Little was known about the city of Lyman prior to 2022. Yesterday’s events will put it into collections
of interesting facts and quiz games.
Because it is a place that has beaten every record of a time of being a part of the Russian federation.
By supper of September 30 it entered the Russian Federation, and left it before dinner of October 1.
The retaking of Lyman is important not only from a military perspective. I am not a military expert.
But judging from what experts like Ruslan Leviev say, I understand that the course of war and the de-occupation
of the Lugansk region in many ways depend on the liberation of Lyman.
But the most important question here is a political one. Russia has officially given up Lyman less than 24 hours
after Putin signed the annexation, 24 hours after the festive concert on the Red Square.
A VICTORY WHILE THE FRONTLINE IS COLLAPSING
That concert was already a questionable thing to do from an ideological perspective.
Because the annexation of territories that you’ve occupied may be cruel, vile, illegal, whatever,
but at least it’s something that you can do in the real world. But if you declare Zaporozhye as your own while Zaporozhye
is at the rear of the Ukrainian army, it’s not annexation, it’s pure fantasizing.
But when literally on the next day your troops, fearing complete encirclement, withdraw from the very territories
that you’ve just triumphantly declared as yours, it’s not even called fantasizing, it’s humiliation.
In the eyes of the international community Putin doesn’t look like an infernal evil and a threat to the entire world anymore,
but as a cartoonish dictator who boasts about fictional conquests in the absence of real ones.
A sort of Idi Amin in the north, who calls himself the Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Conqueror of the British Empire,
but who really is nothing but brutal, talentless tyrant who got too full of himself.
After this, Putin may just as well declare the whole of Eurasia as his domain or call himself the Emperor of Mars.
No one would take him seriously anymore, except for a small circle of toadies that he surrounded himself with.
We will defeat them all, we will kill them all, we will rob them all.
It was extremely important for the Ukraine’s leadership to liberate Lyman,
to remove Putin’s celebration from the public field, to make it pointless.
To show to everyone that his words aren’t worth even a single second of air time.
That all of it is nothing but a part of his intra-political game while the frontline exists by its own rules.
And they succeeded.
Just yesterday the whole “patriotic” z-community were celebrating Victory, and today it’s busy looking for traitors
and blaming the General Staff for unprofessionalism and even betrayal, it brings back memories from the beginning
of September, when after Izum and Balakleya even the most stubborn of Z-channels audience and fans of the Russian
World began to scold Russian leadership in a way that even the opposition never did.
All while insides tell us that it could actually be worse, that the fictional victory
and the real withdrawal could happen literally on the same day, that Russian troops were prohibited to withdraw from
Lyman, that they were supposed to hold until the end of the celebration in Moscow.
That is, people were sitting ducks under the threat of complete encirclement, wasting their lives,
retreating through a narrow and vulnerable road only to save Putin’s face, to prevent his Historical Russia from
falling apart right in his hands during the signing of the annexation.
In that sense, Putin’s minions were right. Putin’s speech was truly a historical one, in a sense that historians,
textbook authors and documentaries really love moments like that. Moments that can be used to show the essence
of an epoch with just a few words.
Like this celebration of a big victory while the front was collapsing for the second time in a month.
It was literally an attempt to shape reality with television, when they tried to convince everyone including
the Ukrainian army that they won simply because they said so.
That single moment describes the last 20 years better than hundreds of articles.
It’s always like that in Russia, the television can solve every problem. In a half a year you can turn an unknown
official into the savior of the nation.
Or to beat the pandemic. Or to win an election. In the evening you tell people what to think,
in the morning sociologists ask them how well they remembered it, and voila,
the circle of make-believe is complete.
The problem is, an armed enemy is not your TV viewer.
It’s more difficult for the propaganda agents that don’t just talk but live in some contact with their viewers or readers.
Because they have to be maneuvering between two realities.
To be celebrating a victory in Moscow and at the same time to be scolding the talentless command
and to be demanding to send the generals to the frontline.
