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MOSCOW After touring the grand, marble-clad Victory museum in Moscow, dedicated to the Soviet Unions triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II, the two visitors concluded that the situation today is not all that different: Russia is under attack again.

America badly wants to start this war, said Olga A. Petrova, a retiree, referring to the simmering conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine. NATO wants to bring its troops to our borders, they looked for our weak spots and they found Ukraine, she said, adding that Americans dont even know where Ukraine is on the map.

Mrs. Petrovas conviction that the United States is fomenting war between Russia and Ukraine reflects the thinking of many Russians, including her companion, Tamara N. Ivanova, who watches the two main talk shows on the countrys state-run television channels.

It is a message hammered home daily by the Kremlins propaganda machine.

Russians argue over a host of domestic issues, like the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic or ballooning inflation. Others, fed up with the Kremlins manipulation of the news media, have just opted out. But there is one thing many seem to agree with President Vladimir V. Putin about: If war does come, it will be the Americans fault.

The Levada Center, one of the few independent pollsters in Russia, says that 50 percent of Russians see the United States and NATO as responsible for rising tensions. Fewer than 5 percent blame the Kremlin.

Ms. Ivanova says she can see clearly how people in Ukraine and the West have been brainwashed. Her steadfast support of the Kremlin line is not surprising, given that pensioners like her constitute the core of President Vladimir V. Putins base.

In past years, a subset of younger, chiefly urban people might have taken to the streets in protest, but dissenting voices have been muzzled by a crackdown on demonstrations, independent news media and rights groups that began in earnest a year ago. Scores of young activists have been detained, expelled from universities and driven out of the country.

In response, says Sergei Belanovsky, a sociologist who studies public opinion, many Russians, including the countrys youth, have just opted out of following the news.

Yana Yakushkina, a 20-year-old medical student, seemed to embody that finding.

Attending a retrospective show in an exhibition hall opposite the Kremlin on the life and career of Viktor Tsoi, a famous Russian rock musician, she allowed that she doesnt pay much attention to politics, and that all this talk about war is just empty. With a shrug she added, No one can explain this never-ending conflict.

Darya Rokysheva, 19, an applied math student attending the exhibition, said that she, too, does not follow politics all that closely, and that she believes that conflict happens between governments, not between nations.

Mr. Belanovsky said that this sense of alienation from the news and issues facing the country is pervasive among Russians.

This crisis is perceived by some as the edge of consciousness something incomprehensible is happening to them, he said. They dont want to delve into it, and they think theres no point anyway.

Yet, even among those who may oppose the Kremlin on one domestic policy or another, Mr. Belanovsky adds, when it comes to Ukraine and relations with the West, many people share Mr. Putins narrative of Russia as a besieged fortress.

Aleksei Izotov, 45, an IT entrepreneur, is one of them. He said that while he abhors systemic corruption in Russia and the fact that Mr. Putin is unwilling to give up power, when it comes to foreign policy the president is doing everything right.

He added: I like it, and I think that I share the point of view of most people.

Mr. Izotov said he does not watch state television, preferring to get his news from the internet, where outlets with a small but loyal following can still buck the Kremlin line. Nevertheless, he shares the view that the current Ukraine crisis has been provoked by the United States and NATO.

Feb. 3, 2022, 2:31 p.m. ET

America pursues its geopolitical goals in the post-Soviet space, it wants to divide Russia and post-Soviet countries, he said, wearing a black sweater embossed with Mr. Tsois signature slogan We Need Change!

Mr. Izotov said he sympathizes with Russias most prominent opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny, who was jailed last year for violating parole by leaving the country. Mr. Navalny had left to seek treatment for poisoning after what Germany and other Western nations said was a government assassination attempt.

But Mr. Izotov is fatalistic about Mr. Navalnys chances of altering the existing order, believing that Mr. Putin will rule Russia until he dies and will protect his friends in power.

Even then, Mr. Izotov said he couldnt say the current president is evil, or an enemy.

