‘What war?’ Independent sociologists spent four weeks in Kursk, studying how Russians near the front lines cope without getting political

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has made it exceedingly difficult for sociologists to study public sentiment inside the country. How many people actually support the war? How do opinions differ between those whose families have been directly affected by the fighting and those who have not? How do dissenters find ways to mask their opposition? All of this has become largely off-limits for independent researchers, especially those working inside Russia.

These challenges make fieldwork especially valuable, as evidenced by the latest report from the Public Sociology Laboratory (PS Lab), a research collective founded in 2011 to examine Russia’s social problems and political landscape. Based on a unique ethnographic expedition, the study chronicles two researchers who traveled to the Kursk region soon after Ukrainian troops occupied part of the area in August 2024. One spent three weeks on assignment in September and October, visiting Kursk and a nearby settlement; the other spent four weeks in the regional capital in November and December. Throughout their stays, the researchers observed local life by volunteering at humanitarian centers and making acquaintances on public transportation, in taxis, cafés, bars, parks, and other public spaces. The full report will be published on the Public Sociology Laboratory’s website on Monday, September 29. Meduza has abridged and translated an excerpt from the study, drawing on the chapter that explores how the outbreak of fighting in the Kursk region altered everyday life.

The following text contains adult language.Dancing to the sirens

In September 2024, Kursk greeted PS Lab’s researcher with the blare of an air raid siren, groups of soldiers, and bomb shelters:

Ignoring the air raid signals turned out to be a universal social norm. “Suddenly the siren blared,” one researcher wrote in her diary. “No one (as usual) paid attention.” (Kursk, December 2024.) Another diary entry from a second researcher notes: “The air raid alarm went off unexpectedly — Karina [a volunteer] paused for just a moment, listened, snorted a laugh, and carried on sorting things as if nothing had happened.” (Humanitarian Aid Center, Kursk, September 2024.) Locals say that when the alarms were new, in August 2024, and sounded much more frequently, people did react. But it didn’t take long for everyone to stop noticing. People clearly remembered hearing the alarms “back then,” but by mid-September, they had grown so accustomed to the noise that they no longer noticed it.

One of PS Lab’s researchers had a telling exchange with a taxi driver, who assured her that “lately everything [in the city] has been quiet and calm.” When she brought up the siren, he told her it “used to go off almost every half hour, but now only once or twice a day.” He added that he hadn’t heard it today, though the researcher herself distinctly remembered that the alarm had sounded earlier. (Male, about 40, taxi driver, Kursk resident; Kursk, December 2024.)

In another similar exchange, a researcher overheard a group of women refugees discussing their situation at a temporary shelter. One remarked that in her town, “it’s quiet now — even the siren hasn’t gone off for days.” When the researcher interjected, pointing out that the siren had in fact gone off just yesterday in the town, another refugee, without disputing the point, chimed in, “But it’s not as bad as it was, is it? The siren used to be terrible.” (Both women, about 40, unknown occupation, refugees, Iglovka, October 2024.)

Likewise, most Kursk residents ignored the city’s bomb shelters — or were simply unaware of them. In a conversation with PS Lab’s researcher, volunteers Kostya and Andrey, when asked if they headed for cover when the alarm sounded, flatly denied their existence: “No. No shelters. What shelters? I’m not going into those concrete boxes.” Andrey agreed: “There aren’t any — there are no shelters in the buildings.” (Both male, about 22, volunteers, Kursk residents; Kursk, November 2024.) Yet both researchers had repeatedly seen shelters in residential buildings, and city maps show significantly more of these older, more robust shelters than the more recently introduced “concrete boxes.”

Our only hope is you. Support Meduza before it’s too late.

Before long, the researchers themselves had stopped noticing the sirens. One of them made the following entry in her diary:

The researcher arrived in Kursk in November 2024, by which point patterns of collective behavior had already crystallized. It was this new norm — not the official guidelines urging people to “sense the danger” and “seek shelter” — that instantly began regulating her own behavior and perception.

