Source: Ozon email advertising circular, 14 November 2025
An American World War II cemetery in the Netherlands removed displays focused on Black American soldiers, sparking outrage and compelling Dutch politicians to appeal to U.S. officials this week to restore the information.
The two displays were added to the Netherlands American Cemetery’s visitor center in September 2024 after some historians and relatives of service members criticized the site for not mentioning the unique experiences of Black troops. One plaque featured the story of George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier in the 43rd Signal Construction Battalion, who died trying to save a comrade. The other highlighted how Black American service members were “fighting on two fronts” — for freedom overseas and for their civil rights at home.
The displays’ removal, American and Dutch critics of the move say, signifies an erasure of Black Americans’ contributions in the war and their work to liberate the Netherlands from the Nazis. It also represents an overstep in the Trump administration’s campaign to curb what it deems diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, the critics said.
It’s unclear exactly when the plaques were removed.
The American Battle Monuments Commission, a U.S. government agency that oversees the cemetery, did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. The commission told Dutch news outlets that one panel is “off display, though not out of rotation,” and a second panel was retired. The commission did not elaborate on either decision.
Janice Wiggins, the widow of Jefferson Wiggins, a Black WWII soldier who was quoted in one of the displays, said she had “a gut-wrenching feeling” when she learned the panels had been removed.
“Not only reading about, but actually experiencing, how history and those who shaped it can be so easily and casually erased,” she said. “It was very personal.”
“The removal of the displays is disrespectful to the Black American soldiers who served and to the legacies their families cherish,” Wiggins added.
More than 8,000 U.S. troops who fought in World War II are buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery, a solemn site in the village of Margraten in the southern part of the country. Just over 170 of these service members are Black Americans, a slice of the more than 1 million Black Americans who fought during World War II in segregated forces.
The cemetery is special to the local community, according to the American Battle Monument Commission’s website. Residents have adopted the grave sites, bringing flowers to the cemetery for decades.
The 6,450-square-foot visitor center, where the displays about Black service members were, tells the stories of the thousands of Americans commemorated at the cemetery.
One of the removed plaques described the “horrors of war” that Black service members faced while serving primarily in labor and support positions. In fall 1944, the U.S. Army’s 960th Quartermaster Service Company, a mostly Black unit, arrived in Margraten “to dig graves at the newly created cemetery,” the display read, according to a photo provided to The Post.
Jefferson Wiggins, a first lieutenant, recounted seeing service members under his command crying as they dug the graves.
“They were just completely traumatized,” the display said.
Now there is no textual information provided about Black troops at the cemetery, said Kees Ribbens, a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. Although it’s unclear why the displays were removed, Ribbens said it’s notable that it happened during the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity efforts.
President Donald Trump signed executive orders on his first day in office banning government diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The impact has been widespread: Arlington National Cemetery scrubbed information from its website about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War. Exhibits related to slavery were removed at multiple national parks. The White House accused the Smithsonian of promoting “race-centered ideology.”
“Given the emphasis the current administration puts on DEI, it doesn’t make it that difficult to start wondering if the disappearance of Black history [at the cemetery] has to do with the current winds blowing in D.C.,” Ribbens said.
In the Netherlands, the public has been baffled that anyone would see a reason to remove the panels, Ribbens said.
Dutch politicians have demanded that the displays be reinstated, appealing to the American Battle Monuments Commission and the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.
Alain Krijnen, the mayor of Eijsden-Margraten, where the cemetery is, sent a letter Monday to the commission: “We greatly value the story of the Black Liberators in relation to the past, present and future. In that context, we would greatly appreciate it if the story of the Black Liberators — like the 172 Black Liberators buried in Margraten — could be given permanent attention in the visitor center, and therefore reconsider the removal of the displays.”
The office of the governor of Limburg, the Dutch province containing the cemetery, said it also has “serious concerns.”
“The displayed panels depicted a history we must never forget, and from which we can learn a great deal — especially now, as global divisions are being increasingly magnified,” Bas Alberson, a spokesman for the governor’s office, said in a statement to The Post.
The mayor’s office and the Limburg governor’s office said they had not heard from American officials as of Wednesday.
Janice Wiggins, the 77-year-old widow of Jefferson Wiggins, said she learned the displays had been removed after her friends visited the cemetery in October and noticed the absence. The removal chips away at some of her life’s work, she said.
“Along with [former] US Ambassador to the Netherlands Shefali Razdan Duggal and Dutch author Mieke Kirkels, I lobbied for the inclusion of Black American soldiers in the exhibits at the Netherlands American Cemetery Visitors Center. The original exhibits included only White soldiers,” Wiggins, who lives in New Fairfield, Connecticut, wrote in an email.
Those who have family buried at the cemetery also feel the loss.
Julius Morris is a Black WWII soldier who is buried there. His nephew, Raphael Morris, who lives in St. Louis, felt resigned when he heard the news.
“Business as usual by this administration,” said Morris, 73. “Color me concerned, disappointed, but not surprised.”
School of Rock performs System of a Down’s “Toxicity” (2022)
Actors Martin and Janet Sheen, John Cusack and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek have signed an open letter urging Russian prison officials to end the solitary confinement of jailed activist Mikhail Kriger, who has been on a dry hunger strike for more than a week.
They join Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson, who earlier this week called on the local prison chief to end Kriger’s isolation.
Kriger, 65, first launched a hunger strike in late September. He started a dry hunger strike — meaning abstention from both food and water — last Friday after a planned visit with his daughter was canceled.
Kriger has accused prison authorities of deliberately trying to isolate him to prevent contact with other inmates.
The latest signatories of the letter to the head of Correctional Colony No. 5 in Russia’s Oryol region claimed Kriger’s condition “has now become critical,” according to the letter published by the exiled news website Mediazona.
“[Kriger’s] speech has slowed, his gaze is unfocused and he is extremely weak. Dry hunger strikes cause organ failure and quickly lead to shock and death,” the Sheens, Cusack and Žižek wrote.
Kriger was in 2023 sentenced to seven years in prison for “justifying terrorism” and “inciting hatred” over anti-Kremlin social media posts. The activist said during trial that he was being persecuted for his anti-war views and open pro-Ukrainian position.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial designated Kriger a political prisoner.
The anti-Kremlin activist group Pussy Riot raised alarm over Kriger’s hunger strike earlier this week, calling on followers to write letters to him and the prison administration.
