invisible woman
I AM BRITAIN
On 14 September 2026, I woke up famous.
Not quite in the way I had imagined becoming famous, admittedly.
The Telegraph had published a story by Tom Cotterill, its Acting Defence Editor, under the headline: “Nato officer’s Tinder romance sets off spy alert at UK base.”
Apparently, I was the Russian-born woman at the centre of a NATO espionage scare.
My first action that morning was entirely practical.
I subscribed to The Telegraph.
After all, if one is going to become an international security sensation, one should at least be able to read the article.
In a first place had spoken to Tom about something rather different.
My interest was in institutional accountability: how security-related information had been generated, communicated and acted upon; who had made decisions affecting me; what evidence supported those decisions; and why, despite extensive correspondence, I had struggled to obtain clear explanations.
As a solicitor, I was interested in procedure, evidence and the exercise of public power.
Tom had found a rather more marketable opening.
Tinder. NATO. Russian spies. A Spanish naval commander. A British military base.
I was shocked. Initially.
Then I read the article again.
And I began to laugh.
Because I thought I understood what Tom had done.
The British art of making absurdity visible
The story concerned a security controversy that had begun approximately fourteen months earlier.
Fourteen months.
Yet here it was, presented with all the excitement of a freshly discovered international espionage scandal.
The more carefully I read it, the more I was reminded of the great British tradition of satire — particularly Jonathan Swift, whose genius lay in presenting absurdity with an almost perfectly straight face.
The Telegraph article was not literally a satirical essay. It was journalism, reporting serious allegations, disputed accounts and legal proceedings.
But to me, the combination of sensational framing, documentary detail and institutional responses produced an almost Swiftian effect.
And then came the ending.
A MARCOM spokesman explained that the command did not comment on personnel matters, while reaffirming NATO's commitment to protecting allied personnel and safeguarding classified information.
The British Ministry of Defence spokesman stated:
“It would be inappropriate to comment on matters subject to ongoing legal proceedings.”
There it was.
A story about extraordinary security suspicions, a relationship, institutional decisions, an international controversy and unanswered questions.
And the official responses were, essentially: personnel matter; ongoing litigation.
I sat there admiring the construction.
Whether Tom intended the satire I perceived is something only Tom can answer.
But I found it magnificent.
Then I opened the comments.
And discovered something even more entertaining.
British readers had opinions.
Very British opinions.
Some appeared to recognise the absurdity immediately. Others seemed to arrive at it by entirely different routes. Some were sceptical, some amused, some sharp, and some gloriously irreverent.
I was reading the responses to a story about myself and discovering that the British public possessed exactly the kind of humour I love.
Not everyone was laughing at the same thing, of course.
That is part of the beauty of British humour.
It allows several meanings to coexist without requiring everyone to agree on which one is the correct interpretation.
The following day, The Times published its own account, after Charlie Parker had contacted me.
I subscribed to The Times too.
Becoming a Russian spy was proving surprisingly expensive in newspaper subscriptions.
Once again, I found myself reading a story whose dramatic subject matter contrasted rather wonderfully with the institutional and human absurdities beneath it.
And once again, I enjoyed watching readers respond.
By this point, I was beginning to understand something important.
Perhaps I had not become a celebrity in the conventional sense.
Perhaps I had become a character in a very British comedy.
And perhaps the most British thing I could do was to participate in it. So I started Invisible Woman blog. Initially on LinkedIn and now here.
The Times, Russian intelligence and a cancelled subscription
Two weeks later, the initial excitement had subsided sufficiently for me to address an urgent administrative matter.
I needed to cancel my subscription to The Times.
This, I discovered, was a considerably more complicated operation than subscribing.
Subscribing required a few clicks.
Cancelling required a telephone call.
I called.
I was approximately twentieth in the queue.
Fortunately, the system offered to call me back.
Fifteen minutes later, a cheerful young woman telephoned.
What followed is reconstructed from memory, but the spirit of the conversation was unmistakable.
“Good afternoon. How can I help?”
“I would like to cancel my subscription.”
“Of course. Let me just confirm your details.”
We went through the necessary formalities.
Then she asked a perfectly reasonable question.
“May I ask why you subscribed to The Times in the first place?”
“Well,” I said, “you published an article about me two weeks ago.”
