#Putin’s Article

[xtruss]

Every Russian Soldier Is Required to Read This 2021 Putin Article on Ukraine

"We Will Never Allow Our Historical Territories and People Close To Us Living There To Be Used Against Russia"

— Vladimir Putin, President of Russia | 16 January 22 | Anti-Empire | The Kremlin

Putin: The formation from our lands and people of an anti-Russia “is comparable in its consequences to the use of WMDs against us.”

Editor’s Note: Published in July 2021, and made mandatory reading for the Russian military just days later. If Moscow goes to war in the coming months you can take this text as its “Why We Fight”. Some select quotes:

— “The republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union.”

— “But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy.”

— “The path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.”

— “We will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia”

— “Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.”

During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe. I therefore feel it necessary to explain my position in detail and share my assessments of today’s situation.

First of all, I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy. These are, first and foremost, the consequences of our own mistakes made at different periods of time. But these are also the result of deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity. The formula they apply has been known from time immemorial – divide and rule. There is nothing new here. Hence the attempts to play on the ”national question“ and sow discord among people, the overarching goal being to divide and then to pit the parts of a single people against one another.

To have a better understanding of the present and look into the future, we need to turn to history. Certainly, it is impossible to cover in this article all the developments that have taken place over more than a thousand years. But I will focus on the key, pivotal moments that are important for us to remember, both in Russia and Ukraine.

Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today.

The throne of Kiev held a dominant position in Ancient Rus. This had been the custom since the late 9th century. The Tale of Bygone Years captured for posterity the words of Oleg the Prophet about Kiev, “Let it be the mother of all Russian cities.”

Kievan Rus

Later, like other European states of that time, Ancient Rus faced a decline of central rule and fragmentation. At the same time, both the nobility and the common people perceived Rus as a common territory, as their homeland.

The fragmentation intensified after Batu Khan’s devastating invasion, which ravaged many cities, including Kiev. The northeastern part of Rus fell under the control of the Golden Horde but retained limited sovereignty. The southern and western Russian lands largely became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which – most significantly – was referred to in historical records as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia.

Members of the princely and ”boyar“ clans would change service from one prince to another, feuding with each other but also making friendships and alliances. Voivode Bobrok of Volyn and the sons of Grand Duke of Lithuania Algirdas – Andrey of Polotsk and Dmitry of Bryansk – fought next to Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich of Moscow on the Kulikovo field. At the same time, Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila – son of the Princess of Tver – led his troops to join with Mamai. These are all pages of our shared history, reflecting its complex and multi-dimensional nature.

Most importantly, people both in the western and eastern Russian lands spoke the same language. Their faith was Orthodox. Up to the middle of the 15th century, the unified church government remained in place.

At a new stage of historical development, both Lithuanian Rus and Moscow Rus could have become the points of attraction and consolidation of the territories of Ancient Rus. It so happened that Moscow became the center of reunification, continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood. Moscow princes – the descendants of Prince Alexander Nevsky – cast off the foreign yoke and began gathering the Russian lands.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, other processes were unfolding. In the 14th century, Lithuania’s ruling elite converted to Catholicism. [From Baltic paganism.] In the 16th century, it signed the Union of Lublin with the Kingdom of Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. [After which its nobility largely Polonised.] The Polish Catholic nobility received considerable land holdings and privileges in the territory of Rus. In accordance with the 1596 Union of Brest, part of the western Russian Orthodox clergy submitted to the authority of the Pope. The process of Polonization and Latinization began, ousting Orthodoxy.

The 1648 Orthodox Cossack-serf Revolt that would seek Russian aid against Poles

As a consequence, in the 16–17th centuries, the liberation movement of the Orthodox population was gaining strength in the Dnieper region. [Albeit the revolt was largely social. More so than ethno-political.] The events during the times of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky became a turning point. His supporters struggled for autonomy from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

In its 1649 appeal to the king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Zaporizhian Host demanded that the rights of the Russian Orthodox population be respected, that the voivode of Kiev be Russian and of Greek faith, and that the persecution of the churches of God be stopped. But the Cossacks were not heard.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky then made appeals to Moscow, which were considered by the Zemsky Sobor. On 1 October 1653, members of the supreme representative body of the Russian state decided to support their brothers in faith and take them under patronage. In January 1654, the Pereyaslav Council confirmed that decision. Subsequently, the ambassadors of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Moscow visited dozens of cities, including Kiev, whose populations swore allegiance to the Russian tsar. Incidentally, nothing of the kind happened at the conclusion of the Union of Lublin.

In a letter to Moscow in 1654, Bohdan Khmelnytsky thanked Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich for taking “the whole Zaporizhian Host and the whole Russian Orthodox world under the strong and high hand of the Tsar.” It means that, in their appeals to both the Polish king and the Russian tsar, the Cossacks referred to and defined themselves as Russian Orthodox people.

Over the course of the protracted war between the Russian state and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, some of the hetmans, successors of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, would ”detach themselves“ from Moscow or seek support from Sweden, Poland, or Turkey. But, again, for the people, that was a war of liberation. It ended with the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667. The final outcome was sealed by the Treaty of Perpetual Peace in 1686. The Russian state incorporated the city of Kiev and the lands on the left bank of the Dnieper River, including Poltava region, Chernigov region, and Zaporozhye. Their inhabitants were reunited with the main part of the Russian Orthodox people. These territories were referred to as ”Malorossia“ (Little Russia).

The name ”Ukraine“ was used more often in the meaning of the Old Russian word ”okraina“ (periphery), which is found in written sources from the 12th century, referring to various border territories. And the word ”Ukrainian“, judging by archival documents, originally referred to frontier guards who protected the external borders.

Truce of Andrusovo 1667, left-bank transferred from Poland to Russia, cossack Zaporozhia under Russian protection

On the right bank, which remained under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the old orders were restored, and social and religious oppression intensified. On the contrary, the lands on the left bank, taken under the protection of the unified state, saw rapid development. People from the other bank of the Dnieper moved here en masse. They sought support from people who spoke the same language and had the same faith.

During the Great Northern War with Sweden, the people in Malorossia were not faced with a choice of whom to side with. Only a small portion of the Cossacks supported Mazepa’s rebellion. People of all orders and degrees considered themselves Russian and Orthodox.

Cossack senior officers belonging to the nobility would reach the heights of political, diplomatic, and military careers in Russia. Graduates of Kiev-Mohyla Academy played a leading role in church life. This was also the case during the Hetmanate – an essentially autonomous state formation with a special internal structure – and later in the Russian Empire. Malorussians in many ways helped build a big common country – its statehood, culture, and science. They participated in the exploration and development of the Urals, Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Far East. Incidentally, during the Soviet period, natives of Ukraine held major, including the highest, posts in the leadership of the unified state. Suffice it to say that Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, whose party biography was most closely associated with Ukraine, led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) for almost 30 years.

In the second half of the 18th century, following the wars with the Ottoman Empire, Russia incorporated Crimea and the lands of the Black Sea region, which became known as Novorossiya. They were populated by people from all of the Russian provinces. After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire regained the western Old Russian lands, with the exception of Galicia and Transcarpathia, which became part of the Austrian – and later Austro-Hungarian – Empire.

The incorporation of the western Russian lands into the single state was not merely the result of political and diplomatic decisions. It was underlain by the common faith, shared cultural traditions, and – I would like to emphasize it once again – language similarity. Thus, as early as the beginning of the 17th century, one of the hierarchs of the Uniate Church, Joseph Rutsky, communicated to Rome that people in Moscovia called Russians from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth their brothers, that their written language was absolutely identical, and differences in the vernacular were insignificant. He drew an analogy with the residents of Rome and Bergamo. These are, as we know, the center and the north of modern Italy.

Many centuries of fragmentation and living within different states naturally brought about regional language peculiarities, resulting in the emergence of dialects. The vernacular enriched the literary language. Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Grigory Skovoroda, and Taras Shevchenko played a huge role here. Their works are our common literary and cultural heritage. Taras Shevchenko wrote poetry in the Ukrainian language, and prose mainly in Russian. The books of Nikolay Gogol, a Russian patriot and native of Poltavshchyna, are written in Russian, bristling with Malorussian folk sayings and motifs. How can this heritage be divided between Russia and Ukraine? And why do it?

