I had started to make friends and was finally feeling happy when I noticed my friends were hanging around with a group of skinheads I was terrified of. I remember going up to talk to my friend Igor, and him simply ignoring me. We were seven. They didn’t beat me up, at least.
Later, I became a professional musician and attended a music school which was a very different experience from my early school days. My life revolved around music until I learnt about the climate crisis and realised that unless Russia, the largest country in the world by area and fourth largest by emissions, tackled the climate crisis, there was little chance the rest of the world would be able to.