“Oh! Was it a nice article?”
“Yep. It was about me being a Russian spy.”
There was a moment of silence.
And then she burst into laughter.
Not the polite, restrained laugh of someone following a customer-service script.
A wonderfully spontaneous, ringing laugh.
“Well, in that case,” she said, still laughing, “it must have been quite an interesting article!”
We were both laughing.
And then, suddenly, the call disconnected.
I have absolutely no idea which of us pressed the wrong button, or whether technology simply decided that we had enjoyed ourselves enough.
Five minutes later, she called back.
“I am so sorry! We got disconnected!”
“Don't worry,” I replied. “I suspect Russian intelligence wasn't particularly happy about us discussing my espionage activities.”
She almost cried with laughter.
By now, cancelling a newspaper subscription had become one of the most enjoyable customer-service experiences I could remember.
We completed the cancellation.
And I reassured her that the next time The Times reported on my Russian espionage adventures, I would undoubtedly subscribe again.
We parted on excellent terms.
And I thought: this is why I love Britain.
Not because every British person has the same sense of humour.
Not because the country is always fair.
And certainly not because its institutions are beyond criticism.
But because there is something wonderfully liberating about being able to take an absurd situation, recognise its multiple meanings and laugh at it together.
Even when you are the subject of the story.
Especially then.
What happened when the headlines faded
The initial wave of publicity did not last forever.
It was never going to.
For a few days, I was an international curiosity: a British and Polish citizen, born in the Soviet Union, romantically involved with a Spanish naval officer, suddenly associated in headlines with Russian espionage.
Then the immediate excitement began to fade.
But something much more interesting started happening.
Journalists continued contacting me.
Only now, the conversations were changing.
The question was no longer simply: how did a Russian-born woman become involved in a NATO security controversy?
The questions were becoming more substantial.
What actually happened?
What do the documents say?
Which institutions made which decisions?
How do the British, Spanish and NATO accounts fit together?
Where do they contradict one another?
And what might this episode reveal about institutional accountability?
Even today, a month after the first publication, I gave another newspaper interview.
I was told that my story was unique.
I agreed.
And I am increasingly interested in the opposite possibility: that the circumstances are unusual, while the underlying institutional mechanisms are not.
The sensational part may be exceptional.
The questions about administrative power, information asymmetry, accountability and access to justice are universal.
Meanwhile, something unexpected was happening on LinkedIn.
Before the publicity, my rather sleepy account had approximately 500 followers.
Within a month, that number had grown to around 4,000.
I began publishing my own account through Invisible Woman.
I explained the documents, examined the contradictions and wrote about what it feels like when institutions classify a person without adequately explaining the consequences.
The readership statistics were fascinating.
People were reading.
Often extensively.
But public engagement was comparatively quiet.
Few likes. Relatively few comments.
And then the private messages began arriving.
People wrote to me directly.
Warmly. Thoughtfully. Sometimes with extraordinary generosity.
What struck me most was that many did not express pity.
They expressed recognition.
They valued the fact that I was continuing to investigate, question, analyse and, occasionally, laugh.
I cannot know precisely how every reader interprets my writing. But many of those who contacted me seemed to recognise that I was doing something more than defending myself against a sensational label.
I was examining the machinery that had produced it.
And I was refusing to let that machinery define me.
The month that rearranged my relationships
Public exposure has an interesting side effect.
It reveals people.
Some individuals who had previously described themselves as friends quietly disappeared.
I do not necessarily blame them. Public controversy makes people uncomfortable. Some relationships are simply not built to withstand it.
But their disappearance was informative.
At the same time, new people entered my life.
People who were interested not in rescuing me, but in knowing me.
People who recognised independence, intellectual curiosity and determination.
Some became genuine friends.
And something else happened, something I had not anticipated.
A person occupying an institutional position — someone from whom I had not expected support — offered me precisely that: institutional support.
I will not identify the person or the circumstances here.
It is important to distinguish friendship from institutional engagement.
Friendship is personal.
Institutional support is a different kind of relationship, carrying different responsibilities and possibilities.
What surprised me was not merely the offer itself.
It was the reminder that institutions are not homogeneous organisms.
They contain people capable of independent judgement.
And sometimes the most interesting developments occur when someone inside a system chooses to exercise it.
That distinction matters enormously to me.
