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At first, the captain fervently repeated Kremlin propaganda: He and his compatriots were in Ukraine to rescue the Horbonoses, he said; the soldiers were fighting not Ukrainians but Americans; this wasn’t a war, but rather a “special operation.” Once it was over, they could all live happily under Putin’s rule, he said.
Irina would push back. She didn’t need rescuing, she would say. There were no American soldiers or bases in Lukashivka, or anywhere in Ukraine. She didn’t want to live under Putin. When the captain said that he had been told Ukrainians were barred from speaking Russian, she told him they could speak in any language they chose. (I spoke with the Horbonoses in Russian.)
Gradually, he was worn down, confronted not simply with Irina’s protestations but with the grim facts of the war. In the conflict’s early days, he was buoyant, believing conquest to be imminent. He would rush into the cellar, declaring, “Kyiv is surrounded! Chernihiv is about to fall!” But as the weeks went by, and neither Kyiv nor Chernihiv fell, his mood soured. At one point, Sergey told me, he had to show the captain where Kyiv was on a map, leaving the Russian surprised to learn that it was not anywhere nearby, as he had assumed, but nearly 100 miles away.
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I lived and worked as a TV producer and documentary director in Russia during Putin’s first two terms as president, from 2000 to 2008. As one of Putin’s spin doctors told me then, the Kremlin has always had a problem motivating people. Whenever it needed to put on a progovernment demonstration, officials were forced to bus in civil servants and pay extras. It is notable that, despite rampant censorship, thousands have been locked up for protesting against the war. For all the supposed domestic support the Kremlin claims for the invasion, there have been no mass demonstrations in the streets of Russian cities in favor of the government’s actions.
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Researchers at the Public Sociology Laboratory, an independent institute, conducted 134 in-depth interviews with Russians, and found that even those who bought the underlying idea that their country was surrounded by enemies and that the war in Ukraine was the fault of NATO nevertheless doubted apparent evidence supplied by Moscow.
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One morning, she took them with her to gather wild herbs for tea.
As they walked through what little was left of the Horbonoses’ lives, the soldiers apologized for all the destruction they had brought. It would be so much better, one said, if they could someday visit as guests. Sergey was livid. “You’ve come here to kill me and destroy my home,” he said, “and we are meant to be friends? We can only be enemies.” The Russians again apologized, and soon all of them began to say that the war was senseless. They even began calling it a war.
The Horbonos family also got unusual insight into the Russians’ motivations. When I asked Sergey what he thought drove them, he was unequivocal. The soldiers, he said, were propelled not by national pride or expansionary zeal but by money.
The soldiers all said they had debt—mortgages, loans, medical bills—and needed their army salaries. Even those wages weren’t enough. Their job as mechanics was to repair tanks, but their skill set meant they were also proficient at taking them apart. During breaks in the shelling, they would find damaged or destroyed Russian vehicles and smelt down plates with gold wiring. One plate would get them 15,000 rubles, or about $200, back home.
Other Russian soldiers were less creative. On the day the Russian army left the village, many grabbed everything they could. Their tanks were piled high with mattresses and suitcases; their armored vehicles were stuffed full of bedsheets, toys, washing machines.
(When the Tatar soldier came to say goodbye, he told Sergey that he would soon retire, and promised to send the Horbonoses part of his pension.)
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