The PS Lab researcher who visited the city in September 2024, meanwhile, managed to witness — albeit only on a handful of occasions — different reactions to the air raid siren in public spaces:

Tellingly, even in this situation, the girl described ignoring the siren as the norm and presented her friend’s reaction as the exception: “She’s the one who gets scared,” suggesting that everyone else, by default, does not.

The girls’ laughter in response to the situation was also significant. A joking — often deliberately exaggerated — attitude toward danger was a common occurrence. Humor, along with ignoring, overlooking, and forgetting, appeared to be one way residents adapted to living with war. Most often, people shared stories about sirens and explosions with humor, through laughter, expressive phrasing, or jokes.

One interaction, typical of how residents “handled” air raids, involved a teacher and two young volunteers, both college students. This took place in the courtyard of a humanitarian aid center:

By discussing fear in a joking, exaggeratedly theatrical way and laughing during moments of potential danger, people were able to turn an emergency into something routine, thereby blunting their sense of anxiety. In effect, they “repackaged” experiences of war in familiar, safe cultural forms. Linguistically, this sometimes meant using peacetime words to describe wartime events, simply because they had a similar look or sound. For example, both researchers heard people referring to the explosions from air defense systems as “fireworks.”

It’s notable that these humorous reinterpretations of the war began to take on a life of their own. The researcher who visited Kursk in November–December 2024 frequently observed their use, even when there was no immediate military threat:

Manifestations of the war became fodder for imitation, for games, and for jokes — and with this shift, the anxiety surrounding them also faded. Similar “normalizing” of extraordinary circumstances was seen during the pandemic, such as when children played COVID-themed games. In a sense, Kursk residents developed their own defenses against the official safety precautions. Even municipal infrastructure wasn’t immune: judging by the smell, the city’s concrete shelters had become public toilets for many locals.

But sometimes the realities of war couldn’t be ignored — they disrupted daily routines. One man living on the city’s outskirts complained about regular traffic jams caused by security checkpoints and the influx of refugees, which put additional strain on the roads connecting Kursk and the surrounding villages. For him, it was this “shitshow on the roads” — not the sirens, anti-aircraft fire, or other signs of conflict — that made it impossible for him to forget the “counterterrorism operation” still underway. (Male, about 25, occupation unknown, Kursk resident, October 2024.)

Official safety measures often simply irritated people. Locals didn’t just try to ignore the alarms or deliberately refuse to act (“I’m not going into those concrete boxes”), but also took conscious steps to block out the constantly intrusive war, flipping their phones over, turning off notifications, and unsubscribing from news channels. One man described his approach in a Kursk bar: “We used to get alerts and texts, but only like an hour after the siren. And those texts at night really piss me off. I just started putting my phone face down so it wouldn’t keep lighting up.” (Male, about 25, occupation unknown, Kursk resident, October 2024.)

Residents also expected others, such as neighbors, to behave similarly. Following safety precautions wasn’t just seen as unusual (as in the case of the girls in the shelter — “she’s the one who gets scared”); at times, it even caused resentment. One example was a manicurist who complained to PS Lab’s researcher about her upstairs neighbor:

People sometimes chose to forgo safety measures for everyday practical reasons. For instance, the same manicurist, when asked by PS Lab’s researcher about blast-resistant window film she’d seen in Kursk, spoke of it the way people might talk about home renovations or buying appliances: “Good protective film is expensive. And I’m only renting!” she said, breaking it down: “It would’ve cost about 28,000 rubles [about $335] for all the windows. I thought, ‘No way — I’m not paying for that!’” She mentioned other costs, like hiring someone to install it properly, and concluded, “I guess it’s not meant to be. Screw it.” (Female, 25, manicurist, Kursk resident, November 2024.)

The locals themselves acknowledged how routinized the war had become. In one bar, PS Lab’s researcher asked how they were coping with life in Kursk during the war. One of them shot back: “What war? You feel like there’s some kind of war happening here?” The researcher recalled hearing an air raid siren as soon as she got off the train. “Oh, the sirens go off all the time — that’s it. For us, it’s just an everyday thing now,” the young man answered. (Male, about 25, occupation unknown, Kursk resident, October 2024.)

