[_tunic_]

I just read an interesting article about life in Russia at the moment, from the eyes of Derk Sauer, who has been running several media businesses like newspapers and magazines in Moscow over the last 30 or so years. Here's the Google translation:


==============



Derk Sauer was forced to leave Moscow: 'Will we ever see our house again?'

Publisher and journalist Derk Sauer has lived in Moscow since 1989. Because of the war he is forced to leave. A personal account of a painful farewell.
Derk Sauer < 12-03-22, 15:00 Last update: 07:16

This was it. I embrace Oleg – our mainstay in Moscow who will look after our house, pack my suitcase, take one last look at the turret on the roof of our house and get into the car on this beautiful, clear winter's day on the way to the Sheremetyevo airport.

I take with me: the drawing of the dacha the boys made for our 12.5-year marriage, my wife Ellen's three favorite porcelain figurines, some family jewellery, the children's milk teeth and our marriage certificate.

Behind remains a house full of stuff we collected over the past 32 years; our diaries, photo albums, library full of books about Russia, the goldfish, the soccer trophies our children won and our social realist art that we collected over the years.

Will we see them again? And if so, when. Months, years? We can't do anything with our house anyway. The Russian government has banned all transactions by foreigners.

Today was Maslenitsa, the festival of spring. That's why I pay a visit to the dacha at Lena's to eat the traditional pancakes with caviar and sour cream. Lena lives in a dacha village just outside Moscow. I navigate my car through narrow streets between huge snow banks and stop in front of her picturesque wooden house. I will definitely miss those Russian winters. Cross-country skiing on the Moscow River, the buzz of the city muffled by crunching snow.

Lena was our interpreter when we arrived in Moscow in 1989. She spoke Dutch fluently, graduated on the theme 'the reciprocal verb in the Leuven Bible', but had never visited the Netherlands. She looked at us shyly with her big Soviet glasses.

She helped set up Independent Media, our publishing house that quickly grew into a major media company. Together with Ellen, she became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and influenced a generation of Russian women. She made it to CEO of our company with 1,300 employees and more than forty titles.

I no longer dare to write on Facebook against the war, because imagine if I am arrested. Then my son has no one
Lena

Now Lena is nervous. Her son is severely autistic and dependent on western medicines. Ellen is a godmother and has been taking Anton out to dinner every two weeks for years. Always to the same restaurant, where he always orders the same menu. We have agreed that if something happens to Lena, we will take care of Anton. She has no further family in Russia. How should that be done?

,,I still have ampoules for a month,' says Lena about the medication that Anton absolutely needs, ,,I went to all pharmacies in recent days, but the medicines are already gone. How on earth is that supposed to go on?” "We will send them from the Netherlands", I say, but I immediately realize that all courier services have stopped.

"I don't dare to write against the war on Facebook anymore, because imagine if I was arrested. Then Anton has no one left,” says Lena. Not much is left of the successful businesswoman. Her husband Nicolai died four years ago of a heart attack. And to make matters worse, she lost most of her savings to a shady Russian wealth manager.


Dollars in cookie jar

Lena withdrew her remaining money from the bank just in time. in dollars. She shows a cookie jar under the counter full of plastic-wrapped stacks. “I have to deal with this. I can't leave and soon I'll be hungry. The stores are already empty.” She does not dare to talk more than superficially with the neighbours. “They believe in Putin's fairy tale. It hurts my ears. I am so ashamed of my country.”

Julia stops by at home to say hello. I got to know Julia at RBK, for which I worked as CEO from 2015. RBK was a large independent Russian media company, with its own TV channel, daily newspaper and Russia's largest news site. Julia, a petite woman with a big smile, was the Human Resources Director. And above all a good person.

With a young journalistic team, we dusted off the old RBK and turned it into a modern media company. Our investigative reports on corruption caused a furore. After an article about the billion-dollar property of Putin's eldest daughter, the bomb exploded. The FSB raided, the owner was forced to give the company away to a pro-Kremlin oligarch, and the editors were fired. RBK, like so many media companies, came under the direct control of the Kremlin.

Most managers stayed put; the salaries were too high, the cars too fat, but Julia got out. “Principles are more important than money!” Said but more Russians that.


Passport Russian, Birth Certificate Ukrainian

A month ago she exchanged her flat for a house with a garden in a fenced park just outside Moscow. She bought the house by accident from my Dutch friend Jan-Willem, who, like us, spent years in Moscow and had just decided to return to the Netherlands.

“I am perfectly happy here with my husband, our twins and my parents. Life smiles at us," Julia wrote a few weeks ago. Now she sits at our kitchen table with trembling hands. I bought pastries but she doesn't touch it. "I haven't been able to eat for days." Julia grew up in Ukraine. Her niece is in a cellar in Kharkov with children. Now and then she has telephone contact, charging the mobile is almost impossible.

Like Julia, there are millions of Russians. Her passport is Russian, her birth certificate Ukrainian. She never had to think about that before. It is something like the Netherlands and Flanders: the same language, the same traditions, the same culture. Julia thought it impossible that Russia would ever go to war against her own family.

I am distraught and furious. I would have loved to go straight to Ukraine to help there, but how do you get there from Moscow?
Julia

She bursts into tears. Putin destroyed our lives in a week. I am distraught and furious. I would have loved to go straight to Ukraine to help there, but how do you get there from Moscow?” Julia, like many middle-class Russians, is also immediately in financial worries. She has taken out a hefty mortgage to pay for her dream home. Her husband is a construction project manager. A good job – were it not for the fact that after a week of sanctions the work comes to a standstill. “There is cement and wood, but technical stuff such as lifts and air conditioners no longer come in. The whole construction in Russia is coming to a standstill. And without work, no salary.”

Julia has just started a startup to advise companies on their so-called ESG strategy: how to operate sustainably and responsibly as a company. A new but important theme for Russia. Russia, and especially Siberia, is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. More and more companies are realizing that action must be taken before it is too late.

“Now that the Russian economy is collapsing before our eyes, they have something else on their mind than ESG strategy,” Julia realizes. The stock market has been closed for a week. Russian stocks are worth nothing anymore.

We don't get bombs on our heads. We are perpetrators and victims at the same time. Putin destroyed two countries in one week
Julia

She wants to go to Georgia with the whole family. Russians can go there without a visa. She is certainly not the only one. More than 30,000 Russians have already preceded her last week. “Even though I have to wash dishes. Anything better than staying in this sick country.” The only problem is that her elderly parents are refusing to leave.

She sighs. “I don't know anymore. You know what it is: of course our suffering pales in comparison to that of the Ukrainians. We don't get bombs on our heads. We are perpetrators and victims at the same time. Putin has destroyed two countries in a week.”