"For school, we've been teaching her to lie for a long time."

"For school, we have been teaching her to lie for a long time" After the publication of Arthur's story from Siberia about obsessive military propaganda at school, we received many comments. They included advice to change the school to another one with more adequate teachers, to transfer the child to home schooling, to leave the country. The comments also included emotional responses and their own examples of confronting ...

"For school, we've been teaching her to lie for a long time" Read More "

"I became disillusioned with the idea of peaceful protest."

- To be optimistic about what is happening in Russia right now is naive, it's stupid. It is clear that there are bits and pieces in me, some strings that say: no, no, everything will be fine! It will be, I guess. Probably. But when? How many years? Will I live to see it? It's very hard to believe.

"Putinism is contagious."

- The autocrat helps the autocrat because Putinism is contagious. Why did Xi Jinping go to Putin in Moscow in 2013, when he became the official President of the People's Republic of China? Because he was interested in suppressing internal opposition, suppressing powerful opposition politicians, which he did... He was interested in technologies to control the masses, to come to power, to change the constitution.

"I got into a fight with riot police, so I had to get out."

- I didn't talk, I growled. When the woman was carried in front of me, it was an animal growl at these guys. I remember when they put their hands on me. I got yanked, I broke free, they went down. I got tasered in the leg. I did a somersault. I'm an acrobat. They said I was like the devil out of a snuff box. I realize I'm fucked.

"Russia is North Korea number two."

- It's like the sword of Damocles hanging over everyone - you can be taken away, you can be caught in the subway, [there may be] a summons... I have clearly decided for myself that a doctor's task is to save lives, not to take them away. This is the position that our public politicians lack. They believe that human life and human beings in general are a means, not an end... A doctor sees how hard life is, how hard it is to keep healthy, how much effort it takes to restore at least a fraction of it, and in some situations it is impossible. We lack humanistic politicians who understand this value.

"Don't trust the cops, they'll always cheat you."

- You can't trust this government. When they tell you that it's not troops pulling up to the border, but it's just an exercise, why on earth would you [answer]: "Oh, yes, it's an exercise!" It was some kind of denial or just collective obfuscation. There is no other way [to explain] that we believed in this nonsense.

"I packed my life into one suitcase."

- In the year and a half that I've been drawing anti-war illustrations, a lot of people have changed their minds. I used to have relatives, family friends, come to my comments and write me nasty things or that it's all wrong and I'm a traitor to my homeland. When I flew on a sad occasion to Russia in January, after a year of emigration, they came up to me and said: "We were wrong, we understand you now". At such moments, I realize what I am drawing these illustrations for.

"We couldn't even bury Dima."

- He was lying in my arms. There was an ambulance at the exit from Volnovakha, which was passing by in the evening. Everyone in it was killed by shelling. They shot the ambulance with machine guns. We drove towards Ugledar. A [some] car stopped. There was a nurse or a doctor with a red cross. They tried [Dima's] pulse. They said, "Hold on. He's already dead."

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