tl;dr: The longer Ukraine can stall the invasion the more pressure it puts on Russia to back down.
Russia is losing the public opinion campaign so badly. Ukraine is getting levels of support from all kinds of surprising places, like the Germans and Swiss stepping up more than expected. Zelenskyy looks like a big dang macho hero, while Putin looks really off with the bowling alley length tables. His inner circle, people, and troops don't want this war. Alas, none of this is going to change the level of destruction and loss of life to come. I hope some real positive turn happens.
Russia is losing the public opinion campaign so badly.
What scares me is the possibility that the global public opinion campaign doesn't much matter
inside
Russia. I just listened to last weekend's This American Life, a quick audio primer on Putin's entire history, and one of the segments was by a US journalist who'd lived in Moscow as an exchange student in the early 90s and has remained very close to his host mom, who's now in her 60s. They talked about Putin generally, and about the invasion of Ukraine, and then he turned to opinion polling and how to tease out just how exaggerated his exaggerated approval ratings are vs. how large a grain of truth there is in them.
And it was really alarming. She *loves* Putin, unreservedly adores everything about him, and steadfastly disbelieves everything anyone in the Western press has to say about him, even knowing her beloved "American son" is part of the Western press. They're all liars running elaborate anti-Russia propaganda campaigns, invading Ukraine was absolutely the right call, Ukraine had definitely been planning to murder people in the separatist states, Zelenskyy is a clown and Biden is a moron and her Volodya (some Russian mystics had foreseen that a man named Volodya would arise one day as Russia's savior) is always the smartest guy in the room.
I know there have been protests and marches by Russian citizens who don't want this to happen, but that interview just scared the shit out of me. The protestors, brave and amazing as they are, are probably still outnumbered by people who think everything he's doing is just great. Personally decent, kind, non-villainous humans, but excited and happy for him.
Ugh. I really, deeply hope that TAL segment was wrong, or at least was underestimating the quiet opposition to Putin.
My primary concern with Russia is that Putin is going to decide he needs to make a lesson of Ukraine so that any other former Russian territory, as he defines it, who doesn't bow down will know what to expect.
It seems more likely that the oligarchs and military leaders would turn on Putin than the general population that are more likely to only see very filtered media. It is certainly terrifying to think what Putin will do if he feels backed into a corner. The world is a scary place.
Wild card element #3 is that Russia is threatening to use nuclear power, and if cornered Putin will certainly be willing to fire off a nuclear warhead shell in some lesser populated part of Ukraine as a show of force.
If we're lucky its lesser populated. Russia just tramped an army through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on its way to Kyiv. Putin doesn't seem overly concerned with who else he iradiates.
Feeling pretty dark on this point.
In the office. It simultaneously feels like I never left and is completely weird and alien. I'm already tired just from sitting in a different kind of chair for a couple of hours and my keyboard arrangement is all strange. But being around people is much more ok than I expected, so that's nice.
Between my normal work, dealing with the roofers, and the surveyors, I am pulling stuff out of cabinets and taking pictures to inventory what is in what bin so when I want something I can find it without opening 50 bins. SIL is on her way to pack.
Zoom calls from the cubicle are pretty bad. That's all I have to say about that.
I'd like noise-canceling headphones that block out news.
So, news-canceling headphones, then.
