Ukraine invasion: Russians feel the pain of international sanctions

Ukraine invasion: Russians feel the pain of international sanctions


But it is difficult to determine how reliable these surveys are, in light of new crackdowns on free speech and dissent in Russia, where even the use of the word “war” to describe the invasion is now a crime. In the meantime, sanctions affect every Russian citizen in their daily lives – both those who support and those who oppose the war, those at home and those abroad. Positive Russian attitudes toward Ukraine once again dramatically collapsed during the Euromaidan, which was portrayed in massive state-sponsored information campaigns as a Western-backed coup bringing Russophobes and fascists to power. A just-released poll by Russia’s Levada Center shows that Russians think the most hostile countries are the United States, followed by Ukraine, Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania. Two-thirds of Ukrainians, but only a quarter of Russians, understand the conflict as a Russian-Ukrainian war.

He had been born in Kyiv in 1977, when Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union, but was brought up and educated in the United Kingdom, after his parents went into exile there. He has worked in both London and Moscow, where he became an expert on Russian propaganda. Now a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Pomerantsev shuttles between Washington, D.C., and Ukraine.

UK army chief warns citizens to prepare for massive war with Russia

Many of the Ukrainian writers at the forum also expressed similar sentiments. In a panel I moderated, the Ukrainian historian and author Olena Stiazhkina began her remarks by expressing her gratitude to the Ukrainian armed forces for their defense of the homeland. “We’re all living on credit given to us by the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she said.

  • And at the time of the Soviet Union many ethnic Russians were moved from Russia into Ukraine to promote Russian language and culture there.
  • Many Western brands leaving Russia have paved the way for young entrepreneurs and new, high-quality Russian brands are thriving.
  • As it thaws, it creates massive problems for infrastructure built on top of it, causing roads to buckle, building foundations to crack and pipelines to break.
  • Some 38% of respondents reported the war “has reduced their options or ruined their plans.” Among them, 14% of respondents reported a job loss, 36% a decrease in income and 56% reported spending more savings on food.

Overall, he’s always had nationalist views, so it’s not surprising. I haven’t lived with my parents for many years, but even if I did, I wouldn’t argue with them, because it’s their business what to think. "Even if the baseline result may be affected by self-censorship ... shifts in the trend over time show that people are willing to report changes in opinion," she wrote. "Trended data can also be very informative about the direction of changes in public opinion even if the magnitude is exaggerated." Even those who did agree to answer the questions in Miniailo’s survey displayed a heightened level of fear and discomfort. One man in his fifties said, “It is now prohibited by law to answer what you think about this topic.

The truth about a massacre of Indigenous people in Argentina

People walk next to a cracked panel apartment building in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk in 2018. Climate change is causing permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, to thaw across the Arctic. When the earth thaws, it can destabilize building foundations, roads, pipelines and other infrastructure.

  • Among the most prominent outlets are the Meduza and Mediazona websites - both have been blocked in Russia and both are labelled as "foreign agents" by the Russian government.
  • Public opposition to the war can result in criminal prosecution, so people who are critical of the war and the regime are less likely to agree to speak to a pollster.
  • People walk next to a cracked panel apartment building in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk in 2018.
  • For Ukrainians, the looming first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of their country is a historic milestone within an ongoing tragedy of unprovoked bloodshed, one which seems to be escalating again.

However, over the following decade various central bank measures helped reassure Russians about the rouble. Deposits placed in Russian currency began to grow and so did the amount of money Russians invest in the stocks of Russian companies. When President Boris Yeltsin's government defaulted on its debt in 1998 those who'd been sleeping on their money felt vindicated. Daria, 35, a project manager in Moscow, said this meant he'd been unable to use the metro. Like other interviewees for this article we are not using his full name or showing his face for security reasons. “The conflict between Russia and Ukraine may last for several more years.

He calculates that the greater (though still limited) involvement of the Russian population in Ukraine may push Russians to support their boys in uniform more strongly. It will drive a wedge between families whose members fight, and those whose run for the border or curse the war. By that, he means that those who were most connected to the outside world might have been less inclined to support Putin's military operation, but now find themselves cut off from the West. That means they're on conflicting sides — and feel the shunning of Russia most of all.

  • To understand the nature and composition of the pro-war majority, you need to dig deeper.
  • I can do without access to the blocked social media platforms.
  • “In the past few years, I’ve become closely involved with volunteering.
  • Mostly because I don’t understand how anyone could take this step – to send people to fight, to kill others.

A few years ago, Tape helped start the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, so scientists all around the Arctic could collaborate and share data. But with the invasion of Ukraine, the dream of Russian collaboration in the project stalled, he says. "We're having a meeting at the end of February," he says, "and it's basically Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia. There's no one from Russia coming." Was hatred a natural and ultimately inevitable response to the atrocities Ukrainians were being subjected to? Does it change anything to know that many Russians oppose Putin’s war but are powerless to stop him, or to understand that others have been duped into supporting it through his hyper-nationalistic discourse? A few weeks after my trip, I contacted Peter Pomerantsev, who had accompanied me from Lviv to Kyiv.

  • Those "objectives do not change", he said, listing "denazification, demilitarisation and its neutral status".
  • He calculates that the greater (though still limited) involvement of the Russian population in Ukraine may push Russians to support their boys in uniform more strongly.
  • Yet Volkov added that this tolerance, however passive, is likely to remain quite stable, even strong.
  • Russian companies could end up cutting hours or stopping production as sanctions bite.
  • A war reporter for Russian daily Izvestia based in occupied Luhansk in eastern Ukraine tasked Mr Putin about Ukraine's recent foothold on the Russian-occupied east bank of the Dnipro river.

More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels. While the defence alliance, Nato, and the US warn of an imminent invasion, many people are still unconvinced that war will happen or that it would be to Russia's advantage. Since Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backed militants in the eastern Donbas region in 2014, there's been no real let-up in fighting, cyber-attacks and misinformation. As concern grows that Russia will invade Ukraine, BBC correspondents gauge the public mood in Moscow and Kyiv on whether the crisis could lead to a wider war in Europe. Russian opinion of the war, and also how it has affected Kenya.

  • "Trended data can also be very informative about the direction of changes in public opinion even if the magnitude is exaggerated."
  • In the third version, the Russian motherland has been declared in danger and hundreds of thousands of men are being drafted to fight.
  • "People in Europe won't see any benefit if Moscow receives a pass from Brussels in the form of negativity towards Ukraine. Putin will surely use this against you personally, and against all of Europe," Mr Zelensky said via videolink.
  • Now, I’m very encouraged by the fact that the world understands that the Russian people did not choose this war, that instead it was started by a president who lives in some absurd reality of his own.

As a result, some of the few remaining independent media in Russia have started to censor themselves. For most Russians, television remains the main source of the news. It is firmly controlled by the Kremlin and pumps out relentless war propaganda. Ukrainians are said to shell their own cities, and Russian troops are presented as liberators. Restrictions on reporting are increasingly severe, and access to almost all independent outlets is blocked or limited - or they censor themselves. "The rouble (Russia's currency) will fall and people will have it really bad. So https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-is-a-molotov-cocktail-ukraine.html must be avoided. It is not people's fault, but it will be ordinary people who will be hit," he said.

Report Page