Overreach, page 26
Western news consumers were saturated by exhaustive, and often shocking, coverage of Russia’s brutal campaign to subdue Ukraine, naturally feeling horror, hostility and hatred. Russian TV viewers and readers of Kremlin-sanctioned news, by contrast, were fed a steady diet of updates on their army’s heroic progress against Ukrainian ‘fascist bands’ and equally horrific footage of ‘genocidal’ Ukrainian attacks on civilians in Donbas. Hearing – and believing – that Russian boys were fighting and dying in Ukraine in order to save ‘our people’ from the clutches of fascists was comforting, understandable, a source of pride. The counter-narrative – that their country was engaged in an unprovoked war that had killed tens of thousands of civilians in the name of ‘liberating’ people who would rather flee than live under Russian occupation – was not. Russians – like most humans – preferred to believe the story that validated them, not the one that humiliated them. The lack of an immediately accessible alternative narrative simply made that choice easier. If Kremlin news was your only news – and the only news anyone you knew received – then your country, and your own skin, became an easier place to inhabit.
Furthermore, there was a strong element of performative ritual to Russian state TV, with a set of rules mutually understood by both the propagandists and the propagandised. ‘The Russian people have always been spectators of their country’s politics,’ observed the poet and critic Dmitry Bykov. ‘It’s like a theatre … today’s Russian does what is expected of him. Sometimes he applauds, sometimes he wolf-whistles. But he is not required to actually believe. Everyone knows that the man on the stage is not Prince Hamlet but Laurence Olivier. Nobody believes that what is happening on the stage is actually true. Do you think anyone believes what is being said on TV talk shows? But [after the invasion] the theatre is coming more like a circus. The people are not stupid. They watch and laugh nervously and see how low the actors will go.’22
The same complex issue of ritual and self-delusion applies to polling in a totalitarian state. Many polls have been and will be cited in this book. They are problematic not so much because Russians feared the consequences of speaking their minds but because their stated opinion was often what they believed was expected of them, or what they wished were true.
An excellent example was when in July 2018 over 80 per cent of Russians claimed to believe that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in their Salisbury home not by Russian assassins but by the British secret service. Or polls in March 2022 that showed that over 70 per cent of Russians blamed NATO for provoking the war and a similar number apparently believed that the Kyiv government and its Jewish leader Zelensky were literal Nazis.
Do these polls show that Russians are uniquely gullible or stupid? I think not. When Russian respondents claimed to believe that the British poisoned the Skripals or that Zelensky was a disciple of Hitler, most, I suspect, were signalling that they accepted the official line – that the fellow on the stage really was Hamlet – rather than expressing their actual deepest beliefs. Or put another way, their answer was effectively that they agreed with whatever the official line happened to be. Because life that way was easier, more comforting, less lonely. And because the truth, in Russia, was often so damn depressing.
In that sense, the war had thrown two Russias into sharp opposition. One was urban, educated, internet savvy and relatively wealthy – the people who had most to lose from an economic crash and would miss imported goods, foreign holidays and their middle-class European lifestyle. But more importantly that small minority of Russians were people who were accustomed to think critically, to draw their own conclusions about the world and their own country. The other Russia, the much larger Russia, was one that valued patriotism over material goods, preferred to believe in a glorious feel-good version of the world based on television news, had no interest in seeking out alternative truths likely to upset or disturb them. Most of all, that majority of Russians trusted the wise man in the Kremlin to guide them, think for them and protect them from the enemies all around. It would take something drastic, such as an undeniable battlefield defeat or the real prospect of their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers being sent to fight in Ukraine against their will, to change that profound faith.
Sanctions
The Kremlin had been prepared for economic sanctions following its invasion – indeed surviving sanctions and energy price crashes had been the twin strategic goals behind the Finance Ministry and Central Bank’s careful, decades-long build-up of its $650 billion strategic reserve war chest. It was thanks to these reserves – and particularly to the pusillanimous sanctions response of the West – that Russia had easily weathered the economic fallout of the 2014 Crimea annexation. Not unreasonably, Putin’s inner circle assumed that the same would happen in 2022: lots of vocal protest, little actual economic impact.
