The Quiescent Russians

 Foreign Affairs:

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This period of heightened stress and uncertainty has caused Russian society to lean even harder into its fundamental pragmatism. Most Russians have absolved themselves of responsibility for anything that doesn’t concern them personally. And even Russians who are personally affected by the war—say, a parent whose son was drafted—have tended to compartmentalize, refusing to allow this entanglement to lead them to question whether the war is just or Putin has made a strategic mistake. Instead of confronting their government directly, they have focused on adapting: getting their children out of the country, perhaps, or finding a job in a category that makes them ineligible for the draft.

Given the climate of wartime censorship and repression in Russia, it is difficult to measure genuine public support for the war there. Levada Center polling from late last year showed that although three-quarters of those surveyed said they supported the “special military operation,” over half said it was time for Russia to engage in negotiations to end it—a sign that enthusiasm may be waning. Paradoxically, the feeling of helplessness and insecurity brought by the war can also play to Putin’s interests. When your country is at war, even if you don’t like or even understand that war, the thought of defeat can be paralyzing. Even some Russians who harbor no goodwill toward Putin worry about what losing might bring: prolonged economic hardship or a chaotic collapse of the regime.

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Early in the war over 700,000 military-aged men left Russia. That should not be too surprising for a war that never made any sense.  Ukraine was never a threat to Russia and Putin's suggestion that Ukraine was filled with Nazis was absurd. Putin's war is an attempt to reimpose a Russian empire.  That is why he pretends that countries that used to be in the Russian empire are Russian.