Russian public support for exiled Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin has not entirely collapsed despite the defeat of his short-lived insurrection, according to a poll published by Russia's Levada Center.
The survey, conducted from June 22 to 28, spanned a whirlwind week in which Prigozhin led his Wagner fighters to briefly occupy the western Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and oversaw an aborted drive on Moscow that sought to unseat Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, with whom Prigozhin has long been feuding.
Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters have now been offered a pardon in exchange for their relocation to Belarus, under the watch of President Alexander Lukashenko. The Kremlin plans to incorporate remaining Wagner fighters into the regular military.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described Prigozhin's mutiny attempt as "treason," and vowed retribution. His failure to deliver on this threat has raised speculation that Putin's position is weaker than it may appear from outside the Kremlin's walls. And among the Russian public, a significant minority still supports the Wagner financier.
Prigozhin had the approval of 58 percent of the 1,643 respondents two days before the uprising, per Levada. The polling body said those surveyed saw "Putin's chef"—a nickname given to Prigozhin due to the fortune he made from state catering contracts—as a "patriot" and a "victorious general," an image buoyed by the relative battlefield success of his Wagner fighters compared to their regular Russian counterparts.
Respondents' support for Prigozhin dropped to 31 percent during the mutiny, and after its unsuccessful conclusion remained at 29 percent, Levada reported.
The number of those who said they were willing to vote for Prigozhin in a hypothetical future presidential election halved due to the uprising; from 18 to 9 percent in the course of the week.
Respondent attitudes to Shoigu—who Prigozhin has accused of trying to destroy Wagner—also fell over the course of the chaos. Approval for Shoigu, long considered one of the more popular and effective of Putin's top officials, fell from 60 percent before the insurrection to 48 percent afterward.
Putin himself appears to have avoided an opinion poll hit, despite his conspicuous absence during the Wagner rebellion and reports—fiercely denied by the Kremlin—that the president fled Moscow as Prigozhin's advance units bore down on the capital.
Eighty-one percent of respondents supported Putin before the rebellion, dropping to 79 at its peak. By June 28 when Prigozhin abandoned his gambit, Putin's approval had risen to 82 percent.
But all is not rosy for the president. Levada's poll found a rising number of Russians who are concerned about the future direction of a country mired in a costly war, increasingly isolated from advanced foreign technology and economies, and facing deepening authoritarian rule.
Sixty-seven percent of respondents told Levada in May they believed Russia was moving in the right direction. At the height of the Wagner mutiny, this figure fell to 53 percent. Sentiment recovered somewhat after the situation stabilized, but still, only 61 percent are now positive about the country's trajectory. This is below the average of 66 percent since the start of 2023.
Newsweek reached out to the Kremlin via email for comment.
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