"The coffins come home"
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Interesting to read the propaganda's effects....
“I only blame America—not Ukraine, not Russia,” Mr. Akhromov, a 32-year-old parks-and-recreation worker, said. “Biden, or however he is called, allowed for Nazism to flourish in Ukraine, and so Russia had to fight not only to protect its people and borders, but also the Ukrainian people, women, children, elderly.”
Mr. Kozubenko, 51, served as a military officer, and Dmitry’s grandfather served too—though neither ever fought in battle. “There is a profession called defending your motherland,” said Mr. Kozubenko. “And if he didn’t die under a fence in a drunken or drug-addled stupor, or in a gang feud, but like a real man with a weapon in his hands, then that means it was an honorable death.”
Mr. Kozubenko said he supports the offensive. “But I’m opposed to it being so humane,” he said. “As soon as there is a single shot from a residential area, it should be leveled to the ground. If you treat people like animals, you should be treated the same.”
“There is a foundational understanding that the West is against us, that we wanted to be friends with them but they spat in our soul in the 1990s,” Mr. Volkov said. “It’s a mix of grievances, all mixed together, plus propaganda, strengthened by Putin. It’s very serious.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry uses social media to daily recount what it says were heroic deeds on the battlefield. The stories, which invoke World War II-era heroism, are relayed by state television broadcasters and in local media.
An obituary published last month by a local paper in the Arctic city of Norilsk said three locals had given their lives fighting “shoulder-to-shoulder to expel the ghost of the Third Reich.”
Ms. Bogaeva said she believes her nephew is a hero for defending Russia and liberating Ukrainians, and that he and other Russian soldiers are dying because the Kremlin is pursuing a policy of protecting Ukrainian civilians.
“Russian forces came to save them and send them humanitarian help from all over, and they still aren’t happy,” Ms. Bogaeva said. “Then why are we saving them? Let them die at the hands of the nationalists.”
