The Daily - How Russians See the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Russians and Ukrainians are deeply connected. Millions of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia. Many have lived in the country.But Moscow has taken steps to shield its people from open information about the war, even as its bombing campaign intensifies.When Ukrainians try to explain the dire situation to family members in Russia, they are often met with denial, resistance, and a kind of refusal to believe.Guest: Valerie Hopkins, a correspondent for The New York Times, currently in Ukraine.Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: A wave of disinformation has emanated from the Russian state as the Kremlin tries to shape the messages most Russians are receiving.At the same time, the last vestiges of a Russian free press are being dismantled.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. As Russia steps up its bombing campaign against Ukrainian cities, it's also waging another battle over the truth about the war. My colleague, Valerie Hopkins, on why so many people in Russia are in denial about what is happening, even as it wrecks the lives of their own family members in Ukraine. It's Monday, March 14th. Valerie, you've been reporting on the war in Ukraine since the beginning.

And you've been hearing stories again and again of this pretty shocking misinformation campaign coming from Russia. Can you describe what you've been hearing and seeing? You know, I've been talking to a lot of people here in Ukraine, first when I was in Kiev and then on the road. And a lot of them have pretty shocking stories about their relatives in Russia. You know, Ukraine and Russia are really well connected. Millions of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia. Some of them used to live there. But now, as some of Ukraine's cities are being bombed, as millions of people are being forced to flee, people are trying to tell their relatives in Russia what's going on,

and they're being met with denial, resistance, and kind of a refusal to believe what their family members, their blood relatives, are telling them. And one person whose story really stuck out to me was this guy, Misha Katsurin. Hey. Oh. Valerie? Hi, yes. Thank you.

Do you hear me? Yes. Misha is 33 years old. He lives with his wife and kids in Kiev and actually owns a really trendy chain of Asian restaurants. Right now, of course, all my restaurants closed. And he said the fourth morning of the war. I realized that father still didn't call me like any time. He woke up and realized that he hadn't heard from his dad at all

since the war started. And I thought maybe he doesn't know what's going on here. His father lives in Russia in a city called Nizhny Novgorod. So I called him because that was strange. There is a war. I'm his son and he doesn't call me. So he gave his dad a call and told him what was going on. I tried to tell him how is it going here in Kiev with my family, that Russia started bombing us, But he said his father had a really different version of events and didn't really believe him. No, no, no, no, stop. But he said his father had a really different version of events and didn't really believe him. And he started to interrupt Misha.

No, no, no, no, stop. Everything is like this. And he started to tell me how the things in my country are going on. He said his father basically said, no, no, no, and that he denied what Misha was telling him that he sees with his own eyes. So he told me that, look, everything is going like this. So the Nazis, they took the government, the Nazis, the Ukrainian Nazis,

and they are now control. And anyways, he said, the government there, they're all Nazis. So Valerie, I'm going to stop for a second on this Nazi reference because it keeps coming up. This is an idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often repeated, right? But why is he doing that? I mean, it doesn't really make sense. But for Putin, it's this weird multi-layered argument. He is trying to piggyback on the proud legacy of the Soviet defeat of the Nazis in World War II. And he also cannot really deal with the fact that Ukraine

wants to have a separate country and a separate identity from Russia 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Right. And Putin sort of sees this Ukrainian rejection of Russia, which has only gotten stronger since Russia invaded Crimea and now gotten even stronger. He sees all of this as nationalism and that nationalism he kind of immediately starts to equate with Nazism in order to get support for this invasion. with Nazism in order to get support for this invasion. So essentially when he says this, he's trying to paint Ukrainians as crazy nationalists. Yeah. And I mean, he's actually used those words to refer to President Volodymyr Zelensky,

who's actually Jewish and also a native Russian speaker, President Putin has referred to him and the people around him as, quote, drug-addled Nazis on Russian TV, even though this is just a completely outlandish, intentional distortion of the truth. So Misha's dad is getting this idea from Putin's messaging, which is carried by Russian television.

What else did Misha's dad say that he believes about the war in Ukraine? Well, he certainly doesn't think a full-scale war is actually happening. He told me that Russian soldiers, they're helping people. They give them warm clothes and food. Misha's dad thinks it's essentially a rescue operation

conducted by the Russian military. And not only that, he believes that Russian soldiers are liberating Ukrainians from this repressive Nazi government. And that the majority of the people want them there. I told him, look, father, look, I'm here right now, and I see it with my eyes. So look how it's going on in reality. So it's pretty unbelievable that a father is denying his own son's reality. But how pervasive is this? Is this most Russians' view of the war right now? So we actually have seen some pretty significant street protests in Russia, mostly in large cities since the invasion started, actually more than in Russia's recent history. These people are out in the streets chanting no to war, even though they know that they'll likely be taken away by the police and detained. But we've also seen reports from Russian cities,

including one done by this independent media outlet, Nastyashye Vreme, or Current Time, which went out and spoke to Russian citizens and showed them pictures of the war in Ukraine. And their responses were... No, that's not happening. These photos are fake. Ukraine was preparing for an attack on Russia. I'm absolutely convinced of that.

