[The link leads to 2 min. video.]
Alexander Borodai is a member of Russian Duma and one of the founding fathers of the “DPR” (Donetsk People Republic) under FSB control.
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First, he admits that any ceasefire for Russia will only be a temporary freeze in the war, because Putin’s main goal will not be achieved - taking control of all of Ukraine and establishing a puppet Russian regime. Any independent Ukraine for Russians is “Western weapon”.
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Second, he admits that Russia has been waging war with the help of people like him in Ukraine since 2014, and in 2022 it only continued with a full-scale invasion.
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And most importantly, third, he directly says that the problem is not that Ukraine can be in NATO. The problem for Russians is that they consider all of Ukraine to be their “historical territory” and that Ukrainians “do not exist as a nation at all”, and that Ukraine is inhabited by “divided Russians”.
The tricky part is justifying that without a source due to the state of journalism in Russia
From one of my posts in this thread. [2] explicitly addresses the canard about russians all being secret liberals and humanists but being forced to answer in support of genocidal imperialism because they are afraid. [3] also briefly touches upon this (among other things).
Sources
Some more specialized research that addresses some of the clown logic that you often hear in such discussions “they don’t actually support genocidal imperialism, the vast majority are very afraid and lying in the polls!!!”
Solid support or secret dissent? A list experiment on preference falsification during the Russian war against Ukraine - Note how the authors explicitly state that their preference falsification adjusted estimate for support for the full scale invasion (65%) likely underestimates the true level of support.
Do Russians support the military invasion of Ukraine? - This is minor part of the report, but they do show how preference falsification is irrelevant with respect to often criticized (by allegedly liberal russians) Levada findings about ~85% support for the annexation of Crimea that has been stable from 2014 to 2021.
«А когда уже победа-то наша будет?» - In russian, maybe somebody made a good English language translation, I don’t know. A damning take on “non-political” russians’ view of genocidal invasions. The funny thing is that this qualitative research was run by opposition-minded russians. I am surprised they even published it.
Don’t trust opinion polling about support in Russia for the Ukraine invasion. A weak counter argument to findings similar to [1], does not in any way address the general points in [2],[3],[4]. The author explicitly denies [2] without providing any context or explanation. It’s the “I don’t believe any research unless it portrays russian society in a good light” factor so to speak.
I think it’s a little more complicated than that, and I suspect a majority of Russians supported the war for the first few months, but currently support Putin and not all of his actions, including the war. The list experiment uses data from 3 years ago.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/24/nx-s1-5123628/independent-study-suggests-russian-support-for-the-war-in-ukraine-is-complicated
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-strong-is-russian-public-support-for-the-invasion-of-ukraine-2/
It’s difficult to get accurate information from a country during a war, and when a country is willing to arrest protestors or disappear journalists who present a dissenting view of the country’s leadership or wars it’s worth taking the information we do get with suspicion.
Ah the classical “I don’t believe this research because it doesn’t align with what I think”. You’ll be surprised how often I’ve heard this. It’s actually one of the reasons I don’t bother posting detailed sourcing. Don’t give me this “it’s complicated” bullshit, you have no clue what you are talking about.
You quote Minialo from the NPR article. Let me tell you a little story about Minialo. So he had some sociological research about russian support for the war. Since the numbers were high (i.e. they didn’t align with goal of white washing russian genocidal imperialism), he decided to massage the numbers. There were three questions around related to genocidal imperialism (continuing the war to take Kyiv, the role of occupied territories and something else). So to lower the “support war” stat he only counted the responses that said yes to all three questions. So you could say, let’s continue the war to take Kyiv, but have a more ambiguous view on the role of occupied territories - that would disqualify you from supporting the full scale invasion of Ukraine (in Minialo’s view that’s a fair approach).
I’ve actually interacted with Minialo on Twitter (don’t use it anymore). He said pretty typical russian BS “what about iraq?” and “many russians want to stop the war” (and he of course ignored that would also imply annexation of 20% of Ukraine, including my home town). I posted this rather provocative vignette questioning how he would feel if Ukraine did everything russia has done to us and then suddenly some part of the population would call for peace (with 20% of European russia occupied, bombing of Volga dam, razing Rostov to the ground like they did to Mariupol, Russian style torture of everyone involved with government or military in occupied territories and so on). He immediately started getting aggressive and dismissive (even though I merely suggested a completely equal scenario).
Minialo is a russian imperialist.
“The majority of Russians do not want to seize Kyiv or Odesa,” What great humanists! Occupying 20% of the country and holding ten thousands of civilians in torture camps, banning Ukrainian, banning Ukrainian churches and implementing a policy of settlers colonialism (I am from Donbas, so I know what goes on there). I wonder how russians would view a symmetric situation (similar to what I described to Minialo).
This is really the best you have?
A country prosecuting people with dissenting views does not mean a majority of the population hold dissenting views. On the contrary, broad support makes it far easier to prosecute dissenting views. If truly most of the country is opposed to something, you’ll eventually get pushback and local resistance.
Sources my man. You were acting all high and mighty about sources and now we have to believe your opinion?
~85% stable support for the annexation of Crimea (cross validated with list experiment studies showing no preference falsification) is not a sign of support for genocidal imperialism? I hope you realize that for people in Ukraine the war started in 2014, the full scale invasion started in 2022.
Overwhelming majority is hard to prove, but a simple majority is pretty clearly the case. There have been multiple good polling done by outsider firms enough to show that there is a majority support for it at least.