When I spoke to K. two weeks ago, she had just fled Russia with her three children. She did not want me to use her name or disclose her location because of fear of reprisals against her family still in Russia. Here is some of what she had to say:
I am a citizen of the Russian Federation. I live in a big city in the middle of Russia. I have three children and I work as a freelance translator. I have many Ukrainian colleagues and friends. This situation is very personal for me.
In February of this year, we started to realize that war was being discussed. Then all of a sudden, we woke up one morning and found we have a war with Ukraine. It was unimaginable.
Russia is so big and there are so many people, it’s hard to say what the general opinion is. My impression was that most people were against war. Almost half the people in Russia have relatives and connections in Ukraine.
People were saying openly that they were against it, that they don’t see how this can be happening. And it was like that for two or three days. And then, all of a sudden, the propaganda began working. And day after day, I saw the opinion changing.
Then people started to say – well, it’s not so obvious who’s at fault here, and maybe the president knows what he’s doing, and maybe this is the right thing to do, and so on. Public opinion changed rapidly. In a very short period of time, the majority was actually supporting the war. I think that blow was even more severe than the beginning of the war itself.
For those of us speaking out, our reality changed rapidly. We are now prohibited from speaking about the war. It’s now against the law to even say ‘net voyne‘ – no to war. Just these two words are against the law. It’s against the law to use the word war itself; the law now prescribes using the words special military operation.
It’s against the law to support Ukrainians in their fight. It’s against the law to post any information that might put the army of the Russian Federation in a bad light. So now everyone who is opposed to the war – and that’s many people, a huge number of my friends and colleagues – they are all the same as myself . . . breaking the law.
We are outsiders now. We cannot speak about the war. We cannot post anything about the war. We had to delete all such material from our Facebook profiles, from Instagram, from everywhere, because we are at risk of spending the next 15 years in jail. We all have children, we all have something to lose.
Facebook was a huge resource of unbiased information for us in Russia. It’s not the same as what you get on state TV. Facebook is now closed, Instagram is now closed. All the blogs are closed. Telegram channels are closing. So it’s just like 1937 in Russia. It’s amazing to me how that could have happened within 10 days. If someone had told me this was possible, I would say that this person is crazy, that it’s not possible. I would say it takes years to bring a huge country to a level like that. But it took 10 days.
Anyone who does not support the absolute power of the current president is called liberal and considered to be an outsider. For those of us who oppose the war, it’s natural to stick together. And after years of open communication on Facebook and social media, the civil rights movement in Russia was quite strong. Many of us have been vocal about all kinds of causes – helping political prisoners, helping homeless people, helping cancer patients . . . animal and human and environmental rights.
We have become a huge community of people united by common causes. We’ve enjoyed this practice of doing things together. But when everything was shut down for us, well, our method of communicating and sticking together, it’s more complicated every day. You start looking at each word, knowing that someone can put you in prison for saying it. It’s a lot more difficult. It’s scary.
My kids are shocked. They’re scared. They don’t understand what’s going on. The government is trying its best to use propaganda in schools as well. Teachers receive government documents that state exactly what you should be saying to kids of this or that age. So then teachers are just teaching propaganda. But they have to do it. Those who refuse get fired.
The brainwashing and the propaganda is like a tumor, like a cancer, eating the organism of the country. I just woke up one day and thought I cannot even breathe anymore. It was too suffocating. I don’t see how I can fit in in Russia anymore.
I used to be an optimist. All my life. My friends would say that I’m a crazy optimist. Unfortunately, I don’t see the light at the end of this tunnel. I know that it’s going to end someday, only because it cannot last forever. But right now the night is extremely dark. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I even had to make an effort to breathe.
I think about my children who will have to live with knowing that we were part of an unlawful regime, a regime that’s actually killing people and trying to conquer the neighboring sovereign country. We had high hopes for this generation who did not know anything about the Soviet Union. But now they’re back to where our grandparents were.
I think about what Germany had to go through to become a civilized country after Hitler. They had to repent for a very long time. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation never fully condemned Stalin. To this day, there has always been talk about Stalin being a hero because he won the war.
I want the world to know that Russia is not Putin. There are lots of people who are so strongly opposed to everything he’s doing and especially to this disgraceful and shameful war. And there is absolutely nothing that we can do because the concept of protest simply doesn’t work here. It’s a totalitarian state.
If a million people go out into a square and say they’re against anything, they will just be shot dead, and things will continue as they were. We’re nothing against the tanks. We cannot do anything because the Russian state is a huge machine that will not listen to our voices. Russia will say – well, we have lots of space. We have lots of prisons. We can fill them up.
But we do exist, and we are many, I just want the world to know that.
K. has now reunited with her husband who also managed to leave Russia. They do not know what their future is – where they will go or how they will support themselves. They just know that as Russians who openly oppose the war, they cannot return – certainly not now, probably not ever. She had this to add:
Much has changed since we last talked. I’m even surprised to read that I said we are outsiders in Russia; because now we are enemies and betrayers, guilty of high treason. And with the death penalty being revived, the idea of going back is not tempting at all.
Raw Intel with Lindsay Moran 