En Garde

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

The year I turned eighteen I fenced épée for the University of California at Los Angeles. I was recruited by my roommate, who was a junior British sabre champion who flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

I don’t remember any of us ever thinking we could get in trouble for fencing.

But today a thirty-year-old Russian épée champion is in trouble for fencing. I’m not sure exactly what law Sergey Bida broke, but Vladimir Putin has put his name on Russia’s most-wanted list for denouncing his country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bida left his country in protest, much as many boys my age did in my fencing days to protest my country’s war in Vietnam.

He still wants to fence — for the United States at the Paris Olympics in July and August.

He has just nine words for Putin.

“Here,” he said, at his California dacha, “I feel more free. I breathe more free.”

Touché.