The Daily - The Cost of Dissidence in Russia

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Nearly two months into the war in Ukraine, many Russians have gone from shock and denial to support for their troops and anger at the West.What is behind this shifting view, and what does it mean for those who go against it?Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: In Russia, some citizens are turning on one another, illustrating how the war is feeding paranoia and polarization in Russian society.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. Nearly two months into the war in Ukraine, many Russians have gone from shock and denial to support for their troops and anger at the West. to support for their troops and anger at the West. Today, my colleague, Anton Trajanovsky, on what's behind that shifting view and what it means for those who go against it. It's Tuesday, April 19th. So Anton, we've talked before on the show about Russians' views of the war.

And at the start, you know, there were some protests around the country. But fundamentally, most Russians didn't really believe that a full-fledged war in Ukraine was happening. So catch us up on what's been happening inside Russia since then. So you're right. Initially, it wasn't even made clear in the state media that what was going on was a full-fledged invasion. Putin, when he announced this on the morning of February the 24th, described it as a special military operation to protect people in that eastern Donbass region of Ukraine. And that's how the TV news presented it. You know, you didn't really hear anything about the fact

that Kiev was being hit by airstrikes and that the suburbs of Kiev were being attacked by Russian troops. So for a big part of the population in those early weeks of the war, it wasn't even clear that their country had mounted a full-fledged invasion of their neighbor. There were other Russians who did see what was going on. And there were protests around the country in dozens of cities. In total, more than 15,000 people were arrested. And then on March 4th, Putin signs a law that puts in place really extraordinary penalties for countering the official Kremlin line on the war in Ukraine in basically any way.

So, of course, Russia has been limiting free speech for a long time, but this was really taking it to another level. According to that law, someone publishing something described as fake news about the war in Ukraine can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. Fake news meaning anything that's not what the Kremlin says happened? Exactly. So even calling this a war as opposed to a special military operation, which is the officially approved terminology in Russia, can get you thrown into prison. So this has a huge impact both on media coverage of the war inside Russia

and on any protest movements. Right, so it sounds like it really raises the stakes for someone to go out and protest because you could potentially face 15 years in jail for it. So what happens next? So what's happening in parallel is the war that's being fought on the economic front. Of course, almost immediately after the invasion began, the West put in place some really severe

sanctions against the Russian economy, really much more intense ones than most people had anticipated. So in those early days and weeks, it really felt like the Russian economy was teetering on the brink of collapse. You know, regular Russians were seeing their savings evaporate with the ruble, the Russian currency, losing about half its value against the dollar. You saw empty supermarket shelves. You saw runs on basic goods like sugar. At one point, the Russian government even had to put out a statement assuring people there was no shortage of feminine hygiene products in the country because there was a run on those types of basic goods as well.

And that was really kind of a shocking experience for people who had become used to their country being integrated into the global economy. So a lot of ordinary Russians are feeling quite a bit of economic pain and feeling quite stung. Yeah. And one thing that all this did is it really played into Vladimir Putin's narrative about Russia being under attack by the West. And that was an easier story to tell in a situation in which you had Western sanctions targeting not only Russian oligarchs or officials, but really, to many, it seemed, the Russian people as a whole. But then the Russian economy doesn't actually collapse the central bank manages to stabilize

the ruble and actually bring it back to where it was before the war began you don't see that panic buying that i mentioned earlier really widen out for For many Russians, things aren't really all that different from the way they were before economically. And I think what that does is sort of activate this kind of patriotic impulse in many Russians, where they're seeing the whole world, to put it bluntly, ganging up on them. And yet, they keep going. Russia is surviving. And it's a narrative that Putin really quite deftly activates for his own purposes here. In what way? In what way? Well, the Russian state media, Russian state television, is starting to really intensify this us versus them narrative.

