‘Patriotism is off the charts’: In border towns, Russians believe victory is near
Timur lives in Rostov on Don “three kilometers from an airfield from which warplanes headed to Ukraine take off every twenty minutes.” There is not much else I can tell you about him, because in Russia, where even the word “war” is banned, he is taking an enormous risk by speaking to a journalist and he is nervous. But not as nervous as he is about the way the war in Ukraine is going.
“For me, the idea that Russia might go and conquer Kyiv is terrifying. But equally scary to me is the idea of Ukrainians encroaching on Russian territory. Because I live here, and it is unclear what Putin’s response would be,” he says.
Over the last week, the coverage in the media in the West has been almost giddy over Ukraine’s unprecedented advances. Commentators and pundits in the West are already arguing that Russian military defeat is inevitable, a matter of when not if.
But in the towns along Russia’s border with Ukraine, that perception could not be further from the truth.