Comment by cubefox

N=1, but ... a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine, I talked to a Russian girl at a party in Germany. She said she "voted with her feet" when she decided to move out of Russia. So she wasn't very Russia friendly. Moreover, young women are probably the most progressive demographic full-stop. Yet when I asked her about Ukraine, she repeated all the standard Russian government propaganda about an alleged NATO threat and stated that she was "neutral" on whether Russia should invade Ukraine. I was pretty shocked. If even young female expats think this way, what do older Russian men think? Perhaps she was a rare outlier. Or perhaps it's not an accident that so many Russians appear to continue to vote for Putin's party.