The Washington Post reports:

For Russia’s urban middle class, the war on Ukraine has messed up plans, ruined longed-for vacations and stripped away joys like shopping for a favorite foreign clothing brand, turning the key in a new Japanese car, even biting into a Big Mac.

As the war drags on, many yearn for life to go back to normal, before prices went crazy and foreign companies quit the country over Russia’s invasion. But these Russians are equally sure that President Vladimir Putin will keep on fighting until he wins, because that’s what he always does.

After convincing the majority of the population that the war was necessary to “liberate” Ukrainians from “Nazis,” state television propagandists are now doggedly preparing Russians for a long war, ominously warning that it might end in nuclear war.

In Ukraine, that means more civilian casualties, bombed houses and dozens of soldiers killed daily defending the country’s east.

Russian hardships may be trivial by contrast, but the deadening gloom of a long war worries the Kremlin, according to analysts, because of the challenge of dragging the population along as sanctions bite, businesses retrench, prices continue to surge, and it dawns on people that life may never go back to the way it was. [Continue reading…]