What do Russians see and hear about the war in Ukraine?
On Russian state TV, the country's residents are presented daily with an unreality. News programs describe the invasion of Ukraine not as a war, but as Vladimir Putin does himself: A "special operation."
That unreality is now the law of the land across Russia, with media being officially barred from using words including "war" and "invasion" in any reference to the "operation" in Ukraine. Anyone accused of spreading "false information" about the military in Russia now faces up to 15 years in prison.
As CBS News foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reports, the draconian crackdown on speech led the last remaining independent Russian news channels to close their doors last week.
"Russia is becoming absolutely isolated," Ekaterina Kotrikadze, who was an anchor for the independent TV Rain in Russia before she fled her country, told CBS News. "It really looks like North Korea to me."
She said Russian's are only being told one story.
"The message is clear and very simple: That NATO is right around the corner. That NATO is threating Russia," she told Tyab.
Across Russia, anti-war protests are being crushed with an iron fist. Monitoring groups say more than 13,000 people have been detained at anti-war protests in the country since the start of the invasion. Yet the acts of defiance continue.
Tyab asked Evgeny Popov, a sitting Russian lawmaker, how he thinks the war is going.
"Our government tells us that [the] military operation is going pretty well," he said.
"You keep referring to it as a military operation, but this is an invasion, this is a war," Tyab challenged Popov.
"You, and a huge part of Western world, live in a world of Ukrainian myths," he responded.
What is undeniable, is that support for the military in Russia remains high.
The letter "Z" — initially used by Russian forces to identify their own on the battlefield — quickly became a potent pro-war propaganda tool for the Kremlin.
"This letter, it's a symbol, and it's scary, it's frightening" said Kotrikadze of TV Rain, noting that the symbol bears similarities to a symbol used by German's Nazi regime.
A U.S. official told CBS News on Wednesday that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian troops may already have been killed since fighting began in Ukraine on February 24.
Tyab asked the lawmaker, Popov, it the invasion had been worth it, given the loss of life and the international condemnation and sanctions Russia is now experiencing.
He said Russia was a "proud nation, and we love our country. We have not any other motherland, and we must protect it."
