The level of “approval” for President Vladimir Putin’s performance has been declining for the fourth week in a row amid a fuel crisis that is approaching, in scale, the shortages of goods in the final years of the Soviet Union, The Moscow Times reports.

As of July 12, Putin’s “approval” rating had fallen to 65.1% — the lowest level of the entire war period, the state-run pollster VTsIOM reported on Friday. Over the week, Putin lost 0.9 approval points, and over the past four weeks — 5.3 points.

The pace of the decline has exceeded the slump of autumn 2022, when the Kremlin announced mobilization, and of August 2024, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces entered the Kursk region: in the first case, the drop amounted to 3.3 points over four weeks; in the second — 5.1 points.

The share of those who “disapprove” of Putin’s performance, according to VTsIOM, reached 23.4% and has practically caught up with the share of those who “disapprove” of the government’s work (24.4%). At the same time, Putin exceeds Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in the level of disapproval by more than one and a half times.