actively suppressed news coverage of the Soviet military’s decade-long intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Increasingly tense diplomatic relations with the U.S. are also likely a cause for continued support of the Syria campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin often uses international conflicts and interventions to gather support from the general population by convincing them of a threat from the West. Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert on Russian politics and senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, refers to Putin’s manipulation as the “besieged fortress” strategy. Putin and his allies seize support by convincing the population that Russia is constantly under threat from outsiders.
Russia intervened in Syria just over one year ago in an alleged effort to bolster its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, against terrorist threats. The Kremlin claims its bombing campaign targets terrorist elements, but recent reports show the Russian military actively and intentionally targets civilians.
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