Moscow nights show few signs of a nation at war.
Cheerful crowds packed restaurants and bars in the Sretenka neighborhood on a recent Saturday night, guarded by officers identified as “tourist police.” Nearby, a top-hatted guide led about 40 tourists to a 300-year-old church.
There’s only the occasional “Z,” the symbol for Russia’s “special military operation,” as the invasion of Ukraine is officially known, seen on a building or in a shuttered shop abandoned by a Western retailer. A poster of a stern-faced soldier, with the slogan “Glory to Russia’s heroes,” is a reminder that the conflict has dragged on for a year.
Western stores are gone, but customers can still buy their products, or imitations sold under a Russian name or brand.
Painful and painful changes in Russian life require more effort to see.
A broad government crackdown has silenced dissent, with political opponents jailed or fleeing abroad. Families have been torn apart by the first mobilization of reservists since World War II. State television spews hatred against the West and reassuring messages that much of the world is still with Russia.
And deaths on the battlefield in Russia number in the thousands.
CRUSHING THE CRITICS
“In fact, the war has ruined many lives, including ours,” Sophia Subbotina of St. Petersburg told The Associated Press.
Twice a week he visits a detention center to bring food and medicine to his partner, Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician with serious health problems. Skochilenko was arrested in April for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans.
She is accused of spreading false information about the armed forces, one of President Vladimir Putin’s new laws that effectively criminalizes public expression against the war. The repression has been immediate, ruthless and unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia.
The media can’t call it a “war,” and protesters who use that word on banners receive hefty fines. Most of those who took to the streets were quickly arrested. The rallies failed.
Independent news sites were blocked, as were Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. A major radio station was taken off the air. The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, run by 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, has lost its license.
Skochilenko, who says she is not an activist but simply someone horrified by the war, faces up to 10 years in prison.
Prominent Putin critics have left Russia or been arrested: Ilya Yashin received 8½ years, Vladimir Kara-Murza is jailed awaiting trial, and Alexei Navalny remains in prison.
Artists who opposed the war quickly lost their jobs, and plays and concerts were cancelled.
“The fact that Putin has succeeded in intimidating a significant part of our society is hard to deny,” Yashin told the AP from jail last year.
PUSHING THE GOVERNMENT LINE
The purge of critics was followed by a riot of propaganda. State television suspended some entertainment programs and expanded news and political programs to push the narrative that Russia was ridding Ukraine of the Nazis, a false claim that Putin used as a pretext for the invasion. Or that NATO acts through puppets in kyiv but that Moscow will prevail.
“A new structure of the world is emerging before our eyes,” host Dmitry Kiselev proclaimed in a December tirade on his weekly show. “The planet is getting rid of Western leadership. Most of humanity is with us.”
Such messages work well in Russia, says Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, the country’s leading independent pollster: “The idea that NATO wants to ruin Russia or at least weaken it…has been commonplace for three-quarters of parts (of respondents) for many years.”
The Kremlin is pushing its narrative on the young. Schoolchildren were told to write letters to soldiers, and some schools designated “A Hero Desk” for graduates fighting in Ukraine.
In September, schools added a theme loosely translated as “Conversations About Important Things.” Lesson plans for students in grades eight through 11 seen by AP describe Russia’s “special mission” to build a “multipolar world order.”
At least one teacher who refused to teach the lessons was fired. Although not required, some parents whose children skip them face pressure from administrators or even the police.
A fifth-grader was accused of having a Ukraine-themed photo on social media and asking her classmates if they supported the war, and she and her mother were briefly detained after administrators complained, she said. his lawyer, Nikolai Bobrinsky. When she skipped the new lessons, authorities apparently decided to make her “an example,” she added.
SURVIVING SANCTIONS
The sanctions-hit economy beat expectations, thanks to record oil revenues of about $325 billion after the war sent energy prices soaring. The central bank stabilized the ruble’s plunge by raising interest rates, and the currency is stronger against the dollar than it was before the invasion.
