There are ten major train stations in Moscow.

They are all named after cities to which you can go from them: from Leningrad station to Saint Petersburg, from Kazan to Kazan, from Kursk to Kursk.

Only from the Kiev railway station there have been no trains to Kiev for a good two years.

Officially because of the pandemic.

Catherine Wagner

Business correspondent for Russia and the CIS based in Moscow.

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This is also confirmed by Olga, who is sitting at an information desk in the basement of the station.

Olga is a well-groomed, carefully made-up woman in her late forties.

She wears a chic red uniform, the matching fabric mask hangs casually under her chin.

At the beginning of the conversation, Olga is very friendly.

She points to the Internet where you can find buses to Kiev.

She is also ready to talk about the conflict with the neighboring country.

When asked why Russia sent so many troops to the Ukrainian borders, she replies politely, almost forgivingly: "Everyone tries to make their property a little bigger.

That's purely human, you see that everywhere.

For example at the dacha, when the neighbor moves the fence.” But she doesn't mean Russia.

America is spreading there: "Putin only defends what belongs to us."

"If it's enough, it's enough"

Soon Olga talks herself into a rage.

Questions are no longer necessary.

"If you smack Russia in the face, then we give back well," she says.

"Russians are patient for a long time, but when it's enough, it's enough." The sentences sound like they come from state television, which has been broadcasting exactly such messages for years.

"I don't understand why the West constantly interferes in our affairs."

For her, the West is now the person standing in front of her: "If you like it with your minorities, boys with boys and girls with girls, then I don't care.

But we don't need this here.” When she's finished, Olga suddenly becomes the pleasant person she was at the beginning: Actually, she's not supposed to talk about such things at work, she says with a smile, and says goodbye too best wishes.

Many Russians have little chance of escaping the ubiquitous propaganda.

It's a kind of peer pressure, in families, at work: State television is always on the sidelines.

Even if you don't look, something sticks.

A Russian nanny on the playground, who claims to almost never watch TV, asks: Is it possible that NATO thought up the troop deployment?

NATO thought it up, they say

The propaganda broadcasts seem like parodies to outsiders, as what is being disseminated is so outlandishly twisted.

But they are elaborately produced and professionally made.

Expensively dressed moderators speak in calm tones about Ukrainian "Nazis" planning attacks on Russians in Donbass, where "peaceful citizens are being tortured and killed."

Gennady hasn't had a television for a long time.

He calls it the "zombie box" because it was full of lies.

He gets his information from the internet.

Nevertheless, he is convinced that America is responsible for all the chaos in the world.

Gennady is sixty years old and a security guard at the Kiev railway station.

He makes sure all travelers put their bags on the belt before going through the metal detector.

Gennady wears a dark blue, somewhat worn uniform that stretches over his stomach, and a kepi.

He actually lives near Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border.

Because he can't find work there, he keeps coming back to Moscow for a few weeks "on shift".