As Vladimir Putin continues his bloody invasion of Ukraine, it’s difficult to know what average Russians think of it. An Orwellian new anti-speech law has made it illegal even to call the war a “war,” let alone to speak out against it, and the government has shut down social media sites and various news outlets.
However, one forum – at least so far – remains unblocked: YouTube. And on certain channels, one can still get a glimpse of what the Russian people are thinking.
One such channel is 1420, where a 21-year-old man named Daniil wanders the streets of Moscow, collecting pedestrians’ comments on the latest news. The channel provides a fascinating chronology of Muscovites’ opinions, especially because Daniil posts so often. Watching his videos, we learn how Russians feel before the war, after it starts, one week in, two weeks in – and in the meantime, more and more restrictions of speech emerge from the Kremlin, to which the pedestrians respond in real time. Many become more reticent, but an impressive few become bolder.
“I think the war has started between the governments, not between people,” a young woman says in one video, filmed on the first day of the invasion. “What do we gotta do? You can’t help it with posts. We gotta go into the streets.”
Another youth, between drags of his cigarette, says he’s going to a demonstration that night. A young woman with braces says the war personally pains her.
“It hurts, it hurts. That’s all I can say,” she says. “I don’t understand why it happens in the 21st Century… We, regular people, definitely don’t want war. We want peace, friendship, and love.”
As for Daniil himself, the YouTuber tries to keep his own opinions off-screen.
“We at 1420 prefer not to feel anything about the answers. Otherwise it can affect the video, so it’s better to stay cold-hearted,” the videographer told The Independent by email. “I want to show Russians from every perspective, so the world will be able to know everything about them.”
According to Daniil, the Russians brave enough to answer his questions are only a small fraction of the people he interviews. For one recent video, he said, 23 pedestrians agreed to talk, while 123 refused. That ratio held steady for a while, and then, after three weeks of war, it suddenly plummeted.
“Compared to the first week part, people really started to avoid some topics, and became more cautious,” Daniil said.
That caution is evident in his videos. As 1420 asks people what they think of the war – or, as it now must be called, the “special military operation” – some simply shake their heads and walk away.
“I think I can’t leave comments, because of my job,” one young woman demurs.
“I prefer to not think about it,” says another.
Others appear to adopt the Russian government’s steely denial.
“What war?” one man asks, giving the videographer a cold stare.
“I don’t see no war,” another man says. “There’s no war for me, basically. When a bomb is dropped here, then we can have a talk.”
Daniil is a young person from Moscow, and the people he interviews tend to be in that cohort. This appears to yield a high number of anti-war – or at least neutral – responses.
But not every YouTuber probing Russian opinions focuses on the young. Another channel, run by the non-profit Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (funded by the US government), spends more time on older Russians outside the capital. Eight days into the war, RFE/RL approached pedestrians in Perm and Vladivostok with photos of the destruction in Ukraine. Some refused to look.
“I support Putin,” one middle-aged woman says repeatedly. “I won’t look at these photos.”
“That’s a preventive blow,” another rationalises. “It’s true that it costs thousands of lives. It is bitter, it is painful, but what else is there to do? Wait until they attack us?”
Many of the respondents appear to have absorbed the grab bag of Kremlin propaganda lines – that Ukraine is run by Nazis (its president, it should be noted, is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust), that it was about to commit a genocide against ethnic Russians, or that the war isn’t happening at all.
“No one is bombing Kyiv,” one elderly man says. “I don’t believe it.”
“Putin couldn’t do this. Invade Ukraine?” another asks, laughing. “Why? There are our people living there. In Ukraine, in Belarus.”
“But it has happened,” the videographer tells him.
“I don’t know,” the man replies, looking at his feet. “It’s not what they are saying on the news.”
Even on YouTube, people may not be able to say such things for long. Daniil, for one, says he’s leaving the country, leaving 1420’s future uncertain.
“Now I can’t stay here,” he explained, “so I decided to travel around the world.”
The Independent asked if he was worried he may run afoul of Russia’s new laws against speaking about the war.
“I am not afraid yet,” he replied. “I’ve read a really interesting comment on my channel: ‘You’re not afraid not because you’re fearless, but because you haven’t been scared yet.’ I think this might be my case.”
In typical YouTuber fashion, he added a sweating smiley emoji.
