Military operation in Ukraine have been going on for more than a month.
Opinion polls record an allegedly high level of support for the Kremlin's actions, but they cannot be trusted.
In an environment where an opinion that is different from the official one is threatened with a huge fine
or a prison term, people simply will not express it.
I ordered a sociological study myself: according to it, 95 percent of the respondents refused to voice their position.
But there are people who really sincerely believe in the justification of the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine.
Most often these are people who receive information mainly or exclusively from television, where a separate picture of the world has been created for viewers.
Based on this picture, some of our fellow citizens support what is happening, or at least treat the events in Ukraine with neutral approval.
Perhaps you know such people. It can be your older relatives – parents, grandparents.
This video is primarily for them.
We will try without emotions, calmly, based on facts, to talk about what and why is happening now in Ukraine,
and explain why it is impossible to believe what they say about these events from television screens.
Let me remind you how it all started.
Because so much has happened over the past month and a half that the end of February seems like a very distant time.
On February 24, 2022, President Putin announced the start of the so-called special military operation in Ukraine.
Early in the morning, a massive missile strike was carried out, and then ground forces advanced towards Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Kherson and other large Ukrainian cities.
Pay attention to the circumstances of the beginning of this special operation: without a declaration of war,
after the authorities at the highest level have repeatedly and publicly stated that they do not plan to send troops
to the territory of Ukraine, and their concentration near the border was explained by military exercises.
Does this look like the behavior of a strong and self-righteous party?
By the way, why are the authorities forced to call what is happening a “special operation” and not a war,
and those who do not adhere to the official line are threatened with a new criminal article and prison terms?
Why can't we call a spade a spade? Yes, because our citizens have very deep and strong feelings associated with the word “war”.
“If only there was no war” – this is what our grandparents told us, who survived the horror of the Great Patriotic War,
and are ready to put up with any hardships and shortages for the sake of a peaceful sky above their heads.
In a country where the war has left deep scars in the lives of literally every family, the authorities cannot use this word to describe what is happening in Ukraine.
After all, in fact, this is a war: Russian tanks crossed the border and entered another country,
Russian soldiers have been there for more than a month, Russian artillery is shelling Ukrainian cities and aviation is dropping bombs on them.
It is important to say this: there is no special operation, there is a real war going on.
A war in which Russia acted as an aggressor.
The Russian leadership named the need for denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine as the grounds for starting the war,
which, in their opinion (mostly according to Putin) threatened security of Russia.
Let's take a look at this and start with denazification.
In the Russian media, and especially on TV, Ukraine is called nothing but a Nazi state.
For us, who grew up on the memory of the victims and heroes of the Great Patriotic War, brought up
in the spirit of absolute intolerance towards Nazism, this is the worst accusation that can be.
It justifies any action: it is impossible to put up with the fact that somewhere the supporters
of Nazi ideology have again raised their heads, given the price our country paid for defeating Hitler.
But let's put emotions aside and look impartially at Ukraine. We will see that it does not need any denazification.
Back in 2015, a law condemning the Nazi regime was adopted in Ukraine,
propaganda of the swastika and other symbols of the Third Reich is prohibited, and anti-Semitism is criminalized.
There is not a single Nazi in the government of Ukraine,
and in the 2019 parliamentary elections, far-right parties failed to overcome the 5% barrier.
This doesn't look like a neo-Nazi state, where out of four hundred and fifty deputies there is not a single supporter of Hitler's ideas!
There is only one nationalist in the entire Verkhovna Rada, and even that one is a nationalist, not a Nazi.
Before the war, pro-Russian political forces legally collected votes in Ukraine.
The pro-Russian party – the Opposition Platform «For Life» - had the second place in the Verkhovna Rada!
Can you imagine a big pro-Ukrainian party in Russia? And for pre-war Ukraine, this was the norm.
It was only during wartime that the activities of pro-Russian parties in Ukraine were suspended,
and even then, not on the first day of the war.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has Jewish roots, which he never hid.
His grandfather's three siblings were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust,
and the president's grandfather himself fought at the front, received two orders of the Red Star
and graduated from the Great Patriotic War in the rank of lieutenant of the guard.
On television in Russia, they constantly emphasize that our troops in Ukraine are opposed by certain detachments of nationalists, the largest and most famous of which is the Azov regiment.
