Fleetinglife

"The dark crusade had begun. It can only end in the total defeat of one of these factions and in the total victory of all others."

Whip up your Hugo Boss corporatist uniform suits and *skirts boyz *und girlz! It's flashy fashionable fashy American blitz across ze country time! Personally imagined perfect adequate accompanying modernised for contemporary times American-made music genre inspired theme song playing in the back during the preparation of that potential upcoming re-imagined LARP enterprise endeavour:

Np, of course any time. It's one of the better ones I found and dug out earlier regarding the explanation of origin and intertwining of this phenomenona in some countries political and economic contexts and conditions. It's more in depth in it's explanation of the historical and steady generative processes of these phenomenona, imo, than some other articles generated during the Trump years admonishing and explaining the political and economic trends in a more strict and narrow context than this one - often only mostly focusing on the then situative global political, economic and cultural influencer components of the time of it with some added backdrop spice of brief parallels reffering to the historical sourcing, replication and generation of it in certain recent economic trends and conditions in the base bracket - rather than also including a broad swoop analysis informed by both of the whole of the unconscious structural and systemic repetitive generative processes in which they take place and previous parallels situated within historical political economic trends of the past regarding their social incentives decision component behind it.

http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-20702018000300067&script=sci_arttext#fn7 The mafioso state and the fascist state are not mutually exclusive phenomenona and concepts, as per some authors, as historical trends and formations forming in political economies of certain political constellations in certain countries. For example the Frankfurt school Critical Theory thinkers and actual debates about this on universities during the zenith of WWII by cutting edge intellectual and political thinkers of that time regarding this subject actually illustrates the extent of these two phenomenona often intertwining and being almost one and the same: Critical theory and the unfettered capitalism: "In exile since the early 1930s, due to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the Institute of Social Research found itself in the United States in the early 1940s. Since the beginning of his period as its director, Max Horkheimer had sustained that the task of the Institute was to analyze and critique the historical present.... the Institute organized a debate at Columbia University in November and December of 1941, which was attended by Friedrich Pollock, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Arcadius R. L. Gurland and Herbert Marcus. The positions taken up within the Columbia debate can roughly be divided in two major groups. "According to Pollock, the monopoly economy that followed the free market system of the 19th century was gradually transforming into State capitalism, conceived as a fusion of private monopolies and government intervention. In the words of Pollock, State capitalism meant “the transition from a predominantly economic to an essentially political era” (Pollock, 1941a, p. 207). Its central feature was the introduction of the planning principle into the economic process. Pollock argues that the planned economy lessened the risk of economic crises and increased social domination." Neumann, Gurland and Kirchheimer developed their analyses in a closely bound way that deviated from Pollock’s interpretation: "considering National Socialism to be a totalitarian system. Nevertheless, they insisted that it entailed a private monopoly economy, and not a State capitalist regime: even though the State had assumed authoritarian features, it continued to be capitalist. All the basic capitalist drives, such as the profit motive, were at work in Germany and capitalist contradictions were increasing rather than being dealt with. Cartelization and monopolization were not to be seen as a denial of competition, but rather as another form of it. According to these three and to Marcuse, National Socialism facilitated accumulation for big capital and acted as an intensifier of social contradictions" At that time, Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, who did not take part in the debate as lecturers, were starting their collaboration that resulted in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, concluded in 1944. This book can, to a large extent, be seen as a response to the Columbia debate. But shortly before as well as in the years following the 1941 conferences, texts authored by both of them began: "considering the authoritarian changeover in capitalism as representing the system freeing itself of its fetters or inhibitions [Hemmungen]" In his 1939 article, “The Jews and Europe”, Horkheimer approaches Fascism: "as an unfolding of free trade liberal society, as capitalism that has overcome its political constraints and made use of direct forms of control and violence over the ruled. He claims that “the totalitarian order is nothing else than its predecessor that has lost its inhibitions (Horkheimer, [1939] 1988, p. 116). Horkheimer and Adorno argued that: "Nazism was not to be seen as a historical detour but rather as a consequence of capitalist drives. They understand fascism as a form of capitalism extended to its ultimate limits, as a return to practices of violence and oppression at the very roots of this system – a parallel can be made here with Marx’s primitive accumulation. This was followed by an attempt at ‘humanization’ through liberalism and social-democracy." One important element in this interpretation of the unfettering of domination is Horkheimer and Adorno’s sketch of the racket theory. Horkheimer wrote a fragment, likely in the year 1942 (the same year he published his essay “Authoritarian State”), entitled “The rackets and the mind” ([~1940] 1985b), borrowing the term from the urban crime underworld (In American sociology, policy-making and the press of the 1920s, petty organized crime, which flourished in cities like Chicago, was referred to as racket) and applying it for his own interpretative purposes: "In the hands of Horkheimer, rackets refer to closed groups that could be found throughout human history. “History = a struggle of rackets” wrote Horkheimer in one of his notebooks. "Rackets distinguish between those who are within and those who are outside of their group, recognizing and protecting the insiders. In essence, rackets pursue particularistic goals. Even though Horkheimer thought that the racket pattern could have an extended historical background, the approach was conceived in order to depict the mechanisms of monopoly capitalist society constituted by groups possessing economic and political power, immersed in constant disputes and agreement-making." "Horkheimer’s racket theory claims that monopoly capitalism is regulated in a mafia-like fashion." "Moreover, Horkheimer and Adorno saw the rackets as a subdivision (Untergliederung) of social classes, since the each social class is itself composed of ruling and weaker groups. Class division and opposition as proposed by Marx – bourgeoisie versus proletariat – must be reconceived in the monopoly period so as to recognize that, within the bourgeoisie, there exists a ruling elite that not only opposes the proletariat but also the weaker members of the class. For its part, the proletariat contains an upper echelon that negotiates with the elite connected to the monopoly, and whose interests oppose those of the rest of the proletariat." "The concept of class, writes Adorno ([1942] 1972, p. 379), is as real and, at the same time, as fictitious as liberalism itself." "Racket theory highlights the “self-consciousness of the system in regard to its own perpetuation” (Idem, p. 386) Furthermore, racket theory highlights the undemocratic character of narrowing and limiting the decision-making processes, which take place within increasingly exclusive groups. Economic and political concentration, which is a result of liberalism itself, unfolds as monopolization, and the rackets run the resulting social whole. Horkheimer and Adorno see the liberal period as one in which more direct and immediate forms of domination represented in the racket pattern weaken and a more ‘humanized’ capitalist rule prevails. Yet, the mafia-like form of rule under the rackets accords to the process of economic and political concentration that takes place in monopoly capitalism." Capitalism today: cronyism, mafioso State, rackets: "Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Western scholars and market actors disseminated the term crony capitalism, referring to the fact that the crisis “brought opaque business transactions to the forefront” (Khatri et al., 2006, p. 61). According to the advocates of the crony capitalism approach, a “purported primary contributor to the crisis was the reportedly widespread practice whereby executives in Asian financial institutions funded questionable business transactions by family and friends” (Idem). Crony capitalism, as magazines such as The Economist and Asiaweek claimed, had “subverted economic competitiveness” (Idem, ibidem). Naresh Khatri et al. define crony capitalism as: “a reciprocal exchange transaction where party A shows favor to party B based on shared membership in a social network at the expense of party C’s equal or superior claim to the valued resource” (Idem, p. 62). In the same line, Oh and Varcin proposed the notion of mafioso state in an article from the early 2000s that compared business practices and their relation to the state in South Korea and Turkey. Through the notion of mafioso state, they intended to more precisely address this relationship: "When market actors seek political solutions to market issues, they may hire a lobbyist, a transaction that is unstable and runs the risk of going awry. A mafioso state exists when the state itself assumes the role of this third party. The lobbyist or hit man, as Oh and Varcin call him, is regarded as an agent who acts in a mafia-like fashion. In order to avoid utilizing these agents, the state itself becomes a powerful mafioso operating alongside the monopolist mafia (Idem, p. 717)." Crony capitalism and the mafioso state clearly address late twentieth-century and contemporary developments in peripheral countries. In these countries, the condemnable intertwinement of business and the state is regarded as an imperfection in legal-rational domination and as a gap that is filled by other forms of rationality connected with traditional rule. And it is precisely for this reason that Weber’s discussion about patrimonialism is revived time and again to analyze these imperfections. One of the difficulties in considering cronyism as an aspect of capitalism relates to its ambiguous existence in terms of economic efficiency. Even though it does not receive public approval, it is often taken to be a necessary evil for guaranteeing that certain transformations or investments take place. The “revolving door”, as Salter calls it, is among the core aspects that mark the entanglements and the possibilities of crony relations. A number of almost incestuous relationships have been established, such as those between lobbyists and government... where the concept of lobbying is not as enshrined as in the North and so-called ‘cooling-off periods’ are not in place, i. e., there is no established amount of time before those who exit or enter a government post can assume a position within certain private enterprises or trusts." Current events, have led us to reread Horkheimer and Adorno’s racket theory along with more recent discussions on crony capitalism and the mafioso state. In the light of these two extreme cases, we believe that contemporary capitalism has entered a new phase, which may be described as a higher stage of neoliberalism combined with more direct violence; and not only in these two countries, as right-wing authoritarian solutions to real or perceived crises are on the rise worldwide. "The racket pattern of closed groups competing for the booty (Adorno, [1942] 1972, p. 378) and using the state as a platform for facilitating or fulfilling their private goals is very discernible in the present day. As such, it is no coincidence that approaches such as crony capitalism and mafioso state have been recently proposed." Concluding Remarks: "Horkheimer saw monopoly capitalism of his time as ruled by rackets; it represented capitalism that had shed the fetters placed upon it by liberalism through the granting of rights, a respect for differences and the abdication of the use of violence. Yet, what has been central in a number of contemporary perspectives is the increase in noting that capitalism does not necessarily demand a democratic political system. This view, an important trait of critical theory, is particularly evident in Horkheimer’s racket theory. “In the true idea of democracy, which leads a repressed and subterranean existence among the masses, the notion of a racket-freed society never completely died out” (Horkheimer, 1985b, p. 291). "Our effort in this paper has been to build on the interpretation brought forward by critical theory for analyzing contemporary capitalism. Critical theory analyses are strictly bound to a given temporal framework and do not lend themselves to replication. However, we believe that racket theory can inspire analyses of contemporary capitalism, and we present two current interpretations that we relate to it. The unfolding of capitalism since Horkheimer and Adorno’s writings from the 1940s seems to reinforce rather than discredit interpretations that approach it as a system that functions with a logic in line with mafias or cronies. Although we may not be facing Fascism, such as that experienced by the first generation of critical theory, a feeling of astonishment still persists when dealing with many contemporary social changes, first and foremost the multifarious (re)emergence of authoritarian tendencies. Yet this alone hardly warrants the analogy and the reflexive movement we propose here. Far more pertinent is the idea that the present context is repeatedly being characterized as an exceptional situation, and that, soon or later, provided that the proper measures are taken, ‘normality’ shall be restored. The diagnoses we drew upon, stemming from different empirical examples, lead us to consider that crony capitalism is increasingly becoming a structural element, spreading and upholding different nuances of capitalism." http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-20702018000300067&script=sci_arttext#fn7

