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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Dmitry Glukhovsky

Ordinary Russians did not want this war, but Putin is trying to make us all complicit

Russian tanks on a street in Mariupol, Ukraine, 11 March, 2022.
Russian tanks on a street in Mariupol, Ukraine, 11 March, 2022. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Why did the Kremlin tell us to call this war a special operation? Because no one in Russia wanted war. Everyone was afraid of war. War is real people leaving their homes and returning in zinc coffins. It’s smoking ruins where flourishing cities once stood. It’s ever-present fear. It’s poverty, starvation, collective insanity.

This war was not wanted by the ordinary people who are going to pay for it. Nor by the businesses that will collapse as a result, nor the so-called elites who will be cut off from the world and deprived of their usual feeding troughs. Since the war began, normal life ended for everyone in Russia, and life under martial law began.

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