Letter from St. Petersburg: Many Russians don’t even know there’s a war

I’m writing this on February 27. The Russian military has been shelling Ukrainian towns since the early morning of the 24th, but I’m nowhere near Ukraine. I’m in St. Petersburg, Russia, where, over the past several days, I have noticed a startling fact: Most people without personal international contacts don’t know what their army is doing. It’s not that they support the war—they don’t even know about it.