1:59

At 1.30

2:02

am I messaged my editor in London. I'm

2:05

going to get a few hours sleep before it all breaks

2:08

out.

2:12

At around that same time, the Ukrainian

2:15

president, Volodymyr Zelensky, posted

2:17

a video to social media.

2:26

In the video he made a final appeal for

2:28

peace. Zelensky is

2:30

standing alone in a TV studio, he

2:32

is clean-shaven, dressed in a black

2:34

suit and a tie, not yet wearing

2:36

his signature army green. He

2:39

is in front of a screen displaying a map of Ukraine.

2:41

The country's borders are outlined brightly

2:43

in white. But

2:47

Zelensky is addressing the Russian public, in

2:49

Russian. I know they will

2:51

not show this appeal on Russian television,

2:53

he said, but the citizens of Russia

2:59

must see

3:01

it. Who

3:06

can prevent this war, he asks?

3:09

The people, he says.

3:12

figures,

3:16

journalists, musicians, actors, athletes,

3:19

scientists, doctors, bloggers, stand-up

3:22

comedians, Tik-Tokkers and more.

3:24

Do Russians want war? he asks. I

3:31

would like to answer this question myself,

3:33

but the answer depends only on you,

3:36

the citizens of the Russian Federation.

3:44

A few hours after Zelensky posted that

3:46

speech, Vladimir Putin announced

3:48

the start of his special military operation.

3:51

invasion of Ukraine

3:54

had begun. I

4:00

can't see where they're taking

4:02

the money for this plan.

4:33

But

4:33

while Ukraine was being attacked, or in

4:36

fact because Ukraine was being attacked,

4:39

the ground was also shifting underneath

4:41

Russia. Because

4:43

by bombing Ukraine, Russia was engaging

4:46

and not for the first time in an act

4:48

of self-destruction, attacking

4:50

its own future.

4:57

This is the story of Russians who opposed the

4:59

war, for Ukrainians sake

5:02

and for their own.

5:05

They have taken different

5:07

paths since the 24th of February,

5:10

but they all felt the same that day.

5:14

It seems to me that many

5:16

people had the same day and I don't know for

5:18

what reason why everyone woke up very early,

5:21

much earlier than they usually do.

5:24

I thought, like,

5:26

fucking hell. I mean, like

5:28

everyone, I mean, what can a normal person think

5:30

when one morning, he or

5:32

she wakes up and realizes

5:34

that its country has gone

5:37

for a full-fledged invasion of the neighboring

5:39

country?

5:41

I clearly remember this

5:43

feeling that this is not

5:46

my world anymore. I see

5:48

my apartment,

5:49

and you feel your apartment like a safe place. I

5:52

don't feel it as a safe place anymore. So

5:54

everything changed just in one second.

5:58

So for me it was...

9:57

intellectual,

10:00

a very Russian intellectual, of

10:03

the kind you meet on the pages of a Tolstoy novel.

10:05

He's exaggerating here.

10:08

There were probably thousands of protesters, but

10:10

he's right. It wasn't going to set

10:13

any record for attendance. And when

10:15

I saw Arkady, I thought, fuck,

10:17

there's one person I know, and

10:20

that means that's going to be a small railway,

10:22

because at a large You don't meet

10:25

people, you know. The

10:29

faces of the people who came to Pushkin

10:31

Square that evening reflected three

10:33

main emotions. Pain, fury

10:37

and shame. The demonstration

10:40

didn't last long.

10:41

It's

10:46

dark because it's winter. It's

10:51

even more dark because

10:53

of the black uniforms

10:56

of the riot policemen.

10:58

Helmeted

11:03

riot police pushed protesters to the ground

11:05

and threw them into vans. Some 1,700

11:10

people were arrested that night, half

11:12

of them in Moscow. Others

11:15

had similar protests around the country.

11:19

It was pretty obvious

11:21

after like 15 minutes that not

11:24

many people are going to come, that

11:28

we did something for delusional

11:31

feeling of having fulfilled

11:34

some minimal citizens' duty,

11:38

but we are not going to stop the war

11:40

this way.

