A Ukrainian soldier named Serhiy, returning from Russian captivity, has reportedly been found mutilated with swastikas carved into his forehead, as disclosed by Dr. Olexandr Turkevich, who is treating him.
The soldier, blindfolded during the ordeal, claimed Russian soldiers threatened to dismember him, citing accusations of fascism.
I just want to draw an important distinction between the Russian government, military leadership, & voluntary/willing soldiery and the average Russian citizen. It would be wrong to call the latter “the bad guys”, but not the former.
Thank you.
Russian here, protested against the war and find it terrifying, not buying official narratives of nazis and NATO threat for a second.
Still remember the 24th of February, 2022. Before the date, we were all like “naive Westerners, Russia will not openly attack Ukraine, that’s so obviously stupid on so many levels, it’s a brotherly nation going through turbulent times, that’s it”. No one could in their sane mind even comprehend something like this. It was unthinkable. No one wanted that aside from a few select extremists, and most people never supported it later on - though propaganda machine did make some progress on the weakest of minds.
And then we wake up that day, on 24th of February, and have a collective “HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK PUTIN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT OH WE’RE ALL SO SCREWED”. It was a very grim day, and everyone had worries of their own: some, like me, had friends and family in Ukraine, some were afraid of their men being drafted (which did eventually happen in September 2022), others were just terrified of the scale of human suffering it will entail.
Since then, we learned never to trust anything and question everything we believe in. It was a cultural shock like Russia has never seen.
Same day, 24th of February, streets sparked in violent protests, police got extremely brutal - to this day, almost 2 years into the war, police has constant 24/7 presence in the places that were the main anti-war protest venues of my city. It lasted for months, despite police never stopping and detaining extreme numbers of people: courts are still overburdened processing all of them. All until everyone who had integrity and bravery and nothing to lose got in jail.
Putin should pay for all the atrocities he has committed, and that’s something very many Russians will subscribe to.
Wow thanks for sharing this. Mind if I ask, from your personal perspective/experience, how is the situation now? Did the propaganda work at brainwashing people over the past years?
I’d say at first it did work on a lot of people from TV generation, forming a picture of Ukrainian soldiers as Nazis driven by drugged President who is a puppet of american dementia man, and of Russian soldiers liberating people from insanity.
At its peak, even some of the generally anti-war individuals fell into uncertainty.
But the longer it drags, the less effective propaganda is. War exhausted country’s resources and killed its men, and this becomes clear even to past die-hard supporters of the war. Also, the dissolution of Wagner group made Wagner fans (which constituted a large percentage of pro-war individuals) more bitter towards the military effort.
So in general, the sentiment goes more and more towards “why are we waging this war in the first place” and “how much longer do we have to suffer”
Oh wow, I wonder whether something happened before Feb 24th that might have caught your attention? Any idea? I certainly remember there was something…
You mean Crimea? While it was a hostile act indeed, it was different. Might be less visible from the outside, again.
Lemme try to explain the difference. Again, no justification, I don’t have a strong stance on Crimea, just how it looks from inside Russia (and Crimea - having lots of relatives and friends from there and been there pre- and post-annexation).
The annexation of Crimea was relatively peaceful (while some Russian soldiers came to the peninsula, it wasn’t a full-scale invasion, no bullet was shot and no bullet was meant to be shot) and went in accordance to the interest of locals, who wholeheartedly overwhelmingly approved the change - and I’m not just sourcing this from Kremlin propaganda and referendum results, I’ve been on the ground and have many contacts in there. The sentiment has somewhat changed over time, but is still moderately pro-Russia. Crimea is also primarily inhabited by ethnic Russians - 67,9% Russians with only 15,7% Ukrainians by the time of annexation in 2014 - which might help to explain such a fierce support (source: Wikipedia). Putin has also taken action against growing conflict between Russians and Crimean Tatars, which, while being heavily controversial, got him even more support from the Russian population majority.
The 2022 invasion was meant from the start as a full-scale war, and was meant to meet resistance and be hostile to the civilian population. Unlike annexation of Crimea, which was more of a political recoloring than anything, this time it was an actual war, with blood, bullets, and flame, and with Russian tanks riding through Ukrainian protesters that wished those tanks to go away. And this is the kind of scenario Russians could not envision. In Russian mentality, Ukrainians, just like Belorussians, are brotherly folks, and going for the kill means betraying the almost sacred bond the nations have. This shows in Russian politics, with leaders constantly trying to tell population it is not a war against brotherly Ukrainians, but rather against Nazis and their leader Zelensky (yep, the guy with Jewish bloodline). But it is bullshit that the majority can still see through, and when the war started, it was a giant shock and, like, something that absolutely, under any circumstances, shouldn’t have happened.
This, exactly, has blinded Russians, myself included, into trusting Kremlin with their “combat exercise” rhetoric. Not that we had (and have) big trust in our government, but going to a real bloody war with Ukraine was too unthinkable to ever seriously consider.
Also, please avoid rhetorical questions in favor of direct ones. I do answer this one because it might be useful for the general context, but it is rude and also ineffective in case you actually want to hear an answer.
I’m not Russian so I have a limited perspective of this, but I remember people pointing out good indicators that the invasion was really going to happen during the weeks leading up to it, like how the Russian military was setting up field hospitals along the border. Obviously, hindsight makes reflecting on this difficult, and I’m not sure what information was available to Russian citizens at that time.
Explained this in my answer; long story short, the very idea of such invasion was super unthinkable to an average Russian, and, while we’ve seen news from Western media, we discarded them as sensationalist and lacking understanding of the real situation.
But, as we soon figured out, Putin has no issue crossing any red line.