Q&A Ukrainian perspective on what russians feel about the war
During a random discussion online, one person (Dan O) asked me the several questions about Russia Ukrainian War, and after I answered them he told me that it would be nice to share them, quoting him
I do feel your perspective on key questions of confusion about the war would be read with great interest my many!
Therefore I decided to post them here (mostly) unchanged.
Dan O’s questions:
Since you are reading Russian sources I am interested to understand what perceptions are within Russia today. Specifically:
Do most in Russia have an basic (accurate) understanding of what is happening in Ukraine (e.g. generally how many Russians have died)?
Is it true that most Russian are not really feeling the pinch from sanctions?
Do many Russians feel the rupture with the west will be damaging in the longer term? do they care?
btw, I think telling medium your personal biases then your assessment of Russian sentiment would be of interest and of value.
My answer:
I understand russian but I do not live there, so I do not talk to real people.
25%-50% (depending on statistics) of russians trust their TV. These don’t understand much. This does not mean that other 50–75% trust western sources. They may easily trust no-one, so many of them are lost in information. People cannot openly tell their opinion about the war, as they can get into jail (even for Facebook like), social network platforms are blocked (accesisble through VPN), comments are turned off in russian media, there are many bots working for government to post comments where it’s possible (mostly foreign websites). Given all that it’s not easy to asses what Russians actually think. However I can try to give you my opinion.
No, they don’t really understand everything which is going on in Ukraine. Some of them do, but those are minority and usually they already emigrated. I did have some russian friends in Facebook, but they are either silent about the war (ignoring my questions altogether), or are telling me that “things are complicated, we do not understand who is right and who is wrong, everyone is lying”.
They do feel sanctions, but it’s not that they are dying from hunger. People lost their jobs, economy is slowing down, businesses are shutting down. Many people were poor anyway, so becoming poorer does not really matter that much. “Not feeling a pinch” is a lie.
As for longer term conflict with the west — many of them think that russia can become a new USSR, to which many still hold sentiments. A self-sufficient state. Yes — they will be poorer and have no good cars, but “so what?”. Feeling that their country is “great” and “is being afraid of” is more important than financial well-being. They see it as their own russian way.
I did not quite get your last sentence, but just in case — I’m Ukrainian living in Ukraine, and before the war I never hated russians and even felt that there was some russian part of me. With first russian bombs falling on our cities that has changed dramatically.
Original answer here: https://medium.com/p/ba1762b4e684