The War of rashism against Ukraine seems to have entered a more or less stable, hardly changing or very slowly changing phase.
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Several trends are gaining momentum in the West that cannot but cause concern for all of us who stand firmly on the side of Ukraine.
First, in the West dissatisfaction is growing with the slow progress of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, but without taking into account all the factors for this, and above all the fact that Ukraine was not given combat aviation and was not provided with modern means of quick and safe demining .
Second, in the West War fatigue is growing; the War is trivialized in the mass consciousness and more and more fades into the background of public unrest and sentiment, especially against the backdrop of summer holidays and summer soccer transfers.
Third, in the West there is a growing reluctance to continue providing such colossal funds and such massive armaments to Ukraine, which are deliberately compared to what governments are doing for economic, social, environmental, security (fighting crime) and other critical spheres of domestic politics.
Fourth, in the West pressure is growing on Ukraine to start negotiations with Russia without the precondition of withdrawing the rashist occupation troops from its territory, which is a shortcut to the de facto recognition of Russia's right to keep these territories (or part of them) after the negotiations .
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In fact, without at all underestimating everything the West has done for Ukraine, we cannot help but notice some systemic weaknesses in the West's strategy, policy, stance, and activity regarding this barbaric and unprovoked War against Ukraine.
First, despite the various attitudes and hesitations, ambitions and divisions, the thesis that in this War Russia should be exhausted as much as possible, but preserved as a state in its current form, took hold in the West anyway. And this means in practice (and even more – in theory) to do everything so that Ukraine does not lose the War, but at the same time that Russia is not humiliated, and Putin is not put in a corner and pushed to insane extreme actions. Thus, it was tacitly accepted that the War could last for a very long time, which is actually at the expense of Ukraine.
Second, the West has clearly and unequivocally separated itself from Ukraine, drawn a visible and undeniable line between itself and Ukraine. Thus, despite strong words and often decisive actions, the West showed Putin that it did not intend to fight and die for Ukraine – something that Putin was convinced of and which in no small part led him to launch the brutal attack on Ukraine on February 24 2022. The West has not publicly articulated how far it thinks it extends, i.e. how far the West is, but it goes on to demonstrate where the non-West extends. Georgia is not the West, and therefore the West did not lift a finger when Russia invaded Georgia and took part of its territory. That's why Ukraine is not the West either. And since the West is what the West is ready to fight and die for, the question logically arises: Does the West match NATO or not? The overall behavior of the West raises doubts that the answer to this question is Yes, it does! And this should give rise to very strong strategic concerns and worries in countries like Bulgaria and Romania, as well as in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, for example...
Third, the West has shown that it is in the grip of cumbersome procedures, bureaucratic formalities, slow decision-making, running after public opinion (instead of leading public opinion). It is true that democracies are generally captive to complex interactions and long debates on every principled issue, which is also their strength, but this is so in peacetime, in normal, ordinary situations. Things are quite different, however, when it comes to critical, emergency situations - then any delay can have an extremely high price.
Totalitarian and repressive regimes, especially those of the Axis of Evil, are seen to act much faster and more effectively in the military aid they provide to Russia. China is actively helping Russia's multifaceted (and very strange) violation of sanctions (including on military technology); Iranian drones harass and torment the Ukrainian people; North Korean shells and ammunition are already in service with the Rashist army, etc.
Western democracy is the best thing the world has come up with as a political system, but it is mired in many problems and subject to many weaknesses in our time.
At least in my opinion, it was much faster and much more decisively in the interest of the West to help Ukraine win the War, categorically and undeniably, so that the West could face its grave problems – the growing social divide and corruption; crime and drug addiction; the escalating immorality and transformation of sesexuality and its related passions and pleasures in uncensored and lustful aggression against society; ethnic and religious confrontations and the emergence of not a third, but a fourth generation of emigrants (as a rule with a different skin color and a different religion) who not only do not live by the laws of the country they are in, but also hate this country and its, so to speak, indigenous population, rejoice at its failures – for example in sports, and make mass demonstrations at successes of their "homeland" – again, for example, in sports.
