Don’t Give Up on a Better Russia

February 24, 2022, was the worst day of my life. When I woke up to news that Russia was invading Ukraine, it felt impossible to believe. I knew that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been massing troops along Ukraine’s borders, and I had read that Western intelligence agencies believed war was imminent. A couple of days before the invasion began, I had even submitted an application to hold an antiwar rally in Moscow. And yet the idea that Putin would try conquering Europe’s largest country—one with so many cultural and familial ties to Russia—still felt unfathomable. I hoped the headlines were wrong, and that journalists had mistaken another provocation for a full-blown attack.

Alas, they had not. As I read more, it quickly became evident that the assault was real. In photos and videos, I saw explosions on the streets where I once walked with my friends. My relatives in Zaporizhzhia were writing to me from a missile shelter. As a Russian opposition activist, I am no stranger to horrible Kremlin behavior: I have protested against rigged elections, seen my colleagues get arrested, and spent two months in jail myself—barely avoiding charges that carried a prison term of up to 15 years. But watching the invasion begin was more terrible than anything I had experienced before.

After it became clear the invasion was real, I gathered with friends and allies to brainstorm what we could do. It would have been easy, in that moment, for us to fall into despair. But as activists and researchers, we knew that Putin’s regime was less steadfast than it seems. We had seen Putin use polls and elections to create an impression, both within Russia and outside the country, that he has overwhelming support—an impression that helps him both control Russians and influence foreign politicians. And we worried that many Russian pollsters would struggle to adjust their methods to a wartime environment.

We began a research project, called Chronicles, in which social scientists would endeavor to understand how deep Russians’ support for the invasion actually goes. Pro-war sentiment appears to be much weaker than many think. Although most Russians passively accept the invasion, only 12 percent of Russians can boast at least a minimally coherent pro-war position: one where they simultaneously declare support for the war, say they would not accept a Russian loss, and believe that the state’s priority should be military spending instead of social spending. According to our research, the percentage of Russians who say they would support withdrawing from Ukraine without reaching Moscow’s military goals is higher than the percentage who say they would oppose such a decision—40 percent to 33 percent. (The latter figure has decreased from 47 percent in February.)

Russia’s elite has mixed feelings, too. According to many Western analysts, the Russian establishment is unified in support of Putin’s “special military operation.” But relatively few Russian elites are vocal about their backing. Many of them—including those who are named among Putin’s possible successors—have, at various points, tried to distance themselves from the war. And even some of the war’s biggest supporters appear unhappy with Putin’s leadership. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, which the former overall commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine may have known about in advance, was a great illustration of this dissatisfaction. To end the mutiny, after all, Putin had to humiliate himself by negotiating with Prigozhin, a person who massacred army officers and publicly called Putin what, in Russian, translates to “accomplished old asshole.” The fact that Prigozhin later died in a mysterious plane crash hardly makes this outcome less embarrassing.

To help end the war and bring about democratic change, activists are working to capitalize on disaffection among both the establishment and ordinary people. Our team, for instance, is preparing a grassroots project that will paint a picture of what everyday life in a democratic Russia might be like. We believe that focusing on day-to-day issues is essential: to most people, the idea of better schools, hospitals, and cities is way more comprehensible and motivating than calls for establishing the rule of law and holding free elections. We must persuade Russians that, if the country works on improving itself instead of fighting abroad, they will be more prosperous and secure instead of poorer and more vulnerable. If Russians are convinced this is true, more of them might decide that the high costs of challenging the regime are worth the benefits.

Within Russia, pro-war sentiment appears to be much weaker than many think.

Western voices and policies often make this task—already tough—even tougher, by trying to collectively punish all Russians and treating the country as irredeemable, even with an end to the conflict and change in leadership. Most of Europe, for instance, is reluctant to accept Russians trying to flee Putin’s regime. Borders with Russia are being closed for ordinary Russians (although oligarchs still find ways to get out). Some Americans and Europeans have even talked about breaking Russia apart, arguing that it is the only way to overcome Moscow’s imperial legacy and make Europe safe. Such talk inadvertently bolsters Putin’s claim that the war in Ukraine is defensive and that he is protecting Russians from a rapacious NATO. It has driven much of the country’s elite even closer to Putin, even though many of them lost billions of dollars because of his conflict.