To be shaming men who flee from mobilization to Almaty, Osh, or Tbilisi, and at the same time to be telling stories
of how Russians in a single impulse stand in lines to be conscripted and sent to the front.
And while Moscow celebrates victory and the frontline is collapsing in Ukraine, the mobilization goes on
and it looks more like a natural disaster, nobody except for the most brainwashed would say that it goes according
to the plan. From every perspective, be it the public opinion or the Ministry of Defense.
We’ll talk about it now, but first, a short non-commercial announcement about a volunteer post in Riga
that helps refugees and is run by a 13-years old girl, and it works great
and some say it’s probably the best one in Europe, take a look.
NON-COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
About the announcement by the way — they’re now collecting funds to buy a bus for 3000 euro, they need to be constantly
moving people and they have drivers among volunteers, and they could really use a van.
If anyone is willing to donate, there is a link in the description.
THE MOBILIZATION ISN’T GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN
Let’s continue.
We all know the limitations of wartime sociology.
Of a time when people are afraid to talk loudly in cafes or public transport, let alone to answer direct questions from
an unknown man with a quiz.
But the very first opinion poll conducted by Levada shows that 47% of responders met Putin’s mobilization with
“anxiety and fear”, another 13% felt “anger”, and 11% felt “depressed”, those were only the people who agreed to say
anything in this situation at all. It’s difficult to recall any other of Putin's decisions, including the raising of the pension age,
that caused such an unequivocally negative reaction before.
Only a quarter of responders answered that they feel “pride” about the decision.
And maybe they saw a police van driving nearby at the moment of the quiz.
We need to remember that in regimes like ours, it’s mostly loyalists who answer to sociologists.
Those who attended every single one of Soloviev’s lectures, and are now eager to pass the exam.
You could argue that Levada is an “independent” sociological agency and thus not entirely reliable.
Throw that nonsense out of your heads. Conducting sociological research is a costly thing.
Only small agencies like Russian Field can be truly independent in Russia, and for others,
the state is the most important and sometimes the only client.
That’s why even though they all have different reputations, the results don’t differ much between FOM,
VCIOM, and Levada. The mobilization instills terror in citizens — it’s a sociological fact that you can’t argue with.
But that’s only a part of the problem. It looks like that the Ministry of Defense is doing everything to instill even
more terror, to take the wind out of all public advocates of the mobilization.
It’s being conducted as badly as it gets. Students, retirees, people with disabilities.
Everyone who didn’t hide in time, everyone who was foolish enough to come to the draft board,
is immediately sent to some dirty gathering center that just yesterday served as a school’s gym.
We’re reliving the medieval: the need to bring your own equipment is now being openly declared.
In the case of the mobilization, the usual ways of the Russian leadership failed.
Their propaganda failed to create a nice convenient model of the world in which not everyone is being sent to the front,
in which every conscript gets a thorough training, and young men stand in lines, eager to be conscripted.
The propaganda is great at lying when it’s about something ephemeral and far away, like the economic problems
of Europe or the imaginary confrontation against the USA.
But it’s much more difficult to be lying about things that are of personal concern to the viewer — like prices, salaries,
and such. And mobilization directly concerns every citizen of Russia, so it’s not an easy task to lie about it.
You can’t convince your viewers that only young men with military experience are being summoned,
when half of them have someone they know who is way older than the conscription age, has every possible chronic illness
and no military experience and he still received a summon.
You can’t lie to the viewer that the whole Russian society is dreaming of taking up arms when almost everyone
they know is afraid to go to the conscription office.
Simonyan, Soloviev, even Sobyanin would be glad to be able to say that “it’s proceeding according to the plan”,
but incompetent military commisioneers leave them with no chance to do that.
On one hand, it was inevitable in a system like ours.
The system was tasked with finding hundreds of thousands of men and it does what it can.
On the other hand, as strange as it may sound,
such a format of mobilization works in favor of the high-ranking military, not against them.
All male citizens must report to the local draft board with passports and military IDs.
THE POWER OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY
For the first time in the history of Russia in the last 100 years, the military has real power.
