Today, Explained - Why Russians still support the war

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Putin's war is hurting Russians, too. Writer Masha Gessen and researcher Jade McGlynn explain why public opinion doesn't reflect that. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the day Russia invaded Ukraine, people who think the war is unjust have hoped that ordinary Russians would turn against it. The West tried what it could, hitting Russia's economy and its wealthy oligarchs with sanctions. But polling data shows a majority of Russians still support this war. How is that possible? Russians are feeling the war now. For months, there have been drone strikes on Moscow. In June, there was a near coup by the mercenary leader, Yevgeny Prokhozhin. It made Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for the war, look very weak. And yet, there's been no uprising from the grassroots.

There's been no Russian spring. Just life going on. At Today Explained, we spent the past few weeks tracking down two people to answer the question, will anything make Russians lose faith in Putin's war? Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about Bet MGM.

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. To understand why so many Russians support the war, we called Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker. Masha recently wrote about Ukrainians who are fleeing to Russia and the Russians that are, for some surprising reasons, helping them. There's a huge range of circumstances and of how people ended up going to Russia.

So some of them were literally forced onto buses at gunpoint and taken into other Russian-occupied territories or directly into Russia proper. That's probably a minority. A lot of people were offered a choice that was not a choice, where they were basically told, okay, this place where you have been, say, hiding in a basement for three weeks or two months, this place is about to become scorched earth.

You can get on a bus, we're going to evacuate you, or if you're staying in the city, you're on your own. And of course, if you want to go west, you have to cross the front line. And then there are people who weren't affected by those kinds of evacuations, who weren't told to get on a bus right now, but who had reasons to head to Russia. Those reasons can be that their family members had already ended up in Russia, or they had family members in Russia before the war began or they had needs that couldn't be met in the occupied territories and that's primarily medical care right so a lot of the people who are ending up in Russia now are people who are severely ill

or disabled who simply cannot survive or in some cases cannot die in comfort in the occupied territories and are going to Russia out of this absolute necessity. Strictly speaking, a lot of them are asking to be taken to Russia, are asking to be evacuated. But of course, the circumstances that are moving them is that they're living in occupied territories where the infrastructure has been destroyed. I wonder if you can explain a dynamic that might seem complicated to some people. Russia invaded Ukraine. Why would Russia want Ukrainians coming into Russia? You know, weirdly, that's not actually very complicated. This is a colonial war. So Russia's goal is to colonize Ukraine and to make Ukrainians disappear as a nation.

And in that sense, it's very effective to move people out of occupied territories and to turn them into Russians, where that's possible. But when people are moved, they can end up in places that are very difficult to get out of. Some people are moved to the Far East. Some people are moved to remote areas that are just remote from any kind of transportation network. And of course, people are traumatized. People are disoriented. These are also people who, and this is something that I've sort of tried to reiterate in my coverage of war crimes, is that war crimes always happen to the most vulnerable people. War crimes happen to the poor. And so for them to try to get out requires almost sort of superhuman effort. And this is where we get to the most interesting part of the story, which is this vast network of Russian volunteers, thousands of people who are risking everything to help Ukrainians in Russia.

Tell me about their motives. What are they thinking? Most of the people that I spoke to are moved in some way or another by the desire to oppose the war. One of them said, look, you know, it's, it's, protesting is futile. It just lands you in prison. There's this artist in St. Petersburg who changed out price tags in a store, changed them to little tiny information blocks on the war in Ukraine. She's been in jail for a year and a half and she's facing up to 10 years in prison. And so this person referencing this case said, okay, so obviously what I'm doing makes more of a difference. Another person said, I see this as paying reparations.

So she feels, as a Russian, responsible for this war. And so she feels that she has to do something like pay reparations to its victims. But some volunteers actually support the war effort. Russians refer to them as Z volunteers. And Z is the sort of Russian swastika. And Z volunteers often collect money or supplies for the military effort and also help, quote unquote, evacuate Ukrainians and resettle them in Russia. And so this volunteer effort creates unlikely allies, people who vehemently oppose the war and people who support the war. But people who vehemently oppose the war say that some of what they do cannot be done without cooperating with people who support the war.