Fourth, 75 years of peaceful life and a high standard of living, plus the epoch-making victory of the West over the Soviet Empire, contributed to a uniquely high increase in the cost of human life in the West, to the transformation of man into the only and highest value for himself; to the de facto pampering of the peoples of the West, accustomed to a contented life and considering it as an unconditional and eternally guaranteed right; to the narcissistic arrogance and selfish self-absorption of the White man; to the belief that if war must be fought, it will be through special forces and special services and against religious terrorists, organized criminals and war criminals.
Some time ago, it was October 2016, in a public, introductory lecture to the Military Academy, I warned (as always a voice in the desert):
"European countries are called upon and even doomed to conclude that they must preserve and multiply their capabilities to use force, to defend their interests and security with combat units. Someone even today, even in the post-modern and ultra-modern times, has to fight on the battlefield, and if he has to fight, he has to be prepared to do it in the most professional way possible and with the most modern weapons possible."
When the entire military policy has quietly or by default excluded from the mass consciousness that there are causes and missions for which the West must fight, if necessary at the cost of its life – and not only with special services and special forces, but and with heavily armed armies, it becomes inevitable that hesitations and uncertainties gradually accumulate, which logically turn into weaknesses and fears.
And so today the West constantly demonstrates to Putin its fear – fear of Putin's possible use of nuclear weapons. This is not just fear, but fear squared – fear of fear that Putin will resort to using nuclear weapons. And Putin, as always, turns the weakness of the West into his strategic advantage. He exploits this fear of fear and consistently wins the initiative – he is proactive and the West is reactive. Putin decides what to do, the West decides what to do when Putin has decided what to do... As long as the West allows its weakness to be so visible and obvious, until then Putin will also take advantage of this weakness in a perverse and cynical way.
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It remains only to point out that totalitarian states – however premodern and archaic they may be in relation to the world entering ultra-modern information, communication, gene, medical, space technologies and Artificial Intelligence – quite skillfully and unscrupulously use their "advantages" namely as disgusting undemocratic and antihuman political vampires, drinking the social energy and future of their societies. We will briefly show this on the example of the bunker monster – Putin, today's Hitler, because rashism, this is today's Russian form of the former German Nazism.
First, as a dictator, Putin very quickly and without much effort forms a supporting coalition of like-minded dictators and authoritarian masters of their countries. He is a kind of their banner, he supports them wherever necessary with gangs of war criminals of the PMC "Wagner" type, bribes them with colossal financial and material benefits, inspires them with anti-Western and anti-colonial rhetoric and serves as an example to them of how he behaves for decades in obedience and fear the society in which it believes that it actually serves the Great Idea of a great Russia.
Second, as a dictator, Putin alone has all of Russia's natural, financial, material and human resources at his disposal. He has made the entire country his domain, he has no problem taking or appropriating any and all of these resources and harnessing them to fulfill his maniacal Idea. In this sense, there is no richer leader of a country in the world than Putin, and Russia's wealth of energy resources makes Putin hundreds of times richer and more greedily and ugly at the disposal of his country's endowments than any other leader in the world . At the same time, Putin is an irreplaceable leader, which allows him to construct the entire state, the entire state mechanism so that they work for him and his geostrategic tricks and geopolitical phantasmagorias.
Third, as a dictator, Putin has no problems with public opinion. With aggression and patience, Putin first subjugated public opinion in Russia, and then began to mold it to his needs. By removing some African countries and, counting on the fingers of the world's odious regimes, there is virtually no other chief or leader of a country so free from any problems of public opinion. In this way, Russia was gradually desocialized, it became a territory subject to Putin's control, in which public opinion is absent. Public opinion exists only when it is a continuous corrective and even an active guide to the processes in the country. In Putin's Russia, there is no public opinion in this sense. This practically empties Russia of state and statehood. In the mafia, in the organized criminal gang, there is no public opinion either, there is the sole will of the main mobster, the main bandit. Anyone who does not agree with this will, pays for it with their freedom or their life, and at the very least – loses the opportunity to be part of the mafia or the gang or to be subject to its "protection" (umbrella, krysha - roof in Russian).
