"In early February, I got my driver's license—my parents bought a car and said I needed to learn how to drive. Today, I said goodbye to my brother. I don't know if I'll ever see him again. Putin has liberated us. We no longer have a home, and they even burned that damn car for some reason."

"A month and a half ago, I auditioned for a role. A great role, an interesting film. Just a month and a half ago, I was still making plans for the future, dreaming about something."

I scroll through my Instagram feed—my friends and acquaintances, the people I follow. These two posts appear consecutively. The first was written by a girl from Ukraine, the second by a friend from Moscow.

Burned cars and bombed schools, separated families, millions of refugees, executed civilians—the war against Ukraine, unleashed by Putin, becomes more terrifying and inhumane with each passing day, and the pretexts under which it was started seem increasingly insignificant and false.

And with each day, my sense of the monstrous dead-end in which Russia finds itself grows stronger. A sense of a whirlpool into which it is sinking and from which it will not be able to escape for many years—sometimes it seems, never.

On the morning of February 24, my WhatsApp was flooded with messages from friends in Moscow: "Damn! He did it!", "He started the war!" Horror, unending despair, and hopelessness—in every message. I remember it was a sunny day. But when I went outside, it felt like I was seeing the world through a black filter. Literally. Everything seemed to have darkened, dimmed. My heart was pounding heavily. I was frantically messaging my friends in Kyiv—to find out how they were—and my friends in Moscow. No one could believe that in our time, in our century, a real war could break out between our peoples.

Some of my friends in Kyiv, even young women, decided to stay in the city and defend it to the end, even though at the time it seemed that the Ukrainian capital would be stormed in a few days. They had no intention of surrendering.

Everyone in Moscow was frantically trying to figure out how to leave Russia forever. The end had come for all their projects, all their dreams. Darkness and suffocation descended.

Some tried to protest, to take to the streets, to call for an end to the war—but they were quickly overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness and fear. The only plans they were now trying to make for the future were plans to flee the country, to emigrate.

On February 24, Putin unleashed a war not only against Ukraine. He is waging it on two fronts at once, and the second front is domestic. Because of the war with Ukraine, Russia finds itself isolated from Western civilization, from its technologies and culture, information and markets, science and finance. It is also a war against all those in Russia who wanted our country to develop, who wished it to become a normal state in a united modern world, who cherished some dreams of the future.

Above all—against the young. They are being locked in Putin's timelessness. In the enchanted and cursed space of his delusional notions of a golden age of Russian history, composed of Andropov's nomenklatura Sovietness, Stalin's camp enthusiasm, and Nicholas's Black Hundreds spirituality.

And this war was planned by Putin this way from the very beginning. Putin prepared Russia for isolation, prepared it for disconnection from the West, from global civilization. For many years, he wove the cocoon in which Russia would have to cocoon itself to hibernate for decades, perhaps even centuries. The special path Putin is paving for our country leads it back—to the obscurantism of the Black Hundreds, blind imperial loyalty, to the animal terror and hysterical idolatry of Stalinism.

And he consciously strikes at those who hoped to live in a modern, open, and free country because he wants to rely on bearded fundamentalists, unwashed soil philosophers, and blood-crazed imperialists, and on deceived, unfortunate old people who think that if Putin returns them to the Soviet Union, he will also return their sweet youth.

Putin deliberately splits Russia into two parts, enticing some with the title of patriot and branding others with the mark of traitor. A war with the whole world is not enough for him; he also needs a civil war: otherwise, he may not hold onto power, and the desire to retain it at any cost was the main reason for the attack on Ukraine. The aging, losing-legitimacy ruler tries to regain his political libido and at the same time guarantee himself a place in history with a small victorious war.

Burned cars and destroyed homes, separated families, thousands of killed civilians, millions of refugees—is this a high price to pay for a great goal?

And the goal is being achieved. Frenzied propaganda, total information isolation, and the persecution of dissenters are forging him the support he sought. A nation that prided itself on defeating fascism is sliding into fascism itself. And those who try to resist fascism will be set upon by those who have long awaited this hour. Those who yearn for the past, supported by batons and bayonets, will silence those who dreamed of the future.

Putin gets what he wants: a country in a state of suspended animation, which he can rule as long as he remains standing. Yes, it will be poor and backward, but its citizens will be voiceless and obedient, and they will not be able to compare their short and miserable lives with those of people in other countries because this enchanted kingdom will be reliably cut off from the whole world. And the fact that after his death such a country will inevitably face disintegration does not seem to bother him. Putin will win the war against Russia, even if he loses the war with Ukraine.

And Ukraine will win this war in any case, even if it temporarily loses some territories, even if it pays with thousands of human lives—because this monstrous price will be its ticket to the future.