War Journal Draft

Comprehending the Reality of War Russia.Post's Best Essays on the Second Year of the War in Ukraine

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Table of Contents 'The Broken Gunsight of Language' by Ilya Kalinin .............................................. 2 'Can Peace Be Expected? Sure, But No One Will Like It' by Oleg Kashin ......... 12 'Russians Hopeful About 2024, But Not Counting on Peace and Quiet' by Denis Volkov .............................................................................................................. 16 'Putin Raising the Risk of Nuclear Conflict by Deliberately Increasing Uncertainty' by Alexander Golts ............................................................................. 24 'The State Machine Redistributing Property into The Right Hands' by Nikolai Petrov .......................................................................................................................... 31 "Everything is not so clear-cut." Mundane visions of the war' by Alyona Solntseva ..................................................................................................................... 39 ‘You can still alleviate the horror in which a person finds himself.’ An interview of Maria Eismont ..................................................................................... 44

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The Broken Gunsight of Language Ilya Kalinin Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies The reality of war is defined not only by the masses of people and hardware that opposed forces bring to bear in the conflict, but also by the symbolic resources mobilized to make sense of this reality. The theater of war is mapped out not only by a material network of defensive structures and supply lines, imposed over the natural landscape, but also by the semantic structures of language that organize belligerents’ conceptions concerning the essence of the war they are prosecuting. Whereas tactical success is dependent on the ability to bring human, technical, and geographical elements into alignment, strategic success requires not only an increase in the scale of coordination of these elements, but also an ability to inscribe them in a symbolic horizon adequate to unfolding events.

Furthermore, whether you identify with one of the warring parties or are an external observer who adopts one or another stance regarding the opposed combatants or the war as a whole — the more distant you are from the location of actual battle, the more important becomes the language you use to describe and comprehend the conflict. I am referring here not to opposed languages of propaganda, which the mimetic logic of war constantly and inevitably impels to approach one other, increasing similarities and 2

accelerating a loss of distinctions. (Of course, this discursive mimeticism does not diminish the fundamental boundary in values that stands between the political motivations of Kyiv and those of Moscow.)

Nor am I discussing propaganda that glorifies “our own” and dehumanizes “the other.” At issue, rather, are structures of knowledge that generalize from past experience of human interaction with the environment (both natural and social), which, sedimented in language, mediate perceptions of new experience, establishing coordinates for its cognition and evaluation and for responses to it.

In other words, I am discussing language as a system of conceptual frames and scenarios for processing information, crystallized in a mobile set of analogies, comparisons, authoritative images and commonplaces that help to structure new material, packing it into ready-made cells.

Among the most effective means of responding to life’s challenges and processing their sociocultural or psychological novelty in the language of already familiar experience is metaphor.

In this instance, metaphor is understood not as a rhetorical figure of poetic language, but as a means for the description and understanding of one thing (phenomenon, event, process) in terms of another.

Metaphor as Gunsight Cognitive research regarding metaphor and its functions in human thought have shown that metaphor — as a framework that shapes our perceptions of reality — affects the mechanism of decision making. This mechanism includes a number of elements and transitions from one element to the next: recognition of a problem; identification of various options for its solution; assessment of the adequacy and productivity of these options; and finally, selection of one of them — that is, the actual decision. Note that the frame established by metaphor for perception of a problem, which may influence any of these stages, is especially important in formation of the set of its possible solutions.

Individuals recognize only those paths for the unfolding and culmination of events, and only those possibilities for their own participation in events, that fit within a habitual optics for perception of the situation. The lens that defines this habitual optics is metaphor — a form of comparison of one experience with another, a first object with a second that seems similar or even identical to it.

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George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in their classic work Metaphors We Live By (1980), demonstrate how these processes work, providing an extensive list of expressions of everyday language that describe how we view the activity of discussion: “Your claims are indefensible,” “I demolished his argument,” “He shot down all my arguments,” “He attacked every weak point in my arguments,” etc. Clearly, our ideas about the nature of dispute are organized by our ideas about the nature of war. Summing up these examples, the authors explain at a more general level that: “This is an example of what it means for a metaphorical concept, namely, ARGUMENT IS WAR, to structure (at least in part) what we do and how we understand what we are doing when we argue … It is not that arguments are subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are different kinds of things — verbal discourse and armed conflict — and the actions performed are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR.” One may wonder how different our strategies for argument would be if the metaphorical framework that defined our ideas of what it means to argue were not war, but, say: dance, sexual intercourse, or sawing through a tree with a two-man saw.

Metaphor and Crisis Since the appeal to the cognitive resources of metaphor is largely motivated by the need to respond to challenges and make decisions, one may propose that the intensity of its deployment will increase during periods of crisis, when the volume of new, unexpected, unpredictable, often painful experience demands, in response, extraordinary efforts to integrate it. In a situation of socio-political or economic crisis, a metaphor — that is, a machine for production of comparisons and equivalences — becomes both a means to understand a novel and unfamiliar reality and a therapeutic tool that mitigates the effects of a traumatic collision with the unknown.

The profound crisis provoked by Russia’s attack on Ukraine — which has given rise to extended series of multiplying, tragic consequences, both immediate and long-term — is no exception. As expected, descriptive language applied to the war immediately turned to a range of metaphorical fields, drawn from national literary traditions, modern mass culture (orcs, zombies), zoology and botany (various animalistic epithets intended to dehumanize the enemy), epidemiology and clinical psychiatry (the medicalization of the figure of the enemy in terms of various diseases).

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Yet the rhetorical range of rich symbolic resources that have been deployed in the war of languages, designed to inspire warring armies and those who support them (wherever they may be: in Ukraine, Russia, or elsewhere), works to mask the narrowness of the overall conceptual framework that in fact continues to dominate understanding of this war. “Shell hunger” haunts not only the warring armies, but also the political imaginary governing the approach to strategic decisions with critical significance for the unfolding and outcome of the war.

There is a lack not only of ammunition, but also of conceptual metaphors capable of describing the present global crisis, leaving the stable orbit of 20th century historical experience.

The catalogue of conceptual frames organizing existing narratives describing the current war and possible scenarios for its outcome brings us back in one way or another to three familiar stories drawn from the past: 1) The First World War, which ended for Russia with the transition from imperialist war to civil war — that is, with revolution and the overthrow of the former political regime (at times, as a local variation, we encounter the Russo-Japanese War, in which the defeat of the Russian Empire became the catalyst for the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907); 2) The Second World War, which ended for Germany with utter defeat and unconditional surrender, for the German political regime with an international tribunal, and for German society with collective repentance (which, it must be added, took shape only some twenty years after the end of the war, initiated by a generation that did not participate in the conflict); 3) The Cold War, which ended with the fall of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but which at the same time (and this is currently seen as its main positive significance) ensured for 40 years the stability — albeit at times an anxious stability — of the world system, pushing direct conflict out into the countries of the Third World. In this light, many (on both sides of the conflict) see a return to the situation of the Cold War as the most desirable option for normalization and stabilization of the current crisis.

In fact, the three wars enumerated above function as the basic metaphors (frameworks

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establishing an optics for perception of reality) that determine conceptions regarding the current war and how it might end. Moreover, these frameworks are operative regardless of the position one takes in (or in relation to) this war. What shifts, from one camp to another, is simply the distribution of roles in the plots derived from these three conceptual frames. It seems that we have imagination which is enough just to try out historical costumes, for ourselves or our opponents, handing out props inherited from the past according to our own hopes for a better future.

My central proposal in this essay is that turning to the history of the three major 20th century wars for explanatory models and arguments in decision-making only deepens and prolongs the current crisis, placing this war into a field whose resources the Putin regime learned long ago to use very well.

The Past as a Resource The resource dependency of the Russian state underlies the economic life of the country. It structures the core of its political power, as well as organizing vertical channels of administrative management and the system of capillaries that distributes material support to various segments of the population. This extractive modus vivendi leaves its mark on the characteristics of the political imaginary, which is unable to overcome the gravitational pull of history, given that resources are nothing other than the past in a condensed form (whether we are discussing the past of nature or of society).

