Do not let him silence your voices.
He is no leader.
Leaders are people who help us become better than who we are. Not worse.
You need to join the world, not turn your back on it.
Ukraine was never a threat to you or your country.
Ukrainians want to become free to choose their destiny, not join in Putin’s plans.
He is an envious man.
He has not been able to develop your potential as a people and looks around and sees other nations moving past Russia. But he doesn’t know what to do. So his envy is turned to murderous rage. In your name.
With your talents and resources you could become one of the top nations in the world.
Instead, you have chosen to build nuclear weapons. You have chosen to enlarge your destructive powers rather than your creative ones. So you hide behind such weapons.
That is your failure as a nation. But you can recover.
Right now, in one of your prisons, sits Alexei Navalny, one of your bravest men.
Navalny chose to openly challenge Putin. Because of it he was poisoned and nearly killed.
He will never be released unless Russians speak up.
You cannot win the war with Ukraine. The West won’t let you.
It does not matter how many nuclear weapons you have because you can’t fire them. If you do, then you will burn also.
Nuclear weapons are useful to scare people. But then you can’t use them.
You can’t use them because other nations have the same weapons.
If Putin fired a nuclear weapon toward the West and one of our cities burned, then your cities would burn, too. Beautiful Moscow and St Petersburg would be gone.
The madness of nuclear weapons is that they can only scare people and that’s it.
No more.
Think about it. All that effort and that’s all you get for it.
There was one leader, a real leader, a Russian leader, who once proposed to Reagan, then the American president, to ban all nuclear weapons. Imagine that. The vision. That leader wanted to free the world of fear. I wish Reagan would have had the imagination your leader had. That leader was Mikhail Gorbachev. That flash of brilliance came from a Russian. There is more of that in you. So step up and use that light you have to brighten the darkness in our world.
Today, many countries are torn by war and repression, kept from fulfilling their potential by small minded men like Putin.
We need you to emerge so other countries will emerge. And maybe the Chinese, seeing your example, will rise against the oppressive communist party that now deprives them of their freedom.
Rise Russia, rise! Putin is holding you back.
Rise and the world will rise with you.
The price you pay will be well worth it.
And we will all be grateful.
Oscar Valdes 