Difference between revisions of "How Do Americans and Russians View the War in Ukraine Emerging Global Order Carnegie Corporation of New York"

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<p>I was planning to go see my family right about this time, but it doesn’t seem possible any more. I mean – there is probably a way to go to Russia, but almost zero way for me to come back to study, and as a new semester is coming, I’m not risking it. I have a residency permit right now, but it expires in May.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>This apocalyptic narrative sets up Ukraine as the site of this great battle.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>From fleeting impressions and conversations it is hard to draw firm conclusions.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Ukrainians are said to shell their own cities, and Russian troops are presented as liberators.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>The data reveal that while a narrow majority of Russians think their government should start peace negotiations (53 percent), returning any territory to Ukraine as concessions in a negotiation would be overwhelmingly unacceptable to the public. Most of the Russian public also opposes any use of nuclear weapons by Moscow. Sadly, many of these relations have been strained in recent years due to the Putin government’s hostility towards Ukraine and the Russian media’s relentless and baseless attacks on Ukrainians. The situation has resulted in contacts being terminated for political reasons as a result of changing attitudes towards Russia as a whole. It involves a military assault with air, sea and land forces being deployed in combination with sophisticated cyber attacks and relentless propaganda disseminated by conventional as well as social media. Having a prosperous, modern, independent and democratic European state bordering Russia was perceived as posing a threat to Russia’s autocratic regime.</p><br /><br /><h2>What Russians think of the war in Ukraine, according to an independent pollster</h2><br /><br /><p>And the chaos itself can backfire — or at least quickly diminish its effectiveness — when out of step with lived experience, further undermining legitimacy in the state. Considering all this, telling Russian men and their families that it is in their interest to fight, and die, in faraway Ukraine is a harder story to sell. In other words, Russians appear to be less and less influenced by propaganda from Moscow, especially when it clearly contradicts the struggles in their daily lives. As Putin’s war of choice inflicts personal costs on citizens, Russians seem less willing to swallow the state narratives that are delivered over state television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians. [https://ambitious-camel-g3r4ks.mystrikingly.com/blog/how-a-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-could-spill-over-into-europe https://ambitious-camel-g3r4ks.mystrikingly.com/blog/how-a-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-could-spill-over-into-europe] is good at manipulating public opinion.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>But since the invasion of Ukraine, it has been harder for Russian scientists to share data about how climate change is affecting the region. This tiny chapel is on the grounds of the Northeast Science Station near the Russian town of Chersky. Many shout about it openly, but it doesn’t end in anything good.</p><br /><br /><h3>Tatyana*, 28, from Moscow, currently in Germany – ‘My parents can justify the war in their heads. I can’t understand why’</h3><br /><br /><p>OK, I confess I didn't know who the woman was, but her thoughts didn't exactly seem preoccupied by a possible invasion on her country. As concern grows that Russia will invade Ukraine, BBC correspondents gauge the public mood in Moscow and Kyiv on whether the crisis could lead to a wider war in Europe. The educated and the wealthy, many of them urban residents, are fleeing mobilisation. Those with more meagre resources are going to recruiting stations. They may be frightened and apprehensive, and not very keen to fight, but they are not ready to break away from the imaginary “national body” whose will and aspirations are expressed for them by Mr Putin. The fraught nature of their decisions to enlist will increase their hostility toward those who make the opposite choice.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>In Russia, both pro-Putin supporters and anti-Putin oppositionists like Alexei Navalny and Mikhail Khodorkovsky backed the annexation of Crimea.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>OK, I confess I didn't know who the woman was, but her thoughts didn't exactly seem preoccupied by a possible invasion on her country.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>When I think about the conflict, I feel anxious, sad, and frustrated.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>As Republican and Democratic politicians in the U.S. spar with one another over sending military equipment to Ukraine, “Germany has come through in its support,” Radchenko said. Nearly every Ukrainian agrees that winning the war means regaining all the land that Russia has conquered from their country since 2014, when the Crimean Peninsula was annexed by Moscow, the Gallup survey found. “Given everything that’s happening, paying attention to what’s going on in Ukraine daily is more important now than it was before,” Julie Ray, Gallup’s managing editor for world news, told VOA. And Russian authorities have taken a tough line against people they consider pro-Kyiv agitators. “My husband had already come here to work, and I arrived with our child as the shooting began,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that support from Russian authorities was not as forthcoming as she would have liked. Lena, 30, is a former resident of the city who now lives in St Petersburg.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Now, any anti-war speech can result in up to 15 years of imprisonment. Some of my friends are leaving the country right now, and I understand them. Surveys have suggested that the majority of Russians support the invasion.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>I’m against the war, and most of my friends and people I know feel the same way.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>After such colossal losses, the army will have to be rebuilt again.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Even those who did agree to answer the questions in Miniailo’s survey displayed a heightened level of fear and discomfort.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>For the past year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has worked with FilterLabs.AI, a Massachusetts-based data analytics firm, to track local sentiment across Russia using AI-enabled sentiment analysis.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>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.