A War Without an Author Is an Alibi for the Aggressor: Breaking Down Anastasia Chizhevskaya’s Reel

I stand by this

What struck me in your video wasn’t so much the self-centeredness as an incredibly low level of self-reflection.

Every seventh word in her video is “I,” “we,” “our.” About the war — one word, and even that is someone else’s, from the teacher’s question. There is reflection in the video — about her feelings. About the war there is none. That is what I call self-centeredness and a low level of reflection.

accurate summary

You describe a conversation with your Spanish teacher from Argentina, who was surprised that you didn’t sense the war coming. And you really didn’t sense anything: life was going beautifully, the business was growing, wonderful prospects were opening up ahead.

Her words: “our business was only just taking off,” “our whole life ahead of us.”

I stand by this

And all this against the backdrop of the largest and bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. A war in which people die every day, cities are destroyed, millions of human lives are broken.

The main thesis. And it’s no exaggeration: more than 380,000 dead soldiers on both sides have been identified by name alone. This backdrop is absent from the video: the word “war” is heard once, and even then in someone else’s question.

I stand by this

And here I am watching your video and thinking: God, how can you, in the middle of this whole brutal clusterfuck, perceive what’s happening exclusively through the prism of your own comfort? Where I was better off, where worse, whether emigration paid off, what I gained, what I lost, how we lived then and how we live now.

She named the yardstick herself: whether life got better and whether that justified emigration.

I exaggerated

Me, me, me, me, I’m so fucking important!

A caricature. But in her video every seventh word is about herself. The caricature turned out to be almost literal.

I stand by this

And it’s not that you can’t talk about your own life. Of course you can. The question is whether a person can see anything at all beyond the circumstances of their own life. Any sense of the scale of what’s happening. Any responsibility at all, any moral problem at all.

The video answers this question itself: nothing beyond the circumstances of her own life is visible in it.

inaccurate

My wife tells me: “No way, all that reflection must be in the other videos.” I took the trouble, scrolled back and watched all your videos all the way back to the start of the full-scale war. And I found neither a condemnation of the war, which, by the way, had been going on since 2014, nor any attempt to make sense of what was happening. Nothing at all.

In the videos, I didn’t find it. But “nothing at all” is inaccurate: there was the post “Wars and Ecology” of February 24, 2022. There is no condemnation of this war or its aggressor in it either.

partly right

And then it all falls into place. You were “outside politics” back home too. From 2014 to 2022, judging by what you’ve said, life was going just fine, everything was so fucking awesome. A war was going on somewhere, people were dying somewhere, but apparently it had nothing to do with your wonderful life.

“Outside politics” is my conclusion, not a fact. But that the war had nothing to do with her good life comes from her own video: “our business was only just taking off, everything was so great.”

I was wrong

And then suddenly something happened. Life became inconvenient, you had to leave.

I attributed a motive for leaving to her — the apology is below.

I stand by this

And that, now, turned out to be an event worthy of the most detailed reflection.

What received detailed reflection in the video was her loss, not the war.

the question stands

One really wants to ask: so what actually happened? And at what point did what was going on around you become a problem for you — when the war started, or when it disrupted your personal comfort?

As applied to the video, it still stands: the problem the video names is precisely the lost good life.

Anastasia’s argument 1

You’re a hypocrite: you post about webinars

On February 24, 2022, you wrote a post about sales webinars. On February 27, 2022 — about the formula for a selling offer. After that, funnels, sales, leads and all that kind of stuff. Holy shit, you’re a hypocrite, Georgy

My reply

My instagram is not a blog, it’s a commercial tool, I don’t share my thoughts there and I don’t have an audience. Unlike you, you’re a blogger, you have an audience and influence, and that’s a responsibility.

I don’t accept her argument. The technique she’s using is called whataboutism. It’s a favorite technique of Russian propaganda: to any criticism of the war — “Where were you for eight years?” (meaning Donbas since 2014), “What about America in Iraq?” The point is simple: instead of answering the criticism — a counter-accusation. The conversation shifts from what was said to who said it, and the subject of the dispute disappears. Hence the eternal “don’t like it — get out; got out — shut the fuck up.”

Whatever I may be and whatever I may write, it changes nothing about what she said. As if you can only criticize public content if you yourself are perfect. Then everyone would just sit in their corners with their mouths shut.

And most importantly: our accounts only look alike on the surface. My Instagram is a commercial lead-generation tool. The reels there are made to sell and run on paid promotion — targeted at people who might need my services. There are almost no organic views there: content like that doesn’t get broad reach by definition. I don’t post my thoughts about life there — it’s not a blog.

Her account is a media outlet: 108,000 followers, organic reach, her opinions on emigration, on the war, on everything. It influences people and shapes public opinion — and that’s a responsibility. Mine doesn’t influence anyone’s opinion: I sell services there. So an “I know you are, but what am I?” comparison doesn’t work here.

Her videos since the start of the war have racked up more than 33,000,000 views. Mine — a few tens of thousands. So who’s the hypocrite here?

