January 14, 2016 – A VCIOM expert discussion titled “Russian in crisis: political risks in 2016” was held in the framework of the Seventh Gaidar Forum.The discussion excited interest among the forum participants and mass media. Oleg Chernozub, head of VCIOM’s Monitoring Research Department, presented his report named “Crisis and Society” containing the results of VCIOM”s monthly monitoring describing social and economic situation in the country. Valery Fedorov, VCIOM’s General Director, was the moderator of the discussion. The participants marked that the declared level of the protest mood was law but this indicator did not reflect the actual situation. The protest moods are intensifying in those regions that were trouble-free before (donor regions). With the deteriorating social and economic situation, the population of these regions will suffer more from the situation. Protest mood may become a major destabilizing factor if the local protest initiatives are synchronized with the common protest action caused by negative economic trend.