BBC Monitoring, Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1005 gmt 29 Jun 23   

The Russian public remains sure of a successful course of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to the results of a poll by Russian Field, influential business daily Kommersant reported on 28 June.

While over half of those questioned (58%) approved the actions of the Russian armed forces, a little more than a fifth of the respondents took the opposite view. At the same time, the share of those who support the termination of the operation and a transition to peace negotiations (44%) is practically equal to the number of those who support the continuation of hostilities (45%).

In the course of Russian Field’s 12th survey on the attitude of Russians to the war, sociologists spoke on the phone to 1,600 respondents from 16-19 June 2023. According to the study, 58% of Russians say the campaign is going well, while 21% think it is not. And 64% of respondents would approve the president’s decision to attack Kyiv – a record for the entire time of the study, the survey’s authors note.

A transition to peace talks, however, would be positively viewed by 72% of respondents, the poll found. Among those respondents who trust official sources of information (46% of those questioned), 84% positively assess the current results of hostilities, and 74% would support an attack on Kyiv.

Split on peace or war

When respondents were asked to choose between continuing hostilities or peace negotiations, their answers were roughly evenly divided: 45% and 44%, respectively. The position on this issue depends on age: among citizens aged 18 to 29, 62% support a transition to diplomacy, while only 36% of those aged 60 and older did so.

In the event that a second wave of mobilisation is required to continue the war, the majority in all age groups (54% of the total number of respondents) will approve the peace negotiations, with only 35% in favour of continuing hostilities in such a situation.

Respondents of all age groups, regardless of their attitude to the continuation of hostilities or negotiations, do not see an early end to the war: the proportion of those who believe that it will go on for more than a year is regularly growing and has reached 49% (in March 2022, this was expected by only 13% of respondents).

Divided over strategy

The question of what specific steps to take at the moment divided the respondents. A transition to offensive operations is favoured by 39%, while another 30% are in favour of consolidating the gains achieved, while 12% are in favour of a complete withdrawal of troops.

Russian Field notes that the number of supporters of maintaining the status quo is highest among the more well-off respondents, but falls again when it “gets close” to the wealthiest group of respondents. It is also noticeable that the proportion of supporters of an offensive strategy is higher among those who trust official data on the course of the war.

On the whole, however, the fighting in Ukraine remains a distant event in the perception of most Russians – 40% of respondents are tired of news related to the war. This figure has been stable since March 2022. Relations with some relatives or friends have been broken off because of a disagreement on the Ukrainian issue by 11% of respondents.

Public opinion regarding the war is now set, political scientist Alexei Makarkin told Kommersanta. “The absolute majority have decided on their views,” he said. “Now there are no events that would prompt people to reconsider these views.”

Hardened attitudes

Although Russians have access to various sources of information, they use them mainly to affirm their opinions, Makarkin said. “Information in most cases does not change their approach: if it contradicts their worldview, they almost immediately cut it off.”

According to him, in almost a year and a half since the start of the war, it has managed to “become routine”, and the events related to it do not occupy the Russians in the same way as they did in February 2022 and at the start of “partial mobilisation”. It is unlikely that the failed rebellion of the Wagner PMC will seriously affect their position, he said: “Everything was rapid, everything was very rapid, people did not have time to get scared.”

Kremlin says most Russians support war

On 29 June, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman was asked to comment on “data from an opinion poll according to which the number of Russians who support the special operation is equal to those who are in favour of the negotiation process”, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Dmitry Peskov replied: “The data that we have is different, it still shows the absolute predominant support for the special operation, the absolute dominant support for the president”.

“Everything is clear there, the methodologies are clear – these are, in fact, provided by the pillars of our sociology,” he said.

He declined to comment on the opinion poll mentioned by the journalists, saying that he was not aware of its methodology, Interfax said.

