Norwegian writer Erlend Lu, known for his work on the books Naive. Super”, “Dollar: a novel”, “In the power of women” and others, wrote a letter to his Russian readers. In it, he condemned the war in Ukraine, and also spoke about why the Russian authorities decided to start it.. The full text of the letter was published by Meduza..

“It pains me that Russian boys, as I write this, are dying in tanks, on the streets and in the fields in a war they barely know anything about.. This is not a righteous war, but a lie. The whole world is watching these events, and you, the Russians, also guess that something is wrong.. But you are not allowed to see or know what is happening,” the letter says..

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Lu also wrote that in itself the restriction of access to the free press that is happening in Russia is already a bad sign.. “Your authorities have created an environment in which it is dangerous to seek the truth. For this, you face a fine, imprisonment, and in the worst case, death.; all this is extremely similar to the situation prevailing in the country that attacked you eighty years ago,” he writes..

The writer also added that the Russians are accustomed to being lied to, their parents also faced this.. Under such conditions, it is easy to give up and decide that those who govern should be in charge of politics.. But right now it is especially important that the voice of the Russians be heard..

“From the outside, it seems that your authorities are afraid that the example of the country that your soldiers have now attacked will make you think about democracy in Russia. They are so afraid of this that they call the inhabitants of that country Nazis. Every Russian has this word in his subcortex, which is why it works so effectively. Even though it's not true. After all, Ukraine, on the contrary, is a democratic country.. She spent thirty years building democratic institutions and ensuring the separation of power so that the reins of power did not end up in the hands of one person.. In other words, she managed to build a modern state - with freedom of thought, press and religion, a state that recognizes diversity, ”writes Lu.

He notes that the coalition of right-wing forces in Ukraine received only 2.15% of the vote in the 2019 elections, and that there are neo-Nazis in Russia and Norway, but the mere fact of their presence does not make the country a Nazi..

“Your leaders are afraid that not Nazism will spread to you, but just democracy. But democracy does not pose a danger to the people of Russia. You are just as capable of making decisions for yourself as anyone else.. But democracy threatens your rulers. For them, it means the loss of power and the loss of money that should have been spent on the development of Russian society, but ended up in the pockets of several people..

You yourself know all this very well.. And that's why it surprises me that the Russian people allow all this to happen.. I understand that you are scared. Even I'm scared, although I'm far from the scene. But your sons, brothers, fathers and husbands are dying right now in Ukraine in unthinkable numbers — along with Ukrainian brothers and sisters. In honor of what? In honor of one man's crazy ravings about a lost empire. Europe has not seen such an offensive war since Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941..

Only the Russians themselves can deal with this. Please do it.

So that all of us who love Russia and Russians can continue to do so,” the letter says..

Recall that yesterday the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who started the war in Ukraine, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that Russia lost a significant number of soldiers during the invasion of Ukraine, calling it a great tragedy for the country. But the Russians still have no idea of \u200b\u200bthe scale of this tragedy, since Moscow does not name the number of its losses..