In Moscow, the mood is increasingly uneasy. “I don’t understand anything. Last week everything was normal in Moscow, and suddenly there is no petrol and you have to queue for an hour and a half,” one businessperson said at a meeting in the Russian capital. Another described a growing sense that something was about to happen, while expressing the belief that neither Putin nor Ukraine appeared ready to stop the war.
The concerns reflect a broader deterioration in public sentiment. According to polling centre Levada, 52% of Russians now believe the country is moving in the “right direction”, one of the lowest levels recorded under Putin in almost two decades and the same level seen immediately before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. At the beginning of 2025, the figure had reached 75%, before Russia’s overheated economy began showing signs of strain and its advances on the battlefield slowed.
Putin’s approval has also fallen, standing at around 76% in June compared with 87% a year earlier, according to Levada. Yet the decline has not translated into a political challenge. The Government has an approval rating of 46%, while Putin’s United Russia party stands at only 36%. At the same time, 62% of Russians would support serious peace negotiations immediately, despite Russia having failed to achieve its objectives.
The contrast is increasingly visible in daily life. In Moscow, shopping centres remain filled with products and luxury goods, while outside the capital motorists face queues at petrol stations amid fuel shortages. The economic consequences of the war are becoming harder to ignore, with military production placing pressure on civilian industry and inflation eroding wages that have been boosted by wartime spending.
The pressure has also been intensified by Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure. Attacks on refineries have contributed to renewed fuel shortages, forcing Russia to import petrol from India at twice the cost. Ukrainian forces have also targeted major distribution and online-commerce facilities, including Wildberries and, for the first time, Ozon. Business sources have described Wildberries as being on the verge of bankruptcy, while Putin has acknowledged that such attacks, although not having “serious consequences”, are nevertheless damaging to the country.
The warnings from within Russia’s economic establishment have become increasingly stark. Andréi Klepach, then chief economist of VEB, the Russian Development Bank, warned in May that Russia could not win a war of attrition, arguing that its costs were rising as Ukrainian attacks hit infrastructure, ports, oil and gas facilities, chemical complexes and logistics. When his comments were leaked this month, he was removed from his post.
The economic strain is now feeding fears of deeper cuts. One analyst described Russia as being on the brink of recession, citing falling revenue and an increasingly large budget deficit. More than 8% of the Russian budget is consumed by loan payments, while another 40% goes towards military and police spending. The Government has acknowledged that it is considering cuts to areas deemed “dispensable”, including social assistance and infrastructure investment.
Yet the most sensitive issue may be mobilisation. Russia’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for 18 to 20 September, are widely viewed as a possible turning point after which Putin could announce tougher measures, including a new mobilisation. Vasili Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said this week that a mass mobilisation was neither needed nor expected.
Nevertheless, falling voluntary recruitment, new recruitment grounds and presidential decrees facilitating mobilisation have fuelled public anxiety. Authorities have also intensified what appears to be covert recruitment, with reports of street raids to check citizens’ documents and pressure men to sign military contracts.
Putin has presented the September elections as a demonstration of national unity and political stability. But with moderate opposition figures and parties excluded and the lower house dominated by the Kremlin and loyal parties, the vote is unlikely to alter Russia’s political balance. For the presidential administration, the elections are instead intended to demonstrate institutional normality at a moment when the economic and social costs of war are becoming increasingly difficult to conceal.