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 7/3/23

Following the attempted coup in Russia carried out by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, US President Joe Biden “made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”

It is not quite so clear that Russian officials believe him. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Russia’s security services are investigating whether Western or Ukrainian intelligence services were involved in the rebellion. Former President and current deputy chairman of the Russian security council Dmitry Medvedev released a statement that it is likely that Western intelligence services were working with Prigozhin.

It is very unclear what happened in Russia that day. But whether or not the US, Ukraine or other Western intelligence services were working with Prigozhin or actively involved in the rebellion, there are other ways to be complicit in a coup. Before the coup, you can enable it by not sharing intelligence that it is being planned; after the coup, you can take advantage of it with information or disinformation that exploits or creates cracks.

Because what happened in Russia is so unclear, what is happening in response in Washington is unclear. But it would be concerning if the US was taking advantage of the attempted coup.

One thing that has become clear is that US intelligence knew in advance that Prigozhin was planning some sort of rebellious military action. CNN reported that US intelligence was aware of Prigozhin’s planning “for quite some time” and that they saw signs of the preparations, including the massing of weapons and ammunition. The New York Times reported that US intelligence briefed military and Biden administration officials that Prigozhin was preparing military action against senior Russian defense officials. But both CNN and The Times say that they did not brief Moscow.

Two reasons for the decision not to inform Moscow are given. Both CNN and The Times report that the motivation was to prevent Putin from weaponizing US knowledge to imply US involvement. The Times adds the second motivation that the US “clearly had little interest in helping Mr. Putin avoid a major, embarrassing fracturing of his support.”

But both explanations are troubling. Not sharing the intelligence with Moscow may create the appearance that the US was not involved. But it also risks, if that lack of sharing becomes known, as it very quickly did, creating the appearance of complicity. And it is complicity. What better way could there have been to demonstrate a lack of complicity in a coup – if you really don’t want it to happen – than to inform Moscow of the intended coup?

The second explanation makes that complicity clear. The US didn’t share the intelligence because – whether or not they thought the mutiny could succeed – they didn’t want to help Putin avoid, at least, the embarrassment.

The denial of knowledge of the coup planning was intended to prevent the appearance that there was complicity; the revelation of the knowledge of the coup planning appears to confirm that there was.

The charge of enabling could be upgraded to involvement if information in the Discord intelligence leaks turn out to be true that Prigozhin had offered Ukrainian intelligence, with whom he was alleged to have maintained secret communications, information on Russian troop locations in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing forces from Bakhmut. If confirmed, such reports would suggest that Prigozhin was collaborating with Western intelligence.

Whether or not the US was involved before the coup, they seem to be taking advantage after the coup. As The Times says, the US has an interest in embarrassing Putin and fracturing his support. Hence the many statements insisting, rightly or wrongly, that Prigozhin’s march reveals the cracks in the Russian military and the weakened position of Putin in Russian politics.

There is also the oddity of one of Prigozhin’s statements just before his rebellion in which he repeated the West’s claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. He said that “There was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24. The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block. The special operation was started for a completely different reason.” What was the real reason? “The war was needed … so that Shoigu could become a marshal, … so that he could get a second ‘Hero’ [of Russia] medal. The war wasn’t needed to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine.”

It is odd that Prigozhin, in the days leading up to his rebellion, was reading off the Western script. It is especially odd since Prigozhin is no supporter of Shoigu – indeed, the removal of Shoigu was one of his key demands – but has been a leading supporter of the war. Prigozhin has called, not for Russia to end the war, but for Russia to fight it more aggressively.

The West has repeated this rejection of Putin’s narrative uncritically, reinforcing the already set public doubt of Putin’s claims of provocation. As if Putin was deceived by an ambitious politician and had not been issuing warnings – along with Yeltsin and Gorbachev before him – about NATO expansion into Ukraine and demilitarization for decades.

The Western media has also shifted a key piece of the narrative to reframe loyalty to Putin at the highest levels to disloyalty to Putin at the highest levels, suggesting instability and cracks and a weakening of Putin’s hold on government.

