Reading the recent Telegram posts of prominent pro-war speakers and the rest of the warmongering crowd
was somewhat fun.
Self-deprecation and whining had been rife within this community up until they were grossly insulted
as Zelenskyy met with Erdogan and the latter handed over the Azov regiment commanders
to the Ukrainian leader.
Those commanders were set to stay in Turkey until the war was over. Erdogan assured Putin of just that.
The world according to mishap murder aficionados has crumbled. They’ve taken a heavy hit.
Putin was screwed over and publicly humiliated yet again. Worse still, Putin would just have to swallow it.
Unfortunately, they hoodwinked us. We were screwed.
We were hoodwinked yet again, as I’ve already mentioned.
They deceived us. They took us for a ride and lied to us. It already happened. It follows the plan.
This video has gone viral in pro-war Telegram channels. By the looks of it, they don't echo the idea
of a powerful geostrategist vs. treacherous enemies. They may mean something else.
The trouble with war supporters and the main reason they keep tripping over time and again is
that their stance isn’t rooted in any values whatsoever. They have no grip on reality.
Every time they have to think hard to explain why their friends have become their enemies
and their heroes prove to be traitors.
They try to wrap their heads around the fact that what they believed to be true turned out to be a lie and
what appeared to be fundamental goals was pulverized into a pile of fine dust.
ETHICS & LACK THEREOF
Opposing the war is easy.
The anti-war camp may be debating certain details. Like, do Russians need to pay reparations?
If they do, should they pay in cash or share oil export revenue? What kind of help to Ukraine would be
ethical for a Russian citizen? Clearly, refugees should receive help. Healthcare costs may be covered.
What about a portable power station that can be used by the army? Or a UAV? Or maybe even a missile?
How we do talk to Ukrainians? How do we react to an understandable visceral disdain coming from them?
Are we to blame for the government-mandated invasion? What’s our share of responsibility?
Aren’t we the victims, too? Are we a nation taken hostage by a deranged dictator or a nation
of reckless individuals responsible for his tenure at the helm?
A heated debate erupted between the Moomintroll party of “peace at all costs” and those who think
only Ukraine reclaiming its state borders of 1991 can end the war.
Another argument had decent people frothing at the mouth. How do you treat a Russian soldier?
Consider a conscript who was coerced into signing the contract. Is this 18-year-old kid eviscerated
by the HIMARS rocket launcher before he could ever get his bearings an occupier unworthy
of posthumous empathy?
Or he is yet another victim of Putin just like the guy his age who was killed on the Ukrainian side?
What if the deceased isn’t an 18-year-old youngster but a hardened criminal who stabbed an old lady
for five bucks, got pardoned, and shipped to the battlefield?
Does he deserve to be mourned and empathized with the way a human being should?
Death aside, how do you treat the inhumane conditions they’re subjected to? Sure, no anti-war campaigner
would help the Russian army and shell out for its equipment. But does it mesh well with human decency?
Or should you be justified if you think the idiots who ended up in trenches on foreign
soil deserve what they get?
The debates that may at times turn ugly are raging between those who have a clear-cut worldview mostly
rooted in liberal values, and the debates mostly concern the flavors of this worldview.
We all consider human life and well-being to be the supreme value.
We all agree that Putin’s war against Ukraine is a crime.
Those who started it and helped it along the way must be prosecuted.
What we disagree on are the interpretations of our values adjusted to the war.
We try to figure out if there’s a point where humanistic values and empathy become entangled with atrocities.
War supporters, on the other hand, are trying hard to straddle the abyss.
They’re constantly frustrated as they don’t exactly know what they want.
Their stance has no foundation and isn’t rooted in values.
It should be easy, it would seem, when you live in a country that’s waging a war.
Just be loyal to the regime and think the way it wants you to.
After all, on Sundays, Dmitry Kiselyov hosts his popular TV show where he recaps
and rehashes the official truth of the past seven days.
But it turns out harder than it seems. Embracing the official narrative of the Russian government
may land you in a loony bin.
You never know which off-ramp this narrative may abruptly take at high speed.
The Azov return story perfectly illustrates just that.
AZOV WOES
The way the Russian government portrays it, the Azov regiment is Satan’s very own VIP customer branch.
This isn’t just a trivial propaganda concept that’s not there to stay.
The very existence of the Azov regiment was part of the rationale behind starting this war.
Allegedly the Azov fighters are the very Nazis Putin set out to liberate the brotherly Ukrainian nation from.
