Difference between revisions of "How Do Russians Feel About a War With Ukraine"

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<p>But even though justification of the Ukraine invasion can be found among Russians, there have been no demonstrations of support. It’s sunny, people are taking selfies on Red Square, while a long convoy of National Guard buses rolls by the Kremlin walls. Gudkov says that the number of Russians who reject the Ukraine war has remained stable at 18-22%. That number consists of many young Russians and slightly more women than men.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Romanovsky is also concerned about young Russian scientists who are important to the future of climate research in the region. "Eventually, I believe that we will be able to communicate openly again." "In the past – like, Soviet Union past – the data from this part of the world was also limited," says Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who trained in Moscow. In the mid-1970s, young scientists had virtually no contact with western collaborators, he remembers. For Russian climate scientists who started their careers in the Soviet Union, the current situation can feel eerily familiar.</p><br /><br /><h2>Kira*, 20, Moscow – ‘I don’t want to live in isolation here’</h2><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. MOSCOW — Waiting for her friends on Moscow’s primly landscaped Boulevard Ring earlier this week, Svetlana Kozakova admitted that she’d had a sleepless night. She kept checking the news on her phone after President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggrieved speech to the nation on Monday that all but threatened Ukraine with war. The longer the war drags on, the deeper the human and economic toll in Russia, which will almost invariably impact public opinion, Botchkovar says. His speech comes after weeks of speculation over whether the Kremlin would seize the occasion to announce an escalation in the war, says Mai’a Cross, Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern. 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.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>I really cannot understand why Russians don’t have the right to eat in McDonald’s.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Russian military enlistment offices have been attacked 220 times since the war in Ukraine began, Moscow’s interior ministry has said.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Now, I’m very encouraged by the fact that the world understands that the Russian people did not choose this war, that instead it was started by a president who lives in some absurd reality of his own.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>On the sixth day of the war in Ukraine, there have been more than 6,000 arrests at anti-war protests across Russia.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>It is this that makes the anti-war protests against the invasion of Ukraine so telling.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>Russian Ministry of Defence spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters that Russian forces were indeed mounting a counteroffensive and attacks would target military sites. St Petersburg, Russia – On Thursday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his armed forces were launching a massive operation against Ukraine, sending frightened Kyiv residents into underground stations for shelter. While dissenting voices to Putin’s invasion are minimised in Russia, the scale and the intensity of the feeling of support for Ukraine means that the opposition cannot be entirely silenced by the Kremlin. There has been a raft of sanctions imposed on Russia and on Russian citizens in the past week in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.</p><br /><br /><h3>'It's been a long time coming'</h3><br /><br /><p>One and a half years into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, support for the war, as well as President Vladimir Putin, has remained consistent among people in Russia. 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. [https://matzen-larsen.thoughtlanes.net/russias-shifting-public-opinion-on-the-war-in-ukraine https://matzen-larsen.thoughtlanes.net/russias-shifting-public-opinion-on-the-war-in-ukraine] (name changed), who is in his early 30s, has just finished paying off his mortgage in Moscow.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>At the start of 2022 one dollar traded for about 75 roubles and a euro for 80.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>"I always pay with my phone but it simply didn't work. There were some other people with the same problem. It turned out that the barriers are operated by VTB bank which is under sanctions and cannot accept Google Pay and Apple Pay.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>On Monday Russia more than doubled its interest rate to 20% in response to the sanctions after the rouble plunged to record new lows.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Their town has been directly affected, so we are worried about them.</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>A just-released poll by Russia’s Levada Center shows that Russians think the most hostile countries are the United States, followed by Ukraine, Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russians believe the official propaganda that there was a “democratic referendum” in Crimea, that Ukrainians shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, that there is a civil war in Ukraine, and that there are no Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. Two-thirds of Ukrainians, but only a quarter of Russians, understand the conflict as a Russian-Ukrainian war. Not surprisingly, the major shift in opinion took place after 2014.