On February 23, Razil Malikov, a tank driver for the Russian army, called his family and said he would be back soon; his military unit exercises in Crimea were about to end.
The next morning Russia invaded Ukraine, and Malikov had no further news. On Monday, Ukraine posted a video of a soldier captured in its unit, apologizing for taking part in the invasion.
“He had no idea they could send him to Ukraine,” Malikov’s brother Rashid Allaberganov said in a telephone interview from Russia’s Bashkortostan region. “Everyone is in shock.”
The reality of war is unfolding across Russia.
On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry announced for the first time the number of Russian servicemen killed in the conflict. While the number of wartime casualties is notoriously unreliable — and Ukraine has put the total number of Russian dead in the thousands — the 498 that Moscow has recognized in the seven days of fighting is a higher total than recorded in any of its operations. military since the war in Chechnya, which marked the beginning of President Vladimir Putin’s term in 1999.
Russians, who have long avoided getting involved in politics, are now realizing their country is waging a deadly conflict as the Kremlin grows increasingly aggressive in an attempt to shape the narrative. Its slow-motion crackdown on liberties has become a whirlwind of repression lately, with the last vestiges of a free press facing extinction.
This week, lawmakers proposed a 15-year prison sentence for people who post “falsehoods” about the war, and rumors circulate about border closures or the imposition of martial law. The Education Ministry has scheduled a video lesson to be shown in schools across the country on Thursday that describes the war against Ukraine as a “liberation mission”.
In Moscow, the regional office of the Committee of Mothers of Soldiers of Russia has been receiving 2,000 calls a day since last Thursday.
“The first question for parents is: What happened to my son?” said Alexander Latynin, an official with the committee. “He is alive?”
Taking advantage of the concerns of Russian families, Ukraine was quick to publicize the fact that many young Russian soldiers are dying or being taken prisoner – a reality that the Russian military did not recognize until Sunday (27), the fourth day of the war. Ukrainian government agencies and volunteers posted videos of disoriented Russian POWs, saying they had no idea they would be part of an invasion until just before it began, and photographs and images showed bodies of Russian soldiers strewn across streets and fields.
The videos are reaching out directly to some Russians. Yevgeniya A. Ivanova, for example, identified a friend of hers, Viktor A. Golubev, who appeared in one of the videos. In it, Golubev said he “feels guilty for his wrong actions” on Ukrainian soil and urges Putin “to find a compromise to avoid war”.
For some Russians, the number of human lives is reason enough to oppose the war. The activist group OVD-Info, which counts arrests, has recorded at least 7,359 Russians detained during seven days of protests in several cities across the country.
“It’s the third decade of the 21st century, and we’re seeing news about people burning in bombed tanks and buildings,” Alexei Navalny, an imprisoned opposition leader, wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. He urged the Russians to remain active despite the withering police repression. “Let’s not ‘be against war’. Let’s fight against war.”
Russian elite figures also continued to demonstrate. Lyudmila Narusova, a member of the upper house of parliament, told the independent television channel Dozhd on Sunday that Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine were “unburied; wild dogs gnawing at bodies that, in some cases, cannot be identified because they are burned.”
“I do not identify with state representatives who are pro-war,” Narusova said. “I don’t think they know what they’re doing themselves. They’re following orders without thinking.”
But the discontent showed no sign of affecting Putin’s campaign. The Russian attack on Ukraine has widened, with heavy fighting reported in the port city of Mariupol on the Sea of ​​Azov. The government signaled that it would only intensify its crackdown on critics of the war — including those who called it a “war” rather than, in the Kremlin’s nondescript phrase, “special military operation.”
“Individuals who commit forgery must be punished in the most severe way,” said Vasily Piskaryov, a veteran lawmaker in Putin’s party. “They are discrediting the absolutely fair and understandable actions of our Armed Forces.”
The punishment proposed by him: 15 years in prison. Parliament, which is controlled by the Kremlin, will vote on the law on Friday.
Some feared that Putin might go even further, clamping down on dissent to an extent not seen in Russia since Soviet times. Tatiana Stanovaya, who has studied Putin for a long time, wrote that it was “more than logical” to expect lawmakers this week to pass the imposition of martial law to block the internet, ban all protests and restrict Russians from leaving the country.
Such speculation, fueled by the speed with which the Kremlin was moving to block access to individual media outlets and arrest protesters, prompted increasing numbers of Russians to flee the country.
Echo of Moscow, Russia’s main liberal-leaning radio station, was taken off the air on Tuesday for the first time since the 1991 Soviet coup attempt. left in Russia, left the country on Wednesday after access to their website was blocked.
“It is clear that the personal safety of some of us is threatened,” wrote Tikhon Dzyadko, the channel’s editor-in-chief, explaining why he decided to leave “temporarily”.
There was also evidence that while the war took many Russians by surprise, a significant number came to accept it as inevitable or imposed on Russia by an aggressive NATO. The economic crisis triggered by the West’s harsh sanctions has reinforced this narrative for some. On Wednesday, the ruble hit new lows as more companies such as Siemens and Oracle announced they would scale back their operations in Russia, and the Central Bank ordered the Moscow stock exchange to remain closed on Thursday for the fourth day in a row.
In a Moscow shopping mall on Wednesday, a young couple in line to withdraw cash from an ATM said they were against the war. However, they claimed that the way the world punished them for this was also not fair, considering that the United States had fought its own wars for the past few decades without suffering severe international sanctions.
“Just as you can criticize the government, you can criticize Western countries,” said Maksim Filatov, 25, a hookah bar manager. “When there were similar situations in other countries involving the United States, there were no such attacks, and they did not lead the country into crisis.”
And the Committee of Mothers of Soldiers, despite being a firsthand witness to the tragedy caused by the war, decided to support it, according to Latynin, the official of the body. He echoed the words of Putin, who last week described his “special military operation” as “self-defense”.
“We understand that no armed conflict occurs without victims,” ​​Latynin said. “But this was a necessary step, because it was impossible to continue like this.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
