There are first signs that the people of Ukraine are changing their attitude towards the war.
In Winter Strikes Kiev I explored how Russian strikes against infrastructure in Ukraine would change the mood of the population:
During the war the parts of the Ukrainian population that were not directly involved in fighting seemed to have little interest in what was happening. There was still a lot of nightlife in Kiev, all goods were available and even the few short interruptions of electricity were not much to bother with.
This will now change. Electricity is off for most of the time. Shops are closing because running business on generators is unprofitable. Local public transport is mostly down. Longer range tail transport is interrupted. Apartments are unlivable. The consequences of the war have become personal.
This will change the mood even of those who want to prolong the war. The numbers of those willing to accept the loss of territory in exchange for peace will rise.
After a while a change of policies will follow from this.
Last night another wave of missile and drone strikes hit electricity and heating infrastructure in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. It caused sever additional damage:
The strike on energy infrastructure left consumers in Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as in Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Rivne, and Kharkiv oblasts, without power, the Energy Ministry said.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said that more than 335,000 people lost electricity in Kyiv. At around 10 a.m. local time, power had been restored to 162,000 homes, while about 173,000 remained without service.
In Kyiv, 5,635 buildings remain without heating, or about 46% of the city’s housing stock.
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The right bank of Kyiv, the western part of the city, is receiving water at reduced pressure, while about 3,500 homes on the left bank remain completely without water, according to the deputy minister.
Heat has been restored to about 1,600 buildings. The other 4,000 will have to freeze at least through the night.
The people in Ukraine are now changing their mood and attitude towards the war. Until recently many were still optimistic hoping that the war would have some positive outcome. It was patriotic (and did not cost anything) to have a positive attitude. Ukrainian media, largely under censorship, and Ukrainian artist supported this.
One such artist is the famous pop singer Tina Karol (Wiki, website, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter).
Tetiana Hryhorivna Liberman, aka Tina Karol, supports the war and regularly visits troops like the ‘nationalist’ Kartia brigade near the frontline. She is giving pep talks and performs for the soldiers.
Three days ago she published another of her motivational pep songs (Youtube, TikTok).
But this time it was no longer welcome by the public and caused a severe backlash (machine translation]:
Ukrainian pop singer Tina Karol has been criticized and ridiculed in social networks for several days because of a song about the lack of light.
The celebrity posted in TikTok a video shot in the semi-darkness, in which she sits with a cup in her hands and does not quite open her mouth to her own track with the following words::
We don’t have light, but we do have heat.
We don’t have heat, but we have goodness.
We don’t have water, but we have us –
We are together, we are a family.
We don’t have light, but we do have heat.
And we will defeat any evil,
Because we love each other
And that’s all, that’s all.Many users record their ironic videos for this track and leave negative comments:
- “We have no electricity, because the deputies stole the loot. They raised the excise tax and closed the border. I don’t have any water, I can’t flush it down the toilet, but as long as we are entertained by such “singers”, I understand that this is not all.”
- “We don’t have electricity, but the deputies do. Men are packed into cars without permission, but we have the go-ahead. The state gave a shit about us, but we’re a family. Thank you for the propaganda song!”
- “Tinochka Karol, it’s just a mockery of people to release such shit.”
- “How to warm a baby in high-rise buildings when there is no light for 6 hours, and the apartment in some strange way does not have time to warm up for those one and a half hours for which the lights are turned on?”
The critic became so harsh that Tina Karol felt the need (vid) to apologize:
In recent days , a wave of criticism has rained down on Tina Karol’s spirit-taking song in social networks with the words that even if there is no light and heat, Ukrainians “have good”, and evil will be defeated. The wave was so big that the singer had to apologize for singing the song.
In an apology, the singer assured that she was “as much in context as possible” and wanted to unite people, support them with creativity in a difficult time. She assured that the video is not “zakazuha and manual from the authorities.”
“I saw a guy’s song and decided to sing it again, because I’ve been supporting people with my creativity all my life,” she said.
The writers at Strana analyze the swing of mood expressed in this (machine translation):
Previously, such songs and simple appeals to stop being discouraged and believe in victory were constantly heard in response to the problems of wartime, but the reaction to them, as a rule, was different: basically, people supported this trend, and those who did not fit in and continued to talk about their difficult situation were censured, or even recorded in the fifth column.
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But the situation in the energy sector has sharply worsened due to Russian strikes – residents of the country are sitting without electricity and heat.And when they once again decided to cheer them up in the usual way, singing a life-affirming song about good and evil, the reaction was already different. People are getting tired of simply believing in an early victory in conditions when a full-scale war is approaching its fourth anniversary, the situation in a country with basic needs such as providing electricity and heat is radically deteriorating, and the authorities do not offer any clear options for an early end to the war, let alone an early victory, still calling for patience, faith and present time-wait for warming.
Against this background, the belief is spreading that the main thing is the speedy end of the war, and on what conditions – a secondary question.
So far there is no polling data documenting the mood swing. Official Ukrainian polls are fudged and can not be trusted. Independent ones are rare and lack regularity.
But the reality of living without heat, water and electricity has definitely hit home and patriotic propaganda which says that everything will be fine is no longer welcome.
The big question now is how the authorities will react to this. Will there be a further clampdown on negative attitudes and suppression of peace calls? Or will there be a recognition that without public support a continuation of the war with new counterattacks is no longer feasible?