I criticise institutional conduct.
I do not believe every person working inside an institution is incapable of integrity, courage or independent thought.
Quite the opposite.
Two people, two strategies, one institutional conflict
My former partner, Commander Laureano Pastor Veiga of the Spanish Navy, also reappeared in my life during this period.
Our relationship belongs to a complicated personal history, but it also illustrates something intellectually interesting.
We have both challenged aspects of what happened around our relationship and his military posting.
Yet we approach the institutions involved from fundamentally different positions.
I am outside those structures.
I challenge decisions through courts, complaints, documentary analysis and public-interest scrutiny.
Laureano's approach remains rooted in his identity as a Spanish naval officer and in his relationship with the military institution to which he has devoted much of his professional life.
I see that as a distinction between external and internal strategies.
I can question the system without needing to preserve my place within it.
He must navigate a much more complicated relationship with an institution that forms part of his professional identity.
Neither strategy guarantees success.
And it would be premature to declare either one superior.
But I find the comparison fascinating.
What happens when two people challenge related institutional conduct, one from outside and the other from within?
Which approach produces answers?
Which produces accountability?
Which encounters the greater resistance?
I do not yet know.
That is why I continue observing.
I do not play games any longer.
I model them.
I am Britain
Yesterday, I republished an older essay, I AM UKRAINE, exploring the cultural codes through which I understand my own thinking.
I wrote about Russian space, Polish refusal and Ukrainian determination to remain, adapt and build.
I had intended to examine the Spanish cultural code today as well.
Spain certainly deserves a chapter of its own.
But not today.
Because this month has made me realise something about Britain.
I am not merely British by citizenship.
I am British in the way I think, question, analyse and act.
Let me explain.
One interpretation of the British cultural tradition emphasises independent thinking, paradox, empiricism and the ability to work with contradictions.
I recognise all four.
Independent thinking.
I do not accept an institutional assertion merely because it comes from an institution.
Authority is not evidence.
A government lawyer's statement is not automatically a satisfactory explanation.
And a decision does not become intellectually convincing simply because it has been expressed in formal language.
Paradox.
I am perfectly comfortable with apparently contradictory propositions.
I can love Britain while challenging British institutions.
I can respect the armed forces while questioning decisions made within military structures.
I can recognise the legitimate importance of national security while insisting that its invocation does not automatically answer every question about legality, necessity or accountability.
These are not contradictions that trouble me.
They are questions that interest me.
Empiricism.
I work with documents.
Dates. Correspondence. Decision records. Legal submissions. Official explanations.
I distinguish what a document establishes from what it suggests, and what it suggests from what remains unknown.
My interpretation can change when the evidence changes.
That is not weakness.
That is how inquiry is supposed to work.
Working with contradictions.
I do not regard inconsistencies as inconvenient details to be explained away.
I regard them as invitations to investigate.
Sometimes a contradiction reveals an error.
Sometimes it reveals an incomplete account.
Sometimes it disappears when additional context becomes available.
And sometimes it exposes a structural problem.
The purpose of analysis is to discover which.
This is why I sometimes feel more faithful to the British intellectual tradition than some of the institutions I am challenging — and, on occasion, the lawyers defending their positions.
That is a deliberately provocative observation, not a judgement on anyone's nationality.
My point is that institutional authority and intellectual independence are not the same thing.
One can possess the former while failing to demonstrate the latter.
And one can exercise the latter while standing alone against the former.
English: the language in which I build
There is another aspect of British culture that I recognise in myself.
The English language.
I do not primarily experience English as a language of commands.
For me, it is a language of intellectual construction.
It can be wonderfully simple on the surface and extraordinarily complex underneath.
That combination matters in my work as a lawyer, programmer, Google Developer and AI architect.
I often use different cultural and linguistic resources for different stages of thinking.
My Slavic cultural inheritance encourages me to imagine possibilities, question boundaries and consider alternatives beyond the immediate situation.
But when I need to turn a complex idea into an executable structure, I frequently find myself switching into English.
Define the problem.
Identify the variables.
Establish the conditions.
Test the assumptions.
Model the possible outcomes.
Execute.
That is not because English has a monopoly on logic or science.
It is because English has become my own working interface between imagination and implementation.
I imagine across cultures. I model in English. I execute through systems.