In this sense, the appeal to the historical legacy of the “wars of the fatherland” that Russia waged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as to the “thousand-year history of Russia,” is rooted not only in time-tested methods of securing a national-patriotic consensus, or in the fundamental condition of the Putin regime’s survival — the necessity to stop time in order to remain in power. It is founded on modern Russia’s resource ontology itself. Resource dependency renders the regime dependent on the past, while the past remains its central resource.

At the present moment, everything accumulated by the very ancestors whose name is used to consecrate the war with Ukraine is disappearing, as though into a funnel, into this bad — in both a logical and a historical sense — infinity. Having placed its bets on history, Russia is playing out the past more and more consistently, since hope for victory is tied to it alone.

In an attempt to revive the historical past, Russia is rendering its future less and less certain.

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Having lost a large part of its modern military equipment and ammunition in the first year of the war, Russia has turned to mothballed Soviet reserves. Never put to use in the expected clash with the capitalist Western world of a past era, this equipment now serves duty in a war with a former Soviet socialist republic. In this conflict, its purpose is to prove that the past of that land, too, has not yet come to a conclusion, and that its present and future can only reiterate its “historical unity with Russia.”

Following the abject failure of initial plans for a quick rout of the Ukrainian army and ouster of the Ukrainian political regime, having endured a number of military defeats, the Russian army has transitioned to a form of warfare inherited from the world wars of the twentieth century: dense lines of defense, bombardment of cities located in the rear, frontal attacks with artillery support, and intensive depletion of resources of all kinds.

It is hardly surprising that, dependent on the past for both technological infrastructure and mode of warfare, the Russian regime and the elements of society that support it find the foundation in a social and political imaginary that is also completely shut off into the past.

Russia has a single path to victory in its war with Ukraine and with the West that stands with it — via a collective belief that this is a Great Fatherland War. Furthermore: not just a belief that this is a Great Fatherland War, but that it is in fact the Great Fatherland War of 19411945 — its continuation, return or repetition.

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A cross on a Livonian knight's outfit from Sergei Eisenstein's film (1938) in which Livonian knights were defeated in the 13th century by Prince Alexander Nevsky. Source: Facebook

At the least, this is what the Russian leadership considers to be the most desirable path of development for the current war. Accordingly, both the war’s outcome and the fate of the Putin regime directly depend on the success of its attempts to sink Russian society into a totalizing experience of that past as the actual present.

For this reason, all Russian political propaganda efforts are invested precisely in creation of the collective fantasy of an endlessly repeated heroic past. The Russian president continuously reminds the population of this repetition, making use of each and every memorial occasion: “Once again, we have been forced to repulse the aggression of the collective West. It is unbelievable, but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks adorned with crosses. And once again they seek to make war on the soil of Ukraine against Russia, using as proxies Hitler’s own followers — using the Banderovites” (from a February 2, 2023 speech at a gala concert commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the Red Army’s defeat of the Nazi army in the Battle of Stalingrad).

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History repeats itself again and again. Its movement is reduced to reproduction of one and the same archetypal plot in which century after century Russia opposes the “collective West”: so, the crosses on the sides of tanks can refer both to the events of the Second World War and to the epoch of Alexander Nevsky and his defeat of the Livonian Order.

The phrase Mozhem povtorit' (we can repeat) , has been commonly used in the past decade to celebrate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, as well as a belligerent anti-Western slogan.

Source: VK

The battlefield remains the same — the Ukrainian lands — except that Ukraine itself is conceived as having shifted its political subjectivity, becoming a stronghold of “Hitler’s followers.”

However, the problem with narrative amalgamations of this kind is that within these mirrored constructions, the figure of the enemy loses a certain clarity of outline. With whom exactly is Russia now fighting for the second year? With the “Nazi regime” of Kyiv?

With the Ukrainian people “who succumbed to its propaganda”? With “rotten Europe”?

With American imperialism, striving for world domination? In the end, one is challenged to ascertain who exactly Russia is to defeat and who is to be liberated as a result of victory in this war.

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“Symmetrical Response” So much for Russia. An additional problem is that the opposed camp (Ukraine, its allies, the Russian opposition), in its own understanding of the events of this conflict and their possible outcome, resorts to the same resources drawn from the historical past. In the minds of the German political leadership, the memory of World War II frames perceptions of the war in Ukraine, slowing down the decision to supply the very Leopard tanks to which Putin refers in the quotation above. Evocation of two past invasions of Russia by the West (by Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany), in connection with fears of escalation of the current conflict, regularly crop up in the speeches of European politicians, immediately eliciting enthusiastic reactions from the Russian camp (“victory will be ours, as in 1812 and 1945”).

Images and toponyms from the eras of the First and Second World Wars (Verdun, Coventry, Nuremberg…) regularly appear in descriptions of the current war, not only defining public perceptions of it, but also shaping political decisions by the coalition in support of Ukraine. The plot of the narrative remains the same, yet with different attribution for the role of “Hitler”, who has become an empty signifier of modern political and propaganda discourses. Аs a result, the war in Ukraine is, as Lakoff would say, is “partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about” in terms of previous World Wars (or “Wars of the Fatherland” in Russian history), which serve as framework metaphors (analogies, comparisons, chains of identification and equivalences). This historical horizon is not simply empirically inadequate for cognition of today’s events. It also happened to constitute the main element of the imaginary theater of operations that the Putin regime seeks to impose on Russian society and the rest of the world. Putin is, in fact, not a Stalin or a Hitler. The nature of his power is completely distinct. To describe it via these metaphorical mechanisms or to produce not overly witty puns (such as “Putler” or “Putin kaput”) is in actuality to implement Putin’s own approach, confirming that the Second World War is still a present reality.

To adopt the language of these historical analogies is to engage in the self-same “Fatherland War” that the Russian authorities deploy to endow the “special military operation” with meaning.

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"To view the war in Ukraine through the prism of the First or Second World Wars or the Cold War, regardless of how roles are distributed in these scenarios, is to reproduce the Putin regime’s propaganda agenda" granting reality to its historical imaginary and aiding it in exploitation of the historical identifications of a significant part of the Russian population as a mobilizational resource. The fixation of the Russian liberal-democratic opposition on these same analogies, reversed by 180 degrees, demonstrates the depth and stability of these conceptions.

The appeal to the historical experience of the World Wars of the twentieth century has worked for 77 years as a safety valve preventing new global wars. However, now that the war has already broken out, use of the experience of the First or Second World Wars as metaphor to describe current conflict may backfire, laying a path that leads directly to the Third.

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Can Peace Be Expected? Sure, But No One Will Like It Oleg Kashin Journalist and writer As Chinese special envoy Li Hui goes around Europe with his “peace formula,” every day new peace-wishers turn up, from African leaders to the Pope, while even Hungarian Prime Minister Orban is offering a venue for negotiations.

On the Russian side, Dmitri Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on Telegram that he will not speak with Ukraine; however, no one takes him seriously, so if he writes “no,” then it should be read at least as “perhaps.” The specter of peace talks is everywhere – at the Arab League summit, at the G7, at a meeting of Central Asian leaders in China. Everyone had been waiting for a Ukrainian counter-offensive but instead got an unexpected high tide of peace initiatives.

It's not what is being talked about, but who is doing the talking Currently, there seems to be lacking a decisive episode at the front, even a symbolic one – for example, the fall of Bakhmut – a formal reason to believe that neither side should expect 12

further breakthroughs and should sit down and talk.

Obviously, no one seriously believes in Ukraine getting back to its 1991 borders, and much less in “denazification and demilitarization.”

The subject of talks, besides a ceasefire, will be more mundane things like a demilitarized zone (most often they talk about 100 kilometers), control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and some compromise ideas that have not yet come up and that would let both sides save face.

In such substantive talks, the most interesting thing is not what they are about, but who is leading them.

It is not hard to imagine that Russia and Ukraine, through someone’s mediation, are jointly searching for a compromise that would make it possible to end or at least stop the war for a long time. The toughest thing here is not the agenda, but who is talking. Most likely, everyone who is now offering a venue and peace plan dreams that Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky would be at the negotiating table and look into each other’s eyes, though that is the most pie-in-the-sky scenario.

