Is the United States the Next Russia?

The recent shift in Russian public opinion towards the war in Ukraine has been revealing.

Back in 2022, after a brief wave of urban protests, followed by a brief but brutal crackdown of said protests, most Russians supported Putin’s war. As one November 2023 Carnegie report phrased it, the “limited impact the war in Ukraine has had on the day-to-day lives of most Russians go some way to explaining continuing high levels of support for the war among Russians.” Even after the fall 2022 partial mobilization, “most Russians… were able to resume their regular routine and block out any news from Ukraine, concluding once again that events there didn’t directly concern them.”

Fast forward to 2026, and more aggressive Ukrainian tactics — including attacks on Russian energy systems — have likely had a direct effect on Russian public opinion. That is because the consequences of the war are no longer limited to Ukraine. The attacks on Russian soil are both military in nature but also have economic effects on ordinary Russians. A CSIS report from this July explains:

Ukraine’s ongoing long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries combine both aforementioned mechanisms: They are military attacks imposing tangible economic costs. Ukraine’s self-described “long-range sanctions” campaign against Russia therefore has greater potential to erode public support for the war than military strikes alone….

As illustrated by long lines to gas stations from Moscow to Irkutsk in Siberia, the economic and social impact of this campaign is already visible despite being only weeks old. The Ukrainian strikes were the most frequently cited as the most notable event of May and June, mentioned by 16 percent and 24 percent of respondents respectively. The effects will spread to other sectors, as diesel shortages are likely to disrupt agricultural machinery and supply trucks, potentially threatening Russia’s crucial mid-summer harvest and fuel deliveries to remote regions. They also add upward pressure on inflation, one of the Russian public’s core economic concerns, as the government struggles to contain price growth amid high wartime spending. These factors are likely to further erode support for the authorities and increase public preference for ending the war.

While a cross-border incursion is externally caused and clearly framed as enemy aggression, a fuel queue is different: a banal, recurring inconvenience that is experienced as one of the domestic costs of a war Russia chose and continues to wage. Casualties can be hidden, renamed, and ritualized, and after four years, the Kremlin is well practiced in doing so. The regime can mobilize people against an attacker. It is far harder to mobilize them against a shortage.

I suspect the hard-working readers of Drezner’s World are nodding their heads in satisfaction at reading the previous few paragraphs. After all, Russia started this war, thinking it would be over in a few weeks. Even as the war bogged down, most Russians were secure that the conflict would not touch their daily lives. As that has changed, however, so has Russians’ opinion of the war.

Why am I bringing this up? Because it is difficult not to notice the parallels between Russia and the United States right now.

As with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. decision to attack Iran has proven to be an epic strategic miscue. Even now, it is clear that Donald Trump does not understand his adversary at all, and any recent deal that has been proposed represents a serious setback for freedom of navigation — and, by extension, U.S. interests.1 Most Americans feel the economic cost of the conflict through price increases, most obviously in gasoline.

As for U.S. public opinion, a majority of Americans already oppose the war. The American sense of invulnerability, however, remains pretty rock-solid. Even after six months, fewer than two dozen U.S. troops have died. There have been no military attacks on American soil.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has a question, however: is that sense of invulnerability about to come to an end?