The Russians should be very upset and, yet, the majority of my countrymen seem to be comfortable with what’s going on. Putin remains popular. Many of the staunchest Putin critics are now his allies, precisely because he has given them that sense of a resurging Russia. “We bared our teeth; we made them respect us; we made them pay attention; they don’t like us but let them at least fear us.” These are typical phrases that arise in focus-group discussions of the current state of affairs, says Denis Volkov, sociologist with the Levada Center, an independent pollster.
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