A warm and friendly greeting from Russia!
As someone who has felt a similar unending weight of guilt
for the crimes of my country since before the 24th of February,
before Crimea and before Georgia, I can say that, while there's no accounting
for personal fortitude and sensitivity, but a part of this feeling
is due to a slightly enlarged sense of personal accountability,
and some of it is due to vanity.

We all want to be good people, in our eyes and in the eyes of our peers,
but very few of us are endowed with the power to influence the course of history,
individually. We can organize, we can lead by example and self-sacrifice,
of defiance or diligence, but ultimately, it is the mindless, immoral tides
of human drives and needs that swing nations this way or that,
and it is the will of people possessing incredible power,
who are inescapably corrupted by that intoxicating
capability to control and direct.
With great power comes great responsibility,
but most of us well-meaning people have little to no power.

You can look at any large and powerful nation in history,
and they are all guilty of monstrously evil acts collectively,
but the people in those bloody empires mostly just did
what they could to survive and to foster their families and communities.

We want to make the world better, we try, we try like hell,
but it's not up to us, unfortunately.

It has been getting better, though. There is more transparency and accountability nowadays,
and more people come closer to agreeing what the fundamental human morality
should look like, more people are eager to be involved in politics.

Even with the hideous setbacks that we have had,
we can still see some hopeful trends towards a better future.

Please, don't try to shoulder the weight of guilt for three hundred million people,
most of whom are well-meaning and helpless leaves in the wind, same as you.

But for what it's worth, I share your grief and disgust at belonging
to a society that is so powerful and unchecked that it can
slaughter thousands while arrogantly proclaiming itself
a pillar of justice and civilization.

It feels bad. Really bad. All I can do is dissociate from the country,
and swear allegiance to the principles of compassion, peace and justice.
And it is all that I can advise you to do, instead of punishing yourself.

May your kindness and your creativity continue helping change the world for the better,
as it already has.