And I'm for Putin. They're essentially repeating what they've been hearing from Putin and from talk show hosts on state TV. So, you know, it's really hard to get an accurate picture of public sentiment in Russia. For a pollster now, just asking that question could land them in jail or shut their organization down. But what this video and what my reporting suggests is that this essential, complete denial of what's happening in Ukraine is actually pretty common in Russia. Valerie, what did you think as you were watching these man-on-the-street interviews? What was going through your mind?

I was really sad, but I guess I wasn't so surprised. I mean, this is a product of years and years of clamping down on free press and increasingly escalating rhetoric in media, demonizing the other and slowly building the case for something exactly like this. I think I was most shocked, actually, when there was a guy who literally looked into the camera, looked at the photos and said, Russia's not bombing Kiev.

It's like this alternate reality for so many people. And it's fascinating for me to try and understand why and how that can be. We'll be right back. So Valerie, we're talking about Russians who don't believe what's happening to their own relatives, who don't believe and don't want to look at these photographs of bombings in Ukrainian cities. And I think that this leads us to the question of why.

What do you think it has to do with? Well, I think it has a lot to do with Vladimir Putin and Russians' relationship to him. Putin came to power at this really critical time for Russia, in 2000, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in the intervening period, there was just this total economic upheaval. You know, people knew what to expect in the Soviet period, even if they didn't love it. And now there was just this period of total uncertainty. And now there was just this period of total uncertainty. Anger is building in Russia among people with nothing else to lose. They face a winter of empty bellies, infrequent heating,

and nothing to hope for but spring. Prices skyrocketed and people just couldn't afford basic necessities. For the fifth day in a row, panicky Russians tried to withdraw their savings from banks while the country's financial system appeared to teeter on the brink of collapse. Half of the economy disappeared. These Arctic coal miners took the mine director hostage after enduring more than six months without pay. People were living in lawlessness.

One local leader accusing Moscow politicians of behaving in a way that humiliates the Russian people. There was a lack of trust in the government. And many people, they don't believe in that ideals which existed in the former Soviet Union and the new ideals hadn't been invented for them. And there was also this really major loss of national pride that I think a lot of people discount. They don't believe in their future. So I think that many people, especially in the West, saw this moment as Russia's chance to create democratic institutions.

To live in Moscow today is to watch the soul of a city die. is to watch the soul of a city die. But many Russians associated this period in the 90s with instability, economic fear, and this rampant capitalism that didn't really help them. Right. I remember that time because I was there then. I started in 1994 in Russia. And I remember we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as, you know, a chance to be free, a wonderful thing. And I think that by the end of the 1990s,

many Russians had experienced it as a tragedy. Yeah, I think we have to recognize that that wasn't people's priority back then. It was putting food on the table and not getting mugged by hooligans in the street and being able to trust the police and the law enforcement and the institutions again. And through all of this, the personal and national shame and difficulty. In Russia today, the clear winner of the Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin, began to establish the Putin era. Into that situation walks Vladimir V. Putin. Vladimir Putin, the career spy, talks about establishing what he calls a dictatorship of the law, fight corrupt bureaucrats and strengthen the central government.

Promising to take control and just promising stability, which is what people craved the most. Fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow is now a 24-hour town. The economy started to stabilize and a middle class actually emerged that was substantially better off in the years after Putin came to power. The streets pulse with the kind of big money that was once considered a capitalist abomination. It's largely opportunistic wealth that Russia has enjoyed since the country's oil started selling on global markets for $45 a barrel. He got massively lucky with oil prices, and that sort of allowed the standard of living to rise

and cemented the trust that, you know, many ordinary Russians were living better under Putin than they ever had before. President Putin today criticized the way many private businessmen known as oligarchs had bought state properties at bargain prices after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They appreciated him as a strong guy who was promising to clamp down on oligarchs. You know very well what privatization was like in the early 1990s. At that time, some market participants got multi-billion dollar state assets using different tricks. And Putin continues to exert ever more control over Russian society.

The Kremlin controls the most powerful news broadcasts on the three main television networks. He starts to bring the national media to heel to make sure that things that he doesn't like or criticism of him don't appear in the media. Russia's only independent media owner was formally charged today with embezzling state funds. His media outlets are known for criticizing the media. Russia's only independent media owner was formally charged today with embezzling state funds. His media outlets are known for criticizing the government. And while some people were concerned more or less from the beginning of his rise, the majority of the people really accepted it. Vladimir Putin is popular at home because of the economy based on energy. Yes, Vladimir Putin remains easily the most popular politician across this vast country. Right. I mean, this is the social contract that Putin made.

