If they are moving equipment towards Finland then it isn’t anywhere near Ukraine. I wonder if that was a deliberate ploy?
I read this article in a Swiss newspaper on the effect of the sanctions in Russia, and put it through google translate. Food for thought imo. Sorry for the bad English, but here goes:
The Russians who are pushed towards Vladimir Putin by Western sanctions
by Le Temps with ATS
Long opposed to Vladimir Putin, like many wealthy Muscovites, Rita Guerman says she now supports the master of the Kremlin, who “defends Russia against NATO.” She perceives as an aggression against her country the multiple Western sanctions imposed since the intervention of the Russian army in Ukraine: restricted banking services, foreign brands which are withdrawing, air links to Europe which have disappeared… Like this producer , many members of the Moscow middle class feel “betrayed” by the West.
Until February 24 and the entry of Russian forces into Ukraine, Rita, who defined herself as an “anti-Putin liberal”, designed an advertisement for a company based in Kyiv. Initially, shocked, she wanted to hand over her “fees to the Ukrainian army”, then, after two weeks of reflection, she says she had “opened her eyes”: "There is Coca-Cola and iPhones and then there are existential values. I reconsidered my values […] Entering Ukraine was the only solution for Putin, to protect us from the Anglo-Saxons.
According to several polls, at the end of March, the Russian president’s approval rate exceeded 80%, up almost 20 points since December. The middle class seems to have chosen its side. Sociologist Natalia Tikhonova notes that wealthy Russians, often skeptical of power, now support Putin against the West, while 60% of them said they were close to Europeans in polls preceding the military assault. This social class finds it unfair to undergo “collective punishment”, when it “did not even vote for Putin”, she underlines.
“The economic war declared by the West against the Russians, regardless of their convictions, has united them more than all the Kremlin propaganda poured out for years,” observes political scientist Georgy Bovt. By not separating the nation from its leader, Europe will see a new State appear on its borders: ‘the Anti-West’.
What this phenomenon suggests is that the efforts to build a low-level economic relationship and hope for high-level political ties to improve were a colossal mistake all along. Russian culture appears to be far worse in its acceptance of pluralism and difference than it appeared, far more accepting of brutality because someone took away their iPhone than one could have imagined.
I don’t know. I don’t think it’s entirely suprising to see an instant reaction of “us vs them” when under external pressure. Might change over time though, particularly once/if more people realise that this is going nowhere.
I hope…
How does a society end up where a basic level of humanity and the right to life play 2nd fiddle to possession .
I hope you are right. It has been a dismal, depressing phenomenon to observe. Before the pandemic, I used to play footy with a team of mostly Russians and Ukrainians. I think of them as rather odd (old enough to have had childhoods in the USSR) but fundamentally decent guys. It is impossible for me to square my perception of them with what I am seeing from the society that produced them, it is something of a relief not to be in casual contact with them through this. I can only imagine the split that may have ripped through their social circle.
I just keep feeling that the only way this war will end is when Putin goes full mode crazy and is pulled down by his very own people or sidekicks. The Ukranian forces while might be able to hold them off, but it is not likely to win the way, isn’t it? I hope Putin really goes crazy enough that his fellow Russians will find it too crazy even and depose him of power.
Which century is she living in?
His approval rate has seemingly jumped 20% in 6 weeks of war.“Crazy enough” might just get him 100% approval.
But that is depending whether those approval ratings are even reported by independent media? I think or at least I hope there are enough Russians especially those influential enough who are plotting to pull him down.
I think that the strategy of the West is to keep events from from going nuclear for the next 10-20 years - basically until he dies. There will be horrible concessions to be made in the near term and worse may follow but, in essence, Putin has won. The only thing left to fight over is to make it clear that another incursion into another country will not be tolerated. The price will be high and paid fully in Ukrainian and Russian blood.
I’ve heard anecdotes from people I know here where Russian(-Germans) were completely appalled and irritated when Ukrainian co-workers have now stopped/refuse to speak Russian with them.
Anyway, completely depressing it is. I’m not even sure of anything, I just think this type of reaction is not necessarily unprecedented, people rallying around their nation’s leader and clinging to ‘patriotism’ when under external pressure. But this stuff can sometimes crack over time. Just a bit of optimism.
I actually think it is quite the opposite. Cynically, this is the perfect war for the West. Russia’s rate of loss of men and equipment is unsustainable, even with buckets of money coming for their oil and gas. The West gets to apply economic mass to destroy Russian capacity without the loss of a single soldier, and grind Putin down toward crisis.
This all made Ukrainian lives like collateral damage. The commoners are in a lose-lose situation no matter what happens.
The same thing happened during NATO’s bombings in Yugoslavia. The Serbs initially rallied around Milosevic but after a while, the hardships started to take their toll and gradually his support eroded.
Then again Milosevic never had his populace in a vice grip as Putin does. Nor were the Serbs as willing to be led around like sheep as the Russians.
I don’t think we, generally, having been brought up and educated with a western cultural mindset that by and large allows freedom of speech, thought and action can fully comprehend how other fully functioning and intelligent human beings can be subverted by propaganda and almost a lifetime’s worth of forced secrecy and fear sponsored by the state. They might have had a ‘democracy’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union but its unlike one any of us can really relate to is let’s face it, was a democracy in name only. All that has happened over the past 3 decades or so is that they have conceded some territories and swopped one authoritarian government for another except this time with glasnost and up until now, acceptance from the West instead of a Cold War.
And I call it subverted because to me its abhorrent how the Russian people have managed to allow it to happen to them; in a 100 years since they still have not managed to throw off the yokes that bind them and follow willingly into madness. Any sort of liberal movement amongst them is ephemeral at best and is just a veneer. Yes, there are those that stand against such policies but for the most part its become apparent that the Russian people have given their approval to this action and in allowing the craziness being spouted on their platforms they’ve tacitly given their endorsement to genocide and ethnic cleansing. It’s got fuck all to do with Western sanctions, their entire psyche is but one step removed from Stalin and his policies and it shows.
Yes, there’s a few hints in there that should trigger that feeling that buckets full of salt are needed when you read that ‘nonsense’. Rita is no ordinary Russian being my point. She certainly hasn’t got any principals. We need to be very careful what we take from individual accounts.
We know this is a war and just as much a propaganda war I read this thread with interest (dispair, hope …) but always with salt at the ready.