Yesterday for the first time the war came to the territory of Russia.
So far, it has come without casualties, but with destruction.
This is very interesting to talk about. Firstly, because the arrival of the war in Russia did not become news to anyone at all.
Secondly, as a reason for forecasting the future of Ukraine.
After all, the war has come to Russia, and sooner or later it will leave Ukraine.
After all, it seems to many that Ukraine has been completely devastated by this war, that no stone has been left unturned from its potential,
that the post-war period will not be much better than the military one, and even more so the pre-war one.
In the second part of the video, we will figure out why this is not close to the case,
discuss what you need to worry about and what you should not,
but for now let's start from the first day of the war already on Russian territory.
Of course, we will talk about the most amazing episode of this war,
about the most mysterious incident, which no one really explains, which can have two explanations and one worse than the other –
about a helicopter attack on an oil storage facility in Belgorod.
Two attack helicopters, presumably, according to the outlines, Mi-24, at an ultra-low altitude entered area near the fuel tanks,
made an attack and immediately successfully disappeared.
None of the parties takes responsibility, which is understandable, but neither is in a hurry to blame the opponent.
We still remember how staged shots of “Ukrainian provocations” were made before the war,
how shots of a broken barn in the middle of the forest were savored, how a half-decommissioned UAZ was blown up.
And then – two powerful explosions in Belgorod, almost forty kilometers by air from the Ukrainian border,
that is, not at all in the border zone – and silence in the Russian information field.
No threats to drop a nuclear bomb on Kyiv in retaliation –
in general, the entire burden of informing fell on the leadership of the region.
The Ukrainian position, formally, is in denial, but in such a denial that it does not particularly ask you to believe in itself.
This is more of a coquetry than a denial. It doesn't sound like «No, it's not us,» it sounds like «Come on, is it us?»
Now, what... what i want to tell you about the Belgorod.
Military-political officials of Ukraine are trying all sorts of actions in order to ensure the safety of Ukraine, our territorial integrity and inviolability,
as well as peace and quietness in the skies above us. We figut on our own territory.
It is the Russian Federation leadership who is responsible for whatever happens on the territory of Russian Federation.
Frankly they need to find out what is going on in Belgorod, wether someone was smoking in the wrong place
or russian military are sabotaging with methods available the military orders and don't want to invade the territory of Ukraine,
or maybe something else happened. Anyways, Russian officials are responsible for whatever is happening on the territory of Russian Federation.
Forward all the questions to them
The first version – Russian participation – looks obvious, but in these specific circumstances it is completely implausible.
It turns out a deliberate provocation, a blow to their own infrastructure facility in order to make up for the lack of reasons for war.
Now we are not busy with incomprehensible “denazification” and “demilitarization”, we are not busy with “defending Donbass”, which we completely forgot about for 6 years –
we are now defending our land. They said that if we didn't hit first, they would attack us; well, that's what happened.
This is the monster version. Gouging your own energy infrastructure, burn tons of fuel,
only to justify the bombing of Ukrainian cities, is already villainy on the level of Hamas, ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
That is, no longer a war of conquest, but literal terrorism.
Such a provocation would be terrible and expected at the same time, but the complete absence of propaganda support speaks against this version.
The coverage of the incident is such that the truck drove into the ditch, and not rockets flew into the oil depot.
And this, in itself, speaks in favor of the second version, which is much worse.
The fact is that an attack helicopter is not a fighter like the American F-22,
which calmly flies itself at an altitude of up to 20 kilometers, is capable of twice the speed of sound, is stuffed with systems that reduce radar visibility and is capable of performing
such maneuvers that you are lucky to hit it even the most modern air defense missile.
Things like the F-22 Raptor are worth as much as the GDP of a tiny state,
macroeconomic sums have been invested in their development,
they are specifically designed to be at the very forefront of high- tech warfare in order to successfully overcome any defenses.
This is an ultimate weapon, the destruction of which is a great success.
If such one flew over, then so be it.
An attack helicopter, such as the Mi-24, is just front-line aviation. It was created to directly support troops on the battlefield.
It is hefty, flies low and slow, vulnerable even to hand-held anti-aircraft systems.
In theory, the last thing it can be used for is raids deep behind enemy lines, through layered air defense, because it will be just suicide.
If this really happened, if this is really the Ukrainian Air Force, then the shy silence of propaganda becomes understandable.
And also, perfect abysses of corruption, unprofessionalism, just such a catastrophe of the state and its army are opening up,
in comparison with which the landing of Matthias Rust on Vasilevsky Spusk near the walls of the Kremlin is a childish prank, a petty offense.
You can even leave aside the fact that literally since the evening of February 24,
the Russian Ministry of Defense has been feeding the public with stories about the complete destruction of the Ukrainian Air Force.
