Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine recently crossed the four-year mark. At the time, one of the big questions was: Is this what the Russians want?
Juana Summers, Host:
Our next story is about the never-ending conflict not in Iran but in Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine recently crossed the four-year mark. At the time, the Kremlin’s so-called special military operation had evolved into the deadliest conflict on the European continent since World War II. More than one and a half million people are dead, injured or missing, according to Western governments and think tanks. Yet along the way, one of the big questions is – is this what the Russians want? NPR’s Charles Maines went hunting for answers.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: This was the scene last May.
(drumming soundbite)
Maynes: I used to watch goose-stepping soldiers, missiles and tanks in Red Square as they marched and rumbled over the dark cobblestones.
(cheering)
Maynes: All this for a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. And yet what I kept asking for was yet another victory over fascism in Ukraine that had yet to happen.
Evgeny Wilton: (speaking Russian).
MAYNES: “Our grandparents did everything to defeat the Nazi threat, and now that it has reared its head again, we will do the same,” said Russian Army Lt. Col. Evgeny Wilton (ph).
Yulia Belikhova: (speaking Russian).
Maynes: Yulia Belikhova (Ph) said her son is proudly serving at the front while working with military families at home. “We know what we’re doing and why,” she told me.
Alexander Borodai: (speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Before the full-scale invasion, I ran into Alexander Borodai, who was a key figure in Russia’s initial shadow war in eastern Ukraine a decade earlier. Borodai, now a member of parliament and sanctioned by the West, said he doesn’t know when yet, but victory in Ukraine is coming.
Borodai: (speaking Russian).
Maynes: “Yes, it will take longer and harder than we like in Ukraine, thanks to the intervention of the West,” said Borodai. “But we will go there and we are willing to pay any price.”
(soundbite of archived recording)
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).
Maynes: In today’s Russia, history feels like a feedback loop, the past echoed, amplified, and accelerated to distort the present.
(soundbite of montage)
PUTIN: (Speaks Russian).
(Speaks Russian).
MAYNES: For four years, in speech after speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn parallels between the fight against the Nazis back then and the current military campaign against the fascists in Kyiv.
(soundbite of archived recording)
PUTIN: (Speaks Russian).
MAYNES: And for four years, the Kremlin leader has insisted that Russians rally behind a war effort in Ukraine, which has dragged on longer than anyone imagined, even longer than the Soviet Union’s wars against Hitler’s army.
Alexey Minalo: I would say that this illusion of a unified country that can go to any extent to achieve what Putin wants to achieve, is one of the most powerful weapons.
MAYNES: That’s Alexey Minailo, the opposition activist who started Chronicles, a research project to combat what he argues is armed voting in favor of war.
MINYAILO: To create some sort of illusion of overwhelming support.
MAYNES: Minailo says that in an environment where criticism of the Russian invasion is criminalized, a majority of Russians support military action. It is out of self-preservation. When presented with even more nuanced choices – for example, do you support the decision to withdraw troops early or prefer to allocate government resources elsewhere? – The true picture emerges.
MINYAILO: We don’t have any kind of pro-war majority, and consistently, most people would choose to end the war without reaching the goals but sooner rather than fighting to victory.
Maynes: In other words, the answers you get depend on the questions you ask.
(soundbite of telephone beeping)
Irina Turbina: (speaking Russian).
MAYNES: In small towns like Livni, about 300 miles south of the capital, war often boils down to compliance, money and fear, says Irina Turbina (ph) – whose son, Arseny (ph), is serving a five-year prison sentence for his anti-war views.
Turbina: (speaking Russian).
Maynes: He was just 15 years old, a precocious eighth-grader with a love for physics, Real Madrid and opposition politics, when masked government security agents raided his apartment in 2023. Later convicted on terrorism charges for aiding the Ukrainian army, Arseniy denied and was strictly maintained by his mother.
TURBINA: (Through translator) My boy is now a terrorist. Can you understand it? A terrorist. A lot of people are suffering because they don’t agree with Russia’s position on Ukraine, because they feel that what is happening is wrong and cannot remain silent.
MAYNES: In the midst of Arseni’s legal troubles, Turbina has watched as neighbors and colleagues avoid contact or go out of their way to show support for the Russian invasion — if at all, he suspects. Meanwhile, others in town are fighting back, as Army enlistment bonuses and state severance payments in the tens of thousands of dollars transform the local economy.
Turbina: (via interpreter) These payments are beyond many people’s wildest dreams, but it is at the expense of those who sign up for war because most of them have never known such money in their past lives.
Sergey Poletaev: (speaking Russian).
MAYNES: The government’s ability to preserve a sense of normalcy is key to maintaining public morale, says war effort supporter Sergei Poletaev, who writes for the political blog WhatFor.
Poletaev: (through translator) Of course, people are tired because it’s a war of war. People are exhausted on the front lines and in the factories, while the rest of society goes on with their lives. They go to work, buy apartments, go out to eat.
Maynes: And it’s true. Despite the subsequent wave of Western sanctions, the Russian economy has fared better than anyone could have predicted. Even amid recent signs of mounting economic trouble, Poletaev insists Russians can adapt because they always have.
POLETAEV: (Through translator) This is the sixth financial crisis in my lifetime, and it’s far from the worst.
(soundbite of archived recording)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in non-English language).
Maynes: Yet in the midst of conflict with no immediate end in sight, there is a growing sense that the state’s need for control knows no bounds. Last fall, the arrest of musicians from the band Stoptime for performing anti-war cover songs on the streets of St. Petersburg made global headlines.
(soundbite of archived recording)
Diana Loginova: (speaking Russian).
MAYNES: In court, the group’s singer, 18-year-old Diana Loginova, who goes by the stage name Nauko, said she was playing songs she loved to a public that wanted to hear them.
(soundbite of archived recording)
Loginova: (Singing in a non-English language).
MAYNES: She and another band member fled the country, but the case served as a reminder – wartime censorship laws restricted what Russians could listen to, watch, read and share. They influence everyone.
VICTOR ZEROFEZEV: (Speaks Russian).
MAYNES: “Putin has made a huge strategic mistake in this war,” says Viktor Jerofejev(ph), one of Russia’s leading contemporary writers and now among the hundreds of thousands of Russians in exile. These days, Jerofezhev writes about what went wrong in his homeland and what he and others could have done differently.
ZEROFEZEV: (through interpreter) Why do I write these things? – Because I feel guilty, I could have done more.
Maynes: These are dark times, argues Gerofezhev. Russia may be embroiled in an endless war in Ukraine, but its far-right worldview — which Zerofezhev calls barbarism — is on the march everywhere, including in the US.
ZEROFEZEV: (Speaks Russian).
Maynes: “Today, America’s future is as unpredictable as Russia’s,” warns Zerofezhev, adding one important difference. “The Russians,” he says, “we used it.” Charles Maynes, NPR News, Moscow.
(musical soundbite)
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