Andrey Medvedev, Russian journalist & member of Moscow City Co | Russians With Attitude

Andrey Medvedev, Russian journalist & member of Moscow City Council:

“It was a year ago. Late in the evening of the 20th, I received a call from an acquaintance, an employee of a certain organization, who told me that Dasha Dugina had been killed and that it was definitely a terrorist attack.

The next day we met Vladlen, who had just returned from the front. We sat, drank coffee, talked about the war. And then Max said he wanted to go to the place where Dasha had been killed to lay flowers. So, we went.

A year ago, it seems like a lifetime ago. The Kharkov retreat hadn't happened yet. We were still holding Kherson. Arnie Ogneborets, Igor ‘Bereg’ Mangushev, Vladlen were still alive. Mobilization hadn't started yet, there were no UAV strikes on Moscow.

But in general, the day Dasha Dugina was killed was the day when many people came to a new understanding of what was happening. That this war is not against the Kremlin or the regime. It's literally against all of us. That this is a war of terrorism. That the enemy kills just for words and thoughts that seem dangerous. Dasha's murder made many people who neither supported the war nor sympathized with the authorities see the West with different eyes. When the mainstream media began to write understandingly and approvingly about the murder of ‘the daughter of the Kremlin's chief ideologue.’

We've lost a lot of people this year. I mean everyone. The country. About the families that received death notices. But have we become afraid? Weakened? Did we decide to surrender? Were we broken by Izyum and Kherson, by strikes on the Crimean Bridge or our cities?

Of course not. The war correspondents didn't stop filming, the volunteers didn't stop raising money and going to the front, those public people, who weren't afraid to speak out before, continue to do so now. Our warriors, both professional and mobilized, continue to fight to the death. Their heroic women continue to wait and believe. Yes, waiting for your man to return from war is heroism.

Time passes, but the bitterness of loss does not become less, and the pain will never go away completely. But we all believe that our brothers and sisters in Christ, Dasha, Vladlen, Arnie, Rostislav, Bereg, and hundreds of others, are alive with God.

‘Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.’

Our fallen ones are with us. And as our Lord defeated hell, so Russia will defeat her enemies. Not soon, the way is long and difficult. But she will win.”