The south-western lands of the Russian Empire, Malorussia and Novorossiya, and the Crimea developed as ethnically and religiously diverse entities. Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Karaites, Krymchaks, Bulgarians, Poles, Serbs, Germans, and other peoples lived here. They all preserved their faith, traditions, and customs.

I am not going to idealise anything. We do know there were the Valuev Circular of 1863 an then the Ems Ukaz of 1876, which restricted the publication and importation of religious and socio-political literature in the Ukrainian language. But it is important to be mindful of the historical context. These decisions were taken against the backdrop of dramatic events in Poland and the desire of the leaders of the Polish national movement to exploit the ”Ukrainian issue“ to their own advantage. I should add that works of fiction, books of Ukrainian poetry and folk songs continued to be published. There is objective evidence that the Russian Empire was witnessing an active process of development of the Malorussian cultural identity within the greater Russian nation, which united the Velikorussians, the Malorussians and the Belorussians.

At the same time, the idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians started to form and gain ground among the Polish elite and a part of the Malorussian intelligentsia. Since there was no historical basis – and could not have been any, conclusions were substantiated by all sorts of concoctions, which went as far as to claim that the Ukrainians are the true Slavs and the Russians, the Muscovites, are not. Such ”hypotheses“ became increasingly used for political purposes as a tool of rivalry between European states.

Since the late 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian authorities had latched onto this narrative, using it as a counterbalance to the Polish national movement and pro-Muscovite sentiments in Galicia. During World War I, Vienna played a role in the formation of the so-called Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Galicians suspected of sympathies with Orthodox Christianity and Russia were subjected to brutal repression and thrown into the concentration camps of Thalerhof and Terezin.

Further developments had to do with the collapse of European empires, the fierce civil war that broke out across the vast territory of the former Russian Empire, and foreign intervention.

After the February Revolution, in March 1917, the Central Rada was established in Kiev, intended to become the organ of supreme power. In November 1917, in its Third Universal, it declared the creation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) as part of Russia.

In December 1917, UPR representatives arrived in Brest-Litovsk, where Soviet Russia was negotiating with Germany and its allies. At a meeting on 10 January 1918, the head of the Ukrainian delegation read out a note proclaiming the independence of Ukraine. Subsequently, the Central Rada proclaimed Ukraine independent in its Fourth Universal.

The declared sovereignty did not last long. Just a few weeks later, Rada delegates signed a separate treaty with the German bloc countries. Germany and Austria-Hungary were at the time in a dire situation and needed Ukrainian bread and raw materials. In order to secure large-scale supplies, they obtained consent for sending their troops and technical staff to the UPR. In fact, this was used as a pretext for occupation.

For those who have today given up the full control of Ukraine to external forces, it would be instructive to remember that, back in 1918, such a decision proved fatal for the ruling regime in Kiev. With the direct involvement of the occupying forces, the Central Rada was overthrown and Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi was brought to power, proclaiming instead of the UPR the Ukrainian State, which was essentially under German protectorate.

In November 1918 – following the revolutionary events in Germany and Austria-Hungary – Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who had lost the support of German bayonets, took a different course, declaring that ”Ukraine is to take the lead in the formation of an All-Russian Federation“. However, the regime was soon changed again. It was now the time of the so-called Directorate.

In autumn 1918, Ukrainian nationalists proclaimed the West Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR) and, in January 1919, announced its unification with the Ukrainian People’s Republic. In July 1919, Ukrainian forces were crushed by Polish troops, and the territory of the former WUPR came under the Polish rule.

In April 1920, Symon Petliura (portrayed as one of the ”heroes“ in today’s Ukraine) concluded secret conventions on behalf of the UPR Directorate, giving up – in exchange for military support – Galicia and Western Volhynia lands to Poland. In May 1920, Petliurites entered Kiev in a convoy of Polish military units. But not for long. As early as November 1920, following a truce between Poland and Soviet Russia, the remnants of Petliura’s forces surrendered to those same Poles.

The example of the UPR shows that different kinds of quasi-state formations that emerged across the former Russian Empire at the time of the Civil War and turbulence were inherently unstable. Nationalists sought to create their own independent states, while leaders of the White movement advocated indivisible Russia. Many of the republics established by the Bolsheviks’ supporters did not see themselves outside Russia either. Nevertheless, Bolshevik Party leaders sometimes basically drove them out of Soviet Russia for various reasons.

Thus, in early 1918, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic was proclaimed and asked Moscow to incorporate it into Soviet Russia. This was met with a refusal. During a meeting with the republic’s leaders, Vladimir Lenin insisted that they act as part of Soviet Ukraine. On 15 March 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) directly ordered that delegates be sent to the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, including from the Donetsk Basin, and that ”one government for all of Ukraine“ be created at the congress. The territories of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic later formed most of the regions of south-eastern Ukraine.

Donetsk-Krivoy Rog

Under the 1921 Treaty of Riga, concluded between the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Poland, the western lands of the former Russian Empire were ceded to Poland. In the interwar period, the Polish government pursued an active resettlement policy, seeking to change the ethnic composition of the Eastern Borderlands – the Polish name for what is now Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and parts of Lithuania. The areas were subjected to harsh Polonisation, local culture and traditions suppressed. Later, during World War II, radical groups of Ukrainian nationalists used this as a pretext for terror not only against Polish, but also against Jewish and Russian populations.

In 1922, when the USSR was created, with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic becoming one of its founders, a rather fierce debate among the Bolshevik leaders resulted in the implementation of Lenin’s plan to form a union state as a federation of equal republics. The right for the republics to freely secede from the Union was included in the text of the Declaration on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and, subsequently, in the 1924 USSR Constitution. By doing so, the authors planted in the foundation of our statehood the most dangerous time bomb, which exploded the moment the safety mechanism provided by the leading role of the CPSU was gone, the party itself collapsing from within. A ”parade of sovereignties“ followed. On 8 December 1991, the so-called Belovezh Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States was signed, stating that ”the USSR as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality no longer existed.“ By the way, Ukraine never signed or ratified the CIS Charter adopted back in 1993.

In the 1920’s-1930’s, the Bolsheviks actively promoted the ”localization policy“, which took the form of Ukrainization in the Ukrainian SSR. Symbolically, as part of this policy and with consent of the Soviet authorities, Mikhail Grushevskiy, former chairman of Central Rada, one of the ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism, who at a certain period of time had been supported by Austria-Hungary, was returned to the USSR and was elected member of the Academy of Sciences.

The localization policy undoubtedly played a major role in the development and consolidation of the Ukrainian culture, language and identity. At the same time, under the guise of combating the so-called Russian great-power chauvinism, Ukrainization was often imposed on those who did not see themselves as Ukrainians. This Soviet national policy secured at the state level the provision on three separate Slavic peoples: Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian, instead of the large Russian nation, a triune people comprising Velikorussians, Malorussians and Belorussians.

In 1939, the USSR regained the lands earlier seized by Poland. A major portion of these became part of the Soviet Ukraine. In 1940, the Ukrainian SSR incorporated part of Bessarabia, which had been occupied by Romania since 1918, as well as Northern Bukovina. In 1948, Zmeyiniy Island (Snake Island) in the Black Sea became part of Ukraine. In 1954, the Crimean Region of the RSFSR was given to the Ukrainian SSR, in gross violation of legal norms that were in force at the time.

I would like to dwell on the destiny of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of Czechoslovakia following the breakup of Austria-Hungary. Rusins made up a considerable share of local population. While this is hardly mentioned any longer, after the liberation of Transcarpathia by Soviet troops the congress of the Orthodox population of the region voted for the inclusion of Carpathian Ruthenia in the RSFSR or, as a separate Carpathian republic, in the USSR proper. Yet the choice of people was ignored. In summer 1945, the historical act of the reunification of Carpathian Ukraine ”with its ancient motherland, Ukraine“ – as The Pravda newspaper put it – was announced.

Therefore, modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era. We know and remember well that it was shaped – for a significant part – on the lands of historical Russia. To make sure of that, it is enough to look at the boundaries of the lands reunited with the Russian state in the 17th century and the territory of the Ukrainian SSR when it left the Soviet Union.

