Russians are learning to live with the war that Vladimir Putin has unleashed in Ukraine.

With Putin being sworn in on Tuesday for another six years as president, the invasion has become part of everyday life for many Russians, confounding expectations that the pressure of international sanctions and deepening isolation would eventually turn them against him. Far from protesting, many are rallying around the flag.

The Kremlin is using Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II to reshape Russia, combining strident nationalism involving a potent mix of Soviet-era and imperial nostalgia with an intensifying crackdown on dissent. As a result, Putin faces little domestic pressure to end the fighting despite massive military casualties, posing a challenge for Ukraine’s U.S. and European allies as they seek to raise the cost for Russia of continuing the war that’s now in its third year.

That’s in sharp contrast to the first months after the February 2022 invasion when many Russians reacted with anger, depression and shock, according to Anna Kuleshova, a sociologist at the Social Foresight Group who left Russia when the war started and now lives in Luxembourg.

“When there is no way out of a situation with dignity, there is no way to leave, and there is a need to earn money and raise children, then it’s easier to accept a new reality than to resist it endlessly,” Kuleshova said.

The war has permeated every level of Russian society. In many schools, children send gifts and letters to frontline soldiers, and must attend special lessons where teachers drum home the Kremlin’s message that the country is at war with the West in Ukraine and acted to defend itself by carrying out the unprovoked invasion.

TV and radio shows are often filled with war themes, casting those fighting in Ukraine as successors of the generation that defeated the Nazi German invasion in the “Great Patriotic War,” ignoring the fact that Russia is the aggressor this time. Army recruitment campaigns offer lucrative signing bonuses and salaries for those who’ll “be a man” and join up as contract soldiers.

Platon Mamatov, 41, signed a contract in April to return to Ukraine after spending six months at the front last year. He said people in his native Urals city of Ekaterinburg often approach him to offer help and support when they see him in uniform. While not everyone supports the invasion, there’s been a “consolidation of society” behind the army, he said.

“Everyone realized that this is a war and that it concerns everyone,” he said. “Border territories are shelled daily, factories are burning inside Russia, drones are flying, funerals and disabled people are coming back from the front.”

Putin declared his intention to form a new political and business elite from those “who have proved their loyalty to Russia” in the war shortly before he gained a fifth term with a record 87% in the March presidential election. The Kremlin presented the pre-determined election in which he faced no real competition as evidence the public fully supports Putin’s showdown with the West.

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