Meduza obtained the results of a closed poll conducted by VTsIOM at the end of June 2022 by order of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.

Respondents were asked to answer the question: “Some say that the fighting in Ukraine should be stopped as soon as possible. Others believe that the fighting should not be stopped now. Which point of view is closer to you - the first or the second?

According to the documents that Meduza has, 30% of those who answered this question from VTsIOM believe that “the hostilities in Ukraine” should be “stopped as soon as possible.” Another 13% found it difficult to answer; 57% of respondents believe that the war should be continued. According to the results of the same survey, in the age group of 18-24 years, 56% are in favor of ending the war, and only 19% are in favor of continuing. Among Russians aged 25-34, 43% support the end of the war, 41% support the continuation of hostilities. In general, the older the respondents, the more they support the war. For example, among respondents over 60 years old, 72% of respondents were in favor of continuing the invasion.

Most supporters of the continuation of the war in the regions - 62%, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, judging by the data of a closed poll, about 40% of respondents want an end to hostilities, and 48% are in favor of their continuation.

Among “active Internet users”, 47% of respondents are in favor of ending hostilities, and 35% are in favor of their continuation. But among the TV audience, only 22% support the end of the military conflict, 68% of such respondents are in favor of its continuation.

VTsIOM does not openly publish these data. On July 7, the Project building released an investigation into Kremlin sociology. In particular, the publication writes that in 2018, when Putin's rating fell by 20%, FOM and VTsIOM began to receive instructions from the Kremlin to ask respondents questions that immediately indicated the correct answer. For example, in the VTsIOM poll before the Moscow City Duma elections in 2019, right in the text of the question, information was contained that the Electoral Committee had found invalid signatures from Gennady and Dmitry Gudkov, Ilya Yashin and Lyubov Sobol.

Also, according to the “Project”, sociologists have stopped asking respondents open questions, and some of the survey results are hidden. For example, in the first poll about the approval of the "special operation", it turned out that 55% of respondents aged 18-24 and 45% of respondents aged 25-34 were opposed to the war at that time. However, the media got information that 64% of Russians support the war.

The Project writes that it is simply forbidden to publish the results of opinion polls that are “bad” for the Kremlin. In the spring of 2022, the country's leadership discussed whether to block YouTube: officials decided to understand how citizens would react to this blocking. As a result, a survey was conducted on how often citizens use the service, whether they believe that an information war is being waged through it, how they feel about blocking the State Duma channel. The results, according to The Project, turned out to be “very complimentary for YouTube,” and they were not published. But, according to the source of the "Project", these results were sent to the country's leadership: as two interlocutors of the publication said, the issue of blocking hosting "is not worth it now."