When listening to Russian officials, you may wonder: why can’t they just face the truth? Admit that Russia is losing the war it started in Ukraine. That its economy keeps taking damage from sanctions and the ongoing war. That the fuel shortages are spreading across regions and there’s no clean resolution in sight. Instead, they…
For years, many Russians managed to make one psychological arrangement with the war: it was happening, yes, but not really to them. It was on television. Life inside Russia adjusted. People learned which words not to say, which news not to notice, and how to keep scrolling. And then reality began to crumble into everyday…
If you are an aspiring dictator, one of your first problems is very practical: how do you persuade millions of people to give up freedom, property rights, and control over their own future? You cannot place a soldier with a rifle next to every teacher, factory worker, accountant, doctor, and pensioner. That would be expensive,…
At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s strongest war supporters painted a very comforting picture for themselves.A Russian flag over Kyiv. A victory parade. Grateful “liberated” citizens. Flowers in the streets. National unity. And one giant middle finger to the West, which, in their imagination, had stolen something that belonged to Russia by sacred…
Russian state television still says the war is going according to plan. But if you read Russia’s Z-bloggers, the tone is very different. Z-bloggers are the most loyal and fierce public supporters of the Russian army and its war in Ukraine. They live mostly on Telegram. They post battlefield updates, praise assault units, collect money…
Putin’s war is losing one of its most important weapons: the feeling that it belongs to everyone. For years, the Kremlin wrapped the invasion in collective language. It was our boys, our front, our fight, our historic mission. That word — our — did the moral laundering. It turned one man’s decision into a national…
There is a question Westerners keep asking about Russia: How can people believe such obvious lies? How can they watch state television, hear one absurd explanation after another, and still not look for the truth? But many ordinary Russians ask the same question about you. They look at Western media, Western politics, Western protests, Western…
Russia’s war began with the promise of a historic triumph. Kyiv would fall. Ukraine would be “denazified.” NATO would be pushed back. Russia would rise again as a feared empire. That was the emotional contract Putin sold to his own people. But four years later, Ukraine still exists. Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of…
