One is an engineer, the other an entrepreneur. Andreï and Piotr (1), in their thirties, active, clear-headed and outspoken, embody this new Russian middle class which, open to the world, speaks English or French, likes to travel across Europe and reads Western media. Both live in Kazan, a bubbling city located on the Volga, some 700 km from Moscow, considered one of the strongholds of Russian high-tech.
For years, these two fathers have devoted more time to their work and their children than to being passionate about politics, oscillating between indifference and fatalism, implicit support and passive opposition to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. . But since the start of the president’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, they have not hesitated: Andrei and Piotr are now behind the Kremlin.
“I am not fooled by propaganda”
“I oppose Putin, but I support the offensive in Ukraine”confides Andreï, engineer in one of the factories of the Russian subsidiary of a large European energy group. “Of course Ukraine is an independent country, but action had to be taken. A preventive act to prevent it from attacking us”he said, expecting the Russian army to continue its offensive into Moldova.
Andreï follows the news in the Western media, but also on the television channels serving the Kremlin. “I am not fooled by his propaganda. This is not a targeted, victimless operation as they want us to believe. And if there are neo-Nazi battalions, not all of Ukraine is fascist “, he admits, annoyed by the lessons given at his son’s school on “denazification” in Ukraine. It is precisely because he opposes the Kremlin’s propaganda and the corruption of power that he voted against Vladimir Putin in the last presidential elections. “But, today, it is a question of defending the threatened independence of our country! »he says.
“100% behind the Kremlin”
Globe-trotter and polyglot, Piotr has spent his last five years traveling, a start-up in preparation, another project in mind, an investment in progress. “I know Europe well. That’s why I haven’t had a single doubt since the start of the war: I don’t trust the West and I’m 100% behind the Kremlin.” assures the thirty-something.
His frankness is surprising in today’s Russia. “I don’t do politics, I’m an entrepreneurhe insists. I voted Putin. I trust him. He is the best informed and the most able to make the right decisions for our country. » Piotr turns into a businessman. “The sanctions and measures taken in the banking sector have shown that Europeans do not respect the law. Contracts, laws, trust: everything has been shattered for three months! », he storms. And to deplore that his European suppliers have stopped working with him while his bank accounts in Europe have been frozen overnight. “Only because I am Russian. When decisions are based on the nationality of people, it is the beginning of Nazism. »
“Putin, he knows…”
Andreï and Piotr are far from being the only ones, in Kazan as in the rest of the country. The extent of middle-class support for the “special operation” translates into an 80% approval rating for Vladimir Putin, according to the latest Levada center poll (2).
Supporters of the offensive are no longer counted only among retirees and among the working classes. In a country lacking identity markers, the intervention in Ukraine seems to unite large sections of the population, well beyond the traditional electorate of the Kremlin.
Especially since the propaganda, visible on television but also very present in the cultural sphere and at school, proves to be effective in maintaining confusion. “Some inform themselves freely but end up saying to themselves in the face of the mass of contradictory information that it is impossible to form an idea and that it is better to trust Putin. Because he knows…” deciphers Edouard Vorobiov, 23 years old. This political science student in Kazan defines himself as a disillusioned opponent in the face of generalized apathy. “That’s Vladimir Putin’s real victory. »
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