A different course would be more effective. To steer both the Russian establishment’s and ordinary people’s opinions toward returning occupied territories to Ukraine, the United States and Europe need to grant protection to people running from Russia, and they need to stop discriminating against Russians abroad. They have to make more compelling assurances that they will not try to dismember Russia, and they need to offer some form of amnesty to officials who oversee a democratic transition. Finally, and most important, they have to lay out a clear road map of how, and under what conditions, they will lift both individual and national sanctions.

This program may not satisfy Ukrainians and some of their allies, many of whom want to see Russia suffer for its malevolent deeds. It will also not inspire idealists, who believe that Russians should fight against the war and for democracy simply because doing so is right. As an idealist myself, I understand the disappointment.

But Ukraine, the West, and ordinary Russians should have a unified interest: ending the war as soon as possible, returning occupied territories to Ukraine, and returning to a peaceful life. The United States and Europe can help achieve these aims by convincing our peers that withdrawing and democratizing will have major benefits—instead of serious costs.

RISKS AND RETURNS

Individual decisions are typically motivated by potential risks and rewards. And for Russians today, the costs of pushing for democracy far exceed the benefits.

Moscow has long made sure that dissent is dangerous. Even before the war, simply attending a protest could easily land someone in jail, sometimes for years. But since the war began, the penalties have grown. Today, basic acts of resistance—like wearing a yellow T-shirt and blue jeans (matching the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag)—can land someone in jail. Depending on the scale of the action, the sentence might be short, but in a country where most people live on a salary of around $500 per month, even a brief period of detention can deprive people of the ability to feed their children. And lengthy sentences are common. Writing an article criticizing Putin or making social media posts calling for an end to the “special military operation” can lead to prison terms that might extend for up to 15 years.

Those are the legal punishments. Many Russian journalists and politicians have also been assassinated or nearly assassinated for criticizing the government during Putin’s reign. In 2003, Yuri Shchekochikhin, a Russian investigative journalist, died in suspicious circumstances; relatives, colleagues and civil society actors believe he was poisoned. Boris Nemtsov, one of the country’s most prominent past opposition leaders, was shot dead in 2015 near the Kremlin. Last June, when the antiwar activist Anatoly Berezikov died in detention, his lawyer said it was because of torture. Many other antifascist activists have been tortured—including by being electrocuted naked. Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most famous opposition leader, barely survived being poisoned by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB; today, he is in prison. Vladimir Kara-Murza, an opposition activist, survived two poisoning attempts. Now, he is in jail for 25 years.

Since February 24, thousands upon thousands of Russians have stood up against the invasion. But they have not stopped it. More than 20,000 have, however, been detained by the police, many of whom were then beaten and tortured. They are only the latest protesters that, despite working hard and taking great personal risks, did not realize their aims. The widespread 2017 and 2018 demonstrations against Russian corruption and autocratic rule did not result in major reforms. Mass protests against Putin’s norm-breaking 2012 presidential campaign failed to stop his return to office. In fact, the last successful protest aimed at Russia’s federal government took place in 2005, when the elderly blocked the country’s most important highway to get their social benefits back.

Russia’s experience is, unfortunately, typical of autocratic countries. In Venezuela, years of demonstrations against President Nicolás Maduro yielded arrests and mass repression but no regime change. Iran’s 2022 antigovernment protests captured the hearts of people all over the world, yet public executions and thousands of arrests subdued the unrest. Next door to Russia, in Belarus, over 500,000 citizens—or at least one in every 20 people in the country—demonstrated against President Alexander Lukashenko’s fraudulent 2020 reelection. Ultimately, the Belarussian state snuffed out the dissent with unremitting violence. Even in democracies, protests are often ineffective. Millions of people in the United States demonstrated against the war in Iraq, but their government went ahead and invaded anyway.

In some post-Soviet states, protest movements have had more success. In Ukraine, for example, the 2014 Maidan revolution successfully toppled the country’s corrupt president after he tried to stop Ukraine from deepening relations with the EU. But Kyiv, unlike Moscow, was not an authoritarian regime. The demonstrators did not expect mass arrests or killings in retaliation for their actions. When over 100 people were, in fact, killed by the police, the movement had already gained almost unstoppable momentum.

The protesters also had support from major political parties, elected officials, newspapers, and television channels. Dissenters in today’s Russia do not have any such backing. Putin, slowly but steadily, has either subdued or destroyed these institutions. His regime went about it in a clever way. There was no obvious turning point in Putin’s takeover, no moment when democracy was dealt an undisputed final blow. Instead, he just piled on a series of straws that eventually broke the country’s back.

