Russia’s war against Ukraine has been going on for 4 months.
4 months has passed since the day Vladimir Putin gave a completely insane order to the Russian armed forces —
to invade a territory of a neighboring country and forcibly take power there.
The attack on Ukraine was unprovoked, and it’s getting difficult to recall the myriad of reasons
that were voiced by the Russian propaganda during that time.
One day we’re defending against NATO, the other day it’s a preemptive strike,
on the other we’re avenging Donbass, or saving people, or finishing off Nazism,
or maybe we didn’t have a choice at all, or there are biolabs, or genocide.
The war already yielded results.
Today we will talk about them, specifically the 5 of the most notable of them.
Let’s begin with a person.
Vladimir Zelensky has become a superstar. It’s quite unusual if you think about it.
In all countries folks tend to think that the rest of the world lose their sleep over your country’s politics and problems.
In reality however, unless you’re in the US, which is truly a country that a local Serbian newspaper for a thousand readers
would happily write about to gloat on its problems.
Otherwise however you flatter yourself if you think that the world pays any special attention to what’s happening in your country.
It’s easy to prove. Just ask yourself: what is the name of the prime minister of India? What is the political organization of Indonesia?
What are the parties in the parliament of Pakistan? What is the name of the biggest media outlet in Brazil?
What is the cornerstone of Nigeria’s economy?
All these countries have populations bigger than Russias’ but unless you bothered to learn, you probably know nothing about them.
Whatever their interethnic relations are,
their border conflicts, whichever “historically our” lands they want or don’t want to take back.
I wouldn't be surprised if you can't tell the names of these counties' capitals. Not all of them anyway.
This is how the world sees Russia and Ukraine.
For most of humanity outside certain European countries our problems are something very far away and abstract.
If an ordinary Chilean can tell that the capital of Russia is Moscow and the capital of Ukraine is Kyiv, it’s already good enough.
And of course even the majority of Europeians, let alone people in other countries,
couldn’t tell the last name of the Ukrainian President until 24 of February.
But in the very first days Vladimir Zelensky managed to do two things that seem obvious and for which he is not even credited for.
First, he managed to turn a regional war that could only ever be a problem concerning that that single region, into a subject #1 globally.
This is no longer just Russia’s war against Ukraine, it’s light vs darkness, freedom vs dictatorship, future vs the past.
It’s a war that you can’t be neutral in.
Look at Australia on the other side of the Galaxy.
This is the country that, no matter what happens, can always say:
ok don’t involve us please, we have a whole continent for ourselves
so in case you’re wondering who’s gonna survive the nuclear war, it’s us, so you’ll have to deal with your problems yourselves.
But the matter of helping Ukraine and sanctioning Russia is not a practical one, but an ethical one.
It’s about whether or not you can keep neutrality towards Hell, whether or not a politician can save his career
if he made some questionable statements in the times when humanity is facing evil.
That’s why Australian howitzers are going to Ukraine, Japan is adopting sanctions, and all over the world,
in addition to unprecedented state tranches, people are collecting millions and tens of millions of dollars to help Ukraine.
Among politically active citizens of western countries, helping Ukraine
(be it financial help, or sending volunteers, or just public support) is a socially upheld behavior.
If you want to be a good guy from the middle class, then you care about the environment,
you donate to fighting hunger in Africa, and you help Ukraine to fight its war against Russia.
And it was all Zelensky's doing.
Today you may think that it is natural, that's just how things go and anyone could do it, but no, it was Zelensky's doing.
Secondly, Zelensky has become the most popular politician in the world.
He now shares the list of outstanding people with Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
You may not even know what these people did but you know they’re great people.
European leaders are in constant contact with Vladimir Zelensky.
Never before has Kyiv received so many top officials.
And they do it not only for just humanitarian reasons, but also for selfish ones:
Zelensky shines with popularity and public support, and standing nearby is good for your public image.
Recently the Guardian, one of the main newspapers of GB,
had an article about how the British prime-minister is on phone with Zelensky each time there is a crisis in the government.
The prime-minister of Great Britain calls the Ukrainian President whenever he wants to stabilize his ratings!
Would you believe that just 6 months ago?
The President of Ukraine is now beyond criticism: he is criticized neither inside the country nor outside.
By criticizing Zelensky, you pick a side you really don’t want to pick as a politician.
You stand with an obvious evil. It’s common thinking.
Zelensky turned out to be a brilliant diplomat and public proletizer of Ukraine who gives speeches everywhere,
from parliaments to music festivals.
He talks to everyone from his own citizens to leaders of other states, and he does so every day.
He even gave an interview to Russian journalists and it was quite powerful.
