Western countries struggle to curtail Russian economic activity
EVAN AND VLADIMIR
Tobin Auber, a friend of mine who lived in Saint Petersburg for decades (but who’s now stuck in Turkey in a complex, immigration-related “bureaucratic limbo,” which the British government should sort out), has been writing a memoir about his times in the Russian film industry. It’s in Russian but — if you speak the language — it takes you back to the chaotic but marvelous country that I moved to in 1999, before Vladimir Putin became president.
Of course, it’s possible to romanticize things, and of course, 1990s Russia was very, very far from perfect, but it’s heartbreaking to contrast the hope so many people felt back then with the hateful reality of what Putin is currently inflicting on Ukrainians and on anyone else who he finds inconvenient. So I send boundless respect and solidarity to Evan Gershkovich, the journalist accused of espionage for writing the truth, and to Vladimir Kara-Murza, the opposition activist jailed (“de facto for life”) for speaking the truth.
- “I am not losing hope,” Gershkovich wrote to his parents in a brief letter. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write.”
- “The day will come when the darkness over our country will evaporate,” said Kara-Murza in a speech at his show trial. “When black will be called black and white will be called white; when it will be officially recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who fostered and unleashed this war will be recognized as criminals, rather than those who tried to stop it.”
We must not become inured to such barbarity. Everyone involved in either process should have assets in every Western country frozen and should be barred from travel to the West until the two men are released. Although that won’t make much difference to the judge who jailed Kara-Murza, who previously was part of the persecution of Sergei Magnitsky and was sanctioned as a result.
But, to end on a more hopeful note, here’s a shout-out to one Russian who’s still living like it’s a free country and whose protest at least one academic is linking to growing anger against conscription among ordinary Russians. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a movement in Russia to stop this war, and let’s hope Westerners retain their focus and resolve to do so, too.