The War Against Ukraine, Seen from Russia

On 24 February 2022 Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” and Russian forces invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south. The story of the invasion from the Ukrainian side is told in Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion; this entry is about what it has meant inside Russia.^•

The first days

Many Russians were shocked; few had believed a full-scale war was coming. In the first two weeks OVD-Info, an independent monitoring group, counted more than 13,000 people detained at anti-war protests across the country. Within weeks the last major independent outlets, the radio station Ekho Moskvy and the TV channel Dozhd, were shut down or forced abroad, and Novaya Gazeta, whose editor Dmitry Muratov had just shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, suspended publication. On 4 March new laws made spreading “false information” about the armed forces, or “discrediting” them, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Even calling the war a “war” became risky.^•

Mobilisation and emigration

Russia’s early hopes of a quick victory failed. On 21 September 2022 Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” of reservists, setting off a rush for the borders with Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland. The independent outlet The Bell estimated in 2024 that at least 650,000 people who left after the invasion had not returned; other estimates are higher. Many were young, educated, urban professionals.^•

What Russians think

Measuring opinion under censorship is hard: people may not answer honestly when criticism is a crime. With that caveat, the independent Levada Center has consistently found large majorities saying they support the armed forces’ actions, 73% in December 2025, while a growing share, 66% that month, said it was time to move to peace negotiations.^•

Repression

Since 2022 thousands of Russians have faced administrative or criminal cases for anti-war statements, posts, or even a pacifist drawing by a schoolchild. Memorial had already been dissolved. Alexei Navalny died in prison in February 2024; thousands defied the police to queue at his Moscow funeral and lay flowers in his memory. Schools now teach “Conversations about important things” and a new history textbook justifying the war.^•

For Ukrainians

None of this changes what Ukrainians have suffered: the bombing of cities, occupation, deportations of children and tens of thousands of civilian dead. Many Ukrainians reject any separation between “the regime” and Russians who stayed silent, and find appeals to sympathy for Russians painful while their own country is under attack. That anger is something Russians abroad meet often, and it is worth understanding rather than arguing with.^•

As of late 2026 the war continues. Peace talks have been held intermittently since 2025 without producing a ceasefire.

This entry covers the war’s significance for Russia, not its day-to-day course.

Why it matters today