“Sad for everyone who died”: How two years of war in Ukraine changed Russia

As I stood watching Russians lay flowers in memory of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a young man spoke about his reaction to Navalny's death in prison.

“I'm just as shocked as I was when the war started on February 24, two years ago,” he told me.

It got me thinking about everything that's happened in Russia over the past two years since President Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It's a catalog of drama, bloodshed, and tragedy.

February 24, 2022 was a turning point.

However, looking back, the direction of travel was clear. It was in 2014 that Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and intervened militarily in Donbas for the first time. Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in 2020 and was imprisoned in 2021. Repression within Russia began before the invasion of Ukraine, but has accelerated since then.

As for President Vladimir Putin, two years into the war, he seems increasingly confident and determined to defeat his enemies at home and abroad. He criticizes the United States, NATO, and the European Union, and presents Russia's war in Ukraine as a war against Russia by “a group of Western countries” and an existential battle for the survival of his country.

When and how will it end? You can't predict the future. But I can remember the past.

I recently found a dusty folder in my cupboard containing copies of shipments to Russia from the early days of Putin's regime, more than 20 years ago.

Sifting through them was like reading about another galaxy light years away.

“According to a recent opinion poll, 59% of Russians support the idea of ​​Russia joining the EU…” I wrote on May 17, 2001.

“NATO and Russia are actively seeking closer cooperation. This is a sign to both countries that the real threat to world peace is not in each other…” [20 November 2001]

So where did it go wrong? I'm not the only one wondering.

“President Putin, with whom I met and had good deals and who founded the NATO-Russia Council, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniacal figure at the moment,” said former NATO chief Lord Robertson. told me recently when we met in London.

“The man who stood right next to me in May 2002 and said that Ukraine was a sovereign and independent nation-state that made its own security decisions is now saying: [Ukraine] Not a nation-state. ”

Lord Robertson recalls that Vladimir Putin was even considering Russia's membership in NATO.

“In my second meeting with President Putin, he clearly said, “When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?'' I said, “We are not inviting countries to join NATO; Each country will apply.” And he said, “Well, we're not going to line up next to a bunch of countries that aren't important.”

Lord Robertson said he did not believe Putin really wanted to apply for NATO membership.

“He wanted to give it to himself, because I think he always thought, and increasingly, that Russia is a great country on the world stage and deserves the respect that the Soviet Union had. “Because there are,” he told me.

“He was never going to fit comfortably into a league of equal nations where everyone sat around the table and debated common policy interests.”

Lord Robertson points out that while the Soviet Union was once recognized as the world's second superpower, Russia is now unable to make any claims in that direction.

“I think that kind of thing was eaten up.” [Putin’s] ego. Combine that with the weakness of the West at times, and in many ways the provocations he faced, and his own growing ego. I think this has turned people who wanted to cooperate with NATO into people who now see NATO as a huge threat. ”

Moscow sees things differently. Russian officials argue that NATO's eastward expansion has undermined Europe's security and led to war. They accuse NATO of breaking a promise to the Kremlin supposedly made during the collapse of the Soviet Union, a promise that the alliance would not accept countries previously in Moscow's orbit.

“There was certainly nothing on paper,” Lord Robertson tells me. “Nothing was agreed upon, there was no treaty to that effect. But it was Vladimir Putin himself who signed the Rome Declaration on May 28, 2002, the same one I signed. It was a piece of paper that enshrined the basic principles of territorial integrity and tort. “It's interference with another country. He signed it. He can't blame anyone else.”

Located in the town of Solnechnogorsk, 60 miles from Moscow, the park features dramatic displays from the last two years of Russian history.

I found graffiti supporting the Wagner mercenary group.

There are flowers in memory of Alexei Navalny.

There is also a large mural of two local male Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine. Pictured next to them are young military cadets saluting them.

A new section has been added to the memorial to those who died in World War II and the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the town center.

“To the soldiers who died in special military operations.”

The names of 46 people are carved in stone.

I asked Lidiya Petrovna, who was passing by with her grandson, how her life had changed in two years.

“Our factories now make things that we used to buy abroad, and that's good,” Lidiya says. “But I'm sad when I think about the young people who died, and all the people. We certainly don't need a war with the West. Our people have seen nothing but war, war, war all their lives. .”

When you talk to Marina, she praises the Russian soldiers who are “doing their duty” in Ukraine. Then she looks at her 17-year-old son Andrei.

“But as a mother, I'm worried that my son will be called into battle. I want peace to come as soon as possible so that we don't fear what will happen tomorrow.”