Costel’s Reviews > I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country > Status Update

That's your grandfather Fyodor, that's your babka Evdokia. Your great-grandfather was named Pavel, but there is no photo of him.

What had I wasted my love on, I wondered. What do you waste your love on? It burns and burns until it burns out. Sometimes it lights up a piece of your life, like the lilac branch, and life comes out of the darkness, reveals its full colors. But then the darkness returns.

All that time, Anya was by my side. And I was by her side. We were running out of strength, but we didn't realize that. Then, one day, we ran out. We stopped loving each other. I felt it because the place in my stomach that had been filled with love now felt empty.

We went to gay pride every year after that. We'd get beaten up and arrested. One time, people ripped off my dress, I was left standing naked in the middle of Moscow. I made friends with LGBT activists. Turned out they weren't crazy, just very exhausted.

I have a daughter, you know. I'd have a talk with your editor about sending a girl out like this. You got really lucky I'm not insane. You're lucky. Not everyone would be this nice. You better learn that. Journalist.

I have a family, I work for them. Do you have any idea what it means to support a family? What could you possibly understand?

In 2021, Russian courts oversaw the trials of 783,000 people. Of these, exactly 2,190 were found innocent. Two thousand one hundred and ninety. The probability of somebody charged with a crime being exonerated was 0.28 percent.

Russians have a saying, “Moscow isn’t Russia and Russia isn’t Moscow.”

"Me and her dad have the same birthday, March 28th. It's messed up!"

And I was left without a brother. I never visited his grave again. I simply couldn't.