But without Putin he would never have such popularity. Because you need a villain for a hero to emerge.
And our story absolutely has a villain.
Zelensky demonstrated his unique abilities and achieved great results.
This is the first result of this war, the one that we can already see. We'll talk about the rest of them now.
But we'll interrupt for a commercial here
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Let’s continue!
On the morning of February 24, Ukraine was weak in terms of armaments.
Yes it had Bayraktar and Javelins, some high-tech weaponry,
but also a laughable annual defense budget of 6 billion dollars, which is approximately 10 times smaller than the Russian once,
and also the inability to buy heavy weaponry due to various regulations.
Before February 24, the world took Putin’s threats seriously
and no one wanted to be the country
that gave him a reason to start a war in Europe by supplying Ukraine with tanks, helicopters and howitzers.
In general, the only real way in which the frozen Donbass conflict benefited Putin
is that it constrained the international relationship of Ukraine.
If you can call that a benefit. By the logic of insane political leadership of Russia, it is. But the fact remains.
Whatever the negotiations were: on joining alliances and unions, on the removal of visas and customs restrictions,
and especially on the supply of weapons.
These negotiations always stumbled upon an unsolvable matter:
Ukraine isn’t in full control of its territory,
the removal of any restrictions and its involvement in a common space is a chance to get a black hole within that common space.
A black hole whichUkraine can’t control, which is on Russia’s payroll, and which is governed by some real thugs.
And to supply Ukraine with weapons would mean the possibility of escalating the frozen conflict,
which is something that nobody wanted to become guilty of.
In 2014-2015 the USA began supplying Ukraine with defensive equipment, like helmets and body armor,
They specifically emphasized that there was no chance for any lethal weapons, even small arms.
Before February 24 Ukraine was a country that didn’t have the money to buy heavy armaments,
but even if it did, it would be almost as difficult as it is for a Mexican drug cartel —
everyone was extremely cautious and didn’t want to give a reason for a big war.
The farther we are from February 24, the easier it becomes for Ukraine to get weapons.
Money is no longer a problem now, it’s only about how far the Western allies can go in order to stop this war.
And we see that their willingness to do just that is only getting stronger with each passing month.
It all started with supplying outdated Soviet equipment that European countries had in their warehouses,
by mid-Spring it was brand new howitzers,
and now the war is fought with something that was out of the question just recently — the American MLRS HIMARS.
Those who closely observed the situation could see in real time
how the politicians of Europe and the United States went from denying the supply of any kind of heavy armaments
to sending the newest weaponry to the frontline.
Over the passing months, Ukraine turned from a country that had big difficulty with reforming and reequipping the army
and into one of the most well-equipped and combat-capable countries on the continent.
Now Ukraine has so much weaponry that it would take years for it to buy it all on its own.
Ukraine now has an experienced, battle-hardened army that knows how to use these weapons.
Ukraine has become militarized in every sense of the word,
it has been turned into a more powerful force than it could have become on its own in the foreseeable future.
Around the afternoon of February 24, a discussion began:
in how many hours Kyiv would fall, how long Kharkiv and Odessa would keep fighting.
Everyone talked about Ukraine surrendering its major cities and capitulating as if it was only a matter of when.
And not only these talks were common in chat rooms of radical Novorossiya supporters.
The world's leading media was writing about it, referencing the leading foreign intelligence services.
Today nobody even theorizes about Ukrainian capitulation, no matter which side they're on.
Over the last two months everyone who watches the news learned the geography of Donetsk and Luhansk regions
to the smallest village better than their way to the nearest metro station.
What capitulation are we talking about if they can't take Severodonetsk for two months.
The degradation of objectives is not the military, but a political result.
Before, not only the people in the Kremlin, but the majority of people thought that if Putin decides to invade Ukraine,
he would achieve all his goals.
Surely everyone knew that there would be sanctions and international isolation,
that there would be a lot of victims, but very few people thought that the war would not end with taking Kyiv.
Because Russia overwhelmed Ukraine in everything: the GDP, the population, the military budget.
And all the arguments were built around whether Russia could keep what it had captured, but not around whether it could capture it.
A lot of things depended on the illusion of Russia’s capability to solve such massive tasks.
Its influence in the region depended on it, as well as how the threats it made were perceived.
It was like this: we aren’t doing it just yet, but we could if we wanted to, so keep us happy or we’ll do it.
Play ball or all hell breaks loose.
When you threaten to take Kyiv it's one thing, but when it is time to walk the walk and suddenly you're happy with Severodonetsk,
a city of 100,000 pre-war population, your threats to the whole region no longer seem so plausible.
