By Yevgeny Kuklychev, September 10, 2022
ladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in late February 2022 came as a shock not just to the world, but also to many Russians, despite the best efforts by state TV and propaganda channels to stoke anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the months and years prior.
The Kremlin was quick to clamp down on any anti-war rhetoric among the population, swiftly passing a number of laws that would introduce weighty fines and jail terms for “discrediting” the Russian military—an umbrella term that has been applied to anything from citing Ukrainian sources to simply stating one’s opposition to war.
But while these measures were effective in silencing the critics of Putin’s “Special Military Operation” initially, they did not destroy the resistance entirely.