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>The ‘Road Home’ platform — Put Domói, in Russian — now has over 30,000 followers. They are a minority, largely out of fear, but a growing group of women are calling for measures to bring their relatives home from the front. They are expressing their discomfort on the channel, have addressed deputies and held protests. Beginning in spring 2014, Ukrainian attitudes toward Russia begin to massively change—not because of any state-directed propaganda campaigns but in response to Putin’s military aggression.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>While the defence alliance, Nato, and the US warn of an imminent invasion, many people are still unconvinced that war will happen or that it would be to Russia's advantage. Since Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backed militants in the eastern Donbas region in 2014, there's been no real let-up in fighting, cyber-attacks and misinformation. "We are measuring public attitudes that, more or less, coincide with how people will behave in public," he adds. "We must understand that polls show us not what people really think or really believe, but what they want to share," he says. Volkov told Inskeep that he's aware of the pitfalls with these polls, but they may still have valuable information to teach us.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Mostly because I don’t understand how anyone could take this step – to send people to fight, to kill others.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Muddling the information environment and sowing mistrust has not generated positive support for Moscow’s misadventures.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Roughly speaking, I just started helping another part of the population.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>“Given everything that’s happening, paying attention to what’s going on in Ukraine daily is more important now than it was before,” Julie Ray, Gallup’s managing editor for world news, told VOA.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>He contrasts this to public opinion surrounding the annexation of Crimea in 2014, recalling that there were positive feelings and even "euphoria" at the time.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>The invasion of Ukraine is just an expansion and escalation of the earlier hybrid war. “The conflict between Russia and Ukraine may last for several more years. I believe that the political system in Russia will be severely degraded in the coming years. Business, housing and community services, medicine, education – everything will sag.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The evidence suggests that even in the best-case scenario, the mobilization effect will be nonexistent.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>By siding with the more militant part of the pro-war camp, which has long demanded mobilisation, Mr Putin may force doubters to pick a side and thus polarise society.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Because of everything escalating so rapidly, I’m anxious about whether I’ll have issues renewing it due to me being Russian.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>That is because its most avid proponents, and its most intractable opponents, will not change their minds.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>It will drive a wedge between families whose members fight, and those whose run for the border or curse the war.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>But this week, after several television appearances by Mr. Putin stunned and scared some longtime observers, that sense of casual disregard turned to a deep unease. To put it simply, before launching an offensive, it’s worth thinking about who will fight in that offensive and how willingly, and to what extent an active conflict will prompt people to rally around Putin. The evidence suggests that even in the best-case scenario, the mobilization effect will be nonexistent. Russian President Vladimir Putin used the national Russian holiday commemorating Nazi Germany’s defeat at the end of World War II to demonize the West, suggesting it is responsible for Russia’s war in Ukraine. In his annual “Victory Day” speech on May 9, Putin said the ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine was necessary because the West was “preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea,” according to CNBC.</p>
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<p>“Except back in the 1970s, when I did my army service with men from western Ukraine. I saw this Banderite reality with my own eyes,” he said, using a disparaging term for Ukrainian nationalists, which is also occasionally used as an ethnic slur against Ukrainians living in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has often expressed the view that Russians and Ukrainians, as well as Belarusians, are one people – a nation divided. Indeed, many famous Russians, such as MMA fighter Fedor Emelianenko, are actually of Ukrainian origin. According to officials in Kyiv, there were approximately three million Ukrainian citizens living in Russia in 2018, including migrant workers sending remittances back home – and many are palpably pro-Russian.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Overall, he’s always had nationalist views, so it’s not surprising.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Some of the first data FilterLabs gathered after the invasion was from the republic of Buryatia, a mostly rural, underdeveloped region 3,700 miles from Moscow and bordering Mongolia.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>On Sunday evening, when sanctions against Russian central bank reserves were announced, you could still use an app to order a dollar for up to 140 roubles, and a euro for up to 150.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>What we do know is that young Russians, unlike their elders, are growing up in an era of smartphones and social networks, and therefore have access to a wider range of information compared with what they are told about the war on state media.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>AI-enabled sentiment data analysis can provide a window into how Russians feel and how fickle public sentiment is. This poses internal threats to Putin’s legitimacy and thus his power. It also signals an inherent mistrust of state institutions that will be part of Russian society — especially outside of Moscow — well after Putin’s reign ends, whenever that may be. When the nationwide “partial mobilization” was announced in September 2022, there were demonstrable dips in the effectiveness of pro-war propaganda. We tracked sentiment across Russia’s eight federal districts, from Siberia to the far east, south to northwest, and the drop in public sentiment was clearly visible. Opinions trended negative and efforts to impact those opinions were less effective and shorter lived.</p><br /><br /><h2>A former ambassador argues that Pakistan needs a new political compact</h2><br /><br /><p>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. 