Invasion of Ukraine. Poisoning of Alexei Navalny. The crash of the Malaysian MH-17 flight.
What do these three events have in common?
hey all didn't go according to plan.
In 2014, they wanted to shoot down a Ukrainian military transport plane over the Donbass.
In 2020, Navalny was supposed to die, as if he had a heart attack while returning from a working trip to Siberia.
In 2022, the troops were supposed to march triumphantly across Ukraine, occupy Kyiv in a couple of days and establish pro-Russian regime there.
In all three cases, the original plan did not work.
A passenger Boeing was shot down from the Russian "BUK" instead of a military transport aircraft with citizens of Netherlands and other countries inside.
Navalny survived, and even investigated the attempt on himself, naming the perpetrators and calling one of them personally.
Well, the invasion of Ukraine has been going on for almost a month without commensurate results.
Three events with the apparent involvement of the Russian military or intelligence agencies did not go according to plan,
which were not originally planned.
Well, really, if "BUK" shot down the Ukrainian An aircraft — would it really be necessary to explain and prove something to someone?
If Navalny had died, the Omsk hospital would have issued a certificate with the "acute heart attack" cause of death,
and the investigation would have ended there.
If the blitzkrieg had succeeded, then Putin’s pseudo-historical rantings from the video message on the eve of the invasion would have been enough.
There would be a fait accompli of a change of power in Ukraine, and everyone would discuss this fact, and not the reasons for the invasion itself.
But for some reason, the lightning fast offensive stalled.
Now, Putin's arguments, already weak, do not seem to be a sufficient basis for what is happening.
No demilitarization can explain the shooting at the residential areas of Kharkiv.
Denazification does not go well with the destruction of the Mariupol maternity hospital.
In Kharkiv, recently, the Jewish youth club "Hillel", which quietly worked for itself under the "Kiev junta of the Ukronazis", was recently smashed with a "precise blow".
Therefore, a kaleidoscope of new reasons for the invasion is now unwinding, which can justify everything.
It was exactly the same with Boeing and Navalny.
The Spanish dispatcher Carlos, Captain Voloshin at the helm of the Ukrainian Su-25 attack aircraft, the Ukrainian rocket —
what have we not heard from the authorities and propaganda about the MH-17 disaster, except for the truth!
Metabolic disorders, poor-quality vodka from the village of Kaftanchikovo, a lack of Rafaello in the body,
and even poisoning either by comrades-in-arms or by Western intelligence agencies —
these wild versions were supposed to explain what happened to Navalny, but in the end they came to nothing.
Just a young healthy man suddenly fell into a coma, and then suddenly came out of it — could happen to anybody.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, some, albeit vague, justifications were presented to the public immediately.
And only then, as the "special military operation" began to turn into a protracted war,
they had to invent some new arguments and invent facts in favor of a big war.
Today we will analyze the theses that justified the military invasion in the very first days, and show their deliberate inconsistency and absurdity.
And then we'll see what Russian propaganda has already been thinking up on the go, as events unfold.
Absurd number one. The West is attacking.
One of the alleged "root causes" of the start of the war was the threat of Ukraine's entry into NATO.
Allegedly, the deployment of NATO weapons on its territory threatens the "very existence" of Russia,
since the flight time of American missiles to Moscow will be reduced to a matter of minutes.
As if the American rocket cares whether it flies to Moscow from Latvia or from Ukraine.
The distance, in general, is almost the same, and the difference in flight time at modern speeds is completely insignificant.
For a promising hypersonic weapon, it will be calculated in minutes, if not seconds.
But let's suppose these minutes are important.
Even so, all these calculations make no sense as long as the Russian Federation has its nuclear triad —
strategic aviation, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarine missile carriers.
No one will ever attack a nuclear superpower.
It is senseless to attempt to destroy the Russian high command with a first strike,
since Russia is armed with the Perimeter system, which will automatically turn the aggressor into “radioactive ashes”
even if the entire political and military leadership is killed.
The existence of the Perimeter system is a well-known fact — just so that it would never occur to anyone to attack.
The potential entry of Ukraine into NATO would not bring threats to Russia's "very existence" as Putin says.
It wouldn’t be a threat at all.