The Bolsheviks treated the Russian people as inexhaustible material for their social experiments. They dreamt of a world revolution that would wipe out national states. That is why they were so generous in drawing borders and bestowing territorial gifts. It is no longer important what exactly the idea of the Bolshevik leaders who were chopping the country into pieces was. We can disagree about minor details, background and logics behind certain decisions. One fact is crystal clear: Russia was robbed, indeed.

When working on this article, I relied on open-source documents that contain well-known facts rather than on some secret records. The leaders of modern Ukraine and their external “patrons“ prefer to overlook these facts. They do not miss a chance, however, both inside the country and abroad, to condemn ”the crimes of the Soviet regime,” listing among them events with which neither the CPSU, nor the USSR, let alone modern Russia, have anything to do. At the same time, the Bolsheviks’ efforts to detach from Russia its historical territories are not considered a crime. And we know why: if they brought about the weakening of Russia, our ill-wishers are happy with that.

Of course, inside the USSR, borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal within a single country, which, while featuring all the attributes of a federation, was highly centralized – this, again, was secured by the CPSU’s leading role. But in 1991, all those territories, and, which is more important, people, found themselves abroad overnight, taken away, this time indeed, from their historical motherland.

What can be said to this? Things change: countries and communities are no exception. Of course, some part of a people in the process of its development, influenced by a number of reasons and historical circumstances, can become aware of itself as a separate nation at a certain moment. How should we treat that? There is only one answer: with respect!

You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked.

In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people’s views.

The Russian Federation recognized the new geopolitical realities: and not only recognized, but, indeed, did a lot for Ukraine to establish itself as an independent country. Throughout the difficult 1990’s and in the new millennium, we have provided considerable support to Ukraine. Whatever “political arithmetic” of its own Kiev may wish to apply, in 1991–2013, Ukraine’s budget savings amounted to more than USD 82 billion, while today, it holds on to the mere USD 1.5 billion of Russian payments for gas transit to Europe. If economic ties between our countries had been retained, Ukraine would enjoy the benefit of tens of billions of dollars.

Ukraine and Russia have developed as a single economic system over decades and centuries. The profound cooperation we had 30 years ago is an example for the European Union to look up to. We are natural complementary economic partners. Such a close relationship can strengthen competitive advantages, increasing the potential of both countries.

Ukraine used to possess great potential, which included powerful infrastructure, gas transportation system, advanced shipbuilding, aviation, rocket and instrument engineering industries, as well as world-class scientific, design and engineering schools. Taking over this legacy and declaring independence, Ukrainian leaders promised that the Ukrainian economy would be one of the leading ones and the standard of living would be among the best in Europe.

Today, high-tech industrial giants that were once the pride of Ukraine and the entire Union, are sinking. Engineering output has dropped by 42 per cent over ten years. The scale of deindustrialization and overall economic degradation is visible in Ukraine’s electricity production, which has nearly halved in 30 years. Finally, according to IMF reports, in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Ukraine’s GDP per capita had been below USD 4 thousand. This is less than in the Republic of Albania, the Republic of Moldova, or unrecognized Kosovo. Nowadays, Ukraine is Europe’s poorest country.

Who is to blame for this? Is it the people of Ukraine’s fault? Certainly not. It was the Ukrainian authorities who wasted and frittered away the achievements of many generations. We know how hardworking and talented the people of Ukraine are. They can achieve success and outstanding results with perseverance and determination. And these qualities, as well as their openness, innate optimism and hospitality are not gone. The feelings of millions of people who treat Russia not just well but with great affection, just as we feel about Ukraine, remain the same.

Until 2014, hundreds of agreements and joint projects were aimed at developing our economies, business and cultural ties, strengthening security, and solving common social and environmental problems. They brought tangible benefits to people – both in Russia and Ukraine. This is what we believed to be most important. And that is why we had a fruitful interaction with all, I emphasize, with all the leaders of Ukraine.

Even after the events in Kiev of 2014, I charged the Russian government to elaborate options for preserving and maintaining our economic ties within relevant ministries and agencies. However, there was and is still no mutual will to do the same. Nevertheless, Russia is still one of Ukraine’s top three trading partners, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are coming to us to work, and they find a welcome reception and support. So that what the ”aggressor state“ is.

When the USSR collapsed, many people in Russia and Ukraine sincerely believed and assumed that our close cultural, spiritual and economic ties would certainly last, as would the commonality of our people, who had always had a sense of unity at their core. However, events – at first gradually, and then more rapidly – started to move in a different direction.

In essence, Ukraine’s ruling circles decided to justify their country’s independence through the denial of its past, however, except for border issues. They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation. The common tragedy of collectivization and famine of the early 1930s was portrayed as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Radicals and neo-Nazis were open and more and more insolent about their ambitions. They were indulged by both the official authorities and local oligarchs, who robbed the people of Ukraine and kept their stolen money in Western banks, ready to sell their motherland for the sake of preserving their capital. To this should be added the persistent weakness of state institutions and the position of a willing hostage to someone else’s geopolitical will.

I recall that long ago, well before 2014, the U.S. and EU countries systematically and consistently pushed Ukraine to curtail and limit economic cooperation with Russia. We, as the largest trade and economic partner of Ukraine, suggested discussing the emerging problems in the Ukraine-Russia-EU format. But every time we were told that Russia had nothing to do with it and that the issue concerned only the EU and Ukraine. De facto Western countries rejected Russia’s repeated calls for dialogue.

Step by step, Ukraine was dragged into a dangerous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine into a barrier between Europe and Russia, a springboard against Russia. Inevitably, there came a time when the concept of ”Ukraine is not Russia“ was no longer an option. There was a need for the “anti-Russia” concept which we will never accept.

The owners of this project took as a basis the old groundwork of the Polish-Austrian ideologists to create an “anti-Moscow Russia”. And there is no need to deceive anyone that this is being done in the interests of the people of Ukraine. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth never needed Ukrainian culture, much less Cossack autonomy. In Austria-Hungary, historical Russian lands were mercilessly exploited and remained the poorest. The Nazis, abetted by collaborators from the OUN-UPA, did not need Ukraine, but a living space and slaves for Aryan overlords.

Nor were the interests of the Ukrainian people thought of in February 2014. The legitimate public discontent, caused by acute socio-economic problems, mistakes, and inconsistent actions of the authorities of the time, was simply cynically exploited. Western countries directly interfered in Ukraine’s internal affairs and supported the coup. Radical nationalist groups served as its battering ram. Their slogans, ideology, and blatant aggressive Russophobia have to a large extent become defining elements of state policy in Ukraine.

All the things that united us and bring us together so far came under attack. First and foremost, the Russian language. Let me remind you that the new ”Maidan“ authorities first tried to repeal the law on state language policy. Then there was the law on the ”purification of power“, the law on education that virtually cut the Russian language out of the educational process.

Lastly, as early as May of this year, the current president introduced a bill on ”indigenous peoples“ to the Rada. Only those who constitute an ethnic minority and do not have their own state entity outside Ukraine are recognized as indigenous. The law has been passed. New seeds of discord have been sown. And this is happening in a country, as I have already noted, that is very complex in terms of its territorial, national and linguistic composition, and its history of formation.

There may be an argument: if you are talking about a single large nation, a triune nation, then what difference does it make who people consider themselves to be – Russians, Ukrainians, or Belarusians. I completely agree with this. Especially since the determination of nationality, particularly in mixed families, is the right of every individual, free to make his or her own choice.

But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us. As a result of such a harsh and artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian people in all may decrease by hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Our spiritual unity has also been attacked. As in the days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a new ecclesiastical has been initiated. The secular authorities, making no secret of their political aims, have blatantly interfered in church life and brought things to a split, to the seizure of churches, the beating of priests and monks. Even extensive autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church while maintaining spiritual unity with the Moscow Patriarchate strongly displeases them. They have to destroy this prominent and centuries-old symbol of our kinship at all costs.

I think it is also natural that the representatives of Ukraine over and over again vote against the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. Marches and torchlit processions in honor of remaining war criminals from the SS units take place under the protection of the official authorities. Mazepa, who betrayed everyone, Petliura, who paid for Polish patronage with Ukrainian lands, and Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis, are ranked as national heroes. Everything is being done to erase from the memory of young generations the names of genuine patriots and victors, who have always been the pride of Ukraine.