These behaviors should not be misinterpreted by readers far from Kursk and the war as a deficiency of fear or an irrational disregard for safety. Such an interpretation would be inaccurate. In truth, the coping strategies employed by Kursk residents are often thoughtful, intentional choices intended to maintain psychological stability.

For example, Nastya, who met PS Lab’s researcher in a bar, said that “seeing life with humor” was her only real option — otherwise, she said, she’d “end up in a psych ward,” having already dealt with mental illness before. The war started while she was still in treatment, and “those sirens” haunted her. “So either I take things lightly and joke about it, or I just get really bad — depression, hallucinations, all that. And I don’t want that,” she said. (Female, about 25, occupation unknown, Kursk resident from the border area, October 2024.)

[…]

By maintaining a sense of normalcy, Kursk residents protected themselves from fear. It was possible to acclimate to sirens and distant “bangs,” but direct encounters with danger in familiar, nearby places nevertheless triggered genuine fright. Those were the experiences people remembered and talked about most. For example, Dima, whom PS Lab’s researcher met in a bar, described how air defenses shot down a drone, stressing how close it was to his home. He dwelled on his own emotions and sensations: the loud sounds of the drone overhead and the vivid “scarlet flash from the explosion on the wall of his building,” seen from his own window. “And you just sit there watching — it’s unreal how scary it gets. Right by our home. That was a really terrifying day.” (Male, about 22, student, Kursk resident, October 2024.)

On the one hand, in sharing these accounts, residents mapped the city’s districts by degrees of danger: “My sister lives in the railway district — that’s where most of the ‘bangs’ happen, in the private sector. It’s pretty scary there,” said one manicurist (female, 25, Kursk resident, November 2024); “Out on the outskirts, it’s chaos all the time. You see things flying and hear more explosions there,” said another (female, about 25, occupation unknown, Kursk resident, October 2024). 

On the other hand, these comparisons allowed people to feel like their own situation wasn’t so bad (“it’s chaos over there,” “that’s where it’s scary” — which means “here” is okay). Many would echo the words of Bohdana, the volunteer from above: “Just as long as nothing lands here.” (Female, about 20, vocational student, volunteer, Kursk native from the borderlands, September 2024.) Stories from personal experience were usually presented as exceptions that belonged to the past (“that was a really terrifying day”). In other words, these stories helped move moments of panic further away in time and space — another defensive strategy employed by the people of Kursk.

Personal safety ultimately served as a gauge of general “normality” — a kind of psychological barometer that allowed people to convince themselves and others that nothing threatened them personally. Consider Dima, the young man mentioned earlier, who gave what seemed like a contradictory answer when asked if he was frightened by the sirens and explosions. He said the sounds actually indicated safety because “you never hear the one that gets you,” meaning “there’s nothing to fear.” He explained: “If you hear the incoming shell, it means it didn’t hit you. That’s how I try to think about it. I heard it, so it missed me. I’m whole, so everything’s okay” (male, about 22, student, Kursk resident, Kursk, October 2024). Notably, Dima did not invent this “concept” — that the sound of an explosion means “safety” rather than “danger” — but heard it from others, indicating that people were sharing this idea with one another.

At the same time, these individuals understood the rationale behind safety protocols perfectly well. Sometimes, they even offered mild justifications to the surprised researchers for their recklessness. For example, Dima, after sharing his views, qualified his remarks: “Of course, this isn’t really a great approach, because you’re supposed to take cover when they sound the alarm. That’s what you should do.” When the researcher asked why he himself didn’t take cover, Dima said, “I have to work, I have to earn money” (male, approximately 22 years old, student, Kursk resident, Kursk, October 2024). It seems the purpose of this sudden reference to work (work and earnings hadn’t come up before) was to provide some socially acceptable explanation for avoiding the rules. You’re supposed to take cover, but you’re also supposed to work — who would dispute that statement? One is forced, it would seem, to choose.

