On August 5, a Telegram user named Arseniy wrote in a group chat: “Good morning. Today is day 1259 of the criminal war,” followed by a quotation by Albert Camus on how war distorts human nature. He was posting in an old group chat for a grassroots environmental group, created in 2019 to coordinate action and to spread information during a wave of protests.

I had joined back then as a researcher doing ethnography on environmental mobilizations in the Russian periphery. I spoke with most of the group coordinators, both at the time and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I don’t remember how many members the group chat had back then. Now there are a few hundred. Looking back to 2019, it’s clear that most of the Telegram accounts that ever joined it have since been deleted.

To follow these groups in 2025 is a weird experience. My research now has a different agenda. Nonetheless, I still check these groups from time to time. I want to peek into the ordinary lives of people who I know were not supportive of the government to try and follow the arc of their lives amid major geopolitical disruptions and increasing state repression. While it is often possible to catch glimpses of the everyday reality of Russian citizens, connecting the dots is far more difficult. Jeremy Morris’s new book, Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Rebellion, is an effort in this direction. It asks: What is actually going on in Russia?