“I feel like a rat being experimented on”

Ruslan (name changed) is a native St. Petersburger. He is 26. His letter is about the survival of thinking young people who did not choose the current Russian government. There is no way to leave, everyone around me hates me, all my energy is spent on litigation with the military registration and enlistment office. And tomorrow it will only get worse.

- Good afternoon. I really want to also speak out on all these vexed topics, but from a slightly different position.

When this whole war started, I was 22 and studying at university. I remember how everyone was shocked that this happened. The guys simply did not expect that such things as war were even possible now in countries such as the Russian Federation. The shock was so strong that it could be compared to hearing that Germany had started the war again.

Then there was a lot of fear. There were many rumors about nuclear war, and I remember how we were all literally shaking from the news and forecasts. All sorts of experts came out and started talking about what happens to a person during a nuclear explosion, what kind of destruction occurs and how to react, and so on. Almost all of them said that it was especially useless to rock the boat. And then this thesis stuck in my head as an axiom, which was confirmed more than once during the course of this entire damned military campaign.

"It's no use trying." Because you are too small a person to influence anything.

I have few relatives. But I have a mother whom I love very much. We have never been any kind of patriots - just ordinary people who want to live peacefully in an ordinary state. What we can do, we adapt to, and what we are capable of, we influence.

I owe my mother a lot. She helped me pay for my studies (otherwise I would have been drafted into the army, and then I would have been running around among the mobilized), and paid me most of the amount for the lawyers of the company that helps with the military registration and enlistment office. She is the person I just can’t leave.

I constantly hear that everyone is leaving. And everyone is shouting about this as a way out of the room: like, “Well, what do you need, I saved up money, learned languages, filled out the documents - and left, it’s still simple.”

And, they say, if you don’t do this, then you are considered an accomplice of this regime. I want to show a different picture.

Here I am a simple person, chained in place among all this crap.

Absolutely everyone hates me. My country hates me. Because she hates everything and everyone except money. Ukraine hates me. Because, according to their logic, I am an occupier, although I was not in the war and I have no way of getting involved in this whole story. I don’t even earn much, and very little tax comes from this money. And if I work, it’s mostly unofficially. I even tried to reduce my influence on all this.

Since the beginning of this whole situation, they have actively begun to close borders and complicate visa conditions for Russians all over the world to the point of absurdity. We, ordinary people, are not welcome anywhere.

If you are a huge talent, or you have money, or you have some relatives abroad - welcome. Are you a simple emigrant? Well, stay in your own country. No one cares about your fate, and everyone around you will treat you as an aggressor. You're Russian.

I constantly watch videos with various forecasts on liberal channels and feel like a rat in a cage being experimented on. My state is doing everything to ensure that I die, and everyone around is watching and, commenting, making predictions about how long and how much longer I will survive.

And sometimes they just say: “Tomorrow it will be even worse for all of you, you are all fucked.”

I completely agree that people in Ukraine suffer more. And I feel incredibly sorry for those who were forced into this whole meat grinder and either endure or fight for their freedom. It's hard for me to imagine myself in their place. Life is absolutely unfair to them. I respect them very much. Very.

But I always feel like an outcast. Me and the guys like me who are just trying to survive here, no matter what, get mixed up with the crap around us, with these herds of sheep that we are chained to. I didn't choose my neighbors. I did not choose my compatriots.

I have been arguing with the military registration and enlistment office for three years now. Nobody pays me for this. I just understand that it is necessary. I could write here my story of the struggle with him, but then my letter will turn into a legal chronicle. I have several diseases, and the military registration and enlistment office is trying to prevent them from being recorded. They deceive me about the timing of medical examinations, they mess with the fact of passing them. You passed the medical examination, and then they tell you that you did not pass it to the end. And go figure out who didn’t put what in this damn magazine. They lose documents and blatantly lie at all stages.

And I continue to fight them. I do not have any human rights activists who stand on my side and help me. Maybe a law firm, and even then I paid them good money for it. And yet they do very little.

Basically I do everything. I use neural networks for consultation and drawing up plans and strategies for fighting, statements and complaints. I work in such jobs that I can freely go to the military registration and enlistment office without asking anyone for leave. I’m working on my consciousness in order to be patient and consistent, in order to endure all these fruitless walks through torment without a goal and not lose my temper one day by beating up some military commissar.

Because of this, I don’t have time for normal self-development. After graduating from university, I was unable to properly retrain for another profession that I would like. I lived with questions of survival: I need to prepare for a new visit to the military registration and enlistment office, I need to save money, I need to find a working VPN, check it. It doesn't work - you need to find a new one. We need to find spare ones and check them. We need to watch the news. Buy new equipment before it jumps in price. It is necessary to compile many knowledge bases in case this or that happens.

You are constantly preparing for something worse. It's like jumping on ice floes. You jump onto one ice floe, and it begins to sink under your weight. You jump onto another ice floe and hold on for a while, but then everything is the same. This is not life. This is a constant search for some kind of foundation, which constantly turns out to be shaky.

I used to think that the Internet would always exist. Yes, of course, there will be some emergency shutdowns if a cable breaks somewhere or something else happens. But I was not prepared for the fact that the authorities would have the brains to break this seemingly unshakable sphere on their own right now. Now I need to reconsider all my strategies and do a lot of things while there is Internet. Because, as it turns out, it may cease to exist. Do I need to explain how much this slows down development?

I don't have money to move somewhere. I have no connections. I don't have any visas. I don't know the language because I don't know where I could go. What language should I study? Turkish? Serbian? Kazakh? German? Which of these states will introduce entry restrictions tomorrow or stop issuing visas to Russians?

I can't leave my mother because she still refuses to move. This is understandable: she spent a very long time trying to obtain a mortgage for two studios. She has never had her own normal home, and now she simply cannot imagine leaving it all and leaving. It seems to me that she will only think about it when bombs start raining on our heads. I keep trying to educate her on all these topics, but it’s difficult.

If, say, I leave, then what if something happens to her here? Who will help her? Who will protect her? Who will come to her aid? Who will be with her in difficult times? Previously, it was still possible to imagine that I could transfer some money to her or call her. Now even this opportunity has begun to be curtailed due to Internet blocking.

And in all this I exist. There are thousands like me, maybe even hundreds of thousands or millions. And we are all considered accomplices of the regime. Then they make videos about all of us in which they say: “Russians this, Russians that.”

I am also Russian. And I do everything to somehow protect myself from all the trash that is happening. I know that I will eventually be mixed with dirt. Because the world is not ruled by truth, but by statistics.

"Overthrow him." How? How? Pencil and paper? A bag? A flag? How to overthrow a dictator who can even kill people abroad? Even if I go out tomorrow with a club (I just can’t even buy a firearm), then what?

Many people who have gone abroad a long time ago make such cheerful videos, with such fiery speeches. They are so brave. So cheerful. Maybe because they are no longer under influence? I'd look at them if they did the same thing here. I would see how long they would live here.

They were just lucky. For me and people like me, no. How many children are growing up now and looking at all this? How many students are now starting to frantically think about how to avoid getting into a meat grinder, a meat assault? I was born in 2000, when he came to power. Could I influence something? Did I choose him?

Despair and hopelessness. That's how I feel. I'm damned. All over the world, I and people like me are cursed. Because we are deprived of even outside respect. Everyone considers us enemies.