Vladimir Putin has come out on top in a series of polls from a Russian state-owned agency, in a completely unsurprising twist.
According to surveys conducted by Russian pollster VCIOM, Putin is trusted by three-quarters of the general public – making him the most trusted Russian politician (apparently).
As of September 1, 75.5% of the 1,600 members of the public surveyed “definitely trust” or are “likely to trust” the president.
Interestingly, that is a drop of 5.3 percentage points from August 11, when he had a 80.8% approval rating, and his lowest rate since the war began.
Putin does supposedly have a few people who actively disapprove of him too – 19.8% of respondents supposedly said they “definitely distrust” and are “likely to distrust” the Russian preisdent.
But, overall, 72% still approve of his job performance (a 0.4 percentage point drop from August 11).
Putin’s prime minister Mikhail Mishustin was not seen as favourably, securing just 51.7% of the public’s trust, with just 47.9% said they approved of how the government was running the country.
Putin’s complete dominance in these polls is to be expected.
The Russian presidential election earlier this year was widely condemned as a farce by the international communities, especially after Putin apparently won by a landslide with 88% of the vote.
Some voters were coerced into backing the incumbent leader for his fifth term in office even in occupied areas of Ukraine, and Putin faced no serious competition from other politicians.
But the Kremlin has repeatedly claimed to be a democratic state, even claiming in March that Russia’s democracy is “the best in the world”.
This supposed support for Putin also comes as Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region rumbles into its second month, with no sign of Russian troops being able to expel Kyiv’s forces any time soon.
Ukraine’s bold offensive triggered a wave of discontent across the country, and has brought the reality of the war – instead of Putin’s sanitised term “special military operation” – to the Russian public.