Notes

Russia-Ukraine: What do young Russians think about the war? Russia-Ukraine war
“The feeling of the inevitability of war from the life of Russians, the feeling that the war is now with us, and we are with this life, caused the emergence of new meanings of war,” Zhuravlev said. As a result, researchers estimate that the core group of war supporters numbers around 30% to 35% of the total number of survey respondents. Koneva said her research group has focused on examining the opinions of the core audience that supports Russia’s war in Ukraine. It is not just Ukraine’s 44 million people whose lives have been upended. In the coming days, many others far from the field of battle maybe find themselves buffeted by ripple effects.

Young Russians tell us about a war few wanted and how the sanctions are affecting their lives. Kyiv’s politicians used to be notoriously fractious – not least because of divisions between the pro and anti-Russian camps. Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. Residents feel abandoned and angry in the little frontier town of Shebekino, where cross-border shelling has become a daily reality.
Many commentators declared that this rhetoric would undermine the fragile support of the majority for the war. Mr Putin has a long record of masterfully manipulating public sentiment. 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. He calculates that the greater (though still limited) involvement of the Russian population in Ukraine may push Russians to support their boys in uniform more strongly. It will drive a wedge between families whose members fight, and those whose run for the border or curse the war.

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Overall, he’s always had nationalist views, so it’s not surprising. I haven’t lived with my parents for many years, but even if I did, I wouldn’t argue with them, because it’s their business what to think. 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. 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.

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. 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. “Covid showed our ugly side, with people getting upset when all they were being asked to do was sit on the sofa at home,” said the former TA soldier. People get used even to war, especially if they live far from the battleground. I have a colleague in my laboratory who is a reviewer at an open access science publisher.
The logistics of training a “Citizen Army” are also formidable, according to one former Territorial Army (TA) soldier. “If you are talking about mass mobilisation to defend the homeland, that is hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. The conflict in Ukraine offers a glimpse of how Britain might prepare for self-defence.

Russia-Ukraine: What do young Russians think about the war?
The Levada Center stays within those parameters by asking whether people support the actions of the Russian military. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Why Russians do not protest is perhaps better explained by Russian history and not opinion polls. That the Kremlin was right to block the majority of independent media sites they used to read. 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.

Being far away from them helps because we try to prioritise keeping our relationship intact and caring for each other more than anything. Many Western brands leaving Russia have paved the way for young entrepreneurs and new, high-quality Russian brands are thriving. A bus service has started up connecting the city to the local cemetery where growing numbers of soldiers killed in Ukraine are being buried.
In addition, the police recently searched the flat of a close friend of mine and then put her under house arrest for two months. She had been putting up posters that said “No to war” around the city. https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-is-russia-invading-ukraine-newsround.html of us wanted this war, and we stand in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions. At demonstrations, people are detained for several days or fined.

This messaging appeared convincing, at least to a point. According to the Athena Project, a collective of sociologists and I.T. Twenty-one per cent of TV viewers didn’t know the goal of the operation.


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. “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.


This will make the war in Ukraine a longer and more traumatic enterprise than anything Europe has known since the middle of the last century. The coming year will demonstrate whether Russia - and its suppliers in North Korea and Iran - or Ukraine - and its Western backers - are able and prepared to meet the voracious demands of industrial-age warfare. Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority. Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. For democracies, long-term consensus in support for war has always been more complicated than for autocrats with no accountability. At the same time, there have been cases of pro-war pupils recording their teachers making dovish statements in class, and reporting them to the authorities.

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. After an uneasy peace with Ukraine, Moscow has sent forces into the Baltics, clashing with British troops based there to protect Nato’s eastern flank. Because of everything escalating so rapidly, I’m anxious about whether I’ll have issues renewing it due to me being Russian. 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. A woman in a raspberry pink coat with her glasses perched on her face mask is also sure the invasion was a good call.
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. That is because its most avid proponents, and its most intractable opponents, will not change their minds. Russia-based research outfits such as the Levada Center have been able to maintain some independence, but face higher rates of non-response. Many ordinary Russians decline to participate in polling for fear of government retribution—and those who do are likely to indicate higher levels of support for Putin for the same reason, Botchkovar says. Additionally, data suggests that up to 30% of Russians say they’re not closely following the situation in Ukraine, she says. But the problem with measuring public opinion in a country under authoritarian rule and censorship, Botchkovar says, is that the data are highly imperfect.

You don’t know when your friends and family will be taken away for mobilisation. 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. The protesters trickle along smaller streets, following location updates from dedicated Telegram channels. There would also be concerns about looting, especially if food shortages started to bite. At the same time, there have been cases of pro-war pupils recording their teachers making dovish statements in class, and reporting them to the authorities. We have VK (a Russian substitute for Facebook), but it’s not the same.
A couple walk in front of the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower and St Basil's cathedral in downtown Moscow. While 80% of poll respondents say they support Russia's military, some have mixed feelings. One local family visiting St Petersburg were shocked to find nothing had changed while their own lives had been turned upside down. He points out that our digital networks are mainly cellular in structure, making it almost impossible to wipe them all at once. True Russian cyberwarfare capabilities have proved something of a damp squib in Ukraine.


"During that time, lots of data became available from the Russian permafrost regions," he remembers. International scientists started collaborating with Russian scientists to investigate how permafrost was changing. A few years ago, Tape helped start the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, so scientists all around the Arctic could collaborate and share data. But with the invasion of Ukraine, the dream of Russian collaboration in the project stalled, he says. "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."

My Website: https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-is-russia-invading-ukraine-newsround.html