He said to the Russian people, I'm going to bring you order. I'm going to crack down on the oligarchs. I'm going to make it so that your life is stable, your salary is reliable. But at the same time, you're not going to mess with politics. And you're going to be okay with a media that is not free. Exactly. And while Putin largely consolidated his power over the last two decades, he did leave some pockets, you know, mostly online media, some radio, spaces where people who didn't support the government, who were free in thinking and

independent-minded, could air their views and hear people who mostly thought like them. You know, it wasn't mainstream national news on the airwaves, but you could find it if you looked for it. So bring us up to the war, Valerie. I mean, if Putin has been doing this for years, chipping away at independent media, what's different now? Well, now it's not chipping anymore. It's a sledgehammer. He's been trying very hard to control the narrative around the war, which he refers to only as a, quote, special military operation. That's why most Russians don't know what's really happening in Ukraine.

And most of the official communications about it don't even mention the Russian military. The state censorship office has now blocked the BBC Russian language service. That is a huge source of independent news here. The state orders some of the few remaining independent media in Russia to stop broadcasting, including the BBC's Russian service and the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. And then it bans Facebook. and the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. And then it bans Facebook.

And on the same day, the lower house of parliament, the state Duma, approves a law forbidding the invasion from being referred to as anything besides a special military operation. Simply calling it a war or an invasion instead of a special military operation can lead to up to 15 years behind bars. And it essentially criminalizes independent reporting on the war. Staff at one of Russia's most prominent independent television stations have resigned live on air. And because of this law, the few remaining media outlets left in Russia are being forced to make really hard decisions. Vladimir Putin and the authorities, they just don't want free media. This voice of truth must be destroyed. Which means that right now, there's only one version of events that Russians are seeing in their country. Putin's.

This is a fundamentally different level of censorship. It's something we haven't seen since Soviet times. That's right, Sabrina. And while it's not clear just how long Putin can sustain his attempts to seal off Russians' access to information about the war. For now, he's been able to dramatically shape their beliefs. I'm not angry about my father. I'm angry about Kremlin. I'm angry about the Russian propaganda. I'm not angry about these people. I understand that I cannot blame them in this situation. And that's forced people like Misha

to try to convince his dad of the brutal truth of what's happening in Ukraine. What do you think it is psychologically that prevents him from... I mean, of course there's this media, but you're also his son and you're telling him the truth and he doesn't want to believe it? It's too painful? It's too sad?

I think he won't. I think he won't. I think he won't i think he won't he cannot that's the power of this propaganda he wants he loves me and he's really scared and he told that his heart is bleeding and that's very painful painful. And that's why we need to be more wise and we need to like be calm and explain and explain and explain three times or five times or 20 times as more as we need. Valerie, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that one of the pregnant women photographed in last week's attack by Russia on a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol has died.

Her baby was delivered, but died too. The attack, and Russia's response to it, is an example of Russia presenting an alternate reality in the face of facts about the war. After the bombing, Russia's defense ministry denied having done it, accusing Ukraine of a, quote, staged provocation. Then Russia began to criticize the reaction, with its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, calling the international response to the bombing, quote, pathetic, and that global public opinion had been, quote, manipulated. It's not the first time we see pathetic outcries concerning the so-called atrocities. You could draw your own conclusions as to how the public opinion

is manipulated worldwide. Finally, Russia's embassy in London tweeted photographs of one of the women and claimed that she was a crisis actor who had played several of the women photographed in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Twitter eventually removed the post. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday, Russia attacked a Ukrainian military base 12 miles from Ukraine's border with Poland, bringing the war dangerously close to NATO's doorstep. The target was a base used to train foreign fighters who flocked to Ukraine to help defend the country against Russia. The missile attack killed at least 35 people and wounded at least 134. Meanwhile, the death count has risen sharply in the city of Mediopol, which has been encircled and bombed by Russian troops, and has been without power, water, or phone connection for more than 10 days. So far, city officials said, the Russian attacks have killed 2,187 residents. 287 residents. Finally, Russian forces have kidnapped a second Ukrainian mayor in what appears to be a strategy of removing local officials and replacing them with Russian puppets. The abduction of the mayor from the town of Dnipropetrovsk follows the dramatic capture of the mayor of Melitopol, who was reportedly taken from a government building with a bag over his head.

In a video message, the mayor's replacement, a Russian appointee, instructed the residents of Melitopol to adjust to, quote, the new reality and to end their resistance to Russian occupation. Today's episode was produced by Asla Chacharvedi, Diana Nguyen, and Caitlin Roberts, with help from Rob Zipko and Michael Simon-Johnson. It was edited by Mark George and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Miriam Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.