As covered by Russian mainstream TV channels, early into the war the Russian army was fighting Azov only.
It could seem the regular Ukrainian army was nowhere to be seen.
Russia was fighting armed neo-Nazis and destroying the equipment of the “national battalions,”
embodied by none other than the Azov regiment.
WW2 propaganda mythology as well as the Marvel universe superheroes are easily dwarfed by this story.
If the official narrative is to be believed, 150,000 Russian troops took on a single “nationalist” regiment, which,
in reality, is part of Ukraine’s National Guard.
The Russian command’s fixation on Azov led to the large city of Mariupol being wiped off the map.
It also sealed the fate of Russia’s offensive in southeastern Ukraine. Instead of making advancements,
the invading army was ordered to go get the Azov fighters in what was a purely political move.
To accomplish this goal, the Russian army was demolishing Mariupol along with its residents
as it assembled its main forces in southeastern Ukraine to assault the city and the premises
of the Azovstal steel factory. In the meantime, the Ukrainian army wrestled the battlefield into a stalemate.
Azov, as opposed to some major cities, was the hot target of the invasion, second only to Kyiv.
It could be obscure to us since we were getting our news someplace else.
But for TV viewership, that’s the way it was.
No one could put their finger on the exact death toll the rabid drive to capture the steel plant
cost the Russian army.
However, if Azov hadn’t drawn that disproportionate attention and if their fierce resistance hadn’t forced
the engagement of so many Russian troops, the war could’ve taken a very different course.
When the Ukrainian military, including Azov, vacated the steel factory and surrendered,
it was the fall of Berlin 2.0 for the Russian authorities. Victory Day, hurrah!
They were gung-ho about milking that “victory” as best they could.
They even began to set up purpose-built cages at the Mariupol Philharmonic for a show trial intended
for the Azov leaders.
They must’ve been planning on airing a full-fledged live reality TV show with a death sentence
issued in the final episode. That it never came to fruition is a big achievement for the human species.
The rumored intentions of swapping the Azov leaders for Viktor Medvedchuk were flatly denied at first.
How come? One just can’t release the worst Nazis the world has ever seen and exchange them
for a shady Ukrainian oligarch whose sole publicly known achievement was
that Putin was allegedly the godfather of his kids.
Then, the swap just happened.
The pro-war blogosphere was left furious as they read the news of captured Azov fighters eating steak
and tiramisu on board a private jet headed to Turkey.
What did the whole episode look like to the loyal audience?
That’s simple. They were grinding it out and lost thousands of soldiers in combat, only for the oligarchs
to sort it all out for a tidy packet.
The Russian soldiers are dead, the Azov leaders boarded a private jet whizzed off,
and a sketchy punk named Medvedchuk is now being fed gourmet meals in a suburban villa.
Putin didn’t just screw his army — he swapped their lives for nada.
Relying on the government in your pro-war stance is akin to a swamp walk where the seemingly safe spot
in the narrative may suddenly get soggy and submerge.
Let’s say there’s no point in trying to match Putin’s logic.
But let’s assume that the end justifies the means when it comes to war.
There’s no need to listen to the official narrative that’s oh so prone to hairpin turns.
Assume that this is his idea of red herrings.
That’s the villain’s logic with a special twist to it.
Like, we aren’t fighting the Nazis, we don’t seek to capture certain provinces,
and we don’t want to enslave Ukrainians.
We’re fighting just because we can. We’re a bunch of tough guys armed to the teeth.
We’re doing whatever we please, and the rest of the world is supposed to put up with it
and keep voicing their concern.
We’re powerful just because we can wreak havoc on an entire nation and get away scot-free.
This logic is airtight as long as it doesn’t consider the situation on the ground.
Yeah, we may have fled Kherson, but we’ll blow your power grid to smithereens tomorrow.
Yeah, we may have swapped the Azov leaders, but we’ll mow down another 100 for each one of those.
No higher considerations whatsoever.
We’re just going on a murderous rampage, spreading terror and violence because we’re tough,
and nobody will ever make us face the music.
Suddenly, the “friendly” Erdogan appears to have clean forgotten about his deal with Putin.
He’s no longer overseeing the Azov leader until the war is over.
They’re getting back home and are adamant about rejoining the battle.
Meanwhile, the Russian side doesn’t offer any serious response, except whining and mumbling.
It’s this kind of a rogue state’s response that undermines the entire concept of merry murderoursness.
What kind of a cannibal is he?
