He says officials are instead monitoring the situation to make sure that it's "under control." Most ordinary Russians are in the middle, trying to make sense of a situation they didn't choose, don't understand and feel powerless to change. For Russian climate scientists who started their careers in the Soviet Union, the current situation can feel eerily familiar. 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.
- Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.
- “The conflict between Russia and Ukraine may last for several more years.
- Now a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Pomerantsev shuttles between Washington, D.C., and Ukraine.
A confidential plan drawn up by Brussels reportedly suggests the EU will go for Hungary's economy if Budapest blocks further aid for Ukraine this week. It follows a series of similar drone raids on Russian energy infrastructure in recent weeks, some of which have disrupted fuel production. "Law enforcement agencies and special services are working at the scene," he wrote. However, Mr Orban's political director said this morning that Hungary was open to using the EU budget to allow further aid for Ukraine.
Kirill Rogov on what Russians really think of the war in Ukraine
Koneva said public opinion in Russia increasingly seems resigned to a longer-term war. In 2010, with the election of Viktor Yanukovych, Russian attitudes toward Ukraine dramatically improved, doubling to a 70 percent approval rating. Yanukovych signed the Kharkiv Accords extending the Black Sea Fleet basing agreement to 2042, and Ukraine adopted a ‘non-bloc’ foreign policy and changed its approach to national identity questions such as the Holodomor.
It’s too scary, the idea of dying or being locked up for life. Plus, I can see that despite many years of huge protests, the people have not achieved anything at all. He says the firm asks about peoples' feelings, and is seeing that both groups — those who support and oppose the military's actions — are anxious and afraid.
Russians make Thailand a refuge as Ukraine war enters second year
He was fielding questions from journalists and ordinary Russians in his first marathon news conference since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. The first, a blitzkrieg to capture Kyiv, failed within the first month. The second, the seemingly inevitable offensive, stalled in the summer and was abandoned in early September following the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
On the sixth day of the war in Ukraine, there have been more than 6,000 arrests at anti-war protests across Russia. The protesters trickle along smaller streets, following location updates from dedicated Telegram channels. The night ends with a 39-year-old man driving a car into the police barriers at Pushkin Square with signs “This is war! It seemed to me that all this was not real and could not last long.
By mid-2014, positive views of Russia had fallen to 52 percent. In contrast, Ukraine’s three presidents since the 2004 Orange Revolution never organized anti-Russian media campaigns. Ukrainians throughout this period have never held negative views of Russians and only because of Putin’s aggression have Ukrainian attitudes turned against the Russian state and its leaders. Ukrainian citizens—unlike Russians—distinguish between Russian leaders and state institutions, which three-quarters of them abhor, and the Russian people, whom a majority of Ukrainians continue to view positively. What do Russians make of their country’s invasion of Ukraine?
You don’t know when your friends and family will be taken away for mobilisation. I’m afraid they will announce a full mobilisation and take everyone. Some teenagers have been arrested for sabotaging railways, sharing anti-war memes on social media, and taking part in peace rallies – although actual criminal charges for under-18s are relatively rare. Koneva also studied how public opinion shifted after Moscow announced a mobilization campaign in September 2022 that resulted in the conscription of certain people. Koneva said researchers found that people in this group, the largest single segment of the population, have contradictory attitudes toward the war, consisting of narratives from both sides of the conflict.
- Gen Sir Richard Barrons, the former head of the British Joint Forces Command, told the committee that he doubted there were “sufficient munitions to sustain a high-intensity conflict for more than about a week”.
- And if I am not imprisoned soon for speaking out against war, I want to try – together with like-minded people – to do everything I can to give our country hope for a peaceful future.
- On Wednesday, one week after the invasion began, the first Russian official resigned from his position at a global organisation in protest.
- Next, two separatist regions in Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, declared their independence from Kyiv.
- Business, housing and community services, medicine, education – everything will sag.
- Koneva said researchers found that people in this group, the largest single segment of the population, have contradictory attitudes toward the war, consisting of narratives from both sides of the conflict.
“If I watched different channels, I would probably have a different opinion, but I don’t watch them,” she said. It’s not that she doesn’t know alternative information is out there, but that she doesn’t want it, lest her vision of the world come under threat. “It’s not about having to reconsider this one event but everything you thought and understood over the last ten or fifteen years,” Volkov told me. I want peace, but my grandmother thinks our military is needed to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine. She supports our president, despite the fact that her whole family is still over there. When I hear it from Ukrainian people, I begin to doubt that our president’s strategy is wrong.
- She kept checking the news on her phone after President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggrieved speech to the nation on Monday that all but threatened Ukraine with war.
- For democracies, long-term consensus in support for war has always been more complicated than for autocrats with no accountability.
- And as Russia's war in Ukraine continues, the U.S. and other Western allies are hitting it with more economic sanctions.
But as time passed, I got used to it, no matter how terrible it was. People get used even to war, especially if they live far from the battleground. The economy hasn’t been stable for a long time and the sanctions haven’t gone away.
Russian state television—instrumental in shaping public opinion—serves all these audiences. According to recent opinion polls, conducted by pollsters such as the Levada Centre which has offices in Moscow, 70-75% of respondents in Russia support the war with Ukraine. (These surveys were conducted before Mr Putin announced his mobilisation drive.) But these shocking figures are deceptive. 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. This results in skewed samples and inflates the level of support for the war. “My father has a very strange position – it seems that he simultaneously supports and does not support the special military operation.
Restrictions on reporting are increasingly severe, and access to almost all independent outlets is blocked or limited - or they censor themselves. Going to war is one of Russians’ greatest fears, according to the Levada Center, an independent pollster. And after https://euronewstop.co.uk/how-many-troops-does-ukraine-have.html . Putin’s angry speech and his cryptic televised meeting with his Security Council on Monday, Russians realized that possibility was lurching closer toward becoming reality. MOSCOW — Waiting for her friends on Moscow’s primly landscaped Boulevard Ring earlier this week, Svetlana Kozakova admitted that she’d had a sleepless night. She kept checking the news on her phone after President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggrieved speech to the nation on Monday that all but threatened Ukraine with war. "I don't know why they are doing it, they are pushing their people to get killed, it's a one-way trip for Ukrainian forces. The reasons for this are political, because Ukrainian leaders are begging foreign countries for aid."
It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve. The military course of this war in 2024 will be determined in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang more than in Avdiivka, Tokmak, Kramatorsk or any of the devastated battlefields along the frontlines. Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority. Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. For democracies, long-term consensus in support for war has always been more complicated than for autocrats with no accountability.