Casualties Won’t Topple Putin

Western governments report that Russian losses in the war against Ukraine are approaching a staggering 200,000 killed or wounded, with roughly 40,000 dead. These figures are almost three times greater than the death toll Moscow saw in 10 years of war in Afghanistan. These massive losses, however, have led to little public protest in Russia. Why?

Media coverage of casualties during the Vietnam War steadily eroded support for the war in the United States. By contrast, the Russian government and state media rarely mention the scale of the casualties, and we do not know what the Russian public knows about these losses. But hiding losses of this magnitude will only get harder. Wounded soldiers are returning home and telling tales of life and death at the front, and those killed in action have friends and families. As more people learn about the size of losses, support for the war will be harder to sustain.

Research on how the public responds to losses during war is scarce, but evidence from one well-studied case, the United States, illuminates why the public tolerates war casualties, as do lessons from history about how authoritarian leaders hold on to power during unpopular wars. All evidence points to trouble ahead for the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin may be an autocrat, but it is easier to govern as a popular autocrat than as an unpopular one. Like all autocrats, Putin faces the dual challenge of keeping his elite cronies in the fold while also satisfying the masses. Rising casualties, regardless of their media coverage, will make both tasks more difficult.

Future casualties may come from more politically powerful groups as Putin struggles to recruit from marginalized groups. The Kremlin has reportedly stopped emptying the prisons to send troops to the front. Rural populations now know the dangers of serving in Ukraine. The Kremlin has increased incentives to sign up and allow recruiters to hit their quotas.

Beyond recruiting, the Kremlin’s ability to shape expectations of military success also matters for public tolerance of war casualties. Scholars found that during recent wars Americans were willing to tolerate losses as long as they ultimately expected the United States to achieve its military goals. How Russians perceive success in the war is difficult to discern, in part because of the challenges of conducting public opinion polls in wartime and the vague military goals put forward by the Kremlin.

In May 2022, 73 percent of Russians thought that the “special military operation” in Ukraine was proceeding successfully, but following the partial mobilization of draftees in September and the retreat from Kherson in October, this figure fell to 54 percent. Other polls at the time revealed even harsher evaluations. After the front line in Eastern Ukraine stabilized in the winter, 63 percent of Russians viewed the war in Ukraine as going well.

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If, as many expect, the current military stalemate in the Donbas continues and the war drags on without a clear end in sight, the Russian public may see the war effort in much less rosy terms, as happened in the United States during the latter stages of the Vietnam War. Indeed, there is already evidence that the Russian public is growing ambivalent about the war in Ukraine. Surveys of the mass public during war may be less reliable, but they generally show that majorities of Russians tell pollsters that they support the war, if with increasing reservations and decreasing enthusiasm.

One recent review of survey research from Russia found that “while the Putin regime has managed to maintain an ‘imposed consensus’ around the war in Russian public space, in reality, the ‘support for the war’ of the median electorate is internally contradictory, unstable, and unconsolidated.” Another study found that 37 percent of respondents were not able to give a clear answer when asked what the war in Ukraine was being waged for. Even Kremlin polling suggests that a majority of Russians support peace talks with Ukraine. About one-third of Russians are hardcore supporters of the war effort, but most Russians hold contradictory views about it.

The public’s ambivalence, however, is unlikely to undermine Putin as long as his military and political leaders continue to back him: Elite unity in supporting the war is crucial for ensuring the public’s tolerance of casualties. Research from a range of conflicts after World War II found that the American public is not reflexively opposed to casualties, but instead relies on elite cues about the war. When political elites remain united, the public is generally willing to support high casualties. However, even a relatively small number of casualties can spark opposition to the war if elites are at odds with each other.

To date, Russian political elites have shown a remarkable public consensus in support of the war. No high-ranking Russian officials have resigned to protest it, and those who have criticized the war have not done so on the grounds that losses have been too high, but on the grounds that the Kremlin has fought incompetently or with insufficient resources. Indeed, most critics would prefer to pursue the war with greater ferocity, a tactic entailing greater losses. At the same time, that the Kremlin has begun taking the passports of high-ranking elites and preventing them from traveling abroad is hardly a sign of growing confidence in their support.

This level of repression, though, is a very costly response to opposition that modern autocrats try to avoid. Not only does repression require devoting significant resources to security services which could be used elsewhere, it also increases the autocrat’s dependence on those security forces and rarely solves the problems that provoke protest in the first place. Cracking down on protestors is hardly a path to winning “hearts and minds” in support of the war. Indeed, that the Kremlin has devoted so much effort to repress even minor acts of protest against the war hints at its level of concern.

Putin seems to understand the political risk of war casualties. He only reluctantly agreed to a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 men last September and has resisted suggestions that another round of mobilization is in the offing despite struggles on the battlefield. His fears of public opposition to mobilization are not unfounded: More than 200,000 Russians fled the country after the announcement of a partial mobilization in September and, at that time, 65 percent of Russians expressed concern about the prospect of a general mobilization.

Fears about casualties may have influenced Putin’s decision for a lightning strike on Kyiv with a relatively small force which he thought would produce fewer casualties over using overwhelming firepower and a large military force to subdue Kyiv, which would have resulted in even greater casualties. Similarly, in Syria, Russian tactics have rarely put Russian soldiers at risk, perhaps in hopes of preventing an unpopular war from becoming even less popular.

In the end, Russia is an autocracy, so does it matter whether the public supports the war? It is hard to replace autocrats, particularly during wars, and even personalist autocrats like Putin who lose wars are rarely removed from office upon defeat. Saddam Hussein launched disastrous wars against Iran and Kuwait, but retained power, as did Joseph Stalin in his 1940 offensive against Finland and Hafez al-Assad in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Autocrats have been able to fight long wars even with high casualties, so great casualties on the battlefield by themselves are unlikely to dislodge Putin from power. But they are likely to make his job much more difficult.