Many Russians share the belief that they are powerless to influence events, a sociologist, Grigory Yudin, recently told Ekho Moskvy, a state-owned but liberal-leaning radio station. The lack of public outcry is in stark contrast to the response in 2014, after Mr. Putin annexed Ukraines Crimean peninsula.

Back then, about 50,000 people came out to protest the military action in Moscow. Now, even an online petition circulating since Jan. 30 has received only 5,000 signatures.

Citizens of Russia are becoming hostages of criminal adventurism, which is dictating Russias foreign policy line, the authors of the petition, prominent Russian intellectuals, wrote.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

But no one asks the citizens of Russia, they added. There is no public discussion. Only one point of view is presented on state television, and that is the point of view of the supporters of the war.

Ivan Preobrazhensky, an independent political analyst, says that Russians apathy, the belief in this case that a war is inevitable, has been reinforced by years of political oppression.

The Russian society doesnt want war, but its biggest part also came to terms that it is most likely inevitable, he said in an interview. He added that, with every round of tension over Ukraine, the Russian government induces people to think of war as routine.

They are people like Sergei Ryzhkov, who works in construction, who said he doesnt pay attention to the tensions over Ukraine.

I am not interested, he said. Its my opinion that these are just political showdowns.

Still, said Mr. Belanovsky, the sociologist, if it comes to an actual war with real armaments and, inevitably, body bags, those attitudes could change.

I think that such news will certainly reach the apolitical people, he said. And the reaction will be mostly negative.

Arseny Filippov, 22, said he already feels the consequences of Russias posturing. Before these events, traveling to Europe was affordable, and then the ruble just collapsed, he said. An architect, Mr. Filippov said that he gets news from independent sources online and from foreign news outlets.

He said that he could not understand why, from the beginning of Russias conflict with Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin took steps like annexing Crimea given how damaging it all was for the country and its economy.

He said that while he at first refused to believe that a war with Ukraine was inevitable, he is not so sure now, after two months of tensions.

I very much hope that it wont happen, he said.

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.

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On Ukraine, Many Russians Have No Doubt: Its the Fault of the U.S. - The New York Times

The train station in Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine near the Russian border, is a giant building in the Stalinist Empire style, ornate and overpowering in scale. Upon arrival, you exit the building into a swarm of taxi drivers hawking their services. Unlike cabbies in most places in the world, these men are not offering to drive you into town; instead, they promise to drive you to the border, or the full eighty kilometres (fifty miles) to Belgorod, the nearest Russian city. Its always like this in countries at war: travel that used to be easy, fast, and cheap becomes convoluted and expensive. People used to travel between Ukraine and Russia by air or by rail, but the planes are no longer flying and the Kyiv-Moscow train is no longer running. War has turned Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, from a regional center into a way station.

It was always a frontier town, Denys Kobzin, the director of the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, told me. A hundred years ago, the city was the frontier of Bolshevism, the first capital of Soviet Ukraine. Later, it was an industrial and scientific hub. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kharkiv remained a trade and university town, largely Russian-speaking and Russia-facing, back when those were geographical, economic, and cultural facts of little political import. For the last eight years, Kharkiv, a city of some 1.5 million, has represented a different frontier: between what Ukrainians call the governed and ungoverned regions of Ukraine. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where a Russian military incursion helped overthrow the government in 2014, are just southeast of the city, and up to half a million people displaced from those regions have settled in Kharkiv.

The ungoverned territories have named themselves the Donetsk Peoples Republic and the Luhansk Peoples Republic. Eight years ago, there was an attempt to establish a Kharkiv Peoples Republic. On March 1, 2014days after the former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, had fled the country, and just as Russian troops were occupying Crimeasomeone placed a white-blue-and-red Russian flag atop the Kharkiv regional-government building (another giant Stalinist Empire-style structure). Less than an hour later, the flag was replaced by a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.