McDonald’s, Ikea, Apple and others left Russia. The golden arches were replaced by Vkusno—i Tochka (“Tasty – Point”), while Starbucks became Stars Coffee, with essentially the same menus.
Visa and Mastercard stopped services, but banks switched to the local MIR system, so existing cards continued to work in the country; those traveling abroad use cash. After the European Union banned flights from Russia, airline ticket prices increased and destinations became more difficult to reach. Travel abroad is now available to a privileged minority.
Sociologists say these changes hardly bothered most Russians, whose average monthly salary in 2022 was about $900. Only about a third have an international passport.
Inflation shot up by almost 12%, but Putin announced new benefits for families with children and increased pensions and the minimum wage by 10%.
MacBooks and iPhones are still readily available, and Muscovites say restaurants stock Japanese fish, Spanish cheese and French wine.
“Yes, it costs a bit more, but there is no shortage,” said Vladimir, a resident who asked not to be named for his own safety. “If you walk through the center of the city, you have the impression that nothing is happening. Lots of people go out on weekends. There are fewer people in the cafes, but they are still there.”
Still, he admitted that the capital seems emptier and the people look sadder.
‘IN THE TRENCHES, OR WORSE’
Perhaps the biggest shock came in September, when the Kremlin mobilized 300,000 reservists. Although billed as a “partial” call-up, the announcement sparked panic across the country, as most men under 65, and some women, are formally part of the reserve.
Flights abroad sold out within hours and long lines formed at Russian border crossings. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands left the country in the following weeks.
Natalia, a medical worker, left Moscow with her boyfriend after her mother was served with a summons. Her income was cut in half and she misses her home, but they decided to give it a try for a year, said the woman, who asked that her last name and location not be disclosed for her safety.
“Between us, we are saying that once things calm down, we can go back. But it would not solve the rest. That huge snowball is rolling downhill and nothing will come back (as it was),” Natalia said.
Recruits complained about poor living conditions on the bases and a shortage of equipment. Their wives and mothers claimed they were sent to the front lines without proper training or equipment and were quickly wounded.
A woman who opposes her husband’s conscription said her family life fell apart after she suddenly had to care for her children and frail mother-in-law.
“It was difficult. I thought I would lose my mind,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because her legal case is ongoing. Her husband came home on leave with pneumonia and needs psychological care because he jumps at every loud sound, she said. .
Vasily, a 33-year-old Muscovite, has learned that the authorities tried twice this month to send a summons to a former apartment where he is officially registered. Although he isn’t sure if the call-up was to recruit him or to clear his enlistment records, especially after a September attempt to deliver the call-up papers, he doesn’t intend to find out.
“All my friends who went (to the enlistment office) to find out are now in the trenches, or worse,” added Vasily, who withheld his last name for his own safety.
Volkov, the pollster, said the prevailing sentiment among Russians is that the war is “somewhere far away, it doesn’t affect us directly.”
As invasion anxiety and mobilization came and went throughout the year, “people started to feel again that it doesn’t really affect everyone. We are out of danger. Well, thank God, we get on with our lives.’”
Some fear a new mobilization, which the Kremlin denies.
LOST LIVES
As the war bogged down in defeat and setbacks, families received the worst possible news: a loved one was killed.
For a mother, it was too much to bear.
She told the AP she became “hysterical” and “started shaking” when told her son was missing and believed dead while serving on the Moskva, the missile cruiser that sank in April. The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity at the time because she feared retaliation, said she found it hard to believe she killed him.
The army has confirmed just over 6,000 deaths, but Western estimates are in the tens of thousands. Putin promised generous compensation to the families of those killed in combat: 12 million rubles (about $160,000).
In November, he met with a dozen mothers, whom Russian media say were handpicked from supporters and Kremlin officials, telling one of them that her son’s death had not been in vain.
“With some people… it’s not clear why they die, from the vodka or something else. When they leave, it is difficult to say if they lived or not, their lives passed without warning, ”she told him. “But your son did live, do you understand? He achieved his goal ”.
