How foreign wars can consolidate authoritarian power: Evidence from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

It is a common hope that Russia’s war with Ukraine will erode domestic support for the Kremlin. This column uses individual-level survey data to show instead that the invasion produced a sharp and enduring surge in pro-Kremlin sentiment. The subsequent partial mobilisation only briefly depressed support. Russians living abroad, however, became markedly more critical of Putin following the invasion. The findings suggest that hopes for regime change from within, driven by public war-weariness, are likely misplaced at least in the near term.

In policy discussions about Russia, Ukraine, and Western responses, a frequent hope is that military spending, sanctions, economic hardship, and battlefield losses will erode domestic support for the Kremlin, weakening its legitimacy and possibly its capacity to wage war (Becker et al. 2024, Fisman et al. 2025). At the same time, foreign wars often produce a ‘rally round the flag’ effect (e.g. Mueller 1970), boosting support for leaders and making opposition harder.

In a new paper (Elinder et al. 2024), we provide evidence on how the full-scale invasion of Ukraine shaped public opinion inside Russia and among Russians abroad. In our paper, we use individual-level data from the Levada Center and the Gallup World Poll and find that the invasion produced a sharp and enduring surge in pro-Kremlin sentiment, raising Putin’s approval, optimism about the future, and anti-Western attitudes, while reducing Russians’ desire to emigrate. These shifts were seen across most demographic groups, though were notably absent among residents of Moscow. By contrast, the subsequent partial mobilisation depressed support. This effect, however, only lasted briefly before sentiments rebounded. At the same time, Russians living abroad became markedly more critical of Putin following the invasion.

Our findings carry implications both for Western strategy and for how we understand political control in authoritarian regimes in war time.

Rallying behind the Kremlin

Leveraging the quasi-random timing of survey fieldwork around the invasion on 24 February 2022, we compare Levada respondents interviewed just before and after the invasion. Putin’s approval jumped by 13 percentage points – an effect echoed in Gallup data showing a 25 percentage point rise between 2021 and 2022. Crucially, this was not confined to any one group: men and women, young and old, rich and poor all showed similar surges. Only Muscovites showed no significant change.

Figure 1 Approval of Vladimir Putin before and after the invasion

This ‘rally round the flag’ effect extended well beyond leader approval. Optimism about Russia’s future rose, views of the EU became more negative, and fewer Russians wanted to move abroad. Even life satisfaction increased in the Gallup data. Such broad attitudinal shifts indicate that approval gains reflected genuine sentiment, not just fearful conformity. Moreover, we find no evidence of selective survey response or item non-response patterns.

These effects are large by historical standards: roughly one-third to one-half the magnitude of the record rally effects following the 9/11 attacks in the US (Hetherington and Nelson 2003), and comparable to Russia’s rallies after the annexation of Crimea (e.g. Hale 2022).

Temporary crack during mobilisation

When Putin announced a partial military mobilisation in September 2022, we find immediate declines in the support for Putin, optimism, and current mood, as well as more fear, tension, and irritation. Yet, a few months after the mobilisation ended in late October, these effects had fully dissipated.

Figure 2 Short-lived sentiment drop during the mobilisation

Looking at heterogenous effects across the population, we find that during the mobilisation young women showed sharper drops in optimism and older women in mood. Gallup data also hint at a small, short-lived rise in young men’s desire to emigrate, consistent with reports of surging flight ticket prices (Avila-Uribe and Nigmatulina 2023). Moreover, the direction of these results suggest that many Russians still dared to answer surveys honestly despite the risk of repression.

A diverging diaspora and global backlash

Gallup’s global surveys show a stark contrast between Russia and the rest of the world. Outside Russia, approval of the Russian leadership plunged sharply from 2021 to 2022, even in previously pro-Putin countries. Among Russians living abroad, who were historically more patriotic than residents in Russia, approval also dropped steeply. The diaspora’s views have now converged with the global opinion and diverged away from the homeland.

Figure 3 Divergence between Russians at home and abroad

Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest these effects were mostly driven by a genuine shift in sentiment, not just selective emigration: even assuming one million anti-Putin emigrants, they would make up only 4% of the diaspora, which could not alone explain the 25 percentage point drop in support abroad.

Why did Russians rally?

What can explain such broad-based support for the war? One factor may be that the invasion furnished a clear external threat that leaders could use to frame the war as existential, invoking nationalism, and suppressing alternative narratives. Another is state control of information: censorship and propaganda have been shown to raise support for Putin (e.g. Enikolopov et al. 2011, 2018). While our study lacks individual media use data, aggregate Levada data show stronger pro-war sentiments among those who trust state media than among social media users (El Baz et al. 2024).

Similarly, the rally’s absence in Moscow may reflect the city’s greater access to independent information and/or cosmopolitan values. By contrast, the negative reaction to the mobilisation suggests that personal exposure to war costs can puncture patriotic sentiment, perhaps explaining why the Kremlin has avoided larger mobilisations.

Policy implications

These findings underscore the resilience of autocratic support during foreign wars. The invasion’s strong and persistent rally effects suggest that hopes for regime change from within, driven by public war-weariness, are likely misplaced at least in the near term. More broadly, our paper highlights how autocrats can strategically wield external conflict to consolidate domestic control.

At the same time, the loss of diaspora support could carry long-run costs. Russians abroad often serve as cultural and economic bridges; their estrangement may erode soft power and eventually filter back through personal networks to Russia. Understanding these transnational opinion dynamics could help policymakers design sanctions and information strategies that weaken authoritarian legitimacy.

Source : VOXeu