In Freedom Square, so named after the fall of the Soviet Union (it used to bear the name of the founder of the Soviet secret police), a large blue-and-yellow tentabout the size of a trailer home and a halfsits opposite the regional-government building. A blue-and-yellow banner flying from the tent says, Everything for victory. In the first years of the war, the tent served as a clearing house for volunteers and donations: clothes, blankets, tools, portable heaters, infrared night-vision binoculars, and whatever else people brought to aid the war effort and its casualties. More recently, activists who continue to staff the tent have insisted that it must remain in the square as a reminder that the war is not over.

Boris Redin, who is fifty-three, has been volunteering at the tent from the beginning. Before the war, he ran a series of small shipping businesses. A Kharkiv native, he served in the Soviet military, in the nineteen-eighties. I took part in training exercises five times, he told me. Each time, they began with the statement that the global layout has grown fraught and ended with the announcement that our tanks are in the streets of London. Redin has no doubt that Russia maintains the same military ambitions as the Soviet Union, and that the road to London may lie through Kharkiv. In a January 20th interview with the Washington Post, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, mentioned Kharkiv as a possible target of Russian military aggression; since then, there has been a steady stream of journalists to the tent. Today, I talked to a Slovene, a Serb, a Pole, two Estonians, and three Spaniards, Redin said.

Many Kharkiv residents are not getting their information about the threat of war from the tent in the square, or even from the media. (I have written about Ukraines post-Soviet and post-colonial distrust of lites.) Since 2014, the community has formed a mighty network of social networks, beginning with the volunteer efforts to help the military and displaced people, Denys Kobzin said. So I know that I dont need to put my trust in civil defense or the draft office, but I can trust the network that surrounds me. Everyone is talking, everyone has ideas of what might happen and what they can do, whether its taking up arms or driving medical supplies to the front. They have the experience. You should have seen the way that volunteer effort functioned, Kobzin said, describing the operation in the early years of the war. My apartment was one of the way stations, and for three years I had a room that was always full of donated stuff. And now people are pulling at the threads that connect them to others, checking: Are you ready? Im ready. I am confident in the way of a person who has been able to lean on anothers shoulder.

Kobzin is forty-nine. He has lived in Kharkiv since he was a child, and has been studying public opinion there for more than twenty years. Eight years ago, Kharkiv was a very different city. A lot of residents had strong family, cultural, and economic ties to Russia. Since then, Kobzin said, Kharkiv has undergone a process of patriotization: a clear majority of the residents have come to identify with the Ukrainian state. One reason, he said, is the ever-growing lawlessness, poverty, corruption, and isolation in the ungoverned regions.

Compared to Donetsk and Luhansk, Kharkiv is thriving. It has absorbed upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand displaced people from the ungoverned regions. The city soaked them up like a sponge, Kobzin said. We now have more teachers, more doctors. But Alexandra Naryzhna, an urban planner who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor two years ago, told me that a sense of contingency had set in since the war began. Yes, weve built all this new housing, but its cheap construction, as though its meant to be temporary, she said. Even capital projects, such as a seventy-million-dollar reconstruction of the city zoothe oldest in Ukrainehave an air of shoddy impermanence to them, she said. Its like we are living temporary lives.

Naryzhna, who is thirty-seven, lives in a house built by her great-great-grandfather. Before 2014, her professional and intellectual life was tied to Russia: Moscow has urban-studies and contemporary-art centers that publish a lot of books in Russian translation. We used to go there for all the architecture exhibitions and buy books, Naryzhna said. Now you might order one and have to wait for it for months. Its not hard to get to Moscow: there are two dozen men milling around the railroad station who could drive you to Russia at any moment. Its that, emotionally, Ive had to cut myself off. You can be spending time with a relative and they might just say, Its a good thing we took Crimea. That is exactly what happened several years ago, when Naryzhna met up with a family member in occupied Crimea. I realize that they are under the influence of propaganda, she said. They are being told that we eat babies for breakfast, or that the Russian Army has to come in to defend us against fascism. She has limited her contact with family members in both Russia and Germany, where Russian speakers also watch Russian state television.