I must admit what got me bursting out all in laughter just now, since I didn't expect it at all in a first opening sentence, was not when he at the end compared people who are a part of Antifa to Story of Cain and Abel from the Old Testament, but when he with all due seriousness of his conviction began his opening statement (baited by Ngo though prior by using the "animalistic" adjective in his forwarded question to JP) by saying in a very serious, attempt at authorative and convicted tone that: "that they are worse than animals". They way he said it all due seriousness blew my prior expectations of what to expect of the tonality set for this video. The way he said with such seriousness that it almost felt like a skit to me, well I guess not to though to the people who believe and share his feelings and opinions on about what he is saying and the implications of it and parallels drawn to it of course. There is a lot projection mechanisms going on in JP's rhetoric, I wager IMHO, and satisfactory psychological conclusions for him to deal with life phenomenona that feel uncomfortable and unsavoury to him and his follower base, hence they project on them their own actual inner feelings towards them, of why they are there and why are they like that in the first place. A lot of psychologically deceptive games of cat and mouse is actually going in the backdrop of all that comotion I personally feel (cat painting the mouse as the devil for wanting to grab and/or eat/steal a bit of cheese from the shelves while it wants to eat the mouse and it's whole family itself).

Slovak political philosopher Juraj Mesik made a stark prognosis and prediction, following a similar train of thought of the late Russian historian Andrei Amalrik who in the hayday of the of the USSR in the 60s wrote an essay predicting and setting the date of it's collapse (symbolically) in the year 1984, that the Russian Federation, excarcabated now even further by the outcome and by the crippling from the Ukrainian war, might collapse as whole unified polity in 3 to 5 years (even sooner than his original prediction setting the date in the year 2031. before and without counting and factoring the war and the subsequent sactions), here is what he wrote in an recent essay he wrote, attempted to be very similar in nature to the one Amalrik wrote in his day regarding the remaining lifespan and future outcome of the USSR and it's political influence and reach as a whole polity as well: "Despite the fact that the Russian historian Andrei Amalrik warned them in his famous essay from 1969 "Will the Soviet Union survive until 1984"? (This happened during the occupation of Czechoslovakia and at the time of Moscow's greatest achievements in space) Western leaders ignored the possibility he pointed out, as did others in 1990-1991. which predicted that the USSR would disintegrate. None of the Western Soviet scholars in the late 1960s could have imagined the collapse of the USSR, and slogans on the buildings of occupied Czechoslovakia boldly proclaimed "With the Soviet Union forever and never differently!", Points out Slovak foreign policy expert Juraj Mesik for European Justice. The USSR, as the incarnation of the Russian Empire at the time, was shrouded in communist ideology and seemed firm and unyielding. In just a few years, history has shown that Amalric was right in his prediction. However, if you had been told in the summer of 1989 that the occupied countries of Central Europe would be liberated from Moscow before the end of the year and what would happen to the USSR itself before Christmas 1991, you would doubt the narrator's mental health. The result is numerous political mistakes that have cast a shadow until today, says Juraj Mesik. After all, people often miss the "most obvious things". The result was improvisation and tragic failures, the consequences of which lasted for decades. Today we see them through the Russian occupied territories in the countries of the former USSR and especially through the bloody war in Ukraine. Russia's collapse is also inevitable, Mesik believes, stating that if Europe and the West are not ready for this, the consequences will be equally tragic. Missed, slow or wrong decisions of unprepared Western politicians can lead to the long-term Balkanization of today's Russia. Unlike the Balkans, the territory of Russia is 50 times larger than the territory of Yugoslavia and 6 times larger in population. At the same time, they have nuclear warheads. So speculation about Russia's impending collapse is not fun or a wish, as supporters of Putin's regime believe. Without thinking about this scenario, we will not avoid it - and vice versa, thinking about it, we will not challenge it, even if we want to. There are hidden internal reasons for that, and the question is not whether the "Russian Federation" will fall apart, but when it will happen. The initials, quotes in the name of the state are not accidental, because today's Russia is a vertically controlled and centralized empire that has nothing to do with a real federation. The very name of the country is the classic Potemkin village, an invention designed for naive foreigners: The Russian Empire is held together by only three powers: the superpower ideology, the security apparatus, and oil and gas revenues. The latter allows you to fund militarism, the repressive apparatus and corrupt politicians in Europe and around the world. All three of these forces will weaken and collapse dramatically in the coming months and years as a result of Russia's long-term military defeat in Ukraine, Western sanctions and the rapid development of electric mobility. Russia's military and repressive forces are bleeding in Ukraine, Russia's great chauvinism will be mortally wounded, and the rapid decline in oil and gas sales, combined with later sanctions, will destroy the Kremlin economically and prevent it from bribing political elites at home and abroad. Without the corrupt government of carrots and sticks, the ideology of imperial Russia will not be sustainable and it is degrading. In the essay from 2016, "Will the Russian Federation survive 2031? Russia, China and the inevitable consequences of climate change," I assessed Russia's disintegration as the topic of the next decade. However, the attack on Ukraine radically accelerated the development of events - therefore, the disintegration of the Russian Federation will become a matter of the next 3-5 years. Of course, this is only an estimate - various subjective factors and specific decisions of specific politicians can speed it up or, on the contrary, delay it a bit. However, Europe is waiting for the disintegration of the Russian Federation. The defeat of the Russian army in Ukraine means a significant weakening of the repressive military apparatus that keeps the peoples detained in Russia in slavery. Of the officially 140 million inhabitants of today's Russia (their actual number may be smaller), only about 75 percent of the population are ethnic Russians, and their share is constantly decreasing. On the contrary, the number of non-Russian, especially Muslim, ethnic groups is growing. In addition, a figure of 75 percent can be significantly overestimated. Representatives of many oppressed ethnic groups often identify with the Russian ethnos because it benefits them. Maybe we don't need to explain this to Slovaks - just remember the "Hungarian" ethnic Slovaks of Hungary in the 19th century or the suspiciously small number of Roma in Slovak censuses. The same phenomenon is at work in Russia - and apparently, due to the long-term pressure of Russification, it can be much more widespread. This is especially true for the descendants of Ukrainians in mixed Ukrainian-Russian marriages, where Russian identification is very common, so the actual number of Ukrainians living in Russia can be significantly higher than the official 1.4 percent. Given the demarcation lines of Russia's impending collapse, it is easiest to start from the territories it occupies. First of all, it means the return of the occupied Crimea and Donbas to Ukraine, Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia, Transnistria to Moldova. There is nothing to discuss here. The issue of returning the Kuril Islands under Russian occupation to Japan and Karelia to Finland is also simple. There could be more discussions among Europeans about the future of occupied and annexed Kaliningrad. After all, it can be reasonably suspected that Russians living in St. Petersburg, the Urals, Siberia or the Far East will want to remain under the rule of a sincerely hated Moscow, which both Urals and Siberians perceive as a voracious parasite. Thus, Russia can be divided into several smaller Russian-speaking countries. However, something else is important: the West should already be analyzing possible scenarios for the disintegration of the Russian Federation. This is important because such a break will open up great challenges and risks and opportunities. The risk is that the post-Russian population will face Balkanization, a long period of poverty and violence. Or the West can act prudently, quickly, pragmatically and sensitively - and give the people of Russia and the Russians themselves a chance for a decent future in freedom and at least relative prosperity. But you have to be ready for this. And that, at the very least, requires the abolition of the "internal taboo" in Europe from the talks on the possible collapse of Russia." END.