And perhaps that is another reason Britain feels like home.
My home is my castle
In I AM UKRAINE, I described the Ukrainian cultural impulse as the determination not to abandon the ground, but to remain and create the means to defend it.
The British tradition offers a wonderfully compatible expression:
My home is my castle.
I have always loved that phrase.
To me, home is not merely a building.
It is the space in which I exercise agency.
My life.
My professional identity.
My reputation.
My right to ask questions.
My right to disagree.
My right to remain a subject rather than become an object of someone else's classification.
I do not have to abandon that space because an institution finds my questions inconvenient.
Nor do I have to accept that a decision affecting me is beyond examination simply because the decision-maker possesses authority.
I can remain.
I can investigate.
I can build.
And I can defend what I consider mine through lawful means.
The Ukrainian in me refuses to abandon the ground.
The British in me insists that my home is my castle.
The bulldog and the slug
And then there is the British bulldog.
I am absolutely a bulldog.
I remember 30 years ago, when I lived in Poland, a person told about me exactly in these terms: Janina is like a bulldog. It is easier to kill her, than to stop her.
Not because I enjoy conflict.
Not because I am incapable of changing my mind.
And certainly not because I believe stubbornness is a substitute for evidence.
I am a bulldog because I pursue questions.
If one approach fails, I examine why.
If one procedure closes, I consider whether another lawful route exists.
If an explanation contradicts a document, I investigate the discrepancy.
If the evidence changes, I adjust the model.
That is active persistence.
And I make a distinction between persistence and institutional defensiveness.
A bulldog moves.
It acts.
It pursues a purpose.
An institution that merely retreats into formulaic responses, procedural delay or unexplained positions is not necessarily demonstrating bulldog determination.
To my mind, that looks rather more like a slug withdrawing into self-protection.
Of course, not every refusal to comment is evasive. Legal proceedings, confidentiality and national security can impose legitimate limits.
But the distinction remains worth examining.
Is the institution actively resolving a problem?
Or merely protecting its existing position?
The difference is not cosmetic.
It is a question of institutional purpose.
Britain is not its institutions
There is one sentence from Tom Cotterill's article that I have thought about repeatedly during this extraordinary month.
Speaking about the impact of events, I said:
“I feel Britain, my country, betrayed me.”
I meant it.
But a month later, I want to explain exactly what I meant.
I did not mean that the British people had betrayed me.
Quite the opposite.
Over the past month, I have encountered British humour, curiosity, generosity, intellectual independence and quiet encouragement.
I have laughed with strangers.
I have received thoughtful messages from people who owe me nothing.
I have met new friends.
And I have been reminded that people inside institutions can sometimes act with a degree of independence that surprises even someone as sceptical as I am.
What I meant was that I felt betrayed by the conduct of particular institutions from which I had expected legality, fairness, accountability and reasoned decision-making.
Those are not the same thing as Britain.
Institutions are structures created to serve public purposes.
They are not the owners of the values they are supposed to uphold.
And questioning whether they have fulfilled those purposes is not an act of disloyalty.
It is an exercise of citizenship.
A month ago, I woke up to discover that I had become a character in an international spy story.
I subscribed to two newspapers to find out what had happened to me.
I discovered British satire, cancelled a subscription with the assistance of a woman who laughed at Russian intelligence, acquired thousands of new readers, lost a few supposed friends, gained some genuine ones, encountered an unexpected institutional ally and continued investigating the questions that had brought me into public view.
The media frenzy has quietened.
The real inquiry is only becoming more interesting.
And through all of this, I have arrived at a rather wonderful conclusion.
I do not love Britain because I believe its institutions are always right.
I love Britain because its finest intellectual traditions give me the tools to question them.
I love its humour because it allows us to confront absurdity without surrendering our intelligence.
I love its independence because it reminds me that authority is not the same as truth.
I love its empirical tradition because evidence matters more than status.
And I love its bulldog spirit because I recognise it in myself.
I am Russian by birthplace, Polish by citizenship and cultural inheritance, Ukrainian in one part of my imagination, and British by citizenship, intellectual practice and choice.
These identities do not cancel one another.
They give me more ways to understand the world.
But today, after one extraordinary month, there is one thing I want to say.
I am not fighting British values.
I am enhancing them.
I AM BRITAIN.
