There is a long weekend in Russia right now: yesterday was Sunday, and tomorrow will be March 8th.
Because of this, they decided to make Monday a day off as well.
Maybe those who watch me from Russia are experiencing a strange feeling. Why is everything different?
Everything seems to be the same way as before. Same blue sky.
People continue walking the streets, visiting shops, dining in restaurants, talk about their business in public transport –
everything is the same as used to be two weeks ago – usually and habitually.
Imagine if you fell asleep in the midst of a pandemic, during the days of the most severe restrictions,
and woke up right now – it might seem to you that life is finally getting better.
But we didn't sleep. Moreover, I know that after February 24, many of my viewers literally did not sleep for several days in a row,
because they simply could not sleep. Now the whole surrounding reality has appeared before us like some kind of surreal scenery –
I can’t even believe that there is a war going on right now.
For the citizens of Ukraine, forced to hide in basements from shelling,the new reality is already obvious.
It came and announced itself with a roar of explosions. In Russian cities, by inertia, ordinary life continues.
but in reality, the usual way of life in Russia is also demolished.
This, of course, is not physical destruction from shells and bombs, tearing apart residential apartments of ordinary Ukrainians, offices and schools.
But our usual life has already been destroyed — the tangible consequences of this catastrophe are yet to be determind, but everyone will definitely feel them.
This is an incredible period for our country — the inertia of normal life.
This fleeting period can be compared with the onset of acute radiation sickness.
One received a huge dose of radiation. He still does not feel any pathology, he even smiles and jokes around.
But his organs fail, and the tissues are rapidly destroyed.
For a while, this person will still be vigorous and outwardly seem healthy to you.
But he has already been sentenced to a serious illness, the struggle against which will soon
fill his whole life and become its only meaning.
Until February 24, 2022, Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union,
was the country that victoriously ended the last great war in Europe, and ended it on the bright side of history.
The status of the winner in World War II even gave our country certain privileges: both political and moral.
But after February 24, Russia is a country that itself shamefully unleashed the first European war in the 21st century.
Until recently, leading German politicians spoke in plain text about Germany's historical guilt before Russia.
However, after Russia changed its place in the history of the European continent in one day, Germany,
and the whole of united Europe, and many other countries of the world, without much hesitation and reflection,
imposed unprecedented sanctions against our country.
These sanctions undermine entire sectors of the Russian economy.
They will not only worsen the life of Russians, but, most likely, will radically change their way of life.
The period of stagnation, when the Russian economy did not grow, and the incomes of the population constantly slipped down,
may soon seem to us as “golden years”.
A new reality is coming, and no one will like it. If earlier we asked to return our 2007 to us, and then we missed 2019,
when there was no pandemic, very soon we will dream of returning to at least 2021.
We will no longer dream of the Beautiful Russia of the Future, but of the Tolerable Russia of the Past.
To my regret, I can not say anything comforting here. To paraphrase Winston Churchill:
I can promise you nothing but sweat and tears.
I at least hope without blood
Everything will be very bad.
Do not be under the illusion that sanctions are not for long. Practice shows that they can be introduced quickly,
but it takes many years to cancel them. Let me give an example of the famous Jackson-Vanik Amendment.
These were the economic sanctions that the United States imposed on the USSR in 1974 for preventing Jewish emigration to Israel.
This amendment was in effect for 38 years, right up to the end of 2012!
The Soviet Union was long gone, you can leave Russia for Israel by simply buying an airplane ticket,
because you don’t even need a visa, there has been a renaissance of local Jewish culture in Russia itself,
and the sanctions continued to apply. Removing them is far from the same as introducing them.
Sanctions take days to implement, but decades to be lifted.
Now we will discuss what we have to do next, but first we will break for ads.
Don't rewind! This is arguably one of the most important ads in the channel's history.
Let's continue. What should we all do next? If you are hoping for some kind of instruction on survival,
then I have to disappoint you: it is not even clear yet what exactly to prepare for.
There was nothing like this in our memory, and I am afraid that the experience of the nineties
is completely irrelevant for the current situation.
In the nineties, Russia was painfully going through a difficult but inevitable transformational crisis –
this is not the same as when practically the entire civilized world gathered the collective will into a fist in order
to destroy the Russian economy with this fist.
In addition, the drop height is now much greater. Even the poorest strata of Russian society managed to get used to
some civilian services and minimal living conditions.
