The announcement at the end of September of the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists brought the conflict into the daily lives of many families in Russia, where its impact on the population was minimized by the Kremlin.
In addition to the shock caused by the mobilization, the stalemate in the conflict and increasingly alarmist statements from Moscow agitating the nuclear threat are also stressing the Russians.
As soon as the intervention was announced on February 24, Vassilina Kotova, a 22-year-old Muscovite, remembers having been “downright paralyzed”.
“For two months, I didn’t leave my house, nothing made sense anymore”, tells AFP this computer science student, who says “only survive with (her) antidepressants, like many ( his friends”.
“You think at first that you had a narrow escape, that you are not affected personally and that your friends are crazy to leave the country”, says this blonde with pale complexion. “And suddenly, the idea that you’re the crazy one starts to worry you,” she says.
And her concern has increased tenfold in recent weeks with the mobilization, the student fearing that her brother and father will be called.
Vassilina also said that she had “very badly experienced” the accusations – unsubstantiated – from Moscow according to which kyiv was preparing to use “a dirty bomb”.
“My mum really freaked out then,” she says.
– Rush on antidepressants –
At the end of September, after the announcement of the mobilization, 70% of Russians said they were “anxious”, a record rate never recorded by the FOM polling institute, favorable to the Kremlin.
A month later, the Levada Center, an independent institute, reported that nearly 9 out of 10 Russians said they were “worried” about the situation around Ukraine.
And the latest statements from the Kremlin are not likely to appease the population.
At the end of October, when Vladimir Putin declared that the world was going through “its most dangerous, most unpredictable decade (…) since the end of the Second World War”, neighbors of Vassilina began to set up an air-raid shelter in the underground parking lot of their building.
In this climate, spending on antidepressants jumped 70%, and 56% for painkillers, in the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period in 2021, according to the authorities.
The YouTalk online psychological consultation service has seen “the number of requests increase by 40% since the mobilization”, its co-founder, psychologist Anna Krymskaya, told AFP, with “a 50% increase in the number of people complaining of depression”.
And this concern affects both those who oppose the offensive and those who support it.
– “All are worried” –
After the outbreak of the conflict, Ilya Kaznatcheyev was “happy and proud” of his country. But since the first reverses of the Russian forces, at the end of March, he says he is “in permanent anguish”.
“What can be worse than a war launched? A war lost!”, says this 37-year-old bearded brown man, glasses plugged in, sunk into an armchair in the conservative “Listva” bookstore in Moscow.
Considering taking antidepressants, he worries about “shortages of drugs” imported, due to Western sanctions against Moscow.
Thus, a famous antidepressant, Zoloft, has already disappeared from pharmacies, and the Russians “rushed to stock up with other drugs still available, and they did well”, Oleg Levine, a neurologist, told AFP. well-known Muscovite.
“For or against the operation (in Ukraine), everyone is worried about the future,” summarizes the neurologist, who has seen the number of patients taking antidepressants increase by a quarter since February.
At the end of October, 57% of Russians said they were “for talks with kyiv”, nine points more than the previous month, according to the Levada Center.
And as the conflict drags on, psychologists are already worried about its long-term fallout.
Amina Nazaralieva, psychologist-sexologist at the private Mental Health clinic in Moscow, already fears the return of the reservists, some of whom will “inevitably suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism”.
“The whole country will be traumatized for a long time,” she concludes.