Prigozhin’s forces were small. Not only much smaller than Russian forces, but much smaller than the picture that he projected. His force of 25,000 was less than a third of that. He probably hoped, if the coup theory is correct – and we don’t even know that yet – that elements of the Russian military would defect to his side. One of the keys to that hoped for defection was General Sergei Surovikin. Surovikin is powerful, influential and respected: even by Prigozhin who, in demanding the removal of Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, nominated Surovikin to replace him.

But rather than defecting and taking part of the Russian army with him, Surovikin publicly condemned Prigozhin, stayed loyal to Putin and implored Prigozhin’s mutineers to lay down their arms. In a video appeal, Surovikin said, “I urge you to stop. The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country. Before it is too late, it is necessary and it is needed to obey the will and order of the popularly elected President of the Russian Federation.”

Many expert commentators see this public appeal as a decisive moment in the rebellion. Many of the Wagner forces, when they realized they were in rebellion against the Russian government and military, reportedly laid down their arms and left. As far as is known at this point, no one in the Russian military, government or security services defected to Prigozhin. No Wagner commanders or officers joined the rebellion.

But the Western media has retold this story to undermine the loyalty narrative and recast Surovikin as the traitor and not the savior.The New York Times accepted the role of lead writer.

On June 27, The Times reported that, according to US officials, Surovikin “had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership.” Despite the richness of the innuendo, of course he had advance knowledge of the rebellion. Everyone at his level of command had advance knowledge of the rebellion. That’s how they made the plans to quickly and effectively stop it. Knowledge does not imply involvement.

The Times, engaging in implication rather than reporting, then says that US officials “are trying to learn if Surovikin “helped plan Mr. Prigozhin’s actions.” That the US is trying to learn if he did does not mean that he did. Nor is it a “sign” that Russian generals “may” have supported Prigozhin, as The Times claims, that Prigozhin “would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.” He likely did believe that. He was likely wrong.

Employing the word “if” as the foundation of their reporting, The Times then serves up the whole point of the innuendo: “If General Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of . . . a wider fracture” in the Russian military and government.

Later in the article, The Times says that the US officials “emphasized that much of what the United States and its allies know is preliminary.” The reporters go on to say, “Still, American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin.”

Days later, reports broke that Surovikin had been arrested. Many outlets, including The Times, picked up the story. Surovikin, several media outlets reported, has not appeared in public; though his daughter reportedly claims this is untrue and that he is “at his work location.” Stating that the “circumstances surrounding the status of the general, Sergei Surovikin, are still very murky” and that “the reports were not conclusive,” The Times reports that Surovikin “appear[s] to have [been] detained.” What is not often reported is that Surovikin seems to have been detained before The New York Times reported that he knew of the rebellion in advance.

The report then says that “American officials would not say – or do not know – if he was formally arrested or just held for questioning.” That’s a big difference.

Maybe Surovikin has been arrested and maybe he hasn’t. But the story is being used to take advantage of the coup to exploit or create cracks with information or disinformation. Surovikin may have disappeared, and he may have been detained. But if he has been called in for questioning or debriefing that is normal and not news. If he has been called in for interrogation because he is suspected of participating in the rebellion, that is news. But since US officials “do not know,” the headlines and the story seem to be being framed in such a way as to imply cracks and a weakening of Putin’s position.

Weakening Putin’s position may seem to be obviously desirable. However, there are many reasons why removing Putin could lead to a worse alternative for the West. A little discussed one is that the removal of Putin could lead to a replacement with a more hardline foreign policy toward the West. In line behind Putin are hardliners who pushed Putin to go further in 2014 and annex not only Crimea but the Donbas. Putin has been more a restrainer than a hardliner. The leader who emerges victorious from a coup, like Prigozhin, could be a worse hardliner.