For the Ukrainians who fought in the Red Army, in partisan units, the Great Patriotic War was indeed a patriotic war because they were defending their home, their great common Motherland. Over two thousand soldiers became Heroes of the Soviet Union. Among them are legendary pilot Ivan Kozhedub, fearless sniper, defender of Odessa and Sevastopol Lyudmila Pavlichenko, valiant guerrilla commander Sidor Kovpak. This indomitable generation fought, those people gave their lives for our future, for us. To forget their feat is to betray our grandfathers, mothers and fathers.

The anti-Russia project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians. The people of Crimea and residents of Sevastopol made their historic choice. And people in the southeast peacefully tried to defend their stance. Yet, all of them, including children, were labeled as separatists and terrorists. They were threatened with ethnic cleansing and the use of military force. And the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk took up arms to defend their home, their language and their lives. Were they left any other choice after the riots that swept through the cities of Ukraine, after the horror and tragedy of 2 May 2014 in Odessa where Ukrainian neo-Nazis burned people alive making a new Khatyn out of it? The same massacre was ready to be carried out by the followers of Bandera in Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Lugansk. Even now they do not abandon such plans. They are biding their time. But their time will not come.

The coup d’état and the subsequent actions of the Kiev authorities inevitably provoked confrontation and civil war. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that the total number of victims in the conflict in Donbas has exceeded 13,000. Among them are the elderly and children. These are terrible, irreparable losses.

Russia has done everything to stop fratricide. The Minsk agreements aimed at a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbas have been concluded. I am convinced that they still have no alternative. In any case, no one has withdrawn their signatures from the Minsk Package of Measures or from the relevant statements by the leaders of the Normandy format countries. No one has initiated a review of the United Nations Security Council resolution of 17 February 2015.

During official negotiations, especially after being reined in by Western partners, Ukraine’s representatives regularly declare their ”full adherence“ to the Minsk agreements, but are in fact guided by a position of ”unacceptability“. They do not intend to seriously discuss either the special status of Donbas or safeguards for the people living there. They prefer to exploit the image of the ”victim of external aggression“ and peddle Russophobia. They arrange bloody provocations in Donbas. In short, they attract the attention of external patrons and masters by all means.

Apparently, and I am becoming more and more convinced of this: Kiev simply does not need Donbas. Why? Because, firstly, the inhabitants of these regions will never accept the order that they have tried and are trying to impose by force, blockade and threats. And secondly, the outcome of both Minsk‑1 and Minsk‑2 which give a real chance to peacefully restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine by coming to an agreement directly with the DPR and LPR with Russia, Germany and France as mediators, contradicts the entire logic of the anti-Russia project. And it can only be sustained by the constant cultivation of the image of an internal and external enemy. And I would add – under the protection and control of the Western powers.

This is what is actually happening. First of all, we are facing the creation of a climate of fear in Ukrainian society, aggressive rhetoric, indulging neo-Nazis and militarising the country. Along with that we are witnessing not just complete dependence but direct external control, including the supervision of the Ukrainian authorities, security services and armed forces by foreign advisers, military ”development“ of the territory of Ukraine and deployment of NATO infrastructure. It is no coincidence that the aforementioned flagrant law on ”indigenous peoples“ was adopted under the cover of large-scale NATO exercises in Ukraine.

This is also a disguise for the takeover of the rest of the Ukrainian economy and the exploitation of its natural resources. The sale of agricultural land is not far off, and it is obvious who will buy it up. From time to time, Ukraine is indeed given financial resources and loans, but under their own conditions and pursuing their own interests, with preferences and benefits for Western companies. By the way, who will pay these debts back? Apparently, it is assumed that this will have to be done not only by today’s generation of Ukrainians but also by their children, grandchildren and probably great-grandchildren.

The Western authors of the anti-Russia project set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain. Reaching peace was the main election slogan of the incumbent president. He came to power with this. The promises turned out to be lies. Nothing has changed. And in some ways the situation in Ukraine and around Donbas has even degenerated.

In the anti-Russia project, there is no place either for a sovereign Ukraine or for the political forces that are trying to defend its real independence. Those who talk about reconciliation in Ukrainian society, about dialogue, about finding a way out of the current impasse are labelled as ”pro-Russian“ agents.

Again, for many people in Ukraine, the anti-Russia project is simply unacceptable. And there are millions of such people. But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view in fact taken away from them. They are intimidated, driven underground. Not only are they persecuted for their convictions, for the spoken word, for the open expression of their position, but they are also killed. Murderers, as a rule, go unpunished.

Today, the ”right“ patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea. Hate and anger, as world history has repeatedly proved this, are a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, fraught with many serious risks and dire consequences.

All the subterfuges associated with the anti-Russia project are clear to us. And we will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia. And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.

The incumbent authorities in Ukraine like to refer to Western experience, seeing it as a model to follow. Just have a look at how Austria and Germany, the USA and Canada live next to each other. Close in ethnic composition, culture, in fact sharing one language, they remain sovereign states with their own interests, with their own foreign policy. But this does not prevent them from the closest integration or allied relations. They have very conditional, transparent borders. And when crossing them the citizens feel at home. They create families, study, work, do business. Incidentally, so do millions of those born in Ukraine who now live in Russia. We see them as our own close people.

Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our partner is defending its national interests but not serving someone else’s, and is not a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.

We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to see their country free, safe and prosperous.

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.

Today, these words may be perceived by some people with hostility. They can be interpreted in many possible ways. Yet, many people will hear me. And I will say one thing – Russia has never been and will never be “anti-Ukraine”. And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide.

— Source: The Kremlin

[folklorespring]

russia commits genocide in Ukraine

https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/they-tried-to-make-us-russians-the-children-putin-stole-kpf9vrv7b

[dontforgetukraine]

During a recent nationwide air attack on Ukraine, a husband and father in Lviv suffered an unimaginable loss – his wife and three daughters were killed in a missile strike that destroyed their home. In an instant, his entire family was taken from him, leaving him to endure grief beyond words. Images of this tragedy flooded social media, serving as a heartbreaking reminder of the devastating human toll Russia’s war continues to inflict on innocent civilians. While the blame for such horrific losses is quickly placed on Putin, these victims were not killed by him alone. The missile that struck their home was not designed and built by Putin. The fighter jet that delivered it was not fueled, maintained, or piloted by him. Putin did not prepare the meals for the military and support personnel. The uniforms they wore were not sewn by Putin. Behind every strike and offensive operation is a vast network of Russian civilians and military personnel. This network includes countless individuals involved in every aspect of Russia’s so-called “special military operation,” from complex missile launches to basic administration. These tasks are carried out by average Russians working in various sectors – military, energy, manufacturing, food and agriculture, transportation, telecommunications, media. Each industry is critical to sustaining a war of this scale, and each employs millions of Russians. These workers may not hold positions of power or directly participate in combat, yet they are essential to maintaining Russia’s military efforts against Ukraine.

—Mariya Chukhnova, international security expert

Source: Opinion: Putin’s war? The case for Russia’s collective responsibility in Ukraine

[themo-themo]

🇵🇱 Hi, a Pole here - few things

Stop fucking spreading panic

No, WW3 is NOT starting right now

2 people, farmers, civilians, NOT SOLDIERS, with families are dead, be respectfull dammit

Poland is not "impatiently waiting to use article 5 and attack Russia"

we ARE however all waiting for Vladimir Putin's painfull death

there are decades worth of history of bloody wars, genosides, oppressions, assasinations, kidnappings, corruption and so SO much more

because of this there is a long history of hate and longing for justice

also millions of poles have families or relatives from Ukraine

Putin WON'T announce capitulation because he KNOWS that would mean his death at the hands of his own people who would kill him in matter of hours

UPDATE (17th Nov. 2022):

Poland is NOT going to force neither article 4 or 5

Polish experts say the missiles used were ukrainian not russian and were probably launched to shoot down rockets fired by Russia but missed and hit the polish border

Thanks. Smacznej kawusi, niech się Putin chujem dusi. Chwała Ukrainie. 🇵🇱🇺🇦

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

“We need to strengthen the conflict between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, along the lines of ‘he intends to fire him,’” one Kremlin political strategist wrote a year ago, after a meeting of senior Russian officials and Moscow spin doctors, according to internal Kremlin documents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration ordered a group of Russian political strategists to use social media and fake news articles to push the theme that Zelensky “is hysterical and weak. … He fears that he will be pushed aside, therefore he is getting rid of the dangerous ones.”