Official representatives of the Russian government are also talking about this.
At the beginning of the war, their task was to create the illusion that the majority of Ukrainians support Putin's actions,
but they are held hostage by the Nazis, who force them to resist.
Now the manual is already being rewritten:
now they say that a huge part of the Ukrainian population is poisoned by the ideas of Nazism,
that almost the majority of Ukrainian citizens are Nazis themselves.
Unfortunately, horrifically and to our silent amazement, significant part of the Ukraine and Ukrainian people, frankly not all and hopefully not even a majority,
but a significant part of the population has been gripped by this madness of Nazism
Now Ukraine is being assisted by Israel,
a state in which the memory of the Holocaust is very reverent and which does not accept Nazism in any form.
Specialists from Israel opened a field hospital in western Ukraine – it is impossible to imagine that they help neo-Nazis.
The world's leading researchers of World War II and the Holocaust from Israel and other countries,
including the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, protested against accusations of neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
But let's get back to the original thesis: as if the Ukrainians needed to be freed from the «Azov» that took them hostage.
This is much smaller than the personal army of Ramzan Kadyrov.
The Russian group at the time of the outbreak of the war, together with the troops of the DPR and LPR,
consisted of about two hundred thousand soldiers and officers.
How could a handful of neo-Nazis have been able to resist such superior enemy forces for so long?
Russian forces are actually fighting the entire Ukrainian Armed Forces, not just individual units like Azov.
Not a single Ukrainian military unit went over to the side of Russia.
The number of Ukrainians who surrendered is insignificant even according to the official data of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
At the same time, the Ukrainian army is resisting fiercely, stubborn battles are going on everywhere,
and Russian troops have not been able to take a single regional center, except for Kherson.
Secondly, even in those cities that were under the control of Russia,
and where there is definitely no Azov regiment, residents constantly go to rallies with Ukrainian flags and chant “Occupiers, go away».
They chant more other things too.
The Russian military fires into the air and uses tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, but this does not help –
the demonstrators gather again and again.
Ukrainians do not meet Russians with flowers, there is not a single example of such a meeting,
no one calls the fighters of the Russian army liberators.
There are no neo-Nazis who have taken Ukrainians hostage.
There are people in Ukraine who chose their officials in a democratic way and now is united against the occupiers.
These invaders, unfortunately, are the soldiers of the Russian army, who came to a foreign land and brought death and destruction with them.
I will say a few words about the Russian language.
In our press, the Ukrainian authorities are often accused of oppressing the rights of Russian speakers.
Indeed, the Russian language does not have the status of the second state language in Ukraine.
That does not prevent Ukrainians from speaking Russian.
President Zelensky, until the moment when he decided to go into politics, spoke almost no Ukrainian.
Russian is his native language. And Kharkiv, Sumy, Kherson and Odessa are all predominantly Russian-speaking cities.
In devastated Mariupol, which has been under blockade for a month now, the city's official website was also maintained in Russian, and the city's elected mayor spoke only Russian.
And 90 percent of the inhabitants of Mariupol also spoke Russian before the war.
Will they continue to do this after all that has happened to them?
The answer is obvious.
No one harmed the Russian language in Ukraine as much as Vladimir Putin did with his decision to go to war.
Why, despite all this, do they continue to talk about non-existent neo-Nazis in Ukraine on TV?
Because for Russia the theme of the fight against Nazism is sacred, all our self-consciousness stands on two pillars – June 22 and May 9.
By declaring Ukrainians as Nazis, propagandists want to incite hatred towards them. Do not fall for this manipulation.
Let's look at the recent example of propaganda piece.
While trying to convince people that Ukraine is filming fakes about civilians' deaths they released this video:
"This is the preparation for the literally "theatre of military actions".
Pretty uncomplicated as you can observe.
Two people wearing military uniform are wrapping the mannequin with duct tape and frankly want to pass him off as a dead body.
Well this isn't surprising. Tens of fakes involving mannequins oftentimes appear in Ukranian telegram public channels.
Looks convincing. Very tempting to believe.
That would be good if all those dead bodies are in fact just mannequins.
But unfortunately this isn't Ukraine. This happened during filming a movie in Russia.