[…]

Soldiers without a war

Another characteristic of Kursk’s urban landscape was the constant presence of soldiers. How did this affect the city’s social life? We encountered three types of attitudes among residents toward the military: reverence and sympathy; contempt and fear; and, finally, indifference.

Some residents expressed distinctly positive attitudes toward soldiers, characterized by respect, sympathy, and an eagerness to win their approval. For example, Vika, a bartender who regularly served soldiers as customers, said that she mostly “really likes them,” that they are all “extremely well-educated, well-mannered” and, with rare exceptions, “decent, thoughtful guys” (female, approximately 25 years old, Kursk resident, Kursk, November 2024).

PS Lab’s researchers also noticed examples of women showing particular interest in soldiers. On one occasion, one of them wrote: “At a bus stop, from the window of a minibus, I saw two girls who were chatting and smiling at some guy in military uniform. They were clearly flirting with him. ‘Batting their eyes,’ I thought” (Kursk, September 2024).

Soldiers occasionally enjoyed symbolic privileges, such as discounts in stores or informal access to services. Once, a researcher observed a soldier approaching a tobacco kiosk that was already closed. Light was visible through the lowered blinds, and the soldier knocked on the door. The door opened slightly, and the saleswoman looked out and explained that the store was closed. Almost immediately, however, she added: “But what do you need?” After hearing the answer, she said, “All right. Let me take care of you,” and invited him inside (Kursk, October 2024). In other words, reverence and respect toward soldiers represent common, normalized responses to their presence in the city.

At the same time, PS Lab’s researchers just as often encountered locals who saw soldiers as unstable, dangerous, shady, aggressive, traumatized, and delinquent people whose presence made the city more dangerous.

For example, one person complained that some soldiers “who seem drunk or high” sometimes come to the repair service where he works and ask to be served without waiting in line (male, about 25, service center employee, Kursk resident, Kursk, December 2024).

A volunteer at a humanitarian aid center, Kostya, recounted a disturbing story involving a soldier (male, about 22 years old, student, Kursk resident, Kursk, December 2024). Kostya witnessed the following scene unfold in the courtyard directly outside his office windows: two drunk men fought, resulting in one of them falling to the ground. Lying on the pavement, he shouted, “I fought in the war! Return my 200 thousand! I’ll burn down your house!” Later, the first man returned with another man, and together they began beating the man on the ground with a jackhammer. When an ambulance, police officers, and the National Guard arrived an hour later, it turned out that the beaten man was indeed a ”special military operation” veteran. However, he refused to file a complaint against his attackers until a National Guard officer forced him into it by slamming his head against the ambulance. The soldier was taken away in the ambulance, and the attackers were arrested. Although in this story the serviceman appears primarily as the victim, it illustrates how, in the minds of some residents, the arrival of soldiers has coincided with an uptick in the city’s levels of violence and aggression.

Stories like this were shared widely, possessing a certain “media potential.” As these accounts spread around the city, they reinforced another way of thinking about this new social group and changed how people saw their urban environment, which at least some residents started to view as dangerous and associated with risks of violence.

Finally, it appears likely that many residents became accustomed to the military presence in their city in much the same manner as they had adapted to the wail of air-raid sirens. To illustrate this phenomenon, consider a scene witnessed by one of PS Lab’s researchers as she waited in line at a shawarma stand. Directly ahead of her, a soldier was placing his order:

A minute earlier, the same cashier had told the soldier flatly that their establishment offered no discounts to the military. But as soon as the vendor saw the card with the anime character, he exhibited an immediate and basic human curiosity. In other words, he had no particular interest in soldiers as such.

While the arrival of soldiers had indeed altered the city’s social fabric, it didn’t fundamentally create new relationship models or lead people to reconsider the war in political terms by examining its causes and consequences. As evident from the examples presented above, neither reverence nor acutely negative attitudes toward soldiers were directly related to their participation in the current war and their role in defending the country from an “enemy” army.

