“I’m calling to tell you a very important message. I don’t know if you know a lot about what is actually happening right now in Ukraine,” Stonyte says in the call last month, her voice trembling as her 1-year-old daughter babbles in the background.
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
Others, like Stonyte, are trying a more individual approach. They’re cold calling or messaging strangers in Russia, hoping their personal pleas will disrupt the Kremlin’s propaganda — and potentially even help put an end to the deadly war.
‘Make the most important call of your life’
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, documentary filmmaker Stonyte and her husband Mantas Kazlauskas watched the news from their home in the Lithuanian port city of Klaipeda.
Stonyte, 30, grew up in Lithuania after the Baltic state declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. While she doesn’t remember Russia’s occupation, the Russian threat never really went away, she said.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Stonyte said she felt “a sense of desperation and helplessness.”
The idea is based on Senūta’s belief that Russian people have the power to end the war if they have access to free information and understand the human suffering in Ukraine.
“There’s a lot of support (in Russia) for this (war),” Senūta told CNN last month. “But the funny thing about it is they don’t know this war. They don’t know, hundreds, thousands of people killed, bombs dropped, children killed, women giving birth in metros — they know nothing about it.”
With the help of psychologists, Senūta’s team of about 30 people put together a script to guide the calls. They didn’t want to get into a confontation — instead the goal is to “convey the human tragedy and the fact that they don’t know about it.”
In just one week after the CallRussia launch, thousands of volunteers made 84,000 phone calls, he said.
Stonyte says few people hang up. Instead, most fall into one of two categories — those who argue back, and those who listen, she said. Stonyte believes many people may not want to respond out of fear the call could be monitored and they could face punishment.
One call to a museum in Moscow stuck with her, Stonyte said, even though the person who picked up the phone said very little. Her husband — who speaks some Russian — helped to translate the words conveying the horror of Putin’s war.
“I believe that even silence between my husband and that woman was really important,” Stonyte said. “I mean, she didn’t hang up the phone. She waited for a long time, she wanted to hear every single word.”
‘They exist in another reality’
It’s not just strangers that Ukrainians are trying to reach.
But when he called his father himself, Katsurin found something disturbing: his father simply didn’t believe there was a war.
Even as Katsurin described being woken by blasts and hiding in a bomb shelter, his father remained incredulous. “They exist in another reality,” he said. “He wants to believe me, but he cannot,” he said.
In a recording of a subsequent call with his father, published to his site, Katsurin tries to counter his father’s ideas — that Russians in Ukraine are oppressed, that the United States is making Slavic people kill each other.
At the start of the call, Katsurin seems hurt. “I’m calling to tell you what’s been happening in my life and in my country, things that I see with my own eyes, but you don’t believe me.” By the end of the call, his father seems swayed. “I sincerely understand your feelings and I’m so worried for you,” he tells his son.
But convincing a stranger can be even harder.
Henkka, a Finnish man based in Estonia, who asked to only be identified by his first name, set his location on dating app Tinder to St. Petersburg, got tipsy, and went on a mission to tell Russians about the war in Ukraine.
With each match, Henkka opened the conversation with “Hi! Have you heard the news about Ukraine?” Henkka said he was surprised by how many of the people he spoke to knew about the invasion but remained lukewarm about the issue or were simply confused by conflicting accounts in Russian and Western media.
“They truly didn’t know what to trust,” Henkka said.
‘Some changes is going to happen’
Cold calling doesn’t always have the desired effect.
Serge Kharytonau, a Belurusian now based in the US, where he works as a media expert at the International Strategic Action Network for Security, says he has made about 120 calls to Russia since early March as part of the CallRussia initiative — but so far, he hasn’t had the impact he hoped for.
Fewer than a handful of the calls he’s made have been successful, Kharytonau says. In most cases the respondent becomes aggressive or quickly ends the call. Kharytonau says that what’s been most surprising is that Russians he has spoken to don’t just reject alternative information — but deny the fact it exists at all.
He says that while Russian people are victims of the propaganda that’s imposed upon them, it would be “a great mistake” to think they bear no responsibility.
“On one side, they’re the victims of the propaganda. But on the other side, it’s their decision to trust the propaganda and to deny even not just the alternative Information, but even the fact that alternative information exists.”
The reality, though, is that speaking out in Russia can potentially come with heavy consequences.
Stonyte, the Lithuanian cold caller, is more sympathetic to the difficulties for Russians. Her hope is that Russians spread the truth of what is happening in private, and eventually, they might be able to protest against Putin’s regime.
“At the moment, the problem is that only a relatively small percentage of people are against war,” she says. “The government can easily silence and arrest them. They couldn’t arrest the whole nation (if the Russians were united).”
For now, she’s just focused on calling. And the call with the Russian woman last month is one of the more successful she has made.
During the call, as Stonyte starts recounting what’s happened in Ukraine, the woman appears to agree with what she’s hearing, according to a recording of their call shared with CNN. She tells Stonyte she knows everything but is afraid to act on it because she has a baby. She and her partner are thinking about leaving Russia, she says.
As they talk, their children can be heard chattering in the background — and both women are moved to tears.
“I really hope you will find a way and you will be safe in this situation,” Stonyte tells the woman.
“We are both mothers and we understand how important is the safety of our children. When we live with these kinds of governments, it is impossible to be completely safe, to feel safe in your own home. So I just really hope that some changes is going to happen.”
