War Through the Eyes of Meduza Readers. Today we are publishing a letter from Alexandra in Bu...

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The war: what is happening on day 1565. Ukraine said that a Russian drone attacked the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility located in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. IAEA experts will soon visit the damaged site.…

War through the eyes of Meduza readers. Today we are publishing a letter from Alexandra in Budapest

I moved abroad recently, literally just five months ago, so my soul is still back there, in Russia. It seems to me I still haven’t fully processed it, but my loved ones, too, may be in danger because of drones: my mother and sister, my husband’s parents. I read the news about those killed and still feel nothing, although intellectually I understand that I probably should.

I keep track of people’s moods through my mother’s state of mind: she is extremely suggestible, watches television, and reads vatnik channels. Whatever is there is what is in her head. For a long time she smugly laughed and said that my husband and I would definitely return to Russia and would regret ever leaving. But recently I said to her again something like, “Sorry, we don’t want to live in Russia, it’s dangerous here,” and she only replied: “What can I say, you’re right.”

Unfortunately, most people like that, although they have become disillusioned with the authorities, still think they just need to wage war at full force, and believe that the “collective West” wants to destroy Russia. I don’t know when they will understand, or whether they ever will, that they are destroying themselves.

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