NARVA, Estonia – Like many of the ethnic Russians living along Estonia’s eastern border with Russia, Stanislava Larchenko could not believe that President Vladimir V. Putin went on a killing spree in Ukraine.
Me. Larchenko, 51, became angry with her son when he was arrested in February after Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine said Russian soldiers were killing civilians. She maintained the massacre was the work of Ukrainians dressed in Russian uniforms, a herd of state television radiated from Russia which she watched.
“For me, Russia has always been a liberator, a country that has been attacked but never attacked others,” she said. Larchenko said in the Estonian border town of Narva, NATO’s easternmost outpost and the European Union’s most ethnic Russian city.
But after four months of war, Ms. Larchenko said she “took off my rosy glasses” – and stopped arguing with her son, Denis, 29, after taking his advice to stop watching Russian state television.
“Psychologically,” she said, “I went to the other side.”
In a city where almost everyone speaks Russian instead of Estonian and experiences social pressure to stay with their ethnic group, Ms Larchenko is unusual in her willingness to openly declare that she no longer sees Russia as a force for good. , but as an aggressor.
That so few Russians in Estonia’s free and democratic society are ready to do so is perhaps an indication of how difficult any change of heart will be for people in Russia, where open criticism of the war is a criminal offense.
Below the surface, however, the mood in Narva is changing, especially among younger ethnic Russians. For some, this move carries a worrying message for the Kremlin: Private doubt erodes public support for what Mr. Putin calls his “special military operation.”
Others see only loyalty ahead: Russians, says Raivo Raala, a dispathetic ethnic Estonian retiree in Narva, “are not people, but slaves.”
Ms Larchenko’s son, a member of the city council, said most ethnic Russians in Narva “now know that Russia was wrong in attacking Ukraine”, but still struggled to reconcile it with a foundation of their identity – deeply proud of Russia’s role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Sergey Tsvetkov, a Russian critic of the Kremlin who fled from St. Petersburg to Narva in 2014 and is now helping refugees from Ukraine, said he was disappointed that so few ethnic Russians in Estonia had spoken out against the war.
Better understand the war between Russia and Ukraine
But, he added, “people are starting to think a little more now – most have not changed their minds, but they have doubts” about Russia’s rationale for invading Ukraine, mainly its claim that Ukraine was overrun by fascists and must be “released.”
Mr. Putin last month helped fuel this doubt by recreating the invasion as part of a mission to “return and strengthen” territory that he said “belonged to Russia” from ancient times. “This,” said Mr. Putin said, “applies to Narva,” which was conquered by Peter the Great in 1704.
Narva’s elder, Katri Raik, an ethnic Estonian historian, told Mr. Putin’s reading of history was mocked as untrue. No one in Narva, including Russian native speakers, more than 95 percent of the city’s population, she said, wants to be part of Russia.
About 36 percent of the city’s 60,000 residents have Russian instead of Estonian passports, but, the mayor said, “no one goes away to live in Russia,” where salaries are much lower, corruption is rampant and health care and others services are much weaker.
“Everyone here knows what life is like there,” she said. Raik said.
Despite this knowledge, however, many ethnic Russians in Estonia still favored Mr. Putin watched as the war began.
A public opinion poll in March by Globsec, a Slovak research group, found that 22 percent of Estonians – a figure that roughly coincides with the ethnic Russian population – have a positive view of Mr. Putin had, down from 30 percent last year.
The mayor said she believes Mr. Putin’s support has since shrunk, especially as people can no longer easily watch Russian state television following an Estonian ban on cable services it carries.
To confirm Narva’s separation from Russia, the city recently adopted a new slogan: “Europe starts here.”
Even ethnic Russian politicians who tilted to Moscow conceded that Russia’s despotic system was not one that anyone in Narva wanted.
“We live in a democratic society – those who do not want it have already left,” said Tatiana Stolfart, a city council member for the Center Party, a former pro-Russian political force. Shortly after Russia’s invasion, the party suddenly terminated its partnership agreement with Mr. Putin’s United Russia party canceled.
In an interview, Ms. Stolfart initially cautiously said who was to blame for the killings in Ukraine, but then admitted: “Yes, Russia is the aggressor.”
The encroachment on Russia’s image has helped garner support, even among some ethnic Russians, for the Estonian Defense League, a voluntary militia under the Ministry of Defense. Roger Vinni, an ethnic Estonian organizer of the league in Narva, said half of his 300 members in the city were ethnic Russians. “They are Estonian patriots, just like us,” he said. Vinni said.
Many older Russians, he added, still cherish nostalgia for the Soviet Union, but their children and grandchildren are more integrated, speak Estonian and “see themselves as part of Estonia and Europe, not the Soviet Union or Russia.”
Younger Russians in Narva also joined efforts to help Ukrainians, many from Mariupol and other occupied villages, who fled to Estonia to escape Russian troops.
Kristina Korneitsuk, a 23-year-old volunteer who was bedding for a refugee residence, said that while she blamed Russia and Ukraine for the conflict, Mr. Putin “may have lost his head a little.”
His remarks about Narva belonging to Russia, she added, should be taken seriously. “If he can attack Ukraine, there is reason to think that the next step could be the Baltic countries,” she said.
While Russia did not issue specific threats against Estonia, Moscow on Monday threatened Lithuania, another Baltic state, with retaliation if it did not reverse its ban on the transport of certain goods to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. .
Some older ethnic Russians, despite their strong emotional ties with Russia, express dismay at the aggression and paranoia that has gripped Russian society. Gennady Suslov, a mechanic, complained that when he rode on his Ukrainian-made bicycle over the bridge connecting Narva to the adjoining Russian village of Ivangorod, he had to put adhesive tape over the “Ukraine” brand on the crossbar to detain him. to avoid. .
Russia, he said, “you went a little crazy.”
This perception has given a boost to a long, often shaky campaign by the Estonian state to get more ethnic Russians to embrace the country where they live.
“With Putin’s help, the process of Estonianisation has been catalyzed,” said Artemy Troitsky, a veteran Russian journalist and Putin critic who moved to Estonia in 2014. Mr. Putin, he added, made his country “completely uncool” and so toxic. that almost no one is ready to defend his actions in public.
Estonia has also banned four Russian cable television channels, previously the main source of news for many ethnic Russians, who make up almost a quarter of Estonia’s population.
Russian television can still be watched in Narva with the purchase of a small antenna, but Moscow has nevertheless lost its propaganda stranglehold. Me. Larchenko, the mother who abandoned her illusions about Russia, said she had not watched Russian television for three months and now gets all her news from the internet, including from critical sites of the Kremlin.
Alyona Boyarchuk, a Ukrainian single who took refuge in Narva shortly after Russia invaded her country, said when she first arrived, she was facing hostility from ethnic Russians. She is now mostly treated with respect and asked if what Moscow is saying about the war is true.
“People here are no longer zombies,” she said.
To counter Russian propaganda, Estonia’s state broadcaster has its own Russian-language service, ETV +, which reflects the government’s view that Ukraine is the victim of an illegal and brutal attack by the Kremlin.
Sergei Stepanov, a news editor for ETV + in Narva, said the “Soviet mentality” of an older generation longing for the days when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union still made it very difficult for Russia to be an aggressor. to see.
His mother-in-law, he added, considered him and his wife “fascists” because they supported Ukraine. “There’s a spiritual war going on between generations,” he said.