In the first weeks after February 24, psychologist Anastasiya Rubtsova says, many Russians were in denial about Putin’s war in Ukraine and assumed that it would soon be over and not affect them. But now, she continues, almost everyone can see that this war is going to go on for a long time, and reactions of most have shifted from denial to fear.
The fears Russians have are intensified by two factors, Rubtsova suggests. On the one hand, they are as yet unfocused. People don’t know what is going to come next and therefore have no good way of integrating that into their thinking and thus finding ways to cope (polit.ru/article/2022/07/12/rubtsova/).
And on the other, they don’t know whom to trust for guidance. Russian’s authoritarian rulers have benefited from keeping people from trusting one another, but the country now faces a situation in which people don’t trust anyone…
