Monday, Mar 14, 2022 • 23min
How Russians See the War in Ukraine
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Russians and Ukrainians are deeply connected. Millions of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia. Many have lived in the country.
But Moscow has taken steps to shield its people from open information about the war, even as its bombing campaign intensifies.
When Ukrainians try to explain the dire situation to family members in Russia, they are often met with denial, resistance, and a kind of refusal to believe.
Guest: Valerie Hopkins, a correspondent for The New York Times, currently in Ukraine.
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Valerie Hopkins
Sabrina Tavernise
Misha
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Sabrina Tavernise
00:30
From the
New York Times
, I'm Sabrina Tavernise
. This is The Daily
.Share
00:43
As
Russia
steps up its bombing campaign against Ukrainian
cities, it's also waging another battle over the truth about the war
. My colleague, Valerie Hopkins, on why so many people in Russia
are in denial about what is happening even as it wrecks the lives of their own family members in Ukraine
.Share
01:09
It's Monday, March 14th.
Share
01:23
Valerie, you've been reporting on
the war in
Ukraine
since the beginning. And you've been hearing stories again and again of this pretty shocking misinformation campaign coming from Russia
. Can you describe what you've been hearing and seeing?Share
Valerie Hopkins
01:39
You know, I've been talking to a lot of people here in
Ukraine
. First when I was in Kyiv
and then on the road and a lot of them have pretty shocking stories about their relatives in Russia
. You know, Ukraine
and Russia
are really well connected, millions of Ukrainians
have relatives in Russia
, some of them used to live there. But now, as some of Ukraine's
cities are being bombed, as millions of people are being forced to flee, people are trying to tell their relatives in Russia
what's going on. And they are being met with denial, resistance and kind of a refusal to believe what their family members, their blood relatives, are telling them. And one person whose story really stuck out to me was this guy, Misha Katsurin.Share
02:25
Hi, yes. Thank you. Misha is 33 years old. He lives with his wife and kids in
Kyiv
and actually owns a really trendy chain of Asian restaurants.Share
Misha
02:37
Right now, of course, all my restaurants are closed.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
02:40
And he said the fourth morning of
the war
.Share
Misha
02:43
I realized that father still didn't call me, like any time.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
02:48
He woke up and realized that he hadn't heard from his dad, at all, since
the war
started.Share
Misha
02:53
And I thought maybe he doesn't know what's going on here.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
02:56
His father lives in
Russia
in a city called Nizhny Novgorod
.Share
Misha
02:60
So I called him because that was strange. There is a war, I'm his son and he doesn't call me.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
03:05
So he gave his dad a call and told him what was going on.
Share
Misha
03:08
I tried to tell him how is it going here in
Kyiv
with my family. That Russia
started bombing us, that Russia
started the invasion and that I'm trying to evacuate my children, my wife, my family. Everything is extremely scary and like that's real war.Share
Valerie Hopkins
03:29
But he said his father had a really different version of events and didn't really believe him
Share
Misha
03:34
And he started to interrupt me, no, no, no, no, stop. Everything is like this. And he started to tell me how the things in my country are going on.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
03:44
He said his father basically said, no, no, no, and that he denied what Misha was telling him that he sees with his own eyes.
Share
Misha
03:51
So he told me that look, everything is going like this. So the Nazis, they took the government, the Nazis, the
Ukrainian
Nazis and they are now control...Share
Valerie Hopkins
04:06
In anyways, he said the government there, they're all Nazis.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
04:11
So Valerie, I'm going to stop for a second on this Nazi reference because it keeps coming up. This is an idea that
Russian President
Vladimir Putin
has often repeated right, but why is he doing that?Share
Valerie Hopkins
04:24
I mean it doesn't really make sense. But for
Putin,
it's this weird multilayered argument. He is trying to piggyback on the proud legacy of the Soviet
defeat of the Nazis in World War II
. And he also cannot really deal with the fact that Ukraine
wants to have a separate country and a separate identity from Russia
30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union
.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
04:53
Right.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
04:53
And
Putin
sort of sees this Ukrainian
rejection of Russia
which has only gotten stronger since Russia
invaded Crimea
and now gotten even stronger. He sees all of this as nationalism and that nationalism, he kind of immediately starts to equate with Nazism
in order to get support for this invasion.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
05:14
So essentially when he says this, he's trying to paint
Ukrainians
as crazy nationalists.Share
Valerie Hopkins
05:20
Yeah. And I mean he's actually used those words to refer to
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
, who's actually Jewish and also a native Russian speaker. President Putin
has referred to him, and the people around him, as quote, "Drug-addled Nazis" on Russian TV even though this is just a completely outlandish intentional distortion of the truth.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
05:48
So, Misha's dad is getting this idea from
Putin's
messaging, which is carried by Russian television. What else did Misha dad say that he believes about the war In
Ukraine
?Share
Valerie Hopkins
06:01
Well, he certainly doesn't think a full-scale War is actually happening.