It was not immediately clear whether authorities in the Oryol region prison colony intended to respond to the international appeals.
It was also not clear when Kriger was expected to be moved out of solitary confinement and whether his medical condition was being properly monitored.
Kriger’s support group said the activist was taken to a regional hospital on Wednesday for tests, the results of which have not been shared.
Kriger’s lawyer said he was “cheerful, wrote poems and even offered to hop on one leg to show his strength,” the support group said in an update Thursday.
“Forced feeding will only begin if he loses consciousness or doctors deem his condition critical,” Kriger’s support group wrote on Telegram.
Yegor Shramko holding a placard that reads “No to the war with Ukraine” in Petersburg’s Palace Square
Our correspondent reports that activist Yegor Shramko did an anti-war picket in Palace Square and was detained.
The Petersburg man held a blue-and-yellow placard bearing the slogan “No to the war in Ukraine” and stood this way for around an hour. Shramko told our correspondent that although passersby supported him, the police were summoned by animateurs dressed as Russian emperors and empresses who offer to take photos with them for money on the square.
“I cannot keep silent. A life in which you have to fear everything, keep quiet, and be afraid of every little noise has no value for me,” Shramko explained to Bumaga.
He told RusNews that he had been wanting to stage the protest for four months but only worked up the nerve today.
This past summer, Shramko was jailed for twenty-four hours on charges of “displaying extremist symbols.” The “extremist symbol” in this case was the portrait of Alexei Navalny which Shramko brought to the Solovetsky Stone on the murdered politician’s birthday. At the time, Shramko told Bumaga that Navalny’s own words—”I’m not afraid, and you shouldn’t be afraid either”—had encouraged him to take the plunge and risk arrest by carrying out the proteest.
The activist held a solo picket for about an hour. St. Petersburg residents approached him—some offered words of support, while others began arguing with him. More than 50 minutes after the picket began, security forces in full uniform arrived and detained Yegor.
As you have probably heard, recently, on a Swiss train, a Russian man (with Latvian citizenship) attacked a family. The family was speaking Ukrainian among themselves. He started threatening to kill them and their baby.
It’s easy to dismiss this as just another “fait divers” (which, in a sense, it is), but I think it says something larger. To understand his actions, you have to understand where it comes from.
For centuries, the inhabitants of the Russian state lived in a situation where order depended on fear and extreme forms of violence. This was true in much of the world, but while many countries began to change over the last century (let’s put aside the reasons behind the change), in the Russian/Soviet empire the situation actually became worse. Much worse.
The rules were never something people agreed to follow together (after all, you need to feel a part of a society and thus to share common imaginary to do it, and it is impossible to do it if you live in the empire, however much some contemporary researchers might wish it). It is something they were imposed from above, by the state, or by whoever had power over you at the moment. People learned that laws only mattered when someone strong was watching. So when a person raised in that kind of world finds themselves in a place like Switzerland, where rules work because the majority respects them voluntarily, they see the absence of fear and coercion as a sign that anything goes.
The man in that train was in a setting where no one was looking as capable to physically stop him and he took that as permission to dominate others, those people that he hates for the mere fact of their existence.
This same pattern plays out on a global scale. The Russian state elites see Europe much like that man saw the train: as a place without explicit “real” (military) force. It looks fake, easy to break, like a house of cards, because it relies on trust, and thus, in their view, on NOTHING.
People and societies shaped by fear and domination can’t imagine relationships built on any agreements (that require trust). They assume that if no one is dominating explicitly, it’s an invitation to act.
The man on the train and Putin’s crew are two versions of the same story. Both come from a social setting that sees respect as submission, peace as weakness, agreements as empty shells and absence of explicit force as an invitation to unlimited violence.
Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday to make a deal with Russia, pouring cold water on Kyiv’s push for Tomahawk missiles as the U.S. leader pursues a diplomatic solution to the war.
Trump said as recently as last month that he believed Ukraine could take back all its territory — but a day after agreeing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for a new summit the American had changed his tune.
After meeting with Zelensky at the White House, Trump said on social media that their talks were “very interesting, and cordial, but I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL!”
Trump also appeared to suggest both sides should accept their current front lines. “They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide!” he said.
Zelensky said after the meeting that Russia was “afraid” of the U.S.-made long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, but that he was “realistic” about receiving the weapons from Washington.
He told reporters that while he and Trump talked about long-range weapons they “decided that we don’t speak about it because… the United States doesn’t want escalation.”
‘Get the war over’
Zelensky came to Washington after weeks of calls for Tomahawks, hoping to capitalize on Trump’s growing frustration with Putin after a summit in Alaska failed to produce a breakthrough.
But the Ukrainian left empty-handed as Trump eyes a fresh diplomatic breakthrough on the back of last week’s Gaza peace deal.
Trump has appeared far more upbeat about the prospects of a deal since his two-and-a-half hour call with Putin on Thursday, in which they agreed to meet in Budapest.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks,” Trump told journalists including an AFP reporter as he hosted Zelensky at the White House.
Trump added that he believed Putin “wants to end the war.”
Zelensky, who came to the White House to push for the long-range U.S.-made weapons, said however that he would be ready to swap “thousands” of Ukrainian drones in exchange for Tomahawks.
Zelensky congratulated Trump on his recent Middle East peace deal in Gaza and said he hoped he would do the same for Ukraine. “I hope that President Trump can manage it,” he said.
‘Many questions’
Diplomatic talks on ending Russia’s invasion have stalled since the Alaska summit.
The Kremlin said Friday that “many questions” needed resolving before Putin and Trump could meet, including who would be on each negotiating team.
But it brushed off suggestions Putin would have difficulty flying over European airspace.
Hungary said it would ensure Putin could enter and “hold successful talks” with the United States despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.
Since the start of his second term, Trump’s position on the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically back and forth.
Initially Trump and Putin reached out to each other as the U.S. leader derided Zelensky as a “dictator without elections.”
Tensions came to a head in February, when Trump accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “not having the cards” in a rancorous televised meeting at the Oval Office.
Relations between the two have since warmed as Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin.
But Trump has kept a channel of dialogue open with Putin, saying that they “get along.”
The U.S. leader has repeatedly changed his position on sanctions and other steps against Moscow following calls with the Russian president.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.
Russia now occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory — much of it ravaged by fighting.
