The majority of Russians support the end of the war – on one condition that China says goodbye to former government leader Li Keqiang

Russia’s war of aggression has turned the world order upside down. Russia has been conducting a three-day military operation in Ukraine for twenty months. It consumes a lot of money, resources and human lives.

The Kremlin has barely commented on the losses at the front. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense currently estimates the number of Russian troop losses at more than 300,000 soldiers. However, Ukraine’s figures should be viewed with caution; they cannot be independently verified.

According to the British Ministry of Defense, approximately 150,000 to 190,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Russia’s war of aggression, which violates international law. Losses continue to rise – especially now due to the heavy fighting for the city of Avdiivka.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov recently announced that military spending will double by 2024. “Total spending on national defense will increase significantly compared to previous years. “Today, 29 percent of all household expenditure goes to our main task: ensuring our victory,” Siluanov said.

But what if Putin announced the end of the war today? The Russian non-governmental research organization Levada Analytical Center (Levada Center) asked this question to the Russian people. The result is surprising.

How many Russians would support an end to the war?

70 percent of respondents would support Putin’s decision to end the war in Ukraine “this week.” These figures come from a survey conducted from October 19 to 25 by the Levada Analysis Center in Russia in personal interviews.

Curious statistics, says Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. “The investigation was conducted by the Russian Levada Center, which is fully under the control of the Kremlin,” he explains on X, formerly Twitter, sharing the result.

The Levada Center’s task is to regularly monitor public opinion in Russia, the website said. It conducts research for companies, universities and non-governmental organizations in Russia and around the world, as well as for international organizations.

The head of the center’s supervisory board is Soviet economist Abel Aganbegyan. He is chairman of several national committees and councils, and at the time he was personal economic advisor to the political great Mikhail Gorbachev.

Sociologist and analyst Denis Volkov says he is director of the Levada Center. The American think tank “Jamestown Foundation” describes the research institution as “an independent opinion research institute and think tank based in Moscow”. Volkov has written several publications on civil society, protests and political views in Russia, the report continued.

But according to Gerachchenko, the Kremlin probably exerts influence over the research center. “This means that this information has been deliberately placed in the public space,” he explains. The exact results were as follows:

However, the Levada Center asked a second question in this regard, which showed that the Russians would apparently agree to an end to the war only under one condition.

The Russians agree to end the war under only one condition

However, the majority of respondents would not support an end to the war if it were linked to the return of all occupied Ukrainian territories. These are the figures in detail:

However, half of those polled also said they would prefer peace talks to continuing the war. Also interesting is that 41 percent of respondents would not start the war if they had the ability to turn back time and reverse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Most of the supporters of the “special military operation” were in the age group of 55 years and older, of whom 51 percent supported Putin’s February 2022 decision.