Perhaps the most striking thing about Moscow today is its tranquility. This is a city that has hardly been touched by war. In fact, until you turn on the television — where propaganda is ubiquitous — you would hardly know there was a war.

Any economic damage from Western sanctions is offset by the large number of wealthy Russians who have returned because of the sanctions. The Russian government has deliberately limited the military service in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and this, together with a certain degree of repression, explains why there have been few protests from educated young people. No longer afraid of conscription, many of the younger Muscovites who fled Russia at the beginning of the war have now returned.

As for the shops in downtown Moscow, I can’t say whether the Louis Vuitton handbags are the real deal or Chinese knockoffs, but there’s no shortage of them. And more importantly, Russia has shown something since the war that Germany once understood and the rest of Europe would do well to understand: that in an uncertain world, it’s really important to be able to grow all your own food.

In the provinces, it is said to be very different. There, the military service and the casualties really hit hard. However, this has been offset by the fact that the industrial provinces have experienced a huge economic boom due to military spending, with a labor shortage that has pushed up wages. There are countless stories of technical workers well into their seventies being called back to work, which has boosted their income and restored the self-respect they lost in the collapse of the nineties. As I have heard from many Russians, “the war finally forced us to do many of the things we should have done in the nineties.”

In Moscow, at least, there is little positive enthusiasm for the war. Both opinions pollsand my own conversations with Russian elites, suggest that a majority of Russians do not want to fight for complete victory (whatever that may mean) and would now like to see a compromise peace. However, even large majorities are against surrender and oppose the return to Ukraine of any land in the five provinces “annexed” by Russia.

Among the elites, the desire for a compromise peace is coupled with opposition to the idea of ​​storming major Ukrainian cities by force, as was the case with Mariupol — and Kharkov is at least three times larger than Mariupol. “Even if we succeed, our losses will be enormous, as will the civilian deaths, and we will inherit huge piles of ruins that we will have to rebuild,” one Russian analyst told me. “I don’t think most Russians want to see that.”

Despite the efforts of some figures like former President Dmitry Medvedev, there is very little hatred of the Ukrainian people (as opposed to the Ukrainian government) — partly because so many Russians are themselves Ukrainian by origin. Which may be another reason why Putin has presented this as a war with NATO, not Ukraine. This was reminiscent of the attitudes toward Russia of people I met last year in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, many of whom are themselves fully or partially Russian. They hated the Russian government, not the Russian people.

Several ideas for a compromise peace are circulating among the foreign and security elites: a treaty ratified by the United Nations that would guarantee Ukraine’s (and Russia’s) security without Ukraine joining NATO; the creation of demilitarized zones patrolled by UN peacekeepers instead of annexing more territory; a territorial swap, in which Russia would return land in Kharkov to Ukraine in exchange for land in Donbas or Zaporozhia. However, the vast majority of Russian analysts I spoke to believe that only the US can initiate peace talks, and that this will happen only after the US elections, if at all.

The overall mood therefore seems to be one of acceptance of the inevitability of continued war, rather than positive enthusiasm for war; and Putin’s government seems content with this. Putin remains deeply distrustful of the Russian people; hence his refusal so far to mobilize more than a fraction of Russia’s available manpower. This is not a regime that wants mass participation, and therefore wary of mass enthusiasm. It seems more akin to the adage: “Calmness is the first duty of every citizen.”

A German version of this article was published in the Berliner Zeitung on June 29, 2024.