The Kremlin instruction resulted in thousands of social media posts and hundreds of fabricated articles, created by troll farms and circulated in Ukraine and across Europe, that tried to exploit what were then rumored tensions between the two Ukrainian leaders, according to a trove of Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The files, numbering more than 100 documents, were shared with The Post to expose for the first time the scale of Kremlin propaganda targeting Zelensky with the aim of dividing and destabilizing Ukrainian society — efforts that Moscow dubbed “information psychological operations.”(..)

The documents show how in January 2023 the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, tasked a team of officials and political strategists with establishing a presence on Ukrainian social media to distribute disinformation.

The effort built on an earlier project that Kiriyenko, a longtime Putin aide, had been running to subvert Western support for Ukraine, including in France and Germany, previous reporting by The Post shows. The European propaganda group was overseen by one of Kiriyenko’s deputies, Tatyana Matveeva, head of the Kremlin’s department for developing information and communication technologies, the documents show.(..)

At a Jan. 16, 2023, meeting, Kiriyenko laid out four key objectives for the Ukraine propaganda team: discrediting Kyiv’s military and political leadership, splitting the Ukrainian elite, demoralizing Ukrainian troops and disorienting the Ukrainian population, the documents show.(..)

By early March, dozens of hired trolls were pumping out more than 1,300 texts and 37,000 comments on Ukrainian social media each week, according to one of the dashboard presentations. Records show that employees at troll farms earned 60,000 rubles a month, or $660, for writing 100 comments a day.(..)

The strategists advised developing “a network of Telegram channels in combination with Twitter and Facebook/Instagram” as the most effective way of penetrating Ukraine’s media space, noting that the Telegram audience in Ukraine had grown 600 percent over the previous year. (..)

By the first week of May,a post the Kremlin strategists had planted on Facebook, saying that “Valery Zaluzhny can become the next president of Ukraine,” had garnered 4.3 million views, one of the dashboard presentations shows. The Kremlin then issued orders to create similar posts or “additional reality” — a term used by Russian officials for fake news — including reports that Western leaders were looking for a replacement for Zelensky and that Zaluzhny intended to halt the counteroffensive.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said in a statement referring to the Russian posts about Zaluzhny and the alleged lack of state aid for the fallen soldier that it had been “monitoring and blocking accounts, Pages and websites run by this campaign” since 2022, “including these two Pages that were quickly detected and disabled by our security team.”

Undeterred, the strategists planted a plethora of articles in Ukraine via social media, with one in May headlined “Zelensky is holding on to the throne. In Ukraine democracy is being liquidated,” the documents show. Another in June sought to play up what it claimed was the prolonged disappearance of Zaluzhny from public view, with bloggers instructed to post comments declaring: “This is why Zaluzhny disappeared: Because he could have and should have taken Zelensky’s place.”

The strategists also sought to exploit Kiriyenko’s campaign in Western Europe by recycling its disinformation for use in Ukraine. The tactics in the European campaign included cloning and usurping media and government websites, such as those for Le Monde and the French Foreign Ministry, and then posting fake content on them denigrating the Ukrainian government, in an operation dubbed Doppelgänger by European Union officials. They also included creating fake accounts on X, or Twitter, for prominent figures including German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. The strategists sought to place stories or posts from those websites or accounts on Ukrainian social media as genuine European reporting or commentary.

After the fake Baerbock account declared in September that “the war in Ukraine will be over in 3 months,” the German authorities launched an investigation and found more than 50,000 fake user accounts coordinating pro-Russian propaganda, including those promoting the tweet. Officials believe the fake accounts were an extension of the Doppelgänger campaign, Der Spiegel reported.

The Doppelgänger operation was first exposed by Meta in September 2022 and then by French authoritieslast summer and tied to Reliable Recent News, a fake news site traced back to two Russian companies, the Social Design Agency and Structura National Technologies. The Kremlin documents show that the heads of Social Design Agency and Structura — Ilya Gambashidze and Nikolai Tupikin — worked directly with Kiriyenko and another Kremlin official, Sofiya Zakharova, who coordinated efforts in Europe and Ukraine.“She is the brain,” a European security official said.

The E.U. imposed sanctions in July on Gambashidze, Structura National Technologies and Social Design Agency for what it said was their role in creating fake webpages and social media accounts “usurping the identity of national media outlets and government websites” as part of “a hybrid campaign by Russia against the EU and member states.” Gambashidze and Tupikin were named by the U.S. State Department in November for their role in Kremlin efforts to spread disinformation in Latin America(..)

Gambashidze, Tupikin and their colleagues proposed narratives they hoped would destroy Zelensky’s image in the West as “the hero of a small country fighting a global evil,” one of the documents sent in April shows. They suggested portraying Zelensky as an actor only capable of following a script written for him by the United States and NATO,and his Western backers as tiring of him. They proposed distributing fake Ukrainian government documents as evidence of corrupt military procurement schemes, and suggesting that Zelensky and his family had Western bank accounts, the document shows.

The plans led to hundreds of articles and thousands of social media posts translated into French, German and English that targeted Zelensky, the document trove shows.

One article, for a French audience, was headlined: “The conductor has gotten bored of Zelensky’s concerts: the actions of the U.S. in Ukraine lead one to believe that Washington soon intends to get rid of Zelensky, without discussing this with Paris.”

On the basis of this article, one of the strategists ordered a troll farm employee to prepare social media posts in French saying, “Washington will replace Zelensky with a more capable president. And France will have to silently continue arming and financing Ukraine.”

Another article described how Zelensky had pushed for Ukrainian forces to defend Bakhmut against Zaluzhny’s wishes, leading, it said, to the deaths of 250,000 Ukrainian troops, a wildly exaggerated death toll in what was nonetheless a brutal battle for the city. The troll farm employees were asked to write comments such as “Why do Ukrainian generals hate Zelensky? PR out of the blood of fighters” and “To shoot the exhausted president? In Ukraine, a generals’ conspiracy is brewing.”

One of the strategists’ aims, European security officials said, was to ensure that the themes placed in European social media filtered back into Ukraine, through reposts and amplification,or by being picked up by Ukrainian politicians keen to boost their profiles with provocative posts.(..)

The strategists also had price lists for planting pro-Russian commentary in prominent Western media and for paying social media “influencers” in the United States and Europe “willing to work with Russian clients.” The documents say the Russians were willing to pay up to $39,000 for the planting of pro-Russian commentary in major media outlets in the West.

“Practically everywhere this will be columnists, leaders of public opinion, former diplomats, officials, professors and so on,” a note attached to the price list states.”

Catherine Belton, “Kremlin runs disinformation campaign to undermine Zelensky, documents show”

[ravenkings]

The Kremlin stage-managed Russia’s presidential vote over the weekend to send a singular message at home and abroad: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s support is overwhelming and unshakable, despite or even because of his war against Ukraine.

From the moment the preliminary results first flashed across state television late Sunday, the authorities left no room for misinterpretation. Mr. Putin, they said, won more than 87 percent of the vote, his closest competitor just 4 percent. It had all the hallmarks of an authoritarian Potemkin plebiscite.

The Kremlin may have felt more comfortable orchestrating such a large margin of victory because Mr. Putin’s approval rating has climbed during the war in independent polls, owing to a rally-around-the flag effect and optimism about the Russian economy. The Levada Center, an independent pollster, reported last month that 86 percent of Russians approved of Mr. Putin, his highest rating in more than seven years.

But while the figures may suggest unabiding support for Mr. Putin and his agenda across Russia, the situation is more complex than the numbers convey. The leader of one opposition research group in Moscow has argued that backing for Mr. Putin is actually far more brittle than simple approval numbers suggest.

“The numbers we get on polls from Russia don’t mean what people think they mean,” said Aleksei Minyailo, a Moscow-based opposition activist and co-founder of a research project called Chronicles, which has been polling Russians in recent months. “Because Russia is not an electoral democracy but a wartime dictatorship.”

In a late January survey, Chronicles asked one group of Russian respondents what they wanted in key policy areas and a different group what they expected to see from Mr. Putin — and documented a substantive difference between desires and expectations.