IN THE WAY

Russia, however, is not hopeless. There are opposition groups, including mine, that are trying to convince the country that a more democratic and peaceful future is both better and possible—and we are far from hopeless. According to our team’s phone polls, more Russians (46 percent) want the state to prioritize social spending over military spending than the other way around (26 percent). Almost half—47 percent—empathize with people who try to dodge military service, as opposed to the 36 percent of people who condemn their behavior. It is difficult to estimate the number of Russians who actively support the war—defined as Russians who volunteer, donate to troops, or otherwise go out of their way to assist with the operation. But by our estimates, the number is below five percent. In fact, willingness to serve in the army is so low that the state offers up to $11,000 just for signing the contract with the military. Russians are not unrestrained warmongers. Most are willing to end Moscow’s assault on its neighbor.

Critics might argue that our conclusions are prejudiced because of the team’s political positions. But the professional pollsters do all due diligence and use rigorous methods to ensure that our data is valid. We are transparent about how we conduct surveys, publishing our questionnaires and anonymized datasets so that any social scientist can check and criticize our work—critiques that we, in turn, use to improve our methods. And for the most part, our findings do not contradict those of other researchers, be it Russia Watcher or the Levada Center. They just show that, for many Russians, support for the war is paper thin.

That there is discontent, of course, does not mean there will be active opposition: responding to a poll is different from taking action. To turn unhappiness into constructive action, activists must persuade disaffected Russians that the return is worth the risk and that doing nothing at all will land Russia in an even worse situation than it is in now. In order to do so, Russian opposition figures try to explain Russia’s real economic situation and what is happening with the war through analytic materials and through political entertainment shows broadcast on YouTube, which is not yet blocked in Russia. We are also actively trying to show what a peaceful democratic Russia might look like.

The United States and Europe have in some ways complicated our task, in part through restrictions that make it harder for us to function. Mitya Aleshkovsky, for instance, a Russian nonprofit and media manager well known for his antiwar and anti-Putin stance, encountered numerous problems with international banks and PayPal when he tried to create a nongovernmental organization aimed at supporting Russia’s antiwar initiatives. Latvia revoked the license for TV Rain, a liberal Russian television channel that Moscow had kicked out. (Latvian officials contended, falsely, that the station supported the invasion.)

Western rhetoric has encouraged ordinary Russians to stand by Putin.

Western societies have also made life needlessly difficult for ordinary Russians fleeing the regime. The vast majority of NATO states make it hard for Russians to get visas or residence permits. The EU states that border mainland Russia—Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—have prevented most Russians with existing tourist visas from entering. These barriers are entirely self-defeating. Ostensibly designed to demonstrate the anti-Putin stance of Western politicians, the restrictions’ most important accomplishment is reinforcing Putin’s message that the West views all Russians as the enemy. They also prevent many able-bodied and smart young men—the people whom Putin needs to prosecute his conflict—from evading conscription.

The West does, of course, have an interest in preventing a certain class of Russians from enjoying life in its cities: Putin’s cronies. And Washington and Europe’s post-invasion crackdown on Russian oligarchs, years overdue, was welcomed in the Russian opposition community. But the West may ultimately need to go easier on these figures than it would like. After Putin himself, Russia’s elite are the country’s most powerful people, and the West’s tough stance means they have zero incentive to push for an end to the conflict. The Kremlin, of course, will punish them for dissent. But U.S. and European commentators have threatened to punish them, too, as part of a peace agreement. As a result, their safest course of action is to stand by the current regime and its ongoing invasion. “For all his failures,” the political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote in Foreign Affairs in November 2022, Putin “remains their best bet for preserving the regime that keeps them safe.”

Western rhetoric has also encouraged ordinary Russians to stand by Putin. Although the population has not bought in on the invasion, they do not want to see defeat in Ukraine destroy their country, and some U.S. and European groups have published articles declaring that Russia should be dismembered. For example, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe—an independent commission of the U.S. government, designed to promote human rights and peace on the continent (and elsewhere)—declared that “decolonizing Russia” should be a “moral and strategic objective.” Most U.S. and European elites may not agree with these calls, but they are quickly picked up by Russian news outlets and blasted to every household in the country. Propagandists then use them to argue that Putin is, indeed, fighting to save Russia.

It is therefore little wonder that millions of Russians have not taken to the streets. They know that the costs of public dissent are far too high, and the potential returns of democratization seem very low.