Zelensky is officially prohibited by Ukrainian law from talking to Putin. Probably, it could be amended or canceled – at the end of the day, an emotional political declaration put into law is not so fundamental to the state. All the image and reputational risks for Zelensky – that if he starts talking to Putin, the warring Ukrainian people will go to the Maidan and drive him out –now seem exaggerated.

If his readiness to talk with Moscow means a loss for Zelensky in elections next spring, it is unlikely to become a real tragedy for him – he has already gone down in national history, having won a massive victory (he prevented Putin from taking Kyiv in three days) last year. Of course, there are many nuances, but there is not a single argument against negotiations that could be considered ironclad and unassailable.

It is tougher for Putin. Unlike Zelensky, he is not risking anything at all politically; no decision of his (yes, the current war is the most obvious example) could trigger a serious protest from the elites, let alone society. The problem is different – it is the human factor: to put it bluntly, Vladimir Putin is too crazy for such talks.

To put it delicately: in his position (when in your own state you have long been the absolute master and the highest authority) and at his advanced age (when you are over 70,

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it is much more difficult to swallow your pride), it is simply impossible to recognize people he called Nazis and drug addicts as equals in a negotiation or make concessions on issues that in Putin’s worldview have been decided long ago.

It is not only Crimea – which the Ukrainians will talk about anyway – but even the “inland” Sea of Azov, which Putin has already proclaimed as his historical achievement.

Even the Minsk talks from eight years ago – when both the Ukrainian side and the FrancoGerman intermediaries were incomparably more acceptable to Putin and the costs incomparably lower – was for Putin both politically and personally a kind of step too far.

Now, he is hardly capable of such a step, though the situation requires a much bigger one than back then.

A formal ceasefire agreement following the First Chechen war was signed by General Lebed (right) and General Maskhadov (left) in the summer of 1996. Source: VK

Who could make peace?

Against this backdrop, it is more reasonable to assume that direct contact between the leaders of Ukraine and Russia is impossible. However, this impossibility is not an 14

insurmountable obstacle to talks, but rather the first move toward them.

If Putin and Zelensky cannot make peace, then someone else should. The closest historical parallel for modern Russia is obviously Khasavyurt in 1996, when the war between Russia and Chechnya was ended with the signing of an agreement with Russia represented by Security Council Secretary Alexander Lebed and Chechnya by Aslan Maskhadov, who commanded its armed forces.

Even though in that case it was the federal center and a rebellious province that were formally at war with each other, who said that people with the same, second-level status in two independent states cannot put an end to a conflict?

Hypothetically speaking, from the Ukrainian side it could be Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny, while from the Russian side – well, who knows – the Security Council secretary is now Nikolai Patrushev – let it be him, and if need be, pick a more exotic figure authorized to negotiate with the Ukrainians, like Yevgeny Prigozhin or, if he is too much, Zaluzhny’s vis-à-vis, Valery Gerasimov, for whom the Ukrainian side has voiced respect publicly several times.

If at least one of the potential mediators running around today with his peace plan understands that at this stage, it is possible to make peace without the leaders of the countries, then negotiations seem quite realistic right now.

And then wait for a new war or a change of regime in Russia. A delayed resolution – expectations for which will paralyze both countries – and imagine life, say, in Donetsk and Mariupol or in Kharkiv and Kherson during these years. It’s probably nothing good, but which of the available options can really be considered good?

Then it is about luck. Putin’s regime is actually very likely to come to an end, and with it his personal project to destroy Ukraine – much more likely than any other outcome that is dreamed about by the interested parties today. Anyone who is seriously waiting for peace today must understand that the peace that is available is unpleasant and in no way corresponds with anyone’s romantic aspirations.

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Russians Hopeful About 2024, But Not Counting on Peace and Quiet Denis Volkov, Director of the Levada Center (Moscow) To begin with, recall that despite the shocks from the “special operation,” Western sanctions and partial mobilization, Russians did not see 2022 as the hardest year. The pandemic-tarred 2020 and financial-crisis-marked 1998 were deemed much harder in their time.

Two-thirds of respondents say that 2023 was “average” on the whole, while another 20% called it “good.” In addition, two thirds consider it rather successful – the highest figure since 2000. As our respondents explained, they had time to relax, some came into money, some found a new job and even took up personal development. Still, Russians again said that the year turned out harder for the country than for themselves personally. Meanwhile, whereas in 2022, 2020 and 2014 the difference between the assessments of the situation in the country and in the private sphere exceeded 20 percentage points, it halved in 2023. All this points to a rapid return to average pre-Covid assessments and people’s adaptation to

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what is going on.

In the eyes of Russians, the main events of the year were rising prices, Vladimir Putin’s announcement of another presidential run, the “special operation,” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the school shooting in Bryansk, Putin’s annual call-in show, the earthquake in Turkey, rising salaries and pensions, the march on Moscow by Wagner and the subsequent death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Economic trends of 2023 In 2023, the trend of a perceived weakening of the acuteness of most social problems continued. Nevertheless, at the end of the year we saw a surge in anxiety about inflation, the main symbol of which was the rise in prices for eggs and, to a lesser extent, for bananas, the most popular fruit in the Russian grocery basket – this was repeatedly mentioned in focus groups. Overall, however, people have rather adapted to rising prices; inflation is perceived as a chronic problem that can be tolerated as long as it is not in the double digits.

Throughout 2023, there was a steady trend of improving economic assessments, as recorded by indexes of consumer and social sentiment. This trend began to emerge in the summer of 2022 as the March inflation shock wore off: in the year and a half since then, the number of people reporting a worsening of their economic situation decreased from 41% to 24%. Over the same period, the share of those who expect their situation to worsen in the future halved from 28% to 14%. Back in 2016-21, these trends had already been noticeable, but they evolved at a much slower pace.

Moreover, over the past 1.5-2.0 years in Russia there has been a noticeable increase in the share of people who, in their own estimation, can afford to buy relatively expensive things, such as a TV or refrigerator. Whereas in 2020-21 the average annual figure was about 24%, in 2022 it rose to 27% and then 29% in 2023. Meanwhile, the size of the well-off segment of the population did not change significantly.

The expedited indexation [adjusting for inflation] of wages and pensions played a role in this – this was repeatedly mentioned by respondents in answers to open questions and during focus-group discussions. For the second year in a row, “rising wages and pensions” was among the top 10 main events of the year. In addition, the positive assessments of the economic situation were likely supported by payments for fighting in the “special

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operation,” as they are several times higher than the monthly income of most Russians. To quote one of our respondents who was asked what exactly has improved in her life recently: ‘My son is at war, he sends money.’ Apparently, these are the people who can buy today what they could not afford yesterday.

Vladimir Putin's annual call-in show, December 2023. Source: YouTube

As expected, the less well-off segments of the population are most susceptible to such government measures, with their outlook immediately improving following the decisions.

In general, they are adapting to the situation with slightly greater ease – their demands are more modest, they respond more positively to government support measures and their way of life has changed little because of the sanctions, which largely hit the richer and more Westernized parts of major Russian cities. There too, however, positive assessments predominated throughout 2023. The most anxious rich and Westernized Russians from cities went abroad, while those who remained had enough resources to find their way in the new reality – parallel imports were able to support their usual level of consumption, with Chinese alternatives replacing sanctioned goods in some segments.

Note that the trend of swifter adaptation to the new economic reality amid the “special operation” and broad economic sanctions came on top of the longer and slower recovery from the Russian financial crisis of 2014–15, also largely driven by the initial Western sanctions against Russia.

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This is evidenced by the long-term dynamics of the consumer sentiment index: the number of respondents who reported an improvement in their financial situation rose steadily from 4% at the beginning of 2016 to 24% at the end of 2023. Over the same period, the number of those who expect their situation to improve within a year also increased, from 6% to 31%.

In other words, life is slowly getting better. Whether this trend will continue in 2024 will largely depend on whether the Russian government continues its current policy of supporting disadvantaged segments of the population, or whether it will give in to the temptation to take a pause after the presidential elections.

