Why Many Russians Feel a Deep Unease Over Going to War The New York Times

This presidential address could serve to galvanize the Russian public to back Putin’s military aspirations. Russia’s military attacks and bombing across Ukraine could lead to the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Western leaders have warned. 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. In Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border and just 80km (50 miles) from the now war-torn city of Kharkiv, local people are now used to convoys of military trucks roaring towards the front line. Polls in Russia, or any other authoritarian country, are an imprecise measure of opinion because respondents will often tell pollsters what they think the government wants to hear.

On some level, the data likely reflect an impulse, whether born of fear or passivity, to repeat approved messages rather than articulate your own. “Surveys don’t show what people think, but what they are ready to say, how they are prepared to carry themselves in public,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, the country’s premier independent polling and research organization, said. Even before the war, Russia was not the kind of place where you willy-nilly shared your political beliefs with strangers, let alone with those who called out of the blue.  https://euronewstop.co.uk/how-many-troops-does-ukraine-have.html , forged in the Soviet period, only intensified in recent weeks, with new laws that  criminalized “discrediting” the Russian military, spreading “fake news,” and making any mention in the press that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was war. According to the Athena Project, a collective of sociologists and I.T.

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In his first major speech on defence, Grant Shapps said the country was moving from a "post war to a pre-war world". Last week, another senior Nato military chief said countries needed to be on alert "and expect the unexpected". Adm Rob Bauer, who heads the alliance's military committee, said the public needed to change their mindset for an era "when anything can happen at any time".

• After the forum had ended, I made a visit to Kyiv that coincided with a Russian missile-and-drone barrage that heralded the start of Putin’s extensive campaign on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
• Opinions trended negative and efforts to impact those opinions were less effective and shorter lived.
• Now, those who want to publish and are affiliated with Russia have been asked to withhold applications, though they have not yet been officially withdrawn.
• "As the chairman of the NATO military committee warned just last week, and as the Swedish government has done...taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable but essential."
• Polls in Russia, or any other authoritarian country, are an imprecise measure of opinion because respondents will often tell pollsters what they think the government wants to hear.

It also looks for platforms where Russians may feel freer to voice honest opinions, said Jonathan Teubner, the chief executive of FilterLabs. Even so, the messages made for some jarring moments for some of those present, featuring as they often did ultra-patriotic and sometimes militaristic declarations. 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.

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There, for three days, panelists addressed topics related to Ukraine, Russia, war, and culture. Significant shifts in Russian attitudes were detected across the country, sometimes over the prosecution of the war itself. For example, when Russian armed forces met much fiercer resistance from Ukrainians in March and April 2022, and reports of high death tolls filtered back into Russia, FilterLabs detected a decrease of support for the war in many regions of the country. Kremlin propagandists work iteratively, piloting slightly different messages successively and rolling them out in waves when their analysis signals that they are needed.

• Significant shifts in Russian attitudes were detected across the country, sometimes over the prosecution of the war itself.
• It also geolocated combat clashes to the north-west of Bakhmut, west of Donetsk city and south of Robotyne.
• Historical data shows that diversionary wars — fighting abroad to draw attention away from problems at home — have rarely worked for Putin.
• Putin’s approval ratings reached an all-time high of 89% less than one year after Russia forcibly annexed Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula, in 2014.
• We tracked sentiment across Russia’s eight federal districts, from Siberia to the far east, south to northwest, and the drop in public sentiment was clearly visible.

Some of those against the invasion have gathered in Pushkin square in the centre of Moscow to protest. The BBC Russian's Anastasia Golubeva estimates there were initially more than  200 people assembled before police instructed people to move on. "But apart from the fear, there is a sense of horror and a sense of shame about what our authorities are doing. In my circle of friends this is a very common feeling. "We have never seen war in our lifetime and we are about to see one." In other words, Russians appear to be less and less influenced by propaganda from Moscow, especially when it clearly contradicts the struggles in their daily lives. As Putin’s war of choice inflicts personal costs on citizens, Russians seem less willing to swallow the state narratives that are delivered over state television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians.

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“The security of the Polish nation and the Polish state is also at stake in this fight,” he said. Donald Tusk has called the war between Ukraine and Russia a battle between “good and evil”. Volodymyr Zelensky has been condemned for claiming six Russian regions were “historically inhabited by Ukrainians”. Ukraine is shifting its military strategy to “active defence” after its counter-offensive last year failed to deliver significant gains. It also geolocated combat clashes to the north-west of Bakhmut, west of Donetsk city and south of Robotyne.