One Year Into War, Putin Is Crafting the Russia He Craves

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/world/europe/ukraine-war-russia-putin.html
https://archive.ph/HEzQZ

One Year Into War, Putin Is Crafting the Russia He Craves
In Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has met setback after setback. But its effect at home has been very different.
By Anton Troianovski and Valerie Hopkins
Feb. 19, 2023, 6:11 a.m. ET

The grievance, paranoia and imperialist mind-set that drove President Vladimir V. Putin to invade Ukraine have seeped deep into Russian life after a year of war — a broad, if uneven, societal upheaval that has left the Russian leader more dominant than ever at home.

Schoolchildren collect empty cans to make candles for soldiers in the trenches, while learning in a new weekly class that the Russian military has always liberated humanity from “aggressors who seek world domination.”

Museums and theaters, which remained islands of artistic freedom during previous crackdowns, have seen that special status evaporate, their antiwar performers and artists expunged. New exhibits put on by the state have titles like “NATOzism” — a play on “Nazism” that seeks to cast the Western military alliance as posing a threat as existential as the Nazis of World War II.

Many of the activist groups and rights organizations that sprung up in the first 30 years of post-Soviet Russia have met an abrupt end, while nationalist groups once seen as fringe have taken center stage.

...


A patriotic mural in Moscow dedicated to victory in World War II. The Kremlin is tapping into Russian pride in the nation’s victory over the Nazis to demonize Ukraine.


School children visiting the Victory Museum wore green army caps.


A priest blessing men who had just been conscripted into the Russian army at a recruiting office in Moscow in November.


Families of conscripted Russian men saying farewell.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. The MAGATization of Russian.

The smart people are leaving and what's left are the rubes who are inclined to support fascism.

[paleotn]

2. The Russian superpower, mass propaganda.

I wonder how well it will take this time. This isn't 1960 when few Russians deep in the "motherland" had any idea how much their lives sucked compared to those in New York, Bonn, London or Paris. Not after 30+ years of cross border interchange of culture and business. Too many won't fall for the bullshit, but then again, maybe just enough to fill the ranks of cannon fodder sent to Ukraine and body bags sent back home. I guess numbers is Putin's last ditch effort in Ukraine since you can't change a failed military doctrine that's generations old in months. Nor can he make effective military kit appear like magic.

[CanonRay]

3. He's waging a war of attrition

like Grant did to Lee. They think they can out suffer Ukraine and the West. Russians glory in their suffering.