"I think silence is my punishment now."
Soon after her government launched its war against Ukraine, Alexandra Odynova, a Russian journalist and filmmaker, told me how it had suddenly become very difficult to be Russian. |
She abhorred the decision to invade and was saddened that, based on her nationality alone, she would be associated with the war. |
"I have just been trying to figure out how can I continue living as a Russian, how can I work with this world," Odynova said. "People are speaking about how Russian culture is not something you can be proud of anymore." |
The struggle was made even worse for her and other like-minded Russians by the feeling that this was not the time for them to discuss their pain, not while Russia's military was inflicting so much horror on the Ukrainian people. |
"We have no way of speaking about it because we feel that it's not our place to complain because we're Russians," Odynova said. "But we are really depressed." |
For this film, the Opinion Video team invited Russians opposed to the war to talk about how it felt to be Russian now. With Odynova's help, we selected a trio of women to feature in the film: Elina Kulikova, a performance artist and theater director; Anna Narinskaya, a literary critic, curator and educator; and Natasha Zamorskaya, an activist, political aide and journalist. (Kulikova and Zamorskaya fled Russia after the invasion; Narinskaya lives in Moscow.) |
They told us how the country they had lived in most of their lives and was so central to their identity had revealed itself as something different from and darker than they knew. The war forced a difficult reassessment of their relationship with Russia — and even of their careers and lives. |
But each of the women wondered whether it was the time and place to speak about their challenges. |
I'd argue that it is. The war has caused damage to so many lives both inside and outside Ukraine, in ways both big and small. This video gives voice to a population of people who have suffered largely in silence. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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