Political support The authorities are heading into the presidential elections in good shape. As expected, throughout 2023 there were high levels of support for key state institutions and the government. These sentiments were driven by last year’s consolidation of public opinion around the government and patriotic fervor against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which the majority of the country’s population sees as forced on Russia by the West.

All this is very similar to the so-called “Crimea effect” – when widespread support for the regime was observed for several years after the first stage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict back in 2014. Now, as then, there is every reason to believe that the widespread support will last for several years.

In 2023, the prevailing political sympathies, by and large, could not be shaken by the Prigozhin rebellion, which was nevertheless noted by Russians as one of the main events of the year. Meanwhile, 5% of Russians were ready to name Prigozhin the person of the year.

Neither the recent bans, most of which were not noticed by the bulk of the population, nor the hardships of the ‘special operation’ affected the political views of the majority in Russia.

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Collecting signatures to ban abortion. Yekaterinburg, 2017. Source: Wiki Commons

There is every reason to believe that this mobilization of public opinion will continue into 2024. The outcome of the upcoming presidential elections was predetermined at the end of 20

February 2022 – just as the results of the 2016 parliamentary elections, which were easily won by the party of power, were foreordained by the euphoria around the incorporation of Crimea into Russia in the spring of 2014.

Thus, the number of Russians who want to see Putin back in the Kremlin for another term shot up from 42% in 2021 to 72% a year later, rising to 78% as of November 2023. Indeed, the number of people ready to vote for Putin, according to responses to an open-ended question without prompts, increased to 55% last year from 32% in December 2021; today, the figure is 58%. If there is only a limited number of names, like on the ballot, this will only mean an even higher percentage of votes for Putin.

However, the high levels of political support do not guarantee unanimous support for every decision of the authorities. Thus, the recent initiatives that would seriously limit women’s access to abortions have been met with rejection by public opinion.

Even Putin during his call-in show had to speak out against them. In discussions of these issues in focus groups, participants, primarily women and including supporters of the government, generally say that “a woman should decide herself” and that they do not want “state interference in their personal lives.” In other words, people are ready to support the government on many issues – but only as long as it does not diverge from their vital interests.

Ukraine This is also true when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. We have pointed out that consistently high levels of support for the “special operation” are possible only on the condition that the majority of Russians are not required to actively take part in it and have the opportunity to live their private lives. Otherwise – as was the case during the partial mobilization – feelings of anxiety rise sharply, people start demanding that the conflict be wrapped up and approval ratings begin to decline.

Apparently in a nod to this, in 2023 the authorities sought to avoid unpopular decisions and took the path of recruiting volunteers for the conflict, thereby ensuring social stability.

And during the New Year holiday, in most festively decorated Russian cities there is almost nothing that would remind people about what is going on in Ukraine.

In the autumn, it also became clear that the widespread concern at the beginning of the year

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about a Western-backed Ukrainian counteroffensive was not well-founded – in June, as many as 70% of respondents had reported that they were concerned.

Therefore, confidence that the conflict was going well for Russia began to grow late in the year.

A protest against banning abortion in St Petersburg. The big poster reads: "The state is in the womb/The nation must be in bloom" (rhymed in Russian). Source: VK

Still, concerns about shelling of the Russian border and attacks by Ukrainian drones have not gone away.

This seems to be why the first signs of fatigue from the long “special operation” became noticeable at the end of 2023. From May to November, the share of Russians in favor of peace talks increased from 45% to 57%. This was also indicated by the fact that 21% of Russians would have liked to ask Putin on his call-in show about when there would be peace – this was the most popular answer when respondents were asked what they would ask Putin if they had the opportunity.

Among the most discussed topics on social networks during the president’s press conference was whether there would be a second wave of mobilization. Still, despite all the

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fatigue, the majority of Russians believe that “the government knows best” when to end the “special operation” and are convinced that the “special operation” will last a long time.

This means that in this regard the system’s robustness remains intact.

Looking forward Regarding 2024, public opinion is ambivalent. Three-quarters are looking to the new year with hope. From discussions in focus groups, we know that people generally have purely human hopes: for loved ones to be healthy, for wages to be higher and for prices to rise more slowly (everyone has long accepted that they will not go down).

However, for the second year in a row, the main hopes and wishes for the new year increasingly include peace and calm life without wars (as well as without disasters, epidemics and economic crises).

Yet when it comes to themselves and their family, two thirds of Russians think that 2024 will be quiet for them. For the first time in 10 years, more than half (57%) are looking at their own future “with confidence.” It is hard to say what there is more of here: selfhypnosis and complacency or signs that people are gradually learning to navigate a situation that is hardly predictable.

In any case, with regard to the political and economic situation in the country more than half of Russians – 58-59% of respondents – have answered each year since 2014 that the coming year will be “stressful.” Even with all the adaptation to the new economic reality and all the support for the authorities, people are still sensitive to the ongoing tensions both inside and outside the country. The fact is no one expects peace and quiet.

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Putin Raising the Risk of Nuclear Conflict by Deliberately Increasing Uncertainty Aleksander Golts, Journalist

For many years now, Russia’s nuclear potential, capable of wiping out humanity, has had a special place in Vladimir Putin’s annual speeches at the Valdai Discussion Club. You might recall Putin’s prophecy from 2018 that in the event of a nuclear war, Russians would go to heaven and the aggressor would burn in hell.

The conversation with experts that took place on October 5 was also not without sensational nuclear rhetoric. Sergei Karaganov, one of the founders of Valdai, asked whether Moscow should lower the standard for the use of nuclear weapons in its military doctrine to “sober up” Western countries, which are supposedly waging an aggressive war against Russia. In a number of recent articles, Karaganov called for such a “sobering-up,” advocating limited nuclear strikes on cities in NATO member countries.

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De-ratifying the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty While noting that he understands Karaganov’s “patriotic feelings,” Putin said that he does not consider it necessary to update Russia’s nuclear doctrine. However, before foreign experts could breathe a sigh of relief, the president stated that he regularly hears expert opinions that Russia should resume nuclear tests. At that point, he made a sensational announcement: “the latest test launch of Burevestnik was a success. It is a nuclear-powered cruise missile with a basically unlimited range. By and large, Sarmat, a super heavy missile, is also ready. All we have left is to complete all the administrative and bureaucratic procedures and paperwork so that we can move to mass production and deploy it in combat standby mode.”

Experts insist, Putin continued, on testing the warhead that the new missiles will carry.

Putin said that he had not made a final decision on the matter. However, he called attention to the imbalance between Russia and the US in terms of nuclear testing: whereas Moscow had ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Washington had not (though it is a signatory – RP). Putin recommended that the Duma “revoke ratification.”

The very next day, MPs launched the “de-ratification” process. Judging by Putin’s comments, the Kremlin has radically changed its approach to the development of nuclear missiles.

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The new heavy ICBM Sarmat being tested at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, March 2018.

Source: Wiki Commons

In the recent past, a series of successful tests were standard before a new missile could go into service. For instance, the R-36M2 Voevoda ICBM (NATO reporting name SS-18 Satan), which is the missile slated to be replaced by the Sarmat, was tested 26 times over two and a half years in the mid-1980s. Moreover, consider the fact that it was a modification of a longdeveloped rocket. Meanwhile, several years ago, testing of the RSM-56 Bulava SLBM, which would be put on Borei class submarines, also took considerable time. Due to constant failures, 32 test launches had to be conducted. Thus, long test cycles with almost guaranteed failures were the norm for Russian missile engineering.

Fast-tracked into service But now something unprecedented is happening. The Sarmat heavy missile has been under development for more than a decade, having faced considerable difficulties. Since 2016, high-ranking military officials and defense industry representatives have regularly promised to begin testing and quickly put the missile into service. And just as regularly, the

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dates for testing and deployment have been pushed back.