For example, evacuating a bed-bound person from an occupied area involves negotiating with the military authorities, involves hiring an ambulance in a military-occupied zone, and only Z volunteers can do that. Okay, so the people helping Ukrainians have to work together, even if they disagree about the war. We find it mind-boggling that so many Russians still support this war, but we understand that Vladimir Putin has built a system by which he governs and speaks to Russians, and that system appears to be bulletproof. Can you explain how that system works on Russians?

So, you know, this is where language begins to fail us because when we talk about Russians supporting the war, we use words that are not entirely appropriate to the situation in the sense that, you know, how do you measure public opinion in a country where there's no public and no opinion? Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, that's by definition what a totalitarian society is like. You are not free to form your own opinion. You do not have sufficient information. But also, the goal of totalitarianism is to prevent you from having your own opinion, right? This is Hannah Arendt sort of famously and brilliantly made that distinction between

old-fashioned tyranny and totalitarianism, where old-fashioned tyranny demands a certain set of behaviors or statements and basically otherwise leaves you alone. Whereas totalitarianism prevents you from forming an opinion altogether, right? It's not a question of performance. It's that it demands that you belong to it entirely. What that means is that the psychic cost, even if you don't protest outwardly, even if you protest inwardly, the psychic cost of feeling entirely different from everyone around you is, for most people, prohibitive. And that doesn't change as life gets worse, right? If you're more affected by the war, if you become much poorer, if life becomes much harder, if you don't have access to life-sustaining medication, if, God forbid, your child or your brother, your husband has been

conscripted or killed, the psychic cost of protesting even inwardly then grows even larger. Not only are you grieving, not only are you suffering, but you're also entirely alone in your grief and your suffering. And so, you know, when we imagine that the more Russians are affected by the war, the less they will support it, that's like the opposite of the way totalitarian society works. Where does all of this actually leave Russian people? If you're being consistently misled and there doesn't seem to be any way out of the misleading, where does this go for Russians? Well, this is why I'm going to be a little bit of a contrarian. My sympathy for Russians is limited. People do have a choice.

They have the choice to leave. They have the choice to get information. And this is going to sound nuts, right? But Russian independent media is as strong, as robust as it's ever been. It's working from exile. But there are dozens of outlets that are doing extraordinary work. TV Rain, known as Dozhd in Russia, has entered the world of streaming and is now on YouTube from Latvia. That means with a VPN, Russians can once again access the very same coverage that government tried to censure.

And the effort required to get their content is not prohibitive. You have to install a VPN, and it's available to you. So Russians do have a choice. Most people are incapable of making that choice because people are weak, because people have been beaten down, because a century of totalitarian rule with one short break is enough to destroy people in ways that we still haven't really begun to understand, right? This is the longest totalitarian experiment in history. But you see, right, I'm of two minds

in being sympathetic, and I certainly have zero sympathy for educated Russians who are sipping cocktails in cafes in Moscow. But yes, most Russians are living in a country where their life is getting worse. The economy is tanking, not as fast as everyone predicted it would tank as a result of sanctions, but it's certainly taking some very hard hits. Life for ordinary people has gotten a lot more difficult. Ordinary people are increasingly affected by the draft. Russia keeps passing laws, for what it's worth, to increase the possibility of conscription. So I think within the next few months, we're going to see probably a majority of able-bodied men under 30 affected by the draft. And people are being affected by the war physically. I have a friend who lives in a building in Moscow that's been hit by a Ukrainian drone. Mind you, this is not a poor Russian's kind of statement. Russia is pummeling Ukraine and killing civilians every single night. The suffering of ordinary Russians does not begin to compare. But yes, life for Russians is getting worse, and I think it's going to continue getting worse.