It is still very unclear what happened that day in Russia. Time may tell if Biden is telling the truth that the US “had nothing to do with” the coup or if Russian concerns are warranted that they did. But whether they did or whether they didn’t, there are other ways to be complicit in a coup. The US may have been guilty of such complicity before the coup attempt by not sharing intelligence with Russia that the coup was taking shape. And they may be being complicit after the coup attempt by disseminating information or disinformation that exploits or creates cracks that could weaken the Putin government.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

I think most of my readers are aware that most western think tank “experts” on Russia are not the sharpest tools in the shed. But based on this survey of opinion it appears that they’re both dumb and under the influence of psychedelic drugs. – Natylie

By Branko Marcetic, Responsible Statecraft, 6/28/23

In 1998, in the midst of a years-long U.S. campaign to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Gen. Anthony Zinni realized the United States had no actual plan for what would happen in the aftermath. Zinni filled this gap by commissioning a series of war games, which predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would be plunged into bloody chaos. The analysis, largely ignored at the time, would prove prophetic in the ensuing years.

This is worth recalling now, after long-standing hopes that the Ukraine invasion would spell the end of Vladimir Putin’s rule were nudged closer to reality over the weekend, with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin carrying out a mutiny against the Russian president. The episode brings up several questions: What exactly is America’s plan should the Russian state collapse? What would follow a post-Putin power vacuum? And what measures should the United States take to manage its relationship with the country in such a scenario?

We can get some sense of the foreign policy establishment’s thinking on the subject by looking at what influential think tanks have had to say.

Take the Center for a New American Security, an arms-manufacturer-funded think tank closely aligned with the Democratic Party and from which the Biden administration has drawn many of its top foreign policy appointees. Shortly before Prigozhin’s coup attempt, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of its Transatlantic Security Program, co-wrote a piece outlining several scenarios for a post-Putin Russia, drawing heavily on her testimony in a Senate hearing in May.

In one scenario, Kendall-Taylor writes, Putin retains power and eventually dies in office, succeeded by a weak technocrat who changes little from current Russian policy. In another — the course of action she prefers — a Ukrainian military victory triggers a “seismic shift” in the Russian political landscape and galvanizes “a groundswell that could dislodge him,” leading to “the possibility of a more hopeful future for Russia and for its relations with its neighbors and the West.”

Kendall-Taylor admits the odds of a more liberal, democratic Russia emerging from this are “low,” pointing to the 2011 Egyptian revolution that ultimately resulted in Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s brutal dictatorship. And she acknowledges that if Putin was removed by an armed insurgency, “not only would the aftermath be violent, but the odds of a new dictatorship coming to power would also be high.”

Yet despite the risks “of violence, chaos, and even the chance of a more hard-line government emerging in the Kremlin,” Kendall-Taylor nevertheless concludes that “a better Russia can be produced only by a clear and stark Ukrainian victory,” which will “enable Russians to shed their imperialist ambitions and to teach the country’s future elites a valuable lesson about the limits of military power.” Whatever leader follows, she argues, the West should avoid rushing to stabilize relations and instead demand Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, the payment of reparations and the prosecution of war criminals, while aiming to “constrain Russia and its ability to wage aggression beyond its borders” in the long term.

Despite dismissing the risks, Kendall-Taylor is an outlier in acknowledging the potential for violence, instability, and a more hardline government. The Center for European Policy Analysis, another hawkish think tank, has published several pieces since the war began declaring that the possible collapse and disintegration of Russia “will be good for everyone” and that the U.S. goal “should be decolonization,” a popular new shorthand for encouraging its break-up.

Likewise, while insisting it is “essential to prepare” for a coup in Russia, Pavel K. Baev of the Brookings Institution explicitly refuses to consider what he calls the “distinct possibility” of “a catastrophic breakdown of Russia’s autocratic regime and the break-up of this deeply troubled state.” Instead, he asserts that the hardliners around Putin “have neither economic foundation nor public support” to escalate the war, and whoever takes power would simply dispose of them and look for “a way out of the accelerating catastrophe.”

