REALITY-CHECK AFTER THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THE MEAN WAR
Gist of the Week: Three Months of Resistance & ‘Sister-City’ Mariupol
People are somewhat mesmerised by numbers. And in this historical and organic dependability, number three is one of the staples among the maths world. There are many worthy and interesting explanations to that, but let’s leave it to the more serene times. This week, the thirteen week’s of the Mean War, the main focus for a global public is that it marks the three months since the beginning of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The emotional gist of the focus is an amalgam of surprise and pride. Almost no one in the world expected Ukrainians to resist their brutal neighbour so successfully for so long. Meaning: the world did not know Ukrainians well. The old truism that a war prompts the extremes of good and bad in people proved to be correct in front of our eyes. We saw among Ukrainian people more enforced humanity and courage than we could remember we saw in real life for many decades. And we also saw among their largely barbarian neighbours the degree of savagery which is hardly imaginable. Just think about the documented facts stated by the Ukrainian officials. There are daily documented facts from the zone beyond Hell. With an extra-capital Z.
In their arrogance extraordinaire, Russian authorities are reaching next lows almost daily during the Mean War. We’ve got a flurry of letters and messages from our friends from St Petersburg, or those who were living there and left. All those messages are furious. People have not enough air to breathe upon hearing the news about the decision of the Administration of St Petersburg and its current governor ‘to establish a new sister city for St Petersburg – Mariupol’. Official Russian main-stream media are also mentioned, rather in a servile way, their favourite style, the fact that ‘Mariupol in fact was called Zdanov, for over 40 years, from 1948 to 1989”. In fact. For those who are luckily innocent with regard to Soviet history, Zhdanov was a notorious leader of the Soviet Leningrad who shamed himself by living in a diabolic luxury, on a strong diet of champagne and oranges, while people in the city were sometimes eating each other, due to the disastrous famine through the 900-days-long blockade of the city during WWII. To call the fact that Mariupol was named after that monster until 1989 – implying that it ‘practically is our city’ – is as macabre as the Russian propaganda gets.
But not only that made our friends and us ballistic. So, the receipt is somewhat inventive: first, to prepare a city for its future ‘sisterhood’ status with its Russian counterpart. The best way of doing it is bombing.
A delicate flavour of true ‘sisterhood’ is added by total destruction, intentional famine, annihilation of the civil population in huge-quantities, and erasing a big and blossoming city down to earth.
A special notes of sister-like love are brought by innumerable mass graves for the civil population of the candidate for a sister-city, forced migration, filtration camps, re-education camps, copycatting the Chinese models, and forced relocation of tens of thousands of people from the southern marine city to Siberia and Russian Far East.
A piquant taste is achieved by keeping a three-months harsh inhuman blockade of a resisting force of the side which will be converted into a sisterhood, with total refusal of any medical help to hundreds of severely wounded soldiers. What Geneva Convention? Never heard of it, the same as Stalin never did.
These morons have guts to declare their grab of Mariupol in the disguise of a sister-city scheme under the St Petersburg Administration power. They do not care how it looks and what people, including their own ones, think about it. This is typical of that arrogant clique of mediocres that rules that country.
Honestly, I do not know any other society in the world except the North Korean one and Chinese, perhaps, that would allow their elite to rule the way they are doing it, and to be so massively indifferent about it. When I mentioned it to my husband, his immediate reaction was: “I am not that sure about Chinese, actually”.
Speaking of numbers, one is enough to illustrate the abilities of the Russian ‘liberators’: the consensus among military experts is that the losses of the Russian army during the first three months of the war are comparable with the losses of the Soviet army during their entire campaign in Afghanistan, all nine years of it.
A Fear of the Rotten Fish
This week 13 of the Mean War demonstrated a telling phenomenon which now accelerates among the Russian leadership starting from the top, as usually is the case there. My mom was an expert of Russian folklore, in particular, on its proverbs and saying ( that’s why I am a bit over-resistant to that part of that heritage, having had a bit too much of it in my childhood, the same as with Tchaikovsky). Among those proverbs, there is the well-known one “A fish starts to rot from its head’. I was always curious: how come? It is possible only for a gutted fish, because according to biological processes, a fish rots from its stomach, due to misbehaving intestines.
So, I was facing the dilemma in my childhood on syllogisms of proverbs. My expert mom explained to me that this very proverb, as many, actually, is pan-national and that it is believed to have originated by Plutarch. As a figure of speech, so to say. A metaphor. Later on, after reading the immortal Saltykov-Schedrin who knew his people very well, being all his life a senior official in the Russian Empire, up to a vice-governor, twice, I realised that the Plutarch metaphor in the realities of Russia was quasi-real. It always rots from the top there. Especially if the rot concerns and translates into fear, anxiety, and phobia.