The first and only successful test of the Sarmat took place in April 2022, six years after Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly in which he unveiled the development of unprecedentedly powerful new rockets. The next test of the Sarmat took place on February 17, 2023, on the eve of another address to the Federal Assembly. However, according to the US government, it was a failure. Yet these, to put it mildly, modest results were enough to deploy the heavy missile in combat mode, as Putin claimed at Valdai. Note that the media, citing a “source in the defense industry,” has previously reported that the minimum number of test launches is five.

The story of the Burevestnik, the exotic nuclear-powered cruise missile, is even stranger.

According to media reports citing intelligence data, a dozen and a half tests have been conducted since 2017, of which only one could be called “partially successful.” At the beginning of October 2023, The New York Times, based on satellite images from Planet Labs, reported preparation for or already completed testing of the Burevestnik at a Russian base on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. A few days later, Putin made the statement about the successful test launch.

One can only guess as to whether the Kremlin really intends to begin production and deployment of missiles that have not actually been tested, or whether it is launching a fresh nuclear blackmail campaign.

For years, Putin has spared no effort to maintain Russia’s massive nuclear potential, to that end channeling gigantic financial and material resources. Nuclear weapons are considered Russia’s greatest asset, seen as putting the country on an equal footing with the US. It was telling that in the propaganda television documentary Crimea. The Way Home about the military operation to annex the peninsula, Putin said that at that time Russia could have put its nuclear forces on alert and that he had threatened leaders of other states: “we were ready to do this. I talked to my colleagues and told them that this (Crimea) is our historical territory, Russian people live there, they are in danger, we cannot abandon them.”

Later, in another propaganda film called World Order, speaking about the use of Kalibr 27

cruise missiles against targets in Syria, Putin emphasized that it is proof that Moscow has powerful weapons: “Russia has the will to use them if it corresponds to the national interests of our state and the Russian people.”

At the end of the 1990s, this approach even received theoretical justification with the socalled doctrine of “extended nuclear deterrence,” which assumed that the very fact of having a powerful nuclear arsenal should play a decisive role in resolving any international problem in line with Russian interests. And now, it seems, we are seeing a new version of “extended deterrence.”

Putin’s threats not achieving the desired effect After February 2022, the constant reminders of Russia’s massive nuclear potential and hints of its possible use reached a crescendo. As early as February 27, Putin issued the following order: “senior officials of leading NATO countries have also made aggressive statements against our country, therefore I order the minister of defense and the chief of the general staff to put the deterrent forces of the Russian army in a special regime of combat duty.”

Only six months later did Russian diplomats find it necessary to clarify that Putin merely meant “shifts at strategic forces command points” were to see personnel reinforcements. A few days before Russia annexed territories in eastern Ukraine, Putin announced a partial mobilization in Russia and said that when its territorial integrity is threatened, Russia would use all means, including nuclear weapons.

However, these threats no longer delivered the results the Kremlin had hoped for. Though Western states have made weapons supplies to Ukraine conditional on Kyiv’s not using them against internationally recognized Russian territory, they have duly ignored all the other “red lines” that Moscow laid down.

More and more long-range and high-precision weapons are being supplied to Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Washington has reacted directly and rather sharply to Moscow’s nuclear hints.

President Biden noted the increasing danger a year ago: “for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat to the use [sic] of nuclear weapons, if in fact things 28

continue down the path they have been going.”

A month later, a White House official said that CIA Director William Burns had warned his Russian counterpart Sergei Naryshkin about “the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability.” After this, the Russian threats died down. But only for a while.

Kremlin raising the stakes The Kremlin calculated that the stakes should be raised. This happened on February 22, 2023, when Putin announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In fact, it was the last surviving (and most important) of the Russia-US disarmament treaties. Putin argued that the inspections of nuclear facilities provided for by the treaty look absurd in the context of the conflict in Ukraine and the current intentions of the West to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.” He also accused “NATO specialists” of helping to equip and modernize Ukrainian drones that attacked Russian strategic air bases. Still, Moscow said that it would continue to adhere to the restrictions (700 deployed delivery vehicles and 1,550 nuclear warheads) set out in the treaty, as well as give notice about upcoming missile tests.

As a result, all inspections, which had allowed the sides to check the actual composition and condition of each other’s nuclear forces, were stopped. Now, Russia can make any statement about deploying the Sarmat (in the Kremlin’s mind, this hypothetical deployment is fundamentally important to maintain the appearance of quantitative nuclear parity with the US), which no one can verify. Suspension of the treaty also relieves Moscow of the need to discuss the extent to which the Burevestnik missile complies with the provisions of the treaty.

Russia has resolutely refused to discuss the future of the treaty, even though the US has proposed it. “On the basis that the Americans are now proposing we are not ready to conduct this dialogue and will not do so, because they ignore several key points in the whole configuration: namely, we must, first of all, be sure that the US course, fundamentally hostile to Russia, changes for the better for us. This is not even close to being 29

the case, and, rather, I would say that the opposite process is taking place: the anti-Russian component in the American line is not just predominating, but is getting worse and going beyond all conceivable limits, with great associated risks,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. In other words, the US must stop supporting Kyiv for Russia to resume negotiations on nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin, hoping to reduce Western support for Ukraine, is quite diligently working to plunge the situation with nuclear weapons into a state of maximum uncertainty. This is extremely dangerous in the current context. Without information about the state of the other side’s nuclear forces and intentions, the military will assume worst-case scenarios.

And this means that the risk of a nuclear confrontation is rising.

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The State Machine Redistributing Property into The Right Hands Nikolai Petrov, German Institute for International and Security Affairs

The process of “de-privatization” in Russia became widespread by the autumn, with courts, at the request of the Prosecutor General, seizing private companies and turning them over to the state. Regional oligarchs were most often the victims, though there are faces from the top of the Forbes richest people list, such as Oleg Deripaska and Andrei Melnichenko.

How property is being taken away and from whom Behind the myriad cases, two main reasons can be gleaned why the state targets certain assets for nationalization: the first is the wiping out of previous “good deeds” [toward the state] and bringing strategic entities back under state control; and the second is the creation of a mechanism for the new, quasi-owners to be rotated in.

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The most high-profile case of recent times is that which the Prosecutor General filed in August to seize the Sibeko energy company from the above-mentioned Melnichenko (the richest man in Russia). Melnichenko had bought it in 2018 for RUB 31.8 billion from exminister Mikhail Abyzov. Recently, the General Prosecutor’s office withdrew the case against Melnichenko’s business entities after one of them made a significant donation in the field of education.

Prior to this, the state had seized 16% of Komi Energosbytovaya Company, part of the biggest private Russian energy holding T Plus, founded by Viktor Vekselberg, as well as 81.66% of the shares of TGK-2 (with energy assets in five of Russia’s regions), which were held by the runaway businessman and former Federation Council Senator Leonid Lebedev.

Among the more high-profile cases was the seizure of land and a hotel complex in Sochi worth $1 billion from Oleg Deripaska in the autumn of 2022. In this case, the “strategic” interest of the state lay in transferring the oligarch’s property to the Sirius University of Science and Technology, which is under Putin’s personal patronage.

In the cases of both Deripaska and Melnichenko, state entities made what they deemed “fair” exactions to address the needs of the state – without delays, persuasion or drawn-out bargaining. In wartime, the Kremlin is seeking to avoid long and complex legal procedures like those that were used to seize property from Mikhail Khodorkovsky 20 years ago. Swift requisitions are needed, and by going after high-profile figures, the government is showing business who is boss.

Less visible, but no less significant, is the case of the seizure of current Duma Deputy Andrei Kolesnik’s controlling stake in the Kaliningrad Commercial Sea Port. Kolesnik is accused of what any businessman-turned-deputy can be accused of: “in violation of the established prohibitions, he acquired assets and made a profit in the industry in which he made legislative decisions as a deputy.”

In the case of Metafrax Chemicals, a major methanol producer, in which 94.2% of the shares were seized, the court declared illegal the privatization that had taken place in 1992. At that 32

time, through a series of transactions, the owner of the plant became the future billionaire and Uralkali owner Dmitri Rybolovlev, who then sold his entire Russian business to his long-time partner Seifeddin Rustamov (#90 on the Russian Forbes list).

