The war through the eyes of Meduza readers. Today we are publishing a letter from Elena in Moscow

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War. What is happening on day 1606. Nearly 380 Ukrainian drones attacked 19 regions of Russia and annexed Crimea, the Defense Ministry said. Wildberries marketplace logistics centers in the Moscow and Tambov regions came under attack. There are fatalities…

The war through the eyes of Meduza readers. Today we are publishing a letter from Elena in Moscow

Some people write: “Why did Zelensky start striking deep into Russia and terrorizing the civilian population?” Supposedly this only makes Russians hate him more and see the war with Ukraine as a noble cause. I have no words for questions like that… I do not understand how people can be so shameless.

I encountered drones and explosions for the first time about a year ago, but I did not feel hatred toward Ukrainians or toward Zelensky; for me it was one night, over the course of a year, maybe about 10 nights in total. And after one night of such explosions, I thought about the fact that Ukrainians have been living like this for four years. About the fact that my taxes are in those missiles, taxes that I would actually like to spend on pensioners having larger pensions, not on taking the lives of citizens of a neighboring country. And I simply have no right to be angry that Ukraine is responding to the aggressor’s attacks.

What frightens me most is that my friends, whom I grew up with, who listened with me to IC3PEAK, Noize MC, Monetochka, have started saying that all Ukrainians are “Banderites,” that Zelensky is a “deranged clown,” and so on.

But I still know that there are people in Russia who are against the war, and it is important for me to remember that. Now, against the backdrop of the fuel crisis, for the first time I see that some people are beginning to blame not Zelensky and not Ukraine, but the Russian authorities. That already means a lot to me, because responsibility is at least sometimes starting to be named correctly.

I do not understand how anyone can demand that Ukraine not respond to war. It seems to me it would be more honest to ask not that, but why Russia started this war at all and why it still has not stopped it.

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