Russian Young people regarding War: "We didn't choose this"

 begin partial quote from:

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-03-22/index.html

Russian families divided as young people push back against the war: "We didn't choose this"

From CNN Contributor Jill Dougherty

As police in Russia clamp down on anti-war protests emerging around the country, many citizens do not fully know what is happening in Ukraine.

State-controlled television shows almost no reports of Russian bombing and shelling in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Instead, it focuses on so-called Ukrainian "nationalists" and "neo-fascists."

But Russian young people like 25-year-old Arina, who lives in Moscow, aren't watching TV. She's on the internet, reading blogs and listening to vloggers. She, too, is having difficulty comprehending why this war is happening and what it will mean for her own life as a young Russian.

"It is very difficult to predict anything, of course, the situation is horrible," Arina, who asked CNN to only use her first name for her safety, said. "Among some of my friends, there is a lot of anxiety about the future, a lot of fear, because we don't know how it will affect us."

But Arina's mother sees it completely differently, believing the war is a "necessary measure" against Western threat, Arina said. She checked out a guide suggesting how young Russians can talk with their parents and others about the war in Ukraine — and read it just in time before it was removed online.

Arina and her mother "had a very fierce argument," she said. "We have very different sources of information: I learn everything from the independent media, which have mostly long been blocked in Russia, and she watches TV."

Divided reaction: As Arina and her friends follow news about Ukraine on social media, Russians have had contradictory reactions, she said.

"The first one is, everyone says, 'Yes, we should be ashamed.' The second one is, 'No, let's not be ashamed of ourselves and let's not pin decisions on ourselves that were not made by us.'"

But both sides agree on one thing, Arina says: They want the international community to know "that the people are not their President, and we didn't choose this."

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