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Mostly because I don’t understand how anyone could take this step – to send people to fight, to kill others. “I’m scared and hurt for my friends in Ukraine, who write to me ‘we’re going down into the bomb shelter’. The war in eastern Ukraine broke out in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea. Next, two separatist regions in Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, declared their independence from Kyiv. It sparked a conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists, which has seen casualties on both sides. Though the percentage of those able to get around censored and blocked social networks and consume news online rose from about 6% to 22% within the first few months of the war, it has not risen further.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>People who are from disadvantaged groups are suffering the most, he adds, because they don't have the resources to adapt.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the older generation is drowning in propaganda and believes that Putin’s actions are justified.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Millions of Russians like him are starting to feel the effect of Western economic sanctions designed to punish the country for invading neighbouring Ukraine.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>But, at the same time, I can understand why this might seem like sophistry to Ukrainians who have lost their homes, their friends, and seen their fellow Ukrainians tortured and murdered.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>Ukraine cannot expect peace with Russia if it is not willing to give up Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, Robert Fico has said ahead of a meeting with prime minister Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday. “Ukraine has achieved this because it has largely prevented the Russian Black Sea Fleet from operating in the western Black Sea, where it is held at risk by Ukrainian missiles and uncrewed surface vessels,” it said. Ukrainian agricultural exports surged in December after it successfully forced Russia out of the western half of the Black Sea, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated claims made by the region’s Moscow-appointed governor that Ukraine was responsible for the attack, which wounded 20 others.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>These figures belied allegations of a Russophobic western Ukraine; only twenty percent of the public there held negative views of Russians.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Only 10-12% of people surveyed by the Levada Center, many of them civil servants and members of the middle class, were aware of this connection.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>"We're having a meeting at the end of February," he says, "and it's basically Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia. There's no one from Russia coming."</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>In addition, drafted Russian soldiers, as well as contracted ones,&nbsp;now receive&nbsp;much more pay.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>As publishing "any news about Russian losses is absolutely forbidden," not even death toll figures can change Russian public opinion, Gudkov said. In an April 2022 interview with DW, Gudkov&nbsp;said he expected the attitude of Russians towards the war would drastically change if the country is defeated&nbsp;or if fighting drags on and fatality figures rise. Even those who did agree to answer the questions in Miniailo’s survey displayed a heightened level of fear and discomfort.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>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. My sister was struggling to get baby products for my nephew because the prices skyrocketed. One of my brothers-in-law and my father will potentially lose their jobs because their businesses worked very closely with European businesses, and all of those lines of communication are closed off now.</p><br /><br /><p>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. Because of this, I will have to live for a long time in a place where I’m not very comfortable. My feelings are mixed regarding the decision of our president. I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Instead, they have to rely on what they can see from space, from satellite images of beaver dams.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The same thing with conferences – international events that take place in Moscow are all cancelled.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Volkov told Inskeep that he's aware of the pitfalls with these polls, but they may still have valuable information to teach us.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>That’s despite a backdrop of unceasing vitriol directed toward Ukraine on state television, and the persistent, oft-repeated idea that it is external attacks that require Russia to take defensive measures.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>Western powers are unwilling to send troops to fight in the conflict but have sought to make the Kremlin’s actions unsustainable with tough economic punishments. Ukrainians held a positive view of the Russian people throughout this period and only turned against the Russian state and its president in 2014 in response to Putin’s aggression. 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.</p><br /><br /><p>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. Maybe Putin and his people know more and it’s really all justified. 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.</p>
