One of the consequences from our visit to Turkey (see our review here) was that there were a lot (and I mean a lot) of Russians staying in the hotel. This wasn’t specific to our hotel but with sanctions, Turkey is one of the only destinations that Russians are free to travel to, with the UAE being the other main one.
It didn’t really impact our holiday but an upshot was that we got friendly with a Russian couple and one of the things that came up was obviously the war in Ukraine. I was interested to get their perspective as we (the west) clearly view it as a horrendous uncalled for invasion, but what do they think.
In truth as could be expected there was a bit of a language barrier the husband spoke relatively good English (lets say much better than our Russian) so his wife and our points had to go through him for translation both ways, but generally speaking we were all able to get our points across.
The general take away is that they are just like us, what we would call middle class. Both worked in banking she drove a Range Rover (because it was the car the Queen drove – she and I think Russians generally really admired the Queen) he drove a Merc. On holiday they visited historical and religious sites and went scuba diving. They had a holiday home on the lakes and they worried about the same things as us (kids!).
Putin and The Russian Psyche
Before getting onto the specifics of the war its probably worth trying to understand what they think about Putin and what the Russian psyche is generally like.
When it comes to Putin, they loved him. When they spoke of him they spoke as if he was a deity. They spoke about the story of his parents and how they had suffered during and post the Second World War and how they were proud to have such a strong leader. I must admit I was taken aback by the admiration they had for him, what our politicians would give for such adulation. This may have been influenced by the fact that they were from St Petersburg which is also the home town of Putin, but based on this pretty small sample size Putin is very popular.
One of the things I found very strange about Russians in the hotel is that they always looked so miserable and wanted to be anywhere other than the superb 5* hotel they were currently in. Every time I walked past a Russian wearing speedos with his wrap-a-round sunglasses on I expected them to say “Give me your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle” it used to crack me up how down beat they looked. So I asked my new Russian friends why that was? In essence Russians are brought up to be serious people and people that go around smiling and laughing are viewed as either the village idiot or conniving and up to no good. An interesting insight and a very strange way to view life.
I also remember reading a book many years ago (note to self it might be worth a re-read) called “Prisoners Of Geography” which gave an insight into the Soviet Union and more recently Russia from the perspective of their history and their geography. When we think of Russia we tend to think of a sabre rattling bear looking to attack us in the west. The reality is a little more nuanced and they are much more defensively minded due to their borders being very flat and big making them hard to defend and that they have been invaded by both Napoleon and more recently Hitler (more about him later). One of the reasons for the Soviet Union was to create a buffer between Russia and the West, it was used to defend Russia not threaten the West.
Break Up Of The Soviet Union and An Independent Ukraine
Having met my new Russian friends I became interested in the break up of the Soviet Union because from their perspective all roads seemed to lead to this point. Mikhail Gorbachev had just died when we were on holiday and I expected them to be in mourning based on the amount of coverage his death was getting in the press back home. Not so he wasn’t very popular and was blamed for a lot of the problems Russia is facing. Luckily my favourite podcast (The Rest is History) had a series on Russia and Gorbachev to mark his death and it provided a really interesting piece of background around the collapse of the Soviet Union and the current war. Please go and listen to it it is well worth it.
So to summarise the break up of the Soviet Union (very badly) a lot of it was driven by a long standing feud between Gorbachev (head of the Soviet Union) and Boris Yeltsin (head of Russia). Yeltsin had decided that Russia should break away from the Soviet Union and thought it would be a good idea for other Soviet Union countries to join him (including Ukraine). On the way to the meeting with the head of Ukraine, it is suggested that Yeltsin’s advisers told him to look to get a carve out for Crimea and Donbas due to both there strategic importance to Russia and also because they had a large amount of ethnic Russians. Apparently after the meeting when it was agreed that Ukraine would declare independence alongside Russia the carve out had been forgotten (there may have been drink involved at the meeting!). So there was never a massive public push for independence from the Soviet Union within Ukraine but they found they were an independent state following a meeting between a few people, one of which was driven by a hatred for the President of the Soviet Union.
So fast forward 30 years and many of Russia’s historical concerns about its borders are worse than ever. Historical Warsaw Pact countries are part of NATO and the EU, which puts western missiles and soldiers right on the border of Russia. Ukraine is being courted by NATO and the EU which again is perceived as a massive threat and on the back of previous Russian aggression being tolerated by the West (Syria and more relevantly the invasion and annexing of Crimea in 2014) Putin views an opportunity and based on what happened in Crimea an easy one at that.
What Do Russians Think About The War
It is worth pointing out that I was genuinely interested in hearing about what they thought about the war and its consequences and part of that meant I had to listen to some views that were difficult to hear without either getting into an argument or walking away. I wanted to understand what they thought and why they thought it and part of that package was listening to what we would think of as quite extremist views, but how did reasonable people believe such things and if nothing else it illustrates the power of propaganda.