This new leadership, Baev predicts, would make a “series of territorial concessions,” reassess Moscow’s dependence on its nuclear arsenal, and move to restart arms control and strategic stability talks with the United States. Belarussian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko would be replaced by “an unequivocally pro-European government” in the aftermath, in turn leading Moscow to rescind Putin’s September annexation and fully withdraw from Ukraine. Finally, sans Putin, Russia would be less inclined toward confrontation with the West, dealing China a major setback.

Similar predictions abound. Should Putin’s rule collapse, asserts Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “the jingoists will be fighting an uphill battle” while democratic demands will gain steam. A decisive Ukrainian victory could usher in new leadership that “open[s] the door to revived economic partnership with the West,” William Drozdiak, founding executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center, writes for the Wilson Center.

Some urge more ambitious plans. William Courtney, senior fellow at the influential and Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation, suggests sanctions should only be eased if Russia withdraws its troops from both Ukraine and Belarus. Rather than draw down U.S. forces in Europe, as was done after the Soviet collapse, the United States should consider “augment[ing] its forces in Central and Eastern Europe” and keeping the door open to further NATO expansion, while engaging Russia’s new leadership on democratic reforms.

Surprisingly more conciliatory is the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a prominent establishment think tank that nonetheless recognizes the grave risks of violence and instability in a Russian power vacuum, and calls for a “careful confidence-building dance” and maintaining a pledge to “welcome back” Russia into Europe if it reforms. (In a less surprising turn, CSIS still insists on maintaining sanctions, continuing military aid to Ukraine and pursuing Russian war criminals in case of a complete Russian collapse.)

In some cases, the predictions and policy suggestions seem at odds. At an event sponsored by the German Marshall Fund last year, analysts reportedly came to a consensus that “a post-Putin Russia would be worse than it is today,” with the possibility of “an even more Stalinist state,” a civil war, and “the disintegration and fragmentation of Russia, with pockets controlled by militias and warlords.”

Yet more recently, the Fund’s nonresident Senior Fellow Bart M. J. Szewczyk has argued that NATO governments primarily “need to step up their efforts to help Ukraine win” without mentioning these dire warnings raised during last year’s event. He dismisses as a “fallacy” that reciprocal security guarantees for Russia are essential for a viable peace and urges using a Russian military defeat to “end the so-called frozen conflict in Moldova, dissolve the Russian puppet statelet of Transnistria, and help Belarus democratize,” as well as to find this generation’s Mikhail Gorbachev, a Russian “successor they can do business with.”

Some common themes stand out. Few consider that what may follow Putin is not just violence and the country’s dissolution, as several experts have warned, but a more hardline government led by hawks more inclined to escalate the war and even less open to rapprochement with the West — and those who do barely dwell on the prospect, sometimes treating the possible negative consequences as an acceptable risk. This is despite the fact that, as Prigozhin’s munity has viscerally reminded us, almost all of Putin’s Russian critics today are more extreme, even ultranationalist. The Atlantic Council only mentions these hawks to urge Russian elites to “move beyond today’s misguided imperialism,” as if it would simply be a matter of will.

Several view Russia’s collapse as less a risk than an opportunity, either to extract concessions from Moscow beyond a withdrawal from Ukraine, or to further weaken and contain Russia. It’s assumed that any instability will play to the West’s advantage, whether by producing a liberal democracy in Belarus or undermining a Chinese government that, it’s presumed, would simply stand by and watch events unfold.

Maybe most striking, there is no mention of how the West can try to resolve the long-simmering grievances that have fed into today’s Russian aggression, or even that it should. Some advocate doubling down on ignoring Russian concerns about NATO expansion. It’s implied such grievances are exclusive to Putin, even though CIA Director William Burns has explicitly said NATO enlargement is widely opposed in Russia, and Gorbachev himself and other Russian liberals have echoed many of Putin’s criticisms of Western foreign policy.

