Since 24 February 2022, when the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has undergone profound change. The so-called ‘special military operation’, as Moscow describes the assault, has lasted far longer than the Russian General Staff anticipated. Even after four years of the largest military conflict in Europe since the Second World War, the proclaimed goals of ‘demilitarisation and denazification’ remain nowhere in sight.
‘This war (with Ukraine) will last three to four days at most. There will be no one there to fight against us (Belarus and Russia),’ Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov on 5 February 2022.
Several prominent commentators who regularly appear on Russian state television expressed similar views. As the Kremlin did not expect the campaign to endure, war-related legislative changes were introduced only gradually.
You can disagree – but quietly
Between 2014 and 2022, Russia conducted a hybrid campaign in eastern Ukraine, deploying military contractors and irregular units to support pro-Kremlin separatists rather than regular soldiers wearing official insignia. In April 2014, Kyiv announced an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in the east of the country. In 2018, the campaign was reclassified as the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), which formally ended with the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
Many in Ukraine, particularly volunteers engaged in the fighting, rejected the term anti-terrorist operation and spoke plainly of a Russian invasion.
Separatists from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, by contrast, claimed to be resisting a ‘fascist junta’ or fighting a civil war in Ukraine. They described themselves as a people’s militia – opolchenets – a label that soon became widely used. Until February 2022, individuals were not detained or prosecuted for the terminology they used to describe the conflict.
As in the Russian–Chechen war of 1994 to 1996, which the Kremlin termed ‘an operation to restore constitutional order’, the war against Ukraine is officially designated a ‘special military operation’. In Russia, penalties for the slogan ‘no to war’ – and later even for the oblique phrase ‘two words’ or for more explicit condemnation of the invasion – range from fines to prison sentences of up to 15 years. It is also a criminal offence to search online for information classified as ‘extremist’, and the number of political prisoners in Russia now exceeds two thousand.
In recent years, the Russian nationalist Maxim ‘Scythe’ Marcinkevich, the Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna and several others have died in Russian custody under unclear circumstances. At the same time, reports of police brutality have multiplied in the context of suppressing anti-war sentiment. Russian citizens have been subjected to violence during arrest and in detention, including beatings and rape of both men and women.
War-related legislation has also affected many Russian minors who have expressed dissent, directly or indirectly, at school or elsewhere. Convicted criminals, including veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war, have appeared in schools across Russia, and individuals accused of war crimes are among them. Such laws and educational standards apply not only within Russia itself, but also in schools in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Ukrainian pupils are subjected to systematic ideological indoctrination through compulsory extracurricular activities.
Leaving Russia
The war has had its most direct impact on residents of Russia’s Belgorod region, where power cuts have become frequent. Ukrainian drones have also struck cities far from the front, as numerous videos circulated on the Telegram messaging platform attest. Alongside such attacks, operations attributed to a decentralised Russian resistance movement with links to the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) have become part of daily life in some areas.
Owing to the deteriorating security situation since the invasion of Ukraine, as well as mobilisation and the further erosion of the rule of law, between several hundred thousand and nearly 1.5 million citizens are estimated to have left the Russian Federation, according to various sources. Roughly 700,000 are said to have departed in the first year of the war alone. The Kremlin has dismissed such figures as fabrication, yet has not released official data of its own.
The principal motives for emigration include the desire to avoid mobilisation and military service more broadly, together with mounting state repression of citizens holding anti-war – and therefore implicitly anti-regime – views. The age and ethnic profile of emigrants now appears to differ markedly from the pre-war period, when departures were dominated by ethnic Russians with higher education.
War’s impact on a Russian region
Rather than relying solely on aggregate statistics – in which the consequences of war risk disappearing in a sea of abstraction – the impact can be illustrated through a single community. In Balakovo, a town in the Saratov region in the south-west of European Russia near the border with Kazakhstan, with a population of around 180,000, several indicators are telling. Since the beginning of the invasion, 498 residents of Balakovo have reportedly been killed at the front, and at least one Ukrainian drone has flown over the city.
The shift in local spending priorities is equally stark. In 2021, the district budget allocated 70.1 million roubles – roughly 700,000 euros – in housing and utility support for residents. By 2025, no funds at all were earmarked for that purpose. Instead, 134.5 million roubles – about 1,345,000 euros – were set aside for ‘one-time payments to citizens who entered military service on a contract basis’, alongside 13 million roubles – approximately 130,000 euros – in ‘allowances for the Russian National Guard’.
The wider Saratov region, home to some 2.3 million people, presents a similarly troubling picture. According to available data, around 4,500 men from the region have died at the front, and 123 confirmed cases of rape have been recorded, placing it among the three worst-affected regions in Russia. While sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine has been widely documented, assaults within Russia itself – often allegedly involving men returning from the front – receive far less attention.
The regional administration has described the economic situation as critical, with the projected budget deficit for 2025 exceeding earlier expectations fivefold. Like much of Russia, the region is experiencing demographic decline, with birth rates lower than in the 1990s. At the same time, the number of migrants has risen to more than 60,000. Officials link rising crime primarily to individuals without stable income, migrants and those under the influence of addictive substances.
Although the everyday hardships of ordinary Russians have so far had little discernible effect on Kremlin policy or its capacity to wage war, the example of the Saratov region and Balakovo suggests that conditions in parts of the country are severe. Without broader socio-political change at national level, a substantial improvement appears unlikely.