And today's song is TAKEOFF
Not quite in the way I had imagined becoming famous, admittedly.
The Telegraph had published a story by Tom Cotterill, its Acting Defence Editor, under the headline: “Nato officer’s Tinder romance sets off spy alert at UK base.”
Apparently, I was the Russian-born woman at the centre of a NATO espionage scare.
My first action that morning was entirely practical.
I subscribed to The Telegraph.
After all, if one is going to become an international security sensation, one should at least be able to read the article.
In a first place had spoken to Tom about something rather different.
My interest was in institutional accountability: how security-related information had been generated, communicated and acted upon; who had made decisions affecting me; what evidence supported those decisions; and why, despite extensive correspondence, I had struggled to obtain clear explanations.
As a solicitor, I was interested in procedure, evidence and the exercise of public power.
Tom had found a rather more marketable opening.
Tinder. NATO. Russian spies. A Spanish naval commander. A British military base.
I was shocked. Initially.
Then I read the article again.
And I began to laugh.
Because I thought I understood what Tom had done.
The British art of making absurdity visible
The story concerned a security controversy that had begun approximately fourteen months earlier.
Fourteen months.
Yet here it was, presented with all the excitement of a freshly discovered international espionage scandal.
The more carefully I read it, the more I was reminded of the great British tradition of satire — particularly Jonathan Swift, whose genius lay in presenting absurdity with an almost perfectly straight face.
The Telegraph article was not literally a satirical essay. It was journalism, reporting serious allegations, disputed accounts and legal proceedings.
But to me, the combination of sensational framing, documentary detail and institutional responses produced an almost Swiftian effect.
And then came the ending.
A MARCOM spokesman explained that the command did not comment on personnel matters, while reaffirming NATO's commitment to protecting allied personnel and safeguarding classified information.
The British Ministry of Defence spokesman stated:
“It would be inappropriate to comment on matters subject to ongoing legal proceedings.”
There it was.
A story about extraordinary security suspicions, a relationship, institutional decisions, an international controversy and unanswered questions.
And the official responses were, essentially: personnel matter; ongoing litigation.
I sat there admiring the construction.
Whether Tom intended the satire I perceived is something only Tom can answer.
But I found it magnificent.
Then I opened the comments.
And discovered something even more entertaining.
British readers had opinions.
Very British opinions.
Some appeared to recognise the absurdity immediately. Others seemed to arrive at it by entirely different routes. Some were sceptical, some amused, some sharp, and some gloriously irreverent.
I was reading the responses to a story about myself and discovering that the British public possessed exactly the kind of humour I love.
Not everyone was laughing at the same thing, of course.
That is part of the beauty of British humour.
It allows several meanings to coexist without requiring everyone to agree on which one is the correct interpretation.
The following day, The Times published its own account, after Charlie Parker had contacted me.
I subscribed to The Times too.
Becoming a Russian spy was proving surprisingly expensive in newspaper subscriptions.
Once again, I found myself reading a story whose dramatic subject matter contrasted rather wonderfully with the institutional and human absurdities beneath it.
And once again, I enjoyed watching readers respond.
By this point, I was beginning to understand something important.
Perhaps I had not become a celebrity in the conventional sense.
Perhaps I had become a character in a very British comedy.
And perhaps the most British thing I could do was to participate in it. So I started Invisible Woman blog. Initially on LinkedIn and now here.
The Times, Russian intelligence and a cancelled subscription
Two weeks later, the initial excitement had subsided sufficiently for me to address an urgent administrative matter.
I needed to cancel my subscription to The Times.
This, I discovered, was a considerably more complicated operation than subscribing.
Subscribing required a few clicks.
Cancelling required a telephone call.
I called.
I was approximately twentieth in the queue.
Fortunately, the system offered to call me back.
Fifteen minutes later, a cheerful young woman telephoned.
What followed is reconstructed from memory, but the spirit of the conversation was unmistakable.
“Good afternoon. How can I help?”
“I would like to cancel my subscription.”
“Of course. Let me just confirm your details.”
We went through the necessary formalities.
Then she asked a perfectly reasonable question.
“May I ask why you subscribed to The Times in the first place?”
“Well,” I said, “you published an article about me two weeks ago.”
“Oh! Was it a nice article?”
