Thread by @rogertansey

1/ “On Feb. 23, Razil Malikov, a tank driver in the Russian Army, called his family and said he would be home soon; his unit’s military drills in Crimea were just about wrapping up.” nytimes.com/2022/03/02/wor…

2/ “The next morning, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Mr. Malikov hasn’t been heard from since.

3/ “The reality of war is dawning across Russia.”

4/ “Russians who long avoided engaging with politics are now realizing that their country is fighting a deadly conflict, even as the Kremlin gets ever more aggressive in trying to shape the narrative.”

5/ “Its slow-motion crackdown on freedoms has become a whirlwind of repression of late, as the last vestiges of a free press faced extinction.”

6/ “This week, lawmakers proposed a 15-year prison sentence for people who post “fakes” about the war, and rumors are swirling about soon-to-be-closed borders or martial law.”

7/ “Seizing on the worries of Russian families, Ukraine has pushed to publicize the fact that many young Russian soldiers were dying or being taken prisoner — a reality that the Russian military did not acknowledge until Sunday”

8/ “Ukrainian government agencies and volunteers have published videos of disoriented Russian prisoners of war saying they had no idea they were about to be part of an invasion until just before it began. . .”

9/ “. . . and photographs and footage showed the bodies of Russian soldiers strewn on streets and fields.”

10/ “The videos are reaching some Russians directly. Yevgeniya A. Ivanova, for instance, identified a friend of hers, Viktor A. Golubev, who appeared in one of the videos.”

11/ “In it, Mr. Golubev said he “feels guilty for his wrong actions” on Ukrainian soil and calls on President Vladimir V. Putin “to find a compromise to avoid war.”

12/ “To some Russians, the toll in human lives is reason enough to oppose the war, and OVD-Info, an activist group that tallies arrests, has counted at least 7,359 Russians detained during seven days of protests in scores of cities across the country.”

13/ “Aleksei A. Navalny, the opposition leader, wrote in a social media post from prison on Wednesday, calling on Russians to continue to rally despite the withering police crackdown. “Let’s not ‘be against war.’ Let’s fight against war.”

14/ “Members of the Russian elite also continued to speak out. Lyudmila Narusova, a member of Russia’s . . . Parliament [said] that dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine lay “unburied; wild, stray dogs gnawing on bodies that in some cases cannot be identified because they are burned.”

15/ “The Russian International Affairs Council, a government-funded think tank, published an article by a prominent expert describing the war as a strategic debacle.”

16/ “But the discontent showed no sign of affecting Mr. 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.”

17/ “The government signaled it would only intensify its crackdown against the war’s critics — including those who called it a “war” rather than, in the Kremlin’s anodyne term, a “special military operation.”

18/ “Individuals who carry out falsification must be punished in the most severe way,” said Vasily Piskaryov, a senior lawmaker in Mr. Putin’s party.”

19/ “His proposed punishment: 15 years in prison.”

20/ “Some feared that Mr. Putin could go even further, repressing dissent to an extent unseen in Russia since Soviet times.”