Hello!

This is Maksim Polyakov from the online outlet 7x7. Since the war in Ukraine began, “trophy exhibitions” have popped up across Russia. New "Special Military Operation Museums" open in schools. Patriotic corners are built. Cultural ministry employees tour schools with artillery shrapnel and soldiers' personal belongings. Films, songs, and poems glorify the Russian army's actions in Ukraine. All of this is designed to show society that the army is succeeding. In this newsletter, I’ll explain which war stories the Kremlin wants to make legendary — and how Russians really feel about it.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Mini-Victories Instead of Real Wins

Giant chunks of pipe were installed in cities like Yekaterinburg, Kursk, and Isilkul (Omsk region). These public art objects commemorate Operation “Potok” (“Flow”), in which Russian troops allegedly infiltrated Ukrainian-held territory in Kursk via a gas pipeline in March 2025.

Singer Viktoria Tsyganova dedicated a ballad to the operation. Channel One is filming a documentary. The film company “Pimanov and Partners” announced a military action film in production.

What does it all mean? Kremlin propagandists need stories of local success to distract from a war that isn’t going well.

“When you can’t actually win,” says political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, “you need to make it look like the army is dealing damage. That’s where stories of special ops come in — not heroic defense, not death in battle. Those read as losses to the public.”

For Putin, these mini-epics serve a personal fantasy. Gallyamov believes the president is obsessed with the aesthetics of combat — special forces, stealth, surprise. A gas pipe infiltration is tailor-made for his imagination: no casualties, a clean victory, the enemy stunned and neutralized.

The Public Just Isn’t Buying It

The state promotes these stories everywhere — from schools to TV. But the public isn’t listening. According to Levada Center polls from 2005 to 2014, Russians saw WWII as a just war. All others — Russo-Japanese, Afghan, Chechen — not so much.

So why would Ukraine be any different?

“If society doesn’t believe the war is just,” says Gallyamov, “no amount of ‘hero-making’ will work. No one remembers the Afghan ‘heroes’. Nobody quotes their ‘valor’ — because the war was illegitimate.”

Sociologist Oleg Zhuravlev from the Public Sociology Lab agrees. In a 2023 field study, he found that even pro-war seniors drew a line: WWII was “the people’s war,” Ukraine is “the government’s war.”

Zhuravlev points to a telling pattern. When a conflict is seen as unjust, heroism doesn’t stick. Even Yeltsin’s denouncement of the Afghan war didn’t upset the public — because they had never embraced it as glorious in the first place.

No One Comes to the Party

In fall 2023, an ethnographer under Zhuravlev’s team attended five public patriotic events in a town in Sverdlovsk region. She saw screenings, concerts, prayer services — or rather, she saw no one show up.

The film screening: empty. The movie night: cancelled. The patriotic concert? A handful of clergy, sober society volunteers, and a few wives of mobilized soldiers.

Only the prayer services looked like anyone cared.

Why such apathy? Zhuravlev says Russians don’t have a clear moral framework for this war. They’re not sure Russia is the good guy. They don’t see Ukraine as evil.

Quiet Heroism in the Backyard

And yet — people still make camouflage nets. They donate, they help.

“This is soft heroism,” says Zhuravlev. “They do it not to win the war, but to protect a brother, a son, a husband.”

The contradiction: people do believe defending the motherland is noble. They just don’t see this war as that. So they fill in the gaps with the values they do understand: family, safety, community.

And from that — grows a kind of everyday heroism. Not Kremlin-approved. But very human.

Can a Society Choose Its Own Heroes?

Gallyamov explains that true heroes emerge when people themselves choose to remember and celebrate them. The state doesn’t need to do a thing.

Zhuravlev offers an example: Alexei Navalny. Many opposition-minded Russians see him as a national hero — no budget or state support required.

Meanwhile, Putin himself doesn’t inspire that kind of loyalty:

“Even patriotic Russians don’t view him as a hero,” Zhuravlev says. “They see him as someone doing a hard job — the meaning of which they don’t really understand.”

That, in the end, may be the Kremlin’s biggest failure. Not just losing trust — but never earning a myth.