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<p>But to combat the anxiety, we try to remember our connections with friends and family and enjoy the spring weather. I have a colleague in my laboratory who is a reviewer at an open access science publisher. Now, those who want to publish and are affiliated with Russia have been asked to withhold applications, though they have not yet been officially withdrawn. The same thing with conferences – international events that take place in Moscow are all cancelled.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Several minutes later, Solovyov claimed that the attacks against Ukraine are being carried out with “surgical precision” exclusively on military installations. “We all need to recognise that our lives will never be the same. Whether it will be better or worse depends on us,” he said. A journalist, soccer fanatic and Shrewsbury Town fan, Will’s love for the game has withstood countless playoff final losses. After graduating from the University of Liverpool he wrote for a number of British publications before joining AS USA in 2020.</p><br /><br /><h2>No peace unless Ukraine gives up Crimea and Donbas, says Fico</h2><br /><br /><p>As you may have heard, The Moscow Times, an independent news source for over 30 years, has been unjustly branded as a "foreign agent" by the Russian government. This blatant attempt to silence our voice is a direct assault on the integrity of journalism and the values we hold dear. But 66 percent of Russians aged between 18 and 24 have a positive or very positive attitude toward Ukraine. That’s despite a backdrop of unceasing vitriol directed toward Ukraine on state television, and the persistent, oft-repeated idea that it is external attacks that require Russia to take defensive measures. One local family visiting St Petersburg were shocked to find nothing had changed while their own lives had been turned upside down. Having witnessed war firsthand, Alexeevich and Lina’s feelings towards Ukraine’s authorities could be understandable, but many Russian speakers or ethnic Russians in Ukraine are still on Kyiv’s side.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>But in an interview with Channel 4 News, Mr Zelensky said he was open to changing the law to allow for a wartime election. The votes are banned under wartime legislation and Mr Zelensky said in November that he was opposed to holding one because “now is the time of defence”. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is holding a two-day hearing on Russia’s record on the treatment of children. “Russian air defense systems in Leningrad Oblast are most likely positioned to defend against strikes from the north-west and west, as Russia has historically arrayed its air defense in the area to defend against hypothetical Nato attacks,” it said.</p><br /><br /><h3>Why do Russia, the U.S. and Europe care so much about Ukraine?</h3><br /><br /><p>There are likely many others who hate Russia, but it must be remembered that it’s necessary to separate the Russian government, a mad machine of repression and destruction, and the people of Russia, who for the most part are not guilty. I can’t even really tell why they believe what they believe. It could be their Soviet past, or the government propaganda that has been poured out for so many years, or just that there is too much fear and anxiety to actually allow the thought that the world is different from what they expect. Being [https://pastelink.net/submit https://pastelink.net/submit] from them helps because we try to prioritise keeping our relationship intact and caring for each other more than anything. Sometimes I can’t help but try to convince them, which obviously doesn’t work.</p><br /><br /><p>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. After Russia took control of the Crimean Peninsula in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan revolution, rebels in eastern Ukraine held their own unofficial referendums demanding greater autonomy from Kyiv. They were not recognised by Ukraine’s central government, whom Ivan blames for what happened next. The Defence Secretary said on Sunday that European Union member states were not doing enough to support the fight against Russia.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>While Moscow has suffered heavy losses during its ongoing assault — both in manpower and in armored vehicles — its forces continue to advance, making small territorial gains.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>As the war rages on, thousands have been killed according to Ukrainian authorities and many more injured.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>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.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>But everyone who wants to participate can easily find out about it.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Large-scale protests are reportedly planned in several Russian cities later on Thursday, and social media images have showed an increased number of single-pickets across the country.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>But since the invasion of Ukraine, it has been harder for Russian scientists to share data about how climate change is affecting the region.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>“There are some conflicts of interest, we know it well and we will talk about them, but not only in the spirit of friendship, which is obvious, but with the attitude to solve these problems as soon as possible, not to maintain or multiply them,” he said. The Kremlin has said it has no idea how Donald Trump could follow through on his claimed plan to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. “We discussed with the prime minister that all critical issues that exist can be resolved at the level of governments, and work on this will begin shortly,” Mr Zelensky said. The Polish prime minister’s visit to Ukraine represents a step towards rapprochement between the two countries after border blockades by Polish truckers. Now it has downgraded the travel warning for the regions to “all but essential travel”, while maintaining the previous warning in the rest of Ukraine. Two drones struck the port of Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland in the early hours of Sunday, causing a massive explosion.