Recently, there has been talk that the war in Ukraine might end in 2026. Many people are waiting for that moment with relief, and understandably so. But when the shooting stops, the war does not simply vanish. Millions of soldiers will have to return to civilian life. A returning soldier brings more than a uniform….
When people imagine the end of the war in Ukraine, they usually imagine a finish line. One side wins. One side loses. A treaty is signed. The shooting stops. And then life, somehow, begins to move back toward normal. But wars like this do not end that cleanly. The more likely ending is messier: the…
If you grew up in the West, your body is supposed to be yours.A private home. Something you can decorate, improve, enjoy, and talk about without shame. In Russia, the body has always been… public property. Not officially, of course. But culturally, emotionally, and historically. It’s treated like a machine you’re supposed to run until…
In the West, video games are entertainment. Maybe addictive. Maybe a waste of time. Maybe a moral panic. The Kremlin looks at the same screen and sees a labor market. Because a drone war doesn’t just need brave men. It needs hands.Steady hands. Fast hands. Hands trained to track movement in three dimensions, make micro-corrections,…
Russia is a country at war. And yet, in a nation that claims endless “heroism,” you will not find a single living general whom the public is allowed to admire. That absence is not an accident. Look at Ukraine. In Kyiv, a mural of General Valerii Zaluzhnyi towers over a Soviet apartment block — a…
They call it service. They call it patriotism. But in Russia, there’s an older, truer name for it.Killing… for rubles. From the battlefields of Ukraine to the deserts of Africa, Russian men fight under many banners: Wagner, Redut, Storm-Z. But the idea is always the same — when the state runs out of loyalty, it…
Russia is running out of men. Not just soldiers—men of any age, any health, any background.The war machine still grinds forward, but now it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel: convicts freed from prison, men in their sixties, debt-ridden farmers, factory workers pulled straight off the line… and foreigners who don’t even speak Russian.Today, we…
Imagine waking up tomorrow to breaking news: the war in Ukraine is finally over. Celebrations erupt worldwide—but in Russia, it feels different. Because even if the guns fall silent, Russia’s crisis is far from finished. The war was never the root problem—it was just the symptom of something deeper. For the past two decades, I’ve…