Except this time it really was different. Over the first months of the war Western governments would cut off most Russian banks from the SWIFT payments system; freeze Russian state assets and those of Western subsidiaries of Russian companies; and seize and freeze the property, yachts and cash assets of tens of thousands of wealthy Russians in Europe. But the most surprising and devastating sanction of all was the collective decision of over 1,300 Western companies to pull out of Russia under the pressure of social media and systematic online shaming – by Zelensky and his team – of companies who continued to do business with the Putin regime. It was a move that bewildered and blindsided the Kremlin.
‘They didn’t expect so many sanctions,’ said Echo Moskvy’s Aleksei Venediktov. ‘I know for sure they expected government sanctions – freezing accounts, cancelling travel, restricting state companies like airline Aeroflot. [Sanctions] against the big players. But not sanctions from private companies … Ford left, Renault closed. “What happened?” [top Kremlin officials] asked. These are thousands of jobs.’ Even Western politicians who had accepted cushy jobs at Russian companies – like former French prime minister François Fillon, who had been hired as a director of the Sibur oil company in December 2021 – ‘packed and left, despite being a close acquaintance of Putin, who personally offered him this job’. The former French premier’s colleagues were ‘amazed’, according to Venediktov. ‘“Why did you leave, Fillon?” they asked. And Fillon answered, “I just can’t stay.”’23
The cash went first, disappearing from Moscow ATMs and exchange booths within hours of the launch of the invasion as Russians lined up to withdraw their savings. The ruble’s value initially tumbled by 40 per cent against its pre-war value (though it would soon recover and even exceed pre-war levels once the Central Bank intervened to limit trading). In several ATMs the daily cash withdrawal limit shrank to under £3. For the first time since the last days of the Soviet Union, what was effectively a black market in hard-to-obtain cash hard currency sprang up, with one exchange office just off Moscow’s New Arbat quoting 300 rubles to the euro, against an official exchange rate of 145. The black market for foreign currency was not the only throwback to Soviet days. In Kazan in the Middle Volga the local prosecutor’s office arrested ‘sugar speculators’ caught selling sugar at inflated prices. Shelves emptied of imported electronics as consumers rushed to buy before prices rose dramatically.
Then the bank cards stopped working. As the SWIFT inter-bank messaging system disconnected 80 per cent of Russian banks, people desperately trying to buy tickets from foreign air companies found their cards disabled, and Russians abroad were stranded. ‘I laughed at my friends when they said I should open an account in Riga [Latvia] a few months ago,’ said Svetlana Terekhova, 38, a manager at a Moscow furniture import business who found herself stranded in Milan, unable to pay for her hotel room with her Sberbank- or VTB-issued cards. ‘I said they were paranoid, told them that we live in a connected world.’ Svetlana’s company was also unable to make payments to their Italian suppliers, making any future orders impossible. ‘Our business is dead. I’m out of a job.’24 Apple Pay shut down at the end of the war’s first week, blocking payments on the metro and in taxi apps. Many Western banks blocked transfers to and from most Russian banks – and in any case the Kremlin restricted sending money abroad to avoid an uncontrolled exodus of hard currency.
But it was the power of private companies, not states, that really bit. Ikea, Obi and Leroy Merlin, Zara, McDonald’s, Starbucks, H+M, Uniqlo and hundreds of other popular retail stores closed. Luxury brands followed. The shelves of Gucci, Chanel, LMVH, Prada and dozens of other stores that have marked Moscow’s sophistication and wealth stood empty. Microsoft and Adobe software stopped updating. Netflix pulled the plug on all Russian accounts. IBM, Samsung, TikTok, Airbnb, Booking.com, Boeing, Ford, Volkswagen, General Motors, Coca-Cola and Pepsi all pulled out. Some left early on as a matter of principle. Others, in a telling demonstration of the power of social media on companies’ decisions, pulled out only after serious online backlashes from their customers around the world.
The full economic and political impact of sanctions will be discussed in more detail in the final chapter. But by the end of the first six months of the war the withdrawal of international firms had affected some 40 per cent of Russian GDP and threatened some 5 million jobs. Sanctions on the import of foreign-made technology and parts – above all computer processing chips – crippled Russia’s automotive, manufacturing, aviation, high-tech and defence industries.25
Yet the most striking thing about wartime Russia was how utterly normal everyday life remained, how relatively invisible the impact of sanctions. By September the McDonald’s and Starbucks on Moscow’s Arbat Street had been replaced by local lookalikes. The shuttered H+M and Zara had been replaced by shops selling stock made by Belarusian clothes manufacturers. A Moscow coffee importer friend had been forced in the first weeks of the war to expensively offload his goods at a warehouse on the Polish–Belarusian border and reload them onto Russian trucks. But soon his customs agents found a more streamlined solution: to simply exchange the trucks’ licence plates and swap the drivers around. Indeed by June the Russian government would effectively legalise sanctions-busting ‘parallel import’ schemes, keeping the shelves of high-end Moscow supermarkets filled with Swiss Gruyere cheese and Italian Parmesan. For millions of Russians it was very easy to believe the assurances of Kremlin propagandists and Putin himself that Russia would survive on its own great resources. ‘I know some of you are finding this tough,’ said Russian TV host Vladimir Solovyov as he complained about sanctions against him that saw his villa on Lake Como sequestered by Italian authorities. ‘We’ll overcome it all, we’ll endure it all. We’ll rebuild our own economy from scratch, an independent banking system, manufacturing and industry. We’ll rely on ourselves.’26
Culture and sports sanctions followed the financial ones – again shocking the Kremlin. World-famous Russian musicians were dropped from performances in the West. And Putin, a passionate sports fan, was particularly indignant about the exclusion of Russian sportspeople from international competitions – for instance, a blanket ban ‘for the foreseeable future’ imposed by World Athletics.
‘Suddenly the athletes are banned,’ said Venediktov, quoting a close Putin associate on his reaction. ‘“Biathlon! You’re crazy, why biathlon? We know how hard the athletes train. It’s a tragedy for them … And all the [soccer] fans, sitting and waiting for the World Cup? Holy crap!”’
Valery Gergiev – Russia’s greatest living conductor and a much-respected personal acquaintance of Putin’s – was told by the Mayor of Munich to ‘condemn Putin or you are fired from the Munich Philharmonic’, recalled Venediktov. ‘Gergiev didn’t condemn him, he got fired along with [soprano Anna] Netrebko.’ Putin was personally insulted, by Venediktov’s account. ‘Who is the Mayor of Munich [to] touch the great Valery Gergiev? How dare they? It’s a disgrace! He was kicked out of the Philharmonic like a lousy puppy. Putin’s friend!’27
In response to the firing of Gergiev and Netrebko and the cancellation of a Bolshoi Ballet tour to London, Russian state media began to claim that Russian culture as a whole was being attacked. Electronic posters in central Moscow proclaimed that ‘Chekhov has been cancelled in Europe.’ In reality, at that moment no fewer than four Chekhov plays were playing in London, more than in Moscow itself. Nonetheless, it was clear that the world’s reaction to the Kremlin’s invasion was of a different order of magnitude to that of 2014. And the Kremlin’s own attitude to those Russians who disagreed, too, was more aggressive than anything seen since the end of the USSR.
Exodus: The Russians
For millions of Russians who believed that they lived a stable, middle-class, European existence, a world collapsed in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. For Varvara Babitskaya, an editor at a Moscow literary magazine, ‘the hipster bars we went to, the holidays we took in Europe, the idea that we could live a normal life even in a messed-up country – that was all an illusion … In just a few days we realised that everything we thought we shared with the civilised world was borrowed. It was never ours. Never Russian. And now it’s been taken away.’28
On 5 March Putin made an aggressive speech condemning ‘fifth column’ Russians who did not support the war and denouncing them as ‘traitors’. Opposition activists found their doorways daubed with white ‘Z’ signs – the battle insignia on Russian tanks that had become the symbol of the war. At the same time Russian social media filled with photos of cars displaying ‘Z’ signs that had had their windows smashed by anti-war neighbours.
There was an old joke that was once funny: ‘All Moscow theme restaurants actually have the same theme – The theme is: you’re not in Moscow.’ But abruptly, as Russia’s invasion unfolded and the trappings of civilised life fell away with every new sanction, the observation became sad. The exposed brick walls, graffiti decor and hipsterish artisanal lightbulbs of 15 Bar and Kitchen had once made my local bar on Pozharsky Lane feel like an outpost of Brooklyn. Now the place seemed like a mocking reference to a receding, Westernised world that was becoming more distant by the day.
