One year and one hundred and twenty-eight days of war have passed. After many words spoken today by the speakers of both opposing armies, the ISW maps have shown no change from the situation as of last night.
No change on the left bank of the Dnipro, opposite Kherson and near the Antonovsky bridge (the AFU bridgehead is alive), no change near Bakhmut, and nothing has changed at all.
But this is what excited me today. Let me start from afar. Putin’s propaganda is done very, very professionally. Huge amounts of money are invested in it, the most talented and creative specialists are hired, etc. And that, of course, pays off.
After all, what is the most effective propaganda? It is when a person does not feel it. When he thinks that he has come to this by himself. When he thinks that the way he thinks is the way all normal people think. That what he thinks is a platitude and an obvious truth, which there is no point in even discussing, it’s so commonplace.
For example, what do people think about the 1990s? What is the first thing that comes to mind of a modern person when it comes to the 90’s? What comes to mind is “the collapse of the great country”, the corruption of the authorities, predatory privatization, fraudulent bail auctions, the all-powerful oligarchs, rampant banditry, and the miserable, deceived, and destitute people.
In the meantime, the image of the 90s did not appear all at once. Putin’s propaganda created it one by one. Among other things, it was created by honest but stupid journalists, who would have been insulted if they had been told that they were part of Putin’s propaganda machine.
And yet they are! And it is not at all necessary to make them twist their souls for money. They could quite sincerely write both good and bad things. But their clever editors printed only the bad, and left the good “for later”.
Or, for example, oligarch X comes to the Kremlin and asks for something. And they say to him: do you think the elections of 1996 were fair or were they rigged by Yeltsin and actually won by Zyuganov? The oligarch is no fool. He quickly figures out what’s what, and runs to give an interview saying that the elections were rigged.
And then honest, but stupid journalists would pick up the thread and write: the conspiracy of silence has collapsed! Revelations from an insider! Oligarch X, who was in the middle of things, has finally admitted that the 1996 elections were fraudulent. Stop lying! You can’t hide the truth!
A similar story is going on with another myth. The myth of the “disintegration of Russia”. Putin’s propaganda has been driving around our brains for twenty years, telling us that Russia was about to collapse in the 1990s, but Putin came along and with an iron hand brought order and prevented the collapse of Russia, following the scenario of the collapse of the USSR.
And even the honest Chubais, despite himself, lied that at the end of the 90s the country was about to collapse, but God sent us Putin and we moved away from the edge of the abyss. And if Chubais bent over like that, what can we say about the rest of us? Especially the honest and foolish journalists, most of whom were children at the time and knew nothing but what they themselves had read in the Kremlin-pleasing books?
And who cares about the truth now? And meanwhile, the truth is that the only real example of separatism was Dudayev’s Ichkeria (a pity they didn’t let him go, by the way), but all the other rossels, the nozdratenkos and even the shaimievs and rakhimovs were no more than show-offs, designed to get as much power and money as possible out of Yeltsin. No one was really going to secede, and in reality they couldn’t.
But the myth of the “disintegration of Russia” is so enduring that even Putin’s fierce opponents consider it an axiom. And the first thing they start discussing is the collapse of Russia right after the fall of Putin’s regime. But as soon as you ask them to draw at least a scenario, they immediately get off to a brisk start with Chechnya, and then there is a pause and some helpless verbiage begins…
And all of this is the result of the brilliant work of Putin’s propaganda. After all, none of the adherents of the “disintegration of Russia” myth will ever admit that they are simply repeating the mantras that Putin’s brainwashing specialists have drummed into their subconscious.
They are sure that they has reached this point on them own, and that these things are, in fact, obvious.
And it has become such an axiom that even Western experts are saying (along with our eggheads): Putin’s regime is a monstrous tyranny, but there is no alternative. Only Putin is the guarantor of Russia’s integrity, and without him, it will fall apart in a second. And when it falls apart, no way out! Nuclear weapons would spread among a dozen independent countries, or even some Islamic terrorists, and then a real nightmare would ensue.
That’s why Putin must definitely be defeated, but somehow not to the end, “halfway through”, so that he is weakened but retains his footing. Yes, of course, it is a pity for the Russian people, we leave them in the clutches of this beast, but what can we do, the “disintegration of Russia” is an even darker prospect.
This concept of “just the tip” victory is translated into the fact that “we must not shell the territory of Russia”, that we must fear some terrible “escalation”, that there are no F-16s, no long-range missiles, tanks are supplied in homeopathic doses, and so on.
And the first exposers of this vile propaganda duck about the “collapse of Russia after Putin” should seem to be the Ukrainians. Because they are the ones interested in the West putting aside their fears and finally giving them enough weapons for a quick and final victory.
And what was my amazement when I read today’s musings of such a giant of thought as the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov. This clot of intellect came up with nothing better than to declare in a telethon: “Russia will be dismantled as it is now… Russia will be “demolished” as a result of military action in Ukraine… We have an analysis of how the regions reacted during the Prigozhin uprising. I can say that based on these analyses we can say what Russia will look like after the collapse… Tatarstan will be separate, Dagestan will be a separate country that has nothing to do with Russia. They are colonies of the Russian Federation”, etc.
Is it possible to think of a bigger present for western supporters of the concept of “just the tip” than revelations of this half-wit? Who authorized him to make such statements? Did he even think for a second in his stupid head why he is saying all this? To what end? Who is his audience? What does he want to accomplish with this kind of statement?
I can easily imagine the conversation in the office of some high-ranking official from the Biden administration: “You can’t let Ukrainians beat Putin. His regime is a guarantee of nuclear non-proliferation. If you give Ukraine what it is asking for, it will defeat Putin, but then there will be a collapse of Russia, and no one will be able to control their nuclear arsenal. How did I get that? Ukrainians themselves say so! Here read: Russia will be dismantled, there will be a collapse, etc. I didn’t make that up, they say it themselves!”.
We need to refute this idiot immediately. He is the enemy of Ukraine and the enemy of the victory over Putin. Whatever he thinks of himself. It would be a shame if such characters would negate all efforts to ensure that the West finally gives Ukraine the weapons it needs to win.
Especially since our cause is right. The enemy will be defeated, and victory will be ours.
Glory to Ukraine!🇺🇦