One of the members of filming crew identified the set in Vsevolozhsk immediately.
Stuntmen are preparing a mannequin for the act.
And this is what Russian TV is all about.
Also, about manipulation.
In Russia, they like to quote all kinds of Ukrainian political outcasts who have no power and no social capital.
These figures sometimes hold some kind of street actions, but in real elections they receive a microscopic number of votes.
Now just think about it: what if every remark of the late Zhirinovsky was presented abroad as the official position of Moscow?
Although Zhirinovsky is not a marginal, he is a holder of almost all Russian orders, a member of the State Council and the leader of a parliamentary party.
What if someone took photos from the Russian Marches in Moscow – with their overtly Nazi banners –
and then told everyone that Nazis were constantly marching through the Russian capital?
By the way, Dmitry Rogozin at one time very actively organized and participated in these marches himself.
Each country has its own internal problems and problematic political characters.
This does not give a foreign army the right to invade and, through the destruction and death of a huge number of people, try to restore their own order.
Oddly enough, Russian propaganda has been talking about this for almost twenty years in a row!
Just on the example of not Ukraine, but Iraq and Libya.
Now about demilitarization. It is difficult to say what Putin means by this.
He argues that Ukraine threatens Russia's security and therefore must be disarmed.
But in general, Ukraine is an independent state.
Yes, it has its own armed forces, but in the same way, absolutely all of Russia's neighbors have armed forces,
including, for example, China, whose army has more than two million people and which has nuclear weapons.
Why is Putin not eager to demilitarize China,
which, when viewed from this angle, poses a much more serious threat to our country than Ukraine.
An important argument of the official position in this part is the talk about NATO's desire to use Ukraine to attack Russia.
They say that the nuclear weapons of the Americans can be placed near Kharkiv,
which will reduce the flight time of missiles to our territory.
However, it is worth taking a closer look at the map.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have been members of NATO for many years now.
Flight time from there to Moscow in this case will be minutes.
Now, after Russia's attack on Ukraine, even eternally neutral Finland is declaring its desire to join NATO.
I don’t even want to talk about the flight time from the Finnish border to St. Petersburg.
But even now, when hostilities have been going on for more than a month, NATO is doing its best to avoid participation in them.
Despite repeated requests from Kyiv to provide fighter planes and close the skies, that is, to violate the superiority
of Russian aviation, NATO is in no hurry to do this, because it is afraid to enter into a direct clash with Russia.
If they don't want to do it now, when Russian forces aren't in their best condition,
when almost entire army is already busy fighting in Ukraine, one could invade from the territory of Finland
or Latvia and there would be noone to fight back; if NATO doesn't want to fight in Ukraine, not even on the ground, but in the skies,
what is the threat from NATO to Russia at all? It is obvious that NATO has no will to fight against Russia even when Russia is having hige problems.
And Ukraine, as it turned out, is not expected by anyone in NATO.
This is acknowledged by President Zelensky himself, who says that his country's entry into the North Atlantic Alliance is unlikely in the next 10 years.
We agreed to look at the facts – and the facts say that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, and not vice versa.
So who is the real threat to whom?
And one more fact to finally close the topic of a possible NATO attack on Russia.
Russia has a nuclear triad – intercontinental ballistic missiles,
strategic aviation and missile-carrying submarines, which at any time,
including right now, are on combat duty in the world's oceans.
It is a priori impossible to attack Russia and not receive a devastating nuclear strike in response.
Even if you have managed to physically destroy the political and military leadership of Russia,
the Russian automatic system «Perimeter» will give the command to retaliate.
This whole “nuclear umbrella” was created for this,
so that we can calmly go about our business under it and not be afraid of anyone.
Even if the whole world joins NATO, it will never attack a nuclear superpower capable of destroying the entire planet.
And the Russian government imposes unnecessary and non-existent threats on us.
Why?
Another reason for the attack on Ukraine is the creation in Ukrainian laboratories of biological weapons capable of killing people of a certain nationality
and which can allegedly be sent to Russia with the help of migratory birds.
In support of this version, some materials on the activities of biolaboratories were demonstrated.
Well... we could discuss it i guess, but i think majority of people living in Russia have education and understanding processes
going on in the world. Maybe they do watch TV sometimes and can believe in some stories, but not in stories like this.
