(LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM) – Exiled Russian opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin has said the mood in Russia has turned against the war, with support for the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin falling and young people overwhelmingly opposed to the conflict.
Speaking to the Frontline podcast produced by Times Radio, Nadezhdin said ordinary Russians are now feeling the war directly through Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian cities, rising inflation and fuel shortages.
“From the beginning of this year the situation has changed dramatically in Russia because each day Ukrainian drones strike Russian cities,” Nadezhdin said.
He added that rising prices for food, medicine and other goods have shifted public mood “to the bad side,” while the ratings of Putin and the governing United Russia party are “coming down, down, down.”
Nadezhdin said Putin’s rating stood at around 80 percent at the start of the war but has now fallen to approximately 60 or 65 percent.
“For autocratic regime the autocrat should have only one good rating, 100 percent,” he said. “And when it coming down it’s a very bad signal.”
The former presidential candidate said that while he was able to run on an anti war platform in 2024, it is now “absolutely impossible” to call for peace in Russian elections.
He and the Yabloko party, whose name means apple in Russian, were initially legalised as election participants but have since been banned.
Nadezhdin said Russian officials were telling him they feared another mobilisation, describing the October 2022 call up as “the worst time” for regional leaders.
“I do not believe in big mobilisation in Russia because from the military point of view it’s senseless and from the political point of view it is very strong risk for system,” he said.
The politician, who fled Russia in recent weeks after being labelled a foreign agent and facing an extremism case, said he had known Putin since the mid 1990s when both worked in the Russian government.
He described the future dictator as having “very beautiful memory” and “very deep understanding of problems” during Putin’s first term from 2000 to 2003.
“It was absolutely sure that Putin is for democracy, for market economy, for competition in economy and for good relations with West,” Nadezhdin said. “But people are changing, especially when they 25 years in power.”
Nadezhdin said most Russian officials around Putin are not true believers but behave “like an army” following orders, comparing the situation to the Soviet bureaucracy of the 1980s when “everybody was communist” before the system collapsed.
He said a peace agreement on borders is currently impossible, but that a ceasefire stopping strikes on cities in both Russia and Ukraine is achievable.
Citing the examples of North and South Korea and Russia’s lack of a peace treaty with Japan, Nadezhdin argued that territorial questions could be left for future generations.
He said Western leaders should tell Putin directly that his only path to restoring public support is to stop the war and return normal life to Russian cities.
Nadezhdin said real polling shows only seven percent of Russians under 30 want the war to continue, while 73 percent are strongly against it.
“This regime and the support of war and the support of Putin politics absolutely has no strategic perspective for next generation,” he said.
The interview was produced by Times Radio and aired on the Frontline programme.
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