ANTI-PUTIN, ANTIWAR, PRO-RUSSIAN

For many Western observers, what concerns Russia’s 140 million people is unimportant. Moscow launched an imperialist invasion, and so Russian suffering may simply be the price of stopping the Kremlin. Some Westerners may even want to see Russians hurt. According to reporting by The Washington Post, anti-Russian sentiment in Europe is on the rise, and Russian immigrants throughout the continent have been harassed, irrespective of their political views. In the Czech Republic, for example, a Prague University professor declared that he would not teach Russian students, and store owners have put up signs saying they will not welcome Russian visitors.

But this type of thinking is counterproductive (and it undermines principles of universal human rights). Antagonizing ordinary Russians will not help persuade people to actively oppose the invasion or support democracy. It will do nothing to transform Russia into a safe, committed, and predictable partner.

And Russia will need to transform if the world wants a satisfactory ending to this conflict, or if it wants to be sure that Moscow will not start new ones. The war has reached a stalemate, and so Ukraine may not be able to retake all occupied territory unless Russia decides to pull back. Even if Kyiv does succeed in pushing Russia out of Ukrainian land, the Kremlin is unlikely to call it quits. Given Putin’s past behavior, Moscow would likely continue ordering attacks from across the border or try to interfere in the elections in the United States or EU.

U.S. and European leaders would therefore do well to take a new approach. They could start by pledging explicitly, loudly, and repeatedly that they will not try to break Russia apart in the event Moscow cedes or loses the war. They could continue by not rejecting ordinary Russians trying to come into their countries, both because those Russians are fleeing from participation in the war and because they are usually well educated and could greatly contribute to Western economies. The United States and Europe should also make it clear that the entire Russian elite would not be penalized if Russia stops or loses the war and transforms. Only those confirmed to have actively taken part in war crimes would face punishment.

To help win over elites, Western governments could suggest conditions under which officials without a track record of war crimes would be spared from personal sanctions when the war ends. If such officials defect, Western states could even lift sanctions on them before the war finishes. Relatedly, the United States and Europe may want to offer amnesty to Russians who have participated in minor regime crimes in exchange for a willingness to oppose Putin and make Russia return to a path of peace and cooperation. The West should bear in mind that most current high-level Russian officials have participated in corruption, electoral fraud, and other authoritarian offenses. If they are afraid of facing retribution for these sins, they are likely to stick with Putin and do their best to thwart democratization.

There are, of course, war criminals who need to be held accountable; my colleagues and I are not calling for amnesty all around. Nor are we calling for an end to all, or even most, of the sanctions right now. But the West could be more judicious in how it applies certain restrictions, and it should lay out conditions for ending them. Ordinary Russians need to know that, if their country withdraws from Ukraine, the West will lift sanctions and allow the Russian economy to grow, making it easier for them to earn a living.

Thankfully, some Western officials have made it publicly known they are willing to help the Russian people if the invasion comes to an end. In a June address in Helsinki, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the United States “is not [the Russian people’s] enemy.” At the end of the Cold War, “we shared the hope that Russia would emerge to a brighter future, free and open, fully integrated with the world,” he said. “For more than 30 years, we worked to pursue stable and cooperative relations with Moscow, because we believed that a peaceful, secure, and prosperous Russia is in America’s interests—indeed, in the interests of the world. We still believe that today.”

The West can help Russians stop fearing democratization and an end to the war in Ukraine.

To help activists create that peaceful, secure, and prosperous Russia, the West can do more than make encouraging statements. Western officials should offer specific promises and, when possible, act now to support Russians trying to flee the regime. They should offer ways out to accomplices of Putin who are willing to atone. Putin’s propaganda machine will try to hide Western overtures, but a coordinated anti-Putin, antiwar, pro-Russian policy will inevitably seep through. It should reach establishment figures quickly, given that they are both less influenced by propaganda and have easier access to outside information.

Taking these measures, of course, will not by itself change Russia. Foreign states ultimately have little power over my country’s domestic politics. At the end of the day, only Russians can bring democracy and peace to Russia. But these measures would remove some of the roadblocks that make the job of Russian activists—including mine—harder than is needed. It can help us show other Russians that our country can have a future free of isolation, one where they will have more opportunities to prosper than they do right now. It can help us persuade Russians that, if Moscow abandons its aggression, their children will not have to go to the frontline to earn $2,000 per month. The West can, in other words, help Russians stop fearing democratization and an end to the war in Ukraine.

This, in turn, will increase the chances that Russia will start addressing the evils it has inflicted. Ukraine would then hopefully get peace and reparations. Russians would get a better life. And the United States and Europe would get a predictable and constructive partner instead of a hostile dictatorship.