Fourth, as a dictator, Putin is virtually uncontrollable and ungovernable, untouchable and unchangeable. If in normal countries there are various ways and tricks to destroy the legitimacy of the leader – for example, scandals for corruption, for extramarital affairs and children, for nepotism, for betrayal of national interests, for abuse of power and many others, Putin is above all this and all this is not a threat to him. Although, for example, he is waging a doomed War against Russian strategic priorities and interests, Putin can wage this War indefinitely. Despite showing enormous weakness during Prigogine's march, Putin is – still and even more – in power in Russia; he rules without limit because he is unshakeable in his power and because he has so constructed the state, its governing structure, that it not only works for him but also cannot work without him and therefore has to do everything to continue to he rules and to suggest to everyone that he should continue to rule.
Although Russia is at least to some extent civilized and, as it is politically incorrect to say, a "white" country, it is unprecedentedly Putinized, it is subordinated to the idea of "Putin", and the personification of this idea "Putin" can only be Putin. This perception of Putin's Russia is so widespread and uncritical that, in practice, the West is also in its trap – and the West has clearly demonstrated that it does not want to see Putin fall, because that would mean the collapse of Russia.
The West, or at least the significant and controlling stake in the rulers of the West, is apparently firmly convinced that Russia is so irreversibly Putin's Russia that without Putin there could be no Russia, so for the West, Putin is in some shockingly unacceptable way legitimate the leader of Russia (therefore, by pushing Ukraine to negotiate, it is implied that it is negotiating with Putin).
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With such sad and depressing findings of mine, why, despite my common sense, do I remain optimistic about Ukraine in this bloody and deadly War for her, every half hour taking a human life from her on the battlefield and every a day taking the life of a civilian?
First, the most obvious – Putin is a mere mortal, and as Mikhail Bulgakov wrote, all people are mortal, and sometimes they are suddenly mortal. Therefore, the West must direct its strategic thinking in another direction – to separate Russia from Putin and prepare for Russia when Putin is no longer there, and this means participating in the preparation of Russia for the time when Putin is no longer there.
Secondly, at the moment the War is positional, it is like a chess game – the whites (Ukraine) painfully and slowly, but irreversibly accumulate tiny positional advantages against the blacks (Russia), they win with difficulty, but they win anyway, on one or another field of the fierce military chess game. In dialectics, quantitative accumulations lead to qualitative changes. In this terrible War (as in every terrible War, and every War is terrible) qualitative accumulations lead to quantitative changes.
Third, negative, destructive, gradually generating catastrophic uncertainty and apocalyptic insecurity processes are taking place in Russia under the surface, and already on the surface, some of which are noticeably escaping the control of the authorities. Yes, these processes are slower than we would like, but they are already visible and thus changing the political, economic, financial and social landscape in Russia. Russia's weaknesses undermine the confidence of the political regime in Russia that somehow Putin will come up with something and emerge dry from the water again, but they as well affect the attitude towards Putin not only in the West, but also in the South, in the so-called global South, and one Russian analyst calls it the deep South. Anti-Putin coalitions are beginning to form quietly and steadily, in which some countries, through their leaders, are in a hurry to change their shoes, i.e. to change the train, to get on the right train, to cross to the right side, as is often said in Ukraine, of History.
Fourthly, I strongly and even naively, with all my heart and soul, mind and reason, hope that the West will turn on its instinct of self-preservation and rise at least one pro-Ukrainian level higher in its attitude to this War.
The West,
either will inflict upon himself cruel sufferings, strategic destructions, heavy dramas, and unforgivable illusions, still hoping that the best for him is above all the continuation of this War as much as possible;
or will find strength, will, vision, and conviction, to take a course for the uncompromising and unappealable loss of Russia in this War.
Actually, it won't be so much Russia's loss – let the West rest easy! – it will be a loss, heavy, crushing for Putin. This will be the end of Putin. And accordingly, this will be the beginning of another, at least a little more humane and at least partly more normal Russia – Russia without Putin and Russia after Putin.
11/08/2023
