Kirill Rogov on what Russians really think of the war in 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. My mother and I were very afraid for our lives, so the decision was made to leave. What we do know is that young Russians, unlike their elders, are growing up in an era of smartphones and social networks, and therefore have access to a wider range of information compared with what they are told about the war on state media.

• On some level, the data likely reflect an impulse, whether born of fear or passivity, to repeat approved messages rather than articulate your own.
• 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.
• Only aircraft deployed to protect energy facilities, or those carrying top Russian or foreign officials, will be allowed to fly with special permission in the designated zones, according to the Vedomosti daily newspaper.
• The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think-tank said it had confirmed Russian advances to the south and south-west of the settlement.
• But for the majority who have stayed in Russia, life outwardly is pretty much the same as it always was.

For a few years, the unprecedented patriotic surge of 2014 served as symbolic compensation for the socioeconomic problems that had already begun. Russians lapped up the real and imaginary threats that were fed to them, and generally assessed military action as justified, defensive, and/or preventative. In practice, however, the chaotic nature of the mobilisation is throwing off Mr Putin’s calculations. It has undermined the common man’s confidence in the state machine, its efficiency and its dedication to a common cause. Thus it has undermined the very sense of unity and nationhood that Mr Putin hoped to manipulate.

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There are, however, Russian independent media who still defy government restrictions. 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.

• In his mobilisation speech on September 21st, Mr Putin used choice rhetoric of the party of total war to persuade Russian citizens of the enemy’s proximity and the need to defend the motherland.
• “Today’s actions by Zelensky once again prove that our president is right about launching a special military operation,” he said.
• “The feeling of the inevitability of war from the life of Russians, the feeling that the war is now with us, and we are with this life, caused the emergence of new meanings of war,” Zhuravlev said.
• Russians are more likely than Ukrainians to support changing the borders of the two countries so that regions in Ukraine where people may “feel” more Russian could formally become part of Russia.
• Yet Volkov added that this tolerance, however passive, is likely to remain quite stable, even strong.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people in Ukraine disagree with the use of force against them.

The Russian foreign secretary flew on an unspecified “northern route to bypass unfriendly countries” in 12 hours and 45 minutes, Russian state news agency Tass reported. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said fears of “hypothetical Nato attacks” meant the Leningrad Oblast was not well-placed to defend attacks by Ukrainian drones coming from the south. Ukraine has been able to strike multiple targets near St Petersburg in recent days because the region’s anti-air defences are “poor”.

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Talk of wider war in Europe and the potential need for mass mobilisation or a "citizen army" may sound alarming. But  https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-shouldnt-ukraine-bomb-the-convoy.html  of the British Army Gen Sir Patrick Sanders is not alone in issuing a national call to  prepare for a major conflict on European soil. The war in eastern Ukraine broke out in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea. Next, two separatist regions in Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, declared their independence from Kyiv.

The Levada Center stays within those parameters by asking whether people support the actions of the Russian military. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Why Russians do not protest is perhaps better explained by Russian history and not opinion polls. Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the war, certainly do not oppose it. A bus service has started up connecting the city to the local cemetery where growing numbers of soldiers killed in Ukraine are being buried.

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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. Then, as now, except for a few missile attacks, Lviv is probably one of the safest places to be in Ukraine, far from the front lines in the east and the south.

• Russia has opened up at times after moments of calamity and catastrophe.
• He signed a decree on Wednesday calling for the preservation of Ukrainian identity in the “historically inhabited lands” of Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov, which border Ukraine to the north and east.
• 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.
• The Levada Center stays within those parameters by asking whether people support the actions of the Russian military.
• Many who study and report on Russia, me included, believe a small percentage of people actively support the war, and a small percentage actively oppose it.