One year of shame.

I don't really consider myself Russian any more -- I moved to the US in 1995 when I was 19 and then again to Canada in 2005. I am Canadian and I consider myself Canadian, and yet I no doubt still feel a connection to Russia because that's where I grew up.

I am wholeheartedly against Putin's criminal regime and what it has done to the country since it took power. To me, it is a criminal syndicate, ruled by a cowardly mob kingpin. The longer he remained in power, the more he developed delusions of "manifest destiny" historical grandeur -- and his cleptocratic flunkies (inside Russia and beyond) did nothing to rein him in because it lined their pockets and bolstered their political careers.

The Russia I left in 1995 was a young democratic nation, looking with great hope into the future where Russian citizens can be part of a prosperous and peaceful Eurasian continent. Unfortunately, things turned out differently. Russia has not only shattered its future prospects -- it has become a geopolitical monster eating not only its own young, but the young of its neighbours. It offers no plan, no hope, and no future for its people other than stagnation, decay, and death. It has become a textbook fascist dictatorship and it must be contained and excised before it metastasizes too much further into the rest of the world.

I feel sorrow for the people of Ukraine and Georgia, whose lands were occupied and whose livelihoods were impacted by Russia's criminal actions. I feel great pain for all who were murdered or maimed by the invading army. I hope your lives will be avenged and that the criminals responsible for your pain will see justice.

Fascism must be opposed. Slava Ukraini.