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[Vector]

Posted by New York Times today:

Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War

Citizens are denouncing one another, illustrating how the war is feeding paranoia and polarization in Russian society.

Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, showed an uplifting YouTube video to her eighth-grade class last month in which children, in Russian and Ukrainian, sing about a “world without war.”

After she played it, a group of girls stayed behind during recess and quizzed her on her views.

“Ukraine is a separate country, a separate one,” Ms. Dubrova, 57, told them.

“No longer,” one of the girls shot back.

A few days later, the police came to her school in the port town of Korsakov. In court, she heard a recording of that conversation, apparently made by one of the students. The judge handed down a $400 fine for “publicly discrediting” Russia’s Armed Forces. The school fired her, she said, for “amoral behavior.”

“It’s as though they’ve all plunged into some kind of madness,” Ms. Dubrova said in a phone interview, reflecting on the pro-war mood around her.

With President Vladimir V. Putin’s direct encouragement, Russians who support the war against Ukraine are starting to turn on the enemy within.

The episodes are not yet a mass phenomenon, but they illustrate the building paranoia and polarization in Russian society. Citizens are denouncing one another in an eerie echo of Stalin’s terror, spurred on by vicious official rhetoric from the state and enabled by far-reaching new laws that criminalize dissent.

There are reports of students turning in teachers and people telling on their neighbors and even the diners at the next table. In a mall in western Moscow, it was the “no to war” text displayed in a computer repair store and reported by a passer-by that got the store’s owner, Marat Grachev, detained by the police. In St. Petersburg, a local news outlet documented the furor over suspected pro-Western sympathies at the public library; it erupted after a library official mistook the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for that of Mark Twain.


In the western region of Kaliningrad, the authorities sent residents text messages urging them to provide phone numbers and email addresses of “provocateurs” in connection with the “special operation” in Ukraine, Russian newspapers reported; they can do so conveniently through a specialized account in the Telegram messaging app. A nationalist political party launched a website urging Russians to report “pests” in the elite.

“I am absolutely sure that a cleansing will begin,” Dmitri Kuznetsov, the member of Parliament behind the website, said in an interview, predicting that the process would accelerate after the “active phase” of the war ended. He then clarified: “We don’t want anyone to be shot, and we don’t even want people to go to prison.”

But it is the history of mass execution and political imprisonment in the Soviet era, and the denunciation of fellow citizens encouraged by the state, that now looms over Russia’s deepening climate of repression. Mr. Putin set the tone in a speech on March 16, declaring that Russian society needed a “self-purification” in which people would “distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths.”

In the Soviet logic, those who choose not to report their fellow citizens could be viewed as being suspect themselves.

“In these conditions, fear is settling into people again,” said Nikita Petrov, a leading scholar of the Soviet secret police. “And that fear dictates that you report.”

In March, Mr. Putin signed a law that punishes public statements contradicting the government line on what the Kremlin terms its “special military operation” in Ukraine with as much as 15 years in prison. It was a harsh but necessary measure, the Kremlin said, given the West’s “information war” against Russia.

Prosecutors have already used the law against more than 400 people, according to the OVD-Info rights group, including a man who held up a piece of paper with eight asterisks on it. “No to war” in Russian has eight letters.

“This is some kind of enormous joke that we, to our misfortune, are living in,” Aleksandra Bayeva, the head of OVD-Info’s legal department, said of the absurdity of some of the war-related prosecutions. She said she had seen a sharp rise in the frequency of people reporting on their fellow citizens.

“Repressions are not just done by the hands of the state authorities,” she said. “They are also done by the hands of regular citizens.”

In most cases, the punishments related to war criticism have been limited to fines; for the more than 15,000 antiwar protesters arrested since the invasion began on Feb. 24, fines are the most common penalty, though some were sentenced to as many as 30 days in jail, Ms. Bayeva said. But some people are being threatened with longer prison terms.

In the western city of Penza, another English teacher, Irina Gen, arrived in class one day and found a giant “Z” scrawled on the chalkboard. The Russian government has been promoting the letter as a symbol of support for the war, after it was seen painted as an identifying marker on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine.

Ms. Gen told her students it looked like half a swastika.