There is a certain reductive picture of Ukraine that is promoted by Kremlin propagandists and often uncritically picked up by Western media. It holds that Ukraine is divided into two parts, the Ukrainian-speaking west and the Russian-speaking east, and that the west is therefore pro-Western while the east is pro-Russian. It is true that most western Ukrainians grew up speaking Ukrainian at home and at school, and most eastern Ukrainians grew up speaking Russian at home and, until fairly recently, at school. Most Ukrainians can fluidly switch between the two languages; a couple of years ago, one would switch on Ukrainian television and hear a mix of Ukrainian and Russian, spoken by Ukrainians to one another. (The languages are related but not mutually intelligible: a Russian speaker from Russia wouldnt understand Ukrainian, but Ukrainians generally understand both.) But Ukrainians language identities are decoupled from their national identities, Kobzin said, and their national identity as Ukrainians has been fortified over the last eight years, both by the threat of war and the solidarity that Ukrainians have forged and observed in the face of it.

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How a City Close to the Ukraine-Russia Border Has Been Shaped by War - The New Yorker

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said the U.S. and its allies are continuing to signal to Russia that they are ready to respond to an escalation, including by imposing "massive economic sanctions and consequences."

"We're looking at all options," she told CNBC's Hadley Gamble on Thursday.

In response to a question on whether sanctions are limited in their effectiveness, Smith said there isn't "any indication yet" that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided what to do with the troops that he has deployed to the border with Ukraine.

"We're trying to sharpen the choice for President Putin as he weighs his options here," she added.

The growing military presence at the border has sparked fears of a war between Moscow and Kyiv. Negotiations with the U.S. and other Western powers have not yielded much progress, and the possibility of punishing sanctions has not pressured Russia into de-escalating the situation.

The former president of Ukraine,Petro Poroshenko, previously told CNBC that sanctions on Nord Stream 2 would make Russia weaker and discourage Putin from attacking. Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline project that would bypass Ukraine while carrying gas from Russia to Europe.

The Kremlin has denied it is planning to invade Ukraine, in what would be a repeat of its illegal annexationand occupation of Crimea in 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a screen as he speaks during his annual press conference at the Moscow Manege on December 23, 2021, in Moscow, Russia.

Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Separately, Smith said that the decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops closer to Ukraine was made partly to reassure allies in the region and to serve as a deterrent.

Asked if that could be seen as provocative to Russia, she pointed out that the numbers differ greatly, estimating that around 127,000 troops are stationed around Ukraine's border.

"I really think we're comparing apples and oranges," she said, adding that U.S. troops are not going into Ukraine and will not be permanently moved to central and eastern Europe.

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U.S. is weighing all options including 'massive' sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, ambassador to NATO says - CNBC

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and his GOP counterpart atop the panel, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, have spent the last two weeks in high gear hammering out a a legislative package that attempts to reconcile their parties diverging pitches for how best to deter a Russian invasion of its neighbor and send a unified message to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Democrats and the White House have proposed a series of crushing economic sanctions that would take effect only after an invasion, as a way to lay out to Putin the cost of an incursion. But Republicans have argued for imposing some sanctions on the front end of a possible invasion, and ramping them up if necessary.

Negotiators have settled on a plan that punishes Russia for the destabilizing actions it has already taken, including cyberattacks targeting Ukraine as well as false-flag operations to create a pretext for an invasion. A final agreement remains up in the air, however, amid some debate over the sanctions scope and the amount of flexibility to give Biden.

Lawmakers are also trying to bridge disagreements over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which became a contentious topic in Washington after the Biden administration declined to impose sanctions on the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that after meeting with Menendez on Wednesday night, Im pretty confident were going to get there. He told POLITICO that the emerging agreement would include waiver authorities for the president effectively allowing Biden to decide whether to impose the sanctions.

What you need is the president to have the flexibility to target different individuals, different institutions, Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said.

That might not be enough for some Republicans who have advocated for mandatory sanctions. Its also unclear whether the White House will ultimately back the bipartisan proposal, though Menendez, the lead Democratic negotiators, said the Biden administration has given him encouragement on the effort.

This is one of those issues in which you dont have the luxury of time. You want to make an impact, the sooner the better, he said after Thursdays session with Bidens national-security deputies. Collectively, what I heard only makes the case that this is more pressing, more timely, and that time in this regard if we want to be preventative is of the essence.

