Four years in, war in Ukraine grinds on. Is that what Russians want?

0:00Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was supposed to be quick and decisive. That's what Russian planners thought, and it's what Western intelligence saw coming, too. Here's NPR national security correspondent Greg Myrie the day after Russia's invasion began. Russian missiles are pounding the capital, Kiev. It's clear Russian troops are getting close to the city. They've been coming down from Belarus. Of course, Kiev didn't fall quickly, and it still hasn't. So alongside the question of Ukraine's survival, another question popped up. How long can Russia keep this up? The U.S. and allies quickly imposed unprecedented sanctions, which shuttered the Moscow Stock Exchange for weeks and sent Russians scrambling to their banks as their currency tanked.

0:45Here's how former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Juan Zarate put it to NPR at the time. I think it's asking sanctions to do too much to actually stop the war, but it certainly can be part of a tableau of pressure that's put on Putin to try to change his behavior, change his calculus. It did not change Russian President Vladimir Putin's calculus, and neither did the brain drain of Russians fleeing the country because they opposed the war politically or feared being conscripted. Russians like Ivan Mushkin, who spoke to NPR after escaping to Armenia. All my male colleagues had already gone. The older people in the office said, are you an idiot?

1:25What are you still doing here? You're of military draft age. Get out now before mobilization begins. Putin weathered that exodus, too. And when he eventually did mobilize 300 ,000 reservists in September of 2022, he cracked down on the protests that sparked. The next year was one of Putin's closest allies criticizing the war. The head of the Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin, said the war in Ukraine was launched on falsehoods and the Ministry of Defense was deceiving the public. He led a column of fighters toward Moscow in apparent rebellion. Here's then Secretary of State Antony Blinken. It's still a moving picture, and I doubt we've seen the last act.

2:08But I think we can say this much. First, we've seen some very serious cracks emerge. But the rebellion very quickly sputtered. Progosian went into exile in Belarus and died in a plane crash two months later. Putin's war continued. Now, four years into the full-scale war, the U.S. is attempting to negotiate an end to the fighting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio admits it is still not clear whether Putin, who has pushed through a gauntlet of challenges to keep the war going, is ready to stop it. We don't know if the Russians are serious about ending the war. They say they are, and under what terms they were willing to do it, and whether we can find terms that are acceptable to Ukraine upon that Russia will always agree to.

2:53but we're going to continue to test it. Consider this. Russians are paying a steep cost for Putin's war in Ukraine. How are they feeling four years in? From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

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3:41It's Consider This from NPR. As the war in Iran has gripped the world's attention this week, Russia's war in Ukraine has slipped from the headlines, but it is still grinding on into its fifth year. And at that time, the Kremlin's so-called special military operation has evolved into the deadliest conflict on the European continent since World War II, with more than a million and a half people dead, injured, or missing, according to Western governments and think tanks. Yet throughout, one of the biggest questions has been, is this what Russians want? It appears Charles Baines went hunting for the answer.

4:14This was the scene last May. I was on Red Square, watching goose-stepping soldiers, missiles, and tanks as they marched and rumbled over the dark cobblestones.

4:28All of it for a military parade, marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. And yet what I kept hearing about was another victory, one that hadn't happened yet, over fascism in Ukraine. Our grandparents did everything to defeat the Nazi threat, and we'll do the same now that it's raised its head again, said Yevgeny Viltin, a lieutenant colonel in the Russian army. Yulia Belikova said her son was proudly serving on the front while she worked with military families at home. We know what we're doing and why, she told me. I also ran into Alexander Boroday, a key figure in Russia's initial shadow war in eastern Ukraine more than a decade ago, before the full-scale invasion.

5:15Now a member of parliament, then sanctioned by the West, Boroday told me he still didn't know when, but victory in Ukraine was coming. Yes, it's taken longer and been harder than we would have liked in Ukraine, thanks to interference by the West, said Boroday, but we'll get there, and we're willing to pay any price.

5:36In today's Russia, history can feel like a feedback loop. The past echoed, amplified, and accelerated to distort the present.

5:49For four years, in speech after speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn parallels between the fight against Nazis then and the current military campaign against supposed fascists in Kiev.

