I first met Mikhail Zygar not long after he had helped launch TV Rain [ дождь ]. It was a breath of fresh air in the tightly controlled media atmosphere of the early years of Vladimir Putin's rein. Since then, he has become a close friend as his career blossomed—with the appearance of his first book All the Kremlin’s Men Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, followed by his remarkable historical essay, The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917. But on Monday, I received quite a shock. Mikhail had fled Moscow on two hours' notice. He was being targeted for arrest and conviction as a traitor to the Russian state—carrying a 20 year prison sentence. With most Western airlines having turned off his ability to travel to Europe, he boarded the last available flight out. He left behind his family, all his worldly possessions and of course the country for which he still so deeply felt. Wednesday morning, he sent me this dispatch and asked that I spread it widely. His moving account speaks so very loudly for itself….and for the millions of others who no doubt feel the same way but are powerless to express their views.
By Mikhail Zygar
My father wrote to me the other day. We rarely talk — so I was surprised by his message. “You shouldn't be doing this. I condemn,” he wrote. Then he clarified: “My peers and I disapprove of your actions against Russia. I inform you that there will be consequences.”
Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But it is crystal clear to me. This message means that my father and I are on opposite sides of the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.
My father was born in Leningrad on the same day as President Putin—on October 7. He practiced judo as a child. He graduated from one of the best schools in the city with a strong math program. And then he continued his education at the Higher School of the KGB (it still exists now and is known as the Academy of the FSB). He used to tell me that he had probably made a mistake. He had been dreaming of studying math, of becoming a scientist. But the KGB officers had come to his school, talked with the best students, and offered them a chance to "serve their motherland." My father decided not to argue. He was afraid of consequences and took the easy route.
My father went on to serve in the GRU (the Main Intelligence Directorate, the military intelligence service ) as a codebreaker. He refused to relocate to East Germany (unlike Vladimir Putin). He was sent to Angola instead. At the moment, the Soviet Union supported the government of that country during a civil war, while South Africa and the United States supported the armed opposition. Several current Russian officials were serving in Angola at that time, including Igor Sechin, head of the state oil company Rosneft, Putin’s close friend.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, my father resigned from the secret service. So did many others, including Putin and Sechin. He also divorced my mother, and we have rarely been in touch since. When I finished high school, he wanted me to go to the Academy of the FSB. I flatly refused. My father was very offended and said he could no longer help me.
In 2010, I became the first editor-in-chief of the TV channel Dozhd (Rain)—the only independent news channel in Russia. In 2014, after the occupation of Crimea and the start of the first war in Ukraine, the Kremlin cracked down on us: they took Dozhd off the air, our landlords kicked us out of the studio. But we never gave up. We kept on broadcasting online from an ordinary Moscow apartment. My father called me and said that he was following my career and was also watching Dozhd. I was a little surprised. I wasn’t seeking his approval, but it was still nice to hear.
In 2015, I left Dozhd and started writing books. “All the Kremlin’s Men Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin” told the story of President Putin and his relationship with Ukraine. My publisher was afraid that the book would be banned – but it became a bestseller, read by fierce opponents of Putin and his supporters alike. Both sides praised me for writing an unbiased story based solely on facts. My father also came to me with a copy of the book and asked me to sign it for him.
The Russian attack on Ukraine last week came as a shock to me. For a few weeks prior, people would ask me if Putin would attack Ukraine. I always answered "yes" as I was sure it would happen. But I still couldn’t believe my eyes on the morning of February 24. I didn’t want to believe my eyes. In the very first hours of the war, I wrote a short statement appealing to the Russian people:
Fellow Russians!
The outbreak of the war that Russia started against Ukraine is a disgrace.
This is our shame, but, unfortunately, our children, a generation of very young and unborn Russians, will also have to bear responsibility for it. We do not want our children to live in an aggressor country, so that they have to be forever ashamed that their army attacked a neighboring independent state. We call on all citizens of Russia to say no to this war.
We do not believe that an independent Ukraine poses a threat to Russia or any other state. We do not believe Vladimir Putin's claims that the Ukrainian people are under the rule of "Nazis" and need to be "liberated."
We demand an end to this war.
I showed this open letter we drafted to some of my friends: famous Russian writers, journalists, and film directors, even the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov. All of them—13 people at the beginning—told me they agreed with every word and were ready to put their signature on the text. We published it.
Protests against the war broke out in Russia on the same day, and they were met with extremely harsh suppression. In Moscow, police detained up to 2,000 protesters on the first evening alone. And our open letter began to take on a life of its own: every minute people wrote to me and demanded to add their signatures. Several thousand people shared the text on social networks, adding their names and their friends’ names to the list of signatories, each of them began collecting signatures themselves. We all knew that Facebook posts couldn't change much, but at least we had a “census of the living" in a country where so many people had been turned into zombies and were out for blood.
That was when I received that message from my father. He was denouncing my “actions against Russia” and he meant my active anti-war protest. I never asked him who "his peers" were. When we last talked about a year ago, he started telling me about a huge American conspiracy against Russia. I was surprised then: my father never seemed to be infected with the conspiracy theories usually shared by his fellow KGB veterans. Back then, I just smiled and changed the subject.
On the next day, it became apparent what “consequences” had my father been referring to. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office announced that any citizen who supported the enemy could be charged with high treason and face up to 20 years in prison. After that, I published my anti-war statement again and updated the seemingly endless list of signatories. By the time I am writing this text, several petitions against the war, including my own statement, have been signed by over a million Russian citizens.
For them—for all of us—it is a tragedy. We are horrified by what is happening to Ukraine, to the people we know and love, and we cannot understand and forgive this war. We are horrified because we understand that each of us, regardless of our actions or beliefs, will be hated by the whole world. We are also horrified that half of our country supports the war. People poisoned by Putin's propaganda, zombified by television, sincerely believe that “Russia had no other choice” and “Ukraine is bombing itself”, and Russian soldiers are only protecting Ukrainian civilians.
From the very beginning, I have been receiving thousands of personal messages on social media. Half of them are expressions of gratitude for my courageous position, and the other half are curses, threats, wishes to burn in hell, demands that I get out of Russia and move to Ukraine. All journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens who do not hide their thoughts receive the same threats. But worst of all are numerous stories of people who get cursed or disowned by their parents. “I regret that I gave birth to a traitor” and “I will be the first to rat on you to the authorities,” or “I hope your citizenship gets revoked”. These are some non-made-up quotes of mothers who write to their sons who've been holding anti-war stances.
When I first received the message from my father, I laughed. I thought it was very funny. It's a weird repetition of a classic story from Russian literature. Nikolay Gogol, a great Ukrainian writer who wrote in Russian, is the author of a well-known novel “Taras Bulba”. Its main character, Taras, an old warrior, kills his son who refuses to fight and calls for peace, thinking of him as a traitor. Taras utters the infamous phrase "I fathered you, and I shall kill you."
It’s not funny to me anymore. Fears of our fathers and mothers have turned into a monster that kills. It kills the innocent people of Ukraine. And it seems that it has already killed my Russia.