A smartphone, a personal computer, a washing machine, many even have a car in the yard.
In what form all this will exist in the near future and whether it will exist at all is completely incomprehensible.
Now we are looking at a huge tsunami that is about to hit us.
It has not collapsed yet, and we still have time to think about how exactly we will recover.
And to restore Russia, no matter what ruins it would turn into, we still have to restore.
Because there is no other way. One hundred and forty-five million people cannot simply say
“that's it, our power is gone” ​​ and disappear somewhere with no trace.
This is not a movie with a sad ending, where the characters go into a fading screen and the inscription “end of the movie” appears.
Like it or not, you will have to live on, saving what can still be saved, and raising from the ruins what has already been destroyed.
To the madness of the brave we carol. This, of course, is about those whom the responsibility for the fate of their country brought to the streets of Russian cities on Sunday.
The main story that struck everyone yesterday was a recording of the torture of a girl from the Brateevo police department.
She went to an anti-war rally, was detained, taken to the police department and was able to record everything there on audio.
You can hear how answers to some meaningless questionnaire questions are literally knocked out of her.
The police beat the girl, call her names, it's just scary to listen to
Detained: 51st <article> Policewoman: Fuck, I don't understand what this is for.
Policewoman 2: I don't understand either. Policewoman: Fuck you! You are fucked up!
Detainee: A man is beating me in front of you, and I'm fucked up, right? Policewoman: Yes!
Detainee: I understand. Policeman: So, we need to put a ruler here … Policeman 2: Yes, yes, fingers <unintelligible>
Policewoman: You fucking live in this country
Detainee: Are you talking about using a shocker against me now? Policeman: Yes, yes, well, we'll have to 220
And when the executioners open their mouths to say something more frank, the following is revealed:
What, what will happen to us for this? Putin told us to fuck them, fuckers. :
That's it! Putin is on our side! You are the enemies of Russia, you are the enemies of the people, fuck it. :
Let's just fuck everyone right now, that's all. And it's in the hat. We'll even get an award for it!
Putin said to beat the hell out of the enemies of the people! And they will be given an award for it. There you go.
In that police station, not only she was beaten, but also others who refused to incriminate themselves, be photographed or fingerprinted.
According to the Feminist Anti-War Society, which released the footage, the detainees, including at least three girls,
were beaten with fists, knees, bottles, put a bag over their heads, poured water over them, threatened with a criminal asentence and a gun.
An antiseptic was taken away from one of the girls, using it to torture other detainees.
They were captured at an anti-war rally in Moscow. But rallies were held yesterday in other cities as well.
Those rallies, like other recent rallies, are quite chaotic, because they are not coordinated and they do not have any single organizer.
But their geography is extremely extensive — if in past years people rallied mainly in Moscow and St. Petersburg,
now rallies are held in almost every major city.
More than 4,000 people were detained yesterday, and in total, almost 13,000 people have been detained at anti-war rallies
since February 24, according to OVD Info.
That's a lot, for example, at all rallies in support of Navalny in the winter of 2021, 11 thousand were detained.
Thus, these rallies became the most numerous in terms of the number of detainees in the entire Russian history.
Of course, this also speaks of increased risks, but more importantly, that really many people go to attend.
Moreover, people who are not afraid of detention or administrative arrest — after all, now,
n the second week of daily protests, the risks are clear to everyone.
Really a lot of people took to the streets, here is for example, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
No to war!
A very impressive video was filmed in Kaliningrad. There, an elderly woman, who had survived the blockade of Leningrad by real Nazis
took part in a protest against the war with Ukraine.
And when a police colonel approached the protesters to find out something, woman tried to explain her position.
But she did not find understanding in him.
“Did you come to support the fascists?”
How dare he to say this to a blockade survivor?
But well, it's clear with him.
Another thing is interesting here – how people react to his order to detain them.
Nobody gets scared, nobody runs. On the contrary, his words are met with derision.
It's impressive.
Here is another video from Moscow:
In the paddy wagon they sing “Beautiful Far Away”!
The video seems to have been filmed in 2011 rather than 2022.
At the same time, there was a lot of police violence.
They beat protesters with batons, sometimes detained random people with dogs, couriers, cyclists and just passers-by.
That is not good at all, in St. Petersburg, the police, while detaining a man, hit him with a stun gun.
A shocker is not a rubber truncheon, it is absolutely possible to kill a person with it.
