Truth is we don’t know how popular Putin really is

Much has been made of the anti-war protests in Russian cities but it is worth understanding that much of Putin’s support comes from the provinces. There has been the impulse to present this wholesale invasion of Ukraine as fundamentally different from the invasion of Crimea in 2015 from which Putin’s popularity surged. That too was an appalling illegal action conducted against a neighbouring country with a shared ethnicity and a shared history. There are obvious differences too, most notably scale and bloodshed. 2015 was a relatively bloodless act of aggression - whereas the human toll the current invasion might already be too horrific for the Russian people. There are certainly signs that this is the case.

The issue though is the patchwork foreign coverage of Russia - that relies overwhelmingly on correspondents in the cities. The bias here is to overstate the opposition against Putin on the surging crowds in major cities.