War is Peace
Nanna Heitmann
Winner of the 2022 Françoise Demulder Photography Grant
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” George Orwell, 1984
The conflict in Ukraine is being fought with bullets and artillery, but it began years earlier on Russian television. For a long time, state-run television has been the primary source of news for Russians, with only a few independent and often digital channels offering any sense of balance. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine media outlets critical of the regime have been shut down, and social media platforms blocked, leaving only Kremlin-backed propaganda channels to provide most Russians with their news. As a result, many Russians now live in an alternative reality where the Russian army is allegedly “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine, while waging war against the collective, fascist West through the so-called “special operation.” A century of alternating disaster and oppression have induced in many Russians a form of passive acceptance and lethargy that serves Mr. Putin well.
On February 24, 2022, I documented the Russian invasion of Ukraine when Russian tanks rolled into the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. Before leaving Moscow, I photographed the last public anti-war protests in the city. Since returning in June 2022, I have been striving to create a historical record of the events unfolding around me so as to shed light on the stark divide between the reality of the war in Ukraine and the skewed perceptions of the war as cultivated within and for Russian society. How can an entire nation follow the leader blindly, without questioning?
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The war has taken a toll on the poorest regions of the country where, according to international observers, up to 200,000 Russian soldiers have died in the conflict. The armed forces carrying out Putin’s “special operation” include a strikingly large number of young men from the “ethnic” republics. The disproportionate presence of minorities is a function of demographic trends, but also of economic inequality and lack of opportunity in many areas outside the more affluent large cities. The republic that has recorded the highest number of casualties is Dagestan which is also a republic with poverty, a martial tradition, and relative loyalty to Moscow. I have attended funerals seeing relatives traumatized by loss, yet most still maintain a patriotic front, in particular parents adamant that their sons have died defending a heroic cause.
Throughout the summer of 2022, Moscow seemed untouched by the war, and lavish events were held, but by autumn, with mobilization across the country, the war had reached the capital. More than 300,000 men were sent to the front, ill-equipped and unprepared. We met Ekaterina at a recruiting point when her husband was moments away from being sent to a training camp outside Moscow. “They are just cannon fodder.” She would have liked him to refuse to respond to the summons, saying it would have been better for him to spend a few years in jail rather than be sent home dead.
As the war in Ukraine continues, school programs across Russia are inundated with lessons and extracurricular activities focusing on patriotism and military subjects. All this is part of an extensive Kremlin campaign to militarize Russian society, to train future generations to revere the army, and further entrench President Vladimir V. Putin’s narrative that “a real war has once again been unleashed on our motherland.”
Nanna Heitmann