</p><br /><br /><h3>What do Russians think of the invasion of Ukraine?</h3><br /><br /><p>Roughly speaking, I just started helping another part of the population. Over 2022, I helped with humanitarian aid for visiting refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, collected humanitarian aid, and wrote letters for mobilised servicemen. For that, I was named ‘Volunteer of the Year’ in my hometown of Odintsovo. “Since we lived in Russia, the war affected us quite a lot.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The failures of the Ukrainian counteroffensive set the stage for renewed Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine, which kicked off in October and focused heavily around the city of Avdiivka.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Now, any anti-war speech can result in up to 15 years of imprisonment.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>And if I am not imprisoned soon for speaking out against war, I want to try – together with like-minded people – to do everything I can to give our country hope for a peaceful future.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>But the war’s relentless destruction also poses a more existential question, one which fuels an urgent need to resist and prevail.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>He is not a bright leader, and not the tyrant that the opposition paints him as, but he is definitely not the best thing that could happen to Russia.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Officials in Washington, Kyiv, and European partner nations have sounded the alarms that the consequences of aid drying up may be catastrophic.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>Does it change anything to know that many Russians oppose Putin’s war but are powerless to stop him, or to understand that others have been duped into supporting it through his hyper-nationalistic discourse? A few weeks after my trip, I contacted Peter Pomerantsev, who had accompanied me from Lviv to Kyiv. He had been born in Kyiv in 1977, when Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union, but was brought up and educated in the United Kingdom, after his parents went into exile there. He has worked in both London and Moscow, where he became an expert on Russian propaganda. Now a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Pomerantsev shuttles between Washington, D.C., and Ukraine.</p><br /><br /><p>In addition, drafted Russian soldiers, as well as contracted ones,&nbsp;now receive&nbsp;much more pay. Compensation paid to wounded soldiers&nbsp;and the families of killed soldiers, many of whom live in the countryside, has also increased significantly. These payments are not comparable to the ones made before the war,&nbsp;Gudkov said. These are sums that citizens in&nbsp;these rural areas of&nbsp;Russia have never seen before, which also&nbsp;explains why Russia is seeing no anti-war protests.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>In the mid-1970s, young scientists had virtually no contact with western collaborators, he remembers.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Ukrainian agricultural exports surged in December after it successfully forced Russia out of the western half of the Black Sea, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Russia was unnerved when an uprising in 2014 replaced Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president with an unequivocally Western-facing government.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The day before the start of the war, Putin told the nation of WWII-era promises not to expand NATO eastward and said those promises had been broken five times.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>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. Zaichikov travelled to Kyiv during the Maidan revolution, out of curiosity rather than to take part. Working as a tour guide and being rather well-travelled himself, he is also reluctant to dismiss western Ukrainians as “Banderites”. And Russian authorities have taken a tough line against people they consider pro-Kyiv agitators.</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>The stock market remains closed amid fears of a massive share sell-off. One-quarter of respondents say they already feel the effect of those sanctions, according to Volkov. People who are from disadvantaged groups are suffering the most, he adds, because they don't have the resources to adapt.</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>For example, in certain online communities, they’ll just post a single number (indicating a date) and everyone understands everything.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>Travel is hard – you can’t go anywhere with a Russian passport.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br />  <br /><br /> <li>The concentration of human beings – and not cyborgs with eternally gloomy faces – per square kilometre is much higher here than in Moscow.</li><br /><br />  <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p>“Britain has, again, as with all of those other things, led the way with a £2.5billion package and a security agreement, a cooperation agreement with president Zelensky and Ukraine. Russia will be grilled by the United Nations on Monday about the thousands of Ukrainian children believed to have been abducted and sent to Russia since the war began. The Russian foreign secretary flew on an unspecified “northern route to bypass unfriendly countries” in 12 hours and 45 minutes, Russian state news agency Tass reported. Ukrainian drones attacked a St Petersburg oil terminal on Friday and another 110 miles west at Ust-Luga on Sunday. The national guard is controlled by the interior ministry and is responsible for internal security, public order and guarding critical infrastructure. Thousands of non-Ukrainians have served in its armed forces since Russia’s invasion in 2014.</p>