“Yep. It was about me being a Russian spy.”
There was a moment of silence.
And then she burst into laughter.
Not the polite, restrained laugh of someone following a customer-service script.
A wonderfully spontaneous, ringing laugh.
“Well, in that case,” she said, still laughing, “it must have been quite an interesting article!”
We were both laughing.
And then, suddenly, the call disconnected.
I have absolutely no idea which of us pressed the wrong button, or whether technology simply decided that we had enjoyed ourselves enough.
Five minutes later, she called back.
“I am so sorry! We got disconnected!”
“Don't worry,” I replied. “I suspect Russian intelligence wasn't particularly happy about us discussing my espionage activities.”
She almost cried with laughter.
By now, cancelling a newspaper subscription had become one of the most enjoyable customer-service experiences I could remember.
We completed the cancellation.
And I reassured her that the next time The Times reported on my Russian espionage adventures, I would undoubtedly subscribe again.
We parted on excellent terms.
And I thought: this is why I love Britain.
Not because every British person has the same sense of humour.
Not because the country is always fair.
And certainly not because its institutions are beyond criticism.
But because there is something wonderfully liberating about being able to take an absurd situation, recognise its multiple meanings and laugh at it together.
Even when you are the subject of the story.
Especially then.
What happened when the headlines faded
The initial wave of publicity did not last forever.
It was never going to.
For a few days, I was an international curiosity: a British and Polish citizen, born in the Soviet Union, romantically involved with a Spanish naval officer, suddenly associated in headlines with Russian espionage.
Then the immediate excitement began to fade.
But something much more interesting started happening.
Journalists continued contacting me.
Only now, the conversations were changing.
The question was no longer simply: how did a Russian-born woman become involved in a NATO security controversy?
The questions were becoming more substantial.
What actually happened?
What do the documents say?
Which institutions made which decisions?
How do the British, Spanish and NATO accounts fit together?
Where do they contradict one another?
And what might this episode reveal about institutional accountability?
Even today, a month after the first publication, I gave another newspaper interview.
I was told that my story was unique.
I agreed.
And I am increasingly interested in the opposite possibility: that the circumstances are unusual, while the underlying institutional mechanisms are not.
The sensational part may be exceptional.
The questions about administrative power, information asymmetry, accountability and access to justice are universal.
Meanwhile, something unexpected was happening on LinkedIn.
Before the publicity, my rather sleepy account had approximately 500 followers.
Within a month, that number had grown to around 4,000.
I began publishing my own account through Invisible Woman.
I explained the documents, examined the contradictions and wrote about what it feels like when institutions classify a person without adequately explaining the consequences.
The readership statistics were fascinating.
People were reading.
Often extensively.
But public engagement was comparatively quiet.
Few likes. Relatively few comments.
And then the private messages began arriving.
People wrote to me directly.
Warmly. Thoughtfully. Sometimes with extraordinary generosity.
What struck me most was that many did not express pity.
They expressed recognition.
They valued the fact that I was continuing to investigate, question, analyse and, occasionally, laugh.
I cannot know precisely how every reader interprets my writing. But many of those who contacted me seemed to recognise that I was doing something more than defending myself against a sensational label.
I was examining the machinery that had produced it.
And I was refusing to let that machinery define me.
The month that rearranged my relationships
Public exposure has an interesting side effect.
It reveals people.
Some individuals who had previously described themselves as friends quietly disappeared.
I do not necessarily blame them. Public controversy makes people uncomfortable. Some relationships are simply not built to withstand it.
But their disappearance was informative.
At the same time, new people entered my life.
People who were interested not in rescuing me, but in knowing me.
People who recognised independence, intellectual curiosity and determination.
Some became genuine friends.
And something else happened, something I had not anticipated.
A person occupying an institutional position — someone from whom I had not expected support — offered me precisely that: institutional support.
I will not identify the person or the circumstances here.
It is important to distinguish friendship from institutional engagement.
Friendship is personal.
Institutional support is a different kind of relationship, carrying different responsibilities and possibilities.
What surprised me was not merely the offer itself.
It was the reminder that institutions are not homogeneous organisms.
They contain people capable of independent judgement.
And sometimes the most interesting developments occur when someone inside a system chooses to exercise it.
That distinction matters enormously to me.
I criticise institutional conduct.