Later, an eighth grader asked her why Russia was being banned from sports competitions in Europe.

“I think that’s the right thing to do,” Ms. Gen responded. “Until Russia starts behaving in a civilized manner, this will continue forever.”

“But we don’t know all the details,” a girl said, referring to the war.

“That’s right, you don’t know anything at all,” Ms. Gen said.

A recording of that exchange appeared on a popular account on Telegram that often posts inside information about criminal cases. The Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the K.G.B., called her in and warned her that her words blaming Russia for the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, last month were “100 percent a criminal case.”

She is now being investigated for causing “grave consequences” under last month’s censorship law, punishable by 10 to 15 years in prison.

Ms. Gen, 45, said she found little support among her students or from her school, and quit her job this month. When she talked in class about her opposition to the war, she said she felt “hatred” toward her radiating from some of her students.

“My point of view did not resonate in the hearts and minds of basically anyone,” she said in an interview.

But others who have been the targets of denunciation by fellow citizens drew more hopeful lessons from the experience. On Sakhalin Island, after local news outlets reported on Ms. Dubrova’s case, one of her former students raised $150 in a day for her, before Ms. Dubrova told her to stop and said she would pay the fine herself. On Friday, Ms. Dubrova handed the money over to a local dog shelter.

In Moscow, Mr. Grachev, the computer repair store owner, said he found it remarkable that not one of his hundreds of customers threatened to turn him in for the “no to war” text that he prominently displayed on a screen behind the counter for several weeks after the invasion. After all, he noted, he was forced to double the price of some services because of Western sanctions, surely angering some of his customers. Instead, many thanked him.

The man who apparently turned in Mr. Grachev was a passer-by he refers to as a “grandpa” who, he said, twice warned his employees in late March that they were violating the law. Mr. Grachev, 35, said he believed the man was convinced he was doing his civic duty by reporting the store to the police, and most likely did not have access to information beyond state propaganda.

Mr. Grachev was fined 100,000 rubles, more than $1,200. A Moscow politician wrote about the case on social media, including Mr. Grachev’s bank details for anyone who wanted to help. Enough money to cover the fine arrived within two hours, Mr. Grachev said.

He received 250,000 rubles in total, he said, from about 250 separate donations, and he plans to donate the surplus to OVD-Info, which provided him with legal aid.

“In practice, we see that not everything is so bad,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Grachev is now pondering how to replace his “no to war” sign. He is considering: “There was a sign here for which a 100,000 ruble fine was imposed.”

[Strongpoint]

https://youtu.be/6yMPfECN958

Ukrainian news report about the overall situation with bodies of Russian soldiers. With English subtitles. The most gory parts are blurred but it is marked 18+ for a reason

tl;dw - Ukraine doesn't leave Russian bodies rotting in the field, there are a lot of them, only 30% are possible to identify without DNA tests, many bodies were mined by their own "comrades"

[EuchreJack]

I get the need to prove "lots of Russian soldiers died in this war", but that alone would not justify filming of the bodies of the dead Russian soldiers.

However, the Russian military leaving the bodies of their dead soldiers without burial and booby trapped is newsworthy. 
Which sadly due to its nature requires quite graphic depictions to prove.

Thank you for the disclaimers and information.

[brewer bob]

Even Silvio Berlusconi is turning his back on Putin.

Ex-Italian PM 'deeply disappointed' by Putin's behaviour

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that he was "deeply disappointed and saddened" by the behaviour of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When he was in power, Berlusconi had a close friendship with Putin, and invited him on vacation to his villa in Sardinia.

"I've known him about 20 years ago and he always seemed to me to be a democrat and a man of peace," the 85-year-old billionaire said, addressing a convention of his conservative Forza Italia party in Rome.

Berlusconi, who served as head of the Italian government three times between 1994 and 2011, had previously refrained from publicly criticising Putin.

"Faced with the horror of the massacres of civilians in Bucha and other places, real war crimes, Russia can not deny its responsibilities," he said on Saturday.

[Duuvian]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/10/russia-ukraine-live-news-war-to-slash-ukraines-gdp-by-45
From the article:

Kyiv expects Russian attack in eastern Ukraine ‘will begin soon’

Kyiv expects Russia will launch a major offensive in eastern Ukraine “soon”, a spokesman for the country’s defence ministry says.

