The War Through the Eyes of Meduza’s Readers. Today We Are Publishing a Letter From an Anonymous Female Reader in Russia

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War. What’s happening on day 1596. Ukrainian forces attacked the Krasnodarskaya compressor station, which is part of the Blue Stream gas pipeline, using drones. Gazprom said that export gas supplies were not disrupted by the attack...

The war through the eyes of Meduza’s readers. Today we are publishing a letter from an anonymous female reader in Russia

I’ve already gotten used to the war, it has turned into background noise, and the prewar time already feels like some kind of dream. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory bring neither hatred nor triumph, but some strange, unclear feeling of a satisfied conscience, that “now this looks a little more like a fair fight rather than the beating of babies,” that over time there will be less and less to reproach us for regarding the fact that we sit here in safety, living high, and do not see the suffering of our neighbors, “which they themselves inflicted on them.”

This gradually increases respect for Ukraine, that it is capable of defending itself, but together with this it also gradually deprives it of a certain invisible protection born of pity for it as a victim, legitimizes it not as a harmless neighbor next door, but as a full-fledged enemy for whom one no longer needs to feel sympathy and about whom one no longer needs to worry more than about oneself.

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