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Russia

Below is mostly my opinion on how things in Russia are (hindsight is that I never truly lived in Russia, just was born there and left when 8 to Cyprus and then eventually Netherlands. Most of my opinion is thus formed on my visits to Russia, what I learn online and the things I talk about with Russians still in Russia and abroad).

Russian culture and history is fascinating but full of tragedies. It's tragic how the monstrosities Russian government unleashed on Ukraine to maintain a stronghold on oil/gas exports were allowed to happen. It's hard to say how many inside Russia support this aggression as saying anything negative towards this massacre of Ukrainian people is punishable by prison.

It hurts to see this happen to a country with millions of people. Many of which I think genuinely just want to live a life but are instead prisoner of the unfortunately harsh conditions all on a whim of few incompetent people in power. The current state of things is a direct result of all energy of the state being focused on keeping the status quo.

Having said that, I still want to travel to Russia and meet the different people there. Ask them how they live, what they think. Russia is incredibly varied in culture and I want to feel how different regions live and survive given current conditions. I think/hope that more and more people start to grow conscious of the fact that they need to focus everything on immigrating away or starting to care more about their more and more disappearing agency in this oppressive country. Which is getting harder and harder to do given the unavailability of independent court and laws that can land you in jail for saying a war is a war or doing business with banned by Russia countries/organizations. If lucky, you can avoid jail time and will only get fired and get a criminal record that will make finding further jobs more difficult/impossible to do. It's a true dystopia all happening right now.

Having said that, many people don't even want to leave Russia either because they are clueless of what's actually happening outside of Russia or more commonly simply lack the funds to make the move and fear they won't be able to settle down in any other place due to lack of knowing the language or needed skills. I hope to solve this part as much as I can with LA.

There is many people talking and discussing all the unfairness that's happening in Russia every day. Literally non stop. I personally try to limit my exposure to it as it does get exhausting. Russia for all its warts is genuinely beautiful country with many amazing peace loving people. And can be an interesting place to live in if you have money. Infrastructure of cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg is superb. And despite the war tarnishing the image of Russia and Russians on global stage for many years to come, many Russians are very welcoming and friendly people who just want peace.

I don't know when and if ever the situation will change. But as things stand, I can't imagine myself ever living in Russia for long because the uneasiness that comes in living in a police state is too much. Life is too short to expose yourself to this. I try to only live and pay tax in countries that don't prosecute you for non violent speech in any way or form. And ideally having sane laws with respect to psychedelics.

All of this is just my opinion and I genuinely don't know a lot. The west lies a lot and have their own sophisticated propaganda machines for crafting out new 'current thing' narratives. So I just try to live my life and build great tools that hopefully accelerate the future where all countries are free from oppression.

I have a mostly Russian Twitter List I fancy and use daily. For political updates, there's many accounts I like. Michael Kofman & Max Seddon do nice summaries often.

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