Putin’s war is a cross to bear for all Russians

‘The photographs of murdered civilians, their hands tied behind their backs, shot in the head and tossed like animals on to the street… we will not forget, and no one will let us forget,’ wrote Russian journalist and author Yevgenia Albats last week. ‘The guilt for this will lie on our children and grandchildren. Bucha, Irpin, Motyzhin – we will now have to live with them for ever.’

Powerful words and moving nostra culpa for Russian atrocities in Ukraine. But they raise a vital question. Who, exactly, is the ‘we’ who is to bear the blame, guilt and punishment? All Russians? The 70 per cent of Russians who official polls claim actively support the war? Russian soldiers responsible for the atrocities? The commanders who ordered, or at least condoned, them? Or is it just Vladimir Putin and the very tiny clique who conceived and launched the invasion?

Yevgenia Albats is one of the very few Russians who have written publicly of her whole people’s need for ‘repentance’, ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’. But she is also one of the very few Russians who has passionately and publicly opposed the war – and spent a career, as editor of the now-banned New Times independent newspaper, exposing the brutality and corruption of the Putin regime, in particular its venal and murderous secret police. If any Russian is free from guilt by association, it’s Albats and people like her.

The Russians who are actually most responsible are the ones who feel the least guilt. The nihilists and the cynics, the conspiracy theorists and the my-country-right-or-wrong crowd. Russians’ self-delusion comes in a rainbow of dirty colours – from the ‘all media is lying’ and ‘guilt on both sides’
brigade to the outright Russian patriots who believe that their country’s historical destiny is to protect and dominate little brother peoples on the peripheries of the old empire.