On Friday the Russian Defense Ministry announced it had captured three villages in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.
All last week, Republican leaders tried to portray the No Kings protests scheduled for Saturday, October 18, as “Hate America” rallies. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers partnered with Atlanta-based science newsroom The Xylom to estimate that as many as 8.2 million people turned out yesterday to oppose the Trump administration. The mood at the protests was joyful and peaceful, with protesters holding signs that championed American principles of democracy, free speech, equality, and the rule of law. As the Grand Junction, Colorado, Daily Sentinel put it in a front-page headline: “‘This is America’ ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to cities nationwide.”
Then last night, after the protests, the president’s social media account posted an AI-generated video showing Trump in a fighter jet with “KING TRUMP” painted on the side. The president sits in the airplane in front of something round that could be seen as a halo. He is wearing a gold crown; weirdly, the oxygen mask is over his mouth and chin, rather than mouth and nose.
Once in the air, the plane drops excrement on American cities, including what seems to be New York City. The excrement drenches protesters, one of whom is 23-year-old liberal political commentator and influencer Harry Sisson. Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who shares media clips that reflect politics, commented: “Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping sh*t on America.” Historian Larry Glickman noted that media outlets make much of alleged Democratic disdain for ordinary Americans, but have had little to say about the disdain for Americans embodied by Trump’s video.
Several administration videos and images have responded to Americans saying “No Kings” by taking the position “Yes, We Want Kings,” an open embrace of the end of democracy. But they are more than simple trolling. Led by Trump, MAGA Republicans have abandoned the idea of politics, which is the process of engaging in debate and negotiation to attract support and win power. What is left when a system loses the give and take of politics is force.
The idea that leaders must attract voters with reasoned arguments to win power and must concede power when their opponents win has been the central premise of American government since 1800. In that year, after a charged election in which each side accused the other of trying to destroy the country, Federalist John Adams turned the reins of government over to the leader of the opposition, Thomas Jefferson. That peaceful transfer of power not only protected the people, it protected leaders who had lost the support of voters, giving them a way to leave office safely and either retire or regroup to make another run at power.
The peaceful transfer of power symbolized the nation’s political system and became the hallmark of the United States of America. It lasted until January 6, 2021, when sitting president Trump refused to accept the voters’ election of Democrat Joe Biden, the leader of the opposition.
Now back in power, Trump and his loyalists are continuing to undermine the idea of politics, policies, and debate, trying instead to delegitimize the Democratic opposition altogether. Yesterday, during the protests, President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D Vance, and the official White House social media account posted a video of Trump placing a royal crown on his head, draping a royal robe around his shoulders, and unsheathing and brandishing a sword (an image that raises questions about why Trump wanted one of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s swords so badly that he had the museum director who refused to hand it over fired). In the video, Democratic leaders including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and what appears to be Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) first kneel and then bow to Trump.
Administration imagery doesn’t simply insult opposition leaders; it undermines the idea of politics by suggesting that Democrats are un-American. Last night the White House continued its racist crusade against Democratic leaders by posted an AI-generated image of Trump and Vance wearing jewel-encrusted crowns positioned above an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wearing Mexican sombreros. The caption reads: “We’re built different.”
The administration’s hostility to loyal opposition is translating into direct assaults on our government. House speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to seat a member of the opposition. Voters chose representative-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) on September 23 to fill a vacant House seat, but Johnson has come up with one reason after another not to seat her. Until she is sworn in, she has no access to government resources and cannot represent her constituents. She also cannot be the 218th signature on a discharge petition that would force a vote on whether to demand the release of the Epstein files, the final signature needed.
Grijalva recorded a video reinforcing the political system, saying: “We need to get to work, get on the floor, and negotiate so we can reopen the government.”
But Republican congressional leaders are refusing even to talk with Democrats to reopen the government, let alone to negotiate with them. They are trying to force Democrats simply to do as they say, despite the fact that 78% of Americans, including 59% of Republicans, support the Democrats’ demand for an extension of the tax credit that lowers the cost of healthcare premiums on the Affordable Care Act markets. Lindsay Wise, Anna Wilde Mathews, and Katy Stech Ferek of the Wall Street Journal reported today that more than three quarters of those who are insured through the ACA markets live in states that voted for Trump.
A video of Trump in a bomber attacking American cities carries an implied threat that the disdain of throwing excrement doesn’t erase. This morning, Trump reinforced that threat when he reminded Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo: “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, I’d rather do this, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that, that you know they it’s not like a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”
That “safety” apparently involves detaining U.S. citizens without due process. On Thursday, Nicole Foy of ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents. She reports they “have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”
On Friday, the Trump administration pushed its attempt to use the military in Democratic-led cities, asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in Chicago immediately. Chris Geidner of Law Dork notes that four judges, two appointed by Democrats and two appointed by Republicans, have rejected the administration’s arguments for why they must send in troops. Now the Department of Justice has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the so-called shadow docket, which would provide a fast response, but one without any hearings or explanation.
The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court warned that there was “pressing risk of violence” in Chicago—a premise the judges rejected—and said preventing Trump from going into the city “improperly impinges on the President’s authority.”
How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the administration’s attempt to get rid of our democratic political system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against federal agents?
Scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan noted that large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments. Corrigan notes, too, that yesterday “every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo.”
Such rallies “bring together multigenerational groups and the playfulness can help create enthusiasm for big tent politics against the monoculture of fascism,” Corrigan writes. “The frogs (and unicorns and dinosaurs) will be defining ideographs of this period of struggle.”
On Chaplygin Street in Moscow. Photo by anatrrra. Used with their permission
EXTERIOR: A neo-classical building in Moscow’s old German quarter. A plaque on the wall reads, “Western District Military Court No 2”. A group of actors and journalists mill around on the lawn.
INTERIOR: A large hall with a grand staircase. Through the frame of a metal detector stands a statue of Lady Justice in her blindfold, holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other.
A commotion. Several portly guards in flak jackets, with a dog on a leash, escort two handcuffed women through the hall. One, about 5ft tall with big eyes and curly hair, is Yevgenia Berkovich, a 39-year-old poet and theatre director. She is dressed in a white shirt and black trouser-suit. The other, slightly taller, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and large owlish glasses, is Svetlana Petriychuk, a 44-year-old playwright.
