I hope that what is written below is not perceived as pessimistic, but as a realistic text.
Nowhere is it said that realistic thinking is necessarily optimistic. Sometimes it can bring us doubts and worries.
What realism and pessimism have in common is that they also have negative, including bad, development scenarios.
The difference between realism and pessimism is that realism predicts among others the best possible scenario as well, while pessimism predicts among others the worst possible scenario as well.
...
Here I will talk about Ukraine. For Ukraine as an occasion, but rather as a reason to take a sober look at what situation we are in, what is happening with the West and what future awaits us.
Unfortunately, things in Ukraine (in the War against Ukraine) are not going well. And they can go badly.
If 2022 ended in favor of Ukraine (mastery of the strategic initiative, win near Kharkiv, liberation of Kherson, panicked flight of the rashists, hopes for decisive victories in 2023),
then the year 2023 is about to end in favor of the Rashist Federation (gradual mastery of the strategic initiative, stopping the advance of the Ukrainian troops, the passage of the rashists in a counteroffensive in several places, especially brutally – with nearly 50,000 people at Avdiivka/Avdeevka).
In the Ukrainian society (and among us, those who are for Ukraine in the West) towards the end of 2022, the OPTIMISTS were in the foreground; while towards the end of 2023, the pessimists are in the foreground.
First of all – about the OPTIMISTS. Were they naive, why did it turn out that they succumbed to (self) delusions?
In my opinion, there is only one answer here – because, above all, they were optimistic about the West. They thought, and as if they had every right, that the West would realize that this was not a separate, isolated war, not another Chechnya or Georgia, which erupted like a boil on the body of the defunct Soviet Empire, but that it was a fight with the intelligence of the Dark Madness against the West. That the fate of the West itself is at stake.
And by the fall of 2022, the optimists had every reason to be optimistic. After the West contemplated with admiration the incredible resistance of the Ukrainian squadrons in the approaches to Kiev, it, the West, decided to help – militarily and financially, in propaganda and morally – Ukraine.
But when, with the brilliant victories of Ukraine, it became likely that Russia would be decisively and irrevocably defeated, the West suddenly in October-December 2022 drastically reduced (by times) aid to Ukraine, forced Ukrainian political leaders and generals to stop the offensive, and this enabled the rashists to carry out a something like mobilization, to regroup, to entrench themselves, to pack colossal territories with a colossal amount of mines, to run to other criminal states begging for military aid and to catch their breath after heavy combat knockdowns.
Most importantly, by never providing combat aviation to Ukraine, the West enabled Putin's hordes to transform the War of the 21st Century into the War of the 20th Century. The Ukrainians had successes because they waged precisely a network-centric war, with fast, bold and decisive swarms, with information superiority, with flexible strategy and effective tactics, with decentralization of power in field commanders at the expense of centralization and with coordination at the expense of command.
All this was squandered, the rashists were given the opportunity to bring the War into the ruts of the Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front " – trench skirmishes, positional bloodletting, blind, deaf and dumb balance of forces, nothing-happening and exhaustion of Ukrainian optimism.
In the War of the 21st century, cannon fodder suddenly became a decisive factor. And when it is a decisive factor, Ukraine is doomed.
I will continue these reflections in a moment. I will now finish my point about the optimists and the pessimists.
The optimists, who until recently represented the front rows and front pages of analyzes and forecasts of Ukraine, sincerely and pro-Ukraine believed in the victory of Ukraine. Their sin was that they believed in the West. Is this their fault, is it their fault that the West misled them?
Yes, I too paid a tribute to trust in the West, with this essential difference that I always emphasized my concerns that the West was no longer what it should be and is still not what it should be; I criticized him for everything he was not doing to support Ukraine, especially for doing what was necessary to keep Ukraine from losing the war, but not doing enough to help Ukraine win the war.
The West never understood that anything other than a win for Ukraine in this War is a loss for Ukraine.
Now the pessimists are coming to the fore in Ukraine. And they have their own evil and degrading standard-bearer – Arestovich.
Unfortunately, the pessimists don't just not believe Ukraine can win – they believe Ukraine will lose. They are for a Territories vs. Peace deal. They are attacking Zelensky, they have found a way to oust him – by holding elections during a war like a feast during a plague.
The pessimists fanned the anti-Ukraine argument, undermining the legitimacy of today's Ukrainian political leadership – the huge, according to them, corruption at the top of the state.
This convenient justifying argument for many in the US (especially for the Republicans) and even more than many in Europe was systematically inflated by the former KGB spy Yuri Shvets, who proved that there is no such thing as an ex-KGB spy. It was picked up by some Russian and Russian-speaking commentators, who for a long time disguised themselves as pro-Ukrainian (for example, Latynina).
