Repentance

April 4, 2022

The Kremlin conceded (either for good or for a while) that the plan to capture Kyiv had failed, and that the Russian army was not ready for a protracted war. After that, the withdrawal of Russian troops from northern Ukraine (the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions) became inevitable. But the departure of the Russian soldiers was even more terrifying than the night attack on the peaceful country: They left behind not only destroyed houses and looted apartments and stores but also thousands of murdered, tortured, and raped civilians, mined entrances to houses, roads, and playgrounds. Photos from Bucha, Motyzhyn, and Borodyanka are horrifying and evoke the most profound sense of guilt for what has been done by the state of which I am a citizen. 

In a short historical time—22 years of Putin’s rule is less than the lifetime of one generation—Russia has turned from a country of great culture into a nation of looters, murderers, and rapists. Kremlin propaganda has nurtured humanoids who, when asked as Rodion Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: “Whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right,” proudly answer: “I am a trembling creature, but I have a right!” Alas...

I do not have an answer to how this was possible. You can talk as much as you like about the historical predisposition of Russians to have a Tsar, about the Versailles syndrome, and the yearning for a great state. But this in no way explains what Russian soldiers did in Ukrainian towns and villages. Soldiers who read Dostoevsky and Gogol at school; who watched Dovzhenko and Eisenstein movies; who sang the song “Do Russians Want War?” as children; and who talked a lot about the horrors of the Great Patriotic War in history classes.

The saddest thing is that this horror continues: The Ukrainian army has enough courage and bravery to defend its country but not enough armaments to drive out the aggressor. European countries have weapons, but they do not want to give them to Ukraine, naively hoping that something can be negotiated with the monster named “Putin” and then everyone can return to the everyday pre-war life, business as usual. Unless the Western world understands that Putin must be stopped immediately and that the only way to do this is with modern weapons, the harshest economic sanctions, and a total diplomatic boycott, then, unfortunately, we must prepare for Ukraine to be followed by other countries neighboring Russia, which in the inflamed mind of the dictator will become an “existential threat to Russia’s security,” which will open the way for Putin to use the most terrible and destructive weapons.

Today I do not have the energy to write about the usual problems, which are becoming so small and insignificant against the backdrop of the colossal human tragedy unfolding before our eyes. So I will tell you about two polls conducted last week.

We like war

One Levada-Center poll from March 24-30 shows that the Russians are split more and more into two age groups with widely divergent positions on most of the questions. Thus, answering the questions of the Levada-Center, almost two-thirds of Russians (64%) said that they follow the events in Ukraine, while in the age group over 40, the proportion is over 70%, and in the 18-39 age group, less than half such people. 

More than half of the respondents (53%) “definitely support” the actions of the Russian military, and another 28% “rather support.” The proportion of respondents who gave a negative answer to this question was 14%. Although in all age groups, the share of respondents supporting the actions of the Russian army noticeably exceeds half, the percentage of those who take the opposite stand among younger respondents (a little less than 30%) is almost three times higher than among the older age groups (less than 11%). Only among those respondents who do not approve of the activity of Vladimir Putin as the President, the share of those who do not approve of the actions of the Russian army exceeds half (57%). 

The main explanation of why respondents do not support the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine (43%) was a group of universal reasons (“against the war,” “people are dying,” “the civilian population is suffering”). Nineteen percent of respondents were confidently against Russia’s aggressive foreign policy, saying that “this is another state” and “you can’t meddle in another country.”

The survey did not determine the primary sources of information Russians received about the war and did not aim to determine what the Russians knew about the war. We can see this indirectly from the answers to the question of why a considerable number of countries condemned the actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine: A third of respondents think that “the United States and NATO bent them to their will”; 29%, that “the Western media misinformed them”; and 27%, that “the world has always been against Russia.” Only 16% say these countries “believe that Russia has violated international law and the rights of Ukraine,” with 30% of respondents aged 18 to 24 and three times less among those over 55 years old.  

We feel the sanctions

Another Levada-Center poll conducted March 24-30 shows that the proportion of Russians concerned about Western sanctions has increased markedly. The answers in the categories “very worried” and “quite worried” increased by half, from 32% in December to 46%. At the same time, most Russians (53%) are not yet concerned about this issue. Since the introduction of the first sanctions against Russia, the share of those “worried” had exceeded half of the share only twice: When the first sanctions were imposed in March 2014 (although those sanctions were personal and did not affect the lives of ordinary people) and December 2014, when a full-scale financial crisis broke out in Russia, and the dollar rate rose by 30% in three weeks. 

Residents of Moscow (60%), respondents who identified themselves as the least well-off (“Only have enough money for food”) (52%), and respondents who disapprove of Vladimir Putin’s performance as President of Russia (61%) were most concerned about the sanctions. 

While the respondents’ share indicating that the sanctions had caused problems for them and their families nearly tripled, they represent only 29% of survey participants. At the peak of concerns about the sanctions in 2014/15, the percentage of respondents who thought they and their families were affected by the sanctions was 33%-34%. Similar to the response to the question about the level of concern about the sanctions, the highest proportion of respondents who felt the impact of the sanctions was among people with the lowest incomes (38%) and residents of Moscow (37%). These answers suggest that the most understandable indicators of sanctions pressure for Russians are inflation, which affects the poor, and ruble devaluation, which involves residents of Moscow, whose consumption basket contains a larger share of imported goods than the national average.

The results of this poll support my view expressed in yesterday’s essay that the sanctions imposed after the Russian aggression began have had a much more rapid and severe impact on Russia’s economy than those of 2014/15.