Page 21 - RusRPTJul19

the same time, the number of persons outside the labour force increased. The increase is due almost entirely to the over 1mn persons in potential labour force, i.e. not actively seeking work, but who would like to have a job.
The state owned pollster, the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) got in hot water in May with the Kremlin after the release of its latest trust metric that found 31.7% of Russians trust Vladimir Putin. Spokesman Dmitri Peskov said he expected some sort of explanation on how this figure and Putin’s approval rating are correlated. In fairness to Peskov, the trust indicator causes confusion just about every time it is released: it is not a question directly about Putin, but a prompt for respondents to volunteer the politicians they trust most. In that regard, the data captures intensity of support and political engagement more than anything else. However, this was really because 31.7% is a “bad” number, and, hoping to avoid issues, VTsIOM launched a new indicator directly asking Russians whether they trust Vladimir Putin. Some 70% do, versus just over 20% who do not.
Nearly half (49%) of Russians polled by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center have stated that they are satisfied with their standard of living, while 22% claimed the opposite and over a quarter (28%) said they are partly satisfied, the polling center informed TASS. The poll was held among 1,600 Russian citizens over 18 years of age via a phone interview. According to the poll, the social well-being of Russians has generally improved in May. Around 54% of Russians estimate the economic situation in Russia as "average". About 13% of respondents have assessed the economic situation as "higher than average", while 28% said the opposite ("lower than average"). The majority of respondents (61%) noted that their family’s financial situation is average, a quarter (25%) claimed it is bad, while 14% stated that it is higher than average. A third of those polled (31%) thinks that the country is on the right track, 41% partly agree with this statement and a quarter (25%) disagree.
Business Ombudsman Boris Titov met with Putin at the end of May to discuss business climate issues. He brought with him behind-the-scenes polling of entrepreneurs by the Federal Protection Service. The numbers were not good. Only 23.2% respondents said conducting business is safe, and an even smaller 9% indicated that businesses are protected from baseless criminal charges. While Titov wants something here and has an incentive to paint an ugly picture, remember that the situation on the ground for local entrepreneurs is completely different than that suggested by the macro-level ease of doing business surveys that only measure in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Not that foreign businesses are rushing in, anyway.
Fewer Russians are willing to participate in protest, but those that are, appear to be angrier than before. Russians have become more willing to participate in mass protests, although the share of citizens who say they would actually participate has fallen, according to survey by the independent pollster the Levada Center released at the end of May. The result speaks of a core group of Russians who are becoming radicalised to some extent. At the same time, the share of respondents willing to protest against a fall in living standards (27%) for the first time exceeded the share of those who talk about the likelihood of the protests themselves (26%) – a share that has almost halved from a year ago (41% in July 2018). Despite frustration with income stagnation which has moved into its sixth year, the share of those who consider political protests possible (24%) has fallen to record lows since the spring of 2018, although 22% of respondents say they ready to join protests.
21 RUSSIA Country Report July 2019 www.intellinews.com