Miriam Elder, a veteran journalist who reported from Russia for nearly a decade, has interviewed dissident Russian journalists who are delivering warnings to Trump-opposing Americans about growing complacent during his second term.
Writing in the New York Times, Elder describes the political apathy that took over much of Russia's middle class after Vladimir Putin fully returned to the presidency in 2012 and promptly cracked down on dissent.
Rather than continuing to fight against Putin, writes Elder, many of these Russian dissidents turned inward and began focusing on improving their own personal lives with little care for the world around them.
However, she writes that this attempt to stay above the fray came crashing down around them after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 and sank the entire country into a massive crisis.
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Russian journalist Ilia Krasilshchik tells Elder that the complacency on the part of anti-Putin dissidents essentially gave him a free hand to launch a military operation that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians.
"We became insular and lost sight of everyone else’s interests," the journalist explained.
Krasilshchik also tells Elder that his biggest mistake was not seeing the scope of Putin's full ambitions that only became clear with the start of the Ukraine war nearly three years ago.
“What I definitely didn’t think at that time is that we are now in a completely different time,” he said. “It was the start of the time where we are right now, with the war in Ukraine, with a completely destroyed civil society. What I didn’t understand was that it was only just the beginning."
The journalist also recalled an interview he had with late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which he said now seems prophetic given what has happened since.
"He said everything we needed to do at that time: Don’t let yourself get distracted. Don’t let them lie to you," he recalled.