Putin’s regime has introduced a near-total censorship in Russia, and the new law about “fake news concerning military actions” imposes prison sentences on anyone writing or using the word “war”, considering that the government’s official discourse states that Ukraine’s invasion is merely a “special operation”. Nearly all independent media were labeled “foreign agents”, online publications were blocked while TV and radio stations were shut down. The new regulations also triggered a genuine exodus of foreign media outlets from Russia. Nevertheless, Russian independent journalists are still making efforts to reach their public. All they have left is the Internet, which is itself subject to certain limitations. Independent journalists write about the massive wave of people leaving the country, comparable to the mass-migration of 1917. They also continue to provide information about the “special operation” and are trying to counter the extensive propaganda aggressively promoted on all federal channels.
AS FAR AWAY FROM RUSSIA AS POSSIBLE: ISTORIES writes about Russians who leave the country due to the war
Istanbul, Tbilisi, Yerevan and Tallinn, Belgrade and Amsterdam – you run into Russian immigrants almost anywhere right now. They’ve told ISTORIES how Vladimir Putin ruined their lives in just a matter of days.
Alexander, 30, mobile apps specialist, Istanbul: “We decided to leave on February 24, as soon as I got a message from a friend in Novosibirsk early in the morning: ‘Congratulations, the war has begun’. That day I was supposed to pick a date for a complex surgery, but when I saw the message I went to the Turkish Airlines website and booked two tickets for that very day. I didn’t tell my family. I told my girlfriend war had started and that we’re leaving. She understood right away and packed her things. I work for a big company. My boss allowed me to telework. I told her I didn’t want to be called up. […]
I have a lot of friends who’re all gone now. People are fleeing Russia, some companies have evacuated all their employees. There are special chatrooms for people helping each other. I also try to help in every way I can, and I keep an updated list of all the banks where people can open accounts and those where they can’t”. […]
“Everything I’ve achieved is falling apart”. Maria, 43, painter and teacher, Tbilisi: “[…] Our eldest son is 17 and a half. He has psoriasis, meaning he is only partly fit for service. In times of peace this is easy to prove, but right now no one will bother asking, he will just be taken away to serve as cannon fodder. Of course we panicked. My husband’s grandmother lives in a Kyiv suburb. She told us she’s staying in her house until it’s all over. His cousin took refuge in the west with her family. I also have family in the Chernihiv region, they go down to their basement to hide and can hear shelling close to their home. They can’t leave, the bridge was destroyed. There’s nothing they can do right now. We’ve seen the true face of this war. I am so frightened for them”. […]
“We would laugh at the propaganda, but it actually worked”. Anton, 32, the manager of a start-up, Tbilisi. “[…] I was scared when I crossed the border, which is why I also bought a return ticket in advance. I deleted everything from my phone, I erased all videos from Ukrainian websites from my Internet history, as well as other content that might get me sanctioned. […] If this doesn’t stop, I’m never going back to Russia. I think the problem was that we couldn’t understand what ordinary Russians were thinking, [a social category] we don’t communicate much with. We would just watch TV and laugh at the propaganda, but it actually worked. Before working in IT, I was a journalist, and my colleagues and I thought about combating propaganda, of putting up a fight. We were sure that only fools would believe such nonsense. As it turned out, many Russians are fools.” […]
“WE’RE DOWN AT THE SUBWAY. THIS ISN’T THE FIRST DAY THEY’RE BOMBING US”. What the Jewish community in Ukraine has to say about ‘denazification’, one the reasons Vladimir Putin invoked to justify the invasion.
To justify the invasion in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and the entire state propaganda used the terms “denazification” and “demilitarization”, traditionally associated with post-war Germany. In Kyiv, according to Putin, a “band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” have taken control of the government, “taking the entire Ukrainian people hostage.” MEDIAZONA discussed these narratives with Jews in Ukraine.
Yosyf Zisels, the president of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities in Ukraine: “I don’t recall ever seeing a single case of hostile attitude against Jews in the last 8 years in Ukraine. I’m monitoring anti-Semitism very closely […] Ever since the Soviet era, I set up a network for analyzing and monitoring anti-Semitism. This is something no one can lie to me about, neither the Russian authorities, nor anyone else, because it’s something I’m intimately familiar with. And let me be clear: there’s no Nazism, no anti-Semitism whatsoever in Ukraine. […] 73% of voters chose a Jew to lead them, in a country that Putin wants to denazify, a nonsense that is unheard of. Yet Putin’s propaganda doesn’t care about being nonsensical. It keeps things simple. Putin speculates and appeals to the subconscious mindset of those people who still remember fascism, Nazism. He appeals to their subconscious side, not their reason and reflective side. In combat, psychologists play their part too, not just the military. Some words stir negative associations, such as Nazism, fascism, anti-Semitism, so they use them”.
“What the great Putin is saying is fascism”. Sisters Tatyana and Rita Yushkevych, Kharkiv: “We’re down at the subway. They have been bombing us for several days. Our city is multinational, our children and grandchildren were born here. Never in my entire life have I sensed Nazi attitudes. There’s no fascism here – we contribute to the Chesed Fund, we’re both Jews. What the great Putin is saying is simply fascism. He’s destroying the culture of our city. They’re attacking residential districts: hospitals, schools, our theatre, which hosts a unique organ. These are not military objectives. Now we’ve gone down to the subway. During the day they’re firing “Grad” missiles at use. The first time I heard the word ‘denazification’ was from Putin. And the bombs keep falling on everyone, Jews, Ukrainians and Russians alike”.
“This insane rhetoric about ‘denazification’ is an emulation of Hitler’s discourse”. Alexandra Somish, manager of the LvivKlezFest Festival of Jewish Culture: “A lot of Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine are fleeing to the ‘Nazi’ west, in order to save themselves from the ‘denazifiers and liberators’. Babyn Yar was attacked by ‘anti-Nazi’ fighters, with all the people who were there to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, and now the Jews who survived those horrors have taken refuge in bomb shelters.”
“IN THE 21ST CENTURY THEY’VE TURNED US INTO SLAVES TO DO THEIR BIDDING”. An eye-witness told NOVAYA GAZETA about forced mobilization in the DNR.
A young woman from Donetsk told Novaya Gazeta how all the boys she knew, her colleagues from university, family and friends, were all called up to enroll. None of them had completed the military service. Some announced they were already in Ukraine.
“Even before [the ‘special operation’], before the evacuation, they started calling up public sector employees. Those who worked for the Central Bank, teachers, professors, employees of the fiscal administration and other state institutions. Over 50% of them were men. In the case of other institutions, everyone was mobilized. At the bank, for instance, the only ones who were left behind were people behind the cash desk, whereas everyone else, including the managers, were all taken by force.
Later, during the evacuation, they also started enlisting students. They were all called up to the dean’s office to confirm they were still in Donetsk. One of the students in my class was sent to the military commissioner’s office, to confirm he was a student. They were all called up a week later and never came back. Any student trying to leave Russia together with the people who were being evacuated was not allowed to leave the DNR. We have three border checkpoints with Russia. All cars are inspected. Men aged 18-55 are taken to a conscription center. They are picked up in the street, like dogs. If a man simply goes to the store, the police will stop him and ask for his ID. If he doesn’t have his ID on him, he is taken to the local directorate of the Interior Ministry to have him ID-ed. If he has his ID on him, but without a special note from the military commissioner’s office regarding his exemption from performing military service, he is taken straight to the conscription center. All the men in the city are gone. The few men who remain stay indoors, they don’t leave their homes. No one hears of those who were taken. Their phones were confiscated. Whoever does manage to call home simply says ‘We’re alive’ and that’s it.”
[…]
“I TRUST RUSSIAN TELEVISION MORE THAN I TRUSTED MY OWN DAUGHTER OR SISTER.” MEDUZA reports on how Ukrainians are trying to tell the truth about the war to their family in Russia, but no one believes them.
Millions of Russians have relatives in Ukraine. The war has divided them. Many Russians prefer to turn a deaf ear to what their relatives are saying, to their stories about civilians being killed, residential buildings and hospitals being attacked. Meduza has talked to Ukrainians who are trying to convince their relatives in Russia that there’s a genuine war taking place in Ukraine.
“After 14 years, my family fell apart”. Maria Chumak, manager, Kharkiv: “I am from Donetsk. In 2014, I left the Russian-controlled territory, but my parents and elder sister stayed behind. All the Ukrainian TV stations have gone dark, and the only sources of information are now Russian. Now, they believe Russia cannot do anything illegal, because Russia is always telling the truth. […] They started bombing Kharkiv at 4:45. I barely managed to write to my sister that they were bombing us and we were leaving. She answered: ‘Alright’. The next day, on February 25, we got to Poland and I wrote to my parents. My sister told me what’s important is to destroy the ‘Nazis’, while the civilian population will be defended by the Russian Federation. It frightened me. So we were the Nazis now? Or are we bombed for a noble cause?
I asked her: ‘Do you really believe Russia didn’t attack us?’ She told me this was fake news. I sent her pictures, video footage I got from colleagues and friends who stayed behind in Kharkiv: people who posted videos from basements, where they are hiding from the shelling, footage of explosions caught by surveillance cameras, photos of a missile that hit a playground. I only got one answer: ‘That’s impossible, these are all fakes’”.
[…]
“We must become the alternative to TV broadcasting.” Mikhail Katsuryn, restorer, Kyiv, the initiator of the project “Father, believe me”: “[…] I told him we were alive and were looking for a safe place to stay, because we didn’t want to hide in basements with an eight-month toddler, and we were afraid to leave our little daughter at the nursery school for fear a bomb might level the place. And father told me on a calm note that this isn’t true, that we aren’t bombed, that the Nazis are behind everything, that Russia is saving us from the Nazis so they no longer marginalize the Russian-speaking population. When I reminded him I myself was a Russian speaker and that no one in Berdyansk ever oppressed me, he told me I was making things up. I told him mother was hiding in the bathroom as Berdyansk was being shelled, but that didn’t seem to convince him either. I was overwhelmed by the fact they wouldn’t believe us: I am in Kyiv, my mother and grandmother are in Berdyansk, and we can see for ourselves what is happening, but it seems our words are not good enough. Our own daughter is not enough to convince my father that Russian soldiers are not distributing food and clothes to the Ukrainians, but are bombing residential districts, that Russia is not a liberating force, but an aggressor.
I wrote about all of it on Instagram, and I noticed this is a widespread problem. A lot of Ukrainians wrote to me – the post got 135 thousand shares. I wanted to somehow solve this problem. So together with other guys working for the “Father, believe me” project, we found out there are 11 million people living in Russia who have relatives here in Ukraine. Of these, half may have Facebook and Instagram accounts. We must become the alterative to TV broadcasting. If we succeed in convincing these 11 million people, and each of them tells the truth to their family and friends, to at least 3 other people, then there will be 33 million people who know the truth. It might not be enough to stop the war. I called father again, we spoke for an hour and the ice started to break”. […]
