The Warrant for the Tsar & Its Psychological Context
Calmness As a Strength of Ukrainian People
After the thirteen months of the Mean War, the sides are somewhat settled emotionally, for better or worse. In comparison, this process of emotional settlement of the both sides looks more and more contrast, more and more graphic. And totally surreal, at the side of the aggressor.
Our Ukrainian relatives and friends who are there, demonstrate not only resilience, will, and remarkable control being under the fire and mortal danger round o’clock, but also incredible calmness. And not only them, those various dear people whom we know personally. The factor of the Ukrainians’ calmness at the prolonged period of attacks, ongoing brutal aggression, total destruction, and crazy evil-in-action against them is one of the specific lessons of this war, to me personally.
I did admire it from the very beginning of the war, and I learned to respect it more and more as the Mean War with all its horrors and crimes unfolded for over a year. We all can see the calmness, self-control, composure of President Zelensky, his team, Ukrainian skillful and motivated military, from its high command down to the soldiers who hold on in the trenches for so long and so successfully. The same is seen among Ukrainian teachers, doctors, spiritual leaders, the general public, just anyone.
“We will prevail, we will win, everything will be well” – this we hear in literally every conversation with our Ukrainian friends, all this time, all thirteen months of the war.
This incredible calmness and self-composure at all levels and in all groups of Ukrainian society shows most convincingly how people, society and nation which is justified in its stand behave. And what a justified behaviour and attitude means, really. It means conviction from which this remarkable calmness originates. This calmness is both a crucible and a showcase of the Ukrainians strength. They will prevail. They know it. And many of us know it, too.
‘ There is no such a thing as fairness’ : Russian society
And their antipodes? What’s going on in Russia, in the sphere of a social life there, is also telling. Very much so.
This is a first-hand sketch , by an acquaintance, from a recent birthday celebration in Moscow at which twenty something upper-middle class people gathered, all in the age between 45-55 years old. ‘All successful, almost all having their own business, not cannibals, educated, active people. What they were discussing at this birthday gathering of friends? Sport, Oscars, concerts, back and again. Nothing more. Not a word. By anyone. When I tried to bring into the conversation a matter of what a terrible situation we are living through, I was hushed in a second. Arrest of a teenage girl for anti-war drawing? Well, it is sad, of course, but it is rather an exclusion than practice, isn’t it? What are we doing to a neighbouring country? Well, it is all America’s fault, isn’t it? And in general: there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-fairness-a-priori’.
My acquaintance talked about that recent birthday party which affected her deeply, at length. But after hearing the sentence rounded by ‘a priori’, I did not need to hear any more of it. The sentence sounded like the sentence, to me. This is this kind of society, and this kind of society currently lives and functions in this kind of completely immoral and humanity uprooted condition. Not all of them, clearly. But there are too many of them. And this is not even a large part which is zombied by the hysterical Russian TV. This is what is known there as ‘a better part’. Oh well.
It is possible in this society that a person travels in a subway, and at one of the stops, police enters the train and arrests him violently. Why? Because another man travelling in the same train noticed what kind of pictures the arrested one had in his phone, and signalled police from his own phone immediately. Was interested to see what is in the other person’s phone, and was motivated to knock on the police. The young man with ‘a wrong pictures’ in his phone now is arrested for two weeks. And it is only the beginning of his troubles in that country where there is ‘no-such-thing-as fairness’.
It is possible in this society that they have opened a criminal investigation into the art of the 77-year old honourable citizen of Milan Elena Osipova from St Petersburg, trying to find criminally punishable content in her paintings and to put this great woman behind the bars.
It is possible in the society where the younger generation of their prosecutors have no clue of ‘what kind of case that Nuremberg trial was about?’, as one of them just a couple of days ago asked his superior in the presence of my totally puzzled acquaintance who told the story to his friends.
