Putin’s Popularity Declines After Ukraines Surprise Offensive in Kursk

8 comments

1. Fuck Putin!

2. It did decline from 143% to 137%.

3. Doesn’t matter. He just got *”elected”* anyway, pretty sure they’ll *”vote”* for him again in the next 8-10 years (whenever he decides to *show* another election).

4. This is actually an important development.

   It’s important not because Putin would now be close to losing some popular election or something, like what would happen in a functioning democracy, nobody thinks that is going to happen… but rather because Putin’s entire war has always been politically fraught for him. From Day 0 he has lacked a mandate to wage Russia’s war fully, probably out of some shred of sanity left in certain sections of his power base. And as it has dragged on and become lossier and lossier, his power base’s support for him has steadily eroded.

   The deal was supposed to be, “trust me, we won’t need lots of money or troops, we’ll take Kyiv in 3 days and then we can retcon any rationalization we like about what we found there, once Ukraine is ours, just give me a few days of this and you will see, it will all work out.”

   That was 900-something days ago.

   In that time, he has had to throw a steady stream of his power base out of windows. He has had to throw more and more of his supporters into the meat grinder of his failed conquest. He has had to burn Russia’s sovereign wealth fund to sustain the illusion of economic stability.

   And most saliently, he now has actual ethnic Russians in a panic because Ukraine has invaded Old Muscovy and turned them, personally, into refugees — a quarter million or more by now.

   Putin needs all these people, in order to rule. The oligarchs, the military high command, the Muscovites. And it has always been a bit of a dicey question as to whether there was a point where they would all feel threatened enough that they would turn around and react by flocking to Putin’s skirts for protection.

   So the fact that they have not reacted in that way so far, and are instead mostly turning their ire against Putin, is very encouraging for Ukraine.

   And honestly for everyone in the world who isn’t Putin.

5. He is going down. This is gonna be a downfall of a Russian Empire.

6. Is it declined below 90% then I would believe it.

7. The beating will
   Continue until popularity improves

8. Now he will only get 123% of the next election