We in the free world might well still hope for an end to the Ukraine conflict. Still, as we ratchet up economic sanctions on Russia and help arm a Ukrainian resistance effort to gut the resolve of a Russian military utterly unprepared for a war of attrition, one question casts a shadow: will all this misery and suffering convince ordinary Russians to turn on their leader?
It is impossible to say how many people truly believe the warped, self-pitying view of events put forward by Putin, his acolytes in the political class and the state-run media. Perhaps genuinely fewer than the president might hope. From the anti-war protests in Moscow to celebrity influencers taking the Kremlin to task, a sizable portion of Russians are clearly horrified by the invasion.
And it may yet come to pass that citizens, confronted with global isolation and a collapsing economy, rise up. However, the state of discourse in Russia suggests this is increasingly unlikely. After an uneasy start, Kremlin propaganda seems to be coming into its own, spinning a story about the invasion that powerfully manipulates Russian psychology – not just its grandiose moralism and heroic ascetism, but its semi-racialised inferiority complex and genuine terror of cultural obliteration by the West.
Between military updates about the Ukraine “liberation”, Russian media absurdly discusses parallels between “Heil Hitler” and the “Glory to Ukraine” being chanted by European politicians. “In response the Ukrainians actually say ‘Sieg Heil!’” claimed the foreign affairs expert Yevkeny Umerenkov on one top chat show. “Does it not bother the Western people?”
While Ukrainian civilians are besieged by Russian shells, the Moscow media is busily lamenting the threats suffered by Russians abroad. One columnist has even claimed that the West is using woke “positive discrimination” to justify Nazi-inspired “political eugenics” against Russia. Prevalent dark humour about the need for a “Russian Lives Matter” campaign has many layers. To us, Putin often seems as ridiculous as he is malevolent. But many Russians remain resistant to the notion that, far from an aberration, Putin is a perverse embodiment of the wounded and radical Russian zeitgeist.
This is not easy for the West to understand. Even the idea of a Russian soul is far from simple. As writer Konstantin Aksakov put it: “The Russian people is not a people; it is a humanity.” What we have been blind to for so long is that, in contrast with Western civilisation, Russians see themselves as a culture, unfettered by national borders. This Russian culture (or “Russian world”) contains fundamental differences. It believes in illumination (“ozarenie”) rather than enlightenment, and collective salvation rather than individual liberty. In contrast to the American Dream, the Russian Oponskoye (utopia) rejects everyday middle-class aspirations as trivial and contemptible. When the Kremlin’s foreign affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova warns that the West intends to obliterate Russia – “not just politically and economically but culturally”, she is being cunningly apocalyptic in her language.
All of this contradicts the notion that Russians will revolt because they can no longer buy iPhones or Zara dresses. Given Russia’s deep cultural history, cleverly played upon by propaganda, it seems just as probable that sanctions will rally the population behind the Kremlin and against the West. Just as in the UK, there are calls for Moscow to become more self-sufficient under the banner of a Made In Russia campaign. As we Brits call for London to wash its hands of Kremlin cash, Russian conspiracy theorists are calling on Russia to free itself from its status as a British cryptocolony. The St Petersburg cultural milieu has lambasted “Bolshevik-style” European cancel culture and called for a boycott of “vulgar” Hollywood in response to Western bids to cut ties with the Russian arts.
Even Putin’s deranged claims that Ukraine’s leadership are Nazi drug addicts sounds different to Russian ears. In recent years, academic research on the neo-Nazi threat has exploded in Russia. The fixation partly reflects the intelligentsia’s disdain for uneducated far-Right hooligans. But it also speaks to the fact that for many Russians, Nazism remains a more potent – and more immediate – cultural embodiment of evil than it does even in Western Europe. Putin is also skilfully playing on Russia’s profound inferiority complex. The Russian media’s obsession with stories of uppity Ukrainian refugees – turning up their noses at Moldovan dumplings and “granny” flats – is an insecure swipe at the “Western privilege” of Ukrainians.
It is telling that even prominent anti-war figures, such as the opposition politician Alexey Shiropaev, are able to offer only a twisted version of Putin’s own ethnonationalist logic; one bounded up in the idea that Russians, conquered by Mongols in the 13th century, have been “historically dislocated” and marked by wicked Asian impulses. “We Russians are brothers to the Ukrainians, but brothers who have undergone some unpleasant mutation.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise if people choose deluded chauvinism over such self-loathing.
All this said, an elite coup against Putin is still possible. High-level Russian intelligence is being routinely leaked to the West, which suggests that there is a very big rat in the Kremlin. For now, though, a rival to Putin is not immediately obvious. From the director of intelligence Sergei Naryshkin, who has provided Putin with many of his intellectual ideas, to the head of the security council Nikolai Patrushev, who is even more convinced than Putin that the West is bent on Russia’s destruction, his inner circle is if anything even more extreme. Nor does there seem much prospect of an oligarchy revolt, even as sanctions bite. Most nowadays are not businessmen but Kremlin bureaucrats, who need to consider whether toppling Putin could lead to their own demise.
None of this is good news for Ukraine, the tragic victim of Russia’s monumental psychological breakdown. Nor does it offer much in the way of a solution to the West’s current state of impotence. It does, however, suggest that they would be wise to better understand the Russian people – and not to succumb to the wishful thinking that Russia is tiring of its tyrant.
