Ukraine: Russians I met recently in St Petersburg believe there will be no invasion – foreign policy expert

By Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen's University Belfast

While preparing for a trip to Russia in late December 2021, I was half-joking to friends that my return to the UK could well be delayed either by COVID or a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The threat of an imminent war was permeating the western media by that stage, so my concerns seemed perfectly reasonable from their viewpoint.

Yet, whenever I touched on the subject of a possible invasion of Ukraine to people in Russia, an eyebrow was raised in surprise and incredulity. No one I spoke with during my two weeks in St Petersburg seriously considered the possibility of a large-scale Russian…

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