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. 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.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Sadly, many of these relations have been strained in recent years due to the Putin government’s hostility towards Ukraine and the Russian media’s relentless and baseless attacks on Ukrainians.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The idea may be that the departure of defectors will leave a more faithful nation that will fight and die without hesitation.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>As Bekeshkina has written, “In getting Crimea, Putin has lost Ukraine.” Putin’s war will only end when this fact is finally realized in Moscow.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>"Eventually, I believe that we will be able to communicate openly again."</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>In his annual “Victory Day” speech on May 9, Putin said the ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine was necessary because the West was “preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea,” according to CNBC.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>Yet Volkov added that this tolerance, however passive, is likely to remain quite stable, even strong. “If I watched different channels, I would probably have a different opinion, but I don’t watch them,” she said. It’s not that she doesn’t know alternative information is out there, but that she doesn’t want it, lest her vision of the world come under threat.</p><br /><br /><h3>Art philanthropy in the US is localized and depends on prestige of the art organization, Northeastern study finds</h3><br /><br /><p>I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram. We have VK (a Russian substitute for Facebook), but it’s not the same. It was rather cheap, but now I want to buy AirPods and they’re really expensive. They were 7,000 roubles and now cost more than 14,000 roubles. There aren’t long lines at ATMs any more, but we saw them a few days ago.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>It's a chokehold - to use a judo term from his favourite sport. That a sledgehammer is now a positive symbol of Russian power in executions captured on camera and posted by MPs on Twitter. Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the war, certainly do not oppose it. 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.</p><br /><br /><h2>What Do Russians Think of Ukrainians, and Vice Versa?</h2><br /><br /><p>For a few years, the unprecedented patriotic surge of 2014 served as symbolic compensation for the socioeconomic problems that had already begun. Russians lapped up the real and imaginary threats that were fed to them, and generally assessed military action as justified, defensive, and/or preventative. [https://bagge-albrechtsen.mdwrite.net/tv-presenters-who-underwent-plastic-surgery https://bagge-albrechtsen.mdwrite.net/tv-presenters-who-underwent-plastic-surgery] has opened up at times after moments of calamity and catastrophe. This message has echoed down the centuries and brooks no dissent or prospect for change.</p><br /><br /><p>Continued approval of the army and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she added, are key to victory. One in two Ukrainians reported in Gallup’s survey that they struggle to afford food and shelter. Experts say that Russia wants to see increasing disillusionment in Ukraine as the war drags on. As for who is to blame for the current situation, in which more than 100,000 Russian soldiers are stationed at the border in a tense standoff with the Ukrainian and Western governments, Lena is unequivocal.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The Kremlin is confronting a sensitive issue because the protesting women are the wives of the very people on whom the future of the Ukrainian war depends.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>In his mobilisation speech on September 21st, Mr Putin used choice rhetoric of the party of total war to persuade Russian citizens of the enemy’s proximity and the need to defend the motherland.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>I don’t support that view, but I do think we need some changes.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>The idea may be that the departure of defectors will leave a more faithful nation that will fight and die without hesitation. War is a different matter altogether, though; in recent days, Russia has not seen any of the jubilation that accompanied the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This interview was produced by David West and Sean Saldana, and edited by Taylor Haney.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It's quick to set up, and you can be confident that you're making a significant impact every month by supporting open, independent journalism.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>“It’s not about having to reconsider this one event but everything you thought and understood over the last ten or fifteen years,” Volkov told me. He says the firm asks about peoples' feelings, and is seeing that both groups — those who support and oppose the military's actions — are anxious and afraid. He contrasts this to public opinion surrounding the annexation of Crimea in 2014, recalling that there were positive feelings and even "euphoria" at the time. I want peace, but my grandmother thinks our military is needed to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine. She supports our president, despite the fact that her whole family is still over there. When I hear it from Ukrainian people, I begin to doubt that our president’s strategy is wrong.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>As for me, personally, I lost the opportunity to move into my own apartment, which I was supposed to do soon because the renovations became too expensive.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>It’s hard to differentiate global problems from everyday ones, as you can see.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>He says about 50% have "definite support" without any qualms, but the other 30% have support with reservations.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>One man in his fifties said, “It is now prohibited by law to answer what you think about this topic. But the problem with measuring public opinion in a country under authoritarian rule and censorship, Botchkovar says, is that the data are highly imperfect. The Kremlin is confronting a sensitive issue because the protesting women are the wives of the very people on whom the future of the Ukrainian war depends. Shortly after the mobilization, Putin staged a meeting with several wives and mothers of servicemen who support his cause in Ukraine, although it later emerged that many of them had some connection with the government. In addition, her group calls for greater control by prosecutors and human rights ombudsmen at recruitment points and for compulsory military service to be replaced by social services away from the frontlines.</p>