And in order to still dissuade Ukraine from joining the alliance, it would be worthwhile to start by showing at least some level
of respect for its sovereignty and not create military threats. Although, of course, these thoughts were relevant before the start of the war.
Absurd number two. Banderofascists.
Another justification for the attack is that Ukraine, they say, is a Nazi state. That there are only Nazis in power.
Somehow I even got tired of repeating that in Ukraine there are neither Nazis nor even nationalists in power.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is neither a Nazi nor a Russophobe, he is Jewish by nationality,
and his worst fault is playing the title role in the nightmarish Russian-Ukrainian remake of Office Romance (Office Romance. Present Day)
In the Parliament of Ukraine, the presidential party Servant of the People,
which won on the wave of Zelensky's popular popularity, has a majority.
This is a liberal party that has nothing to do with Nazism.
And this faction is led by a native of Russia — David Arakhamia.
The second largest faction in the Parliament is the Opposition Platform — For Life.
This is a pro-Russian and even pro-Russian-state party that legally collected the votes of Ukrainians.
However, just yesterday news came that the activities of this and a number of other political parties were temporarily suspended.
But when it didn’t come to a military situation, they existed, received votes and earned their places in the Parliament.
There is only one nationalist for four hundred and fifty people's deputies of the Ukrainian parliament, and there are no Nazis at all.
The myth of Nazi Ukraine is one of the most odious, yet primitive constructs of Russian propaganda.
How is propaganda different from journalism? It doesn't ask questions.
Propaganda has an answer in advance, and it diligently searches for any more or less suitable facts that fit the predetermined concept.
The words of marginal Ukrainian figures who do not have real power and influence are presented as the official position of Kyiv.
It's like presenting every remark of Vladimir Zhirinovsky as the official opinion of Moscow.
Although Zhirinovsky occupies significant positions in the Russian political system.
Russian propaganda studies street actions of nationalists under a magnifying glass when they take place in Kyiv.
But with the same success, you can show the "Russian March" in Moscow with banners for National Socialism.
And then lament that in Russia you can neither pass nor drive — everywhere the Nazis!
Let me remind you: an active participant in those same marches today manages Roscosmos.
And suggests to destroy the 5th column.
By the methods by which the Russian television molds the “Nazi state” from Ukraine, it can be molded from Russia itself.
For example, to focus on the memorialization of Pyotr Krasnov, the author of the miraculous appeal made on June 22, 1941:
There is also a memorial plaque to Adolf Hitler's ally Karl Mannerheim, who is responsible for the blockade of Leningrad.
Right in St. Petersburg — the former Leningrad — it was opened by the same Vladimir Medinsky, who is now negotiating with Ukraine.
As you can see, if you wish, you can score facts against anyone.
Ukraine is no more Nazi than Russia.
But even if Ukraine really was such a terrible and horrific state, its terribleness is no reason to attack it.
Russia, with all its repressions, torture, extreme social polarization and other gloomy things, frankly speaking, is also a bad place.
Therefore, an even more lethal argument is required that can justify any military intervention — they say, Ukraine is carrying out genocide.
The very word "genocide" has recently become so worn out that it has actually lost its meaning.
In general, genocide is the extermination of certain groups of the population along racial, national, ethnic or religious lines, that is,
literally the destruction of genes.
The genocide is when in Rwanda in 1994, in just six weeks, about eight hundred thousand people were purposefully and systematically destroyed —
just because they belonged to the Tutsi people.
Genocide is pure evil.
This is the most heinous crime.
It must be borne in mind here that in the twentieth century, many war crimes, crimes against humanity,
and even massacres of civilians were not recognized and were not called genocide.
Because genocide is something exceptionally bad.
However, the Russian authorities and personally Vladimir Putin are ready to call any murder by a human being a genocide.
Actually, he does it. What for? The logic is very simple.
Since genocide is the ultimate form of evil, there is no price too high to stop it.
Against genocide, all means are good,
and those who fight against genocide receive full absolution.
A good example is the same Great Patriotic War.
It is absolutely absurd to blame the Red Army for the fact that, while fighting against the Nazis,
it brought large-scale destruction to European cities and itself suffered heavy losses.
Against the background of the crimes committed by the Nazis, such a price looked reasonable.
