Four years in, war in Ukraine grinds on. Is that what Russians want?
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
In the four years since Russia first invaded, the Kremlin’s so-called “special military operation” has evolved into the deadliest conflict on the European continent since World War II. According to Western governments and think tanks, more than 1.5 million people are dead.
And throughout the war, one of the biggest questions has been, is this what Russian people want?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was supposed to be quick and decisive. That's what Russian |
| 0:07.0 | planners thought, and it's what Western intelligence saw coming to. Here's NPR National |
| 0:11.9 | Security correspondent Greg Myrie the day after Russia's invasion began. Russian missiles are pounding |
| 0:17.9 | the capital, Kiev. It's clear Russian troops are getting close to the city. |
| 0:22.8 | They've been coming down from Belarus. Of course, Keev didn't fall quickly, and it still hasn't. |
| 0:28.8 | So alongside the question of Ukraine's survival, another question popped up. How long can Russia |
| 0:33.7 | keep this up? The U.S. and allies quickly imposed unprecedented sanctions, which |
| 0:39.0 | shuttered the Moscow stock exchange for weeks and sent Russians scrambling to their banks as their |
| 0:43.7 | currency tanked. Here's our former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Juan Zarotti, |
| 0:48.8 | put it to NPR at the time. I think it's asking sanctions to do too much to actually stop the war. |
| 0:55.0 | But it certainly can be part of a tableau of pressure that's put on Putin to try to change his behavior, changes calculus. |
| 1:02.8 | It did not change Russian President Vladimir Putin's calculus, and neither did the brain drain of Russians fleeing the country because they opposed the war politically or feared being conscripted. |
| 1:13.4 | Russians like Ivan Moschkin, who spoke to NPR after escaping to Armenia. |
| 1:20.4 | All my male colleagues had already gone. |
| 1:23.0 | The older people in the office said, |
| 1:24.7 | Are you an idiot? |
| 1:25.6 | What are you still doing here? |
| 1:27.0 | You're of military draft age. Get out now before mobilization begins. Putin weathered that exodus too. And |
| 1:34.0 | when he eventually did mobilize 300,000 reservists in September of 2022, he cracked down on the protests |
| 1:40.9 | that sparked. The next year, it was one of Putin's closest allies criticizing the war. |
| 1:50.3 | The head of the Wagner Group, Yvgeny Progoshin, said the war in Ukraine was launched on falsehoods, |
| 1:55.5 | and the Ministry of Defense was deceiving the public. |
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