First, a majority of Russians are starting to accept quite wild ideas as the norm and cease to reflect on their abnormality. For example in January, along with the mantras of Russian officials that “Russia is not going to invade Ukraine,” Kremlin TV channels openly discussed the details of a possible takeover of Ukraine, and fugitive Ukrainian politicians, sitting in Moscow, did not hesitate to refer openly to these scenarios. The First Deputy of the Gosduma Committee on Defense, Aleksey Zhuravlev, on the air of the central TV channel talked about how Russia would “completely destroy both Europe and America,” constantly interspersing his speech with obscene language and insults. This was more than a month before Russia provoked its escalation in the Donbas on February 18-20.
There are very few countries where senior politicians and journalists openly discuss the erasure of a neighboring country, or even the likelihood of a nuclear exchange in furtherance of an aggressive policy. However, for the Russian layman, such things have become practically the norm. Russians have become so accustomed to them that they fail to see the logical contradiction in such propaganda between declarations about “peace-loving Russia” and the “necessity” of war. This is not about a lack of information, but about its inadequate perception. Accordingly, Russians, accustomed to living in this aggressive militaristic world, are certain that the West thinks the same, and simply cannot imagine anything different.
Second, being in such an illusory world creates corresponding expectations. This author has already noted that the growth in popularity of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Russia reflects a societal desire for fairness, sovereignty, a strong leader, and military defense against “enemy encirclement.” Until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was less and less consistent with this desire, but after it, he again donned the image of a “defender” and “warrior for sovereignty.”
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