From the day Russia invaded Ukraine, people who think the war is unjust have hoped that

ordinary Russians would turn against it.

The West tried what it could, hitting Russia's economy and its wealthy oligarchs with sanctions.

But polling day to show the majority of Russians still support this war.

How is that possible?

Russians are feeling the war now.

For months there have been drone strikes on Moscow.

In June there was a near coup by the mercenary leader Yevgeny Pregozion.

It made Vladimir Putin the man responsible for the war look very weak.

And yet there's been no uprising from the grassroots.

There's been no Russian spring.

Just life going on.

At today's point we spent the past few weeks tracking down two people to answer the question,

will anything make Russians lose faith in Putin's war?

It's today explained, I'm Noel King, to understand why so many Russians support the war.

We called Masha Guessin, a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Masha recently wrote about Ukrainians who are fleeing to Russia and the Russians that

are for some surprising reasons helping them.

There's a huge range of circumstances and of how people ended up going to Russia.

So some of them were literally forced onto buses at gunpoint and taken into other Russian

occupied territories or directly into Russia proper.

That's probably a minority.

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