I have often asked myself what I would have done during the Vichy period in France (beyond the arduous task of surviving as a Jew) had I not had the privilege of my late birth in 1946. Very early on, I came to the conclusion that I would have left my country, ideally for London, to join General De Gaulle’s staunch refusal of defeat. If that had not been possible, I would have remained silent like the French writer Vercors, author of The Silence of the Sea, so as not to be forced to lie to the world and to myself.
You are no fool however, you have broad access to information
Putin’s Russia is neither Hitler’s Germany nor Vichy’s France, but it is no longer a "decent" country. Has Russia ever been decent in the recent course of History? As the grandson of a man born in Odessa at the end of the 19th century, I have a deep love of Tolstoy’s Russia, that of Chekhov and Shostakovitch. But I have much less admiration for Putin’s Russia, a country dominated by brutal and criminal thugs, as has become increasingly obvious with each passing day of the war in Ukraine.
Dear Dmitri, under the current regime, your country has simply become politically and ethically indefensible. Especially for someone like you, a man of culture, open to the world, who has access to credible news sources beyond state-controlled propaganda. You are not ignorant of what your country has become, you simply cannot be. When Russian armed forces deliberately blow up a crowded shopping center to inflict maximize civilian casualties, on top of daily abuses and atrocities, one can only conclude that their ultimate goal is to terrorize Ukrainians and force them into capitulation. Their obvious motto can be translated to "I can destroy you to the very last: surrender before it’s too late".
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