Paha Kiisu 🍽️

I didn’t issue my Ukraine and Russia Update last Sunday and I won’t be issuing it today - bit challenging when you are being evicted from your only home and sent into exile without any explanation or the right to appeal. But I am hoping to restart work next week. The main goal of my persecutors is to silence me, but I won’t be gagged, if only because journalism is my bread. However hybrid, infowar-scented journalism many editorial offices have accepted as a given is not my choice. I’ll keep telling people what they need to know, not what they want to hear or especially not what the beneficiaries of this horrible war want them to hear. In the meantime, you are welcome to subscribe to my Substack open.substack.com/pub/leonid… where I publish the updates - free for know. You may also consider supporting my work by subscribing on X. I am not issuing any subscriber-only material at the moment, but I will start if the audience is sufficient. The sadistic punishment imposed on me is painful, but also liberating. For many years I was acting publicly like all fugitive Russian journalists in Rīga - mostly avoiding to talk about Latvia and other Baltic countries despite learning more and more about them, including stuff that I didn’t want to know as a standard Russian liberal. Now that stifling self-censorship is over and I’ll be glad to share my knowledge based on 12-year experience of living there. As I said before, no revenge. I love Latvia, I am pro-Latvian and I’ll come back home to Rīga no matter what. I present no threat to Latvia and I abhor Putin’s regime which stole from me two other countries that I know and love best. But I think it is politicians who are taking Latvia down the black hole of Putinization, lawlessness and normalisation of war who are the real danger for its future as a flourishing and independent state.

Vabariigi President @YlleMadise autokolonn möödus Riias just neljakümne Eesti omavalitsus- ja siseturvalisuse inimesega bussist. Lehvitasime🇪🇪 #esimenevisiit #naabrid