On November 3, 2024, the Russian media outlet Meduza, allegedly in opposition to the Kremlin, wrote that its coverage of the full-scale Russian invasion was lacking “people’s stories.” They posted a form on their website for their readers to share their experiences, thoughts, and plans.

By February 2025, quite a few readers had responded to this call: almost every day the media outlet published these “stories”: memories of Russians who lost loved ones in the “Special Military Operation” (“SMO”), Russian teachers who held “SMO-themed” events, ordinary residents who denied the “collective guilt,” and Ukrainians who joined the discussion.

“It doesn’t matter if you are from Kharkiv or Mariupol, Donetsk or Belgorod, Kyiv or Sudzha, Ukraine or Russia, or any other country. There are no unimportant stories,” reads the form that readers must fill out, to submit their stories. It’s as if they were saying, “what’s the difference” (“Kакая разница” – means “what’s the difference” in Russian, an imposed propaganda narrative used to shame people from the occupied nations into speaking Russian. It means that it doesn’t matter what nation people are or what language they speak, as long as it’s Russian) who you are and where you come from – we are all united by our “mother, (a pun on the “Mother Russia” expression used in Russian cultural propaganda)” – “Meduza.” 

So, from November 2024, these “stories” were added to the chronicle of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine to complete, so to speak, the “history of the war.”

Is it acceptable to publish anonymous stories about the war?

Analyzing the so-called Russian opposition media, we at the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy (https://idpo.org.ua/) have repeatedly observed how these “stories of ordinary people” are often used for various manipulations and dissemination of Kremlin propaganda narratives.

• The most recent example is the publication of accounts of “witnesses” from the Kursk region who spoke of the “execution” or “shelling” of Russian civilians by the Ukrainian armed forces. Journalists from the “opposition” TV Rain and other outlets, including Meduza and Novaya Gazeta Europe, published these stories without verification, thus contributing to the narrative that the Ukrainian military is allegedly violating international humanitarian law.
• Our monitoring of Meduza in the summer of 2022 showed that the accounts of “ordinary people” were being used to promote another narrative favorable to the Kremlin: that people in the occupied Ukrainian territories do not care whose citizens they are – Russian or Ukrainian – as long as they are not being shot at.
• In the fall of 2022, the TV Rain channel published stories of “ordinary Russians” to evoke pity for the mobilized people who deliberately came to military recruitment offices to go to Ukraine and kill Ukrainians.
• Journalists of another “liberal” media outlet, the former Echo of Moscow, now Zhivoi Gvozd, collected information about the hostilities from … listeners in a chat room. Readers’ comments were read out on the air, so anyone could talk about the shelling of anything…

You might think, well, what’s the big deal? After all, by bringing in different perspectives, journalists are really giving everyone a voice. Isn’t that a balance of opinion? There are also street blitz surveys, where journalists collect the opinions of passers-by on current issues…

However, we are talking about the war. And about Russian propaganda, which often uses “stories of ordinary people” to blur the truth.

It’s worth remembering, that journalists cannot limit themselves to the stories of ordinary people when it comes to establishing facts. After all, witnesses are not very reliable sources of information. One of them saw the event from one point of view, another from a different one, and the third decided to make up part of his story. All of these stories need to be carefully fact-checked and corroborated.

Journalists should be very careful with anonymous sources. After all, anyone can fill out a form on the Meduza website. How do you know if the person who wrote the letter is real?

Besides, it is unacceptable for Meduza to add such “people’s stories” to the chronicle of the full-scale Russian invasion. We have repeatedly noticed how in such articles this Russian publication is engaged in “throwing in versions,” presenting different takes in a single article, mixing them with established facts, for example, about a missile attack on a Ukrainian high-rise building, and various fabrications of the Russian Defense Ministry about the destruction of a “Nazi base,” or a “Ukrainian air defense missile hit,” as well as quotes from representatives of the LDPR terrorist organizations claiming that “the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled Donetsk.” Now, to this “vinaigrette” of fact and fiction, they also add stories of anonymous Russians… and sometimes Ukrainians. In this way, Meduza also violates the standard of separating fact from opinion, according to which actual news should be presented separately from points of view.

Also, what if this form was filled out by an “occupier,” an employee of the Russian Ministry of Defense, or a Russian defense contractor? Should they be given a chance to justify themselves?  