As pieces of their once hyper-connected lives went dark, thousands of wealthier Muscovites began to scramble to leave the country. On the seventh day of the war I met an old friend at the Moloko Restaurant for dinner at two in the morning. Alexei sat hunched in a leather banquette, drunk. He was too absorbed in his phone to notice my arrival. Despite sharing a name with the hangout of the sinister Droogs in A Clockwork Orange, Moloko was actually a homage to the Balthazar brasseries in New York and Paris. Tasteful, warm lamplight gleamed on sleek black pillars and polished brass. Alexei looked up, smiled crookedly and brandished his phone. He’d been looking up real estate listings in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Georgia, an easy-going, visa-free and Russian-speaking former Soviet state, had been the destination of choice for self-exiled Moscow journalists, artists, writers, architects, film and theatre people for some years. Suddenly – in the first days of the war everything seemed to be happening suddenly, in swooping downward lurches – Tbilisi became no longer a lifestyle choice but a Noah’s Ark against a dark tide of political repression. Yet Tbilisi was already overcrowded with fleeing Russians, and a backlash was growing. Maja Kononenko, a gallery-owner friend who had lived there for three years, warned that the locals were quickly becoming resentful – especially the Georgian intelligentsia. ‘They say – we stood and fought for our country when Putin invaded [in 2008],’ said Kononenko. ‘Why are you fleeing instead of fighting your regime at home?’29 Rents rose fast due to the influx of Russian refugees, jobs were scarce. Many Georgian landlords refused to rent to Russians.
Alexei’s options were running out. Earlier that day, a TV drama project that he had been working on with Netflix had been abruptly cancelled, a week into shooting. SWIFT had cut off Alexei’s bank from the rest of the world, snapping shut his ruble savings. Tbilisi, resentful or not, would be preferable to Moscow. ‘My life here in Russia is over,’ he said, in that matter-of-fact way that Russians have when speaking of the disasters that periodically engulf their lives. ‘I don’t fancy sticking around while this place becomes North Korea. And you know what? I’m good with being a citizen of the world. See you on the other side.’30
Millions of educated, international Russians like Alexei faced a stark choice: adapt to a dark, repressive world of contracting economic possibilities at home, or try to flee the country for an uncertain future abroad. The plight of millions of Ukrainians fleeing for their lives from bombardment was infinitely more acute. The stakes, for them, were life and death. But the estimated half million Russians who eventually fled Russia in the first months of the war were also refugees from the Putin regime.
‘Partisans. Burning tanks. People crowding onto train platforms. Emigration. Tell me this isn’t a film?’ Anna Kachurkovskaya, 47, a museum curator, stretched painfully on the bar stool where she’d been slumped for hours, doom-scrolling the news. ‘You know what I miss most? Not the past. Which was two weeks ago. I’m nostalgic for a future I don’t have any more. That fucker in the Kremlin has stolen my future.’31 But in some ways Anna envied her Kyiv friends. ‘They have hope. The world is on their side. Europe is welcoming them,’ she said, flicking through images of seas of protesters around the world waving yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags. ‘When the war is over, they’ll go back to a free, European country. But Russians? Everyone hates Russians. Even most Russians hate people like us, who are against the regime.’32
The exodus gathered pace. But even as flights out of the country dwindled, so did the number of places that Russians could go without visas. Most middle-class Muscovites had been used to having a European Schengen visa in their passports as a matter of course. But for two years the EU had not issued any tourist visas because of Covid. The US embassy had not been issuing visas for even longer since the Kremlin forced them to fire their Russian staff in 2017. Moscow friends swapped information on Facebook – until access was shut down and they switched to the more secure Telegram app. Turkey was visa-free for Russians, so was Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan. Many prescient members of Moscow’s intelligentsia had got themselves Israeli passports by ancestry or marriage – making Israel an option for some. A restaurant-owner friend who had recently received an Israeli passport through his wife cracked an old Soviet joke from the 1980s, when Jews fled the USSR in their tens of thousands. ‘A Jewish wife is now a form of transport,’ he said, smiling wryly.33
