There Are No Two Russias - April 16th 2024

April 16th 2024

Tasked with writing for an American media outlet, Yuriy delves into the complex ties between Ukrainians and the Russian opposition during the ongoing conflict, aiming to shed light on the nuanced perceptions in a turbulent landscape.

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)

  It is April 16. 

A couple of weeks ago a major American media outlet- one that is truly democratic and reputable- asked me to write an article about how Ukrainians perceive the Russian opposition now and how much this opposition can help Ukrainians in their fight against the aggressor. I gladly accepted the task. I wrote about how out of tens of millions of Russians, only a few stood against the first stage of the war, the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The vast majority, including those now considered opposition figures were not opposed to the occupation of part of another country. 

I wrote that most of most Russians who now live peacefully abroad and talk about suffering under Putin's regime lived comfortably in Russia when, starting from 2014, this regime was killing Ukrainians daily in Donbas and was almost openly preparing to occupy the entire Ukraine. These people fled Russia only when Putin announced mobilization and they faced the risk of becoming cannon fodder in this war. Before that, they were not particularly concerned about the war. 

I wrote about how the luminaries of Russian culture- contemporary writers, poets, composers -who fled to the West and supposedly opposed Putin have still not determined their position on the war. They even dare to publicly declare that they are not ready to support the Ukrainian army. In other words, they still cannot fully understand that supporting the Ukrainian army is a truly noble cause, that this army is the only force that is currently saving Europe from the genocidal horde of Russian military criminals. 

I wrote all this, sent it to the editorial office, and the editor, who was supposed to publish this text, replied to me. She said she was expecting a completely different text, that she needed a text about how Ukrainians see Russians as friends, that the war is all about Putin and maybe a few people around him. 

According to the editor, it would be painful and uncomfortable to the readers of her outlet to read about how even opposition Russians are perceived by Ukrainians as enemies. She is convinced that what is happening in Russia now is something unusual, some deviation, that Russians are actually against war and killings, against occupation and concentration camps and she expected me to write exactly about it. 

But such a text would be a science fiction, moreover less scientific and more fictional. You can't live in illusions in the third year of the war, thinking that only Putin wants this war. That Russians are his hostages who are simply forced to kill, rape, loot and destroy entire cities against their will. There are no two Russias, bad and good, there is only one, which lives by war, dreams of destroying Ukraine and is committing genocide against an entire nation. And even if you don't read about it in a reputable liberal outlet, it does not change the situation. Ignoring the problem does not solve it; it only makes it worse.