Just watched it at the Siskel Center – the theater was packed, and a significant part of the audience was not Russian-speaking. The English subtitles were OK – some nuances were definitely missing, but still quite accurate. They should have run the subtitles in the end, when they play a recording of “Broad and vast is our mighty country” – it’s not like every English speaker knows this song, and I think it’s important that during the time of a tightening oppressive regime they play “where man is gloriously free.”
The documentary is unimaginably depressing. Not only because of what exactly it shows, not only because the audience physically feels the pressure of the Russian propaganda machine, but also because of how Pasha chooses to be blind even after he left Russia: everything was fine before February 2022, and then all of a sudden…
As always, I didn’t read any reviews before watching, and now I see some interviews with Pasha, and I am oging to try to watch at least some of them (I have no idea when I find time, but…)
I just think that people in the US can’t really understand the concerns of the European nations regarding potential Russian aggression. Yes, there was a Cold War. Yes, there was “duck and cover,” building bomb shelters, and such. But the US never experienced an actual Russian aggression, so all these scares were and still are very abstract.
I thought about that when Boris showed me his recent purchase last week. It was more like a joke for him, but the backstory is worth mentioning.
This is a Philips radio, which also has a large flashlight and a built-in siren. It can be charged from a wall outlet or a USB port, but it also has a built-in solar battery and, as a last resort, a rotating handle that you can turn to generate some electricity by hand. And in addition, it can be used to charge other devices via USB.
Overall, it can be viewed as a perfect “rescue me if I am lost in the woods while hiking” device, except for one small thing. The first time this radio appeared in a store was when the Finnish government was seriously preparing for potential Russian aggression and asked all citizens to have a three-day food and water supply, and to note the location of their nearest bomb shelter.
Half of Europe experienced direct Russian aggression over the last hundred years. Many cities were shelled and partially or almost completely ruined. Many countries lost big chunks of their territory. It’s very real and very close. It’s in people’s memories. And I don’t know how to get it into my countrymen’s heads that it’s not OK.
Here is the article, and I agree with every word here!
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrives at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Aug. 15, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska. Andrew Harnik—Getty Images
Seven days ago, Ukraine’s supporters were watching on optimistically, as all signs pointed toward Donald Trump allowing Ukraine to acquire long-range Tomahawk missiles at a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday.
Giving the green light for Ukraine to buy and use such powerful weapons would have dramatically increased the country’s firepower and ability to strike military infrastructure inside Russia.
But Trump, whose tone towards Russia had hardened since his Alaska Summit with Putin in August failed to produce any meaningful results, made a U-turn that few saw coming.
Zelensky’s most recent trip to Washington had a lot more in common with the notorious shouting match that took place in the Oval Office in February. On top of Trump’s withholding of weapons Ukraine needs, he returned to some of his old talking points. Most alarmingly, he insisted that any halt to fighting would mean Ukraine give up the Donbas region to Putin—an area Russia has failed to take total control of, despite 11 years of fighting.
According to a report in the FT, Trump told the Ukrainian leader that if he did not bow to Putin’s will, Ukraine would be “destroyed.” The meeting reportedly descended into a bad-tempered shouting match, with Trump throwing away maps of the frontline, repeatedly swearing, and echoing a Kremlin talking point that the invasion is a “special operation, not even a war.”
Trump held a surprise two-and-a-half-hour phone call with the Russian President Vladimir Putin while Zelensky was on his way to America.
During that call, Trump reportedly agreed to a second face-to-face summit with Putin, this time in Budapest. Hungary is one of Putin’s few allies in the West, and its Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has repeatedly dug his heels in on Western efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. To say it will be an embarrassment not just for Ukraine but many of its European allies is an understatement.
The meeting will allow Putin onto E.U. and NATO soil, where in theory he should be arrested given an ICC arrest warrant. The sight of Putin standing alongside the most powerful man in the world in a NATO country will instead likely be used as Kremlin propaganda—and another sign that Trump has once again been played for a fool by Putin.
For all the positive noises that have come each time Trump has made commitments to Ukraine, or encouraged NATO allies to spend more on defense, or apparently started to see Putin for who he really is, the facts speak for themselves. A BBC Verify report in August found that the number of Russian attacks on Ukraine has doubled since Trump’s inauguration. In recent weeks, mounting drone incursions have even brazenly entered NATO skies.
Trump’s desire for the war to end seems sincere. He has also made no secret of his wish to win a Nobel Peace Prize. But if the war in Ukraine ends with the nation’s future largely in the hands of its invader, the very idea that Trump is deserving of the prize would be a dishonor.
The Russian President is a man who lives by the axiom: give an inch, take a mile. When the Obama Administration let down Syria, Putin was more than happy to intervene there to prop up his ally Bashar al-Assad. The West’s decision to turn the other cheek after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 may have also emboldened him to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin scoring another summit with Trump is a diplomatic coup. So is Trump’s decision to renege on Tomahawks for Ukraine and swing back to Putin’s way of thinking.
A version of Occam’s razor—that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is probably correct—applies here. If Trump continues to reward Putin and punish Kyiv, Putin will most likely further escalate in Ukraine and test the West.
There is still hope that Trump may swing back to Ukraine, and heeding Zelensky’s call for an additional 25 U.S. Patriot anti-missile batteries is a good start.