Revision as of 11:14, 3 February 2024

But to combat the anxiety, we try to remember our connections with friends and family and enjoy the spring weather. I have a colleague in my laboratory who is a reviewer at an open access science publisher. Now, those who want to publish and are affiliated with Russia have been asked to withhold applications, though they have not yet been officially withdrawn. The same thing with conferences – international events that take place in Moscow are all cancelled.







Several minutes later, Solovyov claimed that the attacks against Ukraine are being carried out with “surgical precision” exclusively on military installations. “We all need to recognise that our lives will never be the same. Whether it will be better or worse depends on us,” he said. A journalist, soccer fanatic and Shrewsbury Town fan, Will’s love for the game has withstood countless playoff final losses. After graduating from the University of Liverpool he wrote for a number of British publications before joining AS USA in 2020.



No peace unless Ukraine gives up Crimea and Donbas, says Fico



As you may have heard, The Moscow Times, an independent news source for over 30 years, has been unjustly branded as a "foreign agent" by the Russian government. This blatant attempt to silence our voice is a direct assault on the integrity of journalism and the values we hold dear. But 66 percent of Russians aged between 18 and 24 have a positive or very positive attitude toward Ukraine. That’s despite a backdrop of unceasing vitriol directed toward Ukraine on state television, and the persistent, oft-repeated idea that it is external attacks that require Russia to take defensive measures. One local family visiting St Petersburg were shocked to find nothing had changed while their own lives had been turned upside down. Having witnessed war firsthand, Alexeevich and Lina’s feelings towards Ukraine’s authorities could be understandable, but many Russian speakers or ethnic Russians in Ukraine are still on Kyiv’s side.





But in an interview with Channel 4 News, Mr Zelensky said he was open to changing the law to allow for a wartime election. The votes are banned under wartime legislation and Mr Zelensky said in November that he was opposed to holding one because “now is the time of defence”. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is holding a two-day hearing on Russia’s record on the treatment of children. “Russian air defense systems in Leningrad Oblast are most likely positioned to defend against strikes from the north-west and west, as Russia has historically arrayed its air defense in the area to defend against hypothetical Nato attacks,” it said.



Why do Russia, the U.S. and Europe care so much about Ukraine?



There are likely many others who hate Russia, but it must be remembered that it’s necessary to separate the Russian government, a mad machine of repression and destruction, and the people of Russia, who for the most part are not guilty. I can’t even really tell why they believe what they believe. It could be their Soviet past, or the government propaganda that has been poured out for so many years, or just that there is too much fear and anxiety to actually allow the thought that the world is different from what they expect. Being https://pastelink.net/submit from them helps because we try to prioritise keeping our relationship intact and caring for each other more than anything. Sometimes I can’t help but try to convince them, which obviously doesn’t work.



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. After Russia took control of the Crimean Peninsula in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan revolution, rebels in eastern Ukraine held their own unofficial referendums demanding greater autonomy from Kyiv. They were not recognised by Ukraine’s central government, whom Ivan blames for what happened next. The Defence Secretary said on Sunday that European Union member states were not doing enough to support the fight against Russia.











  • While Moscow has suffered heavy losses during its ongoing assault — both in manpower and in armored vehicles — its forces continue to advance, making small territorial gains.








  • As the war rages on, thousands have been killed according to Ukrainian authorities and many more injured.








  • 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.








  • But everyone who wants to participate can easily find out about it.








  • Large-scale protests are reportedly planned in several Russian cities later on Thursday, and social media images have showed an increased number of single-pickets across the country.








  • But since the invasion of Ukraine, it has been harder for Russian scientists to share data about how climate change is affecting the region.










“There are some conflicts of interest, we know it well and we will talk about them, but not only in the spirit of friendship, which is obvious, but with the attitude to solve these problems as soon as possible, not to maintain or multiply them,” he said. The Kremlin has said it has no idea how Donald Trump could follow through on his claimed plan to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. “We discussed with the prime minister that all critical issues that exist can be resolved at the level of governments, and work on this will begin shortly,” Mr Zelensky said. The Polish prime minister’s visit to Ukraine represents a step towards rapprochement between the two countries after border blockades by Polish truckers. Now it has downgraded the travel warning for the regions to “all but essential travel”, while maintaining the previous warning in the rest of Ukraine. Two drones struck the port of Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland in the early hours of Sunday, causing a massive explosion.