That is why Vladimir Putin repeats over and over again that the genocide of the Russian population was carried out on the territory of Ukraine.
Only by calling your war a mission against genocide can you justify the destruction of Ukrainian cities.
Only with the help of the myth of the Russian genocid can it be explained that all this destruction was an adequate price in the fight against absolute evil.
But was there really a genocide of Russians in Ukraine? Let's figure it out.
Now the whole world is watching with horror the fate of the besieged Mariupol.
The Pope called for prayer for it.
There is a humanitarian catastrophe, monstrous destruction.
Of the four hundred thousand inhabitants, probably most lost their homes, how many people died — it is impossible to say for sure.
The city is now indistinguishable from Grozny in 1996.
What was so terrible that happened in Mariupol before the war,
so that what is happening now would be a reasonable price for stopping an even greater evil? Maybe genocide?
In the beginning of 2014, street actions began in Mariupol both against and in support of the Maidan.
Without external interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine, this civil confrontation could gradually come to naught, as, for example, it happened in Kharkiv.
However, external interference occurred: in May 2014, fighting broke out in Mariupol between the Armed Forces of Ukraine
and the formations of the Russian proxy — the Donetsk People's Republic.
Dozens of people died within a month.
The victory was won by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and Mariupol was under the complete control of the Ukrainian authorities.
What happened next? Ethnic cleansing started? Russians were taken out to be shot?
Were concentration camps built for the Russians?
How did the Russian genocide manifest itself in Mariupol, in that same Donbas? Well it didn't.
In the elections to the Parliament, no one prevented the residents of Mariupol from casting many of their votes for pro-Russian parties.
In 2015, they elected Vadim Boyko as mayor of the city, who conducted and even now continues to conduct all his public activities in Russian language.
If you visit official website of the city of Mariupol right now,
you can see that it is conducted in two languages: Ukrainian and Russian.
There were no ethnically motivated murders, there was no discrimination at all.
Not only did people not live in concentration camps,
they voted in elections and elected their representatives as leaders, this is by no means called genocide.
Now the residents of Mariupol, those same “ours” from Donbass,
have lost their city, lost their homes, many have died or became disabled.
There is no doubt that after the war they will no longer vote for politicians who advocate friendship with Russia.
They saw what it is like when Russia comes to a foreign city with its friendship.
There was no Russian genocide in the Donbass.
Nor was there genocide in Volnovakha, which is now turned into ruins.
There was no genocide, including in the city of Slavyansk, whose example is especially revealing.
Slavyansk was in the DPR for some time, but then the Armed Forces of Ukraine recaptured it.
As part of Ukraine, it continued its routine peaceful life, no one killed anyone there.
And now it’s just scary to imagine what the Russian invasion will cost Slavyansk if it reaches it.
The genocide narrative is completelyade of by Putin.
Absurd number four. Liberation War.
It is impossible to deny that for eight years people suffered and died on the territory of the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics.
But the question is: why did they suffer and die,
unlike those residents of Donbass who remained in the territory controlled by Ukraine?
Why did people live peacefully and well there, but in the DPR and LPR they lived in poverty?
Back in 2014, Vladimir Putin decided that the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk, dissatisfied with the Euromaidan, were in mortal danger.
Based on this assumption, Putin had two options.
Option one. Announce that every resident of Donetsk and Luhansk,
if he thinks that he is in danger, can go to Russia,
receive Russian citizenship and financial assistance for settling in a new place.
This is an adequate position from a moral point of view and, in principle, normal international practice.
Germany invites ethnic Germans back to Germany, and Israel itself takes ethnic Jews out of disadvantaged countries.
Thus, part of the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk would move to Russia, while the rest would remain in Ukraine,
where they would live in peace and vote en masse for pro-Russian political forces.
It would be a completely correct solution to the current situation, without any bloodshed.
Nobody would have suffered and died these 8 years. And there would be no war at the moment.
Option two.
If Vladimir Putin really believed in 2014 that all the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk needed to be rescued without exception,
right away, urgently, at any cost, regardless of any norms of international law, then he could have annexed these territories, like Crimea.
Include them in Russia, make them a "showcase" — look how good they are in their "native harbour".
