Russian patriotism isn’t what Putin thinks it is

With Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine showing no signs of reaching a conclusion, a recent study by the country’s main state-run pollster, VTsIOM, revealed that 91 per cent of Russians consider themselves patriots. On the face of it, these numbers seem to vindicate two camps with a strikingly similar worldview. On the one hand, there is Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, desperate to prove that he is fighting this war in the name of all Russians; and on the other, a growing handful of those in the West who claim to be supporters of Ukraine and Putin’s foes, but who insist with equal vehemence on the populist fallacy that it is not just Putin’s war, but that of all Russians. 

A closer look at this same poll, however, reveals a striking irregularity: while 91 per cent across the country call themselves patriots, that number goes up to 95 per cent in Moscow and St.