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BORIS JOHNSON SAYS PUTIN IS ‘PRETTY DESPERATE’ February 24 marks one year since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine with no clear end to the brutal war in sight. Surveys suggest that Russians are

mostly supportive of their leader and the ongoing conflict, which has resulted in at least 200,000 Russian troops killed (though this figure is much lower according to Moscow). But knowing

exactly what the Russian people really think is difficult to garner. Information out of Moscow is often spun in favour of the president, and dissent is cracked down upon heavily. However,

social media has become a powerful tool in shedding some light on what some citizens think and feel one year on. Here, Express.co.uk examines how support for Putin has changed in the last

tumultuous year. RELATED ARTICLES Posts have emerged on VKontakte (VK), Russia’s version of Facebook, deploring the deaths of loved ones as unnecessary on pages set up to remember some of

the thousands of men who have died what one grieving mother described as "Putin’s meat grinder". Just last month, the conditions of Ukraine’s eastern region of the Donbas were

described as like that of World War One with wounded Russian soldiers left to freeze to death in no man’s land. Yet more and more Russian men are churned out to replace the fallen. One young

woman, referring to her dead partner, wrote: “This f***ing war took another person dear to me... Well, for what!!??” There have been other similar messages posted on VK with another woman

in mourning writing: “Now you will be an eternally young twenty-two-year-old boy with sparkling blue eyes and a bright smile [but] this damn war has wiped your face off the earth.” One VK

user simply wrote: “These men died a terrible death.” Sky News has found that some users are taking a big risk and not solely posting on the pages dedicated to those lost but are instead

posting anti-war comments on public pages, ones that typically focus on the weather and crime. Those who make anti-war comments are either directed to post them on encrypted pages, free from

monitoring, or they are criticised and attacked by pro-Putin users. Sometimes, users threaten to report them to the moderators. A grieving mother at a funeral in Moscow last year for a

Russian sergeant killed in Ukraine (Image: GETTY) A protester holds a placard reading "Putin - No!" during a rally in central Moscow (Image: GETTY) Conversely, TikTok is full of

videos praising Putin and in the "real" world, images and videos from a rally held in Moscow on February 22 show thousands cheering the Russian President and waving Russian flags

at the event marking “Defender of the Fatherland Day”. Analysis of social media and search trends reveal that opinion in Russia has been divided since the war began. Research conducted by

Lawfare in September last year examined the search terms of Yandex, the country’s most popular search engine, the so-called “Russian Google”, and revealed that despite the word “war” being

banned, the likes of “war news”, “war 2022” and “latest war news” were all searched with “the war in Ukraine” being searched ten times more than “special military operation” (the Kremlin

approved term for the conflict). It also found that many took to Yandex to look up topics raised in Russian propaganda such as Putin’s “noble mission”, which was searched some 126,000 times

in March last year. “Traitors of Russia” was also queried some 158,000 times as those who left the country were shamed in propaganda; the Washington Post estimates that more than 500,000

Russians have left since the war began on February 24, potentially as many as one million. READ MORE: BEFORE AND AFTER MAPS SHOW RUSSIA'S TERRITORIAL LOSSES IN UKRAINE Police officers

detain a woman during a protest in Moscow against Russian military action (Image: GETTY) A man with a poster in Moscow which reads 'we are with him for the Russia's sovereignty,

are you?' (Image: Getty) RELATED ARTICLES In March of last year, a state-sponsored sociological agency called WCIOM revealed that 68 percent of Russia’s population supported Putin’s

“special operation”, but polls can often paint an inaccurate picture, particularly those that come from Russia. Although many social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, and news

outlets vanished from Russia in March last year as Meta was deemed “extremist”, state-controlled VKontakte (VK) — which then had some 23 million users — was still in use. Global Voices’

Civic Media Observatory analysed conversations on social media between Russian citizens surrounding the words “war”, “Putin” and the letter “Z”, which came to be considered the symbol of

public support of the invasion. As seen on Yandex, despite the fact that the word “war” was banned in Russia from March 4 of last year, it was the fourth most used word on the site and was

used much more than the Kremlin’s official term, the “special operation”. DON'T MISS: NORWAY'S KING COULD PROVIDE BLUEPRINT FOR CHARLES AMID REPUBLICAN ROW [INSIGHT] POLL: DO YOU

THINK FOUR-DAY WORKING WEEKS ARE THE WAY FORWARD? [POLL] NICOLA BULLEY TRIBUTE MAP—LIGHT A CANDLE AND LEAVE YOUR MESSAGE HERE [LATEST] The letter Z became a symbol of support for the Russian

invasion (Image: Getty) Police officers detain a man protesting against forced mobilisation in Moscow, September 2022 (Image: GETTY) PUTIN'S DEMANDS - FOUR THINGS RUSSIAN DICTATOR

WANTS BEFORE ENDING UKRAINE MILITARY ACTION Russia has proposed a number of terms to impose on Ukraine in order to halt its "special military operation" in the country. Kremlin

spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Russia would cease its military action in Ukraine if four conditions were met From ending all military action to acknowledging Crimea as Russian territory -

HERE ARE THE FOUR THINGS PUTIN HAS DEMANDED FROM UKRAINE. Those who were anti-war made references to Nazi Germany, comparing Russia’s invasion to Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia with

some calling Putin a “dictator” and “enemy of Russia” for whom February 24 was the “beginning of the end”. One wrote: “Any dictator ends his existence by arranging wars because for a

dictator this is the last chance to still sit on the throne. And such dictators are usually betrayed by those closest to them. The clock is ticking, it won't be long.” Some advised

others not to “blindly believe everything they were told” while others were concerned for the “young children” being sent to war. However, there were also those who vocally supported the

war, with one appealing to the “real Russians who really love their homeland”. Some believed that it was Russia that was invaded first with others claiming that it was the West, the US or

Zionists or Ukrainian “nationalists” for starting the war.