There are sociological methods such as list experiments that allow one to gauge preference falsification impact by comparing list experiment results to more direct polling methods.

List experiments on russian attitudes have been conducted on a wide variety of topics including support for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, support for the annexation of Crimea (pre-fullscale invasion) and support for putin's regime (across time).

The results are damning for russian society.

This is not a novel methodology and there is research on this approach (in context of russia) going back decades. The quantity of research is large enough to allow for meta-analysis research specifically on this topic (again with damning results for russian society).

There is also qualitative research on this topic albeit it tends to have an element of subjectivity and you generally need to to know russian to understand it. For what it's worth, there is a recent qualitative research project around "apolitical" russians in the province that dispels the myth of "russian innocence polemics" and shows that even "apolitical" russians in the periphery are largely commited to genocidal imperialism even if they are not that outspoken about it. The funny thing was this project was run by allegedly opposition minded russians (who have a strong incentive to downplay reality).

Care to answer my question now?