The week 13 of the Mean War demonstrated that Russia’s leadership is getting obsessively nervous with and over Poland. Their ‘love’ for Poland is well-known, both historically and currently. It is known the same well as their obsession with their feelings towards Poland, also both historically and at the present moment. If Poland’s population size were the size of Estonian, it would ease the Russian leadership’s spasms of anxiety. But it is not. If Poland’s history would be reaching the blankness of unpopulated areas of Antarctica, Russian leadership would relax. But it isn’t either. If Polish intellect and guts, accumulated throughout extremely dramatic history, not to mention their wit and finesse, would not exist, Russian leadership might even start to like them, for a bit. But Poles are not lucky to be liked by the Russian leadership to any degree. Very much to the opposite.
There is a known psychological phenomenon of accelerated hatred: when a low-life character succeeds in a mean act, instead of becoming satisfied, he continues to hate the subject of his meanness. For that very Freudian reason, Poland is doomed to be hated by Russia for good. But now, the Russian weak and not that bright leadership did show, inadvertently, many growing signs of their fear, or at least serious, deep concern over Poland and the role of this large and developed country in the war and post-war Ukraine and Europe.
Infamous speaker madame of the Russian Foreign Ministry slightly hysterically stated that president Zelensky would legitimise ‘de-facto capture of Ukraine by Poland’. The next day, the only left friend of Mr P Mr Lukashenka was also uncharacteristically agitated with regard to the current ‘destructive role of that aggressive Poland, you know’ airing their common nervousness in a tet-a-tet meeting. “We are extremely worried about the possibility of capturing Western and other parts of Ukraine ( you-know-by-whom)” – Lukashenka was obviously agitated, echoing the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement a day before. ‘ And in general, the behaviour of ( Polish president) Duda during his recent visit to Ukraine is beyond my grasp, you know”. Mr P knew, nodding solemnly. It was beyond his grasp, too. How come, somebody in a capacity of a president comes to that U-country, still alive and functioning, goes straight to their parliament which dares to conduct a normal working schedule at the time when we are shelling that U-place daily, and be so open about what does he and his country thinks about us. Us! Of course, it is beyond their grasp.
The next day, the character who was keeping the presidential seat for his boss P for one term and who is rewarded for them to be kept in power on whatever meaningless position comrade Medvedev went with open insults against the Polish leadership calling them ‘crazy Polish leaders who who are bargaining ( with their support of Ukraine) in order to get the for the Western ( Ukraine) territories’.
They are very nervous, almost obsessed, on the top of the Russian power pyramid on the Polish factor: the country’s attitude towards the Mean War, the openness of its attitude, the fact that Poland unlikely many European countries including big and mighty ones does not afraid of Russia, not for a bit, the all multi-layered help and support that Poland consistently provides to attacked Ukraine. They are nervous observing a qualified change, with serious and far-reaching consequences in Ukrainian – Polish bilateral relationship. They become hysterical about the practical outcome of this change, special bilateral friendly neighbouring agreement, such measures as mutual coordination and ease of proceeding at the Ukrainian and Polish customs all over the two countries’ borders, and special status for Polish citizens that now Ukraine will implement equalling them in all the rights, statuses, benefits and possibilities with Ukrainian citizens, the gesture of gratitude which the president Zelensky applied by his executive order to the Poles who did and are behave so vitally towards the Ukrainians in that tragedy.
If there is one thing which Russian leadership does not get genuinely in applied politics, it is the nobility. It simply never existed in Russian state policy. So when something noble happens in politics, they instantly start to look at that with suspicion and try to discover ‘a real plot’ behind it. This is exactly what they all from that rotten head down to the rest of the fish’s body are busy with at the moment, with regard to Poland and Ukraine, during and after the war. Given the fact that Lithuania, yet another country which irritates Moscow very much over their stand for Ukraine, firm, loud and consistent, is naturally joining Poland in their all-over active support of Ukraine, power bosses in Moscow plus their sole friend Lukashenka are getting very upset. Especially those of them who have heard some of history, even in their heavily edited version of it. Let them be. They ought their fear in a full measure.
