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Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

Lol, the dictator's approval rating is so high that he bans, forces to exile or kills any opposing candidate, never risking elections vs anyone not fully controlled by him.

Every time someone like Bukele flexes that his approval rating is higher than Putin's, I laugh -- the guy clearly doesn't understand that this isn't the flex he thinks it is.

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I used to be rosy eyed like you for a while

I think if you talked to more fellow russians you would be surprised how many support him unironically)

by my estimate more than 50% (of people who have an opinion)

control of information is a magical thing

I mean the whole thing about perverting statistics is we can't know the truth, since anecdotal surveys are useless (which I realized as a child in 2004 when Bush won despite everyone I knew hating him) and anything big enough to be meaningful is corrupted.

Even if they didn't massage the stats after asking people, I doubt everyone is fully comfortable sharing their honest opinions.

So...we can't know. We likely never will know, at least how people at large felt in this precise moment.

I know from talking to people outside of my friend circle. Sure it's not reliable statistics but it's what I have. Try talking to taxi drivers and so on.

Putin's approval rating is genuinely that high, around 80%. Nobody cares about opposing candidates, because Russia has had one or two free elections in its entire history. Far more important is that Putin has flooded the lower classes with money. People who were used to surviving on a few hundred dollars a month are now receiving tens of thousands in sign-up bonuses alone, plus military wages and compensations. Absolutely life-changing money for them. It is comparable to flooding a troubled area like West Virginia with military sign-up bonuses ranging from hundreds of thousands to a million per enlistment, with additional money flowing into communities from injury and death compensations.

This is absolutely delusional, but Putin thanks you for serving his cause.

Regarding your claim that Putin flooded the lower classes with money, this is simply false. What percent of the population do you think signed up for war? Do you really think that 0.5% (optimistic estimate) that did sign up had spread their wealth with anyone else?

Just last week I stayed in the hospital with 2 men, 72y.o and 64y.o. One has pension of 19k RUB, another one 23k RUB. That's fewer than $300. Showered with money, Yay!

contractors are getting paid VERY good money relatively. Imagine you live in a village, your education is so so. You live in an old house with parents. How much do you earn? Anything?

But now you go to war and you/your family gets 200000 monthly. You can buy a cheap car for that money AND buy a flat in a city (first mortgage payment) after first month. Not counting signup bonus.

How many contractors do you think there are relative to the size of population, so that the previous poster was claiming that was flooded with wealth?? This is just plain nonsense. Mercenary payments have extremely limited impact on the overall 'lower class' wealth.

(And you somehow forget about the little insignificant downside of a mercenary career that you might be a bit dead or maimed, oops)

if you consider that almost all contractors are from poorer families it affects them disproportionately, you need to exclude upper middle class and up from your percentage calc.

I agree that "flooded lower classes with wealth" is an exaggeration but I think it is not completely wrong.

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