The list of current Russian absurdities is not just long, it is endless. They are reaching abysmal heights, re-phrasing the title of the one of the most revealing anti-Soviet books, because many of them, those who are capable of mind activities, know perfectly well, deep down as it is for many, that their country practising military crimes and crimes against humanity for the last thirteen months and counting, and that such society has no solid ground under its feet – exactly as the brain-capable part of the society felt in the Nazi Germany after 1942, keeping it to themselves at the time and for a while.
The Warrant for the Tsar – and Repercussions for the country
But then, one early spring afternoon, they all got a surprise. On March 17th, 2023, exactly a year prior the next presidential election in Russia, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued – and published, uncharacteristically – the warrant for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin born October 17, 1952, and the Kremlin children’s ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova responsible for illegal detain and forced replacement of thousands of the Ukrainian children. Sixteen thousands as I mentioned in my previous essay on the matter.
The president of the Russian Federation and his high-ranking employee are wanted for the documented crimes against humanity – which has no statute of limitation.
Since day one of the Mean War, I knew and realised that the legal aspect of it should become the focus of the international community as the top priority. The history of the post- Second World War period, in which up to 90% of the Nazis were not punished or held responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich in any way, is still booming as one of the largest injustices in the history of humankind. More recently, international legal handling of all regional conflicts – in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, and any other – cries out for the conscious, timely and serious improvement of this vital aspect of world development. Functioning justice in international conflicts is the measure of international society’s self-respect. Not to speak about not just a conflict, with both parties guilty and involved, but an outcry of unprovoked aggression carried on with daily atrocities of the worst kind.
In their expected defiance, the Kremlin officials and those who are still close to the boss ( it would not be for long, as history teaches us) declared that as Russia is not part of the Rome Statute , along with many countries, including such heavyweights as the US and China, the warrant and anything ICC related is irrelevant for them. Saying it, they all felt short. No hysteria on their imbecile TV, no further comments. Instead, the boss started to demonstrate hyper-activities travelling to Crimea, and having all his cheap arrogance to visit razed to the ground Mariupol to play a godfather there. Only, he was limзing far more than usual, and his face was dark. Only the Tsar’s press attache was not his cold himself, but seemingly very nervous while commenting on the warrant. They mis-estimated. They were assured by their domestic legal advisers that the head of the state enjoys full immunity in international affairs.
So, people in the society where ‘there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-fairness’ woke to the new reality after their pathetic Tsar was publicly declared a wanted criminal-suspect, with international warrant for his arrest effective in 123 countries, including all Europe, the UK, the large part of Latin America, and half of Africa. They are now living in the state whose head is indicted by the International Criminal Court.
They wanted to make Ukraine a pariah? Now they would know the real feeling and following circumstances of what being declared and recognised officially by the international community as pariah means.
There are several mile-stones which their current Tsar and his Mean War inflicted upon that huge country and its people, with this unprecedented ICC warrant which, as the crimes for which it was issued, has no statute of limitation. Never before in the history of Russia, from its official beginning in 862, its leader was wanted by international criminal court, nor was he indicted by a legal instrument of an international community. Not Ivan the Terrible, not Josef the Butcher Stalin, but this one, unremarkable as he was until he did not start the Mean War, got there, among quite telling company.
When a leader is indicted, it casts a shadow at his country as such, per se, inevitably and objectively. And now people in Russia are living in the country led by the indicted suspect in crimes against humanity. This is the qualified change in how this country and its society, due to the policies and applied practices of its leadership is rated and perceived by the world since now on, on the record. Even if they would like it, they cannot do anything about it. And it is what oppresses them now heavily, with a good reason.
There are also some other telling records set by the ICC warrant for Putin and his children’s ombudswoman. They have a dubious ‘honour’ to be the first Europeans among 50 indicted by the ICC ( Milosevich, Mladic and Karadzic were tried by the UN Special Tribunal on Yugoslavia which is a different legal entity from the ICC) . He is also the first head of a state among not only Europeans, but also Westerners and all others but Africans, so far, who deserved the warrant for the crimes against humanity. He is also the first acting head of the European ( geographically, at least, in a half-way) state who was indicted.
