A flood of Russians poured into Red Square as Vladimir Putin declared his annexation of Ukrainian territory, ushering in a bright new era of perpetual war with Ukraine and the West. “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Russia! Together forever!” read the banner hanging on Manezh Square near the Kremlin.
There were busloads of tough men from a factory near Moscow getting off at the Karl Marx statue to celebrate, university teachers handing out invitations to a pop concert to their students, workers toting arms full of Russian flags to hand them out. Some of the tricolors bore the image of Putin.
This is the Russia that Putin envisions after 22 years in power: united, simple, cynical and servile. But real life is not a staged rally. And while Putin rallied his lackeys and satraps in the gilded Grand Kremlin Palace across the country, from the ethnic minority republics of Dagestan and Buryatia to the hinterlands of Pskov and Penza to cosmopolitan Moscow, communities are in turmoil.
Hundreds of thousands of men are fleeing their homes, some contracted and mobilized to fight in Ukraine, and more fleeing to the borders to avoid conscription. In both cases, they don’t know when they’re going to get home.
Tensions in Russia have not been as high as they are now in decades, according to a new poll by the State Foundation for Public Opinion. Of those polled by the center this week, 69% said they felt “stress,” nearly double the 35% who told the pollster they felt tense before Putin announced his mobilization.
On September 21, an anti-mobilization demonstrator was arrested in Moscow. Tensions in Russia are at their highest level in decades, according to polls. Photo: Contributor/Getty“I feel like we’re going into the unknown, into nowhere,” said Anton, a Moscow resident who entered Georgia after waiting more than three days at the border. He described men desperate to reach the border before Putin spoke on Friday, with fears the annexations would spark a backlash with the West, leading to a possible border closure.
At the same time, videos have shown Russian men drafted into the army arriving without officers at barracks strewn with rubbish, or simply being dumped in snowy fields without tents or instructions. “Nobody needs us,” said one man in a video posted from a field near Berezniki in the Ural Mountains. “They drove us here like a flock of sheep.”
These scenes are nothing compared to the horrors of the war that Ukrainians have endured at Russian hands for the past seven months. But they are new and shocking to Russians who have tried to ignore the war and now cannot. Polls show that Putin’s mobilization is having a more acute impact on Russian society – and perhaps on his retention of power – than any event since February.
The mobilization played out as a tragic comedy. In Tuva, southern Siberia, authorities give your family a sheep if you enlist for military service, independent media outlet Holod reported. In the Derbent region of Dagestan, police drove loudspeakers through residential neighborhoods urging all men of draft age to leave their homes and go to local military service centers. “Fucking idiots!” raged the leader of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, in response in a video spread on social mediaas reaction to the draft and attempts to placate the public reached its peak.
Mobilized Russians prepare to leave for military bases in Volzhsky, Volgograd. The draft regulation has drawn strong backlash in some parts of the country. Photo: PortalThe cause of the reactions is deep unease at the nuclear standoff into which the Russian president is leading the country. Immediately after the event was announced in the Kremlin, state television began broadcasting a 24-hour countdown to Putin’s speech. As the signing ceremony began in the Grand Kremlin Palace, even some of Putin’s most loyal supporters looked tense.
“Is everyone ready to follow Putin to heaven?” asked Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political analysis company R.Politik. “Putin is basically suggesting to the world that if the West doesn’t give us Ukraine, there will be nuclear war. In this bet, will the Russian elite support Putin to the end? I have serious doubts about that.”
The enthusiasts are also suspicious. “We will conquer everyone, we will kill everyone, we will loot who we need and everything will be as we want it,” said Vladlen Tatarsky, a fighter with the Vostok Battalion and pro-Kremlin blogger, who was on the case was the audience for Putin’s speech, in a video blog.
On Nikolskaya Street, most were busy just performing at the concert. A teacher photographed each of his students holding up their invitations as they entered the event. A group of women worried about the weather and the traffic that would delay them coming and going. “Let’s wait until it starts going in,” said one.
It was a very different scene from eight years ago, when Russia annexed Crimea and Putin rode a wave of political euphoria that boosted his support and fractured his critics. The opposition never recovered.
And it was worlds away from the picture in 2018 when world flags were flown on these streets by revelers during the World Cup – a triumph for Russia considering it had fomented the war in Ukraine just four years earlier.
Now Russia has new symbols. In front of the fabled Bolshoi Theater, men in hats walked by wearing Zs, a tactical sign adopted as a pro-war symbol. They carried flags of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Novorossiya, fictional entities that the Kremlin claims are real. An American in attendance wore a motorcycle jacket with an image of Stalin and Putin superimposed on the 1945 Reichstag storm.
Crowds at the concert on Red Square. “This is truly a historic day,” said one male MC. Photo: Anadolu Agency/GettyThe concert began on Red Square. Pop diva Alla Pugacheva, a Russian icon for decades, fled the country with her children days ago. Instead there were Oleg Gazmanov and Grigory Leps, loyal performers for the pro-Kremlin masses.
Hours before the signing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had to confirm the borders of the areas Russia wanted to annex on Friday.
“This is truly a historic day,” said a male MC, addressing the crowd during the concert. “We have yet to understand what happened today. Understand it and endure it. But look how we are all together.”