Page 29 - RusRPTNov19

month earlier. Governors disapproval was 34% in September and another 3% couldn't answer, according to Levada. The highest the governors have ever scored was 68% October 2014.
In general the majority (49%) of Russian still believe the country is going in the “right direction” according to Levada, but 41% believe it is going in the wrong direction, with 10% unsure. Still, the right direction metric is still off its all time peak of 64% set in July 2015, following the euphoria and national “we’re back” pride that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Finally the propensity to protest jumped sharply over the summer with 30% of Russians saying it was possible that they would participate in protests with political demands and 34% saying the same in protests with economic demands in August. Those numbers were up from 24% and 26% in June but not as high as the 34% and 41% set in July 2018, which remains the recent peak of frustration amongst Russians.
Moreover, while dissatisfaction amongst average Russians is clearly rising and they are thinking about protesting the number of Russians that say they will definitely participate in protests has remained largely unchanged. Indeed, the number of those that said they definitely participate in political protests was down 2pp to 20% in August from 22% in June and in the case of economic protests it remained unchanged at 27% over the same period.
One possibility for these separate trends between possible participation and determined participation could be the level of brutality and the random arrests by police at this summers’ protests.
For the Kremlin these rising levels of discontent represent a serious political problem, but at the same time the stability of the number that are determined to act also says the Kremlin still has time to deal with the social discontent. September rising in incomes and the acceleration of economic growth from the spending on the 12 national projects that is expected to kick in over the next six months may go some way to ameliorating these frustrations.
29 RUSSIA Country Report November 2019 www.intellinews.o