And what do you think will happen then? Well, you know, no regime lasts forever. I think this war is not going to end as long as Vladimir Putin is in power. Is he going to be in power for the rest of his life? Probably. rather than allow him to die in office, a group of frustrated members of the elite will stage a coup. Yes, there's that possibility. You know, I don't think that that's the most likely scenario, but I think it's distinctly possible. But, you know, in that case, we're looking inevitably at either a military-led coup or a coup supported by the military.

Any kind of change of regime in Moscow is good news for Ukraine because nobody owns this war except for Vladimir Putin. So as soon as there's a change of regime, it's going to be possible for Ukraine to start negotiating with Moscow. So in that sense, I really hope it happens, but not necessarily for the sake of Russian people, just because like all sane people in the world, I hope Ukraine wins this war as soon as possible. Masha Gessen is a writer for The New Yorker. Coming up, a Russia researcher goes looking for hard-to-find answers. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. Our AuraFrames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself.

So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays.

Terms and conditions do apply. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? We'll see you next time. withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. In the first half of the show, Masha Gessen said something that really struck us. How do you measure public opinion in a country where there's no public and no opinion? Jade McGlynn took on the challenge. McGlynn is a researcher at King's College London, and she just published a book called Russia's War. It's about how ordinary Russians view the war in Ukraine. While I've always followed and done sort of logical analysis

of state media, such as television and newspapers, for this book, I also looked at Telegram. And the reason for that is that it's very popular. Russians use it on a daily basis, largely to get information about politics, what's going on in the world, but also because it's effectively uncensored in the sense that you can access opposition media there, you can access different types of views. Of course, I also looked at some polling data, admittedly, with a lot of caveats, because you have to be very careful. Polling data can't really tell us what it means when somebody says that they support Putin or they support the war. On top of that, I also have a long established group of respondents, essentially of people that I get together with, reflective of different attitudes or trends that I came across during my time in Russia. We are told that Russians are broadly supportive of the war, and that's usually where it ends. You've been in WhatsApp groups and Telegram groups. What do Russians really think about this war?

I don't think it's correct to say that most Russians actively support the war. What's more correct would be that they broadly approve of it. They broadly approve of the ends insofar as the ends mean to politically control Ukraine and to undo Western dominance, Western cultural influence, not just in Ukraine, but also in Russia. The active supporters, the people who are really sort of gung-ho for the war, the Kremlin is very nervous around them. And we can see the reasons why if we look at somebody like Yevgeny Prigozhin, because people who are true believers, they are the people who will then become critical of you because they genuinely believe in the conquest of Ukraine.

In extraordinary scenes, Yevgeny Prigozhin demanded the downfall of Russia's defense minister and its chief of staff, accusing them of mishandling the war on Ukraine. Whereas everybody else, if you ask them, they'll say they support it, but they probably wouldn't come out into the streets to support it. Well, not everybody else. You do also then have, let's say, a 20 percent, well, 15 to 20% of the population who are quite firmly opposed to the war. I've been reading articles about how if you're in Moscow, you might not even be aware that this war is happening. When we look at where the support is and where the support is not, is there a geographic bent to who's in favor of this and who is not?

So you're quite right. In Moscow, it's very easy to forget or certainly not to feel the impact of the war, give or take a few sort of war recruitment posters. That said, there are also other differences. For example, for people who live out in the Far East or even, you know, in eastern Siberia, for them, Ukraine feels, you know, very, very far away. Whereas, of course, for people who live in Voronezh or those areas in the sort of southwest of Russia, it's literally over the border. And although traditionally those areas have been some of the most supportive of the government, and often they're referred to, for example, as the Red Belt because there's a lot of Soviet nostalgia, what we're seeing in new polling is that among those populations who live, you know, who are more likely to be impacted by the war, it is having an

