This paper presents a personal fieldwork record of repeated visits to Russia―mainly Saint Petersburg―from February 2020 to September 2025. Halted by COVID-19 border closures in March 2020 and further restricted after the 2022 Special Military Operation, research resumed in January 2022. Drawing solely on the author’s observations, photographs, and contemporaneous notes, it offers a necessarily subjective, non-comprehensive account. Chronologically organized into four periods:（1）2020 lockdown to return,（2）July–September 2022 early war phase,（3）2023–2024 adaptation and shifting patriotism,（4）2025 pragmatic realism. Supplementary insights from Moscow, the Far East, and 2023–2024 Central Asia visits are included. All photos by the author.
Noriko IGARASHI (2025) studied this question.