The two women are led into a courtroom and placed in a cage of bullet-proof glass. A bailiff lets in the spectators, who sit down on the upholstered, green benches. Berkovich mischievously sticks out her tongue as photographers’ cameras flash and click. Yuri Massin, the judge, looks towards Berkovich.
Massin: Are you ready for the proceedings? Berkovich: Well, it depends on what will happen.
What happened was a show trial that revealed the radicalisation of the Russian state in the past few years. By the time proceedings began on May 20th 2024, Berkovich and Petriychuk had already been in detention for more than a year, having been charged with “propaganda and the justification of terrorism”. In the eyes of the regime, they had committed a crime by writing and staging a play called “Finist, the Bright Falcon”. Part docu-drama, part fable, “Finist” tells the story of the thousands of Russian women who, from 2015, were seduced online by professional recruiters from Islamic State (IS), and travelled to Syria to marry jihadists. Many of these women received lengthy sentences on their return home. The play premiered in 2020 to critical acclaim and was performed across the country.
As with any show trial, this one’s outcome was preordained, and its purpose was to justify the existing system and demarcate the ideological limits of the state. In doing so, it elucidated the ultra-conservative, anti-Western belief system that has expanded across public life since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Berkovich and Petriychuk were the first artists to be jailed since Soviet times for the content of their work—or, more precisely, the thoughts of their characters. But as theatrical professionals, they managed to turn the trial into their show.
LOCAL INSPIRATION of the day. This quilt by Joleigh Kambic is part of a larger quilt titled “Babies in Gaza Who Never Made It To Their First Birthday.” The quilt is composed of smaller quilts created by nearly 40 quilters from across the Monterey Bay, commemorating the children who were killed in the Israel-Hamas war. It is on display through Oct. 3 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula, 490 Aguajito Road in Carmel.
Different cities. Different motives. Same profile. White. Male. Armed. Deadly.
The news pretends each act is an isolated tragedy: a troubled man, a random eruption, a community blindsided. But line them up side by side and the repetition is too precise to ignore. These aren’t anomalies; they’re a drumbeat. Churches, schools, bars, government buildings. Nothing is sacred. Nobody is immune. The perpetrators are acting out the same choreography and playing variations on a script that ends with bodies on the ground and their names immortalized in headlines.
Humiliation is the through-line.
Strip away the headlines, the manifestos, the mugshots, and what you see is white men who cannot live with being ordinary, ignored, or denied. White masculinity in America was built on the guarantee of centrality, the right to be heard, feared, and obeyed. When that illusion frays, humiliation takes its place. And humiliation, when combined with access to assault rifles and an internet full of cheerleaders becomes combustible.
Enter Donald Trump.
He is not the author of this script, but he is its loudest hype man. He takes that humiliation and translates it into a politics of grievance. He tells white men their despair isn’t failure, it’s theft. He tells them their rage isn’t weakness, it’s patriotism. He baptizes their sense of collapse as a holy war. Trump doesn’t hand them the gun, but he hands them the permission slip to kill. He turns their humiliation into a rallying cry, their despair into his campaign platform, and their death wish into applause lines.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk proves this. Here was no random eruption in a mall or classroom, but a sniper attack staged at a political rally. What we witnessed was violence designed as theater. The accused, Tyler Robinson, was reportedly obsessed with Kirk, surveilled his movements, and turned grievance into spectacle. This wasn’t just about killing one man, it was about sending a message by inscribing grievance onto the national stage. And while Robinson didn’t appear to seek his own death in the same way as other shooters, the logic still holds: collapse turned outward, humiliation converted into performance, violence as a last-ditch claim to visibility. Whether in a schoolyard or at a rally podium, the impulse is the same — make sure the world cannot look away.
That’s why so many of these killings end with the shooter’s own death. Researchers have long noted that mass shooters often carry suicidal intent. Some kill themselves on the spot, others provoke police into finishing the job. Even those who survive often admit they never planned an escape. They weren’t trying to get away with it. They were trying to make sure we all saw them on the way out.
This is suicide turned outward. Instead of a private exit, it is a public performance. It is despair weaponized into punishment. It is a white man who feels invisible deciding that if he must disappear, he will do it in a blaze that makes his enemies, his community, his whole country remember his name. The bullets are not just aimed at bodies, they are aimed at the world that he believes has betrayed him.
A Russian National Guard serviceman checks residency documents during a raid outside the Apraksin Dvor clothing market, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/File)
The immigrant worker from Uzbekistan entered the bank in Moscow, but when he reached the teller, she refused to serve him and she wouldn’t say why.
For him and others from impoverished countries across Central Asia who seek better lives in Russia, such hostility is woven into everyday life. Sometimes it bursts into outright violence.
“Mostly you notice it when you go to the hospital, a clinic, a government office: You stand in line and everyone shoots you dirty looks,” said the man, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions.
Such xenophobia clashes with economic realities at a time when Russia has a labor shortage, primarily due to its war in Ukraine. In the first quarter of 2025, over 20% of Russian businesses said they were hindered by a lack of workers, according to the Central Bank.
But rather than welcoming laborers, Russian officials are fomenting anti-migrant sentiment and increasing restrictions on immigrants, which the government says number 6.1 million, but is probably higher. The government is tracking their movement, clamping down on their employment and impeding their children’s rights to education.
A massacre and a backlash
The continued crackdown comes as a trial began this month for four Tajik nationals who are accused of the shooting and arson attack at a Moscow concert hall in March 2024 that killed 149 people. The four were arrested within hours of the attack and appeared in court with signs of being severely beaten. An Islamic State group claimed responsibility but Russia sought to blame Ukraine for the bloodshed.
Anti-migrant rhetoric had been growing in Russia since the early 2020s. But the massacre in particular launched a wave of “terrible violence” against immigrants, said lawyer Valentina Chupik, who has worked with the immigrant community for over 20 years. In the eight days after the killings, she received 700 reports of injuries to immigrants, including “faces smashed against the doors of police stations,” she said.
Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin captured the public mood after the massacre, saying “migration control is extremely important” to ensure foreign nationals carrying out “illegal activity” could be deported without a court order.
The violence drew concern from human rights groups.
“Central Asian migrants seeking work in Russia due to dire economic conditions in their countries of origin today face ethnic profiling, arbitrary arrests, and other harassment by police in Russia,” Human Rights Watch said in a report on the anniversary of the attack.
“The heinous massacre cannot justify massive rights abuses against Central Asian migrants in Russia,” said its author, Syinat Sultanalieva.
