Three Years of War

What We Shouldn’t Forget

Three years ago was the worst day of my life.
I woke up and learned that Russia had attacked Ukraine.

I woke my daughter with the words, “Liza, I have bad news. The war has begun.”

That morning, my husband was supposed to have surgery—he had broken his shoulder. On the way to the hospital, he wrote an anti-war post on Facebook. Soon after, he read a comment from his mother: “You are no longer my son. There are no traitors in our family.”

She disowned her son for what she believed was the greatness of her country. She still believes that—nothing has changed for them since.

A few hours later that day, I wrote a letter declaring that this war was a disgrace for us and for future generations of Russians. We do not believe Putin’s claims that the Ukrainian people are under the control of “Nazis” and need to be “liberated.” I discussed this text with several acquaintances—writers, filmmakers, journalists—one of them, for example, was the Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov. And Russian independent media published it as a collective letter of protest—the “Letter of the Thirteen”—and in the following days, hundreds of thousands of people shared it on social media..

On that first day, I didn’t know how I would be able to look my friends in Kyiv in the eye after my country started bombing them.

But then I realized that the most important thing I had to do was not to remain silent, but to speak about them, to fight alongside them. In the first month of the war, I interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky—the only interview he gave in Russian after the war began. The Russian authorities banned it even before it was released.

I left Russia on the third day of the war. Forever. To fight against a fascist regime that kills innocent people.

I was declared a foreign agent. I was charged with a criminal offense under Russian law—“spreading disinformation about the Russian army.” Later, I was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison.

Several of my Ukrainian acquaintances have died in the war.
One of my friends, a journalist from Moscow, moved to Kyiv and joined the front lines—he is now a soldier in the Ukrainian army, fighting against Russian aggression.

Almost all of my other friends have left—they now live in Berlin, London, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, and a thousand other places.

My mother died in Moscow last year, and I couldn’t attend her funeral. Two days ago would have been her birthday—she would have turned 72. I may never be able to visit her grave.

Right now, many people I know, both Ukrainians and Russian emigramts, are experiencing very dark feelings. Many of them think it’s all for nothing. That Putin will get away with everything. That the war he started, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost—will all be forgotten.

I am a historian, and I know that this is not true—it’s impossible to hide an aggressive war, to disguise it as a war of liberation. War crimes cannot be silenced. I am certain the day will come when Russia acknowledges its guilt.

But for that to happen, we must fight every single day.

This week, I will be publishing pieces about Ukraine: why Putin decided to start this war, what his real plan for conquest was, how he rewrote Ukrainian history, and how Russian propaganda has evolved over three years of war.

We have a duty not to give up—if we keep fighting, none of this will be in vain.