Well, let’s see what kind of “people’s stories” Meduza spreads and how the Russian occupiers appear in them.

Between November 2024 and the beginning February 2025, I collected 82 stories under the heading “War through the eyes of Meduza readers.” 

‘Wow, the Bakhmut murderer hearts posts with my two-year-old daughter’

In November, when the column first appeared, it seemed that ordinary Russians, who were not involved in the war were contributing to it. From time to time, the media outlet asked its readers what they thought about the safety of flights over Russia or about allowing Ukraine to use ATACAMs against targets in Russia. In January, there was a call asking why Russians were volunteering for the war. When filling out the form, one could “give a false name.” Of course, the wording of the question itself was revealing: the readers had to talk about the “Russian volunteers.” In this way, Meduza seems to avoid “sharp edges,” because “volunteers” are not supposed to be the same as Russian occupiers or Russian military personnel, who knowingly participate in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But still. What did the Russians say?

In these stories, the occupiers appear as nice and ordinary people. Their relatives or friends, of course, characterize them in a positive light.

Natalia, who lives in Germany, remembers her cousin, who “was very kind-hearted, but didn’t like to study very much.” In 2022, he volunteered for the army. Natalia kept in touch with him, and he called her from “there”: “We had a good, very warm conversation because we were friends as children. He told me that he had recently had a son. And then I just asked him: ‘Don’t you regret going there?’ And he replied: ‘You know, now that my son is born, and I can’t break the contract, I do regret it.’” About two weeks later, this “volunteer” died, according to his cousin.

Without knowing the full context of how exactly the Russians are fighting, and most Russian readers don’t know or rather don’t want to know about it, it seems that this is an ordinary guy, a young father who was once a child and was still capable of warm feelings.

This story was published on the site alongside a photo of the aftermath of a missile strike on Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine (the caption fails to specify who launched the attack). The juxtaposition made it look like Ukrainians were suffering from the war, but the occupiers were suffering as well…

Here is another letter – from Vasilisa from St. Petersburg, who spoke about her ex-husband, who was a “great guy.” Sometimes her drunken ex-husband calls her and tells her that he has made a big mistake, that he thinks that he will probably be killed, and that he “wants to leave his money from the war to some charity.” Sometimes he calls sober and says that everything is fine and that he cannot leave his boys behind. “It seems to me that he does not have a happy life ahead of him,” Vasilisa concluded her story. Another “good guy” with a “good heart” who, as it turns out, deserves a happy life. This text was published under the chronicle of the war with the headline “Russian military claims to have found remains of civilians in the Kursk region, from which Ukrainian forces were driven out a week ago.” This claim has not been verified.

Alisa talks about her classmate who died “in the SMO.” She remembers him as a “phlegmatic and quiet guy.” At first, he treated the army as a joke, but then “he actually liked it.” “I had particularly conflicting feelings when he put heart reactions on my daughter’s Instagram photos while he was still near Bakhmut together with the Wagner troops. I kept thinking: ‘Wow, the Bakhmut murderer is putting heart reactions on my two-year-old daughter’s photos.’” Indeed, wow… 

Dmitri, who lives in Oxford, recalls his “skinny school friend” with whom he went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: “After the movie, we spent the whole month dreaming of becoming pirates. And who would have thought then that he would become a pirate and die in Ukraine in 2024? Goodbye, my friend.” According to Dmitri, his former “pirate” (not an occupier!) friend “was hit by a HIMARS strike at his headquarters.” This story is published along with a photo of a Ukrainian soldier in a medical stabilization center in the Donetsk region.

They also published a letter from by Lyudmila from the Pskov region, who lost her son in the war. He had previously fought in the Russian-Chechen war. He was wounded in Ukraine, and she visited him in the hospital, where he was “between life and death” for more than a month: “He was so handsome, young, his eyes were gray-blue… he did not die from the wound, but from a blood infection.” At the end of the letter, Lyudmila says that she received the Order of Courage, but she does not need it, she needs her son alive instead: “Dozens, hundreds of thousands of mourned sons, husbands, fathers, loved ones, cities and villages wiped off the face of the earth, alleys of heroes, in cemeteries sprouting like mushrooms. Now they are talking about a cease-fire. It hurts; it hurts so much…” This story was published in a chronicle titled “Massive Ukrainian drone strike on Russia. Trump says it was Zelenskyy who should not have allowed the war to happen.” Well, this story fits in with the common understanding among Russians that they did not start it, Ukraine did. And Zelenskyy is also responsible for of the occupier’s mother’s “tears”…

‘All these people decided that they had nothing to do in civilian life, and it would be better for them to at least earn a decent living’

How do Russians explain to Meduza that their friends and relatives went to another country to kill people and seize foreign territories? The image is the same as in Jamala’s (Ukrainian-Crimean-Tatar singer) song titled “1944,” with which she won the Eurovision Song Contest: “Strangers come, enter your house, kill everyone and say, ‘It’s not our fault, it’s not our fault.”

