The reasons every Russian is responsible for this war

Українською

While McDonald's, Victoria's Secret and PlayStation are leaving the Russian market, more and more questions from the Russian people appear on social networks (at least on those that have not yet been banned there): what does it have to do with the ordinary people? Why do they have to be deprived of IKEA and why are Ukrainians suddenly so angry with them?

That part of Russia's population that does not go crazy of Putin seeks to distance itself as much as possible from the bombs that fall on Ukrainian maternity hospitals. And they try to convince himself and the whole world that ordinary Russians are good, but they have an evil king, so to speak. Detector Media collected the most popular excuses and explained why this is not true.

Putin does not equal Russia. As long as Putin runs the country, and the people acknowledge him as a legitimate president and obey his orders, Putin represents Russia.

Putin is to be blamed, not Russians. It was not Putin who came to Ukraine by tank, not 190,000 of its clones, but 190,000 Russians. The Russians hit a house in Kyiv, the Russians fired rockets at the center of Kharkiv, and the Russians shell people during evacuations from Sumy, Chernihiv, Bucha and Irpin.

Dozens of thousands of OMON and policeman that detain people on the peaceful rallies, State Duma deputies and a huge bureaucracy machine — they all are Russians supporting Putin's decision or simply carrying out apparently criminal orders.

The Russians develop and build weapons for Russia. The Russians work on a propaganda machine: TV presenters, “journalists”, bloggers and opinion leaders, who easily sold advertisements for constitutional amendments recently. The Russians spread Kremlin rhetoric for money or simply enthusiastically and write about “you have been bombing Donbas for eight years” under each post.

The Russians support and legitimize Crimea occupation: according to the Russian statistics, 6.3 millions tourists visited the peninsula in 2020 only, and lots of Russian entertainers performed on Crimean resorts.

These all are personal ambitions of the senile looney. When we reduce Russian aggression to Putin's personal ambitions, we forget about the centuries of Ukrainian history. Russia sought to seize Ukrainian lands, destroy our culture, and deny the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation under various political regimes. This story did not start with Putin and would not end with his death.

Anti-Putin and anti-war does not mean that they lack imperial views and belief in historical myths about a single nation, older brothers, donated lands, and the like. Russians continue to repeat this rhetoric both in Russia and abroad. According to a CNN poll, 64% of Russian respondents consider Ukrainians and Russians to be one people. In Ukraine, this figure is much lower: 28%.

People are against war. It is extremely difficult to obtain an independent sociological data in Russia, that can show actual support for military aggression against Ukraine. It is just as dangerous to form this impression on the base of individual posts or comments on social media. However, there is the CNN poll, for example: it shows that 50% of Russians believe it is right to use military force to keep Ukraine from joining NATO.

43% of respondents believe that it is wrong to use military force in order to unite Russia and Ukraine. But 36% support this idea. It is not only Putin and a small marginal group of his supporters, but a third of people in the survey.

We support peace, we say “no war”. These slogans do not necessarily mean that a person condemns Russian aggression. These words can have very different meanings for different people, from “Russia must retreat” to “Ukraine must surrender”, “both parties are to blame”, “the West started it all”, “we had no choice” and so on. A striking example is Ksenia Sobchak's letter in which she writes about her fear of nuclear war. “No global geopolitical interests can be more important than the simple peaceful life of millions of people!! Vladimir and Vladimir! You have to concede mutually today!!!” — these are the words of the person who is often considered to be a “good” and liberal Russian. She broadcasts the idea that Ukraine, which has been attacked, must comply, to all the nine million people of her audience. Which region do you want for yourself. Ksenia?

Personally, I do not shoot at anyone. Everyone who lives, works, or does business in Russia is financing this war. Putin does not buy Grads and does not pay the Wagner group with his own money — the state budget pays for all this. In 2022, Russia planned to allocate 3.5 trillion rubles or 15% of all budget expenditures for “national defense”. Not every Russian pulls the trigger, but everyone buys ammunition.

We did not elect him. We do not know the real level of support for Putin and his actions as the elections in Russia cannot be called fair and democratic ones. But the problem of authoritarianism in Russia arose not on February 24, as Putin had been in power for 22 years. And those who did not elect him than made a choice to be apolitical. To be without a public stance, to avoid hot topics in their work, in social media posts, in the conversations with the family. Silently tolerating crime is also a choice. This is criminal inaction.

They did not know where they were going. We have already found evidence this is just an enemy tactic and the occupiers have been preparing for an invasion. For example, here are the plans of taking Ukraine in 15 days. And here is the testimony of the prisoner about how the occupiers wanted to take Kharkiv in three days.

The full-scale war has been going on for two weeks. Russian soldiers still do not know where they are going? They do not know who they are shooting at, they do not know where the cruise missiles are sent? It seems that this knowledge simply does not change anything for them.

We can not change anything. It is scary and dangerous to protest in Russia now. However, Ukrainians cannot be moved by it as we know from our own experience how difficult it is to obtain freedom.

Lots of things but for the government could be changed over the years. For example, people could start coming out of the national comatose “out of politics” state. Or study media literacy. Until recently, Russia had the Internet with access to international media and social media. It had the access to Ukrainian sites, most of which have versions in Russians. It had eight years to make sense of how Crimea was seized and who were shooting on the Donbas territory.

People had time to unfollow all the Kremlin's mouthpieces, paid bloggers, and political experts. They had time to establish an institution of reputation in the country, that could make impossible the popularity and the demand for those overtly supporting the authoritarian leader and his policies — Nikolai Baskov, for example.

They had time to learn to write “in Ukraine”, not “on Ukraine”. Or are they already putting people to paddy wagons for this?

What did athletes / artists / cats do wrong? Why should they be removed from international events? They represent Russia on the international stage, the state that has invaded independent Ukraine and is killing people there. And they are waving the flag that the occupiers dream of setting over Ukrainian cities. They even draw “Z” on their form, that got to became a symbol of the occupier's troops.

I am not ashamed. If you spend enough time on social media, you may start to see double. On the one hand, you find the world with the hashtags #Мненестыдно (#Imnotashamed), # СвоихНеБросаем (#wedontgiveoursup) #stoprussianhate — our greetings to Evgeni Plushenko and all the sports that is “out of politics”. The Russians of this world are proud of their origin, country, culture, strong army and the president. On the other hand, there is a world with “we are ordinary people who have not chosen anything and cannot change anything” under every photo of mutilated Ukrainian cities, under every appeal to the Russians. But there is only one reality: you cannot be great and disempowered at the same time. You cannot take ballet and Dostoevsky and leave corruption, OMON, and bombing Kharkiv to someone else. All of it is their Russia.

Of course, not all Russians are evil, not of them are even guilty of this war. But everyone identifying with Russia bears responsibility for it. At this stage #nowar cannot be enough to escape it.