During these 5 weeks, the mouth of the General Staff has already destroyed as many aircraft, helicopters, drones and air defense systems
as the combined forces of NATO in Europe, let alone Ukraine, hardly have.
Ok, whatever – the Russian military department treats numbers in such a way that it does not take itself seriously.
But two old Soviet attack helicopters developed in the 60s, which successfully passed the occupation zone, crossed the border, flew several tens of kilometers deep into the territory,
successfully worked on their target and disappeared with impunity – that is, in the closed airspace of Russia, which, in theory, is tightly controlled by air defense,
where now everyone is forbidden to fly, except for the military, spent no less than 30 minutes, and then successfully returned to the base – this is a real disaster.
What other war of conquest by the forces of such an army? What, fear God, confrontation with NATO?
The poor analysts of the Pentagon now do not believe their own eyes, watching a helicopter tour in flying Zhiguli with the destruction of oil storage facilities.
With such armed forces, with such air defense, you, comrade generals, must seriously fear that Mongolia will now go to restore historical justice in the form of restoring the yoke
and collecting tribute for the entire overdue period.
This version seems fantastic, but only it corresponds to the informational background.
After all, if you are now too loudly indignant, threatening Ukraine too fiercely, then you will have to admit the gaping holes in the protection of the state border,
and then deprive and imprison the entire Russian military elite, everyone who has been responsible for defense for the past 20 years.
We have to admit that Russia is not a country with a bad and corrupt army; this is a country that has no army at all.
It was impossible not to highlight this event, simply because with all that we have already learned about our army, about the corruption and incompetence of the Russian authorities,
they can still surprise us. Indeed, in this war, things happen that should not happen in nature.
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Our main topic today is the post-war restoration of Ukraine: what this state will become when the war is over, what to be afraid of and what not to.
Let's start with this. Direct material losses are not as terrible as they seem at first glance.
Yes, everything that has been created over generations, in which the labor of tens of millions of people has been invested, from residential buildings to transport infrastructure,
is now being destroyed in hours, days and weeks.
This is an unbearably tragic sight: every day to see broken apartments and houses.
People saved up for them for a long time, took out a mortgage, planned renovations, bought furniture and appliances,
built and settled in their life, their small and cozy world, from which nothing was left in a second due to a rocket that arrived from Russia.
Long years, money and efforts – everything ceased to be important in one moment.
Creators of the horror genre, like Stephen King, are well aware that the worst thing is not the flow of blood –
the most terrible thing is everyday details.
When we see the ruins of a kitchen in Kharkiv, we can very easily imagine how this refrigerator stood in the large household appliances store we are used to, how the family came across,
how they argued among themselves that this one was too expensive, and that one was too big and not fit,
how they read the list of functions on the price tag, how they made a decision.
A decision that has lost all meaning – and this makes the blood run cold.
Or the ruins of a factory.
People got an education, prepared for an interview, tried to make a career, they had some kind of plan for life, which was gone overnight.
It is impossible to assess, at least with an accuracy acceptable for macroeconomic values, the damage caused to the Ukrainian economy.
It is clear that we are already talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, some estimates give up to half a trillion,
but we are definitely talking about an amount exceeding the country's annual GDP.
Physically destroyed housing, property, infrastructure, jobs and means of production.
It all seems (and is) terrible, but it's the smallest problem.
Not machine tools, not houses, not bridges, not power plants, not melting furnaces, but only people are the bearers of economic potential.
Everything that is created by people, they can create again.
History knows such examples. Post-war Europe was in an incomparably worse position than Ukraine is now.
Post-war Europe was in a situation where there was only one large industrialized country left in the world that did not suffer from the war – the United States.
Europe, lying in ruins, could count on the help of the United States only.
Now everything is different.
Now the war is localized in Ukraine, and the sources of its financing and restoration are the rest of the developed world with an unlimited amount of resources.
None of the fundamental economic advantages of Ukraine, which I spoke about in Varlamov's video before the war, have gone away, and it is very difficult to bomb them.
Ukraine is still a country with an educated society, a country of low incomes, a country of endless potential for productivity growth, income growth and consumption.
This is economic black soil.
The post-war restoration of Ukraine is such a mega-project in which if you and your business do not participate, then perhaps you should not be engaged in entrepreneurship at all.
These are millions of qualified personnel who need work, these are millions of people who need new houses,
new laminate flooring, wallpaper, electric stoves, microwave ovens in their houses.
Cities need new bridges, power lines, new buses and tram lines.
Someone has to build, import, produce all this.
Build, import and produce almost everything at once.
There will be an economy where there is a huge unsatisfied demand for everything.