impact in terms of the support that they're willing to voice for the war. And that also fits with other elements such as, for example, the time when there was a big drop in the polls in terms of how much people supported what's called the special military operation. The biggest drop came last year in September when the Kremlin announced mobilization. Vladimir Putin's mobilization of 300,000 Russians to join the fight is already underway across the country. Video from social media shows families in the country's Far East saying tearful goodbyes and men boarding buses. But not everyone is willing to submit to the draft. Cars lined up for as far as the eye could see at border crossings leading out of Russia

and into Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Finland and Georgia. Because it's one thing to support a war that somebody else has to fight and it's another thing to support a war that has direct consequences for you and that perhaps you or your loved ones could die in? Early on in this war, the West attempted to make it painful for Russia, right? So there were sanctions put on Russian officials. Now we've seen a development, which is that there have been these drone strikes in Moscow. And Ukraine is not claiming that it is responsible for the drone strikes, but that is a part of war that somebody is taking to the Russian capital. And then on top of that, you have this bizarre and very bold march by Yevgeny Prigozhin toward Moscow, where it almost seemed like Vladimir Putin might lose his grip on power.

And of course, he didn't. But is any of this changing the way Russians think about the war? Are they starting to turn on it at all? So there's quite a lot wrapped up in that question. Are they starting to turn on the war? No, not in the sense of the underpinning ideas of the war, that Russia is a great country, innately special, a civilization that Ukraine should basically submit to, if not be a direct part of, and that the West is constantly trying to destroy Russia, and it's using Ukraine to do that. And therefore, Russia has every legitimate right to defend itself. No, I don't think it's changing people's minds. Sanctions in particular, never have pretty much never have that effect, not just in Russia, but perhaps especially in Russia.

They will always make people feel under attack. And I think, you know, all of us can think how we would feel if a country decided to sanction us. It would make most people think, oh, OK, I'll do what they say now. Prices have gone up, but it's hardly noticeable. I think we'll feel it later. Are you afraid?

No. We've gone through so many crises in Russia. What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is about the war coming up. No, I mean, what we did see shortly before and in the run-up to Prigozhin's sort of march on Moscow, which it must be remembered he insisted was not aimed directly at Putin, but rather at those who were managing the war. It's given rise to a sense that Russia could have taken Kiev in three days. The Russian army is full of heroes who are, you know, brave and incredible and technically capable fighters. And Russia is a great country. But it's those corrupt elites with their castles in the West who have undermined it. So in a funny way, even a lot of the criticism of the war that's

swirling around actually reinforces some of what we might call the Putinist worldview. And another aspect I suppose to keep an eye on is the longer that the war goes on, the more people are going to be personally bought into it. Of course, it's very obvious in Ukraine and perhaps less so in Russia, but it's still there. And it's just a human element. I mean, if you're a soldier, perhaps you don't know why you're fighting, but once they've killed several of your comrades in arms, you're fighting for them, right, to avenge them. And similarly, if you have a beloved uncle who goes off to fight because he's always been in the military and then he's killed, let's say he's killed in a particularly unpleasant way, or you're

unable to get his remains, it's quite a process to sit down and work out, okay, well, who is actually responsible? What are the different geopolitical structures that led to this when you could just hate Ukrainians? And so that's one of the, war is truly dreadful, but one of the dreadful things is how much it exacerbates and eternalizes that hatred as well. One of the few things that really coheres the Russian people

with the Russian elites who largely live parallel lives is that fear of state collapse. This is a country or a nation that has experienced two arguably three state collapses over the last 110 years and the memories of the 1990s which many Russians view as a time of squalor, of poverty, of unfairness and of gangsterism, because that's how they experienced it, but which they also associate with democracy and capitalism and disillusionment with both of them. That is a very strong cultural and individual memory in Russia. And so the fear is that, OK, even if you didn't like Putin, Putin has a lot of people's lives, did get better under Putin.

He did restore a sense of pride and many still feel that it's a lot better now than it was before he came. That was Dr. Jade McGlynn. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and edited by Matthew Collette and Amina El-Sadi. It was engineered by David Herman and fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Serena Solon. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you