I do not believe every person working inside an institution is incapable of integrity, courage or independent thought.
Quite the opposite.
Two people, two strategies, one institutional conflict
My former partner, Commander Laureano Pastor Veiga of the Spanish Navy, also reappeared in my life during this period.
Our relationship belongs to a complicated personal history, but it also illustrates something intellectually interesting.
We have both challenged aspects of what happened around our relationship and his military posting.
Yet we approach the institutions involved from fundamentally different positions.
I am outside those structures.
I challenge decisions through courts, complaints, documentary analysis and public-interest scrutiny.
Laureano's approach remains rooted in his identity as a Spanish naval officer and in his relationship with the military institution to which he has devoted much of his professional life.
I see that as a distinction between external and internal strategies.
I can question the system without needing to preserve my place within it.
He must navigate a much more complicated relationship with an institution that forms part of his professional identity.
Neither strategy guarantees success.
And it would be premature to declare either one superior.
But I find the comparison fascinating.
What happens when two people challenge related institutional conduct, one from outside and the other from within?
Which approach produces answers?
Which produces accountability?
Which encounters the greater resistance?
I do not yet know.
That is why I continue observing.
I do not play games any longer.
I model them.
I am Britain
Yesterday, I republished an older essay, I AM UKRAINE, exploring the cultural codes through which I understand my own thinking.
I wrote about Russian space, Polish refusal and Ukrainian determination to remain, adapt and build.
I had intended to examine the Spanish cultural code today as well.
Spain certainly deserves a chapter of its own.
But not today.
Because this month has made me realise something about Britain.
I am not merely British by citizenship.
I am British in the way I think, question, analyse and act.
Let me explain.
One interpretation of the British cultural tradition emphasises independent thinking, paradox, empiricism and the ability to work with contradictions.
I recognise all four.
Independent thinking.
I do not accept an institutional assertion merely because it comes from an institution.
Authority is not evidence.
A government lawyer's statement is not automatically a satisfactory explanation.
And a decision does not become intellectually convincing simply because it has been expressed in formal language.
Paradox.
I am perfectly comfortable with apparently contradictory propositions.
I can love Britain while challenging British institutions.
I can respect the armed forces while questioning decisions made within military structures.
I can recognise the legitimate importance of national security while insisting that its invocation does not automatically answer every question about legality, necessity or accountability.
These are not contradictions that trouble me.
They are questions that interest me.
Empiricism.
I work with documents.
Dates. Correspondence. Decision records. Legal submissions. Official explanations.
I distinguish what a document establishes from what it suggests, and what it suggests from what remains unknown.
My interpretation can change when the evidence changes.
That is not weakness.
That is how inquiry is supposed to work.
Working with contradictions.
I do not regard inconsistencies as inconvenient details to be explained away.
I regard them as invitations to investigate.
Sometimes a contradiction reveals an error.
Sometimes it reveals an incomplete account.
Sometimes it disappears when additional context becomes available.
And sometimes it exposes a structural problem.
The purpose of analysis is to discover which.
This is why I sometimes feel more faithful to the British intellectual tradition than some of the institutions I am challenging — and, on occasion, the lawyers defending their positions.
That is a deliberately provocative observation, not a judgement on anyone's nationality.
My point is that institutional authority and intellectual independence are not the same thing.
One can possess the former while failing to demonstrate the latter.
And one can exercise the latter while standing alone against the former.
English: the language in which I build
There is another aspect of British culture that I recognise in myself.
The English language.
I do not primarily experience English as a language of commands.
For me, it is a language of intellectual construction.
It can be wonderfully simple on the surface and extraordinarily complex underneath.
That combination matters in my work as a lawyer, programmer, Google Developer and AI architect.
I often use different cultural and linguistic resources for different stages of thinking.
My Slavic cultural inheritance encourages me to imagine possibilities, question boundaries and consider alternatives beyond the immediate situation.
But when I need to turn a complex idea into an executable structure, I frequently find myself switching into English.
Define the problem.
Identify the variables.
Establish the conditions.
Test the assumptions.
Model the possible outcomes.
Execute.
That is not because English has a monopoly on logic or science.
It is because English has become my own working interface between imagination and implementation.
I imagine across cultures. I model in English. I execute through systems.
And perhaps that is another reason Britain feels like home.
