The war changes everything. By remaining in Kyiv during the bombing,  Volodymyr Zelensky sets an example of courage and fortitude for the whole  world. He records daily video appeals to Ukrainians and other peoples. It  seems as if he has been preparing all his life for this role, that of heroic leader.

For the first two months of the war, Zelensky mainly works out of a  Soviet-built bunker under the building on Bankova Street. But already in  May, his entire office moves upstairs: leading the country from a shelter  is impractical.

In this, and in many other ways, he is the exact opposite of his enemy  Vladimir Putin. As if their characters had been created by a Hollywood  screenwriter.

Putin looks like a grotesque dictator. He hides in his bunker,  receiving visitors, ministers, and generals, at a long table: they at one end,  he at the other. All footage of him is carefully stage-managed. While Ze-  lensky, unshaven, in a khaki T-shirt, is constantly on the street, among the  people. He records his selfie-style appeals on a mobile phone.  

Zelensky is soon the most popular person in Ukraine, an icon of resistance.

He soon becomes the most popular politician in the world. US sociologists say that if a foreigner could run for president, Zelensky would  have every chance of being elected.  

An important feather in Zelensky's cap is that he constantly talks to  his people. Every day he finds the right words, expresses universal emotions.  

On September 11, 2022, Zelensky posts another appeal on the messenger app Telegram: this time addressed not to Ukrainians, but to Russians:  
Do you still think we are one people? Do you still think you can  scare us, break us, force us to make concessions? You really don't get it?  

Don't you understand who we are? What we stand for? What we're  about?  

Read my lips: Without gas or without you? Without you. Without  light or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? With-  out you. Cold, hunger, darkness, and thirst are not as terrible and deadly  for us as your friendship and brotherhood. But history will sort things  out. And we well have gas, electricity, water, and food... without you!  

"Without you" means what exactly? To me, a writer from Russia, it  makes perfect sense. "without you" means without us, the great Russian  people, as we used to call ourselves, while it was supposed that Ukrainians  should call us the "fraternal Russian people."   

To imagine a world "without us" is the main challenge facing Russia  right now.

Putin philosophized on this topic back in 2018. In a documentary  film by propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, he threatened: "Why do we need  such a world if Russia is not there?" Many Russians at the time were  amused, not appalled. The phrase, uttered in March 2018, was considered  presidential bravado. Now, in October 2022, as I write this book, nuclear  war no longer seems like a fantasy. It hasn't happened yet. And I hope it  hasn't happened by the time you read this book.

But something else definitely has happened. Russia as an empire has  been consigned to the past, as a direct and irreversible consequence of the  war. Many of us born into that empire cannot yet grasp this evident fact.

On February 24, the first day of the war, around 140 million people  woke up without the future they'd had the night before. All plans, all  dreams, were destroyed that morning. And not at the whim of one man. They were devoured by the empire.

Not everyone realizes this yet. Many are still drugged up, intoxicated  by the grandeur of imperialism.  

We've been smoking this drug for centuries, feeding our own vanity.The myth of greatness was spooned down our throats, injected into our  veins, and it made us high. We escaped reality, no longer saw what was  happening around us, lost our empathy and human aspect. It's time to get  off the needle. Because we're a danger to others and to ourselves.  

Imperial history is our disease; it's inherently addictive. And the  withdrawal symptoms will hurt. But this is inevitable. We have to return  to reality and realize what we've done.

We have to learn this lesson.  To stop believing in our own uniqueness. To stop being proud of our vast territory.  To stop thinking we're special. To stop imagining ourselves as the center of the world, its conscience,  its source of spirituality. It's all bunk.

We must strip the state of the right to impose its own view of the past  on us. We have to roll up our sleeves and completely reinterpret our history, or rather the history of the peoples who fell victim to the empire. We have to look at the stories of those who have lived in Russia for centuries, who have been raped and killed for centuries, the pain blunted by imperial morphine. Administered by rulers who never hesitated to up the dose.

Looking back, we see a horrific sight: our ancestors, indoctrinated to  believe they were victors, were themselves victims. They were forced to  kill, to rejoice in the killing, to take pride in the killing. And they were  good at it. They were proud; they got high; they wrote beautiful poems,  songs, and books glorifying blood and violence, the crunching of bones.  And they forgot it was their own blood, their own bones.

Sure, not only Russia is intoxicated by this drug. It affects all empires.  But they have to sort themselves out. We cannot cure them; we must cure  ourselves. We are the ones guilty in front of the Ukrainians, Poles, Finns,  Georgians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tatars, Kalmyks, Tungus, Yakuts,  Buryats, the list goes on.   

It's my fault that I didn't understand this earlier. I am guilty before  Nadya, and also Mustafa, Seryozha, Anton, Sevgil, Kolya, Sveta, Nika,  Natasha, and my other friends, as well as people I don't know who now  live in Ukraine, under Russian bombs.   

But now the empire is forever consigned to the past. Some might  argue it's still too early to say. Oh no it isn't. Future generations of Russians will remember with horror and shame the war that Putin unleashed.  Tley will marvel at how archaic hubris came to dominate the minds of  twenty-first-century people. And they will not tread the same path if we, their ancestors, bear the punishment today.