Share
Misha
06:05
He told me that soldiers, they're helping people, they give them warm cloths and food.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
06:11
Misha's dad thinks it's essentially a rescue operation conducted by the Russian military.
Share
Misha
06:15
And now, they try to save you. They will not hit civilian people, they will hit some military objects and try to save you.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
06:24
And not only that, he believes that Russian soldiers are liberating
Ukrainians
from this repressive Nazi government and that the majority of the people want them there.Share
Misha
06:35
I told him, no father, look, I am here right now and I see it with my eyes, so look how it's going on in reality.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
06:43
So it's pretty unbelievable that a father is denying his own son's reality, but how pervasive is this? Is this most Russians view of
the war
right now?Share
Valerie Hopkins
06:56
So we actually have seen some pretty significant street protests in
Russia
. Mostly in large cities since the invasion started actually, more than in Russia's
recent history. These people are out in the streets chanting no to war, even though they know that they will likely be taken away by the police and detained.Share
07:22
But we've also seen reports from Russian cities, including one done by this independent media outlet, Nastoyashcheye Vremya, or Current Time, which went out and spoke to Russian citizens and showed them pictures of
the war in
Ukraine.
Share
07:41
And their responses were, "no, that's not happening. These photos are fake."
Share
07:52
"Ukraine
was preparing for an attack on Russia
. I'm absolutely convinced of that," and-Share
07:60
"And I'm for
Putin
." They're essentially repeating what they've been hearing from Putin
and from talk show hosts on state TV. So, you know, it's really hard to get an accurate picture of public sentiment in Russia
. For a pollster now, just asking that question could land them in jail or shut their organization down. But what this video and what my reporting suggests is that this essential, complete denial of what's happening in Ukraine
is actually pretty common in Russia
.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
08:41
Valerie, what did you think as you were watching these men on the street interviews? What was going through your mind?
Share
Valerie Hopkins
08:49
I was really sad, but I guess I wasn't so surprised. I mean, this is a product of, of years and years of clamping down on free press and increasingly escalating rhetoric in media demonizing the other and slowly building the case for something exactly like this. I think I was most shocked actually when there was a guy who literally looked into the camera, looked at the photos and said,
"Russia's
not bombing Kyiv
." It's like this alternate reality for so many people. And it's fascinating for me to try and understand why and how that can be.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
09:34
We'll be right back.
Share
Break
Sabrina Tavernise
11:08
So, Valerie, we're talking about Russians who don't believe what's happening to their own relatives, who don't believe and don't want to look at these photographs of bombings in
Ukrainian
cities. And I think that this leads us to the question of why? What do you think it has to do with?Share
Valerie Hopkins
11:28
Well, I think it has a lot to do with
Vladimir Putin
and Russians relationship to him. Putin
came to power at this really critical time for Russia
In 2000, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union
, and in the intervening period, there was just this total economic upheaval. You know, people knew what to expect in the Soviet
period, even if they didn't love it. And now there was just this period of total uncertainty.Share
11:59
Anger is building in
Russia
, among people with nothing else to lose. They face a winter of empty bellies, infrequent heating and nothing to hope for but spring.Share
Valerie Hopkins
12:12
Prices skyrocketed and people just couldn't afford basic necessities
Share
12:16
For the fifth day in a row, panicky Russians tried to withdraw their savings from banks while the country's financial system appeared to teeter on the brink of collapse.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
12:26
Half of the economy disappeared.
Share
12:28
These Arctic coal miners took the mine director hostage after enduring more than six months without pay.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
12:35
People were living in lawlessness.
Share
12:37
One local leader accusing
Moscow
politicians of behaving in a way that humiliates the Russian people.Share
Valerie Hopkins
12:43
There was a lack of trust in the government.
Share
12:45
And many people, they don't believe in the ideals which existed in the former
Soviet Union
. And the new ideals hadn't been invented for them.Share
Valerie Hopkins
12:53
And there was also this really major loss of national pride that I think a lot of people discount.
