Russia Ukraine war, page-73333

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"About 25% of my immediate colleagues have already left Russia. They left after 24 February. Some of them left immediately, some left after mobilisation was declared. I think Russia is losing the best people now. The most educated, the most energetic, the most critically thinking people are leaving the country. In short, Russia is going in the wrong direction."

An uncertain future is not solely the consequence of the present. It is also the product of Russia's past.

Across town a small group of St Petersburg residents is standing beside a monument to the victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Terror of the 1930s.

And yet, in Vladimir Putin's Russia, Stalin has enjoyed something of a rehabilitation. The authorities today place less emphasis on the darker chapters of the Stalin years, while Stalin himself is often portrayed as a strongman who defeated Nazi Germany and turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. Putin's Kremlin seeks positives in the past - victories.

"Unfortunately, our country didn't turn over this page properly. Stalin's repressions were not talked about enough or fully condemned. This is why the war in Ukraine is happening today," says pensioner Ludmila, who has come to lay flowers at the Solovki Stone.