The Metafrax case is interesting not only because the Prosecutor General successfully challenged a deal that was more than 30 years old, but also because of the basis on which this was done: according to the Prosecutor General, the fact that the plant was privatized without a decision from the federal government represented a violation of the “economic sovereignty of the Russian Federation and its defense capability.”

This formulation calls into question the authority of regional governments that in the 1990s supposedly had the power to manage state property, including disposing of that property, and provides the legal grounds to challenge many of the privatization deals concluded at the time.

De-privatization is being actively carried out in the oil and gas sector, across infrastructure (mainly ports), at enterprises related to the military-industrial complex, and in the chemical industry and agriculture.

Those caught in the path of the de-privatization steamroller are both businessmen who have emigrated, oligarchs loyal to the Kremlin – including some of the biggest ones – and former bureaucrats. There are former and current deputies of various levels, as well as senators.

It is important to understand that when a privatization from 30 years ago is declared illegal and the asset taken away from the current owner, who often had nothing to do with the original transaction and simply made a bona fide acquisition, this is neither punishment nor a restoration of justice, but rather state banditry.

The de-privatization machine At the Prosecutor General’s office, all de-privatization cases are handled by Deputy Prosecutor General Igor Tkachev, whose portfolio is overseeing the court system. However, 33

the main customer and the brains behind what is happening seems to be the all-powerful FSB economic security department. Moreover, even when Igor Krasnov was appointed prosecutor general in January 2020, experts were saying that his arrival spelled a greatly increased role for the FSB in directing investigations. It is telling how easily and quickly cases involving the seizure of property from regional and national oligarchs who have ‘had their day’ go through regional courts.

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Until 2022, Vagit Alekperov was president and co-owner of Lukoil, one of the biggest oil companies in Russia.

Source: Wiki Commons

Before, such “harmony” between the court and the prosecution had been seen mostly in political rather than economic cases. The obedience of the courts is very likely the result of the expanding Rostov case, where more than a dozen regional court officials, including the

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entire leadership, have been detained on charges of corrupt decision-making in favor of local businesses and authorities (see Nikolai Petrov’s previous article about this in Russia.Post).

The cases described above – when property is seized through the courts – can be called “hard de-privatization.” However, there is also “soft de-privatization,” when the owner is squeezed out. In my view, this is what happened to Lukoil. It started last year, when Vagit Alekperov, having headed the company for almost 30 years, resigned as president (and was replaced by Vadim Vorobyov).

Following Alekperov’s resignation, Lukoil Vice President Leonid Fedun, the second biggest shareholder after Alekperov (their combined stake is worth about $20 billion), unexpectedly retired. The subsequent changes at the top of the company, including directors on the board, are difficult to assess, since this information is now generally not disclosed amid the fear of Western sanctions against businessmen and top managers.

Upon stepping down, Alekperov received the Order “Merit to the Fatherland I Class,” while on his birthday on September 1, 2022 (in the mafia environment, such a coincidence is considered an important signal), Ravil Maganov, Alekperov’s associate and the Lukoil board chairman, who had remained a key representative of the old team following the departure of Alekperov and Fedun, died under mysterious circumstances, having fallen out of a sixth-floor window of the Kremlin hospital.

Essentially, Alekperov and his team were removed from management of the company without, technically speaking, a change of shareholders, since with such a gigantic private company like Lukoil, that would have been too big and tedious an operation. Instead, Lukoil had its management replaced and was turned into a quasi-state company. And since there is no information about who is now on the board of directors, it is nearly impossible to prove exactly how everything happened. As for Maganov, who was also the brother of the head of Tatneft, his demonstrative murder could have been a chilling signal about the need for complete obedience.

Foreign companies are another case. This year, the Kremlin seized the assets of four of the 36

biggest in Russia. First, the electric power assets of Germany’s Uniper and Finland’s Fortum, which before the war had been estimated at EUR 5.5 billion, were put under external management through the Federal Property Management Agency. In fact, they will now be managed by people from Rosneft.

Later, by Putin’s decree, the Danone Russia dairy company and the Baltika brewery, owned

by Denmark’s Carlsberg, were nationalized (see Russia.Post for more about these cases).

The dairy business is now headed up by a former Chechen agriculture minister and Ramzan Kadyrov’s nephew, Yakub Zakriev, while the new head of Baltika is 70-year-old Taimuraz Bolloev, Putin’s longtime acquaintance, who had managed the company from 1991 to 2004.

Conclusion Like any act of repression, the ongoing process of forcibly changing owners of major companies is demonstrative in nature.

Lukoil headquarters in Moscow. Source: Wiki Commons

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The point is, as with the murders (besides Maganov, there was another mysterious death at Lukoil – on May 4, 2022, Alexander Subbotin, another Lukoil board member, was found dead in a Moscow basement, allegedly after receiving a dubious treatment from a “shaman”), to make business as a whole more pliable, so that the seizure of large assets, as well as changes of owners/managers, proceeds more smoothly going forward.

Overall, it is probably more correct to talk not about de-privatization, but about an ongoing large-scale redistribution of property in which de-privatization is only one of the tools.

On February 24, 2022, Putin, with an assist from Western sanctions, built a “fence” to keep businessmen and managers in Russia. The institution of private property, together with the presence in Russia of businessmen owning large assets, is the last obstacle in the way of finally establishing a Soviet-style nomenklatura system in which there is no independent elite – only cogs in a single machine, unquestioningly subordinate to the supreme ruler. To get rid of this obstacle, a streamlined mechanism was needed to redistribute property from the old owners, who still remembered the times when owning large assets gave them some independence, to new ones, completely subordinate to the Kremlin.

The tsar, which Putin essentially is today, must dispose of lands and souls, giving them to those who have distinguished themselves in service as he sees fit. Moreover, the time has come for the original owners to retire, and the Kremlin wants to decide itself who will succeed them. They considered themselves private owners, but Putin always saw them only as holders of assets turned over to them by the state.

Just like in 2004 when the “Beslan package” of reforms, one part of which was the cancellation of direct elections for regional leaders, considerably weakened all governors – not just those whose terms were coming to an end – the current wave of de-privatization is turning the once all-powerful oligarchs into a semblance of Soviet “red directors.”

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"Everything is not so clear-cut." Mundane visions of the war Alyona Solntseva, Theater critic

For a while now, I have not argued about the special military operation or politics in general with anyone but my loved ones, though I try to listen to everyone. And the less I agree with people, the more attentively I listen — I want to understand their worldview, what it is based on, how it is argued, and whether people want alternative information. If they do, you can keep up the conversation; however, more often they do not, so it makes no sense to argue. The problem seems to be that increasingly there is no sense in talking to people from either side, though there are not just two.

I recently wrote a Facebook post about what my friends think about the current situation in Russia. It unexpectedly triggered a very strong reaction, even though it seemed to me that there was nothing special about it – just a very common way of thinking that I had often encountered. Nevertheless, the post was commented on, reposted and discussed all day long as if it was the freshest and most unusual piece of news. It was as if I had discovered 39

some super-secret knowledge about my compatriots. How little we know the world around us, and how poorly we imagine it.

My interlocutors: what do they think about the war?

I must say right away that I am not trying to make sociological generalizations. In the post, I reduced several conversations into one – my interlocutors were diverse in terms of their situation and education, people who I know personally. They are active but not young, aged 40 to 55 years old, all successful in their careers, some owning their own business, some serving in the bureaucracy, some working at large private companies, though none are bigwigs. They make good money and feel confident. Generally speaking, we can call them the Russian middle class.

What they have in common is that they are all quite satisfied with life. They know how to rejoice. They have lots of energy and plans. They lead a healthy lifestyle, exercise, travel a lot, though now they travel mainly in Russia. The war with Ukraine has not affected what is most important to them – everything is basically the same as it was a year or two ago, except that they cannot travel around the world as much, though due to Covid it had already been limited before. I was surprised that they do not talk about political news among themselves and do not discuss the situation with Ukraine. Still, I decided to ask them about it anyway.

