Russian society is currently in freefall.
Vladimir Putin, who it now seems finally knows that his ridiculous invasion of Ukraine is a disaster, announced last week that he is calling up 300,000 extra men to fight in Ukraine.
Not trained soldiers, but basically anyone who can walk and breathe.
They will be cannon fodder, nothing more.
His announcement sent shockwaves through Russia causing tens of thousands of men to abandon their families and scramble to leave the country.
I could quote exact figures as of writing this column, but by the time you read it, it will all have changed.
People’s options for leaving Russia are of course severely limited. If you have a visa, you can cross over by bus into Finland, but for how long no one knows.
Flights to Turkey are currently being sold for up to $10,000 one way.
The land border with Georgia is total chaos, jammed pack with thousands of cars with young men, all desperate to leave before they are sent to war in Ukraine.
Where this will all lead, I for one do not know. It wouldn’t surprise me if by the time you read this, Russia has closed its own borders to all its citizens.
But what worries me even more is what we, the west, are currently doing. We are actively stopping issuing visas for Russians, making it harder for some and more expensive, and even turning away at land borders those who already have a visa.
My partner Lina, thankfully, after waiting months, got her visa and “escaped” last week. A two-year European Schengen visa for the EU, and a two-year British visa.
In normal times, this would have meant she either jumped on a direct flight to any European country, or to get to the UK, took a BA flight to London then connect up to Aberdeen. Simple.
Not so now.
Due to sanctions, there are no flights from Russia into the EU or UK. This year she’s already taken the route of flying from Russia to Turkey, connecting to London, then a train up to Aberdeen. A long hike. But last week, it was even longer.
She took an overnight train from Moscow to St Petersburg, hung around there, then embarked on a nine-hour bus journey across the border to Finland.
She endured eight hours overnight in the airport, a flight to Sweden, then a flight to Spain.
I’m used to this and worse, due to my job. But it wasn’t a picnic for her.
As Lina crossed the land border into Finland, she was asked numerous questions on why she was entering the EU, where she was going, and even though she had a photocopy of my passport, a letter from me, booked flights to Spain and a British visa for onward travel, they initially did not accept that she was genuinely coming to see me.
She was almost refused entry and turned back.
This kind of questioning of a young woman on her own at a land border at night, would have been unthinkable only six months ago. I don’t blame the border guard, he was simply doing his job, I blame the authorities for making it out that every Russian who tries to enter the EU legally is some kind of undesirable.
We are playing a very dangerous game here, and it all plays right into Putin’s hands.
The Kremlin, of course, is “outraged”, at such news of visa bans and restricted entry. It says there will be “retaliations”. Probably blocking off Russian visas for us. That doesn’t matter, for none of us – including me – is going there any time soon anyway. But it’s all a lie. The Kremlin won’t be outraged at this, they will be lapping it up.
Putin’s been telling ordinary Russians for years that the west is out to get them. I even had a schoolgirl in a classroom ask me in 2019: “Why does the west hate Russia?”
It’s all nonsense of course, but it works, it’s been drip fed for years and like a leaky tap will eventually do damage if not fixed.
Nazi propaganda supremo Joseph Goebbels famously said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
We have never been out to punish ordinary Russians, but now it actually looks like we are.
Who are the diplomats who advise on such issues? Why are they not telling our authorities that this is counter-productive? I despair.
Seventy per cent of Russians do not have a passport, meaning they do not ever travel abroad. The remaining 30% do. From my experience of meeting countless Russians over the decades, the more any individual Russian is exposed to our western way of life, the more open their minds become.
When they experience how things are done in Europe and the UK, they begin to change, and see their country and leaders for what they are.
This is progress, yet these are the very people we are attempting to stop coming to visit us. So counter-productive, so stupid.
The argument I’ve read by numerous columnists in newspapers the world over, goes something like this: “Russians should not be allowed to travel to the EU while Ukrainians die.”
This makes no sense to me. If my country invaded, for example, France, why should I not be allowed to travel to Canada to visit friends? Why should I, or any ordinary individual, be punished because of the actions of our government?
Those who back Putin and make money from his regime have already been banned and had their assets arrested. I support this of course. However, banning billionaire crooked Russian businessmen is one thing, but ordinary Russian people? It’s plain wrong.
Those who say all Russians should be banned from foreign travel go on to say that it will force them to make a decision to change their government from within.
Seriously head shaking time from me when I read this.
They don’t get it. They don’t get Russia.
Yes I’ve been highly critical of the Russian public in the past for shrugging off the ramping-up of Soviet propaganda over the past 10 years, but right now, ordinary Russians are currently in no position whatsoever to do anything to change their system.
To be fair, they tired to make changes some years back when hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a rare display over rigged elections.
The Kremlin was taken aback, took notice and quickly put new laws and plans into place to make sure it didn’t happen again.
The door of protest has now closed.
We must remember, what regimes like Russia are afraid of, is not a foreign power, not NATO, they are afraid of their own people. But now, the system has once again got an iron grip on society, and there is no wriggle room for anyone to speak out.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, around 20,000 ordinary Russians have already been arrested, many jailed and beaten for peaceful protests, posting messages on social media, and even arrested for holding up a blank piece of paper.
It’s actually life-threatening for any Russian to even open their mouth against the so-called special operation in Ukraine. Therefore, how or why the EU thinks ordinary Russians can change their own government is beyond me.
I wonder, as I have done for years, how much time such western commentators, specialists, advisers have spent in Russia? Time with ordinary Russians in their homes, getting to know them and what makes them tick.
Precious few, if any, I’d imagine.
Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail knows what he’s talking about, that’s for sure. So does Ian Birrell, and the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg. But I often read drivel written about Russia from writers I doubt have even been there.
If the EU does in fact impose a blanket ban on visas for all Russians, it will be an absolute tragedy for ordinary Russians who are in no position to change anything in their country.
And it’s nowhere near as simple as saying we are merely denying Russians “shopping trips or holidays in the sun”. Lina is only one of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians who have family and loved ones spread all over the EU. By blocking them and denying them access to visit, we are playing a dangerous game that our authorities don’t seem to get.
This policy is collective punishment, and at a time when we should be doing the complete opposite. We have got to take the Russian people with us, but it looks like we are about to make similar mistakes like we made in the ’90s.
For decades, right up until 1991, Soviet Russia banned its own people from visiting the west.
Is this what we want to mirror? To behave like them?
The potential banning of visas for ordinary Russians is ill thought out and discriminatory at best. At worst, it’s an absolute gift to Putin.
When will the west “get” Russia? Will it ever “get” Russia?
If there’s a job of advisor to our new PM on what and how the average Russian thinks, I’m up for the role.
Drop us a line Liz…
Conversation