BTW If I may ask what is the background history of that new "anti-war flag"? I saw that it was first created shortly after the onset of the invasion of Ukraine in February by a Russian art designer expat in Berlin, Germany, as symbol of the Russian opposition to the war in Ukraine. It has no official name, it is only called the "white-blue-white" flag, removing the supposed red, and it's supposed associated added symbolism as of late, from the 1896 or "Vlasov" tricolour flag. BTW Official interpretation on Wikipedia: "The Russian tricolour flag was adopted as a merchant flag at rivers in 1705. These colours of the flag of Russia would later inspire the choice of the "Pan-Slavic colours" by the Prague Slavic Congress, 1848. Two other Slavic countries, Slovakia and Slovenia, have flags similar to the Russian one, but with added coats-of-arms for differentiation. On 7 May 1883, the Russian flag was authorized to be used on land, and it became an official National flag before the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II in 1896. At the times of Alexander III of Russia [when first officially introduced in 1896] the official interpretation was as follows: the white color symbolizes nobility and frankness, the blue for faithfulness, honesty, impeccability, and chastity, and the red for courage, generosity, and love. A common unofficial interpretation was : red: Great Russia, white: White Russia, blue: Little Russia."

Atlas Plug - Truth be Known (discovery via MOBA Dota 2/Dotacinema YT Channel Playlists for Top Featured Weekly Plays Clips/Nostalgia from Teen/Adolescent Online MOBA Gaming Years/Now the Same ImminentJourney/Quest/Victory/Triumph /Discovery/Revelation Vibes I feel and get from when revisiting and listening to the track for time to time when I feel like it/Repurposed for Other Means and Life Goals)

Both countries, as far as I know, already had strong military intercooperatibilty, interoperatibilty and ties to NATO beforehand, even some decades ago, and frequently join and partake in military exercises with NATO aligned countries and major players, and the Nordic countries close to them are often used as host for major joint US and NATO countries military training exercises, and also have an influential and strong not insignificant presence in the US/European/ Western/NATO arms market, and military gear supply department, so as far I see they are now only making this membership bid official and that would only lead to the increase of both of their joint military presence in the alliance - though the bid for Finland will be more difficult to be realized in the exact same moment and time as a bid for Sweden will - because of the closer geographic proximity issue and some past unsettled territorial interlaping boundaries and issues following heated political disputes with Russia in history and in the not so recent past after the breakup of the USSR - I would maybe only hope that that particular country waits a few months or years after Sweden in joining the Alliance after the dust settles from the Ukranian war and when Russia feels that it is in a less vulnerable and weaker moment, not to make it seem that it is doing it as militarily opportune moment and not to allow itself to fall into doubt to be misinterpreted as a militarily aggressive and provocative move in the moment and not it's own general defensive bid for it's own safety and security concerns and not as a useful vessel for someone else's wider political goals and military strategies - though the general idea and hope seems to be to get all of those Nordic countries and geographical region together in one fell swoop and bid - same as they did before with Baltic countries and South Eastern European countries with former historical and political ties to Russia and the Soviet Union.

There is no other way to write and to read but in a literal form ? It's kinda odd not to be literal and unironic when stating one's wants, reasons and motivations for country one's lives in wanting to join a security alliance, which pretty much affects one's life there, no? The truth of any matter is usually not black and white, and it is not exclusively an abstract geometrical object for you so you can speak of it in rotational degrees and turn it in the way you like and then declare that to be truth, for how one's needs currently suited to be so. I urge you then to use it more efficiently and be more precise and clear when writing and stating your opinions or thoughts on some matter in public forums and spaces, for it cannot be easily seen or deduced by others that you are being "not literal" when you write them in the open with no further notice and disclaimers for all to read and see lol.

Lol you base your opinion on believing and doing the complete opposite of what some source of authority that you don't personally like says and believing and doing the almost exact same thing that some other source of authority wants you too, in the version it wants to present itself as, that you are survivally biased towards and like says. A semi-useful analogy for your method and level/stage of reasoning and thinking about politics in the world would be the following: If you by chance were born and incarnated in the 15th or 16th century in some Northern or Central European country back then, with your logic now that you are only applying to Russian places of power and authority, by believing and doing the complete opposite of what they say in a mindless contrarian way, you wouldn't respond to the religious authoritarianism and repressions of the Catholic Church by reassessing, improving, and revising their presented official version, doctrine and dogma of a "only one way right Christianity and to be a Christian" by becoming part of the Reformation and becoming a Protestant for example, no you would probably land yourself, with this logic that you apply to the current Russian government institutions transposing only it to the Catholic Church then in this hypothetical, by doing, as you say, the complete 180 opposite of what they say, in some occult or satanist cult existing back then, just in order to spite the Church and to do the complete opposite of what they say you should believe or do as a Christian, you would go so far as to cease completely being one just in order for you to spite them and do complete opposite of what they recommended or said that you should believe or do. Needless to say this kindergarten level of behaviour, psychological development and reasoning about politics and the world - "The daycare teacher that I don't like and hate said I shouldn't do this so that must mean I should do it because she probably doesn't want me to do it because it's going to be fun for me, and that's the only reason she doesn't want me do it because her sole reason of existence is to deny me fun and doing things that are fun to me - and then you would proceed to suddenly run up and jump towards the fence and impale your genitals on it and fracture your skull and have a head concussion when doing a back flip landing on the other side in the process." Btw to mention in advance before judging the merits of my analogies and arguments based on the projection of my percieved personal political affiliations and their political implications notice I haven't written anything in this criticism of this type of reasoning and argumentation about whether or whether or not should Sweden, the Swedes and the Swedish citizens and the Swedish government decide to join and become an official member of NATO relatively very soon at this moment and period of time in international politics - no I just criticized the utter asinine brain rot contrarianist way of having a slightest indication of a thought about that prospect directed exclusively towards spitting and being contrarian for being contrarians sake (like 3-4 year old child not getting what it wants from it's parents) the percieved "others" way of seeing things from their perspective and concerns approach of a method of the way how you are going to be doing and conducting such a thing and applying for such a process - hopefully in a layered, step-by-step reasonable transition process with no antagonism prejudice attached towards some percieved "other" threat, mostly for one's own sake, stability, integrity and sense of independence and self-reliant security.

This was later claimed to be a Ukrainian T-64BV tank on the video approaching the Ukrainian soldiers and a a tragic mishap case/incident of Ukrainian friendly fire, with the Ukrainian tank operator captured on the video misidentifying those Ukrainian soldiers on the ground as Russian troops viewed from a slight distance. This is one of the unintended indirect consequences and effects broken down and spiralling down on the level of a chance of individual error and mistake happening of giving reprisal instant shot to kill orders of allegedly spotted RF soldiers, even when not posing an immediate threat, on sight, and of harsh eye for an eye reprisals treatment of captured Russian POWs.

This guy was like the biggest psychological cope mechanism and make believe opportunist impostor, pretender imaginable in recent, modern Russian political history memory, and a fairly tragic one at that, a man of Jewish roots, heritage and origin LARPing as a Russian Orthodox ultranationalist, lobbying for the Russian government on the part of it's disputes and PR presentation of Ukraine and doing PR for it in Israel regarding it's near domestic and foreign policy goals and objectives, until fairly recently: "Zhirinovsky was born in Almaty, the capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, modern-day Kazakhstan. His father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, was a Ukrainian Jew from Kostopil in western Ukraine, and his mother, Alexandra Pavlovna (née Makarova), was of Russian background from Mordovia region. Zhirinovsky only inherited his surname through Andrei Vasilievich Zhirinovsky, Alexandra's first husband. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy industrialist in Kostopil, who owned the largest sawmill in (what is now) Ukraine and was head of the Jewish community. His grandfather's mill today has an income of $32 million a year, and over the years Zhirinovsky demanded successive Ukrainian governments return it to him. In July 1964, Zhirinovsky moved from Almaty to Moscow, where he began his studies in the Department of Turkish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University (MSU), from which he graduated in 1969. Additionally, he studied law and international relations at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Zhirinovsky entered military service in Tbilisi during the early 1970s and worked at posts in state committees and unions. He was awarded a Dr.Sci. in philosophy by MSU in 1998. Although he participated in some reformist groups, Zhirinovsky was little known in Soviet political developments during the 1980s. While he contemplated a role in politics, a nomination attempt for a seat as a People's Deputy in 1989 was quickly abandoned. In 1989, he served as a director of Shalom, a Jewish cultural organization; unknown in Jewish circles before, he is thought to have been invited to join by the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, but subsequently forcefully opposed its influence in the group. Jewish heritage Four of Zhirinovsky's relatives were murdered during the Holocaust. Zhirinovsky's parents split while he was still an infant. Abandoning the family, Zhirinovsky's father, Volf Eidelshtein, emigrated to Israel in 1949 (together with his new wife Bella and his brother), where he worked as an agronomist in Tel Aviv. Zhirinovsky's father was a member of the right-wing nationalist Herut party in Israel, and died in 1983 when he was run over by a bus near Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. Zhirinovsky did not find out the details of his father's life in Israel until many years later, or even that he had died. Zhirinovsky said that he was an Orthodox Christian. In 1994, presented with a birth certificate indicating his original name as Eidelshtein, Zhirinovsky said the document was faked. Zhirinovsky denied his father's Jewish origins until Ivan Close Your Soul, published in July 2001, in which he described how his father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, changed his surname from Eidelshtein to Zhirinovsky. He rhetorically asked, "Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land, and fall in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood that my father left in my mother's body?" According to Zhirinovsky, "My mother was Russian and my father was a lawyer". Zhirinovsky later disowned the statement after researching his father's life in Israel. Discussing the statement, Zhirinovsky says: "Journalists mocked me: for saying I was the son of a lawyer. And I am really the son of an agronomist." Discussing his father, Zhirinovsky said with tears in his eyes: "All my life I was looking for him. I believed that he was alive. I believed that someday he would find me... But there is a silver lining. I tried to imitate him... And I was able to achieve a certain position in life, even without the support of my father." Zhirinovsky Israeli relatives included an uncle and cousin, meeting and befriending them for the first time only after discovering more about his family's story in Israel. Zhirinovsky's Israeli family did not know that he was a politician in Russia but responded warmly to his invitation to stay with him in Moscow." source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zhirinovsky R.I.P. Vladimir Volfovich Eidelshtein, Zhirinovsky