Anastasia’s argument 2

“My account is different.” A classic

I was sure you’d write: “my account is different.” A classic

My reply

I don’t accept her argument. Yes, it’s different — and that’s not an excuse, it’s a difference in scale and purpose. Her video about the war was viewed more than 105,000 times in the first 24 hours, and roughly half of the viewers don’t even follow her. And all her videos since the start of the war have together racked up more than 33,000,000 views. My reels don’t get that kind of reach: they run for money, targeted at people who need my services. The most popular reel on my Instagram of all time got about 1,000 organic views. Even if you multiply that by five, it doesn’t compare with the media impact of her video. And my thousand are people far removed from the agenda we’re discussing: mostly people from the US and the Middle East, above all Israel. They came for marketing, and many of them have a war of their own.

Not because I apply double standards, but because someone hundreds of thousands of people listen to bears a different responsibility for what they say. That’s what this whole dispute is about.

Anastasia’s argument 3

My platform is Stories, not posts

i actually write very few posts. My main platform is stories.

My reply

I don’t accept her argument. First, “few posts” is no excuse. Her videos get big reach: since 2025 a typical reel of hers has drawn about 90,000 views, this one — 105,000 in the first 24 hours. And she considered this topic important enough to record a video about it. It is a deliberate public statement — a separate, self-contained message that people take in on its own, without her Stories from 2022.

Second, someone who encounters her content forms an impression from what’s in the account now. On October 25 I watched her Stories and almost all of her Highlights — I opened every one and watched almost every one to the end. There’s nothing about the war there: it’s all the same as in the reels.

And third, Stories are seen by her followers, and they disappear after 24 hours. Reels are shown by Instagram itself to people who don’t follow her.

How reels get shown

Instagram itself explains that in Reels, the majority of what you see comes from accounts you don’t follow. Reels are shown in the Reels tab and in recommendations — far beyond the follower base.

In numbers: according to Fanpage Karma (April 2026, more than 6 million profiles), 47% of reel reach comes from non-followers. Dash Social counted 49% of views coming from non-followers across all formats by the end of 2025.

Reel views include repeat views. The exact split between followers and non-followers is visible only to her — in the reel’s insights.

Stories are a conversation with your own people. A reel is a speech in front of everyone. I’m analyzing what she showed everyone.

How Stories get shown

In Stories, according to Instagram itself, the vast majority of what you see comes from accounts you follow. According to Fanpage Karma, non-followers account for just 9% of Stories reach. And Stories disappear after 24 hours unless saved to Highlights.

The typical reach of a single Story for accounts her size is 2.4–5.3% of followers (Rival IQ, 2021 data; Socialinsider, 2020–2021, via MarketingCharts). In February 2022 she had an estimated 128,000 followers or so: today’s 108,000 plus about 20,000 who, by her account, unfollowed.

These are measurements for brands; Story reach for personal blogs may be higher. But the order of magnitude of the difference between a reel and a Story doesn’t change.

Anastasia’s argument 4

I condemned the war on day one and left

I think something like 20 thousand people unfollowed me when I condemned the war on February 24, 2022, and on February 25 I left the country. Probably precisely because of my self-centeredness and lack of reflection, I was put on the RKN lists

My reply

I don’t accept her argument as an answer to the criticism of the video. And look at what it’s about: first and foremost, her losses — 20,000 unfollows, being put on the lists of Roskomnadzor (RKN, Russia’s media regulator), leaving the country. Again, “look how I’ve suffered.” On one side — the victim frame, on the other — a story about her own losses. It’s a sleight of hand: this isn’t what the discussion is about at all. It’s about a blogger’s public responsibility for the words she says and for her influence on others.

I’m sorry that she ended up on the RKN lists. And I’m glad she left: I’m glad every time someone leaves the country, and I think everyone who can get out should do it.

But I did not find a condemnation of this war in her account. From what she says, one can gather that it was in her Stories. Almost five years have passed since then, and now there isn’t even a hint of it in the account. On February 24, 2022, she herself wrote: “You can’t be outside politics. You can’t stay silent.” And almost five years later, the war appears in her video as a backdrop for a story about a lost good life.

Her account is a media outlet. It’s shown to people who don’t follow her and haven’t seen her Stories. They see the same thing I see. That’s exactly the view I’m trying to show her.

Anastasia’s argument 5

You form opinions about people fast and made up a lot about me

But well done you, forming opinions about people so easily and, most importantly, so quickly

My reply

You’re in Buenos Aires, right? Funny, I haven’t seen you there either.

I partly accept her argument. She’s a public figure: she runs a blog and presents herself in a certain way. Forming an opinion of her on that basis is normal; every one of her viewers does it. Where I went wrong was elsewhere: in several places I passed off guesses as facts — Buenos Aires, the motive for leaving, “nothing at all.” I apologized for that above.

I formed my opinion of her from how she presents herself: from this video and from the account as a whole. I spent time studying it — and my opinion only got stronger. The arguments are in the breakdown of the video above. If that’s not enough, I can analyze a few more of her videos: all she has to do is ask.

