Among ordinary Russians, little appetite for war in Ukraine

MOSCOW — Whatever Vladimir Putin may have in mind for Ukraine, an independent country he nonetheless considers part of the Russian motherland, ordinary Russians are expressing little enthusiasm for a shooting war to make their leader’s dream a reality.

For months, the Kremlin has been positioning tens of thousands of troops and heavy weaponry near Russia’s border with Ukraine, rattling nerves in a nascent democracy that saw a chunk of its territory — the strategic Crimean Peninsula — snatched away in 2014.

Spurred by U.S. intelligence saying that Russia’s military moves could be setting the stage for another and far more consequential attack