amid Ukraine war. "Southern Kurils occupied by Russia, Japanese Foreign Ministry official claims The Japanese authorities have been refraining from the term "occupation" in the recent years, instead preferring to say that "these islands are covered by the Japanese sovereignty" TOKYO, February 28. /TASS/. Russia occupied the southern part of the Kuril Islands, which contradicts the international law, as well as the invasion of Ukraine, Japanese Foreign Ministry Europe Department Director Hideki Uyama said during debates in the parliament Monday. "The Northern Territories [Japanese name for the Southern Kurils - TASS] are occupied by Russia, and we believe that this contradicts the international law, as well as the ongoing attack of the Russian army on Ukraine," the official said. The Japanese authorities have been refraining from the term "occupation" in the recent years, instead preferring to say that "these islands are covered by the Japanese sovereignty." Moscow and Tokyo have been engaging in talks on development of the World War II peace treaty since mid-20th century. The sovereignty of the Southern Kuril Islands remains the main obstacle. After the war, the entire archipelago became a part of the Soviet Union, but Japan challenges the sovereignty of the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a group of smaller uninhabited islands. Russian Foreign Ministry repeatedly stated that the sovereignty of these islands is cemented in international documents and cannot be challenged." https://www.google.com/amp/s/tass.com/politics/1412893/amp "TOKYO -- Russia's invasion of Ukraine has produced a noticeable shift in Japan's diplomatic effort to reclaim Russian-controlled islands lost in the waning days of World War II. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government has reverted to long-standing basic principles on the Northern Territories, dropping the nuanced language used by predecessor Shinzo Abe, who had tried to speed up negotiations on a diplomatic solution with Russian President Vladimir Putin. With progress toward a postwar peace treaty now looking unlikely, Kishida's government has brought back the descriptions of the islands as "inherent territories of Japan" that have been "under illegal occupation" by Russia. The islands form the southernmost end of the Kuril archipelago. Kishida discussed the Ukraine situation with Abe in a 20-minute meeting Wednesday, later telling reporters that he had "received advice on diplomacy and national security" from his predecessor. The Japanese government had used "inherent territories" for many years, until around 2018, when the Abe government began calling them "islands over which Japan has sovereignty," and saying that Russia's occupation was "without legal grounds" rather than "illegal." When Abe met with Putin in Singapore that year, the two sides affirmed they would accelerate talks toward a treaty based on a 1956 joint declaration between Japan and the Soviet Union. This declaration stipulated that Moscow would "transfer" two of the four disputed islands, Shikotan and the Habomai islets, to Japan once a treaty was concluded. The Soviet Union occupied the islands in 1945 after renouncing a neutrality pact with Japan. Moscow holds that the occupation is a legitimate result of the war, and that it is offering to hand over two of the islands in good faith. Asked in parliament in 2019 whether it considered the islands an inherent part of Japan's territory, the Abe government declined to respond, on the grounds that it could hinder negotiations with Russia. Senior government officials said the flip-flop in rhetoric owes to bureaucrats from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry who pushed ahead with negotiations with no regard for diplomatic consistency. Kishida said on Monday that he has "no memory" of differentiating between the "inherent territories" and "sovereignty" language. Asked about not using "inherent territories," Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Tuesday, "I used the 'islands over which Japan has sovereignty' expression from a diplomatic standpoint." The decision to make the change now was "based on the fact that we're not in a position to talk about the prospect of peace treaty negotiations," he said. On the return to the "illegal occupation" language that the government had previously avoided, Hayashi said that "the occupation of the Northern Territories is illegal in the sense that it lacks any legal basis." Soon after taking office in October, Kishida had intended to follow Abe's strategy, pursuing greater economic cooperation with Russia to build rapport for peace treaty negotiations. After an October call with Putin, Kishida said they had agreed to "firmly work on the peace treaty negotiations" based on past agreements, including the 2018 accord in Singapore. But the situation has changed dramatically since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. With the U.S. and the European Union imposing sanctions on Russia, it became increasingly difficult for Tokyo to maintain a business-as-usual relationship with Moscow. "I cannot speak on the outlook of peace treaty negotiations with Russia at this time," Kishida told reporters on March 3. Japan has joined the push to exclude certain banks from the SWIFT international payment network, signaling its opposition to unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force. Some lawmakers from Kishida's ruling Liberal Democratic Party as well as the opposition also want to scrap a cabinet position created in 2016 to oversee economic cooperation with Russia. In a document approved by the cabinet on Tuesday, the government said it would not immediately eliminate the position, and will instead consider how to best demonstrate its stance to the rest of the world." https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/After-Ukraine-Japan-reverts-to-old-line-on-Russian-controlled-islands The problem with all this rhetoric and shifting of official stances is that Russia has on the largest one (russ. Iturup, jap. Etorofu), of the southern Kuril four island chain claimed by Japan historically, in recent years, since 2014 especially, worked on building dual purpose (military) airfields, which it uses to station from time to time in their hangars the latest stealth fighter generations of SU-35 jets and has also hypersonic missiles and combat system installments of the Sarmat type as well. In other words they have been used and repurposed as prime Russian military real estate and strategic possession for power projection and extension in the Far East. Russia can sink Japan? "Chinese experts from Bai jia hao portal prepared material in which they discussed the hypothetical possibility of a military conflict between Russia and Japan. SOURCE: SPUTNIKMONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2021 | 16:50 As they say, that is the last, but still possible option, because the relations between the two countries have worsened since Japan got a new prime minister. The article states that Russia could use the new "Sarmat" combat system in the conflict, which is known in the West as "Satan 2". The flight range of the missiles of that system is 16.000 kilometers. "Russia's Avangard strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) have terrifying power," the Chinese portal writes. The authors of the article described in four words the consequences of "Russia's attack on Japanese territory": "Japan will end up under water". They add that Tokyo should not count on the help of the American missile defense system. Earlier, the new Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, stated that Tokyo's sovereignty extends to the southern Kuril Islands. In that regard, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia does not agree with the statement of the new Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the topic of the Kuril Islands, because those islands are the territory of the Russian Federation. The Kuril Islands dispute, known as the Northern Territories dispute in Japan or the current border contestation between Japan and the Russian federation concerns the rightful ownership of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the Habomai Islets. These four islands are the southernmost part of the Kuril Island Chain, which stretches northeast from Hokkaido, Japan to Kamchatka, Russia. Japan claims ownership by Japan on these islands, referring to the bilateral Treaty on Trade and Borders from 1855. Tokyo set the return of those islands as a condition for concluding a peace agreement with the Russian Federation, which was not signed after the Second World War. The Soviet Union and Japan signed a Joint Declaration in 1956, in which Moscow agreed to consider handing over the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of the peace agreement, and the fate of Kunashir and Iturup was not mentioned. Moscow's position is based on the fact that the South Kuril Islands became part of the Soviet Union after the Second World War and that Russia's sovereignty over them, which has the appropriate international legal basis, is not in question. After the meeting of the leaders of Russia and Japan in Singapore on November 14, 2018, the then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated that the parties agreed to speed up the process of negotiating a peace agreement based on the 1956 Joint Soviet-Japanese Declaration." https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.b92.net/eng/news/world.php%3fyyyy=2021&mm=10&dd=25&nav_id=112073&version=amp

