My Country Started a War

Yesterday, on the second day of the war in Ukraine, I talked to my friend John Horgan and tried to articulate my thoughts and feelings about this war, my country, my people, my government, an my own role in this.

It wasn’t easy.

Here is this conversation.

Here are the first things I’ve said:

“So, we were scheduled to talk today, and we made this plan before the war started. This wasn’t supposed to be about anything in particular: we talk every now and again, and it's a chat between friends, what's on your mind, what's on my mind.

There’s only war on my mind right now.

Since it started, I went back and forth a few times on whether we should record, and I might still chicken out and not publish after we tape. I don't know.

But I thought I should try to talk—publicly and as authentically as I can. Because I don't know what else to do.

So I'll just try to share what this moment is, how it feels and what I think. And it's not going to be easy, because I'm not sure what I feel. And it's very hard to think.

One of the feelings that does seem to sustain itself is the following. It's also hard to describe.

When I woke up and found out that the war had started, and I listened to Putin's address about that, I was in complete shock. As is everybody I know. We're still in that state.

But, as the first day of war progressed, by the middle of it, I thought, I felt... I don't have a word for the feeling. It's not shame, but it's something in the vicinity of shame for the feeling of shock that I had felt in the morning. Because in hindsight, I don't think this should have come as a surprise.

I think it makes sense. I think this is what the Russian state is. I think it's what it's been. I think it's what the Soviet state used to be.

It's a system that's built on brute force.

Putin is in power in Russia because his competitors are either dead or in jail or had to leave the.

This is how the system works. It's not just Putin. The system was here before Putin was born.

And it's a hard realization. Because I think we were willfully blind to this state of affairs. And it has all kinds of implications to what I think about Russia, the Russian people, myself, what share of responsibility I bear for this.

You know, we allowed Putin to come to power, and we allowed him to keep it.

In his first address, when he talked about the recognition of the breakaway republics as independent states, he talked about Ukraine as a country that's not real. It doesn't have sovereignty. It's just a puppet of the United States. It doesn't have its own agency.

I think the reality is that Ukraine is trying to gain sovereignty. And it's very hard for them for geographic reasons alone. They're posed between two large militaristic forces, they're pulled in two directions. It's hard to be your own person in that position. But they're trying to be that.

I think Russia doesn't have sovereignty.

Putin does. Putin can make decisions and implement them and see what consequences they cause. But the Russian people don't have a decision making power.

I hope, I want to believe that most Russians are as shocked by this as I am, as everybody I know is. I have secondhand knowledge of people who are not, who support the war, who bought the view of the world that Putin puts forward. I don't know any people like that, but I know people who know such people.

My hope is most Russians feel in the vicinity of how I feel. I don't know if that's the case. But I also think it doesn't matter. Because we are not calling the shots. We're not even influencing the decisions a whole lot.

And this is where I'm at and this time.”