How Do Russians Feel About a War With Ukraine
Young Russians tell us about a war few wanted and how the sanctions are affecting their lives. “I’m scared and hurt for my friends in Ukraine, who write to me ‘we’re going down into the bomb shelter’. War never leads to anything good and won’t this time either,” – says 18-year-old Tonya, wearing a bag with a hand-stitched "No war" sign.
- The Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the Earth as a whole.
- The hits on two symbols of Ukrainian sovereignty struck many as not coincidental.
- I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram.
- A journalist, soccer fanatic and Shrewsbury Town fan, Will’s love for the game has withstood countless playoff final losses.
But as time passed, I got used to it, no matter how terrible it was. People get used even to war, especially if they live far from the battleground. The economy hasn’t been stable for a long time and the sanctions haven’t gone away.
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Russian state television—instrumental in shaping public opinion—serves all these audiences. According to recent opinion polls, conducted by pollsters such as the Levada Centre which has offices in Moscow, 70-75% of respondents in Russia support the war with Ukraine. (These surveys were conducted before Mr Putin announced his mobilisation drive.) But these shocking figures are deceptive. Public opposition to the war can result in criminal prosecution, so people who are critical of the war and the regime are less likely to agree to speak to a pollster. This results in skewed samples and inflates the level of support for the war. “My father has a very strange position – it seems that he simultaneously supports and does not support the special military operation.
- When I hear it from Ukrainian people, I begin to doubt that our president’s strategy is wrong.
- Throughout the war, researchers have been trying to understand what factors would reduce public support in Russia.
- This tiny chapel is on the grounds of the Northeast Science Station near the Russian town of Chersky.
A short respite came with the country’s independence, but then, in 2014, Vladimir Putin’s aggressions began in Crimea, and carried on afterward in the Donbas. The struggle for identity is further complicated by the fact that many Ukrainians grew up in Russian-speaking households. But Putin’s invasion has accelerated a growing sense of a need to reassert a Ukrainian identity once and for all. On the contrary, the people taking to the streets are those against it, despite threats of arrests. It’s sunny, people are taking selfies on Red Square, while a long convoy of National Guard buses rolls by the Kremlin walls.
Why Do So Many Russians Say They Support the War in Ukraine?
“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 https://euronewstop.co.uk/when-will-german-weapons-arrive-in-ukraine.html having to reconsider this one event but everything you thought and understood over the last ten or fifteen years,” Volkov told me. I want peace, but my grandmother thinks our military is needed to protect Russians in eastern 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.
- If they are troubled by Russia bombing a city where many have friends and relatives, then they're trying not to show it.
- Balazs Orban, chief political aide to the prime minister, said Hungary sent a proposal to the EU over the weekend showing it was open to using the budget for the aid package if other "caveats" were added.
- Their town has been directly affected, so we are worried about them.
- But it is difficult to determine how reliable these surveys are, in light of new crackdowns on free speech and dissent in Russia, where even the use of the word “war” to describe the invasion is now a crime.
- Recently, Ukraine's winter offensive seems to have come to a halt.
It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve. The military course of this war in 2024 will be determined in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang more than in Avdiivka, Tokmak, Kramatorsk or any of the devastated battlefields along the frontlines. 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.
It’s too scary, the idea of dying or being locked up for life. Plus, I can see that despite many years of huge protests, the people have not achieved anything at all. 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 was fielding questions from journalists and ordinary Russians in his first marathon news conference since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. The first, a blitzkrieg to capture Kyiv, failed within the first month. The second, the seemingly inevitable offensive, stalled in the summer and was abandoned in early September following the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
- "Law enforcement agencies and special services are working at the scene," he wrote.
- That is because its most avid proponents, and its most intractable opponents, will not change their minds.
- It seemed to me that all this was not real and could not last long.
- I can’t even really tell why they believe what they believe.
- Sanctions have targeted banks, oil refineries, military and luxury product exports as well as members of the Russian regime and oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin.
Koneva said public opinion in Russia increasingly seems resigned to a longer-term war. In 2010, with the election of Viktor Yanukovych, Russian attitudes toward Ukraine dramatically improved, doubling to a 70 percent approval rating. Yanukovych signed the Kharkiv Accords extending the Black Sea Fleet basing agreement to 2042, and Ukraine adopted a ‘non-bloc’ foreign policy and changed its approach to national identity questions such as the Holodomor.
- To put it simply, before launching an offensive, it’s worth thinking about who will fight in that offensive and how willingly, and to what extent an active conflict will prompt people to rally around Putin.
- Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Russia, including me and my BBC Russian colleagues.
- I’m afraid they will announce a full mobilisation and take everyone.
- One pattern identified by pollsters is that most Russians say they would support peace talks to end the fighting.
- The second, the seemingly inevitable offensive, stalled in the summer and was abandoned in early September following the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive.