*Peter the Great and P the Small
During this, the week 16th of the Mean War, the Kremlin boss has decided to make a coming out from his imperial closet with rather daring self-comparison with Peter the Great as a reasoning for his current war against Ukraine.
His coming out sent some shockwaves across the spectrum, both inside and outside his country, because of his emphasis on the ‘we-are-not-seizing, we-are-returning’ line stamping his & his team policy of the XXI century restoration. Ugly restoration, as it will be known. Restorations are always defined by the individuals involved, their visions, aims, capacities, and abilities. There is Peter the Great and there is P the Small.
The shock-waves aroused by the Russia’s leader’s speech during the week 16th of the war are rather surprising as he did not tell anything new. He just confirmed his and his government’s intentions which were the same for 22 years, as it happened, from the time of placing him on the Russian throne by tragically self-centred and catastrophically useless strategists who fell spectacularly in all directions, including their own lives. Mr P was happy to use the sample of Peter the Great, indisputable in his eyes, for a very happy public proclamation of his intentions. And he does not give a damn about any shock-waves. He rather likes it.
It reminds him of a golden past in which the outside world was nervous and frightened of the USSR, and the inside world knew its place and was quiet. They do not need anybody’s love. They thrive on everybody’s fear. This is the essential psychological characteristic of the country in which Small P and his team were formed, and which collapse he genuinely regards as the biggest tragedy in his generation’s lives, as he memorably was good enough to be open about before.
For some people from that country, the biggest tragedy of that generation’s lives was the Chernobyl disaster of the huge nuclear plant building project of which did not have a contingency plan in the case of a malfunction of a nuclear reactor, believe or not. When I learned about it from the Eltsyn-period chairman of Russia’s state Ecology Security Council, great man and brilliant scientist Academician Alexey Jablokov, I saw, for once again, the very essence of that country which Small P laments about, crystal clearly. It is called mental cannibalism towards one’s own population. And it is exactly what the USSR was about, from the Red Terror, through Gulag, inhuman persecutions of the dissidents, and dwarfing people , an individual, per design, all 74 years of its existence. And the other populations? Either arranged marriages, Pakistani style, or military muscle contractions threatening towards those who were regarded as enemies. Easy life it actually was for the Soviet leaders, in that ours – not ours world.
The Soviet Union did not appear on an empty ground. It appeared as a merciless exercise of the French revolution on a vast territory of the Russian Empire. Imperial mentality, including its communist and post-communist forms, inherited in generations, is not some threat of a character which disappears because of sanctions. Those people who are forming policy in the Kremlin genuinely perceive Ukraine as part of their empire, absolutely real in their world-view. They intend to fix it, whatever it takes. To think otherwise is a bad mistake.
And they are actually encouraged by the Western and the world’s fractured reaction to their ongoing effort of this ugly restoration. They are happy about Latin America, large countries which do not feel the pain of Ukraine and Europe, but do know how to be friendly with a large and weaponised energy supplier. They are happy with the Middle East and Africa, for the same reason. They are thriving on very well known to them weaknesses, some of them objective, of the US Administration. They are relaxed while their special sparring-partner Turkey does work for their interests within NATO. They are yet more relaxed having Hungary being so useful for them within the EU, and Serbia being ever-loyal outside the EU but still in the centre of Europe. This is not to mention their serenity because of German, French and partially Italian sitting on both chairs-mode of political management, due to all different reasons, but with the same encouraging for Russia result. Plus almost $ 100 billion in their cash-register during only three months of the Mean War as a payment for energy products. What sanctions? It is a joke.
Plus, there is a devastating military superiority if not in the quality of soldiers and their commanders, but in pure maths of weapons and quantities. According to the British military experts, Russia has 10-15 higher numbers of soldiers in comparison with Ukraine, 20 times higher number of heavy weapons, and 40 times higher number of ammunition. In front of our eyes, Ukraine, being attacked unprovokedly, is losing their defenders in very large quantities, daily. This ugly restoration of the phantom of the Russian empire in the XXI century is a devastating Mean war in every sense for Ukraine.
And against this background, Pope Francis who cheered the Kremlin again during the Week 16 of the war by his statement confirming his forthcoming meeting in September with the patriarch Kirill, the staunch supporter of the P’s restoration, has the nerve to declare that ‘there are no bad guys and good guys’ in this war. Excuse me?
Anybody wonders why Small P is in such a sustainably cheerful mood from the week 16 of the war onward? He would be happy to explain: it all because of Peter the Great, you know. Who would dare to disagree with such mighty argumentation?
- In the Russian Duma’s Working Diary: forthcoming denunciation of Russia’s recognition of sovereignty of Estonia and Latvia, plus fixing ‘an illegal Ukraine’s leaving the USSR’
And that’s why, in the progressing Ugly Restoration process, the same Russian Duma MP who was delegated to made the trick the previous week of introducing the bill of denunciation of Russia’s recognition of independence of Lithuania back in 1991, now, during the Week 16, went further on: he shared with us their plans ‘to work out the scheme’ ( on Lithuania, as there is an emergency due to Kaliningrad, as he mentioned) , and then to proceed with the same ‘mechanism of denunciation of recognition of independence of Estonia and Latvia, as well as recognition of Ukraine’s illegal leave of the USSR’. After three and a half months of Mean War, they are feeling confident enough now to declare their aims openly. NATO? NATO who? Turkey’s playground?
- Pope and Patriarch to meet up in Kazakhstan
So, Small P is all smiles. His throne stands on the energy-billions, his clerks are preparing, in a full speed, juridical finalising of annexation of the largest region of Ukraine, Kherson region, as a part of new Russia’s Southern Region, along with other seized territories of Ukraine, in what is planned as a new subject of Russian state, and the head of his church which is traditionally extremely close to the state and its apparatus, is about to have a high-profile brotherly meeting with a Pope in Kazakhstan, the country which he has quite successfully and briskly subdued just before he started the Mean War. The unprecedented meeting between the Pope Francis and patriarch Kirill in Kazakhstan in September was reportedly discussed by Mr P with recently ousted long-time Kazakh leader Mr Nazarbayev who flew to Moscow to discuss a couple of delicate things with the current substitute of Peter the Great in the Kremlin.
* News of the week: damping the corpses in Mariupol
Against the background of progressing Ugly Restoration, there is the news of the week, the 16th Week of the Mean War: according to the Ukraine officials, the Russians soldiers and those dispatched to clean out the rubbled streets of Mariupol, are proceeding with typical sickening efficiency: they are throwing the rubble by excavators throwing alongside all and every corpses which are still in abundance under the bombed houses all over Mariupol. This rubble filled with human remnants in a massive quantity indiscriminately thrown away by ‘the liberators’ and those brought in to clean destroyed Mariupol.
Just one fact tells everything about this country, their attitude to life, to people, to the normal moral values. It screams it out, smiles Small P during his public escapades or not. It is the same mental cannibalism which was there, at least in our memory. This is the country which conducts an Ugly Restoration today. And we all should realise whom we are facing and whom we are dealing with. Whom we ‘should not humiliate’ in palpable fears of Mess Macron. To whom we ‘should find a proper place in the world’ in the stunning cynicism of 99-year old champion of cynicism Mr Kissinger, even by his own standards. And, yes, I hope that in September, in sunny Kazakhstan, at least some of Italian journalists from the Pope’s pool would be humane enough to ask him about ‘good and bad guys’ having in hand a large print of the photograph from the street of Mariupol today on which Russian excavator throws away a human remnants, as a part of a demolished street rubble. I’m waiting for the Pope’s answer to that. He is supposed to be an authority on Good and Evil, no?