Well as I mentioned above they have airfields with their latest generation stealth fighters currently in their hangars already there on the largest of the disputed/claimed southern islands Iturup/Etorofu and combat hypersonic missile systems installed/or currently stationed there to project power and influence in the near abroad in these close internationally militarily and international economic trade flow highly dense concentrated and inflection point maritime and island archipelago areas. I will give you an attempt of a semi-equivalent analogy (made even more prescient given the fact that all this is happening almost identically close to the 40th anniversary of the attempt of cementing the Malvinas and Falklands status by war): It's probably slightly less important to the Russians than the Malvinas are to the British (i.e. eng. Falklands) are to the British as an imperial era relic, tool of national consolidation past glory pride, means of abroad, from mainland islands directed, settler control, furthering the British EEZ zone at the expense of Argentina, naval military base, and checkpoint refueling station under their control for staging Antarctica expeditions and their transatlantic connecting tissue point for furthering their exclusive economic claims and control and influence for some newly discovered resources in the Antarctica South Pole region of the globe as the Argentinian Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation explains in this article written for this anti-colonial African based paper illuminating the issue of the current Malvinas status: https://kawsachunnews.com/malvinas-40-years-its-time-to-end-colonialism "The permanent increase of the military presence and the refusal during these four decades of the United Kingdom to resume the dialogue for sovereignty in the terms proposed by the United Nations in its resolution 2065 (XX), show the illegality and illegitimacy of the usurpation that took place in 1833 and reveal the economic, geopolitical and military interests that drive the British to try to perpetuate the usurpation of an important portion of the Argentine territory. It should be noted that, after the 1982 war, on November 4 of the same year, the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 37/9 which stated: “the governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are urged to resume negotiations in order to find a peaceful solution to the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas Islands as soon as possible”. At the same time, it instructed the Secretary General to initiate a new good offices effort to comply with this resolution. The current global situation, marked by the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, once again showed the double standard with which the United Kingdom conceives its international policy. On the one hand, it condemns the rupture of the territorial integrity of Ukraine by Russia and, on the other hand, it maintains the occupation of a vast territory in the South Atlantic that prevents our country from exercising its sovereignty over its entire extension. This is not the only case. The United Kingdom is the administering power in 10 of the 17 colonial situations pending before the United Nations Decolonization Committee. After its independence from Spain, Argentina exercised full sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands. On January 3, 1833, the United Kingdom, in full colonial expansion, violently evicted the representatives of the Argentine government and its settlers and established another population, coming from the metropolis itself. It should be noted that from the very moment of their usurpation, Argentine governments have been uninterruptedly demanding the restitution of the full exercise of sovereignty over the Islands. Even with different emphases and strategies, since 1833 no Argentine government has consented to or legitimized the colonial occupation. In 1994 this claim was unanimously incorporated into the National Constitution. The British Government has failed to comply with UN resolutions and has ignored all the statements of multilateral bodies. Despite trying to base its position on respect for the “self-determination” of peoples, the economic and geopolitical interests underlying its claim to perpetuate the colonial situation are becoming increasingly evident. The United Kingdom is trying to force the interpretation of the principle of self-determination for the Malvinas question when the United Nations does not consider it applicable because it is not a question of a colonized or dominated indigenous population. Those who originally lived there were the Argentines who were expelled by the British. The implantation of a population brought from the metropolis was precisely one of the mechanisms of colonization. In the case of the Malvinas, the real motives seem evident: military control of the South Atlantic situation, exploitation of the natural resources existing in the region, the need to maintain a bridgehead for logistical support of their pretensions in the Antarctic and control over the strategic bioceanic passage. The British military presence contradicts General Assembly Resolution 41/11 (Zone of Peace and Cooperation in the South Atlantic) which, among other provisions, calls upon States of all other regions, especially militarily important States, to scrupulously respect the South Atlantic region as a zone of peace and cooperation. On the other hand, the exploration and exploitation of natural resources in a vast area of the Southwest Atlantic – extremely rich in hydrocarbon, fish, mineral and biodiversity resources – openly violates UN Resolution 31/49. Another aspect by which the United Kingdom asserts its colonial presence in the Malvinas Islands is their proximity to Antarctica. Taking into account the strong British presence in the sixth continent and its claim to sovereignty -which includes the entire Argentine Antarctic sector and part of the Chilean sector- its position in the Islands constitutes a strategic situation"

Have come compassion and understanding for some of the people and the current politics there. How else do you expect them to garner support, sympathy and compassion of some voters in western countries to justify the necessity of sacrifice of their current declining of living standards and economic scarcity of some goods by indefinite maintainenace of sanctions against the Russian economy and for the politicians there to maintain their politics of wartime economy mobilization justifying the steady increase of greenlighting for even more and more of their taxpayers money going into military aid funding increase, defense spending and in private defense corps pockets for more advanced weapons shipments flooding into the country.

Did I call it or had a hunch or what ? Let's if it actually transpires that way and if it's not overly confident optimistic hopes and assessments or propagandistic disinformation campaign attempt directed towards the Russian military by Ukranian counter- intelligence services.

The lowest bar, in my estimate at least, that the Russian military and its current leadership would be willing to go at this stage of things would be to declare a Pyrrhic, yet semblance of a strategic victory - no NATO membership for Ukraine and the severe crippling of its Armed Forces and their foreign military aid - so they might try to force some kind of armistice or peace agreement until annual May 9 Victory March Parade event in Russia - if they have of course the resources to maintain waging the war at this intensity for that long - so they can attempt to declare some type of symbolic victory during that event - or at at least a threshold achievement or victory point in the war to paint it until then as some sort of victory in the war at least in one strategic domain crippling some nationalist strongholds of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They need to do this in order to maintain support for the war and to prepare in advance and pre-emptively lessen the incoming potential aftershock blow for the status, image, and credibility of the long term continuity of the survivability of their regime with the way they were unable to fulfill some of the political and strategic objectives and goals promises they made at the start of the declaration of the war. They can't afford for the sake of the survivability of their regime, at any point, for the war to be painted overall as a loss for them in all the crucial strategic domains for which they decided to wage it and pursue it as a ''forced hand political option'' in the first place.