The prestige and privileged position afforded to military personnel in Russian society predate the start of the full-scale war with Ukraine. Under conditions of social and economic inequality, particularly in smaller and less affluent communities, a military career is considered an attractive prospect. Those fighting in the ”special military operation” receive high salaries by Russian standards, which reinforces this occupation’s social prestige in the eyes of many Russians. This prestige may partly explain the sympathy many in the city show toward soldiers.

Moreover, positive attitudes toward military personnel could have formed through direct personal encounters: new people — soldiers — started appearing in bars, stores, and other public spaces, and they were regarded as “interesting,” “pleasant,” and so on. Many residents also had loved ones — family members, friends, classmates, colleagues — among the enlisted. And some volunteers and refugees simply pitied the soldiers, viewing them as the principal victims of both the broader war and the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ invasion of the region. The prevailing image of military personnel as a social group, therefore, emerged less from any consideration of their political function than from personal connections and everyday interactions.

Critical attitudes toward soldiers, meanwhile, although more common among people with negative views of the war, did not coalesce into a broader criticism of the war itself. Regardless of their views on Russia’s actions in the conflict with Ukraine, locals who spoke to PS Lab’s researchers complained about soldiers as a marginal group, without addressing the reasons for their appearance in the city. The very language used to criticize soldiers mirrored what is typically reserved for marginal groups in general, reproducing the discourse often encountered when people discuss “alcoholics,” “Roma,” “migrants,” and so on in similar ways — in other words, communities that are seen as outsiders.

Finally, it is telling that during their entire stay in the Kursk region, PS Lab’s researchers witnessed no conversations about or with soldiers that would indicate perceptions of them as “defenders of the Motherland” or bearers of a patriotic mission (although such rhetoric may well resonate with specific groups, such as the volunteers helping the army).

[…]

Drones, fingernails, and the perfect burger

In Kursk’s public spaces, conversations about the war departed from what PS Lab had observed in other regions of Russia. In Kursk, such talk was commonplace, with people openly discussing various aspects of the war. Whether strolling down the street or through a park, sitting in a café or bar, or waiting in line at the store, it was routine to overhear terms drawn from wartime vocabulary: “drone,” “tank,” “Ukrainians,” “conscripts.” Ordinary residents used this vocabulary.

However, conversations about the war were almost always part of other discussions unrelated to the war — the topic emerged seemingly in passing, as if it were not worth separate attention. Moreover, locals typically discussed everyday aspects of the war that personally affected them, rather than engaging in more general discussions about the conflict as a political or historical event. When discussing the war, most people were actually speaking about their own lives, and the war was just part of that. Everything “military” neither dominated nor stood out, but instead was linguistically assimilated into the “civilian.”

One assimilation method was a semi-ironic, informal style of expression, characterized by jokes, colorful profanity, and other colloquial phrases, wordplay, or comparisons. With this approach, Kursk residents could discuss dangerous situations as if they were just telling stories or talking about something ordinary.

For example, the young people mentioned earlier would trade stories about the “fuckin’ flashes” from drone fire, talk about how they “really lost their shit,” use expressions like “totally normal” to describe attacks, and tease each other about survival: “The drone was flying straight at me! I hid behind a Pyaterochka grocery store, and it flew past.” “Shit, well, aren’t you a hero, hiding behind a Pyaterochka. Why didn’t you just crawl under a car?” (both: male, about 20 years old, vocational school students, Kursk residents; Kursk, September 2024). 

As discussed earlier, PS Lab noted the ironic “repackaging” of military events in familiar peacetime terms that mirror what’s happening — substituting “fireworks” for “explosion” (or describing it with the colloquial verb “to bang”), “birdie” for drone, and so on. In another example of ironic commentary about the war, a Sudzha refugee described the explosions in her town as a kind of reliable clockwork: “You’re sleeping and it booms every five seconds. Quite nice, actually — very consistent” (female, around forty, profession unknown, refugee, Iglovka, October 2024).

