As the war in Ukraine rages, ordinary Russians face a degree of international isolation not seen in decades. What will Putin do next?
On a wintry January day in 1990, the grand opening of the first McDonald’s restaurant in what was then the Soviet Union was hailed as an emblem of the thawing Cold War. A serpentine line wound through the capital’s Pushkin Square, a throng of thousands waiting patiently for a first taste of American fast food.
But if the West is anticipating that public anger over Russia’s newfound pariah status will weaken Putin to the point of forcing him to forgo his wish to subjugate Ukraine — or even pose a threat to his own rule — some analysts believe those hopes may be misplaced., they say, give the 69-year-old Russian leader an opening to invoke a Soviet-era narrative dating to the days when Moscow and Washington were the only world powers: that the West hates Russia and wants it to fail.
“Right now, nobody can check him,” she said of the Russian leader. Oligarchs, she said, “are frightened to death, and people in the ministries — they are even more frightened.”and depose President Volodymyr Zelensky in the war’s first two weeks, Putin still has powerful tools at his disposal at home, including an arsenal of propaganda, a vast and feared state security network and harshly repressive measures that have targeted independent media and kept a tight lid on street protests.
A domestic Russian audience, especially older people who mainly get their news from state media, largely accepts the Kremlin’s depiction of a “special military operation” — not a war — meant to liberate a brotherly Slavic nation from Nazi-style oppressors.when they telephone and try to tell their Russian relatives of freezing and being starved and terrorized by artillery fire on their homes.
“Citizens of Russia, for you, this is a struggle not only for peace in Ukraine — it is a struggle for your country, for the best there was of it,” he said in a video address Sunday. “For the freedom that you saw, for the prosperity that you experienced.” Some veterans of the protest movement say they are demoralized not only by the crackdown, but also by the attitudes of fellow citizens. A 25-year-old Moscow sports marketing specialist named Danila said she did not believe street demonstrations would be a tipping point in the Ukraine war.
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