More than half of respondents, for example, said they supported restoring relations with Western countries, but only 28 percent expected Mr. Putin to restore them. Some 58 percent expressed support for a truce with Ukraine, but only 29 percent expected Mr. Putin to agree to one.

“We see that Russians want different things from what they expect from Putin,” Mr. Minyailo said. “Probably if they did have any kind of alternative, they might make a different choice.”

Compelling alternative choices, however, have been systematically eliminated over the near quarter century that Mr. Putin has been in power in Russia.

Opposition figures have been exiled, jailed or killed. Independent news outlets have been driven out of the country. And a wave of repression unseen since the Soviet era has led to lengthy prison sentences for simple acts of dissent, such as critical social media posts.

Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who carried the hopes of many Russians for an alternative to Mr. Putin, died under mysterious circumstances in an Arctic prison last month. After declaring victory late Sunday, Mr. Putin called Mr. Navalny’s death an “unfortunate incident.”

The war has only further closed what little space used to exist for alternatives to Mr. Putin’s agenda to gain traction in public.

“There is a sophisticated case to be made about why this war is so much against Russia’s interest, and that part of the spectrum is missing,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “It is now happening in exile, and the government is erecting a lot of barriers to people tapping into this content.”

By casting those against the war as saboteurs, he said, Mr. Putin’s regime has succeeded in making “the opposition something that is really unattractive — more for outsiders, not for mainstream people.”

In years past, Russia’s so-called “political technologists” allowed a semblance of competition and open debate in presidential elections to drive turnout and give the race a patina of authenticity. But this year they took no chances.

Yekaterina S. Duntsova, a relatively unknown TV journalist and former municipal deputy from a city 140 miles west of Moscow, tried to run for president on an antiwar platform but was swiftly disqualified. So was Boris B. Nadezhdin, another under-the-radar politician who collected more than 100,000 signatures required to enter the race but could not get on the ballot.

“They deemed both of them dangerous enough not to let them on the ballot,” Mr. Minyailo said. “That tells a lot, to my mind, about the nature of the regime and about how stalwart Putin’s position is. If his regime thinks there is a danger to letting a provincial journalist collect signatures, that tells a lot.”

Russian opinion polling regularly shows that a relatively small segment of the Russian population are die-hard supporters of Mr. Putin and a similarly sized group are aggressive opponents, many of them now abroad.

The majority, pollsters have found, are relatively apathetic, supporting Mr. Putin passively, with no other alternative coming onto their radar. They are particularly influenced by the narrative on television, which is controlled by the state.

“Deep wells of social inertia, apathy and atomization are the real source of Putin’s power,” Mr. Gabuev said. Many Russians, he said, don’t have a sophisticated framework for thinking about certain issues, because there is no public discussion taking place.

And those Russians who do articulate desires that differ from Mr. Putin’s actions are not necessarily willing to fight for what they want, Mr. Minyailo noted. Many Russians believe they have no influence on the country’s course of events.

Still, the increase in support for Mr. Putin among Russians in the two years since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is unmistakable across multiple polls.

Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, said that a number of metrics showed consolidation around Mr. Putin.

“We monitor many indicators, not only approval rating,” Mr. Volkov said. “We ask open-ended questions. We ask about the economic situation. We ask about the mood of people. All these indicators are pointing in one direction.”

Armed with a vast propaganda apparatus, Mr. Putin has convinced millions of Russians that he is valiantly defending them against an antagonistic Western world bent on using Ukraine as a cudgel to destroy their nation and their way of life.

“The state narrative has generated this idea that it’s Russia versus everybody else,” said Katerina Tertytchnaya, a comparative politics professor at the University of Oxford. “ It’s very important, this narrative of being under siege. The lack of an alternative is also cited as one of the reasons that people support Putin. People cannot conceive of an alternative.”

It is not only that Mr. Putin seems superior to the alternative candidates that the Kremlin allows to appear on state television. He also comes across as a better choice compared to nearly all his historical predecessors.

Mr. Gabuev noted that despite the war tarnishing much of Mr. Putin’s legacy, his first two terms in particular brought the greatest combination of material prosperity and relative freedom Russians had ever seen — and for those uninterested in politics, good will remains.

“That’s the paradox, they really are the happiest life in the country’s history,” Mr. Gabuev said. “Because the combination of wealth and material prosperity and freedoms being present at the same time was never higher.”

[tomorrowusa]

Apparently Russia has again been violating the airspace of Romania – a NATO member. Is Russia fully aware of NATO's Article 5?

Romania is investigating whether Russia once again violated its airspace during its latest attack on Ukraine on the night of Sept. 29-30, Romania's Digi24 news site reported, citing the country's Defense Ministry. The ministry reported that, as Russia was attacking Ukraine's ports on the Danube river, air alert sirens were activated in the nearby Romanian cities of Tulcea and Galati as radar systems detected an unsanctioned object heading towards the latter in Romania's airspace. Local residents said that they saw something fall from the sky and heard the sounds of low-flying military jets. Local authorities are still looking for evidence of an attack. This isn't the first time that Russian attacks on the Danube ports violated Romania's territory. Romania's Foreign Ministry summoned the head of the Russian mission in the country to answer for how Russian drone debris ended up in Romanian territory on Sept. 9. Romania has introduced new security measures to protect the civilian population near the Danube River.

Russia has no fucking business in Ukraine in the first place. It needs to get out before its reckless actions trigger Article 5.

[medicinemane]

Really really don't get why so many people seem to have this burning hatred for Ukraine where they'll just... bring them up randomly purely to drag them through the mud and it's like... ok... but... do you actually know a single thing about Ukraine or what's been happening there?

Do you for instance remember when a major dam was destroyed by russia causing massive ecological damage?

Like I'm dead serious here, can you tell me a single thing that's happened in Ukraine in the last 2 years? Can you in any way demonstrate any basic understanding of the situation?

Cause if not... why do you think you should have an opinion on it, especially if your opinion is gonna be how awful people getting bombed are?

Just legit bothers me and... even more so bothers me the number of smart and caring people I see doing this. Basically I'm not even trying to be rude here, I'm trying to remind you to pay attention and remember that not everything you read on the internet is true, a tumblr post isn't a source unless they're giving you a reputable source

Cause like me? I can go track you down articles about the Nova Kakhovka dam being destroyed, and I can talk about all the reason why it's pretty clear that russia destroyed it

Can you do the same for me? Can you back up your claim about Ukraine with something concrete?

In many ways I'm not even asking you to support Ukraine, I get we have a limit to how much we can focus on, it's ok if you focus on your cause and I focus on mine and... both of us giving our undivided attention, maybe we both make some small impact on the world

What I'm asking is you don't be an asshole for no reason. You don't need to throw Ukraine under the bus. Don't you think your cause stands up on it's own two feet?

And again I'm not Ukrainian, I don't know as well as someone there, though... I spare you a lot of the stuff that crosses my dash because I don't want to burn people out with horrible stuff, but please understand it's worse than you probably think

So no, not Ukrainian, but I'll tell you why I'm still worth listening to: I've followed this every day since the invasion began. I keep my ear to the ground. I do know a fair bit and again can back what I have to say up

Anyway, my plea is to just not be a dick to people for no reason. The correct number of bombed civilians is zero, that's my stance

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Why Navalny was hated in the Kremlin and in some Western circles

The late Russian opposition politician had a unifying spirit that threatened the beneficiaries of conflict.

[Leonid Ragozin :: Leonid Ragozin is a freelance journalist based in Riga.]

It doesn’t matter what caused the death of Russian politician Alexey Navalny; he was killed by Vladimir Putin’s regime.

It was a slow execution that started with his poisoning with the Novichok chemical agent in 2020 and proceeded with sadistic torture in prison after his insanely daring move to return to Russia in January 2021.

The official version about a blood clot suddenly killing the 47-year-old politician on Friday may or may not be true, but the blame for his death still remains squarely with the Russian president.

Navalny was outstanding in every sense. Head and shoulders above all Russian and likely all contemporary European politicians in terms of charisma and bravery, he was a figure of hope that exuded immense optimism and displayed an irresistible sense of humour until his very last days in prison in the Arctic.

He was a character akin to the Hummingbird in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, a charismatic politician trying to prevent the spilt of the newly independent India. Navalny was a highly inspiring and unifying personality that was capable of bringing together what was breaking apart in this current epoch of conflict and polarisation.

