Russian speakers in the UK are being urged to phone ordinary citizens in Russia to counter the Kremlin’s propaganda and media blackout about the war in Ukraine.
The #CallRussia initiative, launched on Tuesday, urges volunteers to cold call Russians in order to challenge Vladimir Putin’s narrative about the invasion, one conversation at a time.
It uses an open database of 40m phone numbers in Russia, which members of the Russian diaspora in the UK and elsewhere have begun to call, in an ambitious non-violent campaign to help end the war.
Volunteers include Lidia, a 29-year-old Moscow-born accountant from Huddersfield. “This is great way to try to make a connection with real people who, in my view, have the power to enact change in Russia,” she said.
Guidelines for volunteers begin with the warning that calls “will be very difficult”.
Of the more than 20 calls Lidia has made so far, many have ended abruptly with the phone being put down as soon as she mentioned Ukraine. Other people she has called have asked hostile question, such as “who in the west is paying you?”
But Lidia already feels she has changed some minds in Russia. She said: “You only need one conversation where you feel you have made someone doubt what they are hearing day in and day out on state media to make you feel like it’s worth it.”
One of her first calls was to a woman called Natalia who believed the foreign media was trying discredit Putin and his “liberation mission for Russian speakers”.
But Lidia probed a bit further, and shared accounts by members of her family who have been trying escape the besieged city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.
It was then that Natalia admitted she knew of friends and family in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro who had witnessed the killing of women and children. “I said ‘why would they say that if it wasn’t true?’ Eventually there was a silence because there is no real explanation,” Lidia said.
She sensed that Natalia was beginning to question the official line from Moscow. Lidia said: “What is being presented in Russia about the ‘liberation mission’ and nazism in Ukraine is nonsense, but if you hear it every day you need a different perspective from someone who doesn’t.”
She added: “It came across as if Natalia got all her information from state TV. That is close to me, because I have grandparents in Russia who believe all that.”
Lidia is determined to continue making calls during her lunch break at work and when she gets home. She said: “I want to carry on because I feel there is a strength in numbers – the more you do the better chance you have to sway as many people as possible. I firmly believe that the only way in which Putin’s regime can come down is from the inside.”
It is an approach shared by the Paulius Senūta, one of the founders of the #CallRussia initiative, who said: “One conversation cannot overcome Putin’s evil propaganda but millions might. Russians empowered with truth and compassion are the only ones who can stand up against Putin’s lies and end this war.”