Raids, roundups and restrictions
While some violence has subsided, it hasn’t disappeared. In April, police raided a Kyrgyz-run bathhouse in Moscow with video showing masked men forcing half-naked bathers to crawl across the floor and deliberately stepping on them before covering the lens of a security camera.
Police also reportedly rounded up immigrants in raids on warehouses, construction sites and mosques, then coerced them into joining the military to fight in Ukraine. Some are threatened with having their residency documents withheld, while others are recently naturalized citizens who failed to register for military service. In such cases, serving in the military is presented as the only alternative to prison or deportation. For others, a fast track to Russian citizenship is offered as an incentive for enlisting.
Speaking in St. Petersburg in May, Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said “20,000 ‘young’ citizens of Russia, who for some reason do not like living in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan (and) Kyrgyzstan” were serving in Ukraine.
Those immigrants who have avoided violence still are subject to new anti-migrant laws. Much of this is targeted specifically toward workers from Central Asia.
In 2024, 13 Russian regions banned immigrants from certain jobs, including in hospitality, catering and finance, and even as taxi drivers. A pilot program starting in September in the Moscow region requires migrants who enter Russia without a visa to be tracked via an app. Those failing to comply are added to a police watchlist, impeding access to services like banking, and subjecting them to a possible cutoff of cellphone and internet connectivity.
A nationwide law banned children of immigrants from attending school unless they could prove they could speak Russian. Less than six weeks after the law came into force, officials told local media that only 19% of children who applied for the language test were able to take it, and the most common reason for rejection was incomplete or inaccurate documents.
Another man from Uzbekistan who has worked in Russia for almost two decades and lives in St. Petersburg said he’s had to wait in line for over seven hours to get needed residency documents. The man, who also spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, hopes to stay in Russia but says the climate has worsened.
“It’s hard to get paperwork,” he said. “There just isn’t the time.”
The oppressive laws sometimes force immigrants to resort to paying bribes. Chupik, the lawyer, believes that Russia’s system results in “violations that cannot be avoided.”
“This is exactly what this mass regulation is striving for: not for all migrants to be here legally, but for everyone to be illegal,” she said. “That way, they can extract bribes from anyone at any moment and deport anyone who resists.”
Encouraging anti-migrant sentiment
Anti-migrant sentiment is unlikely to diminish anytime soon, mostly because it’s encouraged by authorities like the Investigative Committee’s Bastrykin, who said immigrants “physically occupy our territory, not just with their ideology but with specific buildings” — referring to sites such as mosques.
Ultra-nationalist lawmaker Leonid Slutsky said foreign workers “behave aggressively, causing conflicts and potentially dangerous situations.”
Migrants are an easy scapegoat for many social ills, and not just in Russia, said Caress Schenk, an associate professor of political science at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.
“Closing borders, conducting migrant raids and tightening policies are all tools that are easy go-tos for politicians the world over,” she said. “It goes in cycles that are sensitive to geopolitical pressures, as we’re seeing now, but also things like election campaigns and domestic political rivalries.”
A surge of “anti-migrant propaganda” has dwarfed previous rhetoric of recent years, according to the Moscow-based Uzbek immigrant who was ignored by the bank teller.
“If every person paying attention to the TV, the radio, the internet is only told that migrants are ‘bad, bad, bad,’ if they only show bad places and bad people, of course, that’s what people are going to think,” he said.
Such anti-migrant rhetoric has become part of the nationalist narrative from President Vladimir Putin and others used to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine — that Russia is under constant threat.
“Russia has started lumping together all of ‘the external enemies’ that it’s created over the years for itself: the migrants, the Ukrainians, the West,” said Tajik journalist Sher Khashimov, who focuses on migration, identity and social issues. “It all becomes this part of this single narrative of Russia being this castle under siege, and Putin being the only person who is on the lookout for ordinary Russians.”
The Uzbek immigrant in Moscow said Russia has created conditions “supposedly to help people, to help migrants.”
“But the rules do not work,’ he added. ”Special barriers are created that migrants cannot pass through on their own.”
A prominent nonviolent activist from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara has been detained by federal immigration officers. Jamal Fadel was seized by masked ICE agents at Manhattan’s notorious federal building at 26 Federal Plaza on August 25 after a routine immigration hearing — an arrest that was caught on video.
Fadel is from the occupied city of Boujdour in Western Sahara. He’s been protesting nonviolently against Morocco’s occupation since he was a high school student, and was threatened by Moroccan authorities so many times that he left to seek political asylum in the United States.
Fadel is currently being held by ICE at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. His attorney expects ICE will move for an expedited removal hearing. If deported, Fadel faces lengthy imprisonment, torture — or worse.
I spotted some of the Trump administration’s wanted men on Tuesday, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court granted immigration agents virtually unchecked permission to continue the “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in America’s history.
The wanted stood outside of a U-Haul truck rental outlet in the San Gabriel Valley. They polished other people’s BMWs and Range Rovers at a Pasadena car wash. I saw the wanted women too, walking to jobs as nannies and housekeepers.
They looked suspicious, all right, by the definition outlined Monday by Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. They were natives of Mexico and Central America, seeking “certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction.”
They were suspect to many Californians too, but only of wanting to work, wanting to earn a little cash, wanting to pay their bills and feed their families. One hundred and seventy five years to the day after land that once belonged to Mexico became the 31st American state, California felt to many people Tuesday like it had reverted to a kind of frontier justice, where racial profiling had become the law of the land.
“I am just working hard and paying taxes,” said Mario, 50, between sips of coffee on the sidewalk outside the U-Haul station. Even before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids began three months ago, the Honduran immigrant said, life for street-corner workers was not easy.
“People are just looking for work. Some of them are even homeless,” said Mario, who declined to give his last name. “But some people are showing them hate, sometimes even hitting or kicking the homeless. We see it out on the street.”
At the Pasadena car wash where six workers were carted away in late August, those left behind continued their buffing and polishing Tuesday.
“It feels like we have come down low, really low,” said Cesar, between checking in customers. Though he was born just blocks away at Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital, he said he does not feel immune from the raids.
“If now they are just going to judge you by how you look, or maybe how you talk, I can get pulled over. Anyone can get pulled over,” said Cesar, who did not give his last name. “It’s gonna be harder for people to live a normal life. They’re gonna just have to deal with harassment. That’s not something I would want anyone to have to go through.”
