Two Years of War: Voices from Russia
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, Oleg Boldyrev reports on how ordinary Russians are dealing with life in a country at war with its close neighbour. Are there new economic and social challenges, and what do we know of attitudes to the invasion? We talk to Russians across the country to gauge the mood.
Photo by ANATOLY MALTSEV/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock (14329432c) People stand at a bus stop near an image depicting St. Isaac's Cathedral (back) on a sunny day in St. Petersburg, Russia, 02 February 2024. Temperatures in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, reached minus two degrees Celsius on the day.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We lost our humanity. We lost our dignity. We got punished for something we did not do. |
| 0:07.0 | Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service tells the story of the Black 14. |
| 0:12.0 | Our young lives were flipped upside down. Search for amazing sports |
| 0:15.8 | stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Good morning from Kieve, the |
| 0:21.8 | capital of Ukraine, a city, a country under fire. It's fair to say that no one, even those who predicted the Russian invasion into Ukraine expected the fighting to last this long. But in a few days the war or in Russian |
| 0:47.1 | official parlance special military operation will enter its third year. |
| 0:53.0 | There is nearly a stalemate at the front, |
| 0:56.0 | yet every day dozens of lives, |
| 0:58.0 | those of soldiers on both sides and civilians, |
| 1:01.0 | mainly in Ukraine but also in Russia, are being lost. |
| 1:05.0 | How, after two years of unsuccessful attempts by Mr. Putin's army to conquer Ukraine, |
| 1:11.0 | is this conflict seen by ordinary Russians? How does it affect their lives? Do they |
| 1:16.2 | change their views? My name is Alleag Balduriff. I'm a journalist with BBC Russian |
| 1:21.4 | Service and I have been speaking about the war with Russians both inside and outside the country. |
| 1:27.0 | News bulletins on Russian TV did not change much. |
| 1:35.0 | There is stock of fighting but never of those killed, largely of Russian army successes, |
| 1:41.0 | be they real or invented. In that relation, June 24th last year wasn't anything |
| 1:47.3 | special if you listen to Russian news. But not to one woman I spoke to. |
| 1:53.0 | Yana lives in a village near the city of Vladivostok on the age of the Pacific Ocean. |
| 1:59.0 | On June 24th, seven times on the way in Zapparizia in southern Ukraine, her husband Yevgeny, a |
| 2:06.0 | mobilized soldier, private, wrote to her in WhatsApp what turned out to be his last |
| 2:11.6 | message. What turned out to be his last message? Because we had a time difference with him of seven hours. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.