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I’m Russian. I Hope My Country Will Cease to Exist Soon.
Over the past few weeks, watching what the government of my country — but not my government by any standards — is doing to the people of Ukraine, I caught myself thinking something horrible.
I hope my country defaults on its foreign debt, airports are closed, businesses go bankrupt, food runs out in stores, the so-called “middle-class” immigrate elsewhere, and there’ll be nothing left but ruins.
Why? Because Russia is cursed. And burning it to the ground — along with the politicians in charge — is the only way anything can change for the better. It’s the only thing that will get people out on the streets.
Listening to New York Times and the BBC podcasts that cover Ukraine (podcasts like The Daily and Ukrainecast), I realized that people in the West — who have access to world-class journalism — now understand Russia better than most Russians, who watch state-TV filled with propaganda to the brim.
It wasn’t always this way. When I was still in college in Boston, I remember having a conversation with a fellow U.S. student.
“So what,” he said. “Ukraine is like the state of Russia?”
It was funny at the time — the ignorance of Americans, 70% of whom don’t even have passports because they never traveled abroad.
