Thread by @Der_Parrot

I picked you out of the replies. You seem reasonable, I want to be very honest with you. I do not hate you. I have merely reached a point where I am just numb, and find it hard to find empathy for your countrymen.

https://twitter.com/SomeFromSome/status/1678438997700362240

When the war broke out I did not want to celebrate and meme the “turret tossing”. Because I knew that getting burnt alive in a tank is a horrific way to die. But that empathy has just worn down by now.

The turning point was that video by a Russian soldier torturing and castrating a Ukrainian POW. It is one of the most horrific things I have seen in my life.

But the thing I remember most about it, and that I will never forget. Is that tens of thousands of your countrymen celebrated this barbarity and called for more.

It was then that I noticed that this is apparently the “new normal” in your country. When a young mother with a 9 year old child, get burnt alive with an incendiary shell, apparently that is cause for celebration in the “Ruski Mir”.

Throughout the first months of this war, I clung on to the hope that a Russian people will eventually revolt against a government capable of such injustice.

Watching how Russians celebrate cruelty, dashed those hopes completely.

I got to know a young and extraordinarily courageous Ukrainian woman, who had to pick up the pieces of her father after her home got shelled.

She also had to face your countrymen’s calls declaring that she would be next. And apparently this is something all Ukrainians face these days.

If you are Ukrainian, your very pain is not just inflicted by but also hostage to your people. You cant lament your pain, you cant memorialise your relatives, you can’t even talk about being raped, without some Russian coming in to celebrate your pain.

Maybe I should stop watching war footage, as it evidently made me more numb. But I can tell you about things I have seen and not seen.

I have seen Russians slowly saw off people’s heads, I have seen castrations, I heard intercepted calls of Russian women permitting their husbands to rape Ukrainian women. I have seen Russians celebrate when Ukrainians get raped, ripped to shreds, burnt alive, or are drowned.

But you know what I have never seen? Shame.

I know your countrymen are not incapable of shame. You are human just as I am. I am also sure that shame will eventually come. But until it does. Don’t ask me to feel sorry for your country.

So before you complain about the fact that there is a picture of me posing with a toy shark after 5 beers, I’d like to remind you that some of your countryman can slowly saw off the head of a screaming Ukrainian without needing a single drink to do so.

Then pose for pictures with the head and post it on telegram to a cheering chorus of more of your countrymen. Even so, I don’t hate your countrymen. I have merely become despondent through shock and disgust.

I would never condone doing to your people what you have done to Ukrainians, Belorussians, Syrians, Georgians and others. But I also no longer see it as my responsibility to hope, or be positively inclined toward you.

Maybe I have stared into the abyss of what your people are capable of too long. And I am more than willing to accept that criticism.

But even so, I will prioritize the needs and support of Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Georgians, over yours. And will argue for such.

My professor for German history once told me about our history post-WW2 that “We are a people who had to come to terms and learn to live with the fact, that we are the children of monsters”

You, today, are the compatriot of monsters. And tens of thousands, if not even millions of Russians, seem to be the fans of Monsters.

Until your country reached a point through self-reflection, where you finally feel shame, I am not going to care about a Russian who posted videos mocking drowning Ukrainians, getting mauled by a shark.

It is not my job or duty to do your national reckoning and self-reflection for you. My people had to do this for what my grandparent’s generation did.