It’s fair to ask whether the U.S. and European foreign policy establishments are repeating the mistakes of Iraq, when overly rosy predictions about the aftermath of regime change left them blindsided by the cascading repercussions of Hussein’s ouster. Those included a civil war and long-running ethnic conflict; the renewal of corrupt, authoritarian rule; a boost to the regional influence of a U.S. adversary; and violence and instability that spread inside and beyond the country’s borders, necessitating more open-ended military commitments, undermining U.S. global standing, and entailing steep human and economic costs.

Similar outcomes would be magnitudes more disastrous in the case of Russia, which is several times larger than Iraq, is more central to the global economy, sits on the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, is located on Europe’s doorstep, and spans virtually all of Eurasia. We can only hope there’s more serious analysis inside the Pentagon than what’s coming out of Western think tanks.

Link here.

Here is the article discussing the survey of the number of Ukrainians who personally know someone who has been killed or wounded in the war. Mercouris makes reference to this survey more than once in the above video. – Natylie

Survey Reveals Impact of Russian War: Nearly 80 Percent of Ukrainians Affected by Loss and Suffering

Kyiv Post, 7/1/23

In a recent survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), the devastating toll of Russia’s war against Ukraine has come to light. {https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1254&page=1]

The study found that an overwhelming 76 percent of respondents have close relatives and friends who have either lost their lives or suffered injuries as a direct consequence of Russian aggression.

On average, each of the interviewees named seven such people.

Furthermore, the survey revealed that 64 percent of Ukrainians have at least one close relative or friend who sustained injuries during the conflict, with an average of five wounded loved ones per respondent.

Equally poignant is the revelation that 63 percent of participants have experienced the loss of at least one close relative or friend, amounting to an average of three deceased loved ones per respondent.

Gee, this whole neoliberal elitism and disdain for the general population thing sounds awfully familiar. – Natylie

By Prof. Paul Robinson, Canadian Dimension, 6/18/23

Theatre director Konstantin Bogomolov likes to shock. At the end of May, he was at it again, publishing an article denouncing his one-time ideological allies in Russia’s liberal intelligentsia for their attitude towards the Russian people and towards the war in Ukraine. Bogomolov was obviously out to provoke. Still, beneath its insulting rhetoric, his article contained a germ of truth about the prospects for Russia ever turning into a liberal democratic state.

Offending people on a regular basis has made Bogomolov famous, but whereas once he targeted conservatives, Putin, and the Russian state, more recently he’s been targeting the West and Russian liberals. Aggrieved by Western political correctness, in 2021 Bogomolov took up arms against it in an article entitled “The Rape of Europe 2.0.” In this, the director complained that Western Europe was constructing a “new ethical Reich” dominated by an “aggressive mix of queer activists, fem-fanatics, and eco-psychopaths.” Then in November 2022, the Financial Times described a play that Bogomolov directed as “clearly heralding the start of a new era in Russian culture, with new people and new authoritarian values centre stage.” “The uproarious laughter of the audience at jokes about blackface and homophobic slurs was nauseating,” said the FT.

In his latest article, Bogomolov writes that Russia contains a “society within a society” made up of people who perceive themselves as special. This is the intelligentsia, 90 percent of whom “call themselves Europeans and enlightened liberals. But in the depth of their souls, they despise their insufficiently successful, insufficiently advanced compatriots.” These “special people” would never agree to listen to the ordinary people, says Bogomolov, because if they did, ordinary people would tell them that “empire is good, and a whole lot of other things that are simply unacceptable in civilized European society.” Consequently, “the people must be silent.”

