The mystification of war. What Putin is putting in your brain
The Kremlin's manipulations about the causes and consequences of Russia's war against Ukraine influence political decisions and voter sentiment in Ukraine's partner countries
Russia is waging an active hybrid war against the West. In Cologne, Germany, or Des Moines, USA, are you perhaps feeling tired of Russia's war against Ukraine? Are you tired of it all and feel that it is necessary to stop this horror and waste of money under any conditions? Even at the cost of the disappearance from the world map of the largest state in Europe, which is Ukraine? Do you feel that energy prices are going up and your governments are spending too much money to support Ukraine? I understand your feelings. I even share your concern. After all, all these billions should be spent on improving the lives of people in your countries. But to solve this problem, we need to go back to understanding its causes. The problem is not that Ukraine is fighting for its life. The problem is that Russia started this war and is trying to destroy Ukraine and its citizens and create an anti-Western foothold against NATO countries. Russian propaganda infects the brains of millions of people with the idea that if we stop helping Ukraine, everything will be fine again and everyone will be happy. A prominent exponent of this concept of "ending the war" is Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, who is systematically working to ensure that Western countries leave Ukraine in trouble and agree to the Russian scenario. This scenario, in fact, envisages the occupation of Ukraine, the seizure of all its assets and resources, including nuclear power plants and a powerful agricultural sector. At the same time, no one considers how much Russia will become stronger after such seizures and how this will affect the balance of power between civilizations. The long-term consequences of such a redivision of the world seem to be of no interest to the proponents of the idea of the capitulation of Ukraine, deprived of Western aid. Perhaps Orban himself lives under the illusion that Putin will remember the good that Hungarian officials do for the Kremlin regime. And he will not touch this small European country. Just as Hitler did not touch small Switzerland in his time. And the Russian armored columns will go west, deep into Europe, bypassing a happy, prosperous, and peaceful Hungary.
In all this illusion, there is a fundamental error that makes such a belief system unsustainable. A mistake that, unfortunately, is being actively planted in the minds of millions of people. They are being indoctrinated in various ways with the idea that the cause of their troubles is Ukraine's resistance to the invaders. Europeans who have forgotten the horrors of war may think that the only price for peace is the replacement of Ukrainian flags with Russian ones. In such a picture of the world, it is difficult to imagine the real consequences of the occupation – mass terror, repression, and ditches with shot bodies that will be bulldozed. As the Russians did in captured Bucha or Mariupol. But these are Ukrainians' problems, aren't they? The worldview error in this "peace plan" is obvious. The reason for the deterioration of living standards in many countries, rising prices, and spending money to support Ukraine is not because Ukrainians are defending themselves. It is because Russia has unleashed a large-scale war in Europe for the first time since World War II. The goal of this war is to destroy Ukrainian statehood, seize Ukraine's resources and assets to strengthen Russia, destroy the modern security system, cement the anti-Western alliance of autocracies, and methodically destroy the Western world by marginalizing and "orbanizing" its internal processes.
Historical experience
During the Second World War, few people thought of calling on Britain or the Soviet Union to simply lay down their arms and thus stop the suffering of people. And the United States supported both Britain and, in fact, the hostile Stalinist regime in the USSR. The lend-lease to the Soviet empire was in full swing, Soviet soldiers received American weapons, Soviet pilots shot down Messerschmitts with American Aerocobras, and the population of the Soviet empire received American products. My grandmother used to say that without American rations-a set of food in metal cans-there would have been famine even in the always wealthy Kyiv. What would have happened to the world if it had accepted the terms of the Third Reich and surrendered in the name of an illusory "peace"?
The nuclear factor
However, it would be unfair not to mention the differences between these wars. One is nuclear weapons. Russia has transformed from a "guarantor" of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity – according to the Budapest Memorandum – into an aggressor country that is trying to take the whole world hostage with its nuclear blackmail and threats. The Russian regime's mouthpieces, such as propagandist Dmitry Kisilov, periodically scare America that they can turn it into a "nuclear ash heap." Nuclear weapons are exactly what Ukraine, demonstrating its will to peaceful coexistence, has given up. Hoping for the already mentioned security guarantees. Of course, to hell with them, with strategic missiles controlled from Moscow. Ukrainians were not going to fire them at distant America even in their nightmares. But Ukraine also gave up tactical nuclear weapons, and even non-nuclear cruise missiles, along with carriers that could have been a deterrent. I believe that Russia's war against Ukraine has put an end to attempts to demilitarize humanity. Because Ukraine was unilaterally disarmed. And this is not a formula for peace.
And the world will remember this precedent for a long time. But for today, what's done is done, and now it's just emotions. Let's try to be pragmatic. Do you think the world and Europe will become safer if Russia takes possession of Ukrainian territory, a powerful agricultural sector, and a captive population as slaves and cannon fodder for a war with the West? If Russia seizes all Ukrainian nuclear power plants and nuclear facilities? How many factories for the production of weapons, drones and missiles, which are already flying into the airspace of NATO countries, will Russia produce with this increased energy resource? And how close will the Russian Iskanders, Daggers and modernized X-101s, which are now being used by the Russians to hit children's hospitals in Ukraine, be to European capitals (the oncology ward of the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv was hit by an X-101 missile with an 800-kilogram warhead)?
Of course, politicians like Viktor Orban can always reassure you that "Putin will go no further." They say he will take what he considers his own and stop. Many of the Russian dictator's statements show that he does not recognize the existence of Ukrainians as a people in principle, Putin speaks of one nation, the Russians. But Viktor Orban's conditional "peace formula" is only an assumption of the part of the Western political elite that is under the influence of the illusion created by the Kremlin. Do you want to check whether it really works?
To see if Putin has forgotten his own ultimatum to NATO countries demanding that they return to the 1997 borders? And put his own life and health on the line? Then this is not politics. This is a game of Russian roulette. And in this game, even those who are now, objectively, helping Putin in his war against Ukraine may suffer. I think that if Russian tanks follow the usual route and stand on the streets of, say, Budapest (which has already happened in recent history), even Orban will suffer. The Russians will simply not need him. Because the Russian army will bring its own Babrak Karmal in an armored car. Or Denis Pushilin (the head of the occupation administration appointed by the Kremlin). And they will do to Orban what a special forces unit sent from Moscow once did to the then president of Afghanistan, Amin. He also tried to flirt with the Kremlin. It did not work. The empire does not change its narratives or its modus operandi.
I hope that the citizens of the free world will think about the fact that the problem of the current world is not that Ukraine has not surrendered and is resisting. The problem is that Russia has started a war. It is much easier to make decisions based on this obvious fact, but distorted by Russian propaganda. Both at the level of states and at the level of one's own personal readiness to resist the aggressor even thousands of miles away from the actual battlefield.
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