My Message to the Ordinary Russians

Juhani Lehtimäki
2 min readMar 1, 2022

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Image source: https://www.dw.com/en/anti-war-protests-across-russian-cities/g-60915712

Dear Russians,

Putin has destroyed your future and your children’s future with his actions. You will not be able to build a successful business, work for an international business nor will you have access to relocate to abroad to work for one. Your current wealth and living standards is the highest it will get as long as Putin rules your country. It is constantly downhill from here. Putin has truly re-created the Soviet Union, in an economical sense in your country. All tech companies providing skilled programmers for foreign companies will not exist just a few months from now. All the hard work you have put into learning your craft will be useless. Any work you might find will be paid in currency that has already lost most of its value and will lose the rest in a short amount of time. You will not have access to foreign currency. This is all happening to you because of Putin and his cronies.

You have the power to change this! You, an ordinary Russian, are not the reason your military is currently attacking civilians in Ukraine and I refuse to believe that any of you are OK with it either. Your military has proven to be weak and badly motivated and badly organised. So is your police. You can stand up and say “this is enough!”, you can choose to reclaim your future. Your police will not be able to stop the demonstrations and your army is fully engaged elsewhere.

Speak up! Stand up! Tell other Russians around you, abroad and in the country that you are not supporting Putin’s government and his acts to destroy your country’s future. Let others know that there are many Russians who want the government gone. Join the demonstrations to make yourself visible. It takes courage to take action. Time for courage is now!

Europe is with you, we will support your effort and rebuilding a better Russia.

I want to include another message to you which I saw online:

Please save the soul of your nation, before it is too late.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6904151338498764800/

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Juhani Lehtimäki
Juhani Lehtimäki

Written by Juhani Lehtimäki

Dad | Founder, CTO @snappmobile_io | CEO @snappautomotive | GDE, Android | GDG-Android Munich organiser