Russian writer and journalist Niko Farabyov said that President Vladimir Putin is a Russian citizen, but not all Russians are Putin and do not want the current war in Ukraine.
"Even if we win, we will lose."
In an article for the British newspaper, The Independent, Varubyov stated that he was still shocked, after he saw on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in St. Petersburg, Russian citizens, including a mother carrying a baby and a woman who survived the siege of Leningrad, chanting. Slogans against the Ukrainian war, such as "No to war!"
and "Shame on you!"
and “Ukraine is not our enemy!”, while riot police rushed in and kidnapped some of them at random and drove them away in buses.
"I thought Putin was going to Ukraine for a while and maybe just sending troops to besiege rebel areas that look hostile, and last month I've been talking to Ukrainian experts, refugees, politicians, defense officials, mercenaries and Russian neo-Nazis, almost none of them believed an actual invasion was on the table," he said. paper".
The writer emphasized that he believed that the logic of trying to intimidate Ukraine into staying out of NATO could be followed whether the Russians agreed to it or not, and not even the Ukrainians believed that Putin was about to invade their country until the missiles started raining on Kyiv, “I wasn’t I think he'll do it, but now all the speculation is off."
He added that he cannot know exactly how many Russians share his view, but most of his friends are shocked, and the latest opinion polls conducted by the Russian "Levada" polling center showed that more than half of Russians still blame the United States for the crisis, but This was before the bombs began falling on Ukrainian cities, and it does not, in any way, translate into a desire to destroy a country where many Russians have friends and relatives.
bloody takeover
The writer says that before the start of the military operation, about half of the Russians believed that the crisis was a mistake of NATO and America, while only 14% of them blamed Ukraine, and it would be interesting to know the true status of these numbers now, and it would take an extraordinary mental effort to convince ourselves that What happened was really the right move to do.
The story of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was different - the writer adds - and most Russians supported the bloody takeover of the peninsula, and my thoughts personally were "Well, it's Russian land anyway, and whether the referendum is rigged or not, the locals still want Join us, but throwing bombs on our relatives in Kyiv is another matter."