Vladimir Putin is facing rebellion from people in Russia after taking to social media to condemn the war.
As today, February 24 marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine, surveys suggest that Russians are mostly supportive of their leader and ongoing conflict.
However, support for Putin has changed over the last year which has seen at least 200,000 Russian troops killed, according to Moscow.
Posts have emerged on Russia’s version of Facebook, VKontakte deploring the deaths of loved ones as unnecessary.
Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago on February 24
MARKO DJURICA
On a page designed to remember the thousands of men who have died, one woman described their deaths as “Putin’s meat grinder”.
The conditions in Ukraine’s eastern region Donbas have been compared to that of World War One with Russian soldiers left to freeze to death in no man’s land.
One young woman, referring to her dead partner, wrote: “This f***ing war took another person dear to me... Well, for what!!??”
Other similar messages included one from a mourning woman who said: “Now you will be an eternally young twenty-two-year-old boy with sparkling blue eyes and a bright smile [but] this damn war has wiped your face off the earth.”
Another VK user added: “These men died a terrible death.”
Some users are taking a big risk and not only posting on dedicated sites for those lost but are instead sharing anti-war comments on public pages.
Anyone who makes anti-war comments are either directed to post them on encrypted pages, which are free from monitoring, or they are criticised and attacked by pro-Putin users.
Sometimes, users even threaten to report them to moderators.
In contrast, TikTok is full of videos praising Putin and in the “real” world, pictures and videos from a rally held in Moscow on February 22 showed thousands cheering on the Russian President.
A Russian rally was held in Moscow in support of President Putin
ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO
Research by Lawfare in September last year, found that despite the word “war” being banned on Yandex - Russia’s version of Google – the likes of “war news”, “war 2022” and “latest war news” were searched ten times more than “special military operation”, the Kremlin approved term for the conflict.
It also found that Russians looked up propaganda topics such as Putin’s “noble mission” which was searched 126,000 times in March last year.
Around 500,000 Russians have left since the war began on February 24.
Many anti-war Russians made reference to Nazi Germany, with some calling Putin a “dictator” and “enemy of Russia”.
One wrote: “Any dictator ends his existence by arranging wars because for a dictator this is the last chance to still sit on the throne. And such dictators are usually betrayed by those closest to them. The clock is ticking, it won't be long."