The message that I was on the sanctions list of the Russian Federation caught me in a subway car, on the stretch between Klovskaya and Sport Palace. I think the Russians - figures of Western and Ukrainian sanctions lists - do not know at all where the metro is in Moscow. Dima Kiselev, who can be very conditionally called a journalist - besides, he, unlike me, runs a state-owned company - except perhaps the housekeeper. And then I'm not sure.

That is why these sanctions - when they are not against Rinat Akhmetov, but against Vitaly Portnikov - at first glance look so comical. What can be taken away from a person who doesn’t literally have anything in Russia - neither accounts nor property. I don’t go to Russia since 2013 - because I consider it immoral to visit a country that is waging war against my state. I will not hide, it was interesting for me to live there and to be. For a journalist to describe the process of the collapse of an empire is a rare success, just like for an oncologist to monitor the condition of a seriously ill patient, to think whether there are means to cure. But since 2014, Russia is not even a cancer hospital, it is a giant hospice. The patient refused to be treated, I have nothing to do there. And the keys to the collapse of the empire are now here in Kiev.

And yet I understand the logic of the people who put me on the sanctions list. These people are afraid of the truth.. They understand that the truth will sooner or later bring down their regime..

That is why my name in the list of officials and deputies is a signal. This is a warning. This is a wish to be silent.. And I know that this is a killer warning.. There is so much blood in the hands of these people that in the event of loss of power they have one road - to the prison, to the Black Dolphin, or whatever they call it. So why don't they want me to shut up? I understand their intentions. I remember that they already tried to intimidate me, compromise, destroy.

But I will work.

Original.