Children sing at Russia Day festivities in Kirov, in western Russia, on June 12. Behind them is a statue of Vladimir Lenin, first ruler of the Soviet state. (Nanna Heitmann/Magnum Photos for The Washington Post)
The Post visited Kirov, in western Russia, where residents say President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a fight for Russia’s survival against the U.S. and NATO.
July 20, 2024 at 2:57 a.m. EDT
KIROV, Russia — In Kirov, a small city in the heart of western Russia, about 1,000 miles from the front lines in Ukraine, the war that initially few people wanted continues to fill graves in local cemeteries. But most residents now seem to agree with President Vladimir Putin that the bloodshed is necessary.
“The U.S. and NATO gave us no choice,” said Vlad, the commander of a Russian storm unit who has been wounded three times since signing a contract to join the military a year ago. He spoke on the condition he be identified only byfirst name becausehe is still an active-duty soldier.
After fighting in Ukraine this spring left him with 40 pieces of shrapnel in his body, Vlad was sent home to recover. Once healed, he plans to return to battle. “I’m going back because I want my kids to be proud of me,” he said. “You have to raise patriotism. Otherwise, Russia will be eaten up.”
Elena Smirnova, whose brothers have been fighting in Ukraine since they were conscripted in September 2022, said she is proud they “serve the motherland” rather than sit on the couch at home.
Nina Korotaeva, who works every day at a volunteer center sewing nets and anti-drone camouflage blankets, said that she feels “such pity” for the young men dying but thattheir sacrifice is unavoidable. “We don’t have a choice,” Korotaeva said. “We have to defend our state. We can’t just agree to being broken up.”
A glimpse of a Russian city grieving and patriotic
The Post’s Francesca Ebel reported in June from Kirov, Russia, where even far from the front lines the war has visibly changed the fabric of life. (Video: Francesca Ebel, Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
A visit to Kirov last month revealed that manyRussians firmly believe that their country is fighting an existential war with the West, which has sent Ukraine more than $100 billion in military aid, including sophisticated weapons, to defend against Russia’s invasion — assistance that has sharply increased Russia’s casualties.
Interviewsshowed that the Kremlin has mobilized public support for the war while also masking the full, horrific consequences of it. Some residents of Kirov said they still find the war incomprehensible, while others who have lost relatives insist that the fighting must be serving a higher purpose.
Olga Akishina, whose boyfriend, Nikita Rusakov, 22, was killed with at least 20 other soldiers when a U.S.-provided HIMARS missile slammed into their base this spring, said she found it too difficult to speak about him. Instead, she spoke for nearly an hour in an unbroken torrent about NATO bases in Ukraine and “the extermination” of Russian-speakers there — echoing the Kremlin’s unfounded justifications for the war, which are repeated frequently on state television.
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“Of course, if he hadn’t died, it would certainly be much more pleasant for me and his family,” Akishina said. “But I am aware that this was a necessary measure — to protect those people.”
Washington Post journalists traveled to Kirov at the invitation of Maria Butina, a Russian citizen who served 15 months in a U.S. federal prison after being convicted of operating as an unregistered foreign agent. Butina had been an advocate for gun rights and other conservative causes during her years in the United States. Deported after her release, she was embraced as a hero in Russia and now represents Kirov in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.
Butina’s office organized interviews with soldiers on leave from active duty, wounded servicemen, soldiers’ families, volunteers, local medical staff and young police cadets. Butina insisted that one of her assistants, Konstantyn Sitchikhin,sit in on most of the conversations, which meant some people may have felt unable to speak freely. At times, Sitchikhin interrupted, telling young cadets, for example, to speak “carefully and patriotically.”
The Post also interviewed several people independently, in person or by phone.
Butina said she extended the invitation because she still believes in dialogue with the West and wanted The Post to report “the truth.” But she insisted that Sitchikhin’s presence in interviews was necessary. “We need to feel that we can trust you,” Butina said. “I advise you to build bridges, not walls.”
The Post accepted Butina’s invitation because it allowed access to a city outside Moscow where reporting might otherwise have proved risky. Since the invasion, Russian authorities have outlawed criticism of the war or the military and have arrested and charged journalists with serious offenses including espionage. Journalists also are routinely put under surveillance.
Sitchikhin, Butina’s aide, cited a climate of fear. “You need to understand that we are at war and people here see you as the enemy,” he said. “I am just trying to protect the people I care about.”
A day after speaking to The Post, Akishina, whose boyfriend was killed in the missile strike, sent a text message saying that she regretted talking to an American newspaper.
“You will most likely be asked to present the material in the article in a way that will be beneficial to the newspaper’s editors,” she wrote.
“I would not want there to be a headline under my story and our photographs that would blame our country and our President for the death of our military,” she wrote, adding that the 78 percent of Russians who voted to reelect Putin in March were proof of widespread public support for the war. (Independentobservers said the Russian election failed to meet democratic standards, with genuine challengers blocked from running and Putin controlling all media.)