To overcome their fear and anxiety, the Russian state decided to invest 2,6 million euro into the software of the new mass electronic game called Smuta, Polish Turmoil. Until now, there was no electronic game on the period in Russia, and with a very good reason: in the result of the non-stop wars occurred there between them and Poles during the 20 years in the end of the XVI -beginning of the XVII century, with later involvement of Sweden, Russia was defeated a big way, losing a lots of territories including Smolensk and Karelia, and accesses to the Baltic Sea and Finnish Gulf. In general, the state funding of the electronic game industry, and specific games was unprecedented in Russia until now. But it seems that from now on, even electronic games will be working in a controlled ideological way. And of course, it is such a relief, to change the history, even if in the game, and to win over those awful Poles, even back to the events of the XVI century. 2,6 million euros is such a peanut for this pleasure. I have a strong feeling that papa Freud is very close to his next reincarnation, and in this new life, his native language will be Russian.
A Secret to be Zelensky
During the Week 13 of the Mean War, the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky was busy as usual, and a bit more. During just one week, additionally to his round o’clock involvement into the matters of war and his daily video appearances, he conducted the meetings with the chairpersons of the both Houses of the Irish Parliament, prime minister of Portugal, hosted the president of Poland Andrzej Duda on his important state visit, participated in a high-level meeting of the ministers of foreign affairs of the Western countries at the US military base in the German Ramstein, had important appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and also appeared in a long interview along with his wife, the first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenskaya broadcast to mark the third year of his presidentship. Such a program would fit a month-long activity for a robust head of state. But president Zelensky amazes the world with his capacity to work in a superman way. What is his secret?
This man entered politics just three years ago without any political, bureaucratic, administrative experience. For three months now, he is under crushing pressure of devastating reality. He and his family in all generations are in high and present danger around o’clock. He was in an utmost urgent need to to put his hands on many vital for the surviving and functioning of his country matters which were completely alien to him all his previous life, military, security, logistics in mega-scale, international relations on the very top and edge of the world power, all kinds of safety, from food to nuclear, or in a reverse order, not to speak about the ocean of human suffering and a vast subject known as an anatomy of catastrophes. How can a person whose only real pre-existing life experience had to do with show business can get into that all being meticulously and assuredly active daily in superb international information and communication activities? What does it take, and what that 44-year old man possesses that made this amazing transformation into a mature, able and globally respected leader of the nation in war possible?
President Zelensky’s inner strength was noticeable on his first appearance on day one of the Mean War. There is something in this young enough man, the inner vigour of his character that his voters in Ukraine, over 70% of them, were feeling at the intuitive level, but the rest of the world had no idea about. But of course, such ability is not enough to make a person that reliable in a capacity of a president of a large country under merciless attack. So what is that that has made a strong and inspiring leader out of a successful, problems-free actor and producer?
Unlike many other televised appearances of so many that president Zelensky conducts during the last three months, one of them stays apart. It is over an hour long interview with his wife for the Ukrainian people that both Volodymyr and Olena Zelenskies gave during this week 13. In that pre-recorded interview, in the presence of his wife, whom ( and the children, and the parents) he did not see for two and half months, Volodymyr Zelensky behaves in a different way from a statesman during a military emergency. What I saw in that long interview was a good person. Not an actor. A good person. You always know one when you see him. And this was the most important message to me because it concerns everything, and it lasts.
In my view, there are also two other key-components to crack the Zelensky Phenomenon secret: his personal will and his energetic age. At mid-40s, people combine both experience of two decades of an adult life, and capacity of energy in its high potency. This is a blessed age of wise productivity in one’s life. And Ukraine is very lucky to have as its president and his team the capable people of a capable age. Zelensky’s cabinet and the people in his Presidential Office are not only brainy, determined and committed. They are intelligent and shrewd. And most of all, they are normal. Not pompous ignorants which the world is observing in an apoplexy on the other side.
But, in my understanding, the key-factor of the Secret to be Zelensky is the 44-years old president’s will. We all with respect transforming into admiration and care were seeing that David versus Goliath will since the moment when the Mean War started. The presence of will in him was unmistaken despite all the shock he had experienced all of the sudden.
President Zelensky gets really tired sometimes. He also gets emotional, rarely, and he gets sad. He is a normal, well-oriented human being. A good man, most importantly. When a good man gets that inner will, the potency of a will develops. It develops from a theoretically pro-good intentions into determination, devotion, control, composure, intellectual effort, and vision that keeps the performance of a public figure masterly and assured. Assured in his country, assured in his people.
And his people respond to that with respect and trust. I know it hearing many of my Ukrainian friends who are saying emphatically about trust which president Zelensky and his team are enjoying nation-wide.
If the man who attacked president Zelensky’s country in a blindness of his cognitivity ( as it is irrelevant to address either of his heart or brain) somehow manages to get some glimpses of real intelligence from his useless services, he must be genuinely extremely envious of Zelensky the president. And his boiling envy is absolutely mercilessly justified.