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“We asked the question, ‘Imagine there is additional money in the Russian budget, how would you like to spend it?’ Less than 10 per cent are in favour of additional military spending, despite the fact that propaganda is telling them 24 hours a day ... ‘We are at war against the evil NATO, and we have to invest everything we have in defeating NATO’.
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“So ... we can actually figure out that, well, there is no such thing as a popular support for the war there,” Volkov said.
Putin had also lost the support of the elites, he claimed.
“They’ve lost everything. Their lifestyle is ruined. No more kids in London, no more ski vacations ... and he doesn’t present them with an exit strategy. They are asking him, ‘What’s next? What’s the end game?’ and there is no answer. And they are getting more and more angry.”
On calls for sporting bodies to prevent Russian athletes from competing in international events, Volkov said bans did have some impact on Russian society, but that Putin had also tried to weaponise them as an example of Western discrimination.
Ukraine’s sports minister recently renewed a threat to boycott the Olympic Games in Paris next year if Russia and Belarus were allowed to compete, and the sports ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland urged the International Olympic Committee and sporting organisations to ban athletes from those countries. But the IOC held firm, saying Russians and Belarusians could compete under neutral status if they were not “actively supporting” the war.
Vladimir Putin on a recent visit to Mariupol in Russian-controlled Donetsk, Ukraine.Credit:Russian TV
Volkov said that “individual athletes who condemned the war, and make clear statements against the war, should be allowed to participate,” but only under a neutral flag.
The good news, said Volkov, was that the war and the criminal warrant for Putin’s arrest issued by The Hague this month were likely to hasten the president’s demise.
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“It’s a black swan event for him,” Volkov said. Until the invasion, the “most probable scenario was he would remain in power for 20 more years, until he dies.
“Now the probability for this scenario ... has decreased dramatically.”
Once Putin was off the scene, there was no reason Russia could not become a democracy, Volkov said.
“There is no such thing as a nation that’s incapable [of democracy].”