I am far from thinking that there is no corruption in Ukraine. There is corruption in Europe as well – Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Italy are terribly corrupt, I could go on. There is corruption in the US. And they tried to involve me (even me!) in corruption schemes – by the Americans, by the English, by the French, when it came to selling us some armaments and equipment. One of them even told me at one time – I will no longer go to the official institutes, I have found a businessman here who knows who and how much he should give, and I will work with him to sell my goods. And he sold it in huge quantities and with minimal quality.
It is about that the so-called massive corruption in Ukraine has become a wonderful excuse for the West not to help Ukraine properly. And now the aid is one spoon per three months, as one pro-Ukraine analyst says.
...
Now I'm going to say something hellishly controversial for you, perhaps.
The fact is that before, around and after 2014, and even before, around and after 2022, Ukraine was betrayed by one part of the Russians in Ukraine and one very small part of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine.
First for the Russians in Ukraine. They are all kinds, and judging by my Ukrainian Russian friends, the vast majority of them love Ukraine, Ukraine is dear to them, it is their Motherland and is like a mother to them.
But a part of the Russians in Ukraine turned their backs on Ukraine, betrayed and sold it.
Therefore, for me, it has always been a key question for every nationality that is in a minority in a country – does it love this country, does is dear to them, is it for them their Motherland and therefore it is like a mother to them?
That's why I ask friends in Macedonia – tell me do your Albanians love Macedonia, do it is dear for them, do they consider it their Motherland and do it is like a mother to them?
So far I have not received a definitive answer – neither positive nor negative, perhaps there is no such answer. And there are people like that and people not like that...
Ukraine is a bitter example of how a part of the Russians in it betrayed and sold it. They became the fifth column of an aggressive geopolitical monstrosity that Putin has turned Russia into.
Even as a student in Russian speaking Kharkiv (1975-1979) – what did I understand then about serious geopolitical affairs? – nothing! - I asked my Ukrainian friends – how come you are Ukrainians and you speak (only) Russian? It is as if we Bulgarians speak Russian in Bulgaria. And they told me – it's not important what language you speak, but what you carry in your heart.
Most of the time it is exactly like that.
But there are exceptions.
As the structural linguist Noam Chomsky says, we are not only what we are, so we speak, but also what we speak, so we become.
I would paraphrase it – in certain cases and with certain people, the way they think and perceive the world, that is the language they speak, but also the language they speak is how they begin to think and perceive the world.
And here, now in Ukraine, demands are beginning to spread and become not only insistent, but even arrogant:
for historical compromise;
for peace with Russia (against ceding territories);
for accepting Russia as reality – as it is;
for recognition of the historical inevitability of the law of force over the force of law in international relations.
And, notice, practically all the bearers of these sentiments and their increasingly vociferous exponents are increasingly Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Mass arestovich-ization is underway among some of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
And this can't help but upset and worry me...
For some people, the Russian peace can penetrate their consciousness first through the Russian language. Probably because through this language they immerse themselves mainly and even exclusively in a Russian-speaking environment – through what they read and watch, through what they perceive and understand.
...
Let's continue our reasoning with hand on heart:
--- The Alliance of Good (the West, USA, Europe, NATO, EU) is giving way in its aid to Ukraine, in the speed of decision-making, to the Pact of Evil (China, Iran, North Korea).
The Pact of Evil acts immediately and decisively – Shoigu has not yet left Pyongyang and train sets with 1,000,000 shells are already on their way to Russia. A small North Korea has given more missiles to Putin than the entire EU has given to Ukraine.
--- Russia (like Hamas) is winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the West. This is shocking. Well, let's just say it doesn't win it. But it doesn't lose it. It does not lose it, despite its barbaric War against Ukraine.
The West is tired of this War, it prevents it from enjoying life, football, passions and pleasures, complacency, the illusion that it will live (in this way) forever. As a result, Russia is systematically cutting off one or another country from the so-called collective West – Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria next, who's next?
--- The New World Order after the fall of the Berlin Wall kept its key Cold War institutions, did not reform them, and now it is a boomerang hitting the West on the forehead. You see the UN messing with the West. Russia was in charge of the Security Council for a while, Iran is in charge of Human Rights for a while. Cynicism, absurdity, perversion, universal nastiness.
--- Western sanctions are not working (as they should be). Russian weapons and equipment are stuffed with Western chips. Modern iPhones and model cars are freely available in Russia and cost even cheaper than in the West. The iPhones arrive in the mail – shiny and untouched by an "intermediate" hand. Electric cars are running around the big Russian cities while in the West they wait for months for them. Oil dollars fill the Putin regime's bosom and continue to rain like golden rain over the Kremlin. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Armenia and Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania are also part of the schemes according to which everything western with civil and dual (both civil and military) use reaches Russia immediately after its production. And about the fact that Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and who else are oases for transport, traffic and transfer of anything Western for Russia – only President Biden and President Macron probably do not know this.
...
