The Role of Community Engagement in Growth

[Shishirgano9]

Russian journalists are using social media to spread a different story, as have many of the nearly 2 million Russians – out of a population of 145 million – who emigrated to the West during the Putin era. Many are in disbelief about both the war and the domestic repression. “It’s as if everyone in Russia went to sleep on Wednesday night in their own country and woke up the next morning in North Korea,” said a former Moscow resident working as an IT administrator in New York, who wished to remain anonymous out of concern for his loved ones.


On February 24, Russian online journalist Ksenia Sobchak filmed malaysia phone number library a special report aimed at a domestic Russian audience and designed to expose the government’s lies. It included live Skype interviews with actor Sean Penn and, for Russians, another renowned celebrity, Ukrainian music video producer Alan Badoev. The two men were separately in kyiv, separately experiencing the bombings. Both were close to tears. Dare to disagree? Under Putin, public criticism of government policy can be considered a crime . But a few people inside Russia are using social media to denounce both the government's external war in Ukraine and its internal war on free speech.


Vlogger Yury Dud has shared with his 4.9 million Instagram followers examples of courageous Russians opposing the war. He has also referred to the silencing of dissent, lamenting what he calls the “suppression of human will in Russia” under Putin’s rule. Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery posted an Instagram photo that at first glance looks like an ordinary museum visit, but it contains a powerful, if coded, message. The guide is pictured standing in front of a painting by Vasily Vereshchagin depicting a mountain of human skulls, titled “The Apotheosis of War.