In a country of nearly 150m people, zombified by two decades of propaganda, there are many who support Putin. But more and more ordinary citizens are joining the resistance
n a bedsit in Vologda, a Russian city 500 miles north of Moscow, a man sat at a desk surrounded by recording equipment. In his early 60s, tall and thin with long grey hair, glasses and a moustache, he looked like an ageing rock star making a new album. His name was Vladimir Rumyantsev. He lived alone, and his day job was as a stoker, tending a furnace in a factory boiler-room. In the evenings he was theRumyantsev set up the station before the war as a hobby.
Radio Vovan’s signal was so weak it could be picked up only in the streets surrounding Rumyantsev’s home. It had one listener that we know about for certain: the, Russia’s internal security service. Investigators were unable to identify any listeners among his neighbours, but that didn’t matter to them, especially once they cottoned on to the anti-war content Rumyantsev was sharing on social media. In April 2022 his radio equipment was confiscated and in July he was arrested.
He had very poor eyesight; when he was 14 he was sent to a state-run boarding school for disabled children. The teachers, many of whom had served in the second world war, shocked him by impugning the Russian war effort and Stalin, who had died eight years before Rumyantsev was born. They taught him to think critically: that the truth was more complicated than the official line.
They send money to Ukraine’s army. They hack Russian websites. They help young men escape the draft. One banner at a protest read, “The sixth commandment: thou shalt not kill”. They post leaflets through letterboxes and under windscreen wipers. They put on concerts of Ukrainian music. They kneel in the snow in front of a statue in Moscow of the Ukrainian poet, Lesya Ukrainka. They wear garlands of blue and yellow flowers. They create memorials for dead Ukrainians and place bouquets and toys at them. And not all protests are symbolic: trains, loaded with weapons, have been derailed on the way to the front.
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