Ukraine War: Life Seems Normal in Moscow…But a Sinister Undercurrent Exists as Putin’s Conflict Drags On | world news


Moscow can be gorgeous in autumn, its parks a riot of seasonal color under deep blue skies. One last glorious outburst before winter closes in – but behind it all there is a surge of fear and tension.

Outside of billboards celebrating Russia’s “special military operation” heroes, you’d never know this is the capital of a country at war.

Life goes on. But beneath the semblance of normality, there is an increasingly sinister undercurrent. There are noticeably fewer people, especially men of fighting age. Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country.

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Many of those left behind are reluctant to leave their homes, fearing Moscow’s myriad cameras will catch them using facial recognition technology. Mobilization of Vladimir Putin swept away men in wheelchairs, old people, even dead people received appeal papers. No one is safe.

Muscovites fear there will be a knock on the door to take their father, son or husband to training camps for a war they don’t understand and for which they still don’t have a convincing explanation.

And they know it’s not going well. Otherwise, why would their president need hundreds of thousands more troops?

Cheese fries sold its special military operation as something far and wide, carried out by professional soldiers and contractors. Those fooled enough to still believe it got another jolt this week.

Putin did something no other Russian president has done since World War II by declaring martial law. He did this on land he stole from Ukraine, but also allowed a kind of rampant “light martial law” in the rest of Russia.

It gave Russian local governments the power to control movement, gatherings, communications, transportation, and even the power to resettle people. Laws designed to be used only in times of war have been dusted off to give the government more control when needed.

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Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the Security Council on October 19 Pic: AP

Russians are tired of being asked by foreigners why they tolerated it. The protests were brutally suppressed. Police now routinely stop people on the streets to check their phones for riotous content. Russia is importing surveillance technology from China that could, in the not-too-distant future, make dissent obsolete, let alone revolution or regime change.

Muscovites know it can only get worse. The hold of the government on society and the economic impact of this war as well. The Russians have withstood the sanctions better than Western policymakers had hoped, but they are now suffering. Prices are rising and there are shortages of many products. The specters of inflation and rationing loom.

Read more:
Eyewitness: “It does not stop” Soldiers fight Russia under the trees
Putin’s call for marshal law helps him look strong at home, but charade falls apart – analysis

Those who are old enough remember the 70s and fear the return of those days. But in Soviet times, there was at least one ideology that many believed in. This time there is only a Tsar with his grotesque fantasies of a greater Russia and the ambitions and greed of the corrupt old men around him.

There is no end in sight, because we no longer know what the goal is. Russia’s original war aims have failed. Did Putin replace them with another goal he could settle for? Or will this continue indefinitely as Russia sinks into a permanent winter of repression and economic decline?

malek

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