11:42

A police officer approached Andrei. He

11:45

was getting in the way, he said. Andrei

11:48

replied, oh, am I getting in the

11:50

way of your bombing of Ukraine? Andrei

11:53

got arrested on the spot. I was decided

11:55

that yes, it's easier if I am detained

11:57

than my daughter and my wife leave.

12:00

peacefully, because you know there is an

12:02

implicit, tacit agreement

12:04

within every Russian family that you

12:07

know you don't put both parents

12:09

in jail the same evening. So

12:11

if they take me,

12:13

the rest of the family can leave without

12:15

feeling ashamed or something.

12:18

Andrey spent

12:20

several hours held in a police station that night

12:23

with dozens of others. At

12:25

the time he already knew that this

12:27

would be among his final moments in Russia.

12:30

He'd known that since he woke up to the news

12:32

of the war that morning, that compromises

12:35

were no longer possible. I

12:37

was sure I'm going to leave

12:40

whenever it starts. It's one

12:42

of the, actually, what they called my

12:44

red lines. When you

12:46

live in Russia or in any

12:49

unfree country, you have to have

12:51

red lines. You have to be

12:54

ready to leave. You

12:56

never can leave this

12:58

decision to the moment, to

13:00

the heat of the moment, because every

13:02

time something bad happens, everybody

13:06

says, okay, we've got, you

13:08

know, school to go, we've got appointments,

13:11

we've got this and that, we're not going

13:14

to leave. So decision

13:16

this important has to be made in advance.

13:19

I mean, so it was not a sudden

13:21

decision. You thought about it. So

13:24

why? Because there is another argument. I'm

13:26

not leaving this country to these people. This

13:28

is still my country. You know, who are they to say

13:30

that I should be leaving?

13:32

Why did you leave? I was fleeing

13:35

from the sad choice between

13:38

drinking myself to

13:40

suicide or arrest, because

13:42

I thought that every evening after

13:46

the work, I gonna sit

13:48

on my couch and I'll

13:50

face this choice. Either I go

13:53

protest outside,

13:54

because you cannot just keep

13:57

silent, or you drink vodka. and

23:56

rhymes

24:01

and where the story of Russian exile begins. So

24:05

as the first anniversary of the invasion approached,

24:08

I went back.

24:10

Halfway down the hill from my

24:12

hotel, I stumbled across a bookshop. Its

24:16

windows and shelves were lined with books in Russian.

24:20

Its owner was a young amigre.

24:22

So we're OK to speak English. Yes?

24:25

But Russian is better. It's

24:28

hard for me to switch between

24:30

four languages one day. Well, your

24:32

English is perfect. And this is for an English podcast. Oh,

24:35

my God. Her name

24:37

was Sennia Galimova. Well,

24:41

I don't know where to start. Well, I

24:44

left Russia

24:45

in March just after

24:48

war started. Because I

24:50

was really afraid for my family. I

24:53

have family of four, me, my husband,

24:55

daughter and a dog. It's

24:58

important because bringing the dog

25:00

here was so expensive that

25:03

we slept on the floor and we didn't

25:05

have any furniture for five months because

25:08

all our money and all our savings were

25:10

spent to bring a dog here.

25:12

Like me, Sanya was in Moscow

25:14

the day the war began.

25:17

It was so frightening. I understood

25:19

that the most vulnerable people

25:21

in my family is my husband and

25:24

my daughter. My husband, because

25:26

he can be

25:27

caught and sent to war,

25:30

and it's terrible not

25:32

because of a danger of death, but

25:36

before this death, he

25:38

would be a murderer.

25:40

It's worse. my

25:42

daughter because of propaganda because

25:45

I know how Russian educational

25:47

system works.

25:49

Sanya had always told her daughter that

25:51

she had a right to her own opinions about the

25:53

world different from what she heard from

25:56

friends or teachers.

25:57

But when it was started, I...