Hundreds of thousands of new apartments need hundreds of thousands of new toilets, someone has to import them,
someone has to make a description on the site, someone has to advertise, someone has to deliver it to the warehouse (and before that, build this warehouse to replace the one broken by the bomb),
someone – to help client in a bathroom.
So each of these people will have money for their own toilet,
and also go to the cinema theatre and go to a restaurant, so that the waiter will not be left without a toilet either.
And it's not just about direct financial assistance.
The entire human potential of the region will go to make a career in the economy reviving after the war, from a programmer to a poet
(promotional rhymes also need to be written by someone).
It will be like the 2000s in Russia, but at maximum capacity: you put together an artel of painters and get richer.
A very low start, starting literally from the ruins, is a gigantic advantage in itself.
It seems terrible, because there is nothing, but when there is nothing, it means that everything is required,
which means that everyone who is able to do at least something is needed.
Now the Ukrainian government, taking advantage of the military situation, is rapidly canceling regulations, reducing taxes
and all other burdens for business, which means that the space for corruption is sharply decreasing.
Literally in days, those reforms are being carried out that could not be pushed through for decades,
because influential interest groups that parasitized on the vices of the Ukrainian state interfered.
The war will end, but the reforms that are necessary for the recovery of the economy will remain.
With this war, Vladimir Putin not only restored and strengthened NATO,
the roasted rooster that prompted the Ukrainian elites to reforms that were overdue 20 years ago,
which in one fell swoop forced the Ukrainian economy to throw off the blocks that had hindered it throughout the post-Soviet period.
After the war, Ukraine will get a gigantic historical chance to become an «Asian tiger», like Taiwan and South Korea, but in Europe.
Place where you go and for every dollar you make 20 in a couple of years.
And in addition, it is also the center of a huge Russian-speaking region, from Kyrgyzstan to Latvia.
Of all these countries, a person will go to Ukraine to work almost like home, easily adapt, read and understand the instructions at the construction site,
calmly join the team of programmers or draw a website understandable to the consumer.
The only thing you really need to worry about, that which cannot be rebuilt, cannot be restored, is the lost lives of people.
This, of course, is primarily a humanitarian issue – the life of any person is priceless.
But in relation to our discussion today, this is an economic issue too.
It takes a long time to raise a qualified engineer, it is expensive to train, it is not easy to earn experience,
but he can die in one second, taking all his human capital with him. It can neither be revived nor restored.
New houses will be built, factories will be better than the old ones, refugees will return, but for those who die, the story will end.
Only this is important, only people's lives. All other considerations are deeply optional.
It is terrible to live in a history textbook, but since we are in it and not of our own free will, we need to record this history.
In the sixth week, the war crossed the border for the first time. It did it so casually that no one seemed to notice.
But let's imagine that this news did not come now, but in January
combat helicopters attacked an oil depot in Belgorod! –
it would be impossible to believe in it, everyone would discuss it.
And now our consciousness is so distorted that it's just a news background.
Although combat helicopters appeared after the Second World War, which means that this is the first such case in the history of Russia:
for the first time a foreign helicopter hits its territory
and for the first time in almost 80 years a Russian city was attacked by foreign aircraft in principle.
There were people in Russia who saw the explosions of houses, the hijackings, the taking of hostages.
But no one had ever seen an attack \by combat aircraft until yesterday.
And this is not even properly covered by the federal media.
The same ones who simply reveled in imaginary “provocations” a month and a half ago.
Who are ready to inflate a paper cup thrown at a National Guardsman into a terrorist attack,
who have a single picket – riots.
For them, a rocket in the regional center is like a weather forecast.
By the way, this could not have happened in any of the “dashing 90s”: there would have been a live broadcast from Belgorod non-stop, no worse than 9/11.
Here we all like to compare to the USA. Well, imagine this in the States:
Mexico sent a couple of helicopters and smashed an oil depot in Houston.
From the same point, it is useful to assess the perspective. Yesterday we saw Ukraine and Russia.
Ukraine, which, being under the heaviest attack of the enemy, managed to move the war to its territory.
And Russia, which cannot perform the basic functions of protecting its borders,
while not having a single enemy soldier on the territory, not a single occupied village, not a single broken airfield.
It immediately became very clear who the fake state was here,
it immediately became clear what and who the future was waiting for.
Ukraine, so to speak, in the conditions of the current human tragedy, in a certain sense, was very lucky with the enemy.
The war with this enemy not only unites the country within, unites the whole world around it,
but demonstrates such an abyss into which Russia has fallen during Putin’s 22 years,
such a degree of corruption and incompetence that it is already completely clear that Russia cannot win this war in any form.
And if Russia does not win this war, then Ukraine will have an independent post-war future.
A future in which it is doomed to succeed. See you tomorrow