> "...Ukrainian television and radio were cut, and car stereos became the only link to the outside world. They played Russian news, describing a world that couldn’t be further from the reality in Mariupol."

As much as the whole world wants to believe that the people of the Russian Federation are uninformed, or disallowed the information, and disinformed by the propaganda...the grim reality seems that they rather need to believe that propaganda, because it seemingly absolves them of the resposibility for these atrocities

The simple folks of Russia are very much familiar with the horrors and the scale of such war atrocities as from the vast WW2 history, just as from Grozny and Aleppo times. They get how cruel and mindless this is. Just they cannot admit to themselves and their children that this time they are the aggressor side.

It must be the same kind of "fear of blame" that is not that different from decades of Stalin's rule. For many citizens of the Russian Federation, it's the only place to live their lives, there's no exit, not much choice for change. The fear has simply transformed the reality, just as it has done it in times before...

I have no hopes that these folks would suddenly "wake up to truth". Nor that they would attain to any collective remorse for this. Perhaps this fear could only be supplanted by their personal grief.

The Russian country seems to have turned into a Federation of Fear - the main product that its rulers now want to export to the rest of the world. It's the grief that the world is already harvesting.