Enjoying Russia’s lunar mission failure

My self-aware mind questions my feelings: is it cheap to rejoice at something irrelevant to my life and unrelated to Russia’s various crimes? Well, not directly related.

I’ve been vocal about Ukraine — I absolutely couldn’t not be vocal. The war shocked and shattered my Russian identity. However, I never wanted to become a bitter immigrant whose indiscriminate bashing of Russia from thousands of miles away serves as self-validation or virtue signaling. I’ve seen many such individuals. They made no contribution or attempt to contribute to any community or society. They can’t even assimilate into the country they now call home because they can only hang out with fellow immigrants. Yet they are brave fighting Putin on Facebook.

Also, I think of the people I’m close to who are still in Russia: my relatives, and close my friends. They have no choice but to get on with their lives and careers, even if they disapprove of the regime. It’s not easy to emigrate. It’d be insensitive of me to criticize every possible side of Russia.

I go even further in my “self-awareness.” If I stayed in Russia, if I didn’t leave a decade ago, would I have found a way to bend my values and my identity? Would I be working for some Russian oligarch, enjoying Moscow’s beautiful summer evenings on the terraces of the city’s restaurants, tone-deaf to Russia’s bombs falling on Ukraine, or Navalny wasting away in prison? There is a reason I mention this: my ex-colleagues and acquaintances post a lot of this stuff on social…