Alexandra from St. Petersburg tells of Russian “volunteers” who simply decided to make a decent living… By killing people, that is… It turns out that her brother suffered after his wife left him, did not know what to do with himself, and went to war. That is, it was not his fault, but the fault of his wicked wife, who “left him for his friend” and “forbade him to communicate with his children.” Another friend of hers was released from prison and couldn’t find a job because he lived in a small village. The relative of her mother’s friend was a “hopeless alcoholic” and signed a contract “to somehow justify his existence.”

Aleksandr talks about his relatives: one is fighting for money, the other has heard a lot of propaganda. Vitaliy from Israel also writes about the influence of propaganda. His acquaintance, a philatelist, went to war because of brainwashing, was wounded and went blind. Now: “he cries every time he touches the albums of stamps on the shelves that he will never see again.” 

An anonymous reader from Yekaterinburg writes about his nephew, who was imprisoned three times for drugs. He left because of the promise of amnesty to have “a chance to start a new life,” because of money and propaganda, because he wanted to “help his country fight evil.”

Irina from Petrozavodsk adds another motive for the occupiers – “volunteers” – “stupidity.” The husband of a woman she knew and his friends, celebrated February 23 (Defender of the Fatherland Day, a holiday honoring veterans and service personnel of the Russian Armed Forces, often colloquially known as “Men’s Day”) for three days in a row, and they decided they had to go to the military commissariat to prove that they were “real men.” At the draft office, the officers made them sign a contract and then did not let them leave. It looks like it wasn’t their fault either. Just an accident.

Dmitri from the Sverdlovsk region blames “authoritarian women with children” for everything. They “send their husbands to war to live luxuriously and ‘achieve’ a better life without working.” According to Mia, her friend, “a good, sensitive, kind person, a simple Russian guy,” went to war because his father forced him to. She feels sorry for her friend: “He has lost a lot of weight, all skin and bones and huge black eyes full of pain. I am very afraid to ask him if he killed people. I’m afraid he’ll say ‘yes.’”

Zina writes about her brother, a “kind and honest person” who found himself in a “stupid and tragic” situation, who had “bright motives” and was “confused.” He said he had a personal crisis and did not know how to deal with it. He did not return from the first mission. The sister adds that after her brother went to war, she stopped communicating with him because it was unacceptable for her to “support murderers.” Zina also regrets that she was not able to convince him [not to go]. 

Danila from the Moscow region also talks about the “black streak in the occupier’s life,” who recently “said goodbye to one of his best friends, who died in this mad, “Vladimir’s” military operation.” The friend did not support the war, just wanted to “be useful at least somewhere.” And the “operation” was just “Vladimir’s,” which means that Vladimir Putin alone, is to blame for everything.

Alexei’s friend , a “normal Russian guy,” went to war because he “wanted something new.” Besides, when “your people are fighting, you can’t stand aside.” 

What do all these stories have in common? Almost none of the “narrators” condemns the Russian occupiers. It turns out that money, the chance to get out of prison, trivial stupidity, and a “personal life crisis” are perfectly normal reasons for seizing and destroying a neighboring independent state. Almost nowhere do we find the idea that these “normal guys” and “kind people” should be held accountable for their actions.  Only in a few cases, such as with Zina and Mia, do we see at least some condemnation of such acts and the use of the word “murderer” in reference to the occupiers.

Well, the main emotion that should arise in an uncritical Russian reader in relation to these stories is, of course, pity. I wonder how those many Russians, whom Meduza teaches to feel sorry for the occupiers, will answer the question of whether their country’s military should be held accountable for what they have done?

‘I have always hated Putin, took part in all the protests, and… I came to work at a defense company with my diploma’

I couldn’t find any letters from the occupiers to Meduza, but there were several “stories” from those directly involved in the full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Some of them realize that they have done something wrong but still continue to help Russia fight.

