Famous Russians are speaking out against the Ukraine invasion — with some too big to be silenced

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This article was published 24/02/2022 (1035 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MOSCOW — Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov justifies Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on behalf of Vladimir Putin.

His daughter, Lisa Peskova, opposes it.

At least, she did for a short while on Friday when her Instagram feed bore the words, in Cyrillic, “NO WAR” — the tag line of Russians denouncing the attack on their western neighbour.

Sofia Abramovich, the daughter of Russian oligarch and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, did the same. An attack on Ukraine, her social media post insisted, was Putin’s twisted desire, not that of ordinary Russians.

As a fuller scope emerges of the sanctions being imposed, the borders being closed and the means of contact and communication being cut in retribution for Russia’s attack on Ukraine, an unusual thing is occurring.

The discontent of the Russian people is coming to the fore, and it is the normally cautious Russian elite that are leading the way.

“We Russians will be dealing with the consequences of this day for many years to come,” wrote Ksenia Sobchak, a TV presenter, on her Instagram page Thursday morning.

The daughter of St. Petersburg’s first democratically elected mayor, Anatoly Sobchak — a political mentor to Putin — she said she was plunged into despair by news of the early-morning invasion. An optimist, Sobchak wrote that she could only see the worst case scenarios for her country and its people.

“But all who find themselves in Russia right now are optimists. All the pessimists left long ago.”

The current generation of Russian exiles consists of activists, political organizers and journalists who have opted for the freedom of a strange land over the familiar discomforts of speaking truth to power in Russia.

The prosperous in Russia over the last two decades have been silently complicit in Putin authoritarian tactics and intolerance of dissent. In return, they have reaped their riches from lucrative government contracts and managing state-controlled companies and banks, said Maxim Mironov, a former Moscow investment banker who worked with imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny and is now a professor at Madrid’s IE Business School.

“He built quite an efficient system,” the expert in corporate finance and corruption said in an interview from Buenos Aires. “A system of corruption in exchange for loyalty. It was working for 20 years.”

The invasion of Ukraine, which Putin said was necessary to ensure Russia’s security against an ever-eastward-moving NATO alliance, has prompted a swift, concerted and angry reaction in the west that risks destroying that equilibrium.

A sanctioned oligarch is an unhappy oligarch. Attack the finances and interests of the Russian defence and security establishment and it’s Putin himself who becomes vulnerable.

“What he’s doing now is against his own interests,” Mironov said. “He is not only destroying his relationships with the west. He is destroying his relationships with his own elite.”

Putin’s instinct to attack in the face of criticism and dissent is unchanged.

On Thursday, journalist Elena Chernenko, from Moscow’s Kommersant newspaper, initiated a petition to condemn the invasion of Ukraine. Within a day, 296 people had signed on in support. On Friday, Chernenko was told she was being excluded from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s journalist pool due to “unprofessionalism,” losing a post she had occupied for more than a decade.

She wrote that Russia’s concerns about the fate of Russian-speaking residents of a breakaway part of eastern Ukraine should not be used as a pretext to attack the entire country.

“I’m sorry about the (foreign ministry’s) decision, but such are the times,” Chernenko wrote on her Telegram channel. “I will try to continue to do my job as efficiently and objectively as possible.”

Another journalist who put her name to the list, Natalya Dmitrak, works with TASS, Russia’s state-run news agency — at least, she did as of Friday.

“It’s probably professional suicide,” she wrote on Facebook. “But I can’t and won’t be silent.”

Neither could Ivan Urgant, a sort of Russian Jimmy Kimmel recognized last August as Russia’s most trusted television personality.

“Fear and pain. NO WAR,” he wrote to his nearly 10-million Instagram followers.

The message set off a frenzy, with word that Urgant’s nightly show would not appear Friday on the government-run Channel One, Putin’s main media cheerleader. An official later told Russian news outlets it was due not to Urgant’s comments but to a mid-week holiday that had interrupted the usual schedule.

Some stars in Russia are too big and bright to be shuttered and silenced.

Count among them Russian movie star Danila Kozlovsky, expressing “fear and shame”; top-ranked tennis star Andrey Rublev, who, after advancing to the finals of the Dubai Tennis Championships, wrote “No war, please”; or author Dmitry Glukhovsky, who wrote on Instagram: “This war on our Ukrainian brothers is unjust and predatory. It was started by a mad tyrant, but we must all be sorry for it.”

And all Russians fear that they will pay the price with trickle-down sanctions, travel restrictions, fewer opportunities to breathe the air of the world outside of Russian borders.

Aeroflot will no longer be welcome in the United Kingdom and British carriers have been banned from Russia, turning the hop across Europe to see Russian family and friends into a complicated endeavour.

The European Broadcasting Union announced Friday that Russian artists would not be welcomed to compete in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, saying that the inclusion of a Russian entry “would bring the competition into disrepute.”

A poor decision and a poor rationale, said Manizha, whose controversial song of empowerment, “Russian Woman,” was the country’s contender for the 2021 Eurovision title.

“Music has the power to bring millions of people together. There are many examples of this in our history,” Manizha wrote Friday night on Instagram.

“Russia should not be isolated in such non-political spheres as the Eurovision competition. Do not cut down the last bridges of cooperation. This is the way to the new Berlin Wall. If politicians can’t find a common language, maybe artists can.”

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Allan Woods is a Moscow-based reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan