The Russian public doesn’t want war, but is anyone listening?

Eight years ago, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin’s confrontational policies brought out tens of thousands of peace marchers to the streets of Moscow, even as polls showed huge majorities of the public enthusiastically in favor of President Vladimir Putin’s defiance of the West.

Today, amid the Kremlin’s standoff with NATO over Ukraine, the mood is very different for both peace advocates and the public.

Russia’s beleaguered liberal intelligentsia are still speaking out in a tough statement signed by over 5,000 people, warning that in the current crisis “the citizens of Russia are becoming hostages to criminal adventurism,” and urging authorities to step back from the brink of war. The petition is signed by hundreds of rights activists, artists, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, scientists, and opposition politicians.

In the past, such a political challenge would have inspired open protests by like-minded members of the public, and at least be widely noticed in the Western media. But the anti-war petition, published on the website of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, appears to have garnered almost no attention.

Meanwhile, opinion polls and focus groups conducted by Russia’s only independent public opinion agency, the Levada Center, show that while majorities support the Kremlin and blame the West for the gathering war clouds, there is no appetite for a conflict in Ukraine, only pervasive fear and a sense of inevitability.