Kursk locals also integrated the war into their daily lives by seamlessly alternating between military and everyday topics in conversation, without altering their intonation. Our researchers’ diaries contain dozens of examples of how people would switch mid-sentence from describing the war to other subjects and topics, then return to the war, before “forgetting” about it again, as though it evoked no strong feelings.

A similar incident occurred during a conversation between a PS Lab researcher and a young woman named Ida at a bar in Kursk. At some point, the conversation turned to Belgorod, where Ida had lived before the full-scale war and had left quite recently. At first, she praised Belgorod as a city, especially its public transit. When PS Lab’s researcher asked about whether there were shelters in Belgorod, Ida began talking about explosions, which she tellingly referred to as “earthquakes.” Without changing her cheerful tone, Ida recalled how a bomb fell on the local ice rink and how she couldn’t get home while returning from work because of hundreds of burning cars on the bridge connecting the two sides of the city. Ida was then distracted by the burger brought to her — it was overcooked, which made her angry, so she returned it to the waitress and asked her to tell the woman in the kitchen that “this won’t do.” A little later, she repeated her complaint to the manager who came to her table.

After this, Ida casually continued her story about Belgorod, returning to how attractive she found the city: “Well, so yeah . . . It was scary then. I moved to Kursk. But before that, it was fucking awesome, because it’s a really safe city. There are well-lit roads and shops everywhere, and all the houses are built in the same style, so it looks really nice.” PS Lab’s researcher again drew her attention to the war by asking about refugees. Ida responded by talking about her hotel job: “Right after I started working there, all hell broke loose, they were shooting with ‘Vampires’ [RM-70 rockets] — that’s when roofs started burning, and the whole city was on fire.” Ida said many refugees appeared in the city during this period, seeking help with lodging at the hotel. Among them were also “very funny people” who, if there was no vacancy, would say, “Well, okay. But could you help me book a manicure appointment, please?”

And so Ida began talking about manicures: “In Kursk, by the way, there’s a problem with this — I’ve tried everything: eyelashes, nails, hair. I’m always dissatisfied with either the price or the quality . . . But in Belgorod it’s really well developed, because there’s tons of competition.” She continued, comparing the “bar culture” of Kursk and Belgorod (Belgorod won, hands down, yet again), before circling back to Kursk’s substandard nail services. After this, Ida received a new burger, which she also rejected. PS Lab’s researcher used the pause to ask if Ida was afraid that the Ukrainian army would enter Kursk. Ida recalled how late she had learned about the invasion: “Shit, well, on August 6, they came here, I was in Belgorod at the time, and I’d just had my birthday the day before, I was just lying around and, like . . . I found out that they were bombing Kursk, like a month later. Hey, are they ever gonna bring me a decent burger?” Afterward, the researcher noted in her diary: “We spent a while longer talking about beauty treatments — eyelashes and fingernails. In the end, Ida finally got a decent burger” (female, about 22 years old, student, Kursk resident, December 2024).

This exchange demonstrates, on the one hand, how casually people shared their personal wartime experiences — even in response to the researchers’ leading questions — in public spaces, speaking to total strangers. On the other hand, it illustrates how quickly Kursk residents returned to discussing everyday topics like manicures, food, and city life, all without shifting their intonation. In this way, war was woven into the fabric of everyday conversations in Kursk, virtually dissolving into routine small talk.

[…]

The war affected refugees’ lives more deeply than it did the average Kursk resident. In conversations, the reality of war slipped through with particular frequency. Moreover, they wanted to share their experience, telling others about the hardships they’d endured. Still, even refugees typically spoke of the war in passing. For example, once when a PS Lab researcher was helping two refugee women select clothing at a humanitarian aid center, a conversation began between them. The refugees described their evacuation and what was happening in their villages now. They spoke about burning houses, tanks, and other realities of war that they had witnessed. At the same time, they sorted through clothing, exchanging comments about color and fabric quality or asking volunteers about the availability of certain items. PS Lab’s researcher described watching the scene:

[…]