The world community would get angrey, impose some kind of sanctions, and then switch to other topics.
Nobody shoots at anyone, people don't die — everything is ok.
I'm not saying that this is an acceptable course of action, but in the logic of Vladimir Putin it would be normal.
However, Putin came up with a third path.
He created on the territory of Ukraine something like two independent Ichkerias — insolvent peripheral quasi-states
that are in a state of permanent hostilities against the central government.
Of course, people died there.
During the artillery duels people suffered and died, including civilians.
But calling it genocide is a vile substitution of concepts.
People died because they were pulled out of one state (Ukraine), but not included in another state (Russia).
They were placed in artificially created semi-impoverished separatist pseudo-republics,
conducting completely senseless military operations against the Ukrainian armed forces.
And Vladimir Putin did it all.
This is his responsibility.
This went on for eight years.
And now the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk have been forcibly mobilized into local military formations.
After all, they are, like, not Russian soldiers — there is no need to feel sorry for them at all.
And what are these young guys dying for?
Only for the sake of everything that Donetsk and Luhansk endured for eight years, now Mariupol, Volnovakha, Izyum and Kharkiv feel a hundredfold.
Such is the geopolitics with the protection of Russians from Vladimir Putin.
How is it good? How is it right? How could anyone support it?
Even if we don’t share our political views.
At the beginning of the so-called “special military operation”,
its necessity was justified by the defense of Russia from NATO, the fight against Nazism, and the most iron-clad argument
against which any counterarguments should have broken — the need to stop the genocide.
However, the myth of genocide is no longer enough to explain to the Russians why the country is sacrificing its own economy,
its young and healthy men, as well as Ukrainian civilians, and why it is destroying Ukrainian cities.
Time passes, no beautiful victories are visible, and new propaganda constructs are needed to sell
the Russian audience the need to tighten their belts in the name of war against Ukrainians.
The old pseudo-reasons no longer work.
At the same time, it is not so easy to sell war to the population.
They had to close all independent media, including even Echo of Moscow, which had been working since the founding of Russia,
block, although not very successfully, all social networks except YouTube, and introduce an article into the criminal code,
according to which people for wrong opinions about the war are imprisoned for a longer period than for murder.
And with all this, citizens, to put it mildly, are not enthusiastic, they don’t go out to joyful processions in support of the war, they don’t draw the letter Z anywhere without an order.
We need some more understandable explanations: why and against what, in fact, have we been fighting for almost a month?
So that, on the one hand, these explanations can be broadcast to as many people as possible.
And on the other hand, in order to create the feeling:
“Everything is not so simple, maybe they did the right thing by bringing in the troops.”
Discord, usual for our regime, began: new versions are invented right on the go.
Different departments, not really agreeing among themselves, frighten the public with one thing or another.
Remember how loudly they shouted about the nuclear threat from Ukrainian nuclear power plants?
Even propagandists no longer remember it.
On the other hand, a version about the sinister biolaboratories, which, they say, the United States created in Ukraine, materialized.
As early as March 6, the Russian Ministry of Defense accused Ukraine of preparing biological weapons
with the assistance of the Americans.
Documents were published as evidence:
acts of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine on the destruction of dangerous pathogens.
These documents allegedly testify to an attempt to cover their tracks after the invasion of the Russian army.
It looks like it was an attempt to make a sensation out of nothing.
There are enough laboratories around the world that have permission to work with dangerous pathogens —
Russia is certainly no exception.
Some laboratories may well operate on outsourcing,
since it is more profitable for a richer country to hire qualified personnel in less wealthy countries.
The mere fact of research work with bacteria and viruses does not at all mean the development of weapons.
Research in this area is routinely carried out around the world.
And destroying biological samples in the event of force majeure is a normal procedure and not necessarily an attempt to hide the traces of some kind of super villainy.
What was next? Sergei Lavrov went even further.
He stated that biological weapons were being prepared in Ukraine,
and ethnically directed, that is, capable of destroying people of a particular nationality.
The Pentagon established dozens of military bio laboratories in Ukraine under their program designed to create these laboratories across the whole world. These are not some peaceful experiments but the experiment the purpose of which is to create biological weapons, let along ethnically specified weapons. There is no doubt in that.
