St Petersburg, Russia – On Thursday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his armed forces were launching a massive operation against Ukraine, sending frightened Kyiv residents into underground stations for shelter. My feelings are mixed regarding the decision of our president. I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram. We have VK (a Russian substitute for Facebook), but it’s not the same. I have a colleague in my laboratory who is a reviewer at an open access science publisher. Now, those who want to publish and are affiliated with Russia have been asked to withhold applications, though they have not yet been officially withdrawn.
He says the firm asks about peoples' feelings, and is seeing that both groups — those who support and oppose the military's actions — are anxious and afraid. He contrasts this to public opinion surrounding the annexation of Crimea in 2014, recalling that there were positive feelings and even "euphoria" at the time. Surveys have suggested that the majority of Russians support the invasion.
What has the war meant for ordinary Ukrainians?
Earlier today, a Russian official said air defences had thwarted a drone attack on the Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in the city of Yaroslavl. I’m against the war, and most of my friends and people I know feel the same way. These are mostly people around my age with the same level of education. However, when it comes to family, I, unfortunately, do have a conflict with my parents. When I think about the conflict, I feel anxious, sad, and frustrated.
- Examples of Yugoslavia and Libya, two states bombed by NATO forces, are used to drive fears that Russia may be next.
- They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open roads.
- “Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the Ukrainians, nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all that high an estimation of their military capacity,” Oliker says.
A few years ago, Tape helped start the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, so scientists all around the Arctic could collaborate and share data. But with the invasion of Ukraine, the dream of Russian collaboration in the project stalled, he says. "We're having a meeting at the end of February," he says, "and it's basically Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia. There's no one from Russia coming." Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been serving prison time since 2021 after leading street protests and starting a nationwide opposition movement, was recently moved to a penal colony in Russia's far north.
A year on, what do young Russians think of the war in Ukraine?
In Putin’s mind, Euromaidan was a Western-sponsored plot to overthrow a Kremlin ally, part of a broader plan to undermine Russia itself that included NATO’s post-Cold War expansions to the east. The Russian war in Ukraine has proven itself to be one of the most consequential political events of our time — and one of the most confusing. Koneva also studied how public opinion shifted after Moscow announced a mobilization campaign in September 2022 that resulted in the conscription of certain people. Throughout the war, researchers have been trying to understand what factors would reduce public support in Russia. “The feeling of the inevitability of war from the life of Russians, the feeling that the war is now with us, and we are with this life, caused the emergence of new meanings of war,” Zhuravlev said.
- As concern grows that Russia will invade Ukraine, BBC correspondents gauge the public mood in Moscow and Kyiv on whether the crisis could lead to a wider war in Europe.
- But with the invasion of Ukraine, the dream of Russian collaboration in the project stalled, he says.
- Putin and his inner circle are very much products of the Cold War and consider the breakup of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party dictatorship a humiliation.
The Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the Earth as a whole. But, since Russia invaded Ukraine, it's been increasingly difficult for climate scientists in Russia to collaborate or share data about conditions in the country's vast frozen areas. Lack of data about conditions in the Russian Arctic is already hampering climate science, and will cause ever-growing gaps in our understanding of how climate change affects the fastest-warming region of the planet, scientists warn. But since the invasion of Ukraine, it has been harder for Russian scientists to share data about how climate change is affecting the region. This tiny chapel is on the grounds of the Northeast Science Station near the Russian town of Chersky.
How is the rest of the world responding to Russia’s actions?
The first, a blitzkrieg to capture Kyiv, failed within the first month. The second, the seemingly inevitable offensive, stalled in the summer and was abandoned in early September following the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive. In the third version, the Russian motherland has been declared in danger and hundreds of thousands of men are being drafted to fight. The “partial mobilisation” declared by Vladimir Putin on September 21st looks like forced improvisation and it is disrupting the balance of interests and loyalties in Russian society, where views on the war are very mixed.
He is not a bright leader, and not the tyrant that the opposition paints him as, but he is definitely not the best thing that could happen to Russia. Airfares were growing each time I refreshed the page and having reached the figure of 300,000 rubles ($4,000), I understood that an alternative was needed and bought bus tickets to Tbilisi with my girl from Moscow for 5,000 rubles ($66) each. You don’t know when your friends and family will be taken away for mobilisation. https://euronewstop.co.uk/when-will-the-war-in-ukraine-end.html ’m afraid they will announce a full mobilisation and take everyone.
"You can do a lot from space, but you need to have some boots on the ground confirming what you're seeing," Tape explains. The Russian president has intensified a crackdown on opposition since the start of his invasion of Ukraine, and this has ramped up further as the elections have approached. Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. Russian Ministry of Defence spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters that Russian forces were indeed mounting a counteroffensive and attacks would target military sites. One of my friends is against our government while her grandmother supports them, and I know that’s caused a quarrel between them. I don’t support that view, but I do think we need some changes.
- On the contrary, the people taking to the streets are those against it, despite threats of arrests.
- So when the Belgian rock band, Demisec, were offered a gig, they jumped at the chance.
- It's a chokehold - to use a judo term from his favourite sport.
- Russia responded by illegally annexing Crimea, a section of Ukraine that touches the Russian border on the Black Sea.
They are still trying to track Russian public opinion on key topics, including the war in Ukraine, providing a rare window into how the Russian public views the war’s dramatic turns over the last 18 months. Most ordinary Russians are in the middle, trying to make sense of a situation they didn't choose, don't understand and feel powerless to change. In Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border and just 80km (50 miles) from the now war-torn city of Kharkiv, local people are now used to convoys of military trucks roaring towards the front line. Volkov adds that public opinion matters, even though the Russian government isn't taking the public's pulse in order to plan its next moves.