A March 6 New York Times article entitled "Ukrainians Find That Relatives in Russia Don't Believe It's a War" provides accounts of Ukrainians — distressed and in the midst of evacuations — calling their Russian relatives. They find out that their relatives tend to deny that bombs are raining on Ukraine, and revert to Russian propaganda on the need of Russia to liberate the country from a gang of drugged-up Nazis.
The surrealism and callousness of these Russian reactions are extreme, but the underlying mechanisms are more common than one might think. For populations within states that undertake massive military aggression, the victims of this aggression often become invisible.