Sure, they all think things will stay like this for a long time. For years, maybe decades. It does not please them, of course, and they regret that the “special military operation” has dragged on for so long. However, they believe that the world is always at war, and that is rather its natural state. War is ultimately good for the economy, which is why politicians around the world go for it.

My interlocutors are convinced that the sanctions have proven ineffective, in the sense that you can get everything you really need, while resolving the logistical problems can even be interesting. All companies have their own interests, and some are already coming back to Russia, while others will be replaced by new ones from the East.

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It would be a pity to buckle under the US, but if Washington keeps up its aggression we have something to counter it for now. No one with whom I spoke doubts that it is the Americans who are the true cause of the war. The world overall is always a struggle for influence, and you cannot just retreat.

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in early March “No one will make a fuss over Georgia and (Russia) won’t send troops there, they’ll just knock out Tbilisi right away.”

Of course, it would be great if everyone stopped shooting, but in the current conditions that is unrealistic: Russia has already occupied new territories, and the US will not stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. The old relations with Europe and America will never be restored (or not for a very long time).

Sure, generally, life will get worse for everyone, poverty will rise, security will go down, and that is here to stay. So, we just need to minimize the losses. It would be great to have some stability – including on sanctions, to have them always be as they are now, as it is not hard to get around them. The IT industry is full speed ahead, especially since many restrictions have been lifted. Plus, competition does not hurt anyone. Sure, at this point it is not Microsoft, things cost more and work worse, but we’ll get it going in a couple years.

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There are problems: personnel shortages; many first-rate specialists have left, and unlike ordinary programmers, they are not coming back. But that is nothing – we will teach new ones and finally create a long overdue truly sovereign economy.

Our political system, to put it mildly, is not ideal, but certainly no worse than the US. Nowhere is politics done in the interests of the people. There is no justice. Persecution, excesses and extremes are inevitable in any system. In Russia, the pendulum can swing far both ways. In the 1990s, there was complete freedom, but now the screws have really been tightened, so perhaps with time everything will come into balance.

Sure, a lot of stupid things are being done in the areas of culture and journalism – it’s a shame, but freedom of speech is a myth, and restrictions are inevitable. Putting people in jail for a child’s drawing is absurd, though it’s still an isolated incident, an initiative of local authorities. [RT Editor-in-Chief] Margarita Simonyan, who is threatening to smash Tbilisi, is definitely not serious – most likely, it is a signal to someone in a big game, and no public figure says what they actually think.

Overall, people agree that our system is not great, but where is it great? “I’ve got a friend who...” starts a typical story of injustice that someone experienced in Germany, France or the US, where the law is flexibly changed in favor of corporations, against people, etc. The conviction that nowhere do the authorities act in the interests of society is unshakable.

Ukraine, the argument goes, is not acting independently, and people who would like to be with Russia there are being repressed. Still, we do not have real information, though generally no information is objective. There are propagandists everywhere manipulating facts in the interests of different systems.

Reactions to my observations After the post went viral on social networks, there were lots of comments. I read many of them and divided the views reflected in them into three groups.

The general reaction of the first group was “how terrible!” It is people who think that the 42

world is divided into two camps – those for the war and those against it. They were suddenly and bitterly struck by the fact that there are people who are more concerned with their private lives than their civic duty, which they believe means being outraged.

The second group refuses to accept my observations, claiming that drawing conclusions based on overheard conversations is unprofessional and silly. The third group is people who acknowledge that the above opinions are indeed common among Russians, and they have repeatedly come across them.

Obviously, emotions always predominate on social media, but it is surprising that such opinions are seemingly being grappled with for the first time. As if it had not occurred to people before that if a country works, the trains run, communications function, retail is open – that all that is thanks to millions of people who do not have time to dive into the sea of Telegram channels, fish out information, verify data it is easier for them to cancel out everything that contradicts their experience and their desire to live well, here and now. One obvious reason, in my view, is the long absence of public discussions in Russia.

Once upon a time, I worked on television, producing a talk show. Our task was to look for hot topics and guests who would discuss them from different perspectives. At that time, the bosses of the channel were always demanding that we divide experts strictly into those “for” and those “against” and pit them against each other to make for lots of fun in the studio. We resisted and were eventually shut down. Now there is a lot of fun, maybe too much, though there are no discussions at all, only their imitation.

A public space with different opinions could give people the opportunity to present the whole range of opinions, to demonstrate the real complexity of the world. I am very upset that the expression “everything is not so clear-cut” has become a dirty word for liberal journalists… Intolerance to differences, to the presence of unpopular opinions within society, has killed debate. The complexity of the world has been reduced to intolerance, and in that sense, war is really becoming the only agreeable form of existence. And this is not just sad – it is monstrous.

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‘You can still alleviate the horror in which a person finds himself.’

Maria Eismont Lawyer Margarita Aløhina Interviewer

How has your work changed since February 24, 2022?

I have been asked this question very often lately – it seems that people want to hear that since February 24, something has changed radically in our law enforcement and judicial system.

In our lives, sure, almost everything has changed: our future, our plans for it, everything

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that we live, breathe, what we all feel. Because a terrible war was started. But the law enforcement and judicial system was the same on February 24 as it is now.

Everyone was rightly indignant at how [Vladimir] Kara-Murza was detained for no reason, but this had all happened before – for example, two years before in the case of Lusya Shtein, there was roughly the same, frankly insane explanation for her detention.

And even earlier, such a position of the courts had emerged as “we have no reason not to trust the police,” no matter the ridiculous-looking reports. None of this started today or even yesterday.

Yes, there are new Criminal Code articles. But offenses used for repression have been added to the books for a long time now and regularly. And the cases about “military censorship” are not a qualitative change, though of course they are perceived as another new low.

“There is only one truth, and it flows from the lips of the authorities, everything else is lies and extremism” – this approach existed even before any information that contradicted the briefings of Lavrov and Konashenkov was considered “deliberately false information about the Armed Forces.” For a while now, if the authorities really want to, a person can be detained without absolutely any grounds whatsoever. A report from any silovik saying that someone attacked him, was rude, was drunk, was swearing is enough. And the courts always have “no reason not to trust” such reports.

Everything has been very bad for a very long time. It is completely impossible, if the system wants to steamroll you, to resist that – it has been around long before the war. And in this sense, had we had some other law enforcement and judicial system before February 24, perhaps February 24 would not have happened.

I think that February 24 [2022] happened due to a combination of circumstances. First of all, it is a consequence of the destruction of all institutions of civil society and all independent political and civic forces.

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Long before February 24, independent courts that should resolve disputes in society, including disputes between citizens and their elected authorities, disappeared in Russia.

No one has elected the authorities for a long time either, though events called elections are held regularly. Due to the lack of independent courts, there is no place to challenge falsification and removals of candidates.

Thus, the approach that “Russians deserve the government they chose” is not mine. No, Russians did not choose this government.

How do you feel repression has changed?

Repression has grown considerably. People who had not talked about it before have started to.

My clients tell me that a few years ago, if you said in a paddy wagon on the way to court that you were a “political,” then everyone would be bewildered. But now you say “I’m a political” and they ask: “[Article] 270.3? It is fakes or discrediting?” And then someone else will say: “Oh! Me too!”

General awareness of repression has definitely risen. People are much more aware of it and are themselves afraid.

In your work, you interact with officials of this system… What is their attitude about what is happening? Especially against the backdrop of the wave of cases against politicians, cases against “fakes.”

There are people who seem indoctrinated – at least judging by their behavior and what they say. They believe that the state is doing everything right, that the enemy must be punished, that for the sake of the state’s security and stability, it is definitely acceptable to violate people’s rights.

Among people with whom I interact, they are a minority. Most or everyone understands, or 46

guesses, feels that something is wrong. And, since they do not find the strength within themselves to resist or leave, they prefer not to think about it too much.

But, for example, when dealing with cases of military censorship, many siloviki, it seems to me, experience a certain awkwardness.

I know people who left the system after being involved in cases that we would call political.

I know people who left the system after February 24. Most leave quietly – you will not find on the internet any mention of loud, voluntary departures over disagreements about the policy at the top of an agency.