What kind of a mighty emperor is Vladimir Putin who can’t stop moaning for almost a year and a half now?
Everyone’s out to bamboozle him and rip him off. And he can’t do anything about it.
NATO vowed not to pursue eastward expansion, they swore to God they wouldn’t, but they did.
In one year, Prigozhin was paid the money worth two annual budgets of a large city.
And yet, he rebelled. Erdogan promised to keep the Azov commanders in Turkey until the war was over.
Zelenskyy showed up and flew them back home.
What kind of a strongman leader is he if everyone bosses him around and bullies him like
in a rough middle school scenario?
The bullies stole his lunchbox, the hoodlums swiped his phone,
and someone else threw his backpack out the window.
Everyone’s bugging him, hoodwinking him, and selling him down the river.
The mishap warmongers are getting used to the fact that their leader is insulted on a weekly basis.
Crucially, he’s powerless to fight back.
It turns out they can’t afford a carefree armed walk in the park, and they aren’t that mighty, after all.
On the contrary, their counterparts are doing whatever they please, like supplying Ukraine
with all kinds of weapons, breaking their promises, or subpoenaing the head of state.
The Russian leaders will only offer a public complaint and get over it until text time.
TURNCOATS IN ACTION
On the one hand, no clear goals and objectives, vague aspirations,
and no ideology isn’t a bug but a feature of Putin’s system.
Unless there’s a clear-cut idea of what victory should look like, you can declare every move as a victory,
including a retreat to the Russian Far East.
You can spend eight months and 10s of thousands of soldiers capturing a small city of Bakhmut,
one dead soldier for every 19 inches forward, and spend a further eternity celebrating it.
But once the battle’s decorated protagonist emerges to be a mean traitor, you can dismiss
the Bakhmut win as something trivial and unwarranted.
You can vow to go Old Testament on Prigozhin who hoodwinked everyone in a storm
and call his act a mutiny, the worst crime imaginable during the war.
But then, you strike a deal with him and turn a blind eye to the pilots killed in the mutiny.
All this can be undertaken in 12 hours, mind you.
A lack of any foundation, fundamental values, or ideological concepts gives you tremendous wiggle room.
You can make any move you deem fit.
There’s nothing abnormal in this reality since there’s no norm, to begin with.
There can be no contradiction. If tomorrow, Putin shows up in Kyiv and signs a surrender act,
including the liberation of the occupied provinces, this move will fit their reality ever so handsomely.
It has no boundaries, and, therefore, this unlimited space can fit just about anything.
That’s precisely the foundation Putin’s regime has been predicated on for almost a quarter of a century
and will be until its demise. Nothing is what it seems to be.
There’s no truth. There’s only the right narrative as of this hour. By lunchtime, it will have flipped.
Beware of taking something at face value. Amnesia appears to be the highest civil feat in Putin’s Russia.
But it’s this property of the system that makes the lives of pro-atrocity frontrunners a never-ending
and humiliating nightmare. The government has them balancing on the fence.
As soon as they clutch onto the stick it’s offering them, it instantly pulls it away.
If you’re dumb enough to believe this hogwash, if you aren’t a career propagandist,
and if you aren’t a cynical jerk, either, you’ve got no other option but to be a sitting duck.
Everything you were rooting for so vehemently in the morning ceases to be the official truth by nightfall.
And at that time, you’re expected to be cheering for a new take on the same events,
only to disown it the next morning.
But that’s not it. It’s the supporters of the war who’re facing the overwhelming odds of ending
up on the battlefield. The pro-war bloggers are now hot targets for intelligence agencies.
While all prominent liberal public figures either have left the country or are slaloming their way
around the new laws, the shrill and endless pro-war whining will easily fit the casefiles
once these whiners are charged with spreading libel, discrediting the army,
and engaging in extremist activities.
The government can do whatever floats its boat when it comes to handling its supporters.
It can jail or kill them since they are powerless. Most of them won’t be able to flee.
We’ve already talked about it. It may seem like opposing the war and swearing by liberal values
is the worst predicament you can find yourself in these days.
But here’s the catch. It’s not only a morally justifiable and unwavering stance, but also the safest one.
After all, no one can feel completely safe. But our side realizes these threats and knows how to handle them.
These threats won’t come as a surprise to you.
If some of your friends or family members support this war, perhaps it’s time you took it up with them.
Be prepared that they won’t change their minds right away.
But the timing is just right for them to become doubtful.
See you tomorrow!