When asked about the White Houses support, Menendez responded: I dont think what were adding is in any way pejorative. He added that it would not be far afield from his initial proposal, which 40 Senate Democrats and the White House backed.

Risch, for his part, said on Thursday that he and Menendez made significant progress yesterday and overnight, and other important parties have been brought into the discussions.

Other provisions in the compromise package such as additional lethal aid for Ukraine and the creation of a World War II-style lend-lease program have broad bipartisan support and are expected to be included in the final package. The latter would allow the U.S. to send weapons and supplies to Ukraine with the promise of repayment at a later date.

Thursdays briefing for all senators came one day after Biden deployed around 3,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe as a way to shore up NATOs defenses. And it came just hours after the White House disclosed a Kremlin-orchestrated false-flag operation involving a graphic video depicting a fabricated attack on Russians.

The briefers included Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, among others.

For now, some lawmakers remain optimistic that the closed-door session will spur a final agreement on legislation.

Its encouraging at these moments to see Republicans and Democrats behind closed doors set aside their differences, work together to learn as much as they can. And you see people moving closer together with some of their approaches, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said. To the extent there are disagreements, you start to see those narrow during those sessions.

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Senators worry Russia will invade Ukraine before they finalize sanctions bill - POLITICO

ANKARA, Turkey NATO member Turkey and its Black Sea ally Ukraine have agreed to coproduce an increasingly popular Turkish-made drone at a production site in Ukraine.

A top Ukrainian official said Feb. 3 that the two countries would sign a coproduction agreement which would be ratified by parliaments in Turkey and Ukraine.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Olesii Reznikov told reporters in Kyiv that the coproduction compound would also include a training center where Ukrainian pilots would be trained.

In 2019, Baykar Makina, a privately owned Turkish drone maker, won a contract to sell six Bayraktar TB2 UAVs to Ukraine. The $69 million contract also involved the sale of ammunition for the armed version of the aircraft.

In September, the Ukrainian government announced that it was planning to buy 24 more Turkish unmanned combat aerial vehicles in the coming months.

Use of the TB2 by Ukrainian forces against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has irked Moscow. As U.S. officials claimed to have intelligence of Russian officials working on a staged video of Ukrainian forces attacking Russians as a pretext for war, the Washington Post cited an unnamed U.S. government official on Friday saying a TB2 drone could be pictured in such a film to implicate NATO.

The Bayraktar TB2 is a medium-altitude, long-range tactical UAV system. It was developed by Kale-Baykar, a joint venture of Baykar Makina and the Kale Group. The UAV operates as a platform for conducting reconnaissance and intelligence missions.

Reznikov said that the aircraft to be coproduced would be dubbed the Turkish-Ukrainian Bayraktar.

He said the drone would be powered by a Ukrainian engine. In earlier talks Turkish sources said that the engine would be supplied by the Ukrainian producer Motor Sich.

Bayraktar TB2 features a monocoque design and integrates an inverse V-tail structure. The fuselage is made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and hybrid composites, whereas the joint segments constitute precision computer numerical control (CNC) machined aluminum parts.

Each Bayraktar TB2 system consists of six aerial vehicles, two ground control stations, three ground data terminals, two remote video terminals and ground-support equipment.

The Bayraktar TB2s maximum payload exceeds 55 kilograms. The standard payload configuration includes an electro-optical camera module, an infrared camera module, a laser designator, a laser range finder and a laser pointer.

Ukraine was the first export market for the TB2, with the sale of six systems in a $69 million contract in 2019. Baykar has also won contracts to sell batches of the TB2 to Qatar, Azerbaijan and Poland.

Burak Ege Bekdil is a Turkey correspondent for Defense News. He has written for Hurriyet Daily News, and worked as Ankara bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires and CNBC-e television. He is also a fellow at the Middle East Forum and regularly writes for the Middle East Quarterly and Gatestone Institute.

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Turkey and Ukraine to coproduce TB2 drones - DefenseNews.com