A newcomer to Moscow would not see in its snowy streets the specter of a new conflict in Europe. Most Russians do not believe that there will be an open war with Ukraine, but the debate over the conflict in Crimea since 2014 has returned to the front pages after several years buried in the back pages. Life continues as normal on the street, where the main concern is the impoverishment caused by an increase in inflation, although if the Russians have one thing clear, it is that the main culprits of the current tension are the United States and the enemy for several generations: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO.
Semenovskaya metro station is located in a middle-class neighborhood of Moscow.
A young man sells Russian flags in front of the exit "to earn a few bucks", as he explains with the jargon that is not studied in Russian academies.
"There will be no war", he affirms, although if there is, "NATO is guilty" -he assures-;
“Ukraine has little forces and they are giving it weapons.”
Despite defending the government's position, he does not want his name to be mentioned, like many others who are afraid to talk about politics in public.
A few meters away is Yura, an older man more open to showing his opinion. "There will be no war, they are games under the rug," he opines helpfully in a Russian expression that alludes to behind-the-scenes political intrigue. “Everything revolves around gas. There are provocations and Ukraine acts naively”, he says before emphasizing the Russian adaptation power: “We live with sanctions, they can only increase them. In Stalin's time there was an Iron Curtain and life went on. There was everything, maybe not with the quality of life of other countries, but you had a normal life”.
Across the street, a middle-aged woman waits by the bus stop.
“I don't know”, she replies when asked if she believes a conflict is possible.
“She talks to men, all this politics is delicate”, she apologizes at the end of the conversation.
Next to the shopping center, an older man does dare to speak out about this crisis.
"Whether there is a war or not, this does not depend on ordinary people," Vadim Bagrintsev replies resignedly.
“I don't want war, honestly.
There are no objective reasons, only subjective ones,” he adds.
Speaking about the sanctions, he offers a very unusual reply in these parts: "I have no opinion, but they are surely correct."
Fear of conflict grows
Moscow, the most thriving city in Russia and more than 800 kilometers from the Ukraine, is perhaps not the best measure of general Russian thinking. Military service is compulsory for men between the ages of 18 and 27, but many young people have more opportunities to avoid it there than in other provincial cities, where it is one of the few alternatives for a stable job.
In mid-January, 37% of the population considered a war possible throughout this year "with a neighboring country", the highest figure in the historical series of surveys carried out by the Levada sociological studies center, declared agent abroad by the government.
In the previous survey, from 2020, 20% of citizens saw a conflict as possible that year, and not even in the worst phase of the war in Ukraine was such a high percentage reached, since in 2015 and 2016 it did not reach 30 % of the participants.
The same happens when asked if they believe a war is possible this 2022 with a NATO country or with the entire Atlantic Alliance as a whole.
25% of Russians say that there will be a conflict, compared to 14% who believed it possible in 2020.
“In recent years, the average citizen has perceived most external events as a
new normal.
Even things out of the ordinary, like sanctions, began to feel like a routine. Something similar happened with the perception of war”, writes analyst Andrei Kolésnikov in an essay published by the Carnegie Moscow Center. Since the 2008 Georgia war, the country has been engulfed in a small but steady trickle of “gruz 200,” the euphemism for the military's zinc coffins. “Vacationers” (soldiers who supposedly went to Donbas on their own), mercenaries or regular troops, from time to time you read some news of casualties in a
distant war
in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Donbas, the breakaway region of Ukraine where the war broke out in 2014.
"And suddenly the specter of a real war appears, and this is beyond the
new normal
," says Kolesnikov, who believes open conflict could destroy the Kremlin's image of stability if coupled with economic and pandemic crises.
In March 2014, in the days before Crimea was annexed, there were demonstrations across Russia against the war.
These would continue until 2015, led by former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, assassinated that year in front of the Kremlin just before publishing an investigation into Russian military participation in the conflict.
Since then the laws have been tightened and manifesting today, even just one, is much more complicated.
Meanwhile, the debate on Donbas has made a strong comeback in the media after remaining off the map since the 2015 truce, which led to the assassination of several separatist leaders and even an internal "coup" in Lugansk.
Friends worried about the war
With globalization, many young Russians have foreign friends and the conflict has become a recurring topic of conversation.
“They ask me a lot, they think that the Russian media are communicating a message that the West knows nothing about,” Vitali Galkin, who currently lives in Cádiz, answers by phone.
“The truth is that the Russians are just as clueless on the subject.
I doubt very much that there is a war, certainly not in its broad sense.
I see an operation similar to the one in Crimea as more likely,” he adds.
No Russian is free from the magic question.
“A friend from Chile asked me if it is true that Russia has declared war on Ukraine because a friend of his told him so,” explains Kristina Kazármina, who fears that a clash could “further affect relations in the daily lives of the Russians and Ukrainians”, in addition to worsening other problems such as sanctions and the ruble exchange.
Her friend Victoria Mailova, who has very close ties to Spain, also points out that her European friends often ask her.
In his opinion, the tension with NATO is due "to the Russophobic policy of the West", which "must stop filling Ukraine with weapons and sponsoring orange revolutions in countries neighboring Russia".
And similar is the opinion of Vlada, who assures that "neither Ukraine nor Belarus exist, they are concepts", since she believes all of this is part of the so-called "Russian World".
One of the possible hot spots is Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. “A war was not thought of until my European acquaintances began asking me similar questions,” Eleonora writes from there by phone.
"We live on our own," she adds before emphasizing that Russia "in its entire history has not attacked anyone, it has only defended itself."
"People are so tired of these years of covid and instability that little can surprise or scare them," she says from a territory trapped for years in sanctions and international legal limbo.
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