From the BBC:
“Ukraine war: Why so many Russians turn a blind eye to the
conflict”
(A woman walks past a stand with an image of a Russian
serviceman and the inscription reading "The Motherland we defend" at
a street exhibition of military-themed posters in central Saint Petersburg on
February 17, 2023.)
In the weeks leading up to Russia's invasion, I would walk
for hours in the central Moscow district of Zamoskvorechiye, where I had lived
and worked in the BBC office for seven years. An unspoiled and peaceful part of
the city, for me it embodies Russia's complex present and past.
For centuries Muscovites have come here to build homes and
businesses and get on quietly with their lives, leaving their rulers to pursue
greater ambitions on a bigger stage where ordinary Russians have never had a
part to play. It is bordered by the Moskva river and the Kremlin on one side,
and on the other by imposing Stalinist apartment buildings and 21st Century
skyscrapers on the noisy Sadovoye ring road. A maze of narrow streets echo the
past, dotted with churches and aristocratic mansions from the 19th Century.
Bolshaya Ordinka street takes its name from Tatar-Mongol rule, hundreds of years
before, when emissaries would come to collect tributes from Moscow's princely
leaders.
I was there last February when I was phoned by a friend, born
in Ukraine's second-biggest city Kharkiv, who now worked in Moscow. Was Putin
really going to start a war with Ukraine, he asked. Neither of us wanted to
believe it. But surrounded by reminders of Russia's often relentlessly violent
past I felt war was now inevitable. My daily walks were my way of saying
goodbye to a world, and perhaps even a country, that could never be the same
again.
(Russians are seen attempting to leave their country to avoid
a military call-up for the Russia-Ukraine war as queues have formed at the
Kazbegi border crossing in the Kazbegi municipality of Stepantsminda, Georgia
on September 27, 2022)
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Russia, including
me and my BBC Russian colleagues. But for the majority who have stayed in
Russia, life outwardly is pretty much the same as it always was. Especially in
the big cities. In Zamoskvorechiye, most of the shops, cafes, the businesses
and the banks are still open. Many of the hipster journalists and IT
specialists may have left but others have replaced them. Shoppers complain
about rising prices, but local alternatives have replaced some imported goods.
(You can still meet for coffee and the logo looks similar,
but the Starbucks chain is long gone)
Bookshops still have a wide variety of titles, although books
deemed inappropriate are sold in plastic covers. The popular car-sharing
service still works, but the cars are now largely Chinese-made. International
sanctions have not brought Russia to the brink of 1990s-style economic
collapse. But, as Belfast-based Russian academic Aleksandr Titov has observed,
Russia is nonetheless living through a crisis.
It is a slow-burning crisis, but look closely and there are
signs of it everywhere. In Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border and just
80km (50 miles) from the now war-torn city of Kharkiv, local people are now
used to convoys of military trucks roaring towards the front line. If they are
troubled by Russia bombing a city where many have friends and relatives, then
they're trying not to show it.
(Most Russians either do not know or do not want to know what their military has done to Ukraine's second biggest city Kharkiv)
Cheery street
festivals organised by the local governor are well attended, a friend tells me.
But local doctors are leaving their jobs in droves, unable to cope with the
numbers of war-wounded being brought for treatment in local hospitals.
Residents feel abandoned and angry in the little frontier
town of Shebekino, where cross-border shelling has become a daily reality. One
local family visiting St Petersburg were shocked to find nothing had changed
while their own lives had been turned upside down. In Pskov, near the Estonian
and Latvian borders, the atmosphere is gloomy and everyone pretends the war has
nothing to do with them, I am told. Pskov is home to the 76th Guards Air
Assault Division, now notorious for the war crimes its troops are accused of
carrying out in Bucha, outside Kyiv. A bus service has started up connecting
the city to the local cemetery where growing numbers of soldiers killed in
Ukraine are being buried. Under a bridge someone has daubed PEACE in big red
letters.
(When the BBC visited this cemetery near Pskov there were
dozens of fresh graves for Russian paratroopers)
On a train heading for Petrozavodsk, near the Finnish border,
a friend meets a group of teenagers playing a "Name that city" game. Someone
mentions Donetsk: Is it in Russia or Ukraine? None of them are sure. It has
been occupied and annexed illegally by their government. What do they think
about the war? It's nothing to do with them. Petrozavodsk appears to have
returned to its grim past. Empty shelves, no foreign brands, unaffordably high
prices.
Do Russians really support the brutality being carried out in
Ukraine in their name, or are they pretending it's not happening to survive? From
fleeting impressions and conversations it is hard to draw firm conclusions.
Sociologists and pollsters have tried to gauge opinion, but there is no freedom
of speech or information in Russia so it is impossible to tell if people are
being honest.
Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the
war, certainly do not oppose it. This has prompted angry debates among Russians
abroad. Many who study and report on Russia, me included, believe a small
percentage of people actively support the war, and a small percentage actively
oppose it.
Most ordinary Russians are in the middle, trying to make
sense of a situation they didn't choose, don't understand and feel powerless to
change. Could they have stopped it? Probably yes, if more people had stood up
for their freedom and challenged state TV propaganda about trumped up threats
from the West and Ukraine. Many Russians chose to stay away from politics and
let the Kremlin decide for them.
But keeping your head down means making very troubling moral
compromises. To keep the war from their door, Russians have to pretend this
isn't an expansionist invasion, and must close their eyes to the Ukrainians who
are killed and wounded in their tens of thousands and driven from their homes
in their millions by what the Kremlin calls its "special military
operation".
(Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a
Putin ally, has blessed Russia's war effort)
Russians must accept it's normal for soldiers to go into
schools and tell their children war is a good thing. That it's normal for
priests to support the war and stop praying for peace. That it doesn't matter
they can no longer travel or be part of a broader world. That the Kremlin was
right to block the majority of independent media sites they used to read. That
a sledgehammer is now a positive symbol of Russian power in executions captured
on camera and posted by MPs on Twitter. And that it's normal to go to jail for
years for saying what you think about the war, whether you're a councillor or a
journalist.
Why Russians do not protest is perhaps better explained by
Russian history and not opinion polls. Ever since he came to power, President
Vladimir Putin has made it no secret that he wants to rebuild Russia and
restore its position for the world to respect and reckon with. In speeches and
essays he has made clear his belief Russia occupies a unique place in the world
as part of both the East and West. Russia has its own traditions, religion, and
its own ways of doing things. Russians need order and control, and demand
respect.
(A family watches a TV broadcast of Russian President
Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address in Moscow on February 21,
2023)
This message has echoed down the centuries and brooks no
dissent or prospect for change. It's a chokehold - to use a judo term from his
favourite sport. This Putin vision comes with a price: Russians have paid with
their freedom; Ukrainians are paying with their lives. Russia has opened up at
times after moments of calamity and catastrophe. After defeat in Afghanistan in
1989 came the Gorbachev era. Defeat against Japan in 1905 was followed by
constitutional reform, and after defeat in the Crimean war in 1856 came
emancipation of the serfs. One pattern identified by pollsters is that most
Russians say they would support peace talks to end the fighting. But what kind
of guarantees they would give independent Ukraine is not yet clear.
Sooner or later, that will need to be answered and Russians
will have to confront what their country has done.
^ The World (including the then Soviet Union) did not accept
when the Germans claimed "they didn't know" about the War Crimes
their Government, Military and People committed from 1933-1945.
The World cannot accept when Russians claim or will claim
"they didn't know" about the War C
We must treat the Russian Nazis as we treated the German
Nazis (well maybe more severely since many German Nazis were allowed to live
free and openly.) ^
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