With his anticorruption crusade that exposed the illicit riches of top regime figures in a series of brilliantly produced YouTube videos, he built a vast support base and Russia’s biggest regional opposition network. He brought together liberals, nationalists and left-wingers – everyone who was tired of the corrupt securitocracy that has ruled Russia for a quarter-century.

Navalny took opposition politics out of Moscow and St Petersburg into distant regions and small towns. Internet-savvy and very well versed in contemporary culture, he brought about a generational shift in the ranks of Russian opposition. His following to a large extent comprised 20-somethings or even teens who have never experienced any other political regime than Putin’s.

He embodied the hope that changes could be brought about by non-violent resistance in the style of the velvet revolutions that brought down the communists in 1989-91. Born to a Ukrainian father and having spent some of his happiest childhood days in Ukraine, Navalny could have also potentially helped mend the rift between the two neighbours currently locked in a bloody war.

Although his death is squarely on Russia’s political leadership, the hope he represented was shattered by the renewed geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the US-led West. He was a thorn in the eye of the beneficiaries of this conflict – first and foremost among them being Putin himself.

But Navalny and his movement were also an object of incessant bashing by anti-Russian troll farms and hawkish pro-Ukrainian figures linked to the military-industrial complex and securitocratic blobs in the capitals of NATO countries.

Accusations thrown at Navalny boiled down to him being a Russian nationalist who would have done the same thing as Putin – but perhaps even more efficiently because he would have clamped down on corruption.

In the beginning of his political career, Navalny indeed flirted with far-right politics, but he drifted away from it to straightforward pro-Western liberalism a long time ago.

There is no straightforward answer to the question of how Navalny would have acted had he indeed become the Russian president instead of Putin. It is indeed difficult to say to what extent all that happened between Russia, Ukraine and the West was about personalities. It is important to remember Putin himself underwent an evolution from a West-backed nominee of the Russian liberal elite to a murderous authoritarian – a process in which the West’s frivolous and arrogant attitude to Russia’s core security interests played no small role.

A few weeks into Russia’s full-out invasion of Ukraine two years ago, one of the main spokespeople for the Ukrainian government at the time, Oleksiy Arestovych, said that a Russian liberal-democrat president would have also invaded Ukraine in the same manner – such was the logic of geopolitical confrontation.

That kind of thinking presumes that the US-led West was intent on humiliating Russia in the way no Russian leader would have ever accepted – delivering a strategic defeat upon it. That’s indeed something that many hawkish commentators in the West are calling for today.

Navalny was first and foremost a Russian politician, which is why he made what felt like a suicidal choice to return to Russia after surviving the poisoning.

That was the only way to remain politically relevant in Russia. He didn’t want to be anyone’s stooge. In the West, he would have been at best like General Charles de Gaulle in London during World War II – mistrusted and isolated. How would have he managed the insane xenophobic attacks on social platforms his exiled allies are being subjected to on a daily basis now? How would have he reacted to visa and travel restrictions that harm anti-Putin Russian exiles to a much greater extent than the supporters of the regime?

Unlike de Gaulle, he would have had few chances of returning and playing a role as the geopolitical conflict was strengthening Putin’s regime and threatening to usher another half a century of cold war and iron curtains in Europe.

In Russia, he thought he could at least gamble on the growing war fatigue and become an East European version of Nelson Mandela, waiting for the hour of freedom.

Had he miraculously succeeded in coming to power, he would have still faced a very hostile West inclined towards defeating and humiliating Russia rather than finding a common language and an uneasy compromise.

Yet, he was a very different man than Putin in that he was simply not the kind of politician who thrived on conflict. He was not a man from the current epoch of confrontation and polarisation. He perhaps belonged to the better future that Eastern Europe may still attain after years of misery.

Would he have succeeded in finding compromise-leaning interlocutors in the West and sidelining trigger-happy hawks? He would have had a fair chance. This is why he was such an unloved figure in those circles.

Navalny is a tragic figure and in that sense perhaps only comparable to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy – initially a highly unifying pro-peace figure who is now forced to wage an increasingly hopeless battle against the grand master of conflict, Vladimir Putin.

But Navalny has nurtured a generation that may have dozens or hundreds like him in its ranks who can work to achieve the “beautiful Russia of the future” as he famously called it in his main political manifesto.

[banji-effect]

They killed Navalny?????

[dontforgetukraine]

"By reducing the invasion to “one man’s doing and one man’s problem,” not only does the West fail to fully grasp the situation, but Russian propagandists also benefit by portraying war facilitators as victims and "hostages" of the regime. This distortion of reality, promoted by both the state and opposition, allows Russia to whitewash its image, evade the topic of collective responsibility, and create further distraction and confusion in efforts to end the war and seek justice. By demanding collective responsibility from Russia, we can dismantle the increasingly popular narrative of “Russians as innocent victims” and acknowledge the active role millions of Russians play in sustaining the war. This shift broadens the focus from Putin alone to the millions contributing to the brutal aggression."

—Mariya Chukhnova, international security expert

Source: Opinion: Putin’s war? The case for Russia’s collective responsibility in Ukraine

[tolkienillustrations]

Either Trump or Harris will win the election. How exactly does letting Trump win help Palestine?

Harris and Trump are not the same on Israel/Palestine. Netanyahu favors Trump to win and Trump wants Netanyahu to “finish the job.”

Harris and Biden are nowhere near where they need to be on this issue, and their support for Israel’s genocide is abhorrent, but at least Harris has supported a ceasefire.

We’re not able to magically elect a third party candidate this November who is going to cut off aid to Israel because the electoral college exists and none of the hundreds of third party candidates can win.

Again: how exactly does letting Trump win help Palestine?

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

Great article by Timothy Snyder analyzing Putin's interview to Tucker Carlson.

[ravenkings]

One evening in late December, as Muscovites strolled along their city’s brightly lit streets in anticipation of the end-of-year celebrations, a group of old friends gathered for dinner at the flat of a senior state official.

Some of the guests present, which included members of Russia’s cultural and political elite, toasted a new year in which they expressed hope for peace and a return to normality.

As the night went on, a man who needed little introduction stood up for a toast, holding his glass.

“I am guessing you are expecting me to say something,” said Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s longtime spokesperson, according to one of the two people who separately recounted the evening to the Guardian under conditions of anonymity.

“Things will get much harder. This will take a very, very long time,” Peskov continued.

His toast darkened the mood of the evening among the guests, many of whom have said in private that they oppose the war in Ukraine. “It was uncomfortable to hear his speech. It was clear that he was warning that the war will stay with us and we should prepare for the long haul,” one guest said.

More than a year into an invasion that, according to Russian planning, was supposed to take weeks, Vladimir Putin’s government is putting society on a war footing with the west and digging in for a multi-year conflict.

Speaking at length to workers at an aviation factory in the Buryatia region recently, Putin once again cast the war as an existential battle for Russia’s survival.

“For us, this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children,” the president said.

It followed a pattern of recent speeches, said the political analyst Maxim Trudolyubov, in which the Russian leader has increasingly shifted towards discussing what observers have called a “forever war” with the west.

“Putin has practically stopped talking about any concrete aims of the war. He proposes no vision of what a future victory might look like either. The war has no clearcut beginning nor a foreseeable end,” Trudolyubov said.

During Putin’s closely watched “state of the nation” speech last month, the Russian leader repeated some of the many grievances he holds against the west, stressing that Moscow was fighting for national survival and would ultimately win.

The thinly veiled message to the people, Trudolyubov said, was that the war in Ukraine would not be ending anytime soon and that Russians must learn to live with it.

Western officials have described listening to Putin’s combative speech in February with dismay, seeing it as the Russian leader doubling down on his war and leaving little room for retreat.

One western diplomat in Moscow described Putin’s message in the speech as preparing the Russian public for “war that never ends”.

The diplomat also said it was not clear that Putin could accept a defeat in the conflict because it did not seem that Putin “understands how to lose”.

The person said Putin did not appear to be reconsidering the conflict despite the heavy losses and setbacks of the last year. The diplomat noted that the Russian president was a former KGB operative and said they are trained to always continue to pursue their objectives, rather than reassessing the goals in the first place.

Others have noted that the Russian leader, who, according to western intelligence, is personally making operational and tactical decisions in Ukraine, has stopped discussing the situation on the front in Ukraine in his public comments.

