It is notable that the population centers least supportive of intervention in Ukraine are the villages, towns, and small cities in Russia’s “heartland” that Putin has sought to mobilize as conservative counterweights to the wave of political protests in 2011 and 2012.
Undisguised intervention would probably fail to stimulate a robust protest movement in Russia, given the current wave of patriotic fervor, the effectiveness of political repression, and Russia’s low capacity for social mobilization. Nonetheless, open aggression against Ukraine would likely weaken popular support for Putin and also divide Russian society horizontally.
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