Despite huge defense budgets, both in Russia and in the Soviet Union the military were the most powerless,
most humiliated, most insignificant of all people in uniforms. They have no political power.
They have no people in the civilian power. They have no authority within the country.
Their resources for lobbying are extremely limited. They have neither supervisory, nor normative, nor judicial authority.
While the FSB, the Ministry of Interior, and the Investigative Committee fight each other every day,
open criminal cases on one another, provide “cover” for businesses and split assets,
while they’re proving their usefulness to the central government every day, what do the army generals do?
They humbly plunder their own army and take it out on soldiers whom they treat no better than slaves.
Any lieutenant investigator from a local police office who barely shaved yet has more power than any army general.
He can break the neck of anyone who falls into his orbit with just a single criminal case.
The regime needs him — he serves as a small brick in its foundation, the regime loves him and cannot live without him.
But it has no use for the army general, except once in a year on a Victory Parade on the 9th of May.
And now, Putin gave them something that is more powerful than criminal cases or riot police’s batons.
They can now point their finger at any man and send him to die. Anyone, no matter the papers you have.
Oh you have a respite? A letter from a hospital?
Well then your wife will receive a note saying “sorry there was a mistake” along with the funeral letter,
it will certainly make her feel better.
The opportunities for corruption, plunder, and repression this power gives is beyond all imagination.
The insane mobilization of everyone including the elderly and disabled people turns a bug into a feature.
Did Simonyan say something? Did Soloviev? Putin calls for something? Who the hell are they?
I said that a legless, one-eyed father of five children goes into the trenches, and so he does.
What can you do, mister Sobyanin?
We can send 10 buses to Tverskaya 13 and send your entire staff to die from himars. And what will you do?
Will you complain to Putin? We’ll send them back to you in pieces before you even reach him.
Listen you propagandists, managers, policemen and all of you, it’s our time now,
now it is us who is running the show. We see how the civilian bureaucracy is trying to regain control,
we see Sobyanin who tries to run along with the mobilization just so that he could keep the last bits of power.
We also see how it doesn’t work. How generals who have finally gained power are trying to expand it.
From this perspective, the mobilization must not just be chaotic, it must be demonstratively chaotic.
What can you do to the army leadership during the war? Who would dare to not just fire some single military commissioner,
but to really begin repression against generals?
I’m not making any predictions here, but it wouldn’t be unrealistic to expect that they could leave Simonyan without
her entire technical staff and to have her go looking for them in the frontlines as a punishment for her big mouth.
In the beginning of September, the Putin’s vertical that they have been building and strengthening for the last 20 years
and the regime of a sole unchallenged ruler, have only given some minor cracks:
everyone was gathering their personal armies and picking on each other. Now, the cracks have turned into fractures.
How is it possible that in a harsh authoritarian system no one,
not even the official propaganda, took the Ministry of Defense seriously?
Konashenkov with all his amazing language literally talks to the void, not even Soloview is willing to put him on air.
How is it possible that a governor, even a special one like Kadyrov, can publicly scold a General-Colonel,
a commander of one of the army groupings? To call him a moron and such?
The commander who must have certain authority in the army, the very army in which
everyone from a fresh conscript to a colonel saw Kadyrov’s post.
People like to compare Putinism with totalitarian regimes of the past, be it the Third Reich or Stalin’s USSR.
But things like that would be unimaginable there.
If the Great Leader fires a general and sends him to oversee the unloading of woods in Siberia,
then you can scold that general as much as you want.
But a head of a region undermining the authority of the military command during the war — that would be nonsense.
The thing that we saw in the Kremlin and on the Red Square on September 30 was supposed to become a demonstration
of unity within the leadership, among other things.
That there is no divide, no defeatism, and that they all think and act as one.
But as soon as the concert was over, the unity turned into looking for traitors and incompetents.
In countries like Russia, it is impossible to tell what will happen next.
But if you see a regime that is drowning in war, whose power vertical begins to cannibalize itself after the eighth month
of that war, you begin to realize that in all possibility it won’t be that long
before president Zelensky can talk to a new leader of Russia.
See you tomorrow!