Earlier raids by Trump immigration agents have spread far beyond snagging the criminals and drug traffickers the president and his allies claimed to be after. With 10 million Latinos living in the seven Southern California counties covered by the court’s order, a rights group said the high court’s action cleared the way for “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
The action offered portentous echoes of the mistreatment and greater violence unleashed on Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s. Today, it had U.S.-born citizens, such as The Times’ Gustavo Arellano, feeling they will have to carry their passports to prove their citizenship.
Outside the U-Haul, Mario said he holds a green card. So he will continue waiting on the sidewalk for his next job.
“I believe in God,” he said. “We might think different things, but we all have the same heart. There should be the same heart for everyone. Everyone.”
The United States deported 39 Uzbek nationals on a charter flight to Tashkent, the U.S. Embassy confirmed in what it described as part of ongoing efforts to remove migrants without legal status. Earlier this year, more than 100 Central Asians, mostly Uzbeks, were repatriated in a similar U.S.-funded operation. The deportations attest to close cooperation between Washington and Tashkent on migration enforcement. That partnership has been accompanied by political overtures. Last week, Presidents Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Donald Trump held a phone call in which they pledged to broaden their strategic partnership ahead of an expanded dialogue session this autumn. U.S. officials have pointed to investment opportunities in Uzbekistan, particularly in critical minerals, while both sides also highlight cooperation on security and migration.
Yesterday’s news made me think about when I was little and went on road trips with my family. My parents always insisted on preparing and eating Korean food at rest areas along the way. This was before Korean food became more well-known and I remember that if there were people nearby who could smell our food, they often made faces and comments about the smell. Eating kimchi in public was always an interesting experience back then. This was just embarrassing, but does the new Supreme Court ruling mean that in this scenario, it is now something much more ominous we should be worried about?
Now someone could call ICE on a foreign-looking family eating foreign-smelling food in a rest area. When ICE shows up we now would have to show papers to prove we are citizens based on a racially motivated tip, is that our reality? Also, remembering that my mother never became a citizen but had a green card and probably speeding tickets so she would have been deportable under the current regime? What if I can’t prove my citizenship because I don’t carry my passport or naturalization papers, I am detained until I can prove my citizenship and they have the legal authority to do all of this now?
Lawyers, please help me understand. Is this our reality now? Is eating kimchi in public while Korean enough to get ICE called on us?
And I want to add that racial profiling has always been used against Black Americans and to a lesser degree other less white adjacent communities forever in this country, whether it was deemed constitutional or not. This is not new for Black Americans and others and something I have to acknowledge.
The European University at St. Petersburg has purchased and dispatched a UAZ vehicle to the war in Ukraine “for transporting the wounded in the combat zone,” the university’s press service has reported.
It notes that the vehicle was sent to Military Unit No. 11076, which was formed from mobilized residents of St. Petersburg, the Leningrad, Murmansk, and Arkhangelsk regions, and the Komi Republic.
The university’s press service posted a commendation to university rector Vadim Volkov from the unit’s commander, who praised Volkov for his “social activism” and support of the military “as it carries out missions in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhzhia region, and the Kherson region.”
“Military Unit No. 11076 expresses gratitude to the autonomous noncommercial higher education organization ‘European University at St. Petersburg’ in the person of Vadim Viktorovich Volkov for social activism and support rendered to the soldiers of our unit as they carry out missions in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, Zaporizhzhia Region, and Kherson Region. Victory will be ours! Military Unit No. 11076’s commander, Colonel V. Zyatchin, May 2025.”
The European University is a private university founded in St. Petersburg in 1994. The university was funded by grants from American and European NGOs. In 2016, the university was stripped of its accreditation for a year after an audit undertaken by the Prosecutor’s Office and Rosobrnadzor [the Russian federal education watchdog], after which such audits became routine.
In 2023, the Russian authorities audited the European University “for extremism,” and the university was also fined over books in its library published by “undesirable” organizations. Rector Volkov reported in an interview with RBC on June 24 that the prosecutor’s office had audited ninety-eight programs at the university and twelve master’s theses, after which the university had amended the programs and made changes to its academic advising process based on the recommendations of the authorities.
In March 2024, the European University fired Ivan Kurilla, an Americanist who taught in its political science and sociology departments. Kurilla opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was among the signatories of an open letter against the war by Russian academics and science journalists.
Where are you from? And where are you now? Doing what?
I am from Aarhus, Denmark, and have lived in Kyiv for almost 20 years. I own a software company, Livatek, which works with clients in Northern Europe.
As a foreigner working and living in Ukraine for many years, what is the best and the worst thing about Ukraine?
The worst thing about Ukraine is that nothing is possible. The best about Ukraine is that everything in the end is possible.
How has the war changed your life? Has the war changed you personally?
With the start of the war, my brother Morten and I reactivated a Danish initiative called “Biler til Ukraine” – “Cars for Ukraine”—which had already helped a Ukrainian NGO bring SUVs to the front for medical evacuation during the war in Donbas. Within a week of the full-scale invasion in 2022, we were back in Ukraine with the first three cars.
Since then, we have scaled up tremendously and delivered more than 400 vehicles to the Ukrainian military for logistics and tactical purposes, including 75 buses for personnel transports. These days, we are managing more than one car per day. All in all, as a rough estimate, the value of these cars is somewhere close to $2 million. The money comes from absolutely average, normal Danes and private companies. I am often surprised by people’s generosity. They often donate their car and even drive it with us to Ukraine!
Growing a business has become more difficult with the war. With “Cars for Ukraine,” I have found another outlet for my professional energy to defend Ukraine. It has allowed me to work with some unique people in Denmark and Ukraine. Their strength and dedication inspire me.
What has surprised you most about Ukrainians these past couple of years? Good or bad?
I was not surprised to see the tenacity of the Ukrainians as they resisted Russia’s efforts to eradicate their culture. On the negative side—and here I am probably a bit naïve—I can still be disappointed by corruption. I know it is good news that corruption and the people who commit it are discovered and prosecuted, but I would prefer things to be nipped in the bud instead of cracked down afterward.
What are your plans?
I think I am like most Ukrainians in that “the future” does not exist anymore. We have a war to fight and win—after that, there is a future—and it is bright and open.
How do you see the war ending and Ukraine returning to a normal life?
