There is a ‘liberal’ Russia, but it vanishingly small. Millions of acts of compliance, support or silence keep the death machine turning

By Daria Mattingly

Published 24 June 2026

More than four years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West is still arguing with a Russia it would prefer to exist. Faced with overwhelming evidence of Russian aggression, many politicians, academics and journalists remain caught between two powerful impulses: fear and denial.

Both assumptions have distorted Western understanding of the war. The fear is familiar. What if Russia escalates? What if Vladimir Putin resorts to nuclear weapons?

Since 2022, the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened escalation. Western governments were warned that supplying High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars) rocket launchers would cross a red line. Then that giving Patriot systems would. Then long-range missiles. Then permission for Ukraine to strike military targets on Russian territory.

Each time, catastrophe was predicted. Each time, it failed to materialise. While nuclear weapons remain uniquely dangerous, four years of the war suggest that Russia’s nuclear rhetoric has functioned primarily as a tool of political influence rather than an indicator of imminent action.

The result is a striking paradox. Many Europeans remain more anxious about hypothetical future escalation than about the very real destruction taking place every day in Ukraine.

The denial is equally familiar. This is Putin’s war, we are told, and many ordinary Russians are against it. Some even believe that the West provoked the invasion.

Part of the problem lies in how the West imagines Russia.

For decades, Western engagement with Russia was built on the assumption that economic development and cultural exchange would gradually produce a more democratic society. Even after the invasion of Ukraine, many observers continued to search for signs of a different Russia waiting beneath the surface of Putinism.

The Russia familiar to many Westerners is a Russia of literature, music and dissent. It is Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Russian opera and ballet. It is the Russia of BBC adaptations of War and Peace, of the Pussy Riotprotesters, of Moscow intellectuals debating politics late into the night, and of NGOs like Memorial, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

That Russia exists. But it has never been the whole story. A closer reading of even many liberal Russian writers reveals something often overlooked in Western admiration. Humanitarianism rarely extended fully to the non-Russian peoples of the empire.

Ukrainians, Georgians and many other peoples were seldom imagined as political equals entitled to determine their own futures. This was not unique to Russia; British and French imperial writers frequently displayed similar blind spots. Yet it matters because it reminds us that even Russian liberalism often stopped where imperial interests began.

The same problem shapes many Western personal encounters with Russia. Supporters of engagement often point to Memorial as evidence that another Russia exists. They are right. Memorial represents one of the most admirable traditions in modern Russian public life. For decades, its members documented Soviet repression, preserved historical memory and defended human rights. The Russian state’s decision to liquidate Memorial reveals much about contemporary Russia. But Memorial’s fate also reveals something else.

Many of its leading figures emerged from the dissident generation formed during the late Soviet period. They were shaped by the struggle for reform and the hopes of the 1990s. Today that generation is ageing, dying or living in exile. New voices continue to emerge, but few possess comparable authority, institutional influence or public reach.

Businesspeople, journalists and academics like me, who spent years travelling to Moscow and St Petersburg, often developed deep personal ties. Our Russian friends were educated, cosmopolitan and outward-looking. Many genuinely opposed the war.

Yet, the Russia encountered through universities, business and NGOs is not necessarily the Russia that sustains the war. Most Westerners rarely spent time in the industrial regions and economically struggling communities that have supplied large numbers of military recruits.

The uncomfortable reality is that Russia’s war has been made possible not only by Vladimir Putin and his entourage, but by millions of ordinary acts of compliance, support or silence. Responsibility is unequal, but it is not confined to the Kremlin.

‘War akin to a natural disaster’

Even among Russia’s educated classes, opposition often takes a peculiar form. Conversations about the war frequently end with expressions of regret, sadness or helplessness, followed by a return to ordinary life or in exile. The war becomes something akin to a natural disaster – tragic but somehow external to personal responsibility.

Yet wars are not natural disasters, they are sustained by human choices. Across Europe, sections of the Russian diaspora have organised pro-war motor rallies, “Immortal Regiment” marches and supported cultural events that help sustain the comforting fiction that Russia is a country of high culture – rather than acknowledging the war of aggression against Ukraine.

Within Russia, prominent cultural figures have openly supported the war. Others have presented themselves as somehow detached from Russian power. European institutions frequently rush to restore cultural normality, to separate culture from politics while treating the war as a regrettable interruption rather than a fact.

But culture has never existed outside politics. Not in Russia. Not today.

The reality of Russia’s war is one of imperial brutality. As Westerners remain gripped by fear of what Russia might do, Ukraine faces bombardment every day and every night.

Four years into the largest war in Europe since 1945, the lesson should be obvious. Western governments, institutions and intellectuals need to stop waiting for the Russia they wish existed and start dealing with the Russia that does.

Dr Daria Mattingly is a historian of the Soviet Union working at the University of Chichester

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/24/ordinary-russians-cant-escape-blame-for-putins-wars/