What Are The Current Views Of Young Russians

Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) poses for a picture with youths who took part in the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games, as he visits a local Olympic youth sports school in Cheboksary, October 9, 2014. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin

Dimitri Alexander Simes, National Interest: What Russia's Youth Are Thinking

While most young Russians approve of Vladimir Putin and oppose completely overhauling the status quo, they are not blind to the system’s problems.

The politics of Russia’s youth are an enigma for most Western observers. No unified understanding exists among journalists, analysts and policy makers. Some are firmly convinced that the generation raised under President Vladimir Putin’s rule is the vanguard of the opposition, while others insist that young Russians are even more conservative than the population at large.

Surveys of public opinion indicate that Putin enjoys strong support among Russia’s youth. In December 2017, the Levada Center, the country’s foremost independent polling agency, found that 86 percent of Russians between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four approved of the Russian president. Similarly, a poll conducted by the state funded Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) after the Presidential election in March 2018 showed that 67.9 percent of Russian voters aged eighteen to thirty-four cast their ballots for Putin. Like members of older generations, many young Russians credit the Kremlin leader for restoring the country’s geopolitical status after the fall of the Soviet Union. “Thanks to [Putin] Russia overcame the consequences from the collapse of the USSR and rose to a new level,” stated Ekaterina Nikitina, a journalism student.

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WNU Editor: A few weeks ago my cousin's son (29 years old) and daughter (27 years old) came to visit me in Montreal. I regard them as typical young Muscovite's .... and their views and opinions are "more-or-less" what the above author outlines in his post. There are a few differences. One .... they tell me that most Russians like President Trump. And two .... there is not much support for Russia's foreign interventions in places like Syria. As for Putin .... they tell me that he should not run in the next election.