There is nothing to be afraid of the author

This text is not just my last column for "faces". In fact, this article I summarize many years of cooperation with Russian democratic media, which began in the late 80s of the last century.

Of course, today the “facets”, which are prohibited in Russia and published in exile, is difficult to call the Russian media in the full sense of the word - and those publications that remained in Russia are also difficult to call Russian and even more so media, for the most part these are Chekist propaganda leaflets, a service of “special operations”. Today they do not even come for those who wanted to work honestly, but already for those who were ordered to imitate this "honesty".

I admit when I wrote my first article for the Russian publication, I could not foresee such a finale. I wanted to tell the Russian reader about my own country and its natural desire for sovereignty and independence, one of my first articles was called - "Ukraine in the yellow blue." Later, when I could hope for the respect of the reader's audience, I wanted to help democratic processes in Russia itself. I perfectly understood that democratic Russia, whose inhabitants would think about their own future, is a guarantee that Russian tanks will not go to my country, and to many other countries, Russian missiles would not come in, that Russian soldiers would not come to kill us.

Unfortunately, I did not succeed. Many of my Russian colleagues, who even went abroad or were in prison or list of "foreign agents", still do not want to accept responsibility for the next transformation of their Fatherland into a bloody vile monster. Moreover, recently, I have increasingly hear from such colleagues calls to take responsibility for what happened to Russia.

Well, if they do not have enough conscience and courage, I am ready. I am ready to apologize both personally and for Russian journalists of the last decades - for everyone who tried to change Russia. But since I am a Ukrainian journalist, I apologize primarily from my compatriots: I'm sorry that I could not correct the Russian brains. I tried very hard. Each of my texts in “Faces” for these 23 years serves, if not my excuse, then at least evidence of my attempts. And I ask you to take into account this mitigating circumstance. I ask you to take into account that literally from the first political article, published in my student years on the pages of the Estonian magazine Vikerkaar/"Rainbow" for June 1988, and before this column, I constantly convinced my readers in Russia in the justice of the conclusion that the people that depressed other nations will never be free.

And the point is not that most of these readers did not believe me. The fact is that the majority of Russian citizens, as it turned out, did not want any freedom. The prophecy of Alexander Galich came true, who claimed that after years his anti -Totalitarian songs would listen with cautiously - "the author has nothing to fear, he died a hundred years ago."

But I wrote for those who wanted freedom and understood its value. It is for many years of connection with such an audience that I am grateful to the "faces". Grateful for understanding and common values. I am grateful for the readiness to fight evil even when most of the "constructive" creative party decided to adapt to this evil or simply lie down to the bottom to quietly wait for the banquet to end and declare their rights to honesty and uncompromising after all honest and uncompromisingly chopped off.

Even 18 months ago, when Russia was preparing to attack Ukraine, I promised the Russian audience to continue to tell the truth about the shit in which Russia found itself, even when no one would want to prove anything to the citizens of the country who stained themselves countless crimes. Unfortunately, today I am losing the last stand for such a dialogue. But I still know that the fact that my colleagues and I tried to convey all these decades from the "faces" will not be in vain. That sooner or later the Russian regime of killers and gopniks will collapse under the weight of their own atrocities and their own stupidity. What sooner or later the truth will turn out to be necessary even to those who do not suspect about this today. So it always happened in the history of mankind - this will be this time.

I believe in it.