‘State System of Terror’: The Russo-Ukrainian War and Domestic Suppression

‘For any government official or despot, power over his own people takes precedence over everything else’- Jean Baudrillard 

In Terry Gilliam’s Kafkaesque black comedy Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat, joins his affluent, ostentatious mother, Ida, in a restaurant. Their meal is served - at which point - sudden explosions blast shrapnel across the room, saturating the air with shouting, screams, and smoke.

The restaurant has been subject to a terrorist attack, a common occurrence in Gilliam’s absurd dystopia, as waiters aggressively remind the patrons to act calm and ignore their terrifying surroundings. 

Gilliam once described Brazil as ‘a post-Orwellian view of a pre-Orwellian world’. Indeed, with the nightmarish violence and totalitarianism of the state in both texts, there are many parallels between his film and Orwell’s 1984.

Like the population of Brazil, the population of 1984’s dilapidated London is constantly threatened by explosions. ‘Steamers’, or rocket bombs, cause immense fear, striking the prole quarters regularly as a result of Oceania’s perpetual war against either Eurasia, Eastasia, or both. 

However, the text infers a more insidious reason for these attacks.

In 1984’s 5^th chapter, Julia suggests to Winston that the rockets which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, ‘just to keep people frightened.’ 

The government of Oceania, Julia understands, in a bid to constantly increase the fear, docility, and paranoia of its population, regularly launches airstrikes on its own people. This concurs with a critique of the terrorism in Brazil, that it is sponsored or venerated by the government through its capacity to ‘keep citizens fearful and isolated’.

Assuming these theories are true, both the governments of Brazil and 1984 use the threat of externalised violence (from another state or terrorist organisation) to control their own populations. 

The war in Ukraine is far from fiction. The conflict has seen, at an upward estimate, 1.8 million soldiers killed, missing, or wounded as of February 2026. 

Some have speculated that Putin instigated the war to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, or to reaffirm control over the former soviet state through constant attrition. 

Suffering is ubiquitous in war, but Putin’s willingness to facilitate the suffering of his own people seems intentional. 

The situation evokes a series of controversial Baudrillard articles for Libération, compiled in his book ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’. The author argues that whilst Operation Desert Storm did occur, the conflict cannot truly be considered a war in the traditional sense, due to the obvious predetermination of outcome, the war’s sepulchral ‘clean’ image as depicted in legacy media, and the overarching nuclear deterrent. 

Baudrillard, for these reasons, saw the Gulf War as a ‘dead war’, an ‘unfrozen cold war’. The war in Ukraine is similarly dead and stagnant. As Keir Starmer noted in his February 24^th speech, marking the four-year anniversary of the Ukraine war, in the past year of conflict, ‘Russia took just 0.8% of land in Ukraine at a terrible cost to themselves of half a million losses’.

The Russian front line has been referred to as a ‘meatgrinder’, as troops are constantly crammed forward with little ground gained. 

“The Kremlin… acknowledged its war aims ‘haven’t been fully achieved yet’ and said it intended to continue attacking Ukraine.”

Like the front line, the conflict itself is frozen. The Kremlin’s peace deal is performative. The terms are too harsh for Zelensky to ever accept, especially given the relative success of Ukraine’s resistance to date. Putin is keen to drag out the war; it will continue onwards, suffocating soldiers and citizens on both sides, like the perpetual conflict in 1984.

A recent BBC documentary, ‘The Zero Line: Inside Russia’s War’, features firsthand accounts from several Russian soldiers who fought in Donbas. Dima, a former paramedic, relates: ‘Your adversary is in front of you, but the enemy is your commander behind you’.

Russian soldiers, many of whom are ex-convicts, serve under conscription and are commonly subject to the practice of ‘zeroing’ - where a commander executes one of their own for failing to follow potentially fatal orders of advancement.

Ilya, a dishwasher repairman, was coerced into military service. He recalls his apprehension by police in Moscow: ‘they just see my passport, do something on their laptop and tell me 'if you don't go to army you are go to jail’. The fear of conscription permeates deep into Russia’s interior – anyone can be sent to the front lines to die.

Historically, Putin has not shied from the violent oppression of his own population. In 1999, the president suppressed the Chechnya rebellion through indiscriminately bombing towns and cities where suspected rebels hid, killing approximately 6,000 citizens – many of whom were civilians. Putin, through waging war against Ukraine, is waging a war against his own people - the convicts and conscripts who fight on the front line - while the Kremlin sits safe in Moscow. 

Baudrillard, when considering Saddam Hussein’s motivations for initiating the Gulf War, argued, ‘it is typical of Saddam to prove his combativity and ferocity only against his internal enemies: as with every dictator, the ultimate end of politics… is to maintain control of one’s own people by any means, including terror’. 

Putin has shown an apathy to the cost of the war on his own people, and in the past has been willing to use internal violence as a means of population suppression. One must question whether gaining control over Ukraine is his sole motivation for continuing the fighting. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Prime Minister of the Russian Federation

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