Russians are facing a psychological conundrum all human beings confront every day, but at a far more consequential level. It is this: How much will they choose to know, or deliberately not know? Their answer may decide the course of history.

If the war of aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine is the world’s most urgent problem, the question about how ordinary Russians sift and interpret information about it is the meta-problem. It’ll determine whether Putin stays in power and whether he gets away with escalating this conflict into an even bigger catastrophe.

In this war, two mutually exclusive perceptions of reality are clashing. In the one prevailing outside of Russia, Ukrainians are the victims, while Putin is the aggressor and the perpetrator of war crimes, as he bombs millions of innocent women, children and men.