Latest revision as of 02:06, 19 April 2024

“Except back in the 1970s, when I did my army service with men from western Ukraine. I saw this Banderite reality with my own eyes,” he said, using a disparaging term for Ukrainian nationalists, which is also occasionally used as an ethnic slur against Ukrainians living in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has often expressed the view that Russians and Ukrainians, as well as Belarusians, are one people – a nation divided. Indeed, many famous Russians, such as MMA fighter Fedor Emelianenko, are actually of Ukrainian origin. According to officials in Kyiv, there were approximately three million Ukrainian citizens living in Russia in 2018, including migrant workers sending remittances back home – and many are palpably pro-Russian.











  • Overall, he’s always had nationalist views, so it’s not surprising.








  • Some of the first data FilterLabs gathered after the invasion was from the republic of Buryatia, a mostly rural, underdeveloped region 3,700 miles from Moscow and bordering Mongolia.








  • On Sunday evening, when sanctions against Russian central bank reserves were announced, you could still use an app to order a dollar for up to 140 roubles, and a euro for up to 150.








  • What we do know is that young Russians, unlike their elders, are growing up in an era of smartphones and social networks, and therefore have access to a wider range of information compared with what they are told about the war on state media.










AI-enabled sentiment data analysis can provide a window into how Russians feel and how fickle public sentiment is. This poses internal threats to Putin’s legitimacy and thus his power. It also signals an inherent mistrust of state institutions that will be part of Russian society — especially outside of Moscow — well after Putin’s reign ends, whenever that may be. When the nationwide “partial mobilization” was announced in September 2022, there were demonstrable dips in the effectiveness of pro-war propaganda. We tracked sentiment across Russia’s eight federal districts, from Siberia to the far east, south to northwest, and the drop in public sentiment was clearly visible. Opinions trended negative and efforts to impact those opinions were less effective and shorter lived.



A former ambassador argues that Pakistan needs a new political compact



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. 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. 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.











  • Sadly, many of these relations have been strained in recent years due to the Putin government’s hostility towards Ukraine and the Russian media’s relentless and baseless attacks on Ukrainians.








  • The idea may be that the departure of defectors will leave a more faithful nation that will fight and die without hesitation.








