MOSCOW taz | In Moscow, life takes its morning course. Mothers are taking their children out, the streets are jammed with traffic, young skaters are doing their laps on Manege Square, with the Kremlin in front of them. Further away, women in red jackets stand advertising a city tour. Soviet crooners fill the skating rink on Red Square.Maxim Popov, a lanky 19-year-old, takes a drag on his cigarette. "What's happening in Ukraine was to be expected," he says. "When our government says something won't happen, that's exactly what happens a few days later. Has always been like that." The war-"No surprise. A long way off. A step that is necessary." Popov also explains why he sees it that way. Selenski's state tends toward terrorism against the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, he said. "Diplomatic channels have been exhausted, and we must eventually support our country."These are phrases that Russia's President Vladimir Putin also says repeatedly during his appearances. With pursed lips, convinced of what he is doing. Ukraine is not a state at all, he had said this Monday in his speech, not for the first time. "Somehow I also admire Putin for his honesty," Popov says. Only: "People who have nothing to do with it have to suffer. People who are far away, in Siberia or the Far East." He does not mention Ukraine, though from Siberia himself, with a word.Russian state television provides images of destroyed homes and fleeing people. When and where they were taken remains unclear. On the Rossiya-24 channel, a member of the Russian Federation Council calls it a "justified operation." Russia, he said, would "quietly denazify" Ukraine. Putin, too, had justified the invasion - which he admittedly did not call such - with the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine. These terms have already entered the vocabulary of Russians."The Americans are to blame for everything""Frightening what is happening. It looks like Ukraine is at war," says Olga Puchkova at the grave of the unknown soldier in Alexander Garden. "We will all suffer. Even our little one." She lifts her daughter out of the stroller. "And why? Because Selensky is turning Ukrainians against each other."She gets information from the Internet. "Who is good and who is bad, I don't understand anymore," says the 42-year-old. "But I do," her friend Olga Silantyeva interjects into the conversation. "America is to blame for everything. They want to destroy us. Ukraine, oh, it has nothing to say anyway. We have to drive the Americans out of Kiev."Walking through the center, one gets the impression that life in Moscow is taking place in a parallel world. "War? What war?" a security guard asks, continuing to watch a movie on his cell phone. It's as if people have to protect themselves from the news all around them by denying everything. "God has provided Russia with everything we need," says a deputy on state television.There is outrage and horrorIn contrast, the editor-in-chief of the independent online TV station Doschd can barely hide tears in his live broadcast. "We must continue to warn, it is the only reasonable position today," he writes later on Telegram. A Moscow businessman says, "Excuse us, West! We are so stupid." A feminist angrily writes, "How can I explain to my five-year-old son that our beloved, beautiful country is invading its neighbor?" Russian actress Lia Akhedzhakova, in despair, speaks to Dozhd of the Kremlin's "sea of lies and dirty tricks" and calls on the country's cultural leaders to resist."We Russians don't understand what Putin wants. He bullies us. Now he apparently wants to subjugate others as well," says Marat Khamasov in Red Square. He has not heard of Moscow's attack on Ukraine. "I don't watch the news, basically." The 39-year-old wants to watch Moscow with his wife Sina. They have traveled from Tatarstan - a farewell. Soon the family of six is to leave for Poland. "Away from this country that we haven't understood for a long time."Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
In the long corridor of misfortune or soon a satellite of China: Russia's liberal intellectuals discuss the consequences of Putin's war in Ukraine. No one is there to stop the war, they say. While isolated vigils against the war are reported from a number of Russian cities, but quickly stopped by police arrests, liberal Russian intellectuals express horror and deep shame at their country's military incursion into Ukraine. The editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, justifies this shame by saying that there is no one who can stop this war. President Putin plays with the nuclear button like with the key of an expensive car, the Nobel Peace Prize winner says in a video address. In any case, his remark about an "avenging weapon" obviously threatens the world with a nuclear strike. In solidarity with Ukraine and because his colleagues would never consider the neighboring country hostile, as Muratov assured, Novaya gazeta produced a bilingual edition in Ukrainian and in Russian. Muratov concluded with the dramatic declaration that only an anti-war movement of Russians could save life on this planet.Kerstin HolmEditor in the feature section.Writer Boris Akunin confesses that he did not believe until the very end that Putin would engage in this absurd war. But madness has triumphed. Russia is ruled by a mentally ill dictator and, what is worse, the country obeys his paranoia. He knows, Akunin said, that "Putinland" and Russia are not one and the same, but for the world there is now no difference between the two. The emigrated satirist Viktor Zhenderovich is also struck by the fact that, as he says, there was not a decent person in the entire political elite who would have tried to stop the catastrophe. This war, which Putin instigated out of aggrieved self-love, was a crime of Russia, he said. Therefore, he said, all his compatriots were accomplices, because they had allowed the emergence of such a dragon capable of destroying the whole world.Like Hitler's campaigns of conquest Even opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who is facing a new trial in the penal colony, demanded that his demand that this war be stopped be entered into the record. Navalnyi explained that he was cut off from communication with the outside world, but that this war was unleashed by bandits and thieves to divert attention from Russia's problems.Like many, fantasy author Dmitry Glukhovsky compares Putin's war to Hitler's campaigns of conquest, his capture of the Sudetenland and the partition of Poland. Like many Russians, he observes how tyranny is becoming more extensive and freedom is being suppressed, Glukhovsky notes. And the rapper Vlady confesses that he wishes for himself and his compatriots to live to see the time when Russia officially recognizes the crimes of the current rulers as such. That this war will not only cost thousands of lives, but will also not bring Russia any benefits, of this political scientist Kirill Rogov is convinced. On Facebook, he predicts that the decline of his country will only accelerate. What matters now, he says, is how quickly Western countries can find a substitute for the fossil fuels they buy from Russia. This will be painful for Europe, he said, but it is only a matter of time. In the medium term, Russia will thus lose its economic model and turn into a satellite of China, Rogov predicts. In a state of shock, Ekaterina Schulman, a professor of politics, warns her compatriots that they are currently experiencing the "dawn" of a war that will unfortunately last a very long time. Many opponents of violence are currently in a kind of paralysis of shock, she said, so the proponents and the Kremlin bots are more visible. But the first casualty of any war is the truth, and that has not been good in Russia before. Everyone is afraid now, Schulman said, and that can be expressed in hurrahs. But public opinion will change. Now it is important not to act in panic, Schulman advises. All those who have nothing to do with this war should be all the more conscientious in fulfilling their professional and family duties and perhaps prefer to exchange views in the social networks - as long as they still exist, which may soon no longer be the case. In any case, for the time being, she is not calling on anyone to do anything, Schulman writes on Facebook, because that could be irresponsible.Unfortunately, events are unfolding according to the worst-case scenario, the university lecturer and publicist notes, her compatriots are facing a long corridor of misfortune. The former life is over, she says, and a new one begins that is poorer, more dangerous and more restricted. The restrictions will come both from within, through security orders, and from within.Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
I don't want to have anything to do with this country or this people.
media clearly differentiate between "Putin" or the "Kremlin" vs. people in or from Russia
I have long been convinced that this is practically the same thing.
