to analyze
As of: November 19, 2024 5:22 am
1,000 days ago, the Russian army invaded Ukraine on a large scale. The war also fundamentally changed Russia. The country is characterized by ubiquitous propaganda, fear and denial.
“You can hide or not,” reads the poster, below a terrifying image of a Russian attack helicopter. ”He gets you. He’s evil. He’s our predator.” For months, an exhibition of posters that can hardly be described other than glorifying the war has appeared on Old Arbat, Moscow’s most famous pedestrian street.
Another poster, for example, shows a heavy tank, also built head-on, which appears to be rolling towards you. “Do you hear it? The sound of inevitable retribution?” People stroll past the stands with the posters, rarely does anyone stop and take a closer look.
1,000 days of the so-called special military operation. War is everyday life. And if anyone still doubts whether this is really true, there is also a picture of a soldier with a halo like an icon hanging on the Old Arbat to be on the safe side.
Another poster reads: “If God is for us – then who is against us?” War is holy, so goes the message, or at least sacrosanct. If you don’t want to understand this, you have to be careful.
Criticizing the war openly – “discrediting” it, as one law calls it, can cost years of freedom. Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin was jailed for years until he was released as part of a major prisoner swap over the summer for talking about Butscha on his YouTube channel.
Others, less visible, sit on Facebook for “likes.” Or they sit because someone claims they have made critical statements about the war. Like the pediatrician Nadyeshda Buyanova. She is 68, she has been practicing in Moscow for 40 years, a determined woman, hands with a short gray haircut.
She is said to have made negative comments about the war during a treatment appointment. The mother of a small patient, the widow of a soldier who died in Ukraine, reported this to the police. Bujanova denied the allegations, there was a statement against a statement, there was no evidence. The doctor was sentenced to five and a half years in prison last week.
“It’s all absurd,” Bujanova said in her glass cage in the courtroom. But it’s more than that: With the tough new laws, information seems to be back.
Ubiquitous War propaganda
1,000 days of war also means: 1,000 days of war propaganda. You cannot avoid her. Not in Vladivostok or Blagoveshchensk in the east of the country, not in the big and small cities of Siberia, not in the Arctic Circle.
Turning off the TV with the endless success reports from the front – they’re always just success reports – or the talk shows that should really be called shout shows, and so violently people turn to with Ukraine and the “warmongers in the EU” – which is of no use.
Propaganda is everywhere. Large photographs of frontline soldiers hang in towns and villages, children dance in school uniforms at school fetes, and colorful posters advertising military service hang in shop windows. This ad is also flashed on each of the thousands of ticket machines in Moscow metro stations, enticing people to pay the equivalent of 50,000 euros in the first year of service at the start alone. Anyone who is heavily in debt can get into trouble, and many in Russia.
A new park has been laid out in the Syktyvkar town cemetery for the region’s men who died in Ukraine.
Long series with Graves of soldiers
But 1,000 days of war are also 1,000 days of suffering. Long rows of soldiers’ graves grow in Russian cemeteries. In the city of Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi region in the northern Urals, a whole new field has been laid out for the men of the region, who return in zinc coffins.
The BBC, which can no longer be found legally in Russia, named in September some more than 70,000 Russian soldiers whose identities and deaths could be proven using entries in social networks, obituaries or cemetery records . Many suspect that the number is much higher. Russian authorities do not provide any casualty figures.
No one is complaining out loud, high cash payments to survivors and posthumous medals are intended to ease suffering – and nip potential protests in the bud. After almost three years of war, there is a graveyard calm all over the country.
The fear is always present
Fear is ever present in these 1,000 days of war that are not yet called war. Sociologists know how much fear can distort the results of their survey, so they cleverly ask their questions in a way that makes them safe to answer.
Broad support for Putin’s course
At the State-affiliated Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences there is no doubt: that the “military operation,” said last week when a new study was presented, had consolidated society. 78 percent in Russia support the course taken by Russia. The trend is increasing.
The respondents were “absolutely willing to participate” and were very happy to respond. “You can see it in the numbers,” says the institute’s director Mikhail Gorshkov, “Russia has finally gotten off its knees.” Something similar can be read on one of the posters on Old Arbat: “The Russian bear is just waking up. This is just the beginning.”
1,000 days of war also fundamentally changed Russia. He is not only fighting in Ukraine anymore, but he has been fighting for a long time also against the “enemy in his own country”: Anyone who criticizes Putin’s policies, against the war, or even sympathizes with the Ukraine keeps its mouth shut. Or it is long gone: the Russian opposition, the visible and the silent, has left the country in internal migration – or in a prison camp.
How can people support the pursuit of peace in a repressive environment where pro-war sentiments dominate public discourse?
Questions that may help uncover the truth without directly confronting fears. Many will say that they support the military effort, fearing repercussions if they express the opposite view. The atmosphere of intimidation looms large; people are unsure of who might be listening or reporting back.
While some Russians express their dissent in smaller circles or on encrypted messaging apps, the public spaces are filled with pro-war sentiments. The overwhelming majority of the media, is tightly controlled by the state. Those who dare to push back face severe consequences, as echoed in the case of the pediatrician Nadyeshda Buyanova, whose recent sentencing exemplifies the rigid enforcement against even the slightest criticism.
As the 1,000-day mark approaches, various elements of life in Russia—be it through posters, media, or public discourse—continue to reflect and reinforce the war narrative. The war has reshaped Russian society in profound ways, from the very fabric of community interactions to individual lives that have been irreversibly altered. The pervasive propaganda creates a paradox: an overwhelming silence under the guise of national pride and unity, interwoven with an undercurrent of fear that many dare not voice.
Every day reminds the populace of the ongoing conflict, with the war becoming a grim part of everyday identity. Yet, amidst the grim realities and stark propaganda, there remains a flicker of hope among some: hope for dialogue, for peace, and ultimately—an end to the suffering that has claimed so many lives over the past thousand days. But, as with all forms of dissent in the current climate, visibility is fraught with danger. The narrative of patriotism clutches tightly to the reins, struggling against the quiet aspirations of peace that linger just beneath the surface.
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Laura Richards – Editor-in-Chief
20-year newsroom veteran, former Reuters foreign-desk chief. Oversees editorial strategy and standards at Time .News. Multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards.