 | By Indrani Sen Culture Editor, Opinion |
In the Chechen journalist Milana Mazaeva's moving essay about Russia's war on Ukraine, in which she recalls her own experiences sheltering from Russian bombing during the wars in Chechnya, there's a line that particularly struck me. |
Mazaeva describes hearing a journalist recently on an American podcast saying that the international sanctions against Russia are working — as evidenced by the thousands of Russians who have come out onto the streets to protest Vladimir Putin's latest war. |
"That was painful to hear," Mazaeva writes. "People in Russian cities are protesting, yes, but from what I've seen and heard, it's not because of sanctions. It's because they're against war, against killing innocent people. They have always been against it." |
It's a nuanced point that illustrated how our perspective as outsiders can be warped, leading to rather brazen assumptions about what motivates people thousands of miles away. Sanctions may well undermine Russia's government, and are no doubt hurting the economy and affecting Russia's people. But it would be a gross oversimplification to suggest that they are the only reason that some Russians are standing up to their government. |
Sanctions don't seem to have been what motivated Marina Ovsyannikova. The Russian state television employee's on-air protest during the live broadcast of a popular news show went viral last week. "We are Russian people, thinking and smart ones," Ovsyannikova said in a video she released. The mother of two told reporters that she was detained and questioned for 14 hours after her protest and video, in which she expressed shame for having participated in Kremlin propaganda, and called upon Russians to oppose the war. "Only we have the power to stop all this craziness," she said. |
We should recognize Ovsyannikova's bravery, and that of the many thousands of Russians who have risked arrest, detention, violence and reprisals for public denunciations of the war being fought in their country's name. This is all the more important as Putin intensifies his attacks on Ukrainians, and as civilian casualties mount. |
"My colleagues and friends in Moscow go out to protest, and many of them are detained," Mazaeva writes. "Some have gone to Ukraine to cover the war. I cannot compare their sacrifice to what Ukrainians, whose lives will never be the same again, are enduring. Still, I feel a growing obligation to them." |
Of course, not all Russians are protesting their government's actions. Opinion polling within Russia paints a murky picture, but it's clear that many Russians still support Putin and believe the Kremlin's propaganda. Mazaeva writes of a relative of hers, for example, a fellow Chechen who hid from Russian bombings as a child and was made a refugee with his family. |
Now he's a soldier in the Russian army, fighting in Ukraine. "I don't know what his explanation is for going to Ukraine," she writes. "If he returns from there alive, I will ask him." |
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