I think it will be insulting to my viewers in a sence to consider this version seriously. So let's not do it.
Often, when explaining the need to demilitarize Ukraine, supporters of the authorities mention the need to protect the Donbass.
Since 2014, hostilities have been going on there, civilians, including children, have suffered from shelling.
According to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, over 3,000 civilians, including about a hundred children, have died in the conflict zone over the past 8 years.
Of course, this is a huge tragedy. But can one tragedy justify another?
Look at the footage of the shelling of Kharkiv, at the destroyed Mariupol and Volnovakha razed to the ground,
at the bodies of civilians killed in Bucha near Kyiv, who were shot near their homes for no reason.
Can the suffering of the inhabitants of Donbass be the reason for all this?
All according to the same OSCE data, the majority of civilians in Donbas died in 2014 and 2015,
in the hottest phase of the conflict.
Then, 100 people died from shelling and mine explosions a year,
in 2019 and 2020 – about thirty, and last year, 2021 – 18 people.
This is still a lot,
This is approximately the amount of people dying in Russia in car accidents. That's a lot.
But one does not dare to call it a genocide of the inhabitants of Donbass.
Now, during this war, many more Donbass people have been killed in battles with the Ukrainian army.
And most importantly, the conflict in Donbass could not have lasted so long if Russia had not participated in it:
it supported the separatists, sent its military personnel there under the guise of volunteers and vacationers,
and supplied military equipment.
It is not the residents of Donbass who rebelled against the Kyiv junta, as our media portray the situation.
It was Russia that orchestrated and sponsored the sluggish military conflict in eastern Ukraine in order to prevent it from developing fully.
Note that until February 2022, Russia did not carry out mass evacuations of residents of Donetsk and Luhansk to its territory.
Where has Russia been all these eight years?
If desired, our country could have long ago transported them to Russia, given them citizenship, provided housing and work for all residents of Donbass who would have expressed such a desire.
Much less money would be spent on this than on a big war with its huge economic costs, not to mention the lives of people.
But there were no evacuations,
the residents of the DPR and LPR left on their own, leaving their own houses – and not necessarily went exactly in the direction of Russia.
For example, many residents of Donetsk moved to the same Mariupol, because living in poor Ukraine is incomparably better
than living in an unrecognized state entity, where the one who has a rifle has power.
Thanks to the Russian army, these people have lost their homefor the second time in eight years.
During these eight years, Russia has not even been able to repeat the experience of Crimea.
Our country did not annex Donetsk and Lugansk, did not make them a «showcase of the Russian world».
This wouldn't be justified, but at least somehow understood.
So Putin could offer those who are oppressed to escape to Russia and help them here,
or if he wanted a more agressive move, he could annex those territories if he thought they're being opressed.
He have done either of those two within last 8 years.
But instead he kept them as unrecognised states with unreasonable leadership who not only look like bandits, but bandits they are.
And then he started a big war and started bombing all the remaining people of Donbass.
Well what's good about it? How does it help russian speaking people of Donbass?
Instead, Putin kept millions of people in two pseudo-republics for eight years whose only reason for existence is to fight against Kyiv.
Citizens of these pseudo-republics could live quite calmly as part of Ukraine.
When Putin started those action in those territories, some residents probably wanted to join the richer Russia.
But as we discussed this never happened.
Putin forced them to die for the useless DPR and LPR.
And forces them now, when the so-called «people's militia» of these «republics» row all the men en masse, and then they are sent to the front without military training.
Meanwhile, those cities of Donbass that ended up under the control of Ukrainian forces in 2014 –
these cities have existed perfectly for all eight years. The Nazis did not commit atrocities there and did not kill anyone.
Mariupol is located in the same Donetsk region, only in the part that was controlled by Ukraine.
Before the war, it was the fastest growing city in Ukraine, where literally everyone spoke Russian. Today it is a smoking ruin.
If not for Russia, Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Mariupol, Volnovakha, Izyum and Kharkiv,
would be safe and peaceful cities today, not a war zone.
If not for Russia, then no one in the Donbass would have died all these years.
The Russian military has already announced that they have become aware of Ukraine's impending offensive against the Donbass.
And allegedly only the preventive offensive of the Russian troops allowed these plans to be thwarted.