One such letter is from Ivan, whose name has been changed. He works in the Russian defense industry. Ivan likes his job, he likes the fact that not everyone can do it, and he likes the fact that it is necessary “to protect the country, his family and himself.” At the same time, the Russian engineer admits that he “hates Putin” and “participated in all the protests he could find. But he came to work for this particular company. Ivan writes that he realizes he is an accomplice in a “grandiose crime.” He thought about quitting, but did not do so to save the country’s economy. Moreover, he is a “stationary” worker (not allowed to leave the country), and quitting is “life-threatening,” so he continues to work, even though he regrets it.

Here’s a letter from Aleksander, an official in the Defense Ministry. Surprisingly, he too is “against Putin and the war” and “hates Navalny’s killers.” However, he blames “Europe and the United States” for the fact that he works where he does. After all, Aleksander cannot move his money from Russia to Europe. Besides, he does not want to flee the country because “they will shove it in his face that he is an occupier.” It’s clear that, in his mind, working for the Russian Defense Ministry doesn’t necessarily make you guilty.

The official sees himself as a “hostage”: “I’m just a hostage of the ‘terrorist’ [Putin], and the ‘police’ [Europe and the United States] don’t care about me… I’m a cog in his machine out of desperation. And his whole machine consists of such hostage cogs who are simply not welcome in the West. They could have just given residence permits and access to banking to everyone who wanted to come to them, and half of Putin’s machine would have gone there… But because of their stupidity, I am working for Putin’s benefit. I hope they are happy now,” concludes Aleksander’s letter. It was published in the war chronicle section under the title “Five people were killed in the attack on Izium.” Why did they die? It turns out that the West did not allow Alexander and Russian officials like him to live a nice life in Europe!

Russian teachers can also be considered the same “cogs” of the system: several stories have also been published. Marat, a geography teacher, says that he teaches children “morality, kindness, and honesty,” but at the same time, five former students from his school have already been killed in the “SMO,” some of them severely injured. The teacher says that he cannot “sincerely” talk to his colleagues about “sensitive issues” and is afraid that his students will report him. In his opinion, out of fifty colleagues, “not even a dozen would support the war.” But they do hold events with the “SMO theme,” although “they feel performative,” and “there is no sincerity in support.” Marat’s only merit is that he and another colleague do not donate money “for the needs of the military.” 

Another teacher from the Moscow region, on the other hand, says that many in her school support the Russian invasion: “There are constant events in favor of the SMO,” her colleagues have the song “I am Russian” as their ringtone. The children’s parents and [older] brothers are also at war. What did Ksenia do? She simply “went into internal emigration.” She would like to help the “Russian opposition media in exile” with a donation, but she is afraid. Why doesn’t she resign from the school that trains future occupiers? Because she “can’t imagine herself doing any other work.” How is Ksenia different from the aforementioned engineer who works for the Russian defense industry? There is no difference. Yes, they are against the war, but they love their jobs. That’s why they keep working – ensuring that the war continues.

‘For three years now, like hedgehogs in the fog, we have been looking for and calling for someone to finally come and tell us the whole truth, to explain and try to justify all this horror’

Still, most of the stories published by Meduza seem to be from ordinary people. What were the most common messages here?

As a rule, the Russian protagonists in these stories, oppose the war or simply want “peace,” i.e., an end to the war. Of course, the majority deny any guilt or responsibility.

Dmitri from Khabarovsk believes that the “guys” from Ukraine who accuse the Russians of silence should come to Moscow to Red Square or say everything in person to Putin’s face. “We are ordinary people,” he sums up, “Ukraine, we are crying, we are terrified, we are in tears and in stupor. Ukraine, we are cowards… but we don’t want this life. We want PEACE…” Nikita from Moscow, who left Russia after the outbreak of the full-scale war, does not believe in collective responsibility and does not understand why Russians abroad are treated as “not even second-class citizens.” Aleksandra declares that she “will not forgive those who target [Russian] opponents of the war… and smear other people’s crimes on them.” Aleksander writes that Russians alone cannot be held responsible: Americans and Ukrainians are also guilty. And he will not donate to the Ukrainian Armed Forces because “corruption is rampant in Ukraine.”

From time to time, there are opinions that “everyone is a victim and everyone is an accomplice.” And that we should sympathize with everyone “on both sides of the front.”