The Lithuanian authorities say: we will not let transit the sanctioned goods, regardless of the indulgences from the EU.
Because we can. What can you do to us after all?
What can you do to a country that has returned to military conscription in 2014 and has invested heavily in defense?
They have a modern and combat-capable army, why would a country like that worry about the heroic capturers of Lisichansk?
Russia has always been seen as a potential threat to the region, and this was the source of its strength.
And the whole of Russia's foreign politics, as crazy as it was, was built around this fact,
It was its leverage against neighbors: play ball or see what happens.
But when it actually happened it turned out it’s not as scary and you can fight it, and there isn't much else it can do to you.
Let’s move one. This is about Russia itself.
For 20 years Putin has been working on making Europe dependent on Russia’s energy resources.
In order to achieve this goal, he lowered prices, built pipes funded entirely by Russia,
and bribed politicians and officials.
If there was anything consistent in Russia’s external politics, it was making Europe addicted to Russia’s oil and gas.
For the most part, such consistency was not for geopolitical reasons, but for practical concerns:
building thousands of kilometers of gas pipes is something that Putin’s milieu could profit immensely from.
Such projects are a pinata of corruption and a way to legalize any amount of money.
I don’t think there is any contradiction here.
Guess in this case, corruption and geopolitics forged a sinergy that had become truly effective.
You can blame European politicians for going through with it
and making their countries dependent on the unpredictable autocrat as much as you want.
But on the other hand, if you are offered to buy for one dollar something that is really worth two, and with free shipment at that,
it’s really difficult for an elected politician to not buy it,
and we’re not talking about corruption here, which is really something we should be talking about —
it can be too tempting for an influential european politician
with a wage of maybe a couple hundreds thousands euros to have a place on the board of directors of Gazprom waiting for you.
The war has made freeing Europe from dependency from Russia’s energy resources only a matter of time,
which would also mean breaking political dependency on Putin.
It can take a year, or two, or five. But building that dependency took 20 years. And they’ve been all buried in one day.
Next.
It may seem weird now, but before February 24, Putin and his regime had many supporters in Ukraine.
Yes, they were no longer the majority.
We talked about it in a film for Varlamov’s channel: year 2014 inverted public opinions in Ukraine.
The same percentage of people who used to be for an alliance or close relations with Russia,
now have become supporters of European integration and joining NATO.
Still, before February 24 it was tens of percent.
It was an important portion of society that kept buying the Russian propaganda
and even if they didn’t want to become Russian citizens, which was never a popular idea,
was always openly opposed to the West and supported close collaboration with Russia.
We don’t even need to look at the surveys here.
“Opposition Platform - For Life”, a party that is an ideological successor to the Party of Regions,
had always an openly pro-Russian (in this case pro-Putin) agenda.
And it got second place in the parliament elections in 2019.
They did seriously fall behind Zelensky’s “Servant of the People”, but 13% is a lot, it means you have real political power.
After the very first weeks of war there wasn’t a single region of Ukraine left that was missed by Russian shells or missiles,
and all citizens of Ukraine could see for themselves the kind of Pax Ruthenica Putin wants.
Everyone heard the sirens and sounds of explosions, and there was no one who didn’t have acquaintances,
their children, relatives or someone they knew who didn’t end up on the frontline or as a hostage on the occupied territory.
There is a common saying about the Great Patriotic War: war came to every house.
The same can be now said about Ukraine.
It is a personal war for everyone now.
Not a TV footage, not a headline in the news, but a personal story, and it is the one of hatred.
Today and for years and even decades to come after the war,
it is hard to imagine a political force in Ukraine
that would stand for not even alliance but simply normalization of relations with Russia.
And certainly Russia can forget about having any influence on Ukraine,
which it has spent twenty years and billions of dollars on building, just like it was with European energy dependency.
Today we had no intention of discussing objectives that Putin tried to achieve and whether they were good or bad.
They were absurd for the most part, they were action for the sake of action.
We will leave it to future historians to determine the exact percentage of Russian GDP
that ended up in the pockets of swindlers who were selling the Russian “influence” in Europe, Ukraine, USA and around the world.
We know something else though. We know that Putin achieved the opposite of what he had in mind.
The war is at the deadend, his threats no longer scare anyone,
Russia and its money have become toxic for any business or political career,
and what’s most annoying for him is that Vladimir Zelensky has literally become a man
who Putin dreamt of becoming and spent years and billions pursuing that dream —
he has become the most important politician on Earth,
the leader of an major country, with absolute support within and absolute respect from the outside.
This, and not the capture of the completely destroyed Severodonetsk,
was the main result of the four months of war,
even though the story of Severodonetsk is a tragic one.
See you tomorrow!