Some of those against the invasion have gathered in Pushkin square in the centre of Moscow to protest. The BBC Russian's Anastasia Golubeva estimates there were initially more than 200 people assembled before police instructed people to move on. "But apart from the fear, there is a sense of horror and a sense of shame about what our authorities are doing. In my circle of friends this is a very common feeling. "We have never seen war in our lifetime and we are about to see one." In other words, Russians appear to be less and less influenced by propaganda from Moscow, especially when it clearly contradicts the struggles in their daily lives. As Putin’s war of choice inflicts personal costs on citizens, Russians seem less willing to swallow the state narratives that are delivered over state television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians.
- These are mostly people around my age with the same level of education.
- The idea may be that the departure of defectors will leave a more faithful nation that will fight and die without hesitation.
- He's the director of the Levada Center, an independent polling firm in Russia.
It also looks for platforms where Russians may feel freer to voice honest opinions, said Jonathan Teubner, the chief executive of FilterLabs. Even so, the messages made for some jarring moments for some of those present, featuring as they often did ultra-patriotic and sometimes militaristic declarations. Many of the Ukrainian writers at the forum also expressed similar sentiments. In a panel I moderated, the Ukrainian historian and author Olena Stiazhkina began her remarks by expressing her gratitude to the Ukrainian armed forces for their defense of the homeland.
Pictured: Tusk in Kyiv
In his first major speech on defence, Grant Shapps said the country was moving from a "post war to a pre-war world". Last week, another senior Nato military chief said countries needed to be on alert "and expect the unexpected". Adm Rob Bauer, who heads the alliance's military committee, said the public needed to change their mindset for an era "when anything can happen at any time".
It began to dip slightly in early March, only to rebound around the country’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations, according to the FilterLabs analysis. Earlier today, a Russian official said air defences had thwarted a drone attack on the Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in the city of Yaroslavl. You can argue that it isn’t realistic or human to force all Russians into a black-and-white response—either oppose the war or you are complicit.
Russia-Ukraine: What do young Russians think about the war?
"We are measuring public attitudes that, more or less, coincide with how people will behave in public," he adds. He's the director of the Levada Center, an independent polling firm in Russia.
- The national guard is controlled by the interior ministry and is responsible for internal security, public order and guarding critical infrastructure.
- No region of Ukraine, and no age group, has a majority where respondents say Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
- Koneva said her research group has focused on examining the opinions of the core audience that supports Russia’s war in Ukraine.
- European countries have largely outsourced much of their military capacity and thinking on strategy and security to the States through NATO.
That’s despite a backdrop of unceasing vitriol directed toward Ukraine on state television, and the persistent, oft-repeated idea that it is external attacks that require Russia to take defensive measures. But Russia’s other recent military actions, including its 2008 invasion of Georgia and its intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015, were not met with the same enthusiasm. Putin’s Feb. 21 televised speech addressed the dangers of Ukrainian nationalism.
Thousands of non-Ukrainians have served in its armed forces since Russia’s invasion in 2014. Ukraine’s armed forces have denied having anything to do with the attack. Ukraine’s president signed a decree instructing the government to develop a plan for preserving the national identity of the “historically inhabited lands” of Krasnodar Krai, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov. “We discussed with the prime minister that all critical issues that exist can be resolved at the level of governments, and work on this will begin shortly,” Mr Zelensky said. The Polish prime minister’s visit to Ukraine represents a step towards rapprochement between the two countries after border blockades by Polish truckers.
- Surveys have suggested that the majority of Russians support the invasion.
- Hungary has signalled it is ready to compromise on EU funding for Ukraine - after Brussels reportedly prepared to sabotage its economy if it did not comply.
- Now, I’m very encouraged by the fact that the world understands that the Russian people did not choose this war, that instead it was started by a president who lives in some absurd reality of his own.
The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for Russia and plus or minus 3 points for Ukraine for nation-wide data. “The Russian leadership tends to define Russia as the successor state of the Soviet Union. More so than Ukrainians, Russians have a difficult time defining a history without the Soviet Union at the center,” the Yale historian said. Ukrainians overwhelmingly feel Russia and Ukraine should be two separate countries, with 85% saying so, 9% saying they should be one country, and 6% responding that they did not know. No region of Ukraine, and no age group, has a majority where respondents say Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
This presidential address could serve to galvanize the Russian public to back Putin’s military aspirations. Russia’s military attacks and bombing across Ukraine could lead to the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Western leaders have warned. 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. Polls in Russia, or any other authoritarian country, are an imprecise measure of opinion because respondents will often tell pollsters what they think the government wants to hear.
- The size of its active armed forces is only 19,000 personnel, but it can call on another 238,000 reserves.
- They are particularly adept at muddling information environments, making people unsure of what to believe, and sapping their motivation.
- But Russian pollsters have in recent years also noted that younger audiences get more information from the internet, social media and other sources that are not controlled by the state.
- You can argue that it isn’t realistic or human to force all Russians into a black-and-white response—either oppose the war or you are complicit.
- One is peddled by the best-known talk-show hosts who tell viewers that the “special operation” is part of Russia’s total and existential war with the West—which is, of course, hell-bent on obliterating Russia.
“The security of the Polish nation and the Polish state is also at stake in this fight,” he said. Donald Tusk has called the war between Ukraine and Russia a battle between “good and evil”. Volodymyr Zelensky has been condemned for claiming six Russian regions were “historically inhabited by Ukrainians”. Ukraine is shifting its military strategy to “active defence” after its counter-offensive last year failed to deliver significant gains. It also geolocated combat clashes to the north-west of Bakhmut, west of Donetsk city and south of Robotyne.
- But it boosts the strength of the professional armed forces, which is often relatively small.
- The BBC Russian's Anastasia Golubeva estimates there were initially more than 200 people assembled before police instructed people to move on.
- Mr Szijarto will be in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak.
- The current conflict is more than one country fighting to take over another; it is — in the words of one U.S. official — a shift in "the world order."Here are some helpful stories to make sense of it all.
- Despite these divisions in Ukrainian society, it should also be said that since the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year, many Ukrainians - from east and west - feel Russia has gone too far, and has destabilized their homeland.
There, for three days, panelists addressed topics related to Ukraine, Russia, war, and culture. Significant shifts in Russian attitudes were detected across the country, sometimes over the prosecution of the war itself. For example, when Russian armed forces met much fiercer resistance from Ukrainians in March and April 2022, and reports of high death tolls filtered back into Russia, FilterLabs detected a decrease of support for the war in many regions of the country. https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-are-there-so-many-orphans-in-ukraine.html work iteratively, piloting slightly different messages successively and rolling them out in waves when their analysis signals that they are needed.
On some level, the data likely reflect an impulse, whether born of fear or passivity, to repeat approved messages rather than articulate your own. “Surveys don’t show what people think, but what they are ready to say, how they are prepared to carry themselves in public,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, the country’s premier independent polling and research organization, said. Even before the war, Russia was not the kind of place where you willy-nilly shared your political beliefs with strangers, let alone with those who called out of the blue. That tendency, forged in the Soviet period, only intensified in recent weeks, with new laws that criminalized “discrediting” the Russian military, spreading “fake news,” and making any mention in the press that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was war. According to the Athena Project, a collective of sociologists and I.T.