These letters are part of the Russian Youth Month campaign. Throughout the month, Groza — an independent media outlet for students in Russia — is telling the world what young Russians fear and dream about, and how the state prevents them from feeling free, together with media outlets, bloggers, and students from different countries.
We have changed the names of the people quoted.
I study at university in St. Petersburg. My experience of everything happening can't compare to what people in border towns or in Ukraine are going through, but I'd like to share what I've felt.
When the war started, I was 17. All I felt was horror and helplessness. I remember how my friends and I spent that first period putting up anti-war posters and flyers around the city. Luckily, none of us got caught. It was the least we could do.
When the war began, I lost my friend — she lives in Ukraine. After the invasion, she started hating all Russians and cut off contact with me. I can't blame her for that.
At my university, recruitment posters for contract military service are everywhere. Our class was even gathered in a lecture hall for war propaganda. People from the military recruitment office came and talked about how wonderful it is to fly a drone, promising honor and mountains of gold. On top of that, before students get expelled, they're offered a chance to sign a military contract instead, with the argument that when they come back from the war, they'll definitely be able to finish their studies.
Life has turned into a theater of the absurd, and I completely understand why so many people have emigrated. But somehow I don't want to leave. I guess I was raised with some kind of patriotism, and I really am willing to sacrifice myself for my country. Except there's only one enemy, and he's sitting in the Kremlin.
Right now I try to help the opposition in whatever small way I can — in September I'll definitely go as an election observer. It's a very tiny contribution, but it's only through "insignificant" people and their "insignificant" actions that together we can change something. I love Russia with all my heart. And there are many like me — we'll keep fighting to the end against those who sit in power, plunder what's left, wreck the economy, destroy nature, ruin culture, and send people to their deaths for the sake of their palaces.
Russia will be free 🤍💙❤️
What's it like to be young in Russia today? It is not pleasant at all — everyone understands that. But it hurts me deeply that my youth is falling during a time of bans, crises, and anxiety...
I remember 2010–2019, when you could buy cheap groceries, travel freely, listen to well-known foreign artists, and no one would say a word to you about it. Now I catch myself thinking, "is it even safe to like this post?", "maybe I shouldn't post this in my Telegram channel..."
It's very hard when your whole childhood you were taught the values of freedom, equality, love, that "we must never let this happen again" — and then, as you grow up, the world around you shifts onto different tracks, where military action is a sign of courage and manhood instead of a crime, where listening to certain musicians is treated as a betrayal of the motherland, and where not being able to reach your loved ones in another city becomes normal. Even books — I love reading — I now buy not because I liked the description or, out of childish naivety, the cover, but because the book is on the verge of disappearing; I'm literally hunting for books. It shouldn’t be like that.
It's even sadder to hear from everywhere, "Russia has no future," "Russia is headed for collapse," because until recently I saw my future in my own country, I wanted to be useful to it.
I dream of leaving, not only because of differing values, but simply for safety: every day I get messages from friends in different parts of the country whose hometowns are constantly under air-raid and missile-threat alerts... The feeling of dread eats away at me more each day.
But for all the horror, I can't say my youth is lost. I still live my life — I hang out with friends, I study — it's just different now. Since I'm not an adult yet, there's nothing I can really do. I'm researching the ways of emigration, and quietly hoping I'll at least manage to leave in time, because every day things get less predictable.
I usually talk with people my own age about what worries me, including what's happening now. It brings us together.
I really want to leave, but I really don't want to leave my family behind.
People give me strength. People who also understand that what's happening isn't normal, and who try to carry light even in the darkest times. That really gives me energy and hope.
To people my age in other countries, I'd say: value the life and freedom you have. Sometimes you don't realize how precious these simple things are.
I'm 15, and my dream is to be a circus performer. I just finished ninth grade and I'll be applying to study in Moscow, but I'm scared because of the situation in our country right now — I'm afraid that any day a drone could hit, or something worse.
Since February 2022 I stopped being a patriot. Around that time I ended up in a group where most of the girls were from Ukraine, and after hearing their stories about how they live now, I felt deeply ashamed of my country. My whole attitude changed toward everything connected to the words Russia, Putin, patriotism. Those words now stir up very conflicting feelings in me that are hard to describe — I'm ashamed of my country.
I'm afraid of becoming a victim of circumstances where I'm just the last link in the chain — I'm not guilty of this war, and I don't understand why someone like me should have to suffer and be afraid just to live. I hope that someday I'll work in a big circus in some other country in the world. I love Russia very much, but I hate the state. It also upsets me that in my small town there are so few good coaches — I wish I could get so much more than I'm getting now.
Peace and love to everyone ☮️☮️☮️
It feels like for a long stretch of time, this was experienced as an ominous gloom. A gloom that clouds your eyes and thoughts, the way antidepressants remove the symptoms but not the problem.
"Maybe you can get used to anything."
And for a long time, we did.
The war caught me at 17. I was an ordinary girl, worried about exams and dreaming of moving to Europe with my boyfriend after school. Restriction piled on top of restriction, on top of a picture of deaths, bombings, and countless acts of violence — a picture impossible to fully take in as real. And the picture of the world broke apart. In 2023, the person dear to me had neither a deferment nor a military ID exemption. So we broke up. With the hope that this couldn't last forever and would surely end one day.
I've grown up, and now I'm 21. But this year I realized four years had slipped out of my memory. Everything had been built on a fiction — the fiction that the old life would return soon. Now acceptance has set in: things won't go back to how they were. Maybe it took too long to arrive at that thought, but letting go of something so foundational to your own sense of self feels almost impossible.
Can you get used to anything? I guess I have. I've gotten used to reading the news every day. Used to being afraid for people whose neighborhoods get hit by strikes. Used to not hoping for some grand happiness, but just believing in what I see around me. And that's people — always people.
Being young here now is sometimes very strange. We're either afraid to speak loudly, or we're shouting thought-crimes in the middle of the capital. We look with disapproval at those whose shoulder boards give them the right to arrest us for whatever made-up reason comes next. We're very lost about what kind of world this is now — it's nothing like what we were promised. And yet we try to hold on to the most important thing: love and memory of what Russia is, what the Russian people are, what the Russian language is, what the Russian soul is — so irreplaceably loved. Our Russia — the one we still carry inside us — that one exists. It speaks words of love, smiles kindly, sounds louder than anything, and, most important, doesn't accept the violence that has already brought it so much pain throughout its history.
But stepping away from the romanticism that helps us bear the whole weight of reality — living here is like living in a dystopia. History is fleeting, the list of crimes is abstract, and we live biting at the future, unsure whether we'll be safe — from fire, or from the state. Sometimes I hear from friends, "we're living like it's the end of the world," and I can't help but agree. And I probably wouldn't be lying if I said we try not to think about it, because if we start, we don't want anything anymore. Nothing at all.
We just want it to end. Because the inhumanity in the world of people leaves weights on the heart.