  • As Bekeshkina has written, “In getting Crimea, Putin has lost Ukraine.” Putin’s war will only end when this fact is finally realized in Moscow.








  • "Eventually, I believe that we will be able to communicate openly again."








  • In his annual “Victory Day” speech on May 9, Putin said the ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine was necessary because the West was “preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea,” according to CNBC.










Yet Volkov added that this tolerance, however passive, is likely to remain quite stable, even strong. “If I watched different channels, I would probably have a different opinion, but I don’t watch them,” she said. It’s not that she doesn’t know alternative information is out there, but that she doesn’t want it, lest her vision of the world come under threat.



Art philanthropy in the US is localized and depends on prestige of the art organization, Northeastern study finds



I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram. We have VK (a Russian substitute for Facebook), but it’s not the same. It was rather cheap, but now I want to buy AirPods and they’re really expensive. They were 7,000 roubles and now cost more than 14,000 roubles. There aren’t long lines at ATMs any more, but we saw them a few days ago.





It's a chokehold - to use a judo term from his favourite sport. That a sledgehammer is now a positive symbol of Russian power in executions captured on camera and posted by MPs on Twitter. Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the war, certainly do not oppose it. 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.



What Do Russians Think of Ukrainians, and Vice Versa?



For a few years, the unprecedented patriotic surge of 2014 served as symbolic compensation for the socioeconomic problems that had already begun. Russians lapped up the real and imaginary threats that were fed to them, and generally assessed military action as justified, defensive, and/or preventative. https://bagge-albrechtsen.mdwrite.net/tv-presenters-who-underwent-plastic-surgery has opened up at times after moments of calamity and catastrophe. This message has echoed down the centuries and brooks no dissent or prospect for change.



Continued approval of the army and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she added, are key to victory. One in two Ukrainians reported in Gallup’s survey that they struggle to afford food and shelter. Experts say that Russia wants to see increasing disillusionment in Ukraine as the war drags on. As for who is to blame for the current situation, in which more than 100,000 Russian soldiers are stationed at the border in a tense standoff with the Ukrainian and Western governments, Lena is unequivocal.











  • The Kremlin is confronting a sensitive issue because the protesting women are the wives of the very people on whom the future of the Ukrainian war depends.








  • In his mobilisation speech on September 21st, Mr Putin used choice rhetoric of the party of total war to persuade Russian citizens of the enemy’s proximity and the need to defend the motherland.








  • I don’t support that view, but I do think we need some changes.










The idea may be that the departure of defectors will leave a more faithful nation that will fight and die without hesitation. War is a different matter altogether, though; in recent days, Russia has not seen any of the jubilation that accompanied the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This interview was produced by David West and Sean Saldana, and edited by Taylor Haney.





Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It's quick to set up, and you can be confident that you're making a significant impact every month by supporting open, independent journalism.







“It’s not about having to reconsider this one event but everything you thought and understood over the last ten or fifteen years,” Volkov told me. He says the firm asks about peoples' feelings, and is seeing that both groups — those who support and oppose the military's actions — are anxious and afraid. He contrasts this to public opinion surrounding the annexation of Crimea in 2014, recalling that there were positive feelings and even "euphoria" at the time. I want peace, but my grandmother thinks our military is needed to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine. She supports our president, despite the fact that her whole family is still over there. When I hear it from Ukrainian people, I begin to doubt that our president’s strategy is wrong.











  • As for me, personally, I lost the opportunity to move into my own apartment, which I was supposed to do soon because the renovations became too expensive.








  • It’s hard to differentiate global problems from everyday ones, as you can see.








  • He says about 50% have "definite support" without any qualms, but the other 30% have support with reservations.










One man in his fifties said, “It is now prohibited by law to answer what you think about this topic. But the problem with measuring public opinion in a country under authoritarian rule and censorship, Botchkovar says, is that the data are highly imperfect. The Kremlin is confronting a sensitive issue because the protesting women are the wives of the very people on whom the future of the Ukrainian war depends. Shortly after the mobilization, Putin staged a meeting with several wives and mothers of servicemen who support his cause in Ukraine, although it later emerged that many of them had some connection with the government. In addition, her group calls for greater control by prosecutors and human rights ombudsmen at recruitment points and for compulsory military service to be replaced by social services away from the frontlines.