She replied as if I had accused her of not condemning the war and not helping anyone, and since she did condemn it and does help, I must be wrong. But that’s not what I wrote about. I wrote about what she said in the video. Neither her help to people, nor her 2022 Stories, nor the RKN lists change a single word of it.

Anastasia’s argument 6

This is bullying. How are you any better than the regime?

the dude who on February 24, 2022, with a perfectly straight face, posted about “sales funnels” started this bullying, and you backed it. How are you yourself any better than this regime?

My reply

I don’t accept her argument. Criticizing a public video in the comments under it is not bullying. And comparing a commenter to a regime that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, that tortures, represses, abducts children, wages a war of conquest and has been condemned by most of the civilized world — that’s an ugly manipulation and a false equivalence. Equating the two is, in my view, simply absurd.

And again the same pattern: even here she is the victim, the one who suffered.

When I wrote my comment, I rather expected to get my ass handed to me: it’s her turf and her audience. But about a quarter of the commenters criticize the video — almost as many as support it. Instead of listening to them, she called it bullying.

And how much her video influences people — and therefore what responsibility lies on her — can be seen from the comments themselves.

Anastasia’s argument 7

If I show you my Stories archive, will you apologize publicly?

if I show you this, will you make a public apology? Or will you keep trying to prove that it’s not enough on my part

My reply

go ahead and show me, I promise to study it all carefully and give you a substantive answer.

I’ll prepare a public apology, as you asked. Send the proof of your help as you offered, I’m interested. I’m interested first and foremost in help for Ukrainians.

I partly accept her argument. I promised an apology — it’s above: for the things I got wrong. Everything else is my position, and I’m not backing away from it.

She sent the proof — a link to her Telegram channel, which shows that she helps both people who left Russia and Ukrainians. That’s really great, and I’m sincerely glad it’s so. It restores my faith in humanity in general and in bloggers in particular.

But it changes absolutely nothing of what we’re discussing and has no bearing on the subject of the dispute — what she said in the video.

Frankly, after everything covered above, the very demand for an apology looks absurd. It’s the same strategy as in all her replies: attack is the best defense. Once again, twisting concepts and steering the conversation onto another topic. Instead of answering on the merits, she goes on the attack and demands a public apology — where she herself, in my view, is clearly in the wrong.

And judging by how her content and her position echo the prevailing Russian narrative, it seems to me that the fashion for demanding public apologies — the one that started in Chechnya and then spread across all of Russia — has apparently touched her too. Demanding an apology where you yourself are in the wrong is a style we’re used to seeing from the Russian state.

Emigrants from Russia are among those who have suffered. That’s absolutely true, and I don’t dispute it. The economist Konstantin Sonin put it precisely: “lesser victims, but victims nonetheless”.

My complaint was about the lack of reflection. But in Anastasia Chizhevskaya’s video I also see the normalization of war — the very one that both propaganda and Trump are pushing today. That’s how many Russian bloggers who have left the country talk about the war in Ukraine today: through their own losses, without an aggressor.

1. “Both sides are suffering.” First, propaganda says: look, people on both sides are suffering from the war. This strikes a chord with people because it’s true: Ukrainians and Russians, Israelis and Palestinians all suffer from war, from the fighting; they are victims of war. Everyone has their own story, and everyone who has suffered from war considers themselves a victim.
2. War as a natural disaster. Then the next stage of the narrative kicks in. War is talked about as a kind of natural disaster: without naming its causes, without naming who is responsible, without calling the aggressor the aggressor and the victim the victim. This already blurs responsibility. A frame emerges in which war is a natural disaster with no one to blame, where there are only victims.
3. “You’re both as bad as each other.” The next step is equating the victim and the aggressor. Why dig up the past, everyone suffered, everyone’s as bad as each other, everyone’s to blame. Like a schoolteacher when two kids get into a fight: “You’re both as bad as each other.” And we can see that Trump is already very much adopting this discourse.
4. The victim is to blame. The blurring of responsibility has already happened; the equating of victim and aggressor has already happened. The next step is the refusal of responsibility and shifting it onto the victim.

The first two steps are the Kremlin’s long-standing language. EUvsDisinfo, the EU’s counter-disinformation project, analyzes the “Russians are the victims” narrative (Russophobia, the cancellation of everything Russian) this way: the goal is to “prove that Russia is the victim, thereby implying it can't be the culprit”.

And it works. According to an analysis by Carnegie based on Levada Center polls, even among Russians who oppose the war, only about 13% are willing to place responsibility on their own country. Ethnographers at PS Lab describe the same pattern: criticism of the war through the harm it does to “ordinary people” reaches neither the question of whether this war is needed nor criticism of the authorities.

Steps three and four can already be heard from Washington. On February 24, 2025, the US, together with Russia, voted in the UN General Assembly against a resolution condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion. The American draft, according to AP, “never mentions Moscow's invasion”. Security Council Resolution 2774 speaks only of “the conflict,” and Britain’s UN ambassador reminded the same meeting: “There can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine.”

Trump told reporters about Ukraine: “You should have never started it” (step 4). And later: “Everybody is to blame” (step 3; though he did name Putin first).