Notes

The Ukraine Crisis: What to Know About Why Russia Attacked The New York Times
But the war has helped set new records - at one point on Monday a dollar cost 113 roubles and a euro, 127. "There are no dollars, no roubles - nothing! Well, there are roubles but I am not interested in them," said Anton (name changed), who is in his late 20s and was queuing at an ATM in Moscow. On Monday Russia more than doubled its interest rate to 20% in response to the sanctions after the rouble plunged to record new lows. The stock market remains closed amid fears of a massive share sell-off. "I also couldn't pay in a shop today - for the same reason." Among the most prominent outlets are the Meduza and Mediazona websites - both have been blocked in Russia and both are labelled as "foreign agents" by the Russian government.


For most Russians, television remains the main source of the news. It is firmly controlled by the Kremlin and pumps out relentless war propaganda. Ukrainians are said to shell their own cities, and Russian troops are presented as liberators. Restrictions on reporting are increasingly severe, and access to almost all independent outlets is blocked or limited - or they censor themselves. For months, Russians of all political stripes tuned out American warnings that their country could soon invade Ukraine, dismissing them as an outlandish concoction in the West’s disinformation war with the Kremlin.

Ukraine’s chief spy argues that its security deal with Britain is a game-changer
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. And as Russia's war in Ukraine continues, the U.S. and other Western allies are hitting it with more economic sanctions. He's the director of the Levada Center, an independent polling firm in Russia.


The second, the seemingly inevitable offensive, stalled in the summer and was abandoned in early September following the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive. In the third version, the Russian motherland has been declared in danger and hundreds of thousands of men are being drafted to fight. https://www.openlearning.com/u/michaelsenbishop-s2dhzs/blog/RussiaUkraineWhatDoYoungRussiansThinkAboutTheWarRussiaUkraineWar01 ” declared by Vladimir Putin on September 21st looks like forced improvisation and it is disrupting the balance of interests and loyalties in Russian society, where views on the war are very mixed. Volkov adds that public opinion matters, even though the Russian government isn't taking the public's pulse in order to plan its next moves. He says officials are instead monitoring the situation to make sure that it's "under control." Russia-based research outfits such as the Levada Center have been able to maintain some independence, but face higher rates of non-response.

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This is particularly true in the regions of Russia most heavily targeted by Putin’s mobilization. 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. Many of those
drafted into the Russian army regardless of age, military experience and medical history come from ethnic minority dominant regions like Buryatia. In April, a national propaganda campaign created a positive spike in local sentiment in Buryatia towards the war that lasted for 12 days before reverting to pre-campaign levels.

But the problem with measuring public opinion in a country under authoritarian rule and censorship, Botchkovar says, is that the data are highly imperfect. That means they're on conflicting sides — and feel the shunning of Russia most of all. She supports our president, despite the fact that her whole family is still over there.
A Ukrainian soldier from the 68th Brigade on Tuesday in a trench 500 yards from Russian positions in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region.Credit... Russian companies could end up cutting hours or stopping production as sanctions bite. As well as their savings falling in value, many Russians are predicted to lose their jobs as the economy reels from being cut off from financial markets in the West. But by Monday customers of Russia's biggest state-backed bank, Sberbank, told BBC Russian they could not order cash via the app at all - they had to go to its office and sign a form to do so. 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.


Some of the support is more passive, Botchkovar says, coming from Russian citizens who’ve placed their faith in Putin as a political leader, but who may not necessarily vocalize that support. The common thread, she says, is a deep distrust of the West, rooted in decades of state propaganda. 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. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Russia also supplied military personnel, mercenaries and other resources in support of a small but militant minority of pro-Russian separatists in the largely Russian-speaking cities of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s east. Yet Volkov added that this tolerance, however passive, is likely to remain quite stable, even strong. His Ukrainophobic attitudes can be attributed in part to his being steeped in deeply rooted feelings of both Russian superiority and resentment towards Ukrainians who have consistently asserted their distinct identity. Western leaders hope the unprecedented measures will bring about a change in thinking in the Kremlin. Most of the Russian public also opposes any use of nuclear weapons by Moscow.
For that, I was named ‘Volunteer of the Year’ in my hometown of Odintsovo. “My father has a very strange position – it seems that he simultaneously supports and does not support the special military operation. 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. 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.

“They often told us that we could solve this problem with vacations, and that was it,” she recalls. Sentiment analysis is a well-tested form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to read and understand human-generated text and speech. In the coming days, many others far from the field of battle maybe find themselves buffeted by ripple effects.
And other specialised apps, like Matlab (a programming and computing platform) and Coursera (an online course platform). Also, prices for some ordinary things, like cosmetics and food, have doubled, but in many cases, we have no alternative because there are no factories here that produce those products. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, an outcry has arisen around the world. On March 2, the UN voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution demanding the end of the invasion, with only five countries opposing – Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, and Syria. As the war rages on, thousands have been killed according to Ukrainian authorities and many more injured.


The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the older generation is drowning in propaganda and believes that Putin’s actions are justified. Al Jazeera spoke with five young Russians about their views on the invasion, and how the blowback has affected them. The vast majority of Ukrainians until recently had a positive image of Russia, but a growing number now have a critical or skeptical attitude to Russia. Russian is widely used throughout large parts of Ukraine and it is not unusual for people to easily and even unconsciously move back and forth between languages.


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