Btw Great Interview from renowned Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, whose socio-political theory books on the history, evolution, and the state of contemporary democratic politics I have read briefly as extra literature part of some of my courses and classes and found them to be filled with various insights about the history of ''citizenry and citizenship'', electoral politics and history, evolution and state of contemporary democracies and politics in general. Here he did an insightful interview with the well-known German political magazine Der Spiegel about his psychological profiling of Putin and also some of his seen underlying motives behind his decision for the invasion and his analysis on some of the key ideological and emotional motive components that went behind it that produced its tragic consequences and repercussions that we are seeing today: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ivan-krastev-on-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-putin-lives-in-historic-analogies-and-metaphors-a-1d043090-1111-4829-be90-c20fd5786288 Russia's Invasion of Ukraine "Putin Lives in Historic Analogies and Metaphors" Ivan Krastev, born in 1965, is a researcher at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. From Bulgaria, Krastev is widely seen as one of the most original thinkers in today's Europe. Political scientist Ivan Krastev is an astute observer of Vladimir Putin. In an interview, he speaks of the Russian president's isolation, his understanding of Russian history, and how he has become a prisoner of his own rhetoric. DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Krastev, have you ever been to the Kremlin? Krastev: No, but I once met Vladimir Putin in Sochi, on the sidelines of a conference shortly after the annexation of Crimea. The president was hosting a dinner. An American colleague of mine was there, but so too was the Austrian chancellor and the foreign ministers of France and Israel. It quickly became clear that Putin felt like he was completely misunderstood. He spoke about Western chauvinism and its hypocrisy. He said people didn’t understand that Crimea is Russian. They are the same arguments we are hearing today, but I wouldn’t say that Putin back then had this messianism. DER SPIEGEL: Why is it there now? Krastev: If you’ve been in power for 20 years in an authoritarian state, nobody dares to contradict you anymore. You have established a system, you have become the system yourself, and you can’t imagine that the entire country doesn’t reflect that. You also can’t imagine there being anybody who could be an adequate successor. So, you have to solve all problems yourself for as long as you are alive. For Putin, Russia has long since ceased being a country in the standard sense; it is a kind of historic, 1,000-year-old body. DER SPIEGEL: What was your impression of Putin? Krastev: Very intelligent and quick, forthright, confrontative. Sarcastic when speaking with someone from the West. But it is the small things that reveal the most about people. He held forth about the situation in the Donbas like a foreign service agent who knows how many people live in each village and what the situation is like in each of them. He considered the fact that primarily women were responsible for Russia's policy in the Obama administration to be an intentional attempt to humiliate him. The hypocrisy of the West has become an obsession of his, and it is reflected in everything the Russian government does. Did you know that in parts of his declaration on the annexation of Crimea, he took passages almost verbatim from the Kosovo declaration of independence, which was supported by the West? Or that the attack on Kyiv began with the destruction of the television tower just as NATO attacked the television tower in Belgrade in 1999? DER SPIEGEL: Why does he do such things? Krastev: Because he wants to teach us a lesson. Because he wants to tell us: I have learned from you. Even if that means doing exactly that for which he hates us. On that evening in Sochi, he expressed outrage that the annexation of Crimea had been compared with Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. Putin lives in historic analogies and metaphors. Those who are enemies of eternal Russia must be Nazis. And so, he was quick to portray the conflicts in the Donbas as genocide. Putin’s overstatements became so extreme that they no longer had any connection to reality. He has become hostage to his own rhetoric. DER SPIEGEL: Is Putin an angry individual? Krastev: He is constantly speaking of betrayal and deceit. From the West. From individual, former Soviet republics. In 2008, during the war against Georgia, he met with Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, which was one of the last critical media outlets in the country until it was shut down last week. Putin asked if Venediktov knew what he, Putin, had done in his previous job. Mr. President, Venediktov replied, we all know where you come from. Do you know, Putin said, what we did with traitors in my previous job? Yes, we know, said Venediktov. And do you know why I am speaking with you? Because you are an enemy and not a traitor! In Putin’s view, Ukraine committed the greatest crime imaginable: It betrayed Russia. DER SPIEGEL: In the spy novels of John le Carré, everything hinges on betrayal. Krastev: It should also be mentioned that the Western media has contributed to creating a false image of Putin. First, they say that Putin is corrupt. That is true. But does it explain his politics? Putin has been the leader of nuclear power for 20 years. He thinks in terms of history, betrayal, and malice. For such a person, corruption is merely an instrument of power. Money may have been important to Putin when he was younger, but it isn’t any longer. Second, they say that Putin is a cynical gambler, a trickster. In 2011, Putin said that the protests against him had been organized by the American Embassy. Western analysts said that was propaganda because he knew that wasn’t true. During that dinner, it became clear to me: He really believes it. In his understanding of history, things never happen spontaneously. If people demonstrate, he doesn’t ask: Why are they out on the streets? He asks: Who sent them? When we take him at his word, he won’t surprise us anymore. If you read his essay from July of last year, in which he wrote that Ukrainians and Russians are a single people and he would never accept an anti-Russian Ukraine, you find out exactly what his intentions are. And third, they say that Putin is somebody who is extremely strategic and tactical. DER SPIEGEL: You don’t believe that he acts rationally? Krastev: It is said that Putin watched Gadhafi’s end on television for several hours. And that his decision to retake the position of president from Medvedev, which hadn’t initially been part of the plan, was a reaction to that because he didn’t want to meet the same end as Gadhafi, executed by his own people. It is possible to negotiate with cynical, calculating people because they know that they, too, can benefit. But Putin seems to have radicalized as he has aged, perhaps even during his COVID isolation. He is on a mission, and risk avoidance is no longer a category for him. This may sound too psychologizing, but he is part of the last Soviet generation. His job as a KGB agent was that of defending and protecting the Soviet Union. But he and his fellow agents were unable to protect it. The Soviet Union collapsed overnight without a war, without an invasion. Putin and the KGB didn’t understand what happened. They failed. I think he has a strong feeling of guilt. DER SPIEGEL: Putin was stationed in East Germany at the time. Krastev: Which makes things even more interesting. It is difficult to understand your country when it is changing dramatically and you are living abroad. From the outside, the occurrences seem like a mystery, as a kind of conspiracy that is incomprehensible. But what he experienced and comprehended was the national euphoria in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, because he was there. In his essay, he writes that a wall was erected between Ukraine and Russia and that this wall must fall. As such, what is currently taking place in Ukraine in Putin’s eyes is a peaceful reunification. DER SPIEGEL: Sounds tragic. Krastev: The tragedy is that we are seeing a violent recolonization of Ukraine and not a peaceful reunification. This misunderstanding about how the world works produce Putin’s unhappiness. He really believes that it’s not a war, but a special operation, because there can be no war between a single people. And he will never believe those people who tell him it’s not true. Putin sees himself as the father of the Russian nation. Perhaps he is, perhaps he’s not, but one thing is clear: Putin unintentionally became the father of the Ukrainian nation. It was the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas that initially created a Ukrainian identity, one which is rooted in two principles: opposition to Russia, and opposition to Putin. Now, he finds himself in a situation that we know from Russian literature when the father says to his son: I have created you, but now I must kill you. At the same time, Putin is destroying precisely that Russian identity that he is constantly talking about. In 2014, a large majority of Russians supported the annexation of Crimea. But they were just members of the audience, applauding as they looked on. Now, Russian soldiers aren’t just dying, but they are also killing those who Putin himself said were their brothers. And the population is suffering under the sanctions. DER SPIEGEL: Is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy something of an anti-Putin? Krastev: Putin embodies Russia, but in Ukraine, there had never been anybody who embodies this country. Two weeks ago, this became a fight between two men. There is that famous video of the final minutes of the Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island in the Black Sea, who were threatened by the Russian navy and responded by saying: "Go fuck yourself." It reminds me of the battle of the Brest Fortress in the Fatherland War of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. For 40 days, they were besieged by the Germans, but the Soviet soldiers refused to give up as Hitler’s troops gathered before Moscow. Now, Zelenskyy is standing in Kyiv and saying: We are here underground. We are going to defend Kyiv. And we will be victorious because we are on the right side. The myth of the Soviet Union and the heroic fight against the Nazis is not, in fact, embodied by Putin, but by Zelenskyy. DER SPIEGEL: The roles have been reversed? Krastev: Exactly. Putin wanted to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine with claims that Russia once again had to defend itself from the Nazis. This is why he has been constantly talking about the denazification of Ukraine. In fact, though, it is President Zelenskyy, himself a Jew, who is resisting a superior power. DER SPIEGEL: Do you believe that the Russian people support the invasion just as they did the annexation of Crimea? Krastev: There are many Russians who don’t like what is happening and who aren’t necessarily fans of Putin, people who are suffering under corruption and his repression, but who have thus far remained silent because the situation is what it is, and it has always been so. They lived their lives, weren’t interested in politics, and what would be the alternative to Putin anyway? But we should be honest: These Russians also haven’t always been happy with how they have been treated by the West, and they also wouldn’t be happy if Ukraine were to join NATO. Such is Russia. But this isn’t a war of the Russians, this is Putin’s war. All of these apolitical supporters of Putin – who nod along when Putin says that Russia must rise from its knees and be proud – are now, for the first time, asking themselves the most painful question one can ask of an authoritarian leader: Does he know what he is doing? Is he still in his right mind? DER SPIEGEL: There are those photos of Putin sitting at an endlessly long table, far away from other meeting participants. A recent one showed him with advisers in the Kremlin at the beginning of the invasion. The photos certainly cannot be an accident, but what is Putin’s message? Krastev: There appears to be a deep obsession with COVID in his circle. Plus, Putin has always been seen as someone who is far away from his advisers and from the political elite. There is a certain solitude surrounding him, one that is somehow reflective of Russia’s solitude. This is why he’s not concerned about Russia’s isolation, since he, himself is alone. He also sees himself as the only one who really understands what is going on. I was shocked by that video showing him meeting with the Russian Security Council. All of these important figures clearly didn’t know what was expected of them and felt uncomfortable because they of course knew that they could never show any dissent, even though some of them are likely concerned about the self-destructive path Russia is now on. And then there was Putin’s aggressive, humiliating dominance, openly demonstrating that he didn’t share their views and that he didn’t care at all about what they had to say. DER SPIEGEL: But what was the point of the whole thing? Krastev: He wanted to show the world that these people are not without guilt. He wanted to share responsibility. And I learned something else as well: that the Russian elite was perhaps taken by surprise to an even greater degree than we were in the West. And I think that the American government’s radical approach of making its intelligence information public helped to destroy Putin’s narrative. DER SPIEGEL: What narrative? Krastev: That Russia is a victim. You can criticize the Ukrainian government and reject the West, but when you say that Zelenskyy is a Nazi, that’s not just absurd, it destroys the world’s post-World War II intellectual and moral foundation. One of the most important rules is that you’re not allowed to trivialize Nazism. And he also violated another important post-Cold War rule: Don’t talk about nuclear weapons. The weapons are there, they always have been. We know that Russia has them. We know that the U.S. has them. But in the last 30 years, politicians have agreed not to discuss them, much less threaten to use them. On the third day of the war, as the invasion was stumbling, that’s exactly what Putin started to do. And warning that Ukraine could acquire and use them. That is brutal, and it’s also a bit dumb: If you are hoping for appeasement from the West, you should present a story that people will believe. But there isn’t one. DER SPIEGEL: Is Putin so isolated that he could simply push the nuclear button on his own? Krastev: His isolation could lead him to do anything. On the other hand, the situation is so challenging that he could pursue Nixon’s madman strategy. DER SPIEGEL: For a time during the Vietnam War, U.S. President Richard Nixon allegedly pursued a strategy of trying to seem so irrational and angry that he would even use nuclear weapons, all in an attempt to force North Vietnam to surrender. As we know, the tactic didn’t work. On the other hand, Nixon may well have been a bit off – depression, insomnia, alcohol. Krastev: I don’t know if Putin would ever deploy nuclear weapons. I listened to U.S. General David Petraeus at the Munich Security Conference, a man who has led several invasions. I know how it’s done, he said. Military leaders are only interested in capacities. Even if it’s not an approach I agree with, it’s a pretty rational way of thinking. Petraeus said that Putin had all the capacities necessary for an invasion, which is why the likelihood was significant that he would go through with it. Fiona Hill, who wrote a great book about Putin, recently said in an interview: Putin will do what he says he is going to do. That, too, is one of Putin’s messages in the video with the Russian Security Council: Does anyone seriously believe that these people will stop me? People, by the way, who are certainly not suspected of harboring sympathies for the West, just that they think that there might be better ways to handle Ukraine than destroying it and killing Zelenskyy. DER SPIEGEL: Analysts believe Putin is surprised that his plans didn’t work out as he thought they would. Krastev: Because the Ukrainians are defending themselves and Zelenskyy stayed in Kyiv. Putin must realize that simply killing Zelenskyy won’t bring things to an end. Normal Ukrainians way out in the countryside are confronting Russian soldiers and shouting: Go back! What are you doing here? The soldiers don’t have answers. The sanctions will also have surprised him. Putin’s image of the West is something like a caricature. It’s as if the condition of the West reminds him of the final days of the Soviet Union. It happened to us, now it’s their turn. They are collapsing. Putin thought that Europe would try to dodge difficult decisions. The sanctions changed everything. They change the daily lives of the Russian middle class. They used to just be observers, but now they can feel the effects of Putin’s politics firsthand. DER SPIEGEL: The Russian middle class could radicalize, either against or in favor of Putin. Krastev: During the pandemic, I traveled quite a bit. There is nothing more depressing than these empty airports. Now, the war is bringing people into the streets. Ukrainians, who are fleeing. Europeans, who are demonstrating. And there is one video from Moscow that shows a huge crowd of people in front of IKEA, taken on the last day before it closed. They all wanted to go shopping one last time. Shopping at IKEA is part of their lifestyle, something that distracts them from the authoritarian reality just as do trips to Germany, ski vacations in Kitzbühel, and summers spent on the Mediterranean. DER SPIEGEL: They were part of the global middle class. They wanted to live nice lives and travel like everybody else. Krastev: And suddenly, it’s like an island separating from the mainland and sinking into the ocean. And nobody knows if there is a way back. The changes they are experiencing are not trivial. They know that it will take a long time, if at all. That is the difference between the pandemic and the war. There were justified hopes that once the pandemic came to an end, the old normal would return. But after this war, there will be a realization that there is no old normal. And the Russians? They will hardly be able to say that it wasn’t that bad and that nothing tragic happened. There could be a cease-fire or maybe even a peace treaty, but will the West remove its sanctions? Will the people of Europe forget that the pharmacies here in Vienna were sold out of iodine for several days? Our world has changed. We used to be in a postwar world, now we are in a prewar world. That is the change, and it is taking place in people’s heads. DER SPIEGEL: Should the Ukrainians be fighting a war that they cannot win? Krastev: There is a Harvard study about the results of asymmetric wars. At the end of the 19th century, the stronger military power almost always won. In the second half of the 20th century, the militarily weaker side won in 55 percent of the wars. Did anyone think that Afghanistan could fend off the U.S.? I don’t think the Ukrainians can hold out in the long run, but I also think that a long-term occupation of Ukraine is impossible – because of the uprisings that are to be expected and also because of the economic costs of such an occupation. That is the terrible paradox of this war for Putin: The only thing that the world has learned in the past weeks is that Russians and Ukrainians are not a single people. In a certain sense, Ukrainians are even prepared to let their own state founder as a way of gaining an identity. DER SPIEGEL: That sounds a bit romantic. Krastev: It is a situation like in the 19th century. Russia is a classic imperial power. And Ukraine in an anti-colonialist fight against it. And that is, of course, a romantic constellation. Again, if you follow the Russian narrative for the war, there are no Ukrainians because they are actually Russians, while the real enemies are the Nazis and the Americans. So there are only Russians and anti-Russians. DER SPIEGEL: In your research, you have long focused on the relationship between politics and demography. Does that play a role here? Krastev: Absolutely. Putin has a certain demographic fixation. Since the publication of his essay last summer, he has said on several occasions that had there been no revolution and had the Soviet Union not collapsed, Russia would today have a population of 500 million. He believes that Russia needs the men and women of Ukraine to survive in the new world. On top of that, the pandemic is thought to have caused 1 million deaths in Russia and the country’s birthrate has dropped. Russia is a vast territory that is continuing to depopulate. A large number of labor migrants, most of them from Central Asia, are arriving, to be sure, but the Slavic core of the country is shrinking, which is why Belarus and Ukraine offer the promise of a kind of demographic consolidation. It’s not about the territory of Ukraine, but about the Ukrainian people. DER SPIEGEL: Putin thinks in ethnic terms? Krastev: Putin believes that Russia is its own civilization. Putin began his career as a Soviet agent. He wasn’t a nationalist in the classical sense. It is said that he has been strongly influenced by the memoirs of General Anton Denikin, one of the leading officers in the White Army, which was defeated by the Bolsheviks in the civil war of the 1920s. In the speech in which he declared war on Ukraine, Putin also attacked Russia’s Soviet legacy for the first time. Lenin, he says, was the one who created Ukraine. It was the speech of a nationalist, of an anti-Bolshevik. DER SPIEGEL: How will it be possible to transform this conflict from a hot war into a cold war. Krastev: Ultimately, through exhaustion on both sides. Unfortunately, neither side currently stands to benefit from a resolution. If Putin yields, it’s over for him. So, he has to escalate in order to force the Ukrainians to capitulate. For the Ukrainians, neutrality and renouncing NATO membership would be a possibility. But the problem is, the only person capable of signing such a deal is Zelenskyy, because he is the only legitimate leader of Ukraine, the only one who has fought against Putin. But Zelenskyy is precisely the person that would never sign such an agreement. And even if the Ukrainians were to accept Moscow’s conditions, Western sanctions would also have to be lifted, and that is likely to be difficult. DER SPIEGEL: Is the West really as tough as they are currently acting? Krastev: The decisions taken are more severe than even the West itself would ever have imagined. Political leaders were able to make those decisions because they have the backing of the voters. But how long will that continue? There is a certain momentum at the moment, and not just in Poland and the Czech Republic, but also in faraway Italy and Spain. Putin very clearly started something. There was that one tweet: On a single day, Putin managed to put an end to Swedish neutrality and German pacifism. DER SPIEGEL: What exactly did Putin trigger in the West? Krastev: Solidarity. And resilience. DER SPIEGEL: Yet Europe is continuing to import oil and natural gas from Russia. Krastev: Oil will soon be sanctioned. And gas? The West could stop it. Putin could stop it. Ukraine could blow up the pipeline. Whatever happens, and this is why it’s all so interesting: There is no path back to the way things were. Resilience means nothing more than: You have no other choice. Things are the way they are. And we don’t know where it will lead us. DER SPIEGEL: The decisions made by Europe could have been largely driven by fear. Such decisions aren’t generally the correct ones, are they? Krastev: Of course, fear plays a role. There are two types of threats: One comes from people, the other from nature. Putin’s power to mobilize is greater than that of climate change. DER SPIEGEL: Because it is easier to identify the enemy. Krastev: This crisis has destroyed a couple of stereotypes. The Germans have slaughtered two sacred cows. Nord Stream 2 as a symbol of German mercantilism, and pacifism as a symbol of German moralism. Even stereotypes about Eastern Europe have disappeared. Suddenly, the unempathetic East is bending over backwards to take in refugees. And all that is happening because there is an identifiable enemy. The Polish government hasn’t suddenly become more democratic in the last two weeks, but it did realize that the true threat to its sovereignty isn’t coming from Brussels, but from Moscow. DER SPIEGEL: And what about the United States? Krastev: I think the strong sanctions from the U.S. have less to do with saving Ukraine. America is more strategic than it is emotional. By imposing the sanctions, they want to save Taiwan by showing China the price of intervention. DER SPIEGEL: How will Putin end? The Russians aren’t known for being particularly rebellious. Krastev: People die. That also applies to Putin. The changes will be so significant that the regime will have to change in order to survive, just as will happen in Europe as well. Our economy will change, as will our understanding of freedom and democracy. Already, the media has changed in order to fight the disinformation coming out of Russia. That will have consequences. DER SPIEGEL: How do you mean? Krastev: We are closing down Russia Today and other outlets. We will become less tolerant. DER SPIEGEL: We are betraying the freedom of opinion? Krastev: Perhaps. Because of the pandemic and this war, the state again plays a larger role. In the pandemic, it was the welfare state that cared for its citizens and kept them alive. In this war, it is the security state that doesn’t just protect its citizens, but could also demand something from them: Namely, the readiness to make sacrifices. A friend of mine works at one of the biggest business schools. I told him: Everything you are teaching is useless. Just as useless as teaching socialism studies was in 1990. The world of globalization and free trade, in which the economy was only interested in bottom lines and not in politics, will be over. We don’t know what will happen in Russia after Putin, or in Europe, which currently finds itself in a romantic phase. But we shouldn’t make the same mistakes as in 1989. Back then, we thought the East would change dramatically, but not the West. Now, Russia is going to change dramatically. But so will we. DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Krastev, we thank you for this interview. https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ivan-krastev-on-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-putin-lives-in-historic-analogies-and-metaphors-a-1d043090-1111-4829-be90-c20fd5786288

