In the village of Kamenka in Russia’s southern Rostov region, near the border with Ukraine, 47-year-old Alexei Safonov was horrified by news that Russia launched its attack last week. Then he started working as a chief engineer on a skating rink and he was sick of finding his colleagues celebrating.
“It felt like it was high time we showed what we can do to these ‘Nazis’, so it’s high time we started this operation,” he said, referring to Putin’s claim that he would “denazify” Ukraine and its leadership. “It simply came to my notice then that I was really desperate and depressed. People around me are enthusiastic about it. When I look at them, I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. “
That night, he wrote a desperate post on social media, lamenting the “horror and shame” of a war that “will be catastrophic.” He initially received 19 comments, most of which attacked him. A friend, a local policeman, warned him to delete him, but he refused.
The next day, the general director of the complex, who was shouting and cursing Safonov, broke into work.
“He said, ‘Either you’re removing this post, or we don’t need people like you here.’ He told me to sign my resignation, but I just packed my bags and left,” Safonov said.
Three police officers armed with assault rifles later came to his home, arrested him and accused him of disrespecting society and the Russian Federation. He is facing trial on Friday and fears authorities could come up with a more serious charge.
The seismic impact of the war is just beginning to show on many Russians, deepening these rifts in society. State television presenters tell viewers that the sanctions prove the West hates Russians.
Europe’s airspace closed and Russia’s toxic brand was rejected in sports, chess, ice hockey, football, car racing and art galleries, Harley Davidson, Disney, the movie “Batman”, the Eurovision Song Contest, luxury car companies , the Maersk shipping line, the International Olympic Committee, major oil companies, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and many more.
The cascading effect was quick. Google is blocking YouTube channels related to state media RT and Sputnik. Even Europe’s far-right leaders and strong men in Central and Eastern Europe opposed it. The rolls collapsed and the Central Bank stopped trading for two days as Putin banned Russians from depositing foreign currency in accounts or sending it abroad.
When Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stood up to speak at Tuesday’s Geneva Disarmament Conference, almost every delegate stood up and left the room. When senior official Vyacheslav Volodin flew home from a formal weekend trip, his plane was diverted from airspace in Sweden and Norway.
To be honest, outside of liberal circles, public criticism is still a relative stream in a country where dissent is not tolerated. However, it includes several powerful oligarchs, although they have almost no influence over Putin.
Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire industrialist, called for peace “as soon as possible” in the Telegram news app. Ukrainian-born tycoon Mikhail Friedman wrote a letter to LetterOne staff, first reported by the Financial Times, saying war could never be the answer.
The host of state television Ivan Urgant posted a black square in his Instagram show on the day of the invasion, along with the words “Fear and pain. Not the war. “His show was canceled the next day, and it’s unclear if it will ever air again.
Even the daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov posted a black banner on social media reading “No to War,” although she quickly deleted it.
Anise NaouaiThe chief executive of Maffick, a company linked to RT and one of Putin’s strongest advocates for years, said on Tuesday that he was “severing all ties with RT” by posting a black banner on Twitter with the words “Russia without Putin”.
Apolitical people felt the need to clarify their opposition. Peter Svidler, a Russian chess grandmaster, usually tweets about chess, Wordle and dogs. But last week he wrote that it was impossible to remain silent. “Not in the war,” he wrote.
“Let’s at least say some things live on air. I do not agree with the war that my country is waging in Ukraine. “I do not believe that Ukraine or the Ukrainian people are my enemies or someone’s enemies,” he said on Tuesday. chess 24 flow.
Nearly 6,500 protesters in dozens of cities have been arrested since the invasion, according to the human rights group OVD-Info. Psychiatrists, doctors, architects, journalists, actors, historians, computer programmers, directors, Orthodox priests and others have signed open letters protesting the war.
If Putin does not change course, Russia will “take the place of an aggressor and a fraudulent state, a state that will be held accountable for its crimes for generations,” said Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is headed by prisoners. dissident Alexei. Bulk. Zhdanov spoke in a video calling for a national campaign against disinformation.
But as the Russian economy came under heavy pressure from sanctions, Russian officials doubled in and solidified their rhetoric.
In a tweet from the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova asked if the “process of denazification in Germany after the end of World War II” was really over, commenting on Germany’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine.
MP Andrei Klimov called for accusations of treason against those who “cooperated with foreign anti-Russian centers, causing obvious damage to our national security.”
The older generation of Russians who run state television fear the West and admire Putin for the stability he has brought since the chaotic post-Soviet 1990s. But predictability is gone.
Ice rink engineer Safonov said low-income ordinary Russians would be harmed the most, but wealthy elites would “recover as usual”, adding: “They may be a little shaken, but not much, I’m sure.
“For Russia, that means going back to the caves,” he said. “I think this is the end of Russia.
Natasha Abakumova contributed to this report.