Shame on me, an art critic, but these are two pictures I could never have imagined at 18. Me, at 36, the editor-in-chief of an English-language art gallery, and fighter jets whizzing into our homes.

I was almost conscripted. If I had been, I would be writing this book under artillery fire. An art critic. With a Winnie the Pooh tattoo on his neck. A contract killer.

Reader, I understand that this sounds like complete bullshit, but you must believe me, if only because such a thing is impossible to invent. And also because here we are handed out diagrams of how radiation will spread during a nuclear war (by no means diagrams of roads to a bomb shelter, those are classified by order of the president: we, the people, have always been the collateral).

You'll have to believe me because we're all going to die here. And I don’t want someone not to know that we also were capable of loving, and stopped traffic to pick up hedgehogs from the road, and suffered when we saw homeless people sleeping on benches in the winter and wanted children and didn’t want war.

We weren’t all monsters who wanted to kill people.

Tell the world if I can't.

***

That’s the intro to the book I’m raising funds for.

My name is Niki, I’m a journalist who may have stumbled upon his best discovery yet. In brief, I grew up in the UK. At 27, since I have Ukrainian roots, I thought I’d go and visit my Ukrainian family who was living in Russia at the time. That turned out to be the worst mistake yet. Coming back, I found out all members of my family were either dead or abroad, there is a mafia state, people are depressed, and most of them are completely insane.

Long story short, I was terrified of what life in Russia is like, but because I’m stubborn (that was my mistake), instead of going back to the UK when I should have (which was immediately), stayed in Russia and tried to get to the bottom of why people are living such horrifying lives. Then the war started.

The good news is, the book called “Ending The War In Ukraine” is finished. It’s a study of the people, their rulers, why they chose this lifestyle, what the hell happened to them (spoiler: a whole lot of mental illness) and how life in Russia compares to growing up in England. I guess I should have gotten out while I could, but my journalistic instincts got the best of me.

That, on the one hand, is good, because I’ve made therapy my first priority (otherwise I would haму definitely gone insane) and because of that, and also a lot of access to information that can’t possibly be found outside of Russia, including classified files, I was actually able to put together the reason behind Russia being what it is. I understood the reasons that pushed Russia over the edge, how the Europeans are different, and, most importantly, how the pathology can be stopped. It’s no doubt the best journalistic investigation of my whole life.

The bad news is, explosions keep going off everywhere, I have considerable debt because there’s no money in Russia (or at least it’s impossible to make any money honestly). Not only am I expecting to get drafted any day now, there’s also an imminent threat of a full-scale war on Russia, and I won’t be let out of the country with debt. The debt is actually not that bad at around $3000, but there’s no way I can earn that in a country that has been spending $5 000 000 a day on war, with sanctions, and so on. I can’t get in touch with anyone in the UK. I don’t know why.

The bottom line is, I need money really badly to come home, but I also will do my darnedest to publish the book and just maybe the world will find out exactly what made Russia “the empire of evil”.

Actually, knowing the reason means being able to put a stop to all wars, not just the Ukraine one. But it has to be done right.

I need money to pay off the debts, fly home, rent a room in London for a year, edit, publish, and market the book, which comes roughly to $16k. Any percentage of the revenue can be paid out to the backers upon sales starting.

If you’ve ever seen an intro to Season 3 of Farscape, you know what to do.

I need your help, but this is also a chance to do something that’s bigger than both of us. Together, we can give our children a world we couldn’t even dream of: a world without war.

Telegram: @hawaii500

Facebook.com/niki.kosmin