These are not some peaceful experiments but the experiment the purpose of which is to create biological weapons, let along ethnically specified weapons. There is no doubt in that.
I remind you about the channels of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the supply of Argentine coke, this version obviously could not have been created without it.
It is hardly worth explaining to my audience that this is complete nonsense,
that such an idea could only come to the mind of a person for whom the "genetic code" is nothing more than a figure of speech.
That there is no biological weapon that can only hit Russians, but at the same time not touch Ukrainians.
That the idea of a nationally selective biological weapon is currently unrealizable even at a theoretical level.
But the Ministry of Defense developed and supplemented Lavrov's thought.
According to them, experiments were conducted in Ukrainian laboratories on the transmission of viruses using bats and migratory birds, whose seasonal routes pass through Russia.
Of course, under the strict control of the Americans.
And yet, the appearance of a version about bioweapons is quite understandable.
First, the paralyzing fear of it, generated by popular culture. Second, the pandemic factor.
Russia was having a hard time with the coronavirus pandemic:
it was hard not only because of the huge number of sick and dead, but primarily because of the resistance of people.
The need to wear masks, comply with restrictions and get vaccinated was a nightmare,
and the attempt to introduce QR codes almost ended in a revolution.
Now the Russian authorities have tried to play on this phobia. Like, look, the insidious Americans staged experiments
with biological weapons on the territory of Ukraine, and they could well lead to such a pandemic.
However, the concept turned out to be unconvincing — the version about bats remains generally quite unpopular.
And another explanation came into play: “we were left with no choice!”
Representatives of the Russian political beau monde, including Putin, speak about this in different voices.
Sometimes it all comes down to saying that Ukraine allegedly planned to attack the Donbass on February 25,
and the Russian army was just a day ahead of the Ukrainian one.
At some point, the Department of Defense even announced that they found a laptop that contained all these plans.
to wait 8 years for Russia to assemble a powerful military group near the borders of Ukraine
in order to suddenly attack the Donbass at that very moment.
But more often than not, the statements “we had no choice” sound more vague.
Like, the West created an anti-Russian springboard in Ukraine, and we had to strike first in order to destroy its plans.
It also makes no sense to take it seriously.
Suffice it to say that the anti-Russian bridgehead in Ukraine and in the world in general is now being created by Putin with his own hands,
giving orders to storm Ukrainian cities and kill civilians.
Nevertheless, an attempt to justify oneself is already heard in this rhetoric.
Say, we were forced, we would never have entered Ukraine, if not for the circumstances.
Winners don't behave like that — these are the words of the losing side.
Particularly revealing are attempts to justify sanctions.
Vladimir Putin is already repeating like a mantra that sanctions would have been imposed in any case, regardless of the start
of a “special operation” against Ukraine.
These excuses sound almost like an admission that the wrong decision was made.
Like, yes, we really created some kind of an absurd, but the costs would be all the same, in any case.
Perhaps the Kremlin is finally realizing that everything did not go according to plan.
There is only one thing in the world that is worse than war. A pointless war.
Russia's war against Ukraine will go down in textbooks as the perfect example of a senseless war that had no purpose and even theoretically could not accomplish a single task.
For this war is explained by the need to solve problems that do not exist in reality.
And the longer the senseless war goes on, the more meaning the many-voiced Russian propaganda tries to provide to it.
You won’t laugh much at the test tube that Colin Powell showed at the UN.
In front of the Russian audience, they are already shaking several test tubes: taking new ones out of their pockets and removing old ones.
However, among all this national shame, one positive aspect can be found.
The war against Ukraine can be ended at any moment.
Any day Russian propaganda can come up with some new goal of the war and announce that this goal has been achieved.
As they say, the most accurate shooter is the one who first shoots an arrow, and then draws a target around it.
The war must be stopped immediately because it can be stopped immediately.
Of course, then you will have to pay for the destruction of Ukrainian cities
and pay compensation to families who have lost loved ones.
We will have to restore the Russian economy and spend colossal efforts to rehabilitate those
who lost their health in this useless slaughter.
Those who unleashed this war will have to be judged.
Sooner or later we will have to deal with all this. The earlier the better.
If the war has no reason, then there is no reason to continue it. See you tomorrow.