What do Russians think of the invasion of Ukraine?



Roughly speaking, I just started helping another part of the population. Over 2022, I helped with humanitarian aid for visiting refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, collected humanitarian aid, and wrote letters for mobilised servicemen. For that, I was named ‘Volunteer of the Year’ in my hometown of Odintsovo. “Since we lived in Russia, the war affected us quite a lot.











  • The failures of the Ukrainian counteroffensive set the stage for renewed Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine, which kicked off in October and focused heavily around the city of Avdiivka.








  • Now, any anti-war speech can result in up to 15 years of imprisonment.








  • And if I am not imprisoned soon for speaking out against war, I want to try – together with like-minded people – to do everything I can to give our country hope for a peaceful future.








  • But the war’s relentless destruction also poses a more existential question, one which fuels an urgent need to resist and prevail.








  • He is not a bright leader, and not the tyrant that the opposition paints him as, but he is definitely not the best thing that could happen to Russia.








  • Officials in Washington, Kyiv, and European partner nations have sounded the alarms that the consequences of aid drying up may be catastrophic.










Does it change anything to know that many Russians oppose Putin’s war but are powerless to stop him, or to understand that others have been duped into supporting it through his hyper-nationalistic discourse? A few weeks after my trip, I contacted Peter Pomerantsev, who had accompanied me from Lviv to Kyiv. He had been born in Kyiv in 1977, when Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union, but was brought up and educated in the United Kingdom, after his parents went into exile there. He has worked in both London and Moscow, where he became an expert on Russian propaganda. Now a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Pomerantsev shuttles between Washington, D.C., and Ukraine.



In addition, drafted Russian soldiers, as well as contracted ones, now receive much more pay. Compensation paid to wounded soldiers and the families of killed soldiers, many of whom live in the countryside, has also increased significantly. These payments are not comparable to the ones made before the war, Gudkov said. These are sums that citizens in these rural areas of Russia have never seen before, which also explains why Russia is seeing no anti-war protests.











  • In the mid-1970s, young scientists had virtually no contact with western collaborators, he remembers.








  • Ukrainian agricultural exports surged in December after it successfully forced Russia out of the western half of the Black Sea, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.








  • Russia was unnerved when an uprising in 2014 replaced Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president with an unequivocally Western-facing government.








  • The day before the start of the war, Putin told the nation of WWII-era promises not to expand NATO eastward and said those promises had been broken five times.










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. Zaichikov travelled to Kyiv during the Maidan revolution, out of curiosity rather than to take part. Working as a tour guide and being rather well-travelled himself, he is also reluctant to dismiss western Ukrainians as “Banderites”. And Russian authorities have taken a tough line against people they consider pro-Kyiv agitators.







The stock market remains closed amid fears of a massive share sell-off. One-quarter of respondents say they already feel the effect of those sanctions, according to Volkov. People who are from disadvantaged groups are suffering the most, he adds, because they don't have the resources to adapt.











  • For example, in certain online communities, they’ll just post a single number (indicating a date) and everyone understands everything.








  • Travel is hard – you can’t go anywhere with a Russian passport.








  • The concentration of human beings – and not cyborgs with eternally gloomy faces – per square kilometre is much higher here than in Moscow.










“Britain has, again, as with all of those other things, led the way with a £2.5billion package and a security agreement, a cooperation agreement with president Zelensky and Ukraine. Russia will be grilled by the United Nations on Monday about the thousands of Ukrainian children believed to have been abducted and sent to Russia since the war began. The Russian foreign secretary flew on an unspecified “northern route to bypass unfriendly countries” in 12 hours and 45 minutes, Russian state news agency Tass reported. Ukrainian drones attacked a St Petersburg oil terminal on Friday and another 110 miles west at Ust-Luga on Sunday. The national guard is controlled by the interior ministry and is responsible for internal security, public order and guarding critical infrastructure. Thousands of non-Ukrainians have served in its armed forces since Russia’s invasion in 2014.

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