Notes

Why aren't more Russians opposing the Ukraine war? 11 02 2023
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.


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 said he expected the attitude of Russians towards the war would drastically change if the country is defeated 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.

Americans have more confidence in Zelenskyy than Biden when it comes to world affairs
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.

It’s hard to differentiate global problems from everyday ones, as you can see. "During that time, lots of data became available from the Russian permafrost regions," he remembers. 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. He’s acting not like a politician in need of public support, but like a figure from national history books who cares only about the approval of future historians and readers,” tweeted Alexander Baunov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “The conflict between Russia and Ukraine may last for several more years.
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.

‘I‘m not going to leave here and give up. Russia is my home’
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.

Furthermore, fears are growing over the future of US security assistance to Ukraine as additional funding remains held up by Congress — despite repeated pleas of urgency from the Biden administration. The Levada Center stays within those parameters by asking whether people support the actions of the Russian military. “We all need to recognise that our lives will never be the same. But by evening, thousands of people in cities across Russia had defied police threats to take to central squares and protest against the military campaign.
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. Ilya (name changed), who is in his early 30s, has just finished paying off his mortgage in Moscow.

Russian enlistment offices attacked 220 times since war began
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.


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.


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.


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