Forces at play now do not point to a happy-end scenario for Ukraine. The dynamics need to change. Specifically, more political leaders of the West must do “a Macron” — to understand that Ukraine is fighting for every country of the liberal, Western world. (French President Emmanuel Macron underwent a radical change in his view on Russia’s war from dovish to hawkish and insisting on Russia’s defeat.) Because, honestly, for Ukraine to have a normal future, Russia not only needs to be beaten back to within its borders. It needs such an educational wacking that it will give up on its aggressive ways – and never again even consider attacking Ukraine or other states.
Tell us one thing people abroad do not know about Ukraine but they really should.
For too many centuries, Russian culture has defined itself as being unique, and outside rules and measures apply only to other countries. The mere existence of an independent Ukraine is a challenge to that myth. And, when Russia is attacking its neighbor, it is fighting its own demons and inferiority complexes.
You can learn more about the work of “Cars for Ukraine” (in Danish “Biler til Ukraine”) here.
The 45-year-old resident of the Tatarstan capital with the exotic first name and surname and the patronymic Petrovich has four prior criminal convictions
Holy Week has kicked off for a Kazan defendant with a quite uncommon name: Jesus Christ. The 45-year-old Kazan resident has been charged with falsely registering forty-five migrant workers at his address. Jesus Petrovich has prior repeat convictions for burglary and robbery, and in 2014 he underwent preventive care for substance abuse. Business Online reports on Christ’s failure to appear at his court hearing, and the “way of the cross” he has blazed through Kazan’s district courts.
This photo by Business Online reporter Eva Malinovskaya appears in her original article, but it is impossible to say whether it was taken at Jesus Petrovich Christ’s abortive court hearing in Kazan on Good Friday 2025.
Jesus Petrovich’s “Good Friday”
The biography of Kazan’s latest criminal defendant would not be too different from the average person’s — the divorced and unemployed high school graduate will turn forty-six on the tenth of May — were it not for one catch. His name is Jesus Christ: that is the name listed in his [internal] passport.
The story of how he got the name remains a mystery: neither the court staff nor the state prosecutor know what Christ’s name at birth was. All that the people involved in the criminal proceedings know is that the defendant was “obsessed” with numerology, and this led, allegedly, to his decision to change his name and surname several years ago. He kept only his real patronymic: Petrovich.
Christ was scheduled to appear before the Moscow District Court (the Kizichevsky Vvedensky Monastery is situated right next door to the court building on Justice Street ). The current case against Jesus Petrovich is an anniversary of sorts: he has four prior criminal convictions, having blazed a trail through the city’s district courts on his own “way of the cross.”
Jesus was first convicted in 1994 by the Lenin District Court (now the Aviastroitelny District Court) of robbery, per Article 145.2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. He was given a two-year suspended sentence. Since his next conviction, for theft, per Article 144.2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, was handed down by the Novo-Savinovsky District Court, he was given the standard sentence: two and a half years in a medium-security correctional labor colony and confiscation of his property.
After serving his sentence, Christ did not enjoy his freedom for long. In 1999, he appeared before the Volga Regional Court, where he was sentenced to nine years in prison per Article 162.3.g of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, for “robbery committed by a person previously convicted two or more times of theft or extortion.” The convict was sent to a maximum security penal colony and was released in 2007. A little more than a year passed before Christ again came before the Lenin District Court, which by then had been redubbed the Aviastroitelny District Court. He was sentenced to another three years in prison per Article 158.3.a of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, for “theft involving home invasion.”
In addition to his criminal record, Christ had a penchant for illegal substances. From 2014, he was registered with a substance abuse therapist, but not for long, according to his personal file, as submitted to the court. In 2015, a forensic psychiatric expert commission found that Jesus had an organic personality disorder, and he was removed from the substance abuse registry. His mental illness had been triggered by a severe head trauma received in 2010. At the time, Christ did not complete his treatment, leaving the hospital on his own. He was also diagnosed with brain malfunction due to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and was thus registered as a class III disabled person.
During his last clinical examination, psychiatrists noted the patient’s irritability, brashness, inflated self-esteem, pretentiousness, egotism, and mood swings. Although Jesus’ truculent personality was palpable, it was not significant enough to warrant hospitalization, so his diagnosis was not a factor in the criminal investigation.
The charges
What is Christ accused of this time round? According to police, whose account has been corroborated by the prosecutor’s office, between April and December 2024, Christ registered forty-five foreign nationals as residing in his 31.9-square-meter flat. With the consent of the foreigners, Jesus filled out foreign national residential arrival notices in which he identified himself as their host and provided the address of his flat. He then submitted arrival notices to the Moscow District office of the Tatarstan Multifunctional Public Services Center.
The prosecution is certain that the foreigners did not reside at their registered address. The false information about the arrival of forty-five individuals, as received by the migration department of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Kazan office, was registered and entered into the federal migration registration database. Christ faces up to five years in prison.
“The case is quite ordinary. [Police officers] examine the Multifunctional Public Services Center’s identification numbers and files and identify violators,” said assistant prosecutor Nadezhda Moshkova in a conversation with Business Online before the court hearing.
Common practice in such cases
Such cases are not uncommon. There were several such cases in a row in February alone. Six Tatarstan residents and a foreigner were charged with organizing the illegal immigration and falsified registration of more than three thousand foreigners. Later in the month, three more cases of unlawful employment agreements, involving two thousand migrant workers, were uncovered, and on February 26 it transpired that another resident of Kazan had aided almost three thousand immigrants in registering illegally. So the list of Christ’s “apostles” is not that long compared to those of others.
“Has Jesus Christ stopped by?” the assistant judge asked hopefully over the phone exactly one minute before the start of the trial.
“No, he hasn’t,” the bailiff replied with a grin.
The mood of the people in the courtroom was upbeat, despite the fact that the “appearance” of Christ before the Moscow District Court did not take place. Moshkova assured the court that the defendant had been notified in every possible way, but she herself, even before the hearing, had not actually believed that he would show up. “He’s a curious chap,” the assistant prosecutor said, adding that defendants themselves do not like to appear at such hearings, and jokingly condoned Christ by saying that Easter had not yet arrived.
The accused himself, as it turned out, had no clue about the hearing.“What case? And wait, if a court hearing has been scheduled, why the fuck was a notification and a summons not sent?!” said a perplexed Christ, whom Business Online was able to reach by telephone. After voicing his indignation, our source asked us to leave him alone. “I have done twenty years in prison. You’ve got the wrong number, good luck,” concluded Jesus.
