It is timely to remind ourselves that Russia is a nation of cat lovers. They have their own purebred cats e.g. Russian Blue, and a good cat fancy. They’ve got some amazing cat breeders although I don’t approve of cat breeding! Russia has a higher percentage of households owning at least one cat than America. The Statistica website tells me that in 2019 33% of Russian households had at least one domestic cat. The US Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook 2017-2018 tells me that the percentage of American households with one cat, at least, is 25.4.
There are a substantial number of Russians, I guess normally women, who dedicate a lot of their time to cat rescue. The video provides a snapshot of what they do. Their cat rescue has a particularly Russian flavour to it. It’s dictated by the extreme cold in winter and the fact that property owners block up ventilation grills at the base of buildings to prevent cats getting into the basement while decent women unblock access to the basement where cats can seek some refuge from the cold. It’s so cold in Russia that stray cats can freeze to death in about a day according to the lady in the video.
But these ladies and 95% (at a guess) of the Russian population do not know the truth of what is happening in Ukraine. I recently watched a report from Russia on the BBC. A middle-aged lady was being interviewed in her apartment about the Russian invasion of Ukraine by a BBC reporter. She had no idea what was going on. She believed that the invasion was justified to protect Russia and she said that the Russian authorities wouldn’t lie. She believed wholeheartedly what she was told on the television. All television is controlled by the Russian authorities so all news disseminated on Russian television is heavily biased with the intention of indoctrinating the people into believing what the authorities want them to believe.
Television in Russia is the leading source of information with 99% of Russian households having at least one television. About 94 percent of Russians watch TV on a daily basis.
“The ownership structure of the Russian media market shows that the national media outlets with the highest audience reach are controlled by the state, primarily television.” – indexoncensorship.org
The Times reports that at a shopping centre near Red Square customers shrugged off the impact of Western sanctions and dismissed videos of Russian missile sitting Ukrainian cities as Western propaganda.
And Igor said that he could do without his iPhone and that things will blow over soon. He also said that he did not believe that Russian missiles were falling on Kyiv or other Ukrainian cities. “These are all fake videos. I only trust our media”.
Russian citizens have been indoctrinated in the wool is being pulled over their eyes about the truth of the invasion of Ukraine. Even when they see it on television, they think it is Western propaganda.
This pacifies the Russian citizens as they blindly accept Russia’s destruction of Ukraine, the wanton and deliberate killing of fleeing innocent children and women. It will take decades to rebuild Ukraine after this bombardment judging by the amount of destruction to the infrastructure and buildings that is currently happening.
It’s going to cost billions to rebuild Ukraine and this will probably be a war of attrition at the end of which Putin will be the master of Ukraine and all Ukrainian citizens will hate him and they will resist his puppet government until the Russians go home. When Putin wins the war to control Ukraine, he will have destroyed not only the country but his reason for the invasion: to make Ukraine part of Russia. It has become horribly cruel and pointless.
In the meantime, the innocent suffer and in that category are the animals of Ukraine. If people are starving or will starve when the Russians lay siege to the capital and other cities their companion animals will starve too.
