Far from the front lines, Ania suffers the lingering effects of "this endless war" every day. The young psychologist, who asked to remain anonymous, works with returning soldiers as well as civilians: senior managers of state-owned companies, IT specialists who fled the country and returned later, and teenagers in shock. In her small office, tucked away in the basement of a building in central Moscow, ordinary Russians confide in her, struggling with the psychological aftereffects of three years of what the Kremlin officially calls a "special military operation," launched in Ukraine in February 2022. Ania welcomes and supports them.

In most cases, she deals with psychological struggles rather than clinical conditions. She speaks with anti-war Russians forced to pretend in public that they support the war. "I help them relieve the stress of constantly switching between two parallel and contradictory lives. In some cases, it resembles a form of schizophrenia," observes Ania, who often holds consultations until late at night.

"The scale of the dissonance in their double lives, between their outward support for the Kremlin and their internal opposition to the regime and its war, worsens over time. How do they live with this feeling of guilt in the long run?" she wondered, speaking over a secure phone line – a necessary precaution as the crackdown on critics, including journalists, lawyers and doctors, has intensified in recent months.

"Sometimes it takes five sessions before people open up," explained Ania, who regularly receives calls from new patients. "Their paradigm has been swept away by reality. They create new logical chains and say to themselves: 'I have one idea of life, but the state, the system, imposes another on me.' Most of them feel powerless and react by closing [themselves] up." As in Soviet times, many Russians today live in a kind of "inner exile."

'In search of new reference points'

You have 68.17% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.