A year ago, there were also isolated cases of the use of shockers,
but then the police leadership had the sense not to use them en masse, and no one died.
I would also like to note the accident with the paddy wagon in Moscow, it's some kind of complete sur!
The driver of the paddy wagon was in such a hurry to deliver the detainees to the police department
that he collided with another car, crashed into a pole and rolled over.
Fortunately, no one died in the accident.
Those who participate in rallies, despite the great risks, deserve great respect.
I want to make a reservation – everyone decides for himself what risks are acceptable to him.
There is no need to reproach yourself if for one reason or another you cannot attend the rally.
You can do something else.
And I want to finish this piece about the rallies with one video from Ukraine.
The Russian National Guard is used to fighting calm girls and wanted to pacify Kharkiv the same way.
They didn't get there, that's what happened.
Look, friends: destroyed column of Russians, hefty, I don’t know how many.
Here. All kinds of vehicles. And look what they equipped to conquer Ukraine!
Did they think we were some kind of slaves here?
We are Cossacks!
Ukrainian Cossacks!
We smashed these invaders to smithereens!
Look, they were riding with ordinary helmets, with shields, they thought that it would work the same way it did in Moscow,
in St. Petersburg, or in another Russian city, but it didn’t work out that way.
The riot police did not arrive, friends, the riot police stood at the entrance to Kharkiv and remained here forever and ever.
There are a lot of such videos with broken and burned columns of Russian equipment (and, unfortunately, also with
dead Russian soldiers) on Telegram.
There are also a lot of videos with the terrible destruction of Ukrainian cities and with victims among civilians.
Moscow rallies are of course important, but we must remember that the real war is going on very close to us,
with the use of military weapons in large quantities, a war in which civilians of Ukraine, Ukrainian defending soldiers, are dying.
And the Russian soldiers who were sent there are completely incomprehensible why.
What awaits us further, in the distant future?
After this senseless war that Putin started ends, we will have to pay reparations,
and go through the processes of collective repentance in one form or another –
– so that there is literally a museum of Russian aggression in Moscow, so that it tells how Russia under Putin's rule unleashed a huge
and terrible war against Ukraine, in which a lot of people died.
There will certainly be a requirement for tribunal for those to blame for this entire situation
and those who commit war crimes on the territory of Ukraine
Inevitably, we will come to this, because there is no other realistic scenario for the development of events:
Putin's pseudo-empire cannot exist, like the USSR 2.0, it cannot compete with the whole world.
There are neither resources nor ideology for this.
We will pay a high price and inevitably lose in this crazy confrontation.
I would like to believe that after the inevitable complete collapse, radicals or revanchists will not come to power,
but we will still be able to embark on a democratic peaceful path.
And only then, if it is still possible at all, will we be able to play the role that was once natural for us –
and again take our place in the peaceful and friendly union of the former Soviet Russian-speaking republics,
where people were until recently united by same culture and spoke same language.
After this war, it is no longer a fact that this is possible.
Each of us can make this scenario a little more likely than nuclear war, civil war, or a new totalitarian government after Putin.
To do this, even in the darkest times, one must not forget that the truth exists, that it must be spoken and not succumb to general hysteria.
Anyone who remembers a normal life, who remembers the truth, in such dark times will be very valuable.
I'll end on a positive note.
Yesterday there were reports that Putin wants to remove and try Shoigu due to the fact that he is afraid of a military coup.
It is not clear how true this news is, but such news definitely has a basis – a week and a half ago,
the Putin regime ceased to exist.
Putin's regime is an information electoral autocracy – it was built on the control of elections
and the information space through targeted repressions and control of key media.
But its main pillar was an agreement between the elites – as long as they were loyal, they could
cash in on broken institutions here in Russia, and take the money out and settle their families there, in England.
Well, or in Italy, Monaco or France.
Settle them somewhere where property rights are protected, the rule of law works,
and these elites do not suffer from the vices of the state they create.
So, it's over.
There is no longer a regime like Putinism was before the start of the war with Ukraine.
The elites no longer have the opportunity to steal here and live there.
Gone are the safe havens for corrupt officials of all stripes.
Everything for which all these influential and important people of the system worked all their lives – everything collapsed.
And this simply cannot but cause an earthquake in our power system.
We will observe the effects of it in the near future and, I think, we will like them.
Se you tomorrow
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