Maybe most succinctly a large part of the problem was explained and prognosticated almost five-six decades earlier by Japanese author and intellectual Yukio Mishima - though he meant the new Japanese generations and youth as he saw them in the 1960s and 1970s - and analyzed the problems that he saw in them - that may have just have been exacerbated in the following generations that grew up into a postmodern hyper capitalistic environment with still unresolved, undigested residual leftovers and subconscious programming from the previous interpretations and approach to traditional structures still remaining as an unhealthily and not fully integrated stage Blue ledger in most of the superficially by Orange very developed society but with still large portions of remaining Blue residuum in the norms and collective psyche. In other words healthy orange can't really flourish widespread in society because there is still a large aspect of a residuum of not fully integrated and transcended and fully grasped and understood toxic Blue and its limitations in its still overwhelming influence in the management and organization of social structures and human relationships. Note: Mishima was a Japanese ultranationalist, conservative and reactionary in philosophical and political terms in opposition to the majority liberal (in their language and term sense - leaning and meaning more towards a ''liberal-conservative'' in contrast to majority Western societies) ruling society that Japan was at the time and still largely is today even more now then ever before. I think quotes from the samurai manuscript Hagakure and this here thought stream that he is having about the analysis of the current trends of the youth in Japan at 6:31 in the video also provide part of the solution to the puzzle of why a large portion of the contemporary youth in Japan and elsewhere in the most developed or semi-developed post-industrial world suffer from the same problems that they do that was illuminated in the video essay that you posted above: ''The youth today, in contrast, may seek out thrills, and though they are not exactly unafraid of death, there's is not the tense existence in which death becomes the precondition of life. Therefore, in my own work, I naturally consider any sort of ''weariness of life'', or the idea that one can live for one's own sake alone, to be patently vulgar. Human life is mysterious that way. Human beings are not strong enough to live and die only for themselves. That's because we have ideals. We only act for the sake of something. We soon tire of only living for ourselves. It also necessarily follows that we also need to die for something.''

