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FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Feb. 11, 2022. A new poll finds little support among Americans for a major U.S. role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. President Joe Biden has acknowledged the growing likelihood of a new war in Eastern Europe will affect Americans even if U.S. troops don’t deploy to Ukraine. Just 26% of Americans say the U.S. should have a major role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

On February 23, a tank driver in the Russian army called his family and said he would be home soon, as his unit was about to finish its military drills.

Russia invaded Ukraine the next day, and nobody has been heard from since. The soldier in the video apologized for taking part in the invasion.

He had no idea they could send him to Ukraine, his brother said in a phone interview.

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Russia is seeing the reality of war.

The death toll for Russian service members in the conflict was announced for the first time by the Russian Defense Ministry. While casualty figures in wartime are notoriously unreliable, the number of Russian dead in the seven days of fighting is the largest in any of its military operations since the war in Chechnya.

Even as the Kremlin gets more aggressive in trying to shape the narrative, Russians are realizing that their country is fighting a deadly conflict. The last free press in the world faced extinction, as its slow-motion crackdown on freedoms has become 888-282-0465 888-282-0465.

Lawmakers proposed a 15-year prison sentence for people who post fakes about the war, and there are rumors about martial law. The war against Ukraine was described in a video lesson as a liberation mission by the Education Ministry.

In Moscow, the regional office of the Committee of Soldiers has been getting 2,000 calls a day.

Alexander Latynin, a senior committee official, said that the parents first question was "What happened to my child?"

The Russian military did not acknowledge the fact that many young Russian soldiers were dying or being taken prisoner until Sunday, the fourth day of the war. The bodies of Russian soldiers were strewn on streets and fields, and videos of Russian prisoners of war saying they had no idea they were about to be invaded were published by the Ukrainian government.

Some Russians are being reached by the videos. One of the videos featured a friend of Yevgeniya A. Ivanova's, Viktor A. Golubev. Golubev said he feels guilty for his actions on Ukrainian soil and called on Putin to find a compromise to avoid war.

The toll in human lives is a reason enough for some Russians to oppose the war, and OVD-Info, an activist group that tracks arrests, has counted at least 7,359 Russians in jail during protests in scores of cities across the country.

In the third decade of the 21st century, we are watching news about people burning in tanks and bombed-out buildings.

The Russian elite continued to speak out. There are stray dogs gnawing on dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine, according to a member of Russia's upper house of Parliament.

Narusova doesn't identify herself with those who speak out in favor of the war. They are following orders.

The Russian International Affairs Council published an article by an expert who described the war as a strategic debacle. Ivan Timofeev said that Ukrainian society would see Russia as an enemy for a long time.

Those who look for traitors sooner or later become victims.

The discontent showed no sign of affecting Putin's campaign, as Russia's assault on Ukraine widened, with heavy fighting reported for the port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. The government signaled that it would intensify its fight against the war's critics, including those who called it a war.

Vasily Piskaryov is a senior lawmaker in Putin's party.

His punishment was 15 years in prison. The law will be taken up by the Parliament on Friday.

It was feared that Putin could go even further in his suppression of dissent. It was more than logical for lawmakers to approve martial law this week in order to block the open internet, ban all protests and restrict Russians from online activities, wrote a scholar who has studied Putin.

Increasing numbers of Russians have left the country due to speculation about how quickly the Kremlin was moving to block access to individual news media outlets.

The flagship liberal-leaning radio station in Russia was taken off the air on Tuesday for the first time since 1991. Dozhd, Russia's only remaining independent television channel, had access to its website blocked and leading staff members left the country on Wednesday.

Tikhon Dzyadko, the channel's editor-in-chief, wrote that the personal security of some of them was under threat.

Even though the war took many Russians by surprise, significant numbers came to accept it as unavoidable or forced upon Russia by an aggressive NATO. The economic crisis that hit the West reinforced that narrative for some. The ruble plumbed new lows on Wednesday as more companies announced they would reduce their operations in Russia and as the central bank ordered the Moscow stock exchange to remain shut for the fourth straight day.

Two young people lined up for cash at an ATM at a Moscow shopping mall and said they opposed the war. They said that the way the world was punishing them was not fair because the United States had fought its own wars without being hit with international sanctions.

Maksim Filatov, 25, who manages a hookah bar, said that he can criticize Western countries just as he can criticize the government.

According to Latynin, the Committee of Soldiers Mothers, despite being a witness to the tragedy of the war, decided to support it. He echoed the words of Putin, who last week described his special military operation as self-defense.

It was impossible to go on like this, and this was a necessary step.

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