Warning: The photo gallery in this story contains graphics.
Grigory Yudin says it is “devastating” – but also understandable – that more Russians are not speaking out against the war in Ukraine.
While Ukraine and its allies have condemned Russia’s invasion, the Kremlin has called it a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbor and expel leaders it calls neo-Nazis.
Russians who speak openly do so at great personal risk. In the first few weeks after the initial invasion, thousands of Russians were arrested at anti-war demonstrations. A lot since then other dissidents lost their jobs or were forced to flee.
Yudin, a sociologist and political scientist at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, was among those arrested to protest the invasion of Ukraine.
He is still in Russia and still talking. Here is part of his conversation with the guest host As It Happens Dave Seglin.
How difficult is it to be in Moscow right now and to speak out against this war?
The main thing, I guess, is that it is incredibly difficult to live with the fact that my country, this Russia, is involved in this terrible war of aggression. This is actually the main challenge. The rest I think is less important.
But the reason I think it still makes sense to speak from Moscow is simply to give an understanding of what threat the whole planet is facing right now. And this is something that can probably be best seen by Moscow and the Russians.
You described this as the “most senseless” war in it [Russian] history. Now how many Russians agree with you?
The key thing to understand about Russians is that Russians are generally depoliticized, which means they are not interested in politics. They despised politics and were taught to stay away from politics.
What is the story, given what we see in these images, especially this evidence of civil atrocitiesoutside places like Bucha?
You have to understand that the Russian media creates a completely different picture. People in Russia live in a completely different universe, if, of course, they do not want to find an alternative picture. And this is not something you would be tempted to do.
Just imagine that you are beginning to believe in these atrocities, that your army has committed these atrocities, like what we saw in Bucha. What would be your reaction? How can you live with that? What can be done to alleviate this?
The Russians are absolutely certain that there is nothing they can do to change the course of events. They were taught to protest [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is as pointless as protesting the rain.
How the Russians make sense of what is happening in Bucha [and] in Mariupol, where there was a bombing of the theater [and] maternity hospital?
The official story does the work of reconciliation. He goes on to explain why what is happening now is normal; why this is just a special military operation and not a war; why it is justified; why it will end very quickly and successfully. It will provide and protect both Russians and Ukrainians. And all the victims, all the victims, of course, were inflicted by the Ukrainians themselves.
So this is a story that actually helps you deal with this situation, helps you get on with your daily life.
Sergei Lakhovsky, 26, hugs 51-year-old Lyudmila Verginska as they mourn their mutual friend Igor Litvinenko, who locals say was killed by Russian soldiers. (Zohra Benzema / Reuters)
Obviously, you may not share this opinion. So I wonder where are the dissidents in Russia?
There are actually not so few dissenters. There are many.
At a time when opinion polls still made sense – they no longer do, of course, because in this situation it is completely unrealistic to expect people to express their disagreement; it is formally criminalized; this is illegal – but in the early stages of this war we had up to 20 to 25 percent of those who were strongly against this war. And I don’t think the figure is lower.
What [can these] people do? I mean, we saw them on the streets in the early days of the war, and that actually helped the world understand that there are many, many dissidents in the country.
[At this point], doing this probably doesn’t make much sense. So there is a lot of discussion about what can be done in the current situation. And this is a difficult question.
Just to understand how difficult it is, imagine how many Germans and what would be the way for the Germans to protest against the special military operation in Poland in 1939? And this will give you an idea of how things are here in Russia at the moment.
Help us understand how the Russians view economic sanctions. I want to say that here in Canada, at least we have heard that global economic sanctions against Russia would be devastating.
At this point, they definitely aren’t.
There are different types of sanctions. Some of them are aimed at the Russian economy as a whole, but some of them are coming [for] transnational corporations. And perhaps sanctions of the first kind are more likely to be felt late, while sanctions of the second kind can be felt immediately.
These transnational corporations are, in fact … announcing that they are leaving Russia. But this is not really the case. They are not leaving. If you go to any mall in Russia, you will find about 30% of the stores closed and you will find the message “We will reopen very soon”, which contributes to the shared understanding that this will end very soon, probably in a few months.
Critics of this war are leaving Russia. The media is closing. How dangerous is it for you to keep talking?
Many of my people are silent about this. Well, they probably have reasons to do so. They probably taught them to do it. There must be an explanation for this.
However, the fact that my government is doing this and a significant number of people are tacitly supporting it is actually devastating to me.
So as long as I can do anything to stop it, as long as I can tell the audience outside of Russia how dangerous it is, I think it deserves to be continued.
Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Kevin Robertson. Questions and answers were edited for length and clarity.
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