I am often asked: ‘But do the Russians really not know and understand what the Russian army is doing in Ukraine?’

Well, my answer is: they do know and they understand.
All of them. Or almost.
The exception is a marginal minority of ‘Z’ fanatics, which remains a very small part of the population.

All Russians know and understand. It is no coincidence that after the start of the war, demand exploded in Russia for books on how Hitler came to power in Germany, and also for Orwell’s books.

The problem is not the lack of information, but what happens when you sincerely answer ‘yes’ to certain questions, such as: – Is Russia bombing civilians in Ukraine? – Did it start this war without a noble purpose, but for conquest? – Is the Russian army committing war crimes?
As soon as you answer “yes”, you have to face the next question: “What now?”

And this is where the paralysis comes in.
Because the average Russian cannot do anything.
Don’t talk to me about protests: in Russia today, protesting means losing your job, your freedom, or even your life. It is a heroic gesture, but almost impossible.

So how do you live knowing that your state commits horrible crimes, and that you can do nothing?

The truth is that living there is unbearable.
This feeling of helplessness corrodes you.
I know this from personal experience: I spent almost the whole of 2022 crying. And I escaped almost immediately.

For those who stayed, this pain is even more acute. Accepting that one’s state is criminal also requires one to give oneself an answer to the question: “What to do?”.
But there is no answer.
So many people choose oblivion.
I have friends who no longer read the news: they prefer to forget that war exists, because the pain would destroy them.

Others have taken refuge in the classic “not everything is so clear”, or the well-known “so what about America?” argument , repeated by propaganda. Not because they actually believe it, but because it is the only way to survive emotionally.

What we see is not ignorance. It is an unconscious strategy of psychic survival. Russian propaganda does not only serve to deceive. It serves to protect the collective psyche: it gives people a more bearable narrative, a narrative according to which they are not complicit.
It is a form of self-deception, yes, but a necessary one for many. The average citizen cannot afford the luxury of critical thinking, because critical thinking today leads to despair.

And that is precisely the problem: war has killed not only bodies, but also the moral capacity to resist.
Contemporary Russia has destroyed all space for individual ethical action.
And without the possibility of action, conscience ends up anaesthetised, like a body in a pharmacological coma so as not to feel pain.

Not all Russians are ‘good’. Not all are ‘victims’. But those who judge the silence of the majority without understanding the psychological cost of this silence, fall into a dangerous simplification.

It is easy to ask for courage from afar. Much more difficult is to understand what happens when courage can kill you, and silence is the only way not to go mad.