In check
Sir: Jade McGlynn (‘Conflict of opinion’, 23 April) has a point that there are many reasons for popular support inside Russia for Putin’s ‘special operation’ to take over Ukraine. Whether a country is a democracy or a repressive dictatorship you will always find supporters of a patriotic war. Nonetheless you have to take into account the effects of a repressive state on ordinary people’s motivation to protest, even if they want to do so. Millions in Russia and Belarus are either state employees or dependent on the state in some existential way. If you protest you are locked up or beaten up; in many cases both. Would you – and I am pointing my Kitchener finger at you here – risk your life or livelihood for your views? One has to understand that on the Russian chessboard the black pieces are clamped; only the white can move.
M.J. Svoboda
Petersfield, Hampshire
This be the verse
Sir: Had Jade McGlynn referred to the greatest of Russian poets, Pushkin, rather than to Yevtushenko, the lessons drawn would have been different.
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