Majority of Russians Think the Economy is Getting Worse

Back in April a Russia beauty influencer went viral for her comments about politics. Viktoria Bonya didn’t attack Putin directly, instead she suggested he was getting bad information. But her basic message was that people could tell things were not going well.

She rattled off to her 13 million followers a number of problems that she said were facing Russia — the major curtailing of digital freedoms, mass extermination of livestock in Siberia, deadly flooding in the southern Dagestan region and the oil slick drifting off Russia’s Black Sea coast.

“People will get tired of being afraid,” she said in the video, which has now been viewed more than 26 million times and liked by 1.4 million. “They’re being compressed like a spring, and one day, that spring will just snap.”

Of course things have gotten substantially worse since then with gas lines everywhere and constant drone attacks coming from Ukraine. A new poll shows that a majority of Russians now feel pessimistic about their own economic future.

With no end to Russia’s war with Ukraine in sight, a record-high 60% of Russians interviewed between March and May said their local economic conditions are getting worse. Less than half as many (27%) said things are getting better.

This marks the first time since 2006 that a majority of Russian adults have said their economy is getting worse. The previous highs were in 2020 (45%) and 2021 (50%) during the COVID-19 pandemic…

Russians also feel gloomy about their own living standards, with 56% in the latest poll saying their standard of living is getting worse. That’s the highest level of pessimism recorded yet and the first time in two decades that a majority of Russian adults have expressed this view.

Here’s a graph from Gallup showing people’s feelings about the economy. It has taken a huge swing over the past year.

A record-high 60% of Russians interviewed between March and May said their local economic conditions are getting worse. pic.twitter.com/xL4SYddi32

— Gallup (@Gallup) June 30, 2026

Confidence in Russian institutions is also plummeting:

This year, the public’s confidence levels in the military, national government and the honesty of elections have suffered their largest single-year declines on record. Confidence in the military has dropped by 13 percentage points to 66%, confidence in the government by 14 points to 53%, and confidence in the honesty of elections by 16 points to 40%.

Perceptions of media freedom have fallen even further, declining 25 points from a trend high of 59% to a new low of 34%.

I think the last one is the big one. People were content to buy whatever propaganda state media was putting out when they still felt the war wasn’t impacting them very much. Now that it is impacting them their tolerance for being told everything is fine is wearing thin very quickly. 

Earlier this week I highlighted some of the videos of people losing their cool at gas stations. But every day there are more of these videos. In Crimea, if you can find gas at all, it will cost you 1000 rubles per liter, which works out to nearly $50 per gallon.

$50 per gallon gas now in Crimea.

Venezuela 2.0 https://t.co/ulzLgvGq05

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) June 30, 2026

I really like this video in which someone asks people waiting in line for gas how long they’ve waited and how many stations they’ve visited so far. But the best part is when he asks them why this is happening. The first guy he interviews says, “Well, I connect it to the thing we can’t talk about.”

Russians spending their days searching for fuel complain of a sense of fear and panic now overwhelming society, as everything breaks down, with many saying that there will only be relief after the war. pic.twitter.com/4kVtcVSD6R

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) June 30, 2026

People see what is happening and they know why it’s happening. That’s clearly a problem for Putin. Yesterday his government announced they’d be importing gasoline to deal with the shortage. And, sure enough, today they have made a deal to buy gas from India.

Russia has begun importing gasoline by sea from India in an effort to ease growing fuel shortages caused by Ukrainian strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure, according to industry sources cited by Reuetrs on July 1.

According to one industry source, at least 60,000 metric tons of gasoline have already been dispatched from India to Russia. A second source said two tankers carrying between 30,000 and 40,000 metric tons each had been sent.

Maybe this will help smooth over the shortage in some areas but Russia is also now paying for something it usually produces on its own at a time when oil prices have dropped to pre-Iran war levels. It’s just one more strain on the economy that is already struggling.

Finally, there was another drone strike overnight on a refinery in Ufa. It was the second time in a week that this particular refinery was hit.

For the second time, our sanctions in response to Russia’s prolongation of the war have reached the oil refinery in Ufa, one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants. The distance is more than 1,300 kilometers from the frontline.

Also in the Penza region, our weapons reached…

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 1, 2026

Russians are right to be pessimistic. There’s no end in sight for the bad news. 

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