https://www.cbc.ca/radiointeractives/thesundaymagazine/sasha-skochilenko-russia-prison

Sasha's message
Sasha Skochilenko is in prison for sharing information about the toll of the #war in #Ukraine. Her letters and #art offer a window into the world of a #Russian #dissident
By Julia Pagel
Jan. 19, 2024

..."The woman who incriminated Skochilenko told an investigator, “I was extremely outraged by the slander I read [in the grocery store stickers], because I am very worried about the Russian soldiers in Ukraine. I watch the news about it. And ultimately, our soldiers would not allow the bombing of peaceful civilian objects, such as a school. Thus, it is obvious that the information provided is false.”

Under Article 207.3, a law passed by the Russian Federation after the war began, Skochilenko was accused of “public dissemination of information known to be false about: the actions of Russian Armed Forces; the execution of duties by the government bodies of the Russian Federation; co-operation in carrying out the tasks of the Russian Armed Forces or the Russian Federation National Guard by volunteer organizations or private persons.”
...
Paul Goode, McMillan Chair in Russian studies and part of the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, has been monitoring how Russia is reporting the war to its own people. He says the reason Skochilenko’s actions — and those of other antiwar activists — seem so outrageous to average Russians is because they are treated to a “firehose of propaganda” at all times.

Goode says that broadly speaking, President Vladimir Putin and his officials provide three narratives for why Russia is at war with Ukraine. First, the conflict is as much about fighting Western powers as Ukraine; for example, Russian media says there are biological laboratories “sponsored by the CIA” operating there that are creating weapons targeting “Russian DNA.” The second narrative is that Russia is fighting Nazis in Ukraine. The third is that Ukraine was never independent to begin with.

“The idea is not to give people ... reason to embrace a particular version of truth,” said Goode. “It’s rather to dilute the truth so thoroughly that people have no truth to latch onto.”

While people like Skochilenko find foreign sources of news — generally by using a VPN, as most Western media is restricted in Russia — Goode says the majority of Russians are disoriented by the propaganda and normalization of the war by state media.
The result, he said, is that they “simply withdraw from politics. And this is something that has been observed for a long time. The vast majority of Russians are not engaged in politics. They’re not active.”...