Apart from the questionable nature of polling in a totalitarian dictatorship there's also the question of propaganda and lies making people support things they shouldn't.
Even worse: it's used as propoganda itself, they export this idea of all russians being united against the west bla-bla-bla. While in reality most people just don't want to think about it, and the state does everything to keep the "normality level" acceptable. This may sound unrealistic to the americans who seems to have their political opinion all the time, but russians just don't care, there're even jokes about "not interested in politics", not even if it threatens their lifes
When someone rapes someone in front of you and you are like ‘oh, I don’t care’ you are helping the aggressor, not the victim. That’s what Russians are. ‘We are out of politics’ is not an excuse when your county places a genocidal war over another sovereign nation. By whitewashing Russians you help only Russians. Not the best time to play on the Russian side.
Almost all the Russians I know personally support the war. They aren’t some silly ‘90 years olds with Alzheimer’s’ crowd, most of them are software engineers. Some of them know I live in Ukraine, yet they tell me they will ‘liberate me soon.’ From my own free will, I suppose.
Oh no, those who are ideological won’t fail quickly. It’s not that you show them there is no logic and they change their minds. It’s more like absolutely controversial realtors would peacefully coexist next to each other in their heads. The same way those conspiracy fanatics do.
We cannot draw a legitimate statistics, as that could be our own bubble. But it’s incorrect to say an average Joe doesn’t support the war. Even those who oppose the war, do they do something? Or do they like ‘I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can (want to) do.’
That's redefining "support" to mean something completely different. You'll get in a lot of pointless fights if you don't make it clear to people you're using an obscure definition.