The ICC in the Hague, International Criminal Court , has existed since 2002. During those twenty years, it has indicted 50 high-ranking personalities, with 30 of them tried. Among the rest twenty, six of those indicted are in the process of legal proceedings currently, with fourteen, including Putin and Belova-Lvova, having an official status in the ICC data-base as fugitive. Nice western movie though.
Among those fifty indicted, the current acting president of Russia and his children’s ombudswoman are only Europeans. The rest are from predominantly African and some Asian countries.
Apart from Vladimir Vladimirovich, the ICC records listed three more heads of state who were indicted by the Hague court: Muammar Qaddaffi, Sudanese butcher Omar Al Bashir, and Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo. The later one was, actually, acquitted by the court in Hague, after being detained there for years. Gaddafi met his horrific death on a raged street of Tripoli just four months after he was indicted by the ICC. Sudanese butcher, with whom president of Russia actually met, ceremonially and cordially, in the Kremlin during the Al Bashir’s state visit to Russia as recently as in July 2018 , is serving now his short-term two years sentence at home, after which he will be extradited to the Hague for the trial there soon.
So, instead of Palais Elysee, or at least his best pal Silvio’s house in Sardinia, from now on and for good, the Tsar faces quite limited itineraries, and clearly defined company. And personality-wise, he, being indefinitely far from a Napoleon-type, to be able to bear and withstand an exile, also metaphorical one, in a more or less decent way, would reach Kim Jong Un’s type of life with a cosmic speed.
But this timely and fully deserved ICC warrant is not only about Russia’s leader. It is about the state which has started unprovoked brutal aggression. It is about its military which conducts the Mean War with endless military crimes for over a year daily. It is about all those hideous crimes against humanity which are fully provable as at the ICC, as at any other court. It is about its legislation which certifies occupied territories of a neighbouring country and issues plenty of Stalin-like laws and regulations supporting the Mean War in all its aspects. It is about official Russian media which are fuelling lies, enforcing hatred and inciting the war and aggression daily and round o’clock. It is about the officialdom, the government, and many of its institutions who all help the Mean War happen.
And, indirectly, but still, de-facto, it is about Russian current society, the larger part of it which either support the maniac and inhuman ideas willingly, or blindly, it does not matter in the context of such war, actually, and that other part which having rather normal potentials, including their mental abilities and certain financial independence, to live decently, preferred to live in what great American playwright Tennesee Williams called as ‘The Glass Menagerie” – in the artificial by making and concluded from their free choice, world in which there is no such thing as a fairness exist.
Maybe, it does not – for them.
But now, with the indictment of the Russian acting Tsar who started the Mean War by the International Criminal Court, it was certified for them that behind their totally corrupt wall of hatred, self-imposed arrogance, and inhumanity, there is fairness in the normal albeit not perfect world. The world which treats them now as they deserve, with making a point, in the warrant for their acting leader, of what we think he really is.
One of my Ukrainian acquaintances has mentioned recently, in this signatory Ukrainian calmness: “As it happened, our Russian neighbours did not even hate us – they just came here to destroy our cities, to kill us, to kidnap our children, as doing their regular work. We did not hate anyone, we did not attack anyone. We did not wish any ill to anyone. And then they came, the neighbours. And you know what? Ukraine does not even hate them anymore. Hatred is too powerful an emotion. We did pass that stage already. What we experience towards them is disgust and despise’.
With this record, all those in Russia who are mongering the Mean War, will be stamped and go down in history. With completely reserved reasons for that.
And I do not think that they would be happy about their boss who, with his and his clique’s trade-marked baseless arrogance and pathetic incompetence, did lead them all into that new role of Russia in the world. Russia’s long history of its moody society manipulated, due to varying circumstances, with astonishing easiness has quite illustrious proof of it.
March 19, 2023
(C) Inna Rogatchi