Share
13:02
They don't believe in their future.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
13:04
So I think that many people, especially in the west, saw this moment as
Russia's
chance to create democratic institutions.Share
13:12
To live in
Moscow
today is to watch the soul of a city die.Share
Valerie Hopkins
13:16
But many Russians associated this period in the 90s with instability, economic fear and this rampant capitalism that didn't really help them.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
13:32
Right. I remember that time because I was there then. I started in 1994 in
Russia
, and I remember we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union
as you know, a chance to be free, a wonderful thing. And I think that by the end of the 1990s, many Russians had experienced it as a tragedy.Share
Valerie Hopkins
13:50
Yeah, I think we have to recognize that that wasn't people's priority back then. It was putting food on the table and not getting mugged by hooligans in the street and being able to trust the police and the law enforcement and the institutions again. And through all of this, the personal and national shame and difficulty-
Share
14:11
In
Russia
today, the clear winner of the Russian presidential election
, Vladimir Putin
began to establish the Putin-era
Share
Valerie Hopkins
14:17
Into that situation walks
Vladimir V. Putin
.Share
14:26
Vladimir Putin
. The career spy talks about establishing what he calls a dictatorship of the law, fight corrupt bureaucrats and strengthen the central government.Share
Valerie Hopkins
14:37
Promising to take control and just promising stability, which is what people craved the most.
Share
14:43
15 years after the fall of the
Soviet Union
, Moscow
is now a 24-hour town.Share
Valerie Hopkins
14:49
The economy started to stabilize and a middle class actually emerged that was substantially better off in the years after
Putin
came to power.Share
14:57
The streets pulse with the kind of big money that was once considered a capitalist abomination. It's largely opportunistic wealth that
Russia
has enjoyed since the country's oil started selling on global markets for $45 a barrel.Share
Valerie Hopkins
15:12
He got massively lucky with oil prices and you know, that sort of allowed the standard of living to rise and cemented the trust that, you know, many ordinary Russians were living better under
Putin
than they ever had before.Share
15:26
President Putin
today, criticized the way many private businessmen, known as oligarchs, had bought state properties at bargain prices after the breakup of the Soviet Union
.Share
Valerie Hopkins
15:38
They appreciated him as a strong guy who was promising to clamp down on oligarchs.
Share
15:46
You know very well what privatization was like in the early 1990s at that time, some market participants got multi-billion-dollar state assets using different tricks-
Share
Valerie Hopkins
15:54
And
Putin
continues to exert ever more control over Russian society.Share
15:59
The Kremlin
controls the most powerful news broadcasts on the three main television networks.Share
Valerie Hopkins
16:04
He starts to bring the national media to hell to make sure that things that he doesn't like, or criticism of him, don't appear in the media.
Share
16:15
Russia's
only independent media owner was formally charged today with embezzling state funds. His media outlets are known for criticizing the government.Share
Valerie Hopkins
16:24
And while some people were concerned more or less from the beginning of his rise, the majority of the people really accepted it.
Share
16:32
Vladimir Putin
is popular at home because of the economy based on energy.Share
16:37
Vladimir Putin
remains easily the most popular politician across this vast country.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
16:47
Right. I mean, this is the social contract that
Putin
made. He said to the Russian people, I'm going to bring you order, I'm going to crack down on the oligarchs, I'm going to make it so that your life is stable, your salary is reliable. But at the same time, you're not going to mess with politics and you're gonna be okay with a media that is not free.Share
Valerie Hopkins
17:10
Exactly. And while
Putin
largely consolidated his power over the last two decades, he did leave some pockets, you know, mostly online media, some radio spaces where people who didn't support the government who were free in thinking and independent-minded could air their views and hear people who mostly thought like them. You know, it wasn't mainstream national news on the airwaves, but you can find it if you looked for it.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
17:41
So bring us up to
the war
Valerie. I mean, if Putin
has been doing this for years, chipping away at independent media, what's different now?Share
Valerie Hopkins
17:50
Well now it's not chipping anymore, it's a sledgehammer. He's been trying very hard to control the narrative around
the war
, which he refers to only as a quote, "special military operation."Share
18:10
That's why most Russians don't know what's really happening in
Ukraine
, The Kremlin
today-Share
Valerie Hopkins
18:14
And most of the official communications about it don't even mention the Russian military.