“The truth is that the United States and the European Union countries that supply weapons to Ukraine are to blame for the death of our guys, as well as civilians in Donbas and Belgorod,” Akishina wrote.
On Wednesday, June 12, thousands of people crammed onto Kirov’s main square to celebrate Russia Day, swaying to patriotic rock songs in thewarm sunshine. Among them was Lyubov, tears streaming down her face as she cradled a portrait of her son, Anton, in uniform.
“I cry every single day,” Lyubov said of Anton, 39, who was confirmed dead this spring.
Lyubov said she had joined the festivities hoping to take her mind off her grief. But the dancing, happy families, and rousing music that at times drowned out her words proved too much. “I don’t want everyone to join us in our sadness,” she said, “but I can’t take this.”
Anton was killed by machine-gun fire near Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that Russia captured in February after months of fierce fighting. Anton called her the night before the assault and told her that he was “on a one-way ticket” — a suicide mission. When she finally got her son’s body back, she was warned not to open the coffin.
Lyubov said she did not understand the reasons for the war, who Russia is fighting or why her son volunteered to join the army. But she insisted that his death was not in vain. “He did it for us,” she said, smiling a bit, “and for Russia.”
The Post arranged the interview with Lyubov independently by contacting her through a social media page for soldiers’ families. The Post is identifying her and her son by first name only because of the risk of backlash from the authorities.
The interviews — with Lyubov, and more than a dozen others in Kirov — highlighted a striking duality: Many Russians are struggling with the deaths of loved ones or their return with grievous injuries, and some are deeply engaged in volunteer efforts, but many others are largely untouched by the war, which has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed entire cities.
At the entrance to the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a pamphlet written by Kirov’s chief bishop, Mark Slobodsky, tells worshipers that this is not a fight over territory but a war to defend Orthodox Christian values. “It is a sacred and civilizational conflict,” Slobodsky wrote. “No one can stand to the side of these events.”
Inside, priests blessed an icon that Butina’s office had commissioned by an artist from Donetsk, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, to honor Kirov’s soldiers. The icon bore an odd combination of images: Czar Nicholas II, Russian Prince Alexander Nevsky and the former head of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, standing in various positions of piety before the slag heaps of Ukraine’s coal-mining Donbas region.
At a small concert organized by a local volunteer group, people sang patriotic songs about victory and love for the motherland. Three men, the fathers of soldiers either killed or still fighting in Ukraine, were awarded medals for raising “heroes of Russia.”
“Each fighter is a hero for us, and today we wish them the fastest victory,” the concert’s host proclaimed. “It’s thanks to them that we are able to hold such events like this today.”
Public unity behind the war was fully on display in Kirov, including a little girl, whose father is fighting in Ukraine, in a T-shirt that said: “I am the daughter of a hero.”
Several elderly residents said they donate their pensions to the war effort. Many are children of soldiers who fought in World War II and now view Russia as fighting a new war against fascism.
Young cadets in their teens and early 20s, who are training to be police officers and emergency workers, spoke eagerly of volunteer stints they had just completed in occupied Ukraine. One cadet said: “Young people shouldn’t stay on the sidelines.” Asked how they would explain the war in Ukraine, they requested to skip the question.
Some young people who joined the fight, however, are disillusioned by it. Denis, 29, a former Wagner mercenary whose left foot was amputated because of a war injury and who participated in a short-lived mutiny last year when Wagner fighters marched toward Moscow, said he was still enraged at “the corrupt and decaying” Defense Ministry.
Post journalists encountered Denis by chance, independently of Butina’s office, and he agreed to meet to talk about his experiences in the war on the condition that he be identified only by first name because criticizing the military is now a crime in Russia.
Speaking as fireworks marked the end of Russia Day, Denis complained that there was “not enough truth about the war and not enough real, organic involvement.”
“Why are people still partying? Why are they spending money on fireworks and this concert?” he said. “It’s as if nothing is going on. Everyone should be helping, but most people do not feel the war concerns them, and politicians are using it to cleanse themselves and increase their ratings.”
Denis said he planned to return to Ukraine once he is fitted with a prosthesis.
“We have to end this, otherwise the West will see us as weak,” he said. “I thought this war would be short, that it would last six months maximum. We have really been screwed. And I’m disappointed that everyone who tells the truth about the war, about the Russian Defense Ministry, is immediately jailed.”
Meanwhile, Kirov’s social media pages are flooded daily with funeral notices and pleas to help find missing fathers, sons or husbands.
At the cemetery outside Kirov where Lyubov’s son is buried, there are about 40 graves of soldiers killed since 2022, adorned with wreaths and flags. Thirty freshly dug graves await bodies.
Next to one grave, a family gathered to say a few words and raise a glass. “Thank you, Seryoga, for defending us,” said a man, who gave his name only as Mikhail. “You were only there for three days, but at least you tried your best.”
Anastasia Trofimova contributed to this report.