Notes

BBC Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent, What do Russians think of the war in Ukraine?
By mid-2014, positive views of Russia had fallen to 52 percent. Positive Russian attitudes toward Ukraine once again dramatically collapsed during the Euromaidan, which was portrayed in massive state-sponsored information campaigns as a Western-backed coup bringing Russophobes and fascists to power. 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. Two-thirds of Ukrainians, but only a quarter of Russians, understand the conflict as a Russian-Ukrainian war. In contrast, Ukraine’s three presidents since the 2004 Orange Revolution never organized anti-Russian media campaigns. Ukrainians throughout this period have never held negative views of Russians and only because of Putin’s aggression have Ukrainian attitudes turned against the Russian state and its leaders.


Ukrainian attitudes toward Russia were stable until 2013, with positive attitudes ranging from 65 percent in the west to 93 percent in the east. These figures belied allegations of a Russophobic western Ukraine; only twenty percent of the public there held negative views of Russians. ” — showed that there is little enthusiasm for a “real,” large-scale war among members of Russia’s modern, urban society (the country’s military operations in Syria and eastern Ukraine in recent years were not seen as real wars).

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Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been highly critical of the EU's financial and military aid for Ukraine and has maintained close ties with Russia. A little earlier, we told you about a report in the Financial Times that the EU was proposing to sabotage Hungary's economy if Budapest blocks further aid for Ukraine this week. His incomings fell in 2022 as he earned less rental income from real estate he owned because of the outbreak of the war. Only aircraft deployed to protect energy facilities, or those carrying top Russian or foreign officials, will be allowed to fly with special permission in the designated zones, according to the Vedomosti daily newspaper. Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. Meanwhile, Indian thinktank Observer Research Foundation's Russia expert, Nandan Unnikrishnan, said India was unlikely to sign "any major military deal" with Russia because it would cross a red line with the US.


Britain has also allowed ammunition supplies to dwindle to “dangerously low levels,” according to a Parliamentary Defence Committee report. Gen Sir Richard Barrons, the former head of the British Joint Forces Command, told the committee that he doubted there were “sufficient munitions to sustain a high-intensity conflict for more than about a week”. The decline in manufacturing means there are far fewer factories that can be converted to make arms, as happened in the Second World War, when car makers churned out Spitfire parts. And in a globalised world, many industries that are key in wartime rely on imports. "Law enforcement agencies and special services are working at the scene," he wrote. However, Mr Orban's political director said this morning that Hungary was open to using the EU budget to allow further aid for Ukraine.

What do Russians think of the war in Ukraine?
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. History will ultimately decide how much of the blame for initiating the bloodshed rests on Vladimir Putin alone, as well as his Kremlin acolytes, and how much responsibility rests with the tacit acceptance of ordinary Russians. It is important to determine this issue morally, to assess culpability for the conflict, and legally, to prosecute potential war crimes.


“We have become so comfortable here in Britain that it’s hard to imagine young people fighting, and when I went to Afghanistan a decade ago, I didn’t think the youngsters of would be up to much,” he said. Right now, such scenarios tend to exercise only the minds of Ministry of Defence war-gamers and military thriller writers. But far-fetched as they might sound, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of Britain’s army, believes it is time we dwelt on them more.

Many Russians Feel a Deep Unease Over Going to War
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. https://euronewstop.co.uk/how-many-russian-soldiers-have-died.html visiting St Petersburg were shocked to find nothing had changed while their own lives had been turned upside down. 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. "Was Putin really going to start a war with Ukraine?" he asked.

From fleeting impressions and conversations it is hard to draw firm conclusions. The evidence suggests that even in the best-case scenario, the mobilization effect will be nonexistent. And when it comes to Russian war casualties, Koneva said the losses have been successfully covered up by the country’s strict censorship measures. In a panel I moderated, the Ukrainian historian and author Olena Stiazhkina began her remarks by expressing her gratitude to the Ukrainian armed forces for their defense of the homeland. Overall, the war’s outcome will depend on the mood of the group who support it and on the group of conformists who go along with it.
But what kind of guarantees they would give independent Ukraine is not yet clear. Why Russians do not protest is perhaps better explained by Russian history and not opinion polls. 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. Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the war, certainly do not oppose it.


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