According to a study of the president’s speeches by the Russian news outlet Verstka, Putin last mentioned the fighting in Ukraine on 15 January, saying that the dynamics of his army were “positive”.

These omissions reflect the Kremlin’s uneasy acceptance that it is unable to change the course of the war on the battlefield, argued Vladimir Gelman, a Russian politics professor at the University of Helsinki.

“It is easier not to talk about the war efforts when your army is making no progress,” Gelman added. “But scaling back is not an option for Putin; that would mean admitting defeat.”

Russia’s leadership initially expected the conflict would last just a matter of weeks before they declared victory, according to plans captured by western intelligence at the beginning of the war.

Over the winter, western military analysts and Ukrainian officials repeatedly warned that Russia, after drafting 300,000 men last autumn, would mount a major new attack.

But Moscow’s offensive across a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine, which started in February, has brought the country minimal gains at staggering costs. Western officials have estimated that there have been up to 200,000 killed or injured on the Russian side.

“Russia simply does not have the offensive capabilities for a major offensive,” said US military expert Rob Lee.

According to Lee, less than 10% of the Russian army in Ukraine is capable of offensive operations, with the majority of its troops now conscripts with limited training.

“Their forces can slowly achieve a few grinding attritional victories but do not have the capacity to punch through Ukrainian defensive lines in a way that would change the course of the war.”

To boost the military’s long-term prospects, Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu has proposed increasing the armed forces from 1.15 million combat personnel to 1.5 million.

“We see that Russia’s military is preparing for a long war. Putin is banking that his country’s resources will trump Ukraine’s as the west gets tired of helping Kyiv,” Lee said.

Despite the setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine, the Kremlin has weathered any potential backlash against the war at home, crushing the remnants of Russia’s civil society and remaking the face of the country in the process.

“Many in the country have now fully accepted that this war will not go away and believe that they need to learn to live under the reality,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has studied public attitudes towards the war since its beginning.

Kolesnikov said that the population’s ability and willingness to adapt to the new reality has turned out to be much stronger than many observers expected.

When Putin ordered a draft of 300,000 reservists in September, sociologists noticed a record uptick in fear and anxiety, with men concerned about going to fight and mothers and wives worried about their husbands, fathers and sons.

Yet within several months, the dread decreased, according to Kolesnikov.

“The propaganda campaign has been successful despite the initial hesitance of the people,” said a source close to the Kremlin’s media managers, referring to the early anti-war protests, which led to more than 15,000 arrests across the country in the first weeks after the invasion.

“The government has managed to rally people around the flag. The way the conflict was framed helped people to accept it,” the source added.

The full power of the state has been deployed to spread and enforce the message that the war is necessary for Russia’s very identity and survival.

National television has turned from airing light entertainment to broadcasting aggressive political talkshows.

Meanwhile, schools have been instructed to add basic military training and “patriotic” lessons that aim to justify the war in Ukraine. State rhetoric, including calls by Putin to get rid of “scum and traitors”, have led to a wave of denunciations by ordinary Russians of their colleagues and even friends.

“The country has gone mad,” said Aleksei, a former history teacher at an elite boarding school outside Moscow who recently quit after a disagreement with management over the new “patriotic” curriculum. “I had to stop talking to colleagues and friends. We are living in different realities,” he said.

But while hundreds of thousands of Russians have been silenced or fled the country, a vocal group of war supporters have embraced the country’s new direction.

They too have noted the growing costs of the conflict, but are calling for greater public buy-in while increasingly portraying the war as a global battle with Europe and the US.

At a Moscow launch event in mid-March for the “International Movement of Russophiles,” a group backed by Russia’s foreign ministry and heavily populated with fringe European activists and conspiracy theorists, the message was dire.

“We are not just seeing neo-Nazism, we are seeing direct nazism, which is covering more and more European countries,” said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a speech.

Konstantin Malofeev, a conservative oligarch who was sanctioned by the US in 2014 for “threatening Ukraine and providing financial support to the Donetsk separatist region,” said: “We have not seen such hatred since after Russian soldiers ended the war with the victory in Berlin. We stopped that war and now we, the victors, are once again facing the fact that it has risen up from hell against us.”

Yet there were few direct allusions to the situation on the front in Ukraine, and on the sidelines of the conference, some spoke about Russia’s difficult progress and the costs of the war.

“Not everyone in this country yet understands what we’re going to have to pay to win this war,” said Alexander Dugin, a radical Russian philosopher and prominent supporter of the war. “People in our country have to pay for their love for Russia with their lives. It’s serious and we weren’t ready for this.”

Dugin’s daughter, Darya Dugina, was killed last year in a car bombing that may have targeted him. Putin has spoken several times about the attack on Dugina and her name was written on a briefing paper held by Putin during a recent security council meeting, video uploaded by the Kremlin showed.

“I don’t think people in this country fully understand what is happening after a year,” Dugin added.

“Of course there’s full support from the president but it hasn’t fully come into the hearts and souls of all our people … some people have woken up, some people have not. Despite the year of war, it is going very slowly.”

[tomorrowusa]

Saturday October 7th is Putin's birthday – we should regard it as a day of ill omen.

It's Putin's second birthday since he launched his three-day "special operation" to conquer Ukraine. He must have some idea by now of what an international laughing stock his inept army is.

Putin's latest dubious effort seems to be mining the Black Sea.

Britain has accused Russia of plotting to sabotage civilian cargo ships loaded with Ukrainian grain by planting sea mines on the approaches to the country’s Black Sea ports. Based on what it said was declassified intelligence, the UK said Russia did not want to directly attack merchant vessels using Ukraine’s newly created humanitarian corridor with missiles, but instead try to destroy them covertly. Russia would then seek to blame Ukraine for the loss of any shipping in an attempt to evade responsibility, the British Foreign Office continued, and the UK said it was going public in order to deter Moscow from carrying out the plan. James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, accused Russia of the “pernicious targeting” of civilian shipping: “The world is watching – and we see right through Russia’s cynical attempts to lay blame on Ukraine for their attacks.” Merchant ships carrying Ukrainian grain for export have been under threat since July, when Russia pulled out of a year-long initiative designed to safeguard food exports despite the war between the two countries.

Contrary to what Putin thinks, Russia doesn't own the Black Sea. It's divided into exclusive economic zones (EEZ) related to the countries which border it. Three of those countries (Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey) happen to be NATO members.

If Russia places mines in the EEZs of NATO countries or if Russian mines drift into their waters, it risks NATO activating Article 5 – the mutual defense proviso in the NATO treaty.

Bulgaria has already been holding discussions with NATO regarding Russian provocations.

Bulgaria, NATO discuss response to Russian blockade in Black Sea

In the meantime, Putin's Russia continues to commit war crimes even as I type this.

Ukraine updates: Russian attack kills 48 at shop in Kharkiv

Russia has no fucking business in Ukraine. FULL STOP. The only possible moral response to Putin's Red Nazism is to give Ukraine all the assistance it needs.

If you are in the United States and have a Republican member of the House representing your district, tell him or her to get their ass in gear and quit using aid to Ukraine as an internal party political football.

Representatives | house.gov

If they have a district office not far from you then consider paying a personal visit to state your views. Your tax dollars are paying for that office – not for them to find new ways to grovel to Donald Trump.

[imkeepinit]

9) Putin’s Goal: Soften America’s adversarial stance on Russia. For the past 70 years, the Republican Party was the party of Russia hawks, advocating a hard line against the Soviet Union and Russia on issues ranging from nuclear posture, human rights, missile defense, and NATO enlargement. These positions were not just vestiges of the Cold War era. In 2012, Mitt Romney, then the Republican Party’s nominee for president, famously asserted that Russia was “without question our number one geopolitical foe.”

Putin’s Payout: Trump is shifting the Republican Party’s generations-long hawkish views on Russia.

The Trump campaign shifted the 2016 RNC platform to Russia’s benefit. After Republican leaders spent years denouncing Obama’s stance against America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” the Trump campaign edited the party’s platform to be more conciliatory toward the Kremlin. Initially, a draft of the RNC platform called for “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine to combat Russian incursions. Trump adviser J.D. Gordon intervened on behalf of the Trump campaign to soften the final language and call for “providing appropriate assistance” to Ukraine.