This is not Putin’s war

The original in German was published in Die Zeit on November 16, 2024 – on the eve of the “anti-war demonstration” of the “Russian opposition”

If these words had meaning and one could actually expect something from the demonstration, videos with appeals in the spirit of “Supplying arms to Ukraine is the only option” would be spreading across the network. Or “This is not “Putin’s war”, this is a war for which we are all responsible.” Or to fantasize: “Today, our Russian people have turned into an amorphous mass in front of the TV. The bitterness of their own typical insignificance is compensated by millions of small miserable people with imperial fantasies about a superpower.

Or something else like that. However, the march organized by Yulia Navalna, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza seems to be just a November walk through Berlin. A walk without dignity and without consequences. Such a creative grant application of an unwanted NGO with an eye on German or European funding. This is not a fight against the Russian regime, it is a fight for German media attention. So if this is a demonstration, then it is only a demonstration of one’s own weakness.

Yes, I must admit, in contrast to the October “peaceful demonstration” by Sarah Wagenknecht and Co., in Sunday’s Russian remake, the responsibility for the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is still borne by a Russian. However, only one specific Russian.

In fact, the right to determine ““good Russians” the Russians delegated to us, the Ukrainians

All the criminality of the war of aggression, all the horror of its continuous terror against the civilian population of Ukraine, Kara-Murza, Navalny and Yashin fit into the convenient term “Putin’s war”. Like, this is not our war. Collective responsibility? On this question, Kara-Murza in one of the broadcasts with undisguised anger rushes at the West – it is you, they say, who warmed and nurtured Putin. The West is to blame for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Not only Kara-Murza says so. Putin also says so. And so the imperial circle of vice is closed.

I would also like to say that this is not my war. However, it is not pronounced. Not even when I talk to my mother on the phone after another night of Russian terror. Not even when I look at photos of friends who were at zero and were left without limbs. A man from Lviv, from whom the Russian terror forever took his wife and three daughters, will never say that it was not his war. The parents of the 589 murdered Ukrainian children will not say it either. Killed by the Russians. Those Russians for whom Kara-Murza, Navalny and Yashin do not want to bear responsibility, but on whose behalf they want to speak in the West.

That’s how she is, this Russia. And this is her imperial worldview – the vacant place of self-criticism in it was taken over by constant self-love and self-dignation. That Ukraine, that, in fact, the war are secondary circumstances for these Russian non-militants.

In fact, the right to determine ““good Russians” the Russians delegated to us, the Ukrainians. They transferred their authority to us with every bomb they dropped on Mariupol (and Putin did not drop them personally). They signed this contract again and again with each of their rapes of Ukrainian women in Buch and other cities of ours (and it was not Putin who raped them personally). And at least 148,000 times, they deprived themselves of the right to appeal our verdict – with every war crime after February 24, 2022. They were not committed personally by Putin and not even by his personal order.

And in the same way, they delegated this right to us with each of their “hard to say” on the simple question of whether it is worth supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Our demands on the Russians — and we have an absolute right to those demands — are very simple. Acknowledging one’s own responsibility, feeling ashamed, expressing an apology. Support of territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Support for the supply of weapons to Ukraine for self-defense. Support for sanctions — both personal and sectoral. Support for the release of all Ukrainian prisoners of war and political prisoners held in Russian prisons. Support for the return of abducted children. Support for the payment of reparations for the reconstruction of Ukraine entirely and entirely from the taxes of Russian citizens. And yes, not only Putin, but the entire Russian regime and every single war criminal must face international justice.

I don’t care how the Russians live with the burden of their war crimes after our victory. However, I know for sure that the path to the nation’s recovery does not begin with downplaying the scale of the war of aggression or with the denial of national responsibility for it.

It begins with Willy Brandt kneeling in front of the Polish memorial to the victims of the genocide committed by his compatriots. It is difficult for me to imagine Navalna, Kara-Murza and Yashin on their knees in front of the Wall of those who died for Ukraine on Mykhailivska Square. It is equally difficult for me to imagine that they will ever be elected in Russian democratic elections.

“The Russian opposition” is an oxymoron, a concept that contradicts itself. With their PR struggle in the non-existent “Putin’s war”, three Russian exiles are much more deserving of the title “Putin’s opposition”. I know one German. He goes out every day for a solo demonstration in front of “Russian House” on Friedrichstrasse with the demand that this branch of “Rossotrudnichestva” should finally be sanctioned. And every day this innocent German shows a million times more decency and dignity than those three Russians.

The least that Kara-Murza, Navalny and Yashin could do is to call on their compatriots to finally turn off their televisions, switch off from the propaganda wave and take to the streets. But it is too dangerous, they will say. Too dangerous. That’s what I’ll tell my mother the next time we talk after another night of Russian terror.

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