© Vyacheslav Prokofyev/SputnikRussian President Vladimir Putin taking the oath of office during his inauguration ceremony at the Kremlin
A societal transformation in Russia that started before fighting broke out in Ukraine in early 2022 now seems irreversible
Two and a half years into its war against the West in Ukraine, Russia certainly finds itself on a course toward a new sense of itself.
This trend actually predated the military operation but has been powerfully intensified as a result.
Since February 2022, Russians have lived in a wholly new reality. For the first time since 1945, the country is really at war, with bitter fighting ongoing along a 2,000-kilometer front line, and not too far from Moscow. Belgorod, a provincial center near the Ukrainian border, is continuously subjected to deadly missile and drone attacks from Kiev's forces.
Occasionally, Ukrainian drones reach far deeper inland. Yet,
Moscow and other big cities continue as if there were no war, and (almost) no Western sanctions either. Streets are full of people and shopping malls and supermarkets offer the usual abundance of goods and food items. One could conclude that Moscow and Belgorod are a tale of two countries, that Russians have
managed to live simultaneously both in wartime and peacetime.
This would be a wrong conclusion. Even the part of the country that ostensibly lives 'in peace' is markedly different from what it was before the Ukraine conflict began. The central focus of post-Soviet Russia - money - has not been eliminated, of course, but has certainly lost its unquestionable dominance. When many people - not only soldiers but civilians, too - are getting killed, other,
non-material values are coming back. Patriotism, reviled and derided in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, is re-emerging in force. In the absence of fresh mobilization, hundreds of thousands of those who sign contracts with the military are motivated by a desire to help the country. Not just by what they can get from it.
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