Such an explanation only causes bewilderment: it turns out that Kyiv has been waiting for 8 years for Russia to assemble a huge strike group of troops near the borders of Ukraine
in order to then attack the Donbass?
Moreover, we are being asked to believe in this nonsense by the same people who had assured us for several months that they had no plans to attack Ukraine itself.
The war has been going on for over a month. We have witnessed monstrous crimes.
Shelling of residential areas, blockade and destruction of Mariupol, massacres of civilians in Bucha.
But the authorities and the press continue to assure us that the Russian army fires exclusively high-precision weapons at military facilities,
and all the casualties and destruction are a provocation of the Ukrainians.
A 40 days long provocation.
Military censorship came to Russia along with the war.
The last independent media outlets were closed – radio Ekho of Moscow, TV channel Rain, Novaya Gazeta.
You may not have watched or read them, but these media provided a platform and an opportunity for all parties to speak,
and gave an opportunity to hear an alternative point of view.
Now there is no such possibility. Only the Internet remained, but even there almost all objectionable resources were blocked.
What is left? Government TV channels.
Channel One, Russia, NTV – they are all owned and controlled by the state.
They cover only one, official, point of view, all others are banned. In fact, this is not the media, but the means of propaganda.
Ordinary people were also forbidden to express their point of view.
On March 4, Putin signed a law that criminalizes the spread of fakes,
but in fact – for any position that differs from the official one. Violators face up to 15 years in prison.
The police violently disperse any protests
Those who oppose the war are taken to police stations, where they are sometimes beaten and humiliated.
Often this comes to the point of absurdity: people are sent to paddy wagons with empty sheets of paper, or with a bouquet of flowers.
The poster «Fascism will not pass» is also declared «discrediting the Russian Armed Forces»!
Since the beginning of the war, a total of more than 15,000 people have been detained who went out to peaceful protests simply wanting to express their position.
What the problem is here, even if you watch this video and support the officials.
But if you shut down the alternative point of view and forbid any argument, then a potentially wrong position is never critically evaluated.
We cannot not compare, if one side is wrong we'll never know.
This is why censorship is bad in general.
This is why making desicion with no opposition to it is bad.
Even small teams supervisors know this.
If you ever lead a department of even three people you'd know that it's always better to consider all the opinions and other alternatives before making final decision.
Our government now though has basically no access to opposite opinion.
Everything is being decided according to one singular position since all others are prohibited.
That would become a problem even in a very small structure.
And this is a whole country, the army with hundreds of thousands of armed men heading to another country to shoot in Kharkiv and Mariupol.
And no chance to hear an alternative opinion.
In conclusion, I want to show a video from Krasnoyarsk, where a policeman erases the inscription “No to war” in the snow.
It seems like some kind of bad dream: in a country that survived the worst war in history,
buried tens of millions of its fellow citizens, the representative of the law erases the inscription “No to war”.
How can the inscription “No to war” be illegal?
Frankly propaganda wants to say "Yes to war".
But do we need this war?
Shouldn't we take care of our own country?
Shouldn't we take care about our citizens who in a lot of cases live in poverty?
I understand that it is very difficult, almost impossible to admit that all this actually happened.
That Russia attacked Ukraine, attacked for no reason, and now it bombs peaceful cities and kills the inhabitants.
That the whole world has united against the aggressor (Russia) and supports Ukraine.
That Russian soldiers, whom we used to consider defenders, are engaged in looting and robbery,
they shoot people, ordinary Ukrainians.
And they themselves are killed and maimed in vain.
Many thousands of young guys will never return home,
tens of thousands will remain crippled – and no one can answer for what.
This is a terrible catastrophe, one does not want to believe that it is happening.
But you need to believe. Our country is not just on the edge of the abyss, it has already fallen into this abyss.
The worst thing that could happen happened.
And the sooner we realize this, the sooner we will begin to get out of this abyss, to save what is still possible to save.
This war has no purpose.
Even if Russia conquers Ukraine all the way to the western border, even if it takes Kyiv and drives Zelensky out, nothing will end.
It is impossible to force someone to love yourself, it is impossible to control such a large territory where people who hate you live.
No matter how events develop further, Russia has already lost this war. Therefore, the war must be stopped as soon as possible.
See you tomorrow!