Share
18:21
The state censorship office has now blocked the
BBC
Russian language service. That is a huge source of independent news here.Share
Valerie Hopkins
18:27
The state orders, some of the few remaining independent media in
Russia
to stop broadcasting, including the BBC's
Russian service and the German
broadcaster, Deutsche Welle
. And then it bans Facebook
and on the same day, the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma
, approves a law forbidding the invasion from being referred to as anything besides a special military operation.Share
18:55
Simply calling it a
war
or an invasion instead of a special military operation can lead to up to 15 years behind bars.Share
Valerie Hopkins
19:03
And it essentially criminalizes independent reporting on
the war
Share
19:08
Staff at one of
Russia's
most prominent independent television stations have resigned live on air.Share
Valerie Hopkins
19:14
And because of this law, the few remaining media outlets left in
Russia
are being forced to make really hard decisions.Share
19:22
Vladimir Putin
and authorities, they just don't want free media. This voice of truth must be destroyed.Share
Valerie Hopkins
19:32
Which means that right now, there's only one version of events that Russians are seeing in their country -
Putin's
.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
19:45
This is a fundamentally different level of censorship. It's something we haven't seen since
Soviet
times.Share
Valerie Hopkins
19:52
That's right, Sabrina. And while it's not clear just how long
Putin
can sustain his attempts to seal off Russians access to information about the war
. For now, he's been able to dramatically shape their beliefs.Share
Misha
20:04
I'm not angry about my father, I'm angry about
Kremlin
. I'm angry about the Russian propaganda. I'm not angry about these people. I understand that I cannot blame them in this situation.Share
Valerie Hopkins
20:18
And that's first people like Misha, to try to convince his dad of the brutal truth of what's happening in
Ukraine
.Share
20:24
What do you think it is psychologically that it prevents him from? I mean, of course, there's this media, but you're also his son and you're telling him the truth and he doesn't want to believe it? It's too painful? It's too sad?
Share
Misha
20:38
I think he won't. I think he won't. He cannot.
Share
20:43
That's the power of this propaganda. He won't, he loves me and he's really scared and he told me that his heart is bleeding and that's very painful. And that's why we need to be more wise and we need to, like, be calm and explain and explain and explain. Three times or five times or 20 times. As more as we need.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
21:21
Valerie, thank you.
Share
Valerie Hopkins
21:25
Thank you, Sabrina.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
21:32
On Monday,
The Associated Press
reported that one of the pregnant women photographed in last week's attack by Russia
, on a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol
, has died. Her baby was delivered but died too. The attack, and Russia's
response to it, is an example of Russia
presenting an alternate reality in the face of facts about the war
. After the bombing, Russia's
Defense Ministry denied having done it, accusing Ukraine
of a quote staged provocation. Then Russia
began to criticize the reaction with its Foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov
, calling the international response to the bombing quote, "pathetic" and that global public opinion had been quote, "manipulated."Share
22:23
It's not the first time we see pathetic outcries concerning the so called atrocities. You can draw your own conclusions as to how the public opinion is manipulated worldwide.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
22:39
Finally,
Russia's
embassy in London tweeted photographs of one of the women and claimed that she was a crisis actor who had played several of the women photographed in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Twitter eventually removed the post. We'll be right back.Share
Break
Sabrina Tavernise
23:39
Here's what else you need to know today.
Share
23:41
On Sunday,
Russia
attacked a Ukrainian
military base 12 miles from Ukraine's
border with Poland
, bringing the war dangerously close to NATO's
doorstep. The target was a base used to train foreign fighters who flocked to Ukraine
to help defend the country against Russia
. The missile attack killed at least 35 people and wounded at least 134.Share
24:06
Meanwhile, the death count has risen sharply in the city of
Mariupol
, which has been encircled and bombed by Russian troops and has been without power, water or phone connection for more than 10 days. So far, city officials said, the Russian attacks have killed 2,187 residents.Share
24:28
Finally, Russian forces have kidnapped a second
Ukrainian
mayor in what appears to be a strategy of removing local officials and replacing them with Russian puppets. The abduction of the mayor from the town of Dniprorudne follows the dramatic capture of the mayor of Mariupol, who was reportedly taken from a government building with a bag over his head. In a video message, the mayor's replacement, a Russian appointee instructed the residents of Mariupol to adjust to quote, "the new reality," and to end their resistance to Russian occupation.Share
25:11
Today's episode was produced by Asthaa Chaturvedi, Diana Nguyen and Kaitlin Roberts, with help from Rob Szypko and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Marc Georges and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Marion Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
Share
25:40
That's it for The Daily. I'm
Sabrina Tavernise
. See you tomorrow. Okay.Share
Break
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Sabrina Tavernise
Valerie Hopkins
Misha