We have to admit that there are specifics and characteristics of the West that can make it unfit. And the unscrupulous West will turn out to be a scoundrel after all. Because it will not fulfill its historical civilizational mission to be a world leader in the Era of high information, communication, gene, medical, space technologies and the Era of qualitatively new quantum computers, which will fundamentally, radically, shockingly and irreversibly change the world.
The West needs to wake up. It is not too late, but unfortunately, it is already clear that the West is late with this wake up. Dramatically late.
...
Let's go back to what started as a War of the 21st century and turned into a War of the 20th century, the War of the Worlds, fought in Ukraine (and set fire to the carpet of the world, it has already acquired a new focus – the Middle East).
The War of the 21st Century is a War being waged in the New Society. Goal-oriented strategies are pursued in it. I.e. the Goal is leading. You set a Goal and look for resources to achieve it.
The war of the 20th century is a War fought in the Old Society. It pursues Resource-oriented strategies. I.e. leading are Resources. You have certain Resources and you are looking for what goal you could achieve with them.
The Rashist Federation succeeded in transforming the War of the 21st Century into the War of the 20th Century. And so this War became resource driven. And Ukraine cannot compete with Russia in terms of resources – neither human, nor energy, nor military, nor propaganda.
Let's take human resources again. In Russia, there is a dark combination of enormous human resources and a colossally low cost of human life.
Who is fighting for Russia in this War?
--- Criminals are fighting – up to a third of those who participated and are participating in the hostilities in Ukraine are criminal criminals – convicted or awaiting conviction. Thus, Putin solves Russia's problem with the hordes of criminal monsters that have crowded Russia's pretrial detention centers, prisons, jails, and concentration camps.
--- The poorest, marginal, unenlightened, outsider strata are fighting. With the money given to them for going to the front and for injuries and deaths, these unemployed and missed all trains for decent social and personal realization subjects get an opportunity to earn fantastic money for their being and consciousness.
--- People from the backward, extreme, forgotten by God and Putin, wallowing in mud, alcoholism, roadless regions of Russia are fighting. Death returns to them from the battlefields of Ukraine, but they have been taught anyway that if you're going to die anyway, it's better not for moonshine, but for something big, for something great. Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the big cities do not learn about these overproductions of death – they never gave five cents anyway for the so-called Russian глубинка (hinterland).
--- Persons with a religion other than Orthodox and with an ethnicity other than Russian are at war. Especially Muslims, but also people from all other minority ethnicities and all sorts of religions. A Chuvash is 13 times more likely to be killed in Ukraine than a Muscovite is to be killed in Ukraine. And for the Dagestani (whatever "Dagestani" means), the probability is 11 times greater. As Russia is gradually becoming one of the largest Muslim countries, and Orthodox Russians may one day become a minority in the Russian Federation, Putin is doing a similar pruning of the non-Russian and non-Orthodox weeds, this is his eugenics to purge cherished Russia of inferiors according to him and malignant elements according to his Great Russian chauvinistic megalomania.
...
In conclusion, we can hope that the West will come to its senses.
At the same time, we need to carry out in-depth analysis, use the scientific and practical tools of early warning, through which we can identify the likely scenarios of future development and thus carry out credible strategic forecasting, which would give us a chance and hope to foresee what lies ahead, what's up and beyond the horizon.
Among these possible scenarios for the future there are also negative, destructive and simply bad ones.
WE MUST PREPARE FOR THEM TOO.
There is also a scenario which, in its meaning, essence and content, is not only possible, but also the worst of all possible scenarios.
WE HAVE TO PREPARE FOR IT TOO.
If earlier as a rule we stared at the present and tried to guess what future might possibly lie ahead, now we are called and urged to change the optics. We now have to look to the future to guess where our present might be headed.
Every look into the future, every thought about the future is the first step, the initial effort to change that future.
We must remember that there is no single future!
There is only one past (although there are too many versions of it).
There is only one present (though it is perceived in many different ways).
But there are many futures.
We need to try to do our best so that one of the good futures happens, if we cannot guarantee that the best of the good futures will happen.
But our possibilities in this regard are not limitless, they are almost always limited.
That is why we need to minimize the probability of a bad (or worst) future happening.
And if some bad (or worst) future does happen, we need to minimize its destructive consequences.
In addition to good futures, bad futures are also waiting for us.
I do not know which is the best of the good futures that await us, as long as we make it possible to realize it.
But I know what the worst future is that can still be prevented. And it's called SUNSET OF THE WEST.
This Sunset of the West could begin, for example, if Putin wins in Ukraine.
From today's perspective, it is possible for Putin to win in Ukraine.
The West can still make it impossible for Putin to win in Ukraine.
It STILL can. But with each passing month, it STILL will weaken. And if the West doesn't stand up, the day will inevitably come when it, the West, will have to admit that it is no longer possible to make it impossible for Putin to win in Ukraine.
And then the worst of all bad futures can fall upon us with fearful inevitability.
And we at this moment would prefer the sky to have fallen on us.
11/04/2023
