Why did the Kremlin order us to call this war a special operation?

Because no one in Russia wanted war. Because everyone feared war. Because war means living people leaving their homes and returning in zinc coffins. Because war means smoking ruins where flourishing cities once stood. Because war is eternal fear. It is poverty. It is hunger. It is collective madness.

Ordinary people, who will pay for it with their lives, did not want this war. With their broken, destroyed families. Businesses did not want this war, which they will pay for with their collapse. Our so-called elites did not want it either, as they will pay by being cut off from the world and losing their usual sources of sustenance. The entire nation did not want it, because with the onset of war, human life ended for them, and life under the laws of wartime began.

Putin personally declared war on Ukraine. For an entire hour on all channels, he explained to the people why war was necessary: simply because Ukraine is a pseudo-state that fundamentally does not deserve to exist. Just personal animosity. There were no other reasons for the war; everything else was a pretext.

Putin sought the solitary glory that this war would crown him with. He counted on a blitzkrieg: on the day the war began, propaganda TV shows, with exuberant laughter, promised the capture of Kyiv by lunchtime. But he was not ready to take on the responsibility alone.

Therefore, before the invasion began, he gathered the Security Council of the Russian Federation—all those who might later say, "I didn't know," and presented them with the facts. Moreover, he forced them to say aloud, "I am for it." He implicated everyone who might try to negotiate peace with the world separately. "It's not me," Putin told the world. "It's us—all those who truly 'run Russia.'" The West has no one to negotiate with here.

So that if one day, in The Hague, a case about the war with Ukraine is heard, the defendant would be an entire group of people. And so that each person in this group keeps such a prospect in mind.

But even they were terrified of such responsibility—just watch the video of the Security Council meeting, it's clear there. It seems they weren't even informed in advance about the plans to start a war. And to relieve them of their fear, it was decided to spread the responsibility across the entire regime.

The deputies of the State Duma and members of the Federation Council were not told about this war either. They too were summoned and presented with the facts. And, relying on the theatrical consensus of the Security Council, the deputies and senators were also brought to a new oath. Voting against or abstaining was not allowed. Learned helplessness and military drill did their job. And even then, they only agreed to the use of the Russian army on the territory of the pirate republics—DNR and LNR.

But our tanks did not go to Donetsk; they went to Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Kherson. It turned out to be a real war—a war the people were not asked about. A war the people feared and did not want. And within a week, it became clear that instead of a blitzkrieg against mythical Nazi battalions, the country faced a large war against the entire Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, under strange symbols, curiously marked with the Latin letter Z, got bogged down in the mud. The count of our dead reached into the hundreds. Our artillery began firing blindly, destroying residential areas of Ukrainian cities. It became clear that we might be talking about war crimes.

And then it was decided to turn them from crimes of the regime into crimes of the entire nation. To implicate everyone. So that we could not say we did not know about this war and did not want it, they decided to make us accomplices.

The cannibalistic hysteria unfolding in all propaganda media is aimed precisely at carving the letter Z on the forehead of every Russian. It is needed to remove responsibility for the fratricidal war, for the destruction of peace in Europe, for the regression into a nightmarish past, from Putin and his regime, to allow them to hide behind the backs of ordinary people. To convince the West that it is fighting not a group of fanatics, but the entire Russian people. To prove to the people that they are the ones waging a war for survival.

To implicate people in the war, the authorities stage popular support. They organize administrative car rallies under the Z flag across eighty Russian regions. They form the letter Z in the white snow with terminally ill children from a Kazan hospice and film the little figures from above. They urgently invent, post-factum, new explanations for the bloodshed: Ukraine had chemical weapons, biological weapons, Ukraine wanted to create an atomic bomb, it wanted to attack first. At any cost, with any lie, they must prove to the people that this slaughter has meaning, that it is needed by them, the people, and not just the Kremlin.

But we must remember that by supporting Z, we support the bombings and shelling of peaceful Ukrainian cities. We support the destruction of hundreds of schools. The expulsion of two million people from their homes. We support the severing of fraternal ties—both within families and between our countries in general—forever. We support the deafening isolation of Russia from the civilized world, its inevitable weakening, and transformation into a raw material colony of China with its digital concentration camp technologies. Those who believe the propaganda now must remember that Russians are already seen as invaders worldwide. Just a little more, and we will be seen as war criminals. And this will become part of our history—forever.

This is not our war, and we must remember that. We must talk about it.