Happy Nice Mall

Raising climate awareness under an authoritarian government is lonely and dangerous. But Arshak Makichyan, a young activist from Russia, deeply believed in this.

For years, he stood alone in Moscow’s squares, carrying banners to protest climate inaction, speaking at conferences and building a social media following. He was detained several times by the police.

It was all worth it, he thought. Until the war broke out.

“Protesting this war is more important than climate activism,” he told me in a video call from his Moscow apartment just before leaving the country.

The war, he said, made it impossible to envision a future in which parts of Ukraine were razed to the ground by Russian artillery. It is estimated that thousands of people have died and four million have left the country so far.

We we talked in this newsletter About how the war in Ukraine has upset policies to combat global warming, while at the same time making oil companies almost dizzy with new optimism. But Makichyan’s experience highlights another impact of the Russian occupation: It has stifled global conversation on environmental issues.

As Russian tanks entered Ukraine, Makichyan wrote “I am against war” on his dozens of climate stickers and could not find a shop to print anything with “war” on it. Like many climate activists, she has joined thousands of people demonstrating for peace.

He and his wife, Apollinaria Oleinikova, were detained by the police for five hours for protesting the war. His tenure as social media manager ended because websites were blocked. His friends raided their flats by the police and all their electronic devices were confiscated.

“It’s kind of hard to be constantly afraid that someone might break your door,” he said.

In mid-March, she and Oleinikova boarded a bus, crossed the border into Belarus, then crossed into Poland and eventually reached Germany. He was there when President Vladimir V. Putin called the pro-Western Russians”scumbags and traitors” They do not intend to leave Russia permanently, but are not sure when they will return.

Makichyan started out as a climate activist in 2018 when she was a 24-year-old violin student at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. She was browsing English websites looking for ways to improve her language skills when she came across a Tweet about Greta Thunberg from Greenpeace International. She talked about the school strikes in Sweden on Friday to draw attention to the climate crisis.

This prompted him to learn more about climate issues and consider joining the global Fridays for Future movement that Thunberg inspired. At first, he feared “someone would break my arm” if he joined a protest. But he also realized that he was angry with the environmental situation of the world and was shocked to see that no one around him was talking about it.

“You see people who do nothing when terrible things happen,” he said, “and you want to be different.”

He needed permission, which he was repeatedly denied, to demonstrate with other activists in Russia. However, Makichyan realized that the law allows individuals to protest alone. And so he did.

Sometimes he only lasted a few minutes before the police stopped him. Still, he felt that his message had reached him, as he received support both on the street and online. He became known as the “lone collector” and “lone protester”.

He was able to protest for more than 40 weeks. Arrested in December 2019 to organize an unauthorized three-man strike. Activists protested his arrest at Russian embassies around the world.

Life would continue to get harder for activists in Russia. government in 2021 approved a law this tagged anyone who received financial support from abroad and posted a foreign agent online.

As the situation got more tense, he and Oleinikova decided to get married so that if anyone was arrested they would have the right to see each other in custody. The wedding took place in February, the day the war began in Ukraine.

Makichyan said he is disappointed that many countries continue to buy fossil fuels that fuel what he sees as Russia’s system of oppression. But sitting safely in Germany while the people of his country suffer makes him feel guilty.

“We think one day returning to Russia and being in jail is the right thing to do,” he wrote to me on Telegram. The next, “you think it’s impossible and stupid to go back.”

She struggles to imagine a life away from Russia in Europe, where being an activist is a wildly different endeavor and the stakes aren’t nearly that high. “Activism is all I have,” he said. “My place is Russia.”

Before you go: A surprising and disturbing discovery

The expedition that found Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, reminded us of the explorer’s gripping story. It was also a lesson in how technology is transforming our encounters with the past and how climate change is reshaping our world. Ice that once covered the Weddell Sea made underwater research practical, but in recent months the thickness of this ice has reached some of the lowest levels ever recorded. Climate change helped discover Endurance.

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back on Tuesday.

Claire O’Neill and Douglas Alteen contributed to Climate Forward.

Contact us climateforward@nytimes.com. We read every message and reply to many!