"Russia's state-controlled media would have you believe that its army is conducting a special operation to de-Nazify Ukraine, liberating Kharkov, Mariupol, and Nikolaev from Nazi battalions. The operation is going according to plan, they say, and would already have been brought to a victorious conclusion had the Nazi fighters not taken civilians hostage. These Nazi fighters are blowing up apartment buildings and hospitals, along with Ukrainian women and children, so that they can blame the Russian troops for everything — because otherwise the flow of money and arms into the country from the West will stop...
....How can anyone believe drivel that completely distorts reality, passing black off as white? How can anyone call the obvious aggressor a peacemaker when there is overwhelming evidence of the aggression?
Nonetheless, these are exactly the ravings that constitute Russia's official position. And yes, many in Russia believe them.
A deep divide runs through millions of families. The older generation accepts what looks like a photographic negative of the world, arguing until they're hoarse with their young relatives for whom the lying is obvious.
This is not the only problem. Videos of bombings and photographs of the wounded and dead are seeping through the censorship membrane, but the facts, photos and witness videos turn out not to matter. It turns out they can be ignored, doubt can be cast on them, or they can be given another explanation—by being placed in a diametrically opposed narrative.
My country hasn't had a triumph since the victory in the Great Patriotic War (as we call that part of World War II that affected the Soviet Union) and Yuri Gagarin's flight into space. People have had no reason to take pride in their homeland.
Nonetheless, I am confident that a different moment will come and this is what the Kremlin fears.
In the modern world, you can't block the truth. Sooner or later, the thousands of Russian soldiers killed in the Ukrainian war will return home in zinc coffins. Tens of thousands will arrive from the front and tell their families that they weren't fighting Nazis, they were fighting a people we once called our brothers. One day, millions of Ukrainians who have fled their homes and those who have lost loved ones will call their relatives in Russia and tell them how it all was.
A terrible price for simply believing the reality. But I want to believe that one day we will find the strength in ourselves to look the truth in the eye."
