Anxiety in Russia has climbed back to the level it reached when Vladimir Putin ordered mobilisation four years ago.

Some 57% of Russians describe the situation in their country as tense and a further 13% call it critical or explosive - 70% between them, the highest since September 2022. Only 19% say things are calm and 7% call them prosperous, according to the July survey published by the Levada Centre, Russia's last major independent pollster, on August 14. It questioned 1,612 people across 137 towns and villages in 50 regions between July 21 and 28.

Asked what worries them, respondents who gave a negative answer named the war, mobilisation and the deaths of people first, at 45%. Drone attacks, shelling and explosions inside Russia came second at 21% - a category that did not meaningfully exist in the 2022 readings this figure is being compared with, and the clearest measure yet of how far Ukraine's deep-strike campaign has travelled into Russian domestic sentiment.

Fear for themselves, their children and the future followed at 18%, instability at 10%, and the economic crisis and rising prices at 9%. Petrol shortages and queues at filling stations - a summer-long irritation that has been biting into the real economy since the agricultural peak season - were named by 7%, as were power, internet and mobile outages by 6%, alongside distrust of the authorities, also on 6%.

Those numbers describe the war arriving at home rather than a country turning against it. Levada's own breakdown of the minority who call the situation good is telling in the same way: 11% of them give as their reason that there are no protests, strikes or disturbances, and 9% that there is no fighting on Russian soil.

The reading lands with Russia's war economy grinding towards a halt despite an oil windfall, and a month before regional elections in September that the Kremlin is managing carefully.

Nothing in the survey suggests that 70% is about to do anything. It does suggest that the number of Russians who still describe the war as something happening somewhere else is shrinking.