The boredom of young Russians who have only known Putin as president

Shame, anger and pain is what many young Russians, who have only known Vladimir Putin as president, feel when talking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

These young people, who say that they are horrified, that they cannot express themselves and are not listened to, chose for security reasons not to mention their last name when speaking.

21-year-old Maria’s world came crashing down like a house of cards on the morning of February 24, when she learned that her country had launched a so-called “special operation” in Ukraine aimed at protecting Russia from the Western threat. and to the Russian-speakers of a “genocide”.

Since that day, Maria has been trying to “find a logic” to everything that is happening, but without success: “My value system has collapsed,” she says.

Like hundreds of Muscovites, this young woman demonstrates every day against the war, without banners or slogans to avoid being arrested.

“But politicians don’t listen to people like me, who think differently,” says Maria, who has just dropped out of school.

Many young people of his generation feel “betrayed” by the Kremlin, which “refuses to see and listen to them.”

In a tiny cafe in the center of Moscow, Maria gives free rein to her emotions with a friend who has arrived from Saint Petersburg.

Mira, who is 26 and works in the fashion industry, also goes to the small daily anti-war rallies that take place in the former Russian imperial capital. Before each demonstration, she fills her backpack with “medicines, her passport, and a pair of socks,” in case she gets caught.

“Small, invisible”

“Going to a demonstration is something you have to think about, given the risk of being fined, assaulted (by the police), or ending up in prison,” explains Liza, a 20-year-old student.

Often, “demonstrating means spoiling your life,” adds this young woman, who says she feels “small and invisible to the system.”

“I never voted for Putin. No one asked me for my opinion on this war that I pay for with my taxes, ”says Liza, who wants to leave Russia with her boyfriend, Evgueni. “They neither respect me nor listen to me,” she adds.

“Nothing has ever hurt me like this war,” says Evgueni, for whom “demonstrating has become useless.”

Afraid of the “grim prospects that await us Russians as a pariah people”, he fears a general military mobilization, so he is about to leave for Georgia.

Some fears that Elizaveta also has, 28 years old and a graduate of a prestigious university.

Above all, she is overwhelmed by “rage and pain, as if there had been a deceased in the family,” she told AFP.

After the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, Elizaveta resigned from working as a state official, and since then she has been a translator.

“You don’t choose the country you’re born in”

Piotr, 20, has already assumed that the film career he dreams of will be completely wiped out if he is arrested at anti-war demonstrations where he goes with his camera.

“But going is my civic duty and professions,” believes this young man, who also reproaches himself for not having protested “the murder of 15,000 people by the Kiev forces” in the conflict that started in 2014 in the pro-Russian separatist regions of the eastern Ukraine.

Deep down, “power speaks to us like our parents: ‘we know what’s best for you,'” explains Liza, 23, angrily.

“After the Soviet scarcity, our parents started to have (material) goods and that counts a lot for them.” “But neither the country in which you are born nor your parents are chosen,” she says.