Those closest to the U.S. President should urge Trump to do more for Ukraine, and stress that his current strategy is making Putin look smarter and stronger than Trump’s America.
For a man who cares about optics, that may be Ukraine’s best hope.
One of the topics of our conversation with my friend, who visited me on Saturday, was how we both strive to break away from the imperial mindset we had for most of our lives, and how the war in Ukraine has forced both of us to re-examine our beliefs and our “defaults.” She told me about a project she is working on with the Chicago Kyrgyz community, and how she knew virtually nothing about Kyrgyzs before that. She feels a great deal of respect and admiration for this community, and she regrets that she was once clueless, following the “younger brothers” shortcuts of Soviet propaganda. I understand her very well, because I feel the same way, and I am ashamed of the younger me looking down at the “smaller nations.”
One particular story she told me, struck me. When she was teaching a gymnastic class in a Russian-speaking daycare for pre-schoolers, she noticed a girl, sitting by herself and not coming to participate in the gymnastics activities. She encouraged the girl to join, but the teacher, who herself was a Ukrainian refugee, dismissed the move: “What would you expect from aul?” The aul is a word for a small rural village, and the whole sentence was a diminitive reference to the girl being from a “small nation.” My friend was appauled by the fact that a person who just experienced the Russian agression would say this, but she said nothing and still encouraged the girl to participted. Months later, that same teached approached my friend and said: I was thinking about that episode and our conversation, and I am sorry I said that. Now I realize how wrong I was.
I do not think there is much to comment on that, but I shared both my friend’s respect for this person who came a long way to realize that her believes needed some corrections, and also my friend’s deep regret about how deep inside each of us this sense of superiority was rooted.
Like everyone, I knew about the Ellis Island archives, but I never thought I would need to search there, because I do not have any “ancestors” who arrived in America many years ago – it’s me, who came here! But here I was the other day, trying to find whether and when my great-grandmother’s brother came to America. I was pretty sure he did, because my second cousin told me that the family “was in touch” with him and then “lost touch”, shortly after the revolution, I would assume.
Given how many Jews were escaping Russia during the 1900s pogroms, and not knowing the year when my great-grand-uncle came to America, and not even being sure about the name, I didn’t have high expectations about success in the Ellis Island archives. Still, to my surprise, I got a result in five minutes, just typing a couple of possible name spelling variations. Funny that the guide to the search for your ancestors suggested you shouldn’t type the name that they adopted in the US. It states that all of this “using the name of the village as the last name” or “translating Italian names into English” are not more than legends, that the newcomers adopted their new names after arrival. So I first tried his legal name, and that’s when my first several tries didn’t yield any results. But the moment I typed the name, my cousin said my great-grand-uncle has adopted, I found him! Again, I was surprised that only one person checked all the boxes!
I have to figure out what “Dranden” is because no geographical location is identified by this name, so the officers were not that knowledgeable. Also, I ordered the print of the ship manifest page, because I can’t see all of the details in the frame they showed me on the website. The manifest mentions he came from Lithuania, and it is quite possible that he was on his way, but I still can’t figure out what place name was mutilated like this!
And one more discovery. I vaguely remembered that my uncle, who immigrated to the US independently from me, mentioned our relatives “who were here before us.” I contacted his widow, who told me that she knew about these relatives and even used to be in contact with them, but those were yet other relatives! The relatives from my father’s father’s side, and all the connections are well known, so I will try to get in touch with them as well!
I will tell more about them when I get to the other part of my family history!
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.
The last documentary of the Russian Lies series is about Russian athletes and how they are perceived in Western countries. Once again, there was not that much new information for me, but the most valuable part is a clear explanation of how the Russian government uses the athletic achievements of the Russian citizen to it’s advantage. This situation is very similar to the conferences participation, and that’s what I have difficulties explaining to many of my peers. So many times my peers would ask me why I want to panish people “who didn’t do anything,” and tell me that “they want to support them during difficult times.” And each and single time I explain to them that Russian authorities use these situations (like some important person coming to a Russian conference or some Russian researcher is being accepted to speak at some European conference) as an evidence of the fact that “they like us,” ” they can’t survive without us,” and so on. And they so totally-completely do not get the part which is so clearly explained in this documentary!
The fifth of the “Russian lies” documentaries, that one is about the role of media in Russian society, and it is restricted. Probably the least surprising of all of these documentaries – all happened on my watch.
I wish this documentary was separated into at least two films because it touches on several different topics. Otherwise, I have little to comment on. Being intimately familiar with the selection process and the teaching methods at the Vaganova Academy through a friend, I never had illusions about Russian ballet. I remember an evening at my Palatine neighbor’s home when her older daughter rushed in after her first ballet class with a Russian teacher: “She was hitting us on our legs! “
As for looting art, it is, unfortunately, a universal problem. Some governments choose to correct their mistakes, and some don’t…
The third documentary of the series is about Soviet and Russian movies. I am leaving only minimal comments here because Russian cinematography is almost unknown in the US, to the best of my knowledge. Even my most frequent movie-going friends had seen very little if any, of the Soviet movies and even less of the Russian ones. And the fact that movies are the most efficient propaganda tool is well-known, so I have nothing essential to add.
Hettie's Reflections 