A lawyer defends a person from injustice. Sometimes in court. Sometimes when there is no court.
Frost and sun, a wonderful day. The hundred grams from the barbershop warmed me inside; the proprietress’s innovation was working a treat. I’d brought from the Kremlin the third folder: a fresh printout of the exiled emperor’s stream. Who tells the truth better than the worst enemy? My idol is Yarosh, hence the nickname. I believed in a real brown plague and was ready to believe the worst.…
On the column near Brovary: “Dye, ale pohano” (“Works, but badly”). On the two-hundred-kilometer gap near Kharkiv: “Dobre” (“Good”). On the Dnipro: “Dnipro.” On Mykolaiv: “Port.” On Karabakh and Aliyev: “Armenia, get ready.” On the Kadyrovites: “Or Stalin.” My thoughts went unspoken but lay pleasantly against my chest like old, well-fitted weapons.
I began in the traffic police, thought the name had an error: better “Give!” in the imperative. On Euromaidan I was out of uniform. I saw snipers on the roof hit everyone without distinction. Then I left with the Berkut, rose to the FSO, to the Kremlin, to the Tower. Now I sit in the middle of Moscow at a screen counting how many Russians each Ukrainian must kill for them to run out.
The printout went into the folder. Shorya formed a strange picture for himself: a Russian collecting testimony for a trial against Russia in Ukraine, a Ukrainian composing a report on it for the Russian Supreme. Ideal would be to force the enemy boss to publicly admit his crimes, to land him on the defendant’s bench automatically. Tomorrow is the sixteenth day, and on the Kremlin monitors another screen will light up.