“The enemy has almost finished preparation for [an] assault on the east, the attack will begin soon,” Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said at a news conference.

[brewer bob]

Ah yes, we got a statement from North Korea about Russia being kicked out of UN human rights body:

North Korea blames US for Russia's expulsion from UN human rights body

Last week, Russia was suspended from the United Nations' leading human rights body - the human rights council - after a vote by members. It followed mounting evidence that Russian forces have killed civilians in Ukraine.

North Korea - which was among the 24 countries that voted against the move - has now denounced Russia's suspension.

"What the US is after... is to isolate the independent countries, and forces challenging them at the international arena, so as to maintain its illegal and inhumane US-led hegemonic order," says a government statement carried by state news agency KCNA and reported by Reuters.

The statement says international organisations should not be "abused" as a means for the US to put political pressure on countries.

[martinuzz]

Kyiv expects Russian attack in eastern Ukraine ‘will begin soon’

Kyiv expects Russia will launch a major offensive in eastern Ukraine “soon”, a spokesman for the country’s defence ministry says.

“The enemy has almost finished preparation for [an] assault on the east, the attack will begin soon,” Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said at a news conference.

Some part of me fears that retreating from Kyiv is not to start an offensive in the east but a withdrawal to not be in a nuke blast radius.
But then again, they'd have thrown it by now, unless they are waiting for more refugees to return to Kyiv for maximum loss of life.

Several western nations having reopened their embassies in Kyiv might deter that, because article 5 could very well be invoked if an active embassy is nuked. Embassies count as territory of the owner's nation.

[Random_Dragon]

If they are going to outright drop a nuke, I suspect the most likely time for it will be closer to the deadline in May they seem to be after.

[martinuzz]

What deadline in May? I have heard of no such thing.

EDIT: In other news, people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal and more East-African countries are dying of hunger, because of the increased prices of Russian grain. A lot of people on the low income side of society cannot afford to buy food anymore.

Oxfam Novib has opened a special bank account for donations to provide emergency food aid for millions of starving people.

https://www.oxfamnovib.nl/hongersnood-dreigt-in-oost-afrika

EDIT2: Heh, the African famine is part of the war now.
EU chief Borrell has accused Russia of causing worldwide famine by bombing Ukrainian fields, destroying grain supplies and interdicting Ukrainian trade ships from trading grain to Africa.
Meanwhile, Russia accuses the West of causing famine in Africa with their sanctions against Russia.
Africa is more likely to believe Putin than their former hated colonial occupiers.

[EuchreJack]

I'll throw in a friendly reminder to try to stick to news in this thread, and try to keep your reactions in the Emotions thread.

Famine in Africa was predicted as a likely outcome of all this.  Did Ukraine export grain to Africa in recent history as well?

[brewer bob]

Famine in Africa was predicted as a likely outcome of all this.  Did Ukraine export grain to Africa in recent history as well?

Yemen was at least listed as one of the countries likely to suffer from this. They get around 50% of their grains from Russia and Ukraine. It's expected that the situation there will be catastrophic (not to say that it already isn't).

With a quick googling, Investment Monitor has an article about Ukrainian food exports and how the war affects different countries (the article is from a month ago). It also lists the top ten countries where Russia and Ukraine export wheat and maize.

[brewer bob]

What deadline in May? I have heard of no such thing.

It's not a set deadline (as far as I know), but it's been speculated they'll try to achieve some "victory" before May 9th, Victory Day (the anniversary of the Soviet Union's triumph over Germany).

[Strongpoint]

Allegedly, Russian forces used a poisonous substance of unknown origin against the Ukrainian military and civilians in Mariupol, which was dropped from an UAV. - https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1513597873593663492

[Loud Whispers]

Allegedly, Russian forces used a poisonous substance of unknown origin against the Ukrainian military and civilians in Mariupol, which was dropped from an UAV. - https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1513597873593663492

Oh boy it's Aleppo all over again

[Random_Dragon]

Bit belatedly yeah, it's not a deadline so much as they likely want to end the war by that date given the propaganda value it'd have. I can see them potentially ramping the war crimes up the closer that date gets.