They're no longer talking about it as a limited special operation in eastern Ukraine. They're increasingly talking about it as an effort to really take all of Ukraine. And very importantly, they're talking about this as effectively a war against the West being fought on Ukrainian territory. The idea being that Russia has to fight this war on Ukrainian territory or else Russia itself will be destroyed. We're just seeing more and more of this kind of really shrill existential rhetoric on TV in prime time every night. So the war in Ukraine is really about the West and about confronting the West, which was inevitably going to come and try to destroy Russia. which was inevitably going to come and try to destroy Russia. Exactly.

And that's a narrative that was laid out most dramatically by Putin in a speech he gave on March 16th. This was a video conference with senior regional officials. with senior regional officials. He says the policy of containing and weakening Russia, including through economic isolation, is a deliberate long-term strategy. He says the leaders of the West no longer hide the fact that sanctions are not directed against individuals or companies. Their goal is to strike a blow against our entire domestic economy, our social and humanitarian

sphere, against every family and every citizen of Russia. So he says the West is trying to provoke civil confrontation in Russia. And he says the goal is the destruction of Russia. Wow. And so then he goes from there to probably, you know, the scariest moment of the speech, where he starts talking about traitors. you know, the scariest moment of the speech, where he starts talking about traitors. He says, Any people, let alone the Russian people,

will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like a fly that flies into their mouths by chance. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country's solidarity and readiness to respond to any challenges. When Putin talks about scum and traitors, who's he referring to exactly? Well, he means anyone who's against him right now, anyone against the war. You know, he said earlier, as we just heard, that the West is trying to split our society to provoke civil confrontation in Russia and thus destroy Russia. Anyone who's on the side of the West right now, anyone who's on the side of peace, is playing along with the West's efforts to destroy our country from within and is thus a potential traitor. us versus them language that's really at a level we have not heard before from Putin sets us up for a new and even darker phase in the country domestically. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. So Anton, you talked about a new, darker phase in Russia domestically. What were you referring to? Well, I mean, over the years in the Putin era, you've seen this paranoid streak in Russian society about, you know, people looking for hidden spies and traitors. And then this Putin speech, it really brings it out into the open. It really legitimizes it. And remember, he's speaking in that speech to senior regional officials. So it kind of sounds like an order, right? Right.

It's kind of telling lower level officials all the way down the chain across Russia's regions that it's time to really keep an eye out for these traitors. That it was time to basically start a new wave of repression against dissent. So how do we see that play out, Anton? The most dramatic thing that you're seeing more and more on social media and in the local media is people are denouncing one another. So, you know, not only are you seeing universities firing faculty members or expelling students who speak out against the war, but you're also seeing individuals reporting on one another. And I recently interviewed several people who had been informed upon by their fellow citizens. One of them is named Marina Dubrova. She's an English teacher, 57 years old, way out on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific. So she was telling me she had been frustrated by

all the aggressiveness in Russian society stemming from the invasion, stemming from all that vicious propaganda that we talked about. And she found a video on YouTube where kids were singing about peace in Russian and Ukrainian. And she decided to show that in school, show that in her classes. She said, for some reason, this video somehow aroused something in them that I had not anticipated. I thought it would be all the other way around, that it would calm them down. But they somehow got all excited and we had a conversation. She said that a group of five or six eighth grade girls stayed behind after one of her classes and started quizzing her about her views on the war.

She told them things like Ukraine is a separate country, to which one of the girls replied, not anymore. She told them that, look, the whole world is supporting Ukraine. Are all of them wrong? She reminded them that it was Russian troops that went into Ukrainian territory. She said, this is called aggression. And we know that she said all this because she learned afterward that this conversation had been taped secretly by someone who was in the room and then made its way to the police. Oh, wow. So then what happens to her? So a few days later, the police come to the school, bring her to the police station. She's interviewed. They write a report. She's tried in a courtroom. She's found guilty of discrediting the Russian armed forces under that law that Putin

signed on March 4th. She was fined about $400, which is more than a month's salary for many Russians. salary for many Russians. And she says all of this happened in just five or six hours. Within five or six hours. That's very, very fast. Yeah, she told me that this was madness. That the people around her had plunged into some kind of madness. She described Russian society as being in a kind of frenzied state where people know with absolute certainty that they are right, that everything that their government is doing is being done correctly. And she even told me about people she knew who she thought had shared her critical point of view about what was happening

in the country. She said that she saw them suddenly turn in favor of the war, in favor of what the Kremlin was doing. And she said that this scared her. She told me it was all so upsetting to me, I just can't tell you. And what's happening with Marina now, Anton? Well, one of her former students raised money to pay that $400 fine, but she refused to take the money. She brought it to a local dog shelter and said she was going to pay that fine herself. She was also fired from her school where she had taught for 30 years. She's now appealing the fine and her dismissal.

