Apart from the billboards celebrating the heroes of Russia’s “special military operation”, you’d never know this is the capital of a country at war. Life goes on. But beneath the appearance of normality lies an increasingly sinister undercurrent. There are noticeably fewer people out, especially men of fighting age. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left the country. Ukraine Breaking News: Putin’s forces ‘prepare to blow up major dam and flood thousands’ Image: This sign in Moscow reads ‘Glory to the Heroes of Russia’ Many left behind are reluctant to leave their homes for fear that Moscow’s myriad cameras will pick them up using facial recognition technology. Vladimir Putin’s mobilization has drawn in men in wheelchairs, the elderly, and even the dead have received summonses. No one is safe. Muscovites fear a knock on the door to take their father, son or husband to training camps for a war they do not understand and still have no convincing explanation for. And they know it’s not good. Why else would their president need hundreds of thousands of extra troops? Putin sold his special military operation as something distant and remote, fought by professional soldiers and contractors. Those deluded enough to think they got another jolt this week. Putin did something no other Russian president has done since World War II by declaring martial law. He did this on the land he has stolen from Ukraine, but he also enacted a kind of creeping “martial law” across the rest of Russia. It has now given local Russian governments powers to control movement, assembly, communications, transport, and even the power to resettle people. Laws designed for use only in war have been dusted off to give the government more control if needed. Image: Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the Security Council on October 19 Image: AP Russians are tired of being asked by foreigners why they put up with it. Protests have been brutally suppressed. Police now routinely stop people on the streets to check their phones for objectionable content. Russia is importing surveillance technology from China that may in the not-too-distant future make dissent obsolete, let alone revolution or regime change. Muscovites know it can only get worse. The government’s stranglehold on society and the economic impact of this war as well. The Russians have weathered the sanctions better than Western policymakers had hoped, but now they are hurting. Prices are rising and there are shortages of many goods. The specters of inflation and rationing linger. Read more: Eyewitness: ‘It doesn’t stop’ Soldiers fighting Russia from under trees Putin’s call for martial law helps him look strong at home, but charade falls apart – analysis Those old enough remember the seventies and fear the return of those days. But in the Soviet era there was at least one ideology that many people believed in. This time there is just a tsar with his grotesque fantasies of a great Russia and the ambitions and greed of the corrupt old men around him. There is no end, because it is no longer clear what the goal is. Russia’s initial war aims failed. Has Putin replaced them with any other objective that can be compromised? Or will it continue indefinitely as Russia plunges into a permanent winter of repression and economic decline?