Is it good that they are quiet?

It’s their choice, I do not have advice for them. I am just stating that people do leave. I know one official from a security agency who left just a few days after February 24 and the next day following his resignation, he went out to an anti-war protest. He was beaten and detained, and I went to see him at the police station.

But the majority do not leave. The vast majority of the investigators with whom I worked on political cases have told me something like: “They gave me this idiotic political case, I hate politics.” They see it as a repulsive chore. But on other days you get to do the good, necessary things. You are a professional! You go see corpses, you neutralize gangs, you catch thieves, you look for drug dealers. The other days, you are doing good.

But most people with whom I interact do not get any pleasure or joy from “political” cases.

They want to get through this unpleasant procedure and return to the real business. I sometimes ask: ‘You can’t refuse?’ They look at me with huge eyes, as if to say: ‘how can you refuse if the higher ups have given you something?’

Sometimes my friends say to me: “Masha, they won’t put you in jail, the investigators love you.” I say: “So what? What say do they have? Their bosses will tell them, and they will do it. They will come to me in pre-trial detention, keep being nice and in love with me during interrogations.”

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Do you know cases of silent sabotage, even with small things?

Silent – I do. For example, in the case of Konstantin Kotov (an activist who got four years in prison for repeated violations at rallies; later his sentence was reduced to one and a half years – Cherta) there was a video examination protocol – a standard document where an investigator watches a video and describes what is in it. This was a recording where Kotov is exiting a passage at Kitay-Gorod and within 38 seconds walks a certain number of meters deep into the square near the Plevna Chapel, after which the police run up to him and grab him. And this video, either filmed by some streamer or having gotten into the media or onto YouTube, was attached to the case.

The investigator wrote in the protocol: at such and such second the person is just walking, he is not touching anyone, is not doing anything wrong, is not violating anything, is looking at the ground. At such and such second, the police rush him, they detain him. This protocol was in the case, and we referred to it as evidence of Kotov’s innocence: look, he was seized without any reason. I am not sure that this can be called sabotage – it was an honestly done job. But from that description it clearly followed that Kotov did nothing wrong... Incidentally, that investigator left immediately after the Kotov case.

And just the other day, another investigator in the Kotov case wrote to me that he had resigned. Said he wanted to be a lawyer. That in itself does not say anything, but I would like to believe that he will be an honest lawyer, and the specific experience of being involved in an overtly political case will have affected him in the right way.

Today, I again asked one of the investigators: “What if you refused to prosecute someone you know is innocent?” He replied: “They would banish me straight away.” A lot of people say that, and they might be right.

There is a sense that now there will not be as many people coming to court as there were for the “New Greatness” case.

Many activists and people who were interested in political cases have left the country. Yet still people come to the courts. We had a hearing for Dima Ivanov (a student who ran the 48

Protestny MGU Telegram channel and was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for “fakes about the army” – Cherta), and the bailiffs had to open the doors, as the hall could not hold the number of people, and put several rows of benches in the hallway.

This is the first time that they did that in my experience. Many words of gratitude were said to the bailiffs, by the way. I hope they felt they did something good. For the next hearing, a stream was organized in the next room.

Ilya Yashin, Maria Eismont's client, was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for allegedly spreading “disinformation” about Russian atrocities in Bucha. September, 2022. Source: Twitter

How many of your clients have been sentenced in the last six months?

[Ilya] Yashin, Dima Ivanov.

How do you feel about it?

I cannot say it’s been easy. But since I have no doubt lately about what the outcome will be 49

in such cases, I just set different tasks for myself.

How do you get through it?

The main task is to make sure that your presence next to someone improves his situation as much as possible, makes his life easier, helps him to maintain contact with the outside world.

For example, I now have a client, a girl from Ukraine, accused under the terrorism article.

They beat her, tortured her with electric shocks, then kept her in a basement – they waited for the marks to disappear. Then they sent her to Moscow, along the way telling her that her family had disowned her. Even before I got on the case, I contacted her family, who, of course, had not disowned her and were actively looking for her. I found out her sizes for clothes, shoes, underwear. And I thought: “What would I like to receive if I were sitting alone in prison in another country after a month in a basement?” And I went to buy her pads, a comb, cream, bras, underpants, coffee, tea, sweets, T-shirts, a roomy sweater, slippers. I shopped as if for myself. I sent the package to her.

We met later. I entered the case as her defender, and she was brought to me for a meeting in the interrogation room – in the same sweater that I had sent her. And she confessed: “When I received the package, I burst into tears. Because I realized that someone knew where I am. That someone is thinking about me. And these things – it was exactly what I needed.” At that moment, I was proud of myself.

There is a sense that currently it is useless to defend the rights of the repressed and political prisoners. That nothing can be changed. If that is so, why is it needed?

In every case, you can still improve a person’s life somehow, alleviate the horror in which he finds himself.

When you start a criminal “political” case, getting an acquittal is not your real task. Sure, there are examples of cases being called off – for example, several people were released in the so-called Moscow case. But that is rare. You still cannot seriously hope for that, as you 50

understand what you are dealing with.

For example, I had the case terminated against Kostya Jankauskas for “discrediting the Armed Forces” for reposting the Pope’s prayer for Mariupol. Though the judge came to the conclusion that there was no offense, I still do not at all believe that the outcome was connected solely with my involvement in the case and work on it. I have worked no less and no worse on similar cases that have not ended so well for my clients.

Most of the time, you can’t help stopping the case. You just set yourself other, more realistic goals. And you reach them. Imagine, you are the only person at all who goes to a prisoner and communicates with him without glass and a telephone receiver. You are his only connection to the outside world.

He sits there around the clock... Right now, Dima Ivanov is sitting in a cell for four, where there are six people. It’s considered a bonus that the toilet is fenced off. You come to him, bring news, discuss some business, send greetings from his friends, you just chat with him about all sorts of nonsense. And then you are getting ready to leave, and he asks: “When are you coming again?” He doesn’t ask, “when will I be released?” Instead, he asks: “When will you visit me next time?” It means that it is important for him that I come.

I often hear: “When will you come again?” It means that the fact that you come to them is already enough to somehow brighten up their day-to-day existence.

For example, I have a client named Valery Golubkin, a 70-year-old professor, PhD, accused of treason. It is a secret case, so, unfortunately, I cannot talk about it, but just believe me: he did not give up any state secrets, all the commissions had concluded that the information could be openly published.

He is very loyal to the state, a Soviet man, a true patriot of the country and of Russian science. And now he has been accused of treason and faces 12 to 20 years. And there is no doubt that since they chose to arrest him, they will continue to extend the arrest – with that article, everyone is arrested, the FSB is running the case. In fact, there is no judicial control over the legality of the measure of restraint, and every two months he just has a seemingly 51

meaningless trial to extend the arrest.

And every time we write an appeal against the extension. But it is only at first glance that the trial seems meaningless and that it is pointless to appeal against the arrest. That’s because his relatives come to the court. The case is secret, but they are allowed to hear the decision.

They can see him for all of 15 minutes. And if the judge is kind, then they will be let in as soon as the judge retires to the deliberation room to make a decision – and it will then be 30 or 40 minutes. They will be able to sit and look at him, wave to him – because, as a rule, the escort will say that you can’t talk. If the escort is very kind, then he might ignore when they ask: “How is your health, dear?” And he will answer: “Everything is fine, I am very glad to see you.”

And we always appeal the extension of the arrest. Always. Not because I hope that the court will accept the arguments of the appeal. But because he will be brought to the hearing of the appeal. Just about the only plus of these secret cases is that there are no video links – they are worried a terrible secret will leak. So, the person is brought, and relatives can come.

And my task is to say every time in the court: “And one more thing: relatives are sitting out in the hallway, and I ask the judge, when he retires to the deliberation room... Obviously, the case is secret, but since only the basics of the case and resolution will be announced, I ask you to allow the relatives in for the decision.” I say this for the record. And so far, thank God, the judges in the vast majority of cases consent. And we run out for the relatives, we tell them: “You can come in.” They come in and look at him for 30 minutes. It is very important for them.

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