And she told me that... What will happen next for you and for the global community? You know, she understands the risks of speaking out in this environment, but that she feels she has no choice but to do that because this is a time where people who disagree with what's going on can't be silent. She told me, I know it's a long shot, but I'm fighting. Here I am. Thank you very much, Marina.

Goodbye. Anton, how common is Marina's story? I mean, how many people have been reported on and arrested for speaking out against the war or against the Russian military? We're certainly not talking about a mass movement of any kind. But this is a time right now where it seems like almost every day there's a report in the Russian media about something like this happening. I spoke to OVD Info, which is a rights group that helps people

who get detained for political reasons. And they told me they've never seen anything like this. They've never seen so many cases of people reporting on their fellow citizens. So the thing is, we don't actually have raw numbers here of how much this is happening. For all we know, it does still seem to be isolated incidents, not a mass phenomenon. But each of these cases that gets into the media, that gets amplified on social media, sends a real message to Russians everywhere, which is, this is not a time for dissent. So Putin still so strongly controls how people see what's going on, controls the narrative of Russia. But, you know, how long can that last? Yeah, well, you're right.

Domestically, he seems to really have the situation in his grip. But there are several question marks. I'd say the economy is the biggest question mark. You know, as we discussed, for now, the Russian economy has avoided collapse, but it's still pretty close to the precipice. The mayor of Moscow this week said 200,000 jobs in the capital alone are at risk as a result of international companies pulling out of Russia. The central bank chairwoman gave a speech in which she warned that right now the Russian economy is basically surviving on reserves and that those reserves would run out in the coming months. So part of it is all these really severe sanctions,

their impact has been delayed by actions that the Russian government has taken, but those consequences will still play out. And then the second X factor, of course, is the war. Right now we are seeing the Russians apparently begin that offensive in eastern Ukraine. We've been awaiting for several days. How is that going to go? If Putin manages finally to secure exactly the Russians are fighting and dying for here, that could also spark some domestic discontent. And if either of these two things go south, I mean, the economy completely goes off the rails or the war continues to go terribly wrong. What will that mean for Putin? And what will that mean for Russia? Well, we do have to anticipate that the harder things get for Putin domestically in economic terms and in Ukraine on the battlefield, the more he'll see a reason to crack down even harder domestically. And we just don't

know where Russian society goes at that point. You know, you have to remember, this is a society that for 30 years has been reaping the fruits of globalization, that has been living in more or less an environment that had more freedom of speech than Russia had basically ever before, that was more interconnected to the world than ever before. And with this war, all of that has suddenly gone away. How society reacts to such monumental dislocation? We just don't know. So for the moment, Putin appears to be in control. But that's kind of a snapshot in time we're talking about. And looking further down the road, the picture remains very, very murky. Anton, thank you. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, Russia launched its long-anticipated full-scale offensive to take control of a key area in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, announced the start of the surge in a video address, saying, quote, the Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbass. He added that a, quote, significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.

And a judge in Florida struck down the nationwide federal mask requirement on planes, trains, buses, and other public transportation, ruling that federal health officials had exceeded their legal authority to keep the mandate in place. In the hours after the ruling, the nation's largest airlines had dropped their mask requirements for domestic flights, and Amtrak said passengers and employees would no longer need to wear masks. The Biden administration said it was reviewing the judge's ruling and assessing whether to appeal it. Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke and Diana Nguyen, with help from Lindsay Garrison. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of Wonderly. that's it for the daily i'm sabrina tavernisi see you tomorrow