Part of my youth was stolen from my generation, part of memory, part of mythology. They stole the songs we sang when we were young. They stole “Waltz Boston”, “Belorussky Station”, “It's time to rejoice” … Everything that they could reach was soiled with their imperial hands.

Disgust for everything Russian

Thank God, Vysotsky has already died, and Galich too. Otherwise, what happened to Yunna Moritz would have happened to them. How can you watch the old Three Musketeers, seeing Boyarsky gone mad in front of you? How can you watch “Slave of Love” by the inadequate Mikhalkov?

The Ostankino television center for me is no longer a memory of my youth, of the What? Where? When? club, but a fake factory, which is disgusting to approach. For some reason, I don’t feel like asking for an extra ticket to Moscow theaters. Mashkov, Mironov, Bezrukov… What are you talking about? Little Akhedzhakova was kicked out for her civic position, deprived of the opportunity to live on stage in recent years.

The Hermitage, where I first saw Rodin's “Spring”, for some reason does not pull. The Louvre, Prado, Metropolitan pulls, but not the Hermitage. And I don't understand why. Probably, something special spilled into the damp St. Petersburg air, interrupting the rotten stink of stagnant water. Rashism, Putinism, xenophobia – this strikes more than Rastrelli's masterpieces.

I don’t even want to remember the common victory paid by millions of lives. After all, as it turned out, they could win without us. And was there a victory if we are “Nazis” and “German henchmen and we need to be destroyed? Liberate the “originally Russian lands” from Ukrainians. Bomb Kiev. Rape in Bucha. Mutilate Irpen.

Stolen memories turned out to be few

It was not enough for them to steal memories – you will not be fed up with memories alone. They stole the Crimea. They dishonored the forests near Kremennaya, where I dreamed of going fishing with my family. They stuffed them with rusty iron, mines, burnt cars. They destroyed centuries-old pines, poisoned the earth with half-decayed corpses, drowned their tanks in the Seversky Donets, blocked the path with stretch marks. The Liberators have arrived! Rejoice!

They stole Berdyansk from us with its scythe, bulls and a house by the sea. They stole Genichesk with an endless Arabatka. Skadovsk with the iodine smell of algae and selected mosquitoes.

They killed Mariupol, where my grandparents lived and met. They destroyed Bakhmut, where my father-in-law and mother-in-law met. They fired at Nikolaev, where my wife was born. They are hammering in the Sumy region, where my father grew up. Chernihiv was crippled, Kharkov and Kherson are being tormented. My hometown of Dnipro now hides fellow countrymen killed by a Russian missile. She ended up in a residential building, not far from my parents' house. In an ordinary residential building.

They are haunted by Odessa, Ochakov, Zaporozhye. They want to turn them into Mariupol too. They want to turn everything into Mariupol. The protected Kinburn Spit will now become a disaster zone for many years, because they came there. They are never enough. The main thing for them is not to capture, increase and improve, but to reach out, steal, break, disgrace, make uninhabitable, unusable. So that if they don’t get it, then no one will.

A shared future is impossible

There is no more common past. The joint present is a bloody, destructive war. A common future will never be. No one wants to have anything to do with a murderer, rapist, thief and vandal.

They destroyed and maimed everything they could and even more. From memories to the language of communication. There is no desire to have anything in common. I don't even want to remember what happened. What once caused nostalgia, now causes disgust.