London — Natalia, who lives in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg, opened the TikTok app on her phone earlier this month to find she could only see videos from inside Russia.
“Everything that’s happening outside, we can’t access it… I didn’t notice initially and then I was like, ‘wait a second. Every single person I follow is just Russian bloggers,'” she told CBS News in a phone interview.
American social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been blocked or limited in the country. TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, voluntarily restricted its platform to Russian users so they are only able to see new videos uploaded in Russia.
Eager to remain connected to the outside world, 24-year-old Natalia, who we are referring to by only her first name to protect her identity, tried switching on an older phone she still had laying around. The software on it had not been updated in years.
“The first thing I saw was, I think, like an Addison Rae dance or something. It’s so typical for American TikTok. I was like, ‘yes, we’re in!’ I didn’t plan on starting a channel at all. I was just scrolling and being happy that I’m finally back with my videos.”
But Natalia quickly discovered that people outside Russia, including many Russians living abroad, were speculating on social media about what life was like inside the country under the unprecedented sanctions imposed over President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Because of the Russian government’s recent crackdown on media access, the people posting from outside Russia couldn’t get answers. Many independent and international journalists working in Russia have had to either stop publishing or leave the country due to a new law barring “fake news,” under which anyone who publishes information about the Russian army or authorities that the Kremlin finds offensive can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
“No one is actually reporting from inside the country,” Natalia told CBS News. “I consider my English to be good enough to be understood, so I thought, well, I’m going to take this, this mission of reporting it.”
Natalia created an anonymous account and started posting videos, which she called “Iron Curtain Updates,” on everyday life in the newly isolated Russia. Her videos quickly got thousands of views.
“Masks are now banned in public transport,” she said in one of her recent videos. “That is done to obviously help with facial recognition, especially for people who were attending the protests.”
An independent monitoring group says more than 15,000 people have been detained by Russian authorities for attending protests against the country’s assault on Ukraine since Putin launched the invasion on February 24.
“In many countries, including Russia, we have a text message service if you need to notify the population about an upcoming storm,” she said in another report. “Now they’re using the services to tell people, if you notice someone spreading misinformation regarding the actions of Russian army, then please tell us, please let us know, and there is a form you can fill in… We used to think of this snitching phenomenon as something that is far in the past, and now it’s getting back, and we’re not quite sure how bad it’s going to get.”
Natalia said the Western sanctions haven’t drastically changed everyday life for the majority of Russians. At least not yet.
“If you pay attention, you might note some things are changing. But if you’re just kind of continuing to live your life, and if you are lucky enough to not be part of the businesses who shut down, I don’t think your life changed that much,” she said. “When the sanctions started and people, the younger generation, started kind of losing their mind over Zara being closed and McDonald’s being closed, that was mostly people from big cities. But where my family’s from, they went to McDonalds once in their lifetime when they visited St. Petersburg.”
Natalia said she wanted to use her platform to tell the outside world that, just because all Russians aren’t taking to the streets and risking arrest to join the protests, it doesn’t mean they agree with their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s important for me that people know that not everyone is out there thinking what we’re doing is correct. Because I see a lot of people think that because we don’t have mass protests like in other countries, that means we don’t care. But the laws that are implemented on Russians are getting harsher by the day.”
Natalia said that many Russians, especially older generations, having lived for so long under repressive governments, simply don’t believe they can make a difference.
“I talk to my mom, I talk to my relatives who are a bit older, and I say, ‘Well, why don’t you wanna change something?’ But they always answer: ‘But you can’t change anything. Nothing. You can’t influence anything. That’s it. The government decided everything for us. You can’t do anything.’ When most of the people believe that, it’s hard to change their mind.”
Natalia, who like many younger Russians has only ever known the rule of Putin, said she chooses her words carefully in her videos to avoid saying anything that could get her in trouble under the new “fake news” law. But her goal is to keep a bridge open between people in Russia and the outside world.
“By cutting us out from every single aspect of culture and every single aspect of the outside world, you’re helping our government to close the Iron Curtain that they’ve been building for so many years,” she said of the organizations that have blocked access to their services in Russia or international events that have barred Russian people from participating. “It’s exactly what they want.”
Natalia found it hard to guess what might be in store for her increasingly isolated country.
“I’ve learned in the past month that you hit rock bottom and you think, ‘well, this can’t get any worse,’ but then it just falls through again,” she told CBS News. “So, I really have no predictions for the future. I just have hopes.”
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