6:04And for four years, the Kremlin leader has insisted Russians remain united behind the war effort in Ukraine, one that's dragged on far longer than many predicted, even longer than the Soviet Union's battles against Hitler's armies. This illusion of a unified country that can go to any lengths to achieve what Putin wants to achieve, I would say it's one of the strongest weapons. That's Alexei Mignailo, an opposition activist who launched Chronicles, a research project to counter what he argues is weaponized polling in favor of the war. To create some kind of illusion of overwhelming support. Pinyalov says in an environment where criticism of the Russian invasion is criminalized, of course a vast majority of Russians say they support the military campaign.

6:48It's out of self-preservation. Yet when presented with more nuanced choices, for example, would you support a decision to withdraw forces early or prefer government resources be devoted elsewhere, a truer picture emerges. We don't have any kind of pro-war majority, and consistently much more people choose to end the war without reaching goals, but sooner than fighting till victory. In other words, the answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Hello, there are chats. In smaller towns like Livni, some 300 miles to the south of the capital, the war mostly thrives on conformity, money, and fear, says Irina Turbina.

7:32Her son Arseni, serving a five-year jail term for his anti-war views. He was just 15 years old, a precocious eighth grader with a love for physics, Real Madrid, and opposition politics, when mass government security agents stormed their apartment in 2023. He was later convicted on terrorism charges for aiding the Ukrainian army, a crime Arseny denies and his mother maintains was fabricated.

8:01My boy is now a terrorist. Can you understand that? A terrorist. A lot of people are suffering because they don't agree with Russia's position towards Ukraine, because they thought what was happening was wrong and couldn't stay silent. Amid Arseny's legal troubles, Turbina has watched as neighbors and colleagues avoided contact or gone out of their way to show support for the Russian invasion, just in case she suspects. Meanwhile, others in town have gone off to fight, with army enlistment bonuses and state bereavement payouts and the tens of thousands of dollars transforming the local economy.

8:36These payments are beyond many people's wildest dreams, but it's all at the expense of those who sign up for the war, because most of them in their previous lives never knew that kind of money.

8:52The government's ability to preserve a sense of normalcy has been key to maintaining public morale, says Sergei Politaev, a supporter of the war effort who writes for the politics blog Vat4. Of course people are tired, because it's a war of attrition. People are exhausted, on the front lines and in the factories, but the rest of society goes on with their lives. They go to work, buy apartments, go out to eat. And it's true. Despite wave after wave of Western sanctions, Russia's economy has performed far better than anyone predicted. Even amid more recent signs of mounting economic troubles, Politaev insists Russians can adapt, because they always have.

9:35This is the sixth economic crisis in my lifetime, and it's far from the worst.

9:43Yet there's a growing sense that amid a conflict with no immediate end in sight, the state's need for control too knows no bounds. Last fall, the arrest of musicians from the band Stop Time over their performance of anti-war cover songs on the streets of St. Petersburg made global headlines. In court, the group's singer, 18-year-old Diana Loganova, who goes by the stage name Naoka, said they were just playing songs they like to a public that wants to hear them.

10:15She and another band member have since fled the country, but the case has served as a reminder. Wartime censorship laws dictate what Russians can hear, watch, read, and share. They impact everyone.

10:30Putin made a huge strategic mistake with this war, says Viktor Yarafeyev, one of Russia's leading contemporary writers, and now among the ranks of hundreds of thousands of Russians living in exile. These days, Yarafeyev often writes about what went wrong in his homeland, what he and others could have done differently. Why do I write these things? Because I feel guilty too, that I could have done more. These are dark times, argues Yarafeyev. Russia may be stuck in an endless war in Ukraine, but its might makes right worldview. What Yarafeyev calls barbarism is on the march everywhere, including the U.S.

11:08Today, America's future is as unpredictable as Russia's, warns Yarafeyev, adding one key difference. Russians, he says, we're used to it. That was NPR's Charles Maines in Moscow. This episode was produced by Christine Arismith, Leah Venkat, and Connor Donovan. It was edited by Nick Spicer and Sarah Handel. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

11:35It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. This message comes from Wealthfront. It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you. With Wealthfront's cash account, you earn a competitive APY on your cash from program banks higher than the average savings rate with free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. Go to Wealthfront.com. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC. Member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable annual percentage yield.