Russians are getting to experience the divisions their government’s propaganda machine helped foster in the United States (Washington Post):
The invasion that united NATO and Europe on sanctions as never before has also divided Russians. On one side: an outward-looking urban middle class who vacation in Europe and while away spend time scrolling through Western apps on their iPhones and send their children to universities abroad. On the other: Putin loyalists, many less-educated Russians or older people raised on Soviet propaganda.
In Kamenka village in Russia’s southern Rostov region, close to the Ukraine border, Alexei Safonov, 47, was horrified at the news that Russia began its attack last week. Then he got to work as chief engineer at an ice-skating rink and was sickened to find his colleagues celebrating.
“The feeling was it’s high time we showed what we could do to those ‘Nazis,’ so it’s high time we started this operation,” he said, referring to Putin’s claim that he would “denazify” Ukraine and its leadership. “That made me feel really dejected and depressed. People around me are enthusiastic about it. When I look at them, I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Safonov’s disgust will feel familiar. The U.S. has a neo-fascist movement here that is open and eager in its support for authoritarian dictators such as Putin and a wannabe former U.S. president.
Safonov’s boss the next day demanded his resignation over a social media post he’d written overnight lamenting his “horror and shame.” It quickly attracted ciriticism. Safonov refused and walked out. Police later arrested him, the Post reports, “and charged him with showing disrespect for society and the Russian Federation.”
Public criticism is still rare outside liberal circles and a few oligarchs with no sway over President Vladimir Putin, writes Robyn Dixon. But “No to war” messages are popping up in cities nonetheless.
“When I worked at the Foreign Ministry, I was proud of my colleagues,” former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev tweeted Tuesday. “Now it is simply impossible to support the bloody fratricidal war in Ukraine.” But he has no real power.
Lawmaker Andrei Klimov called for treason charges against those who “cooperated with foreign anti-Russian centers bringing obvious detriment to our national security.”
The older generation of Russians who lap up state television fear the West and admire Putin for the stability he brought after the chaotic post-Soviet 1990s. But the predictability is gone.
“To Russia, it means we are going back into the caves,” said Safonov the ice-rink engineer. “I think it’s like the end, for Russia.”
Ukraine might like to think so.
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