In the same context, Russians write a lot about their own suffering. Some people’s social circles have shrunk because some of their relatives support the war. Some are haunted by “nightmares,” “PTSD,” some “groan with powerlessness,” some have developed a “phobia of reading something ‘forbidden’ on their phone screen in the subway.” Some are “stressed out,” others are being treated for depression.

Pro-Kremlin narratives are rare but can still be found. They write that the continuation of the war is beneficial to… Zelenskyy. An anonymous contributor from Yakutsk does not understand why the West and the United States “allow Ukraine to shell the Belgorod region” and “[why Ukraine] was allowed to seize the Kursk region.” “Civilians are suffering here too. But for some reason, their lives are valued less,” he wrote.

But the main thing that unites these contributions is, of course, passivity and a confession of powerlessness. For example, Yelena from Moscow writes that “for the third year, like hedgehogs in the fog, we have been looking for and calling for someone who will finally come and tell us the whole truth, explain and try to justify all this horror.” In other words, instead of this dictator, who will not tell Yelena the whole truth, another one must come and do it. And she is ready to trust him blindly. Some people are hoping that “someone will punch Putin on the nose with full force…” Someone, but who? Artur from Moscow wrote that his future was “stolen” from him. Stolen by whom? Wasn’t it Artur himself?

Of course, these letters are not a valid sample by which to judge Russian society, especially the part of it that opposes Putin. But they do reveal a key truth: the very helplessness that Russians admit to themselves, the inability to take responsibility (okay, not for the war, but at least for the future of their country!), will prevent Russians from building a normal country in the future, from holding fair elections and respecting human rights.

Yes, among letter writers there are those who still feel at least some guilt and realize that things will not end so easily for Russia. Anna from Smolensk urges Ukraine not to give up its territories.  Alexey writes that he is ashamed to be “ethnically attached” to Russia. But they also feel helpless. So, Alexei’s solution is to flee the country. Anna also laments that “there is no one who would give us hope [and the ability] to live in this country without shame.”

In summary

By publishing mostly anonymous “people’s stories,” Meduza remains true to its principle of mixing facts and versions, or, to use the vocabulary of its contributors, “smearing” versions on the facts. By publishing memories about the “occupiers,” Meduza’s editors consciously or unconsciously manipulate the context. The result is that a chronicle of the war, reports of deaths, shelling, and destruction inflicted on Ukraine by the occupiers, ends with some kind of heart-wrenching text about a “kind-hearted” occupier who was guided by “good intentions” and is not at all to blame for going to war.

Meduza did exactly the same thing in a recent campaign that used footage of the war in Ukraine for self-promotion: “Ukrainians, Russians, torturers and victims – all together, donate to us!”

Interestingly, many of the Meduza’s contributors do not call the war a war, instead using various euphemisms such as “all this” [i.e., the unprovoked full-scale war waged by their own country], “he called from there” [i.e., from the war, i.e., from the occupied territory]. Some express sympathy for the “residents of Kursk” who found themselves under occupation, but do not mention the Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans, Chechens, and numerous other peoples whom Russia has tried to “denazify.” For many, the aggressor and the victim are conflated. The false notion that “all are guilty and all are victims” prevails – it is very easy to live in a world where the guilty do not have to answer because they presumably also suffered in the war.

Huge human resources are involved in the full-scale war that Russia is waging against Ukraine. It is thanks to millions of Russians that the war is still going on, but if you read Meduza, you will find that none of these millions can be blamed for it. These letters from Meduza are a great example of how “unpleasant things”, so to speak, the “side effects” of wars of aggression, including genocide and war crimes against the neighboring peoples, have been and continue to be pushed out of the collective consciousness of Russians for centuries. Through these stories, which are mixed with facts and real evidence of the war, Meduza plays on typical Russian infantilism, where people can remain children and, after burning down their neighbor’s house, tell everyone that “it somehow caught fire on its own.” 

The section “The war through the eyes of Meduza’s readers” is a diagnosis. It is a diagnosis of the modern liberal segment of Russian society, of those who are “against the war,” “against Putin,” and are “for peace.” And to Meduza itself, whose journalists and editors are incapable of gathering and disseminating information professionally. Gathering and disseminating information in a way that does not harm, first of all, their audience, who need to be told rather unpleasant things. Yes, they may not like it. But it is in their interest.

Natalia Steblyna,
analyst at the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy