IFrom the beginning of the war I have been ashamed, and sorry, and scared, and I apologised indiscriminately to everyone from Ukraine, regardless of their degree of grief, although I have no feeling that I was the one to blame for it all. But the real culprits of all this will never apologise, and someone has to apologise. That said, the apology doesn't even have to be accepted. But it needs to be expressed.

In 2012 I worked as an independent election observer, I wanted fair democratic elections like everyone else, but I was watching all these lies. I was 22 years old. Perhaps I should have done less of my own thing and more to prevent the further development of the authoritarian regime.

I think this feeling of collective worthlessness - that nothing can be changed - didn't occur just yet. It came in 2012. I remember the night I was chasing with my colleague the chairman of the electoral commission, who had run off with the protocol, and we burst into the electoral committee to prevent him from forging the protocol. There, two-metre tall guys with scars all over their faces came at us. And that's when I got the feeling that I was very small."

Everybody's giving up on Russia now, all my friends around me are getting rid of their Russian citizenship, but you can't run away from your past, which is a part of you. I have to accept the fact that my homeland is also like that. Aggressive, not letting others live freely, not being able to build a fence or renovate a kindergarten, but solving some bloody imperial issues.