The war in Ukraine has horrified liberal intellectuals, writes Bogomolov, but not because they dislike the bloodshed. What really bothers them, he claims, is that it has deprived them of the opportunity to get subsidies from the state to produce works saying how terrible the state is. Russia’s intellectuals lament the loss of their former lives in which they could “sit on two stools, be progressive thieves, intelligent murderers, corrupt philanthropists, uneducated aristocrats, actors with conscience (an oxymoron), Europeanized racists … and so on and so forth.” The war has deprived them of the ability to “live in luxury” and sip “pumpkin lattes.”

The intelligentsia wants to go back to its good old life, says Bogomolov. But, he concludes: “In February 2022 [when Russian invaded Ukraine], the past died. … There is no turning back. … It’s necessary to stop viewing one’s country and one’s people with contempt and to listen to the hum of history and the voice of the people. Because their opinion matters.”

While exaggerated, Bogomolov’s complaints will ring true among many Russians. The sad fact is that the social gulf dividing the liberal intelligentsia and the mass of ordinary Russians is enormous, and the two parties do indeed often view each other with undisguised contempt.

Take, for instance, Moscow professor Sergei Medvedev, author of the Pushkin Prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan. Medvedev writes that the Russian “mass consciousness” is “embittered, alienated and provincial,” “undeveloped,” “archaic and superstitious.” In liberal discourse, the masses are often described as having the “morals of slaves,” and as such compared unfavourably with the enlightened intelligentsia, a contrast that is sometimes referred to as the “Two Russias Theory.” As one-time liberal icon Boris Nemtsov put it in his book, Testament of a Rebel, before his murder in 2015: “The Russian people, for the most part, is divided into two uneven groups. One part is the descendants of serfs, people with a slavish consciousness. There are very many of them and their leader is V.V. Putin. The other (smaller) part is born free, proud and independent. It does not have a leader but needs one.”

As for the idea that what liberals really hate about the war in Ukraine is the loss of their pumpkin lattes, that too contains a tiny bit of truth, although the point of complaint is more often cheese than coffee, good European cheeses having disappeared from Russian shops as a result of the sanctions and counter-sanctions that followed the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Medvedev again provides an example, writing that “Among the losses of recent years—the free press, fair elections, an independent court—what has hurt especially hard has been the disappearance of good cheese. … a piece of brie, a bottle of Italian chianti and a warm baguette … drew him [the Russian] close to Western values and were acts of social modernization. … Striking against cheese was equivalent to a strike against the quasi-Western idea of normality.”

Similarly, in a 2015 article Masha Gessen lamented the loss of Western cheeses in Russia due to sanctions, but found consolation in the fact that they could still be purchased at the Caviar House & Prunier Seafood Bar in a departure lounge at London’s Heathrow Airport. As she wrote:

“It’s my first time in Europe after all that’s happened,” the journalist and filmmaker Inna Denisova, a critic of the annexation of Crimea, wrote on her Facebook page …. “And of course it’s not seeing the historic churches and museums that has made me so emotional—it’s seeing cheese at the supermarket. My little Gorgonzola. My little mozzarella. My little Gruyère, chèvre and Brie. I held them all in my arms … and headed for the cash register.” There, Ms. Denisova wrote, she started crying.

Suffice it to say that the non-brie eating, non-Chianti sipping majority has a rather different perspective. While sentiments such as those above might not be the norm, their occasional expression has given Russian liberals a serious image problem.

Bogomolov’s article thus draws our attention to something quite important. Russian liberalism can never hope to gain power without finding some common ground with the Russian people, or at least of a sizeable section of it. But liberals and the rest of the population are so far removed from one another that this seems impossible. Doing what Bogomolov recommends—listening to the people—would mean accepting the unacceptable, including the war in Ukraine. Liberals don’t want to do this. Instead, they pin their hopes on the war going so badly for Russia that the Russian people changes its point of view. But that means wishing for their own country’s defeat in war, a stance that alienates them even further from the public. Frankly, it’s hard to see how they can escape from this conundrum. For now, all they can do is wait and pray for a miracle.

Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.