My home is my castle
In I AM UKRAINE, I described the Ukrainian cultural impulse as the determination not to abandon the ground, but to remain and create the means to defend it.
The British tradition offers a wonderfully compatible expression:
My home is my castle.
I have always loved that phrase.
To me, home is not merely a building.
It is the space in which I exercise agency.
My life.
My professional identity.
My reputation.
My right to ask questions.
My right to disagree.
My right to remain a subject rather than become an object of someone else's classification.
I do not have to abandon that space because an institution finds my questions inconvenient.
Nor do I have to accept that a decision affecting me is beyond examination simply because the decision-maker possesses authority.
I can remain.
I can investigate.
I can build.
And I can defend what I consider mine through lawful means.
The Ukrainian in me refuses to abandon the ground.
The British in me insists that my home is my castle.
The bulldog and the slug
And then there is the British bulldog.
I am absolutely a bulldog.
I remember 30 years ago, when I lived in Poland, a person told about me exactly in these terms: Janina is like a bulldog. It is easier to kill her, than to stop her.
Not because I enjoy conflict.
Not because I am incapable of changing my mind.
And certainly not because I believe stubbornness is a substitute for evidence.
I am a bulldog because I pursue questions.
If one approach fails, I examine why.
If one procedure closes, I consider whether another lawful route exists.
If an explanation contradicts a document, I investigate the discrepancy.
If the evidence changes, I adjust the model.
That is active persistence.
And I make a distinction between persistence and institutional defensiveness.
A bulldog moves.
It acts.
It pursues a purpose.
An institution that merely retreats into formulaic responses, procedural delay or unexplained positions is not necessarily demonstrating bulldog determination.
To my mind, that looks rather more like a slug withdrawing into self-protection.
Of course, not every refusal to comment is evasive. Legal proceedings, confidentiality and national security can impose legitimate limits.
But the distinction remains worth examining.
Is the institution actively resolving a problem?
Or merely protecting its existing position?
The difference is not cosmetic.
It is a question of institutional purpose.
Britain is not its institutions
There is one sentence from Tom Cotterill's article that I have thought about repeatedly during this extraordinary month.
Speaking about the impact of events, I said:
“I feel Britain, my country, betrayed me.”
I meant it.
But a month later, I want to explain exactly what I meant.
I did not mean that the British people had betrayed me.
Quite the opposite.
Over the past month, I have encountered British humour, curiosity, generosity, intellectual independence and quiet encouragement.
I have laughed with strangers.
I have received thoughtful messages from people who owe me nothing.
I have met new friends.
And I have been reminded that people inside institutions can sometimes act with a degree of independence that surprises even someone as sceptical as I am.
What I meant was that I felt betrayed by the conduct of particular institutions from which I had expected legality, fairness, accountability and reasoned decision-making.
Those are not the same thing as Britain.
Institutions are structures created to serve public purposes.
They are not the owners of the values they are supposed to uphold.
And questioning whether they have fulfilled those purposes is not an act of disloyalty.
It is an exercise of citizenship.
A month ago, I woke up to discover that I had become a character in an international spy story.
I subscribed to two newspapers to find out what had happened to me.
I discovered British satire, cancelled a subscription with the assistance of a woman who laughed at Russian intelligence, acquired thousands of new readers, lost a few supposed friends, gained some genuine ones, encountered an unexpected institutional ally and continued investigating the questions that had brought me into public view.
The media frenzy has quietened.
The real inquiry is only becoming more interesting.
And through all of this, I have arrived at a rather wonderful conclusion.
I do not love Britain because I believe its institutions are always right.
I love Britain because its finest intellectual traditions give me the tools to question them.
I love its humour because it allows us to confront absurdity without surrendering our intelligence.
I love its independence because it reminds me that authority is not the same as truth.
I love its empirical tradition because evidence matters more than status.
And I love its bulldog spirit because I recognise it in myself.
I am Russian by birthplace, Polish by citizenship and cultural inheritance, Ukrainian in one part of my imagination, and British by citizenship, intellectual practice and choice.
These identities do not cancel one another.
They give me more ways to understand the world.
But today, after one extraordinary month, there is one thing I want to say.
I am not fighting British values.
I am enhancing them.
I AM BRITAIN.
And today's song is TAKEOFF