Nevertheless, court-appointed defense lawyer Ksenia Matveeva told us that the defendant fully admits his guilt. He had even requested expedited consideration of the case, but because of his failure to appear, the process had to be postponed to the end of May.
“I order that the defendant be forcibly delivered to the next court hearing,” the presiding judge, Nikolai Zakharov said as he concluded the proceedings. “No one has ever walked away from the court yet,” he said, shrugging.
A 45-year-old Russian national named Jesus Petrovich Christ has gone on trial in Kazan for fictitiously registering foreigners in his apartment. Information on the upcoming court hearing was posted on the website of the city’s Moscow District Court.
The defendant fictitiously registered forty-four illegal immigrants in his one-room apartment, in violation of Article 322.3 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. In fact, [none of the immigrants] lived in the apartment. Christ did not appear in court, so the hearing of his case did not take place.
According to law enforcers, Jesus Petrovich Christ has four previous convictions — for robbery, armed robbery, and theft.
According to local media, the defendant was given a different name at birth, but he changed his first name and surname after becoming interested in numerology. The man’s patronymic is real.
A Russian citizen named Jesus Petrovich Christ is being tried in Kazan on charges of fictitiously registering immigrants. A notice of the upcoming court hearing appeared on the website of Kazan’s Moscow District Court.
A screenshot of Jesus Petrovich Christ’s court hearing record on the website of Kazan’s Moscow District Court, courtesy of Sergey Abashin
Jesus Christ is suspected of fictitiously registering forty-five illegal immigrants in his one-room apartment, in violation of Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 322.3. Despite receiving a summons to appear in court, the 45-year-old Russian national did not show up for the proceedings, and therefore the hearing of the case did not take place.
It is also known that the man was previously convicted several times — in 1994 and 1996, for robbery; in 1999, for armed robbery; and in 2007, for theft.
There is another reason why the Russian Defense Ministry recruits so many members of ethnic minorities [to fight in the war against Ukraine]: as it turns out, because it is psychologically really difficult for [ethnic] Russians to kill Ukrainians. Because we are one people. We are very close peoples, as everybody knows. We have nearly the same language, the same religion, and centuries of history in common. But if it’s someone from another culture, allegedly it’s easier [for them to kill Ukrainians]. I hadn’t really thought about it before. I thought the reasons were primarily economic. But after what [a colleague who spoke about the Buryats] said, I started thinking about it too.
A screenshot of the video Ms. Khazagaeva cites in her Facebook post
You did get that, friends? It’s so difficult, so unbearable for ethnic Russians to kill you Ukrainians that Buryats and Chechens have been doing all the work for them — because [Buryats and Chechens] are beasts and savages. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
By the way, [Kara-Murza] refers to Buryats and Chechens as “those ethnic minorities.”
In other words, all eleven years [of Russia’s war against Ukraine], the Buryats, who number under four hundred and fifty thousand people, including children and the elderly, have been attempting to kill the forty million Ukrainians. It transpires, however, that the hundred million ethnic Russians have had it “psychologically difficult” all those eleven years. They are mere victims of this war, which is something “those [other] ethnic groups” want. Don’t get them wrong: ethnic Russians love you Ukrainians like brothers!
You have explained everything so clearly, Mr. Kara-Murza. I have literally just a couple of follow-up questions. Excuse me, has it also been the Buryats who have been launching missiles at Ukrainian cities? And the creatures who on Russian television rejoice at the deaths of Ukrainian children in Kryvyi Rih, are they also members of these same ethnic minorities?
I’m sorry, but I have another question. The whole world knows what the Pskov paratroopers did in Bucha. Do you have any ideas how to repaint them as Buryats? Although it would probably be a bit difficult, since “your lads” have already been testifying.
One more question. The other day, 7 April, was the thirtieth anniversary of the Samashki massacre. Eighty people, mostly children, women and old people, were burned alive in Samashki, and hundreds of people were killed in total. This is not to mention the forty thousand Chechen children killed in the two [Chechen] wars. Excuse me, did the Chechens shell themselves? Ethnic Russians are totally incapable of that, aren’t they? To hell with what Tolstoy wrote in Hadji Murat. Tolstoy was a renegade.
Oh, I’ve gotten a little carried away. Two million people were killed in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They say that’s where the notorious practice of “mopping up” villages, leaving mass graves in their wake, originated. I’m sorry, who did the killing in Afghanistan? Was that the Buryats too?
Good Lord, where do you get so many of them?
The only thing I don’t understand is how the idea of the “Russian world” could have emerged, since you ethnic Russians live in love and friendship with all countries. It must have been the Chukchi who overdid it on that front.
I also don’t understand why it is the ethnic Russians who do ballet, but it is the non-Russians who make war.
Updated, 13 April. I have replaced the picture originally below the post with a video featuring the entire quotation by Kara-Murza. Thanks to the good people who provided the AI translation. It shows that Kara-Murza’s words, whether presented in expanded or abridged form, bear the same message: ethnic Russians don’t want to kill Ukrainians, and it’s easier for non-Russians to do it. Because we ethnic Russians and the Ukrainians are one and the same, but we’re not the same as those non-Russians. It matters not a whit that Kara-Murza referenced someone else’s observation. What matters is that he voiced this idea personally and voluntarily, and that he confirmed his commitment to it by saying that it has given him pause for thought too. Think about it. A Russian politician (as Kara-Murza fancies himself), while visiting the parliament of a major European country, says that it is mainly Buryats who want the war. He says this on the record in a place where every word uttered potentially has legal force. He said it not in a bar, not on a beach, but in the French Senate, where decisions on sanctions are made.
I have not emended the text of my original post, dated 12 April.
On 10 April 2025, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee heard the testimony of Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice-president of the Free Russia Foundation and a former Russian political prisoner. A Russian politician and opponent of Vladimir Putin, Kara-Murza survived two poisoning attempts, in 2015 and 2017. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony by the Russian justice system after criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was released on 1 August 2024 in a prisoner exchange. In his testimony to the senators, he stressed the autocratic and violent nature of Putin’s regime. He called on the European Union to maintain its sanctions against Russia, and to bring its weight to bear on peace negotiations in Ukraine. He maintains the hope that the country will soon become democratic.
