"Sorry does not mean justifying." Sofya Rogacheva that "you cannot pass by the whole people"

Whether Russia will be, and if it will be, then what, old or new, and if it is old, then it is new, and if the new one, then who will provide the novelty, scattered liberals or not liberals, and what kind of novelty, European or not quite, and what will happen when propaganda falls and everyone recognizes the truth, all smart heads argue about it, but no one has an answer yet.

I would also like to know how it will be - it would still depend on it when I return home. But still this is the future, and the future follows from the present, and in the present day, today's, living, warm, bleeding under my posts on Facebook-those where I allow myself to regret all those killed in this damned war, and not just the victims of Russian aggression, outraged comments arise. "How can one regret these scum? I regret the Ukrainians, and those who were killed, and those who were left for the winter without shelter, and those who kill and shoot at residential buildings - I can not leave." "Your pity is the victimization of criminals, you can’t agree with this!" "To regret rapists and looters - never!" Someone proves to me how harmful my illegible pity is, someone is not lazy to read the political information about how Russian warriors raped women and children in captured villages, how they took out odious washing machines, computers and coffee makers on military trucks. Apparently, commentators believe that I do not know anything of this, and want to open my eyes.

One summer evening I talked with one Georgian woman-I just met my eyes, smiled, ran a spark. The conversation was about nothing and about everything - and about the war too. We drowned, swayed our heads, and then she said: "I go to the temple on Saturdays and always put two candles - for the dead Ukrainians and for the dead Russians. But how else?" I will never forget her phrases. She does not have to prove anything. She does not read my Facebook, but she would definitely not leave the comment that it was impossible to regret the killers.

As they say, if I must explain, then do not explain. But this is if you are not going to deal with those who are useless to explain if you can wave your hand and pass by. But you can’t pass by a whole people, past it, by its huge part, past millions of people with whom you have to live. Therefore, you have to explain.

We have to return to those places that are scary to even think about. In Buch, in Worzel, in Izum, and now in Kherson - how many more such Ukrainian villages and cities with torture basements, robbed and packed houses, hundreds of bodies buried in the forest, tortured, shot into the back of the head. We have to imagine those who did all this - with laughter, with jokes, with obscenities, with pleasure received from other people's suffering, other people's deaths. Yes, what to imagine-the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces were already calculated, and someone was put in the Ukrainian land, and the main question here is not anyone , but why .

A quiet Buryat man lived, walked through his Siberian forests-lugs, and the Pskov paratrooper lived in his barracks, well, sometimes he will wake up, he will float in the fountain-and again silence. And the Yaroslavl man lived quietly, both Samara and Kaluga, and lurked in him, like in each of us, a whole bunch of all good, kind and joyful - but the whole abyss of all sorts of dark, low and terrible also lurked in him. Because we are all people, we are all human, and no one knows until the end of life that he will trample under the influence of circumstances. There, in the blockade, only the last crumbs were shared, they were dying, not touching the samples of collectible wheat, and other cards stole and killed passers -by - but if it weren’t for great hunger, no one would ever have known about this nobleness or this baseness.

I am tormented by the idea that all those who were “famous for” in Ukraine today, murderers, rapists and looters, in principle, could live a quiet life at home, and, perhaps, a worthy life, if one person - we know his name - did not bite the imperial fly, did not take up the mania of greatness, and he would not have unleashed the war, and all the same, all the worst, all the worst ones, did not take it away. The worst thing was in them. It, it is terrible, slept in them and had a chance to sleep all his life. But he was so persistently pounded at the door that, of course, they woke up.

So how can one not regret that this chance to live a normal life, without killing anyone or torture, is missed, how not to regret those who could remain normal people, albeit not grabbing stars from the sky, but turned into monsters?

Here in this place it is necessary to make an important reservation: to regret does not mean taking guilty and responsibility for both your own arts and for the implementation of criminal orders. Sorry does not mean justifying. No, the murderer of civilians remains a murderer of civilians, the sadist, who was trying to people in the basement, remains a sadist, the looter remains a looter, the authors and performers of the detachments of the Kherson TPP and transformers remain criminals, the shooters in power plants, residential buildings and playgrounds remain criminals. But you can’t do not regret them, you can’t sob about them, because they are still people, they walked with us along the same streets, stood in shops at some shelves, sat at neighboring tables in a cafe and could live their former life and not to take on a load of such terrible guilt.

We know the one who called for them, so to speak, de Profundis, from the abyss - and pulled into the light a small evil chaos, moving in the depths of every soul. This person is a student of a sorcerer from an old German fairy tale, who, until the teacher sees, reads an ancient spell and causes the spirit of darkness. The spirit demands to give him a task, otherwise he will swallow the one who called him. The student in a panic asks for the first flower - flower, and unclean power wears and wears water in buckets, floods the whole house, and in vain the student screams - stop! - He does not know the spell to drive the spirit back into the abyss.

Putin, who opened the forbidden book, also does not know the return spell. In a fairy tale, the returning sorcerer saves the student, the flood stops, it is a pity that in our life such a sorcerer is not visible, and the unclean military power destroys and destroys the neighboring country, taking revenge for her for not being given. And at the same time it crushes the souls of those whom she put in her service. Therefore, her victims are on both sides of the "ribbon".

It is impossible, and it is not necessary to demand comprehensive mercy from those who were attacked, whose peaceful cities of Russian artillery today turns into ashes. In newsing programs, there are often a brief interview with Ukrainian soldiers, many never thought of fighting: some had a turn after buch , others after Kramatorsk , others after Vinnitsa . Someone saw people shot in the head with tied hands, someone-a murdered child at the station, threw everything, put on a uniform and climbed into the trench. Someone has a funnel from home and family-it is clear that there is nothing in his soul but anger, and this, as they say, is righteous anger.

They have the right to him. I am not.

Recently, the network has circled a video where there are two noble spouse-retirees to the question "What to do with Ukraine?" They are furious and literally shout: to kill everyone, kill and kill everyone! You can’t look at them without a shudder - but they, too, probably started not with these screams, but with the fact that it’s a pity - not all. To make an exception for someone-it seems to be a small step, but it is the first on the road of hatred. I don't want to follow this road. In the end, the outcome of the war also depends on how much human remains in all of us. And this path, by the way, the same one by which the student of the sorcerer was walking - and still goes.

Sofya Rogacheva - Journalist Radio Liberty

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