The Russian people are rising up against Putin. Well, actually they have been trying for years without success. Now, anti-war sentiment is growing in Russia despite government repression. The street protestsalbeit small, are resuming in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other Russian cities for the fourth day in a row, with people taking to the streets despite the mass arrests we already saw a few days ago.
This weekend’s protest was just the latest in a growing chorus of voices within Russia itself opposing Putin’s threats to Ukraine, a trend that has gone unreported by international media, leaving many Westerners unreported. thinking that everyone in Russia supports the war. It is not the case. In recent days, the main cultural figures of the country, who traditionally have a great moral influence, have spoken against the attack against Ukraine.
One of Russia’s greatest contemporary novelists, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, denounced the Kremlin’s war plans as “madness.” Acclaimed pianist Evgeny Kissin declared that those who provoke war will be remembered as “bloodthirsty criminals.” Tennis player and former Grand Slam champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov said that “only someone who is psychologically deranged can threaten war.” Others have not wanted to get so wet. The former number 1 tennis player in the world, Daniil Medvedev, addressed the situation and only said that “everything for peace”.
Protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine erupted in Moscow this evening, after the Kremlin put out an ominous threat to anyone thinking of protesting.
Looks like everyone has had enough of Putin! pic.twitter.com/TPV2YGNIjP
— Arctic Friend (@FriendEden100) February 27, 2022
Despite all the difficulties of measuring public opinion in an authoritarian state, where all television networks are controlled by the government and where many people are understandably hesitant to share their political views with outsiders, available polls point to the strong unpopularity of a military attack on Ukraine among Russian citizens in general. Most Russians are not in favor of sending troops to Ukraine.
Furthermore, the Russian rulers do not have a good record of “small victorious wars” launched for internal political ends, from the tsarist regime’s disastrous campaigns in Crimea and Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries to the invasion of Afghanistan in recent years. of the Soviet Union. The result is usually the opposite. of what was intended. “For Russia, such wars not only end unsuccessfully, but often turn into a political catastrophe,” warned Professor Andrei Zubov, an eminent historian who was fired from the Russian diplomatic academy in 2014 for his opposition to Russia’s annexation. Crimea.
Although at Magnet we have also talked about how Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea or Trasnistria operated in the opposite way, legitimizing the regime (mainly Georgia and Crimea). For someone as obsessed with Russian history as Putin, it would be ironic if he stumbled upon one of his most repeated mistakes, or how a stagnant and unvictorious war in Ukraine could be for Putin the Afghanistan of the USSR in the 1980s.
And the truth is that there is no clear support in Russian society to the war. According to the Levada Center, the latest independent polling agency, 40% of Russians do not support official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” by Russia.
Massive protests in Moscow, Russia
People shouting: “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine)#ukraine pic.twitter.com/uNDERx6rah 02— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) February 28, 2022
More than 6,000 doctors put their names under a letter on Saturday; more than 3,400 architects and engineers supported another while 500 professors signed a third. Similar letters from journalists, city councilors, cultural figures and other professional groups have been circulating for days. A prominent art museum in Moscow called Garage announced that it would stop its work on exhibitions and postpone them “until the human tragedy in Ukraine ceases.”
An online petition to stop the attack on Ukraine, launched shortly after it began Thursday morning, got more than 780,000 signatures on Saturday night, making it one of the most supported online petitions in Russia in recent years.
Statements condemning the invasion even came from some members of parliament, who earlier this week voted to recognize the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine. Two lawmakers from the Communist Party, which often toes the Kremlin line, spoke out against the hostilities on social media. Meanwhile, the Russian authorities took a tougher stance towards those denouncing the invasion.
digging his own grave
Russia’s deputy Security Council chief saying Moscow could respond to Western sanctions by opting out of the nuclear arms deal with the US, severing diplomatic ties with Western nations and freezing their assets; or even that Moscow might restore the death penalty after Russia was removed from Europe’s top human rights group, he has fueled criticism. Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Kremlin’s human rights council, deplored it as a “catastrophe” and a “return to the Middle Ages”.
These ideas launched by the Russian government operate as propaganda and have generated rejection in certain circles of resistance and activists, but also they are a “diplomatic” tool of Moscow in an open war of propaganda and positions against the West. In addition, the activists only represent a presumably minority position, far removed above all from the most rural and interior Russia.
Western sanctions imposed strict new restrictions on Russian financial operations, a draconian ban on technology exports to Russia, and froze Putin’s assets. Even tougher sanctions will be possible, including Russia’s expulsion from SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
Since the arrest of Alexei Navalny in January 2021, the police and security services have crushed the opposition organized in Russia. Navalny’s organization was deemed “extremist” and dismantled, demonstrations in his defense resulted in some 15,000 arrests, and nearly all independent media outlets were shut down or branded as “foreign agents,” severely limiting their operations.
Some signs of a possible rally ’round the flag (a concept used in political science to explain the short-term increase in popular support for the government or political leaders of a country during periods of crisis or war) are inevitable. Yet despite total control over major media sources and a dramatic outpouring of propaganda demagoguery on television, the Kremlin is unable to foment enthusiasm for war. Namely, it does not seem that the war is internally legitimizing Putin. But we don’t know if it delegitimizes it either, it doesn’t seem like an accolade.
Nor is anything like the patriotic mobilization that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 happening today. If anything, this war could destabilize the regime and even threaten its survival. The government may have miscalculated the social pulse. And the need to put on a convincing show for Putin’s re-election, when Russians vote in 2024, remains on the table.