Mounting Casualties Force Russians to Assess the Costs of War

However for troopers’ households, the state’s propaganda continues to hold affect. Mr. Chernykh, whose son grew up in a small city in Siberia and died 1000’s of miles west, close to the Ukrainian city of Konotop, mentioned he didn’t watch tv information. But, he mentioned Russia was combating Nazis who have been being provided by america, and he dismissed the concept that his nation’s military might be answerable for the atrocities being uncovered in Ukraine.

“I do know the Russian spirit and I do know that Russians don’t shoot at civilians,” Mr. Chernykh, an engineer, mentioned in a cellphone interview from the Siberian metropolis of Krasnoyarsk. “Solely Nazis might do this.”

In one other Siberian metropolis, Khanty-Mansiysk, a 38-year-old lady named Alina — she requested her final identify be withheld out of worry of repercussions — additionally mentioned she believed that her brother, a lieutenant colonel, had perished combating Nazism.

By means of tears, she mentioned {that a} small group of Nazis in Ukraine was inflicting distress by encouraging the mistreatment of ethnic Russians. It was all an echo of World Warfare II, she mentioned, when some Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis — a narrative line propagated at size on Russian tv.

“It is a repeat of what occurred earlier than,” she mentioned. “It is a repeat of this historical past.”

For a lot of others, there’s the sensation of being on the mercy of occasions past their management. In North Ossetia, Marina Kulumbegova, 25, has been avoiding watching the information. Her father, Robert Kulumbegov, 47, left for jap Ukraine on the primary day of the conflict to ship provides to Russian troops, then stayed to combat, she mentioned, “as a result of there have been boys there who have been my brother’s age” — 23.

“The one individuals who know what’s actually taking place there are the blokes who’re combating there,” she mentioned in a cellphone interview from town of Vladikavkaz. “To speak about it, to say your opinion on it, has completely no use.”