Also a possibility from a pol science liberal democratic perspective and theory on things, but as Leo said I think are some much deeper motives and much more concrete fears about the future, that he identifies himself with being identical as Russia and Russia's position and remaining relevance in the world overall geostrategically and economically in the future, than that that do motivate him, while he is still in office, and most likely in the last few remaining years in the near future in his mandate tenure, since he is quite old (more than seventy now) and slowly on his way out from this world.

Looks like the existing threat of the possibility of eventual biological weapons deployment justification narrative by Ukrainian nationalists tacitly supported by the US at some point for the purposes of either deterrence for future Russian military troop involvement within the country (due to their inability to be swiftly or at all be admitted in NATO or EU as long as they have an issue of the existence of unresolved territorial disputes and sovereignty issues in their country, they cannot be fully applied for membership) or launching eventually a military offensive when they are powerful enough using them as key to recapturing of their claimed sovereign territory recognized by most countries in the world now - was what was most on the mind as future coming inevitable possibility of a danger existing, if things left to developed with no input, intervention or attempt to be changed, procrastinated and unresolved as they did, buying the US and Ukrainian side more time to their advantage, that hey had to from the Russian's POV eventually act in some way, to break this stalemate deliberately designed not to go in their favor, in order from their perception to break the possibilty of such a threat existing ever having the possibilty of coming into fruition - which was now, to them from their threat listing and ranking perspective as the war went on and possibilty of further radicalization of Ukrainian nationalists, overall culture and separatist regions grew with it, together with their strategic goals, objectives and demands, a much greater immediate possible future threat and possibilty for them to at some time eventually become operable to have the possibilty of it being possible to be deployed by Ukranian military in conjucture with the tacit approval or forced, calculated mediating involvement by the US, then by now mostly hypothetical, now when it's no longer possible to be easily admitted into NATO due to unresloved territorial issues scenario, alliance domino effect fearmongering nuclear scenario over Crimea, was from the Russian's POV possibly, the possible last ditch attempt by the Ukranian government and military tacilty backed in funding by the US for it, since them being able to be admmited into NATO now is unlikely due to aforementioned membership security requrements resolvements issues, to get by using it the possbility of further Russian threat out of their country and to somehow use it to secure and neutralize the disputed regions they have with the Russian military with active combat, and to on that basis decoupling the ability of a swift Russian military response or deployment to that eventually secure membership to NATO - these do sound like some heavily induced future nightmarish dreams and paranoid fears by the Russian side dreading this scenario but remember they can also seem as very real possibilites to them, due to them thinking, perhaps by more experiential merit than me, who they are dealing with of elements existing and holding onto power and having actual most and more influence in Ukraine and how far they think they are willing to go to achieve their stated strtegic objectives and goals against them from their expereince of them and with them.

Now, if the existence of the actual contents of stuff in this documentation revelation, that it claims to specify, proves to be actually true and legitimate coming from the Russian side and if the part of the funding coming of US defense spending portion for military aid and assistance towards the Ukrainian military, or as a part of US's financial aid package to Ukraine actually went in part for the development of these facilities and their funding for programs to be researched and developed in them for the purposes the production of biological pathogens that could be used for offensive or defensive biological warfare purposes also proves to be in fact true, and not only being a cynical and conniving Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign directed towards the current Ukrainian government and its supporters in the US, then one must an ask an obvious follow-up question, in regards to that, given the overall past historical and political context leading up to this full-on invasion and war now, of why was such emphasis on the US side put for the funding of such's biological facilities and on this part of their specific research development in country such as Ukraine, which since past 2014 was seen as unfriendly and a threat to Russia, due to it's NATO commitment, and that's bordering it and which's eastermost and southern part was already in conflict with Russian-backed separatists for 8 years, costing around some already 14 000 casualties up until the latest invasion, if not for the, either eventual threat in it's deployment, when eventually developed for biological weapon loadage and usage, as seen as deterent for Russia trying to achieve it's political or military goals in the country or even worse for it's usage against the Russian backed separatists at some point as part of an pre-emptive offensive eventually launched by then current Ukranian governmnet and military side, for the aims of the full reconstituion of their non-administrated territories taken or backed by Russia into Ukraine, against them before the possibilty of Russian military backage of their attempt of the constition of their self-declared republics in their full territorial reach in Ukraine - one can see, easily, by looking from the easily spooked, paranoid and fearful Russian mind, of US funding of possbile biological research facilities containing in them biological pathogens that can be easily repurposed and deployed for the purposes of biological warfare usage to bring their backed separatists in to heed with Ukranian extreme nationalists that they were fighting and/or even deployed in the eventual retaking of Crimea by US or NATO backed Ukranian military forces, could have prompted them, with their knowledge of these existence of all these biological research facilites in their borderlands with and disputes with Ukraine and thier Russian supporters there, could have provoked them to plan in advance a potential justification for launching a pre-emptive offensive to neutralize this potential threat for them and those who backed them in Ukraine and achieve the objectives for the populations they backed there much sooner than later due to their lack of information potentially, of how soon the factor of the existence of biological pathogens developed in this US-funded biolabs and facilties might it take for it to be developed enough for it to be eventually possible for it to be deployable as biological weapon to be eventually operable and potentially used as actual military capabilty and option there if deemed possible to get away with and necessary in an upcoming future war with Russian backed separatists or the Russian miliatry directly and it's troops invading/intervening in the country. If there is a legitimate pre-emptive threat of such weapons being developed enough to be deployed eventually as either justifed as deterrence for the possibilty Russian miliatry intervention in the disputed territories in the country or Russian occupied areas within it or caught off guard offensive against the Russian side, with the tacit backing and being part of the shady presence of US military/or just financial aid funding to the current post-Maidan Ukrainian government behind their possible eventual research, development, and deployment, which in the past hasn't hesitated to deploy internationally banned and/or illegal weaponry against the Iraqi military, such as phosphorous and depleted uranium ones for their versions of wider global geo-strategic goals and noble purposes, one can only speculate how the Russian side grew increasingly paranoid with some of the revelations of these developments in Ukraine surfacing on their side, given US's previous track record of how far it was willing to go for securing and saving key deemed geostrategic locations and targets for it's military-industrial complex and it's global presence and stability theory backing, and how far some of the Ukrainian nationalists elements existing in non-small numbers within the country radicalized against Russians and Russian presence in their country over the years, and the unclarity from the Russian's side, perspective and survival agenda of how far the US would be willing to go to back them in their overall strategic goals and objectives, of how far they were willing to go for them actually, to get their country out of the gutter and to resolve these disputes they had with Russia and perhaps rid themselves of their pressence and influence in ''their'' country permanently. So one can easily see then, from the Russian's side and perspective, of their fears, like resembling in part Bush's and neoconservative one's not some time long ago, why the invasion had to be planned and launched sooner rather than later in order for them not to risk of losing literally everything up until that point they have achieved and had in Ukraine, by those they demonized and those who tacitly helped them to potentially require and have such lethal, potentially future troop invasion, intervention, deployment or occupation terminating, weapons in their hands.