Ukraine is still being bombed, countless thousands have died and millions fled.
This sickening and pointless war will finally come to an end, all wars do. And Ukraine and its people will rebuild their shattered lives the best they can.
I’ve written much previously about why Putin started this war. But now I’d like to focus not on what is happening in Ukraine, but what is happening to Russian society.
What now for Russia?
If we thought the ’90s was a headache, ie Russia coming in form the cold and joining the outside world, we are in for one heck of a shock at what needs to be done if and when its regime finally crumbles.
Russian society has, over the past couple of years, gone backwards at an alarming rate. Women’s rights, LGBT rights, environmental issues, ramping up of anti-west propaganda, severe laws such as making it illegal to criticise Russia in the Second World War – the list goes on and on.
The situation is fast changing, but as of writing, here is what is happening inside Russia today.
At least 15,000 people have been detained and beaten for peaceful protests.
Newspapers have been forced to shut down.
A new Kremlin law threatens any individual can receive up to 15 years in jail for spreading false news about the Russian army. This, of course, means simply questioning, and dare I say telling the truth, about what is going on in Ukraine.
I’ve even been told by Russian friends that schools are being “encouraged” by government to give very one-sided propaganda lessons on the war in Ukraine, sorry, the “special operation”.
If an individual teacher refuses to do so, then a student or parent can complain to the principal and the teacher can lose their job. They can even be reported to the police.
The propaganda is so big, the brainwashing so powerful. Russian society is broken.
At no time in all my years of going to Russia could I imagine such a situation. Not even a few months ago.
Russia is accused of blatant bombing of civilians. Torture, rape, stealing money from those fleeing, shooting at protestors in the streets. The Kremlin’s answer? Deny, deny, deny.
It didn’t happen, it’s all fake news.
While at the same time, blame Ukraine. Blame Nazis. Heck, even blame the British. And people believe it.
As a Russian friend told me last week: “Many in my country can be likened to those who are brainwashed inside a cult.”
If Putin is guilty of war crimes, then there is talk of him being put on trial. Sorry, but it’s simply not going to happen. Russia didn’t even sign up to the international criminal court. I wonder why?
Have you seen Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov deny everything? Have you seen Russia’s top ambassador at the UN Vasily Nebenzya claim that Russia is not attacking civilians?
Do they believe what they are saying? I mean really? I genuinely don’t know anymore.
Does Putin himself actually know how badly things have gone in Ukraine? I doubt it.
He seems to be in a bubble and is being fed what he wants and expects to hear.
Russian society is now under near absolute control. All the west is wrong. All western news is lies. All western newspapers print lies. Everyone in the west is lying. The entire world is lying. Only Putin and the Kremlin tell the truth.
That is what we are up against folks.
As for the people who work at the Kremlin’s totally controlled so-called “news” channels, they should be ashamed of themselves. They are not journalists. They are useful idiots.
And don’t get me started on the Russian Orthodox Church. Totally in Putin’s pocket, they have yet to condemn the war. In fact, they support it. Shame on them.
I was supposed to be in Russia for the whole month of May. Not happening now, of course. No flights from the UK or the EU make it difficult, but not impossible. Via Turkey is an option.
But I’m not going. It’s not safe.
By that I mean, being a journalist who has written much on Russia over the years. I have no desire to be jailed for 15 years for speaking my mind.
“I hope you will come back here, sometime…” a friend of many years said to me last week.
I miss my friends. But I can’t go back. I will not go back. Not until there is regime change from within. She understood and agreed.
Russia is currently beyond repair. The damage done to its society is immense. Ukraine didn’t do this, the evil west did not do this. The Kremlin did this.
Putin has crushed the lives of many of his people. He has broken the spirit of his nation. Yet, millions still believe the hype coming out of the Kremlin. It is Stockholm Syndrome on a simply monumental scale.
I mentioned all this to one of my more enlightened Russian friends, and while he agreed with my statement about many of his fellow countrymen having Stockholm Syndrome, he told me that it’s not as simple as just standing up to the system.
“The Russian system,” he told me, “is absolutely rotten to the core. It is not just a case of getting rid of Putin. The whole system needs to go.
“Even if Putin were to somehow lose the next election and a guy who stood for democracy won it, nothing would change.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Sure, it would take the new guy much time to turn things around, but if he truly believed in a new way of doing things then…”
My friend interrupted me and put me straight.
“George, he would be able to change nothing. Listen, the whole system is corrupt. It’s a cancer that runs through all of Russian life. What needs to happen in Russia is change on a scale you can’t imagine. Remember, that all through the Russian system, every level of power and security and state business is run by people who are either ex-KGB, ex-communists, or billion-dollar businessmen. Everything and everyone is connected.
“Russia is a mafia state. None of them care about democracy, rule of law and such things. Everything in all levels would need to be thrown out with the thrash. Parliament, the judges and entire legal system, FSB, regional governors, and especially our police.
“Everything that is connected with how our country is run must go. Then we must start from scratch with people who have known and care about such things as real, fair elections, true freedom of speech, and a system where government does not control the law and police.
“Just voting out Putin would solve nothing. Do you understand me?”
I did. I do. He is right.
The state of Russia in 2022? Newspapers closed down, all news controlled, thousands dragged off the streets and locked up, teachers forced to give propaganda lessons, numerous organisations forced to identify as “foreign agents”, and human rights groups forced to close down.
The west may well have slapped very painful sanctions on Russia, but it’s Putin who has pulled up the drawbridge and successfully isolated his country from the civilised world.
Not actually by invading Ukraine, but by the draconian way he has led his country.
Putin is basically president for life, his leadership is a cult of personality. None of this has happened since Russia invaded Ukraine, it’s all been happening slowly for years.
Putin has done more to drag Russian society backwards than the USSR ever did.
Who else is to blame for this? Us, the west, for doing nowhere near enough in the ’90s to help Russia transform. And, I’m sorry to say, millions of ordinary Russians who backed him, and still do.
They once, I believe, had the chance to do something about it, to “get” what was going on. Now? It’s too late, for the regime they backed, the one that claimed to restore Russian pride, is now too strong to be confronted by its own people.
RIP a once-great country.
I love Russia, or the Russia I remember.
As it stands, today’s Russia is currently beyond repair.
