Current Affairs

While the world is still reeling from Putin’s so called special police operation in Ukraine a year ago, Diplomats were left clutching their sides in bellyaches of laughter, after the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of attacking Russia. This so called recalling of the special police operation into a farce that is reminiscent of the Keystone cops, clutching hysterically onto anything that moves challenges the senses.

There is an element of the Keystone cops to Russia’s invasion, but the brutality and brutalism of the Russian’s has left an image of something more primitive. Fathers and sons being lined up and shot, have more to do with Chaplin in the Dictator, but mothers and daughters being raped has more to do with a depraved landscape that challenges the senses. Children being sent inland into Russia, is nothing more than an admittance that change can only come when the young are stripped of their identity, parentage and nationality.

The Ukrainians have defined the Russian soldier as an Ork, something that is inhuman, just a monster that is incapable of anything other than killing. Prigozhin, kind of meets these qualities in spades, the lining up of his men in waves being slaughtered by Ukrainians, who are confused at the lack of nuance being demonstrated by the officers that have empowered this shambollic bloodbath, and those that don’t follow orders have their skull crushed by the force of a sledge hammer. But that is not the worst of it, it is the inability of the Russian state to fight within the realms of the Geneva Convention. But that is all that is left of Russian military might, a rocket taking down the walls of peoples homes, rockets fired into maternity hospitals and refuges clearly marked smashed into by a bomb, which exposes the infirm, weak and children to the atrocities that the Russian state commits in the cause of what they call a special police operation.

But what is it that the Russian state is trying to do, that is the question that is on the minds of everyone watching in horror. The Ukrainians have realised their identity, something that was contested until the so called special police operation. Germany has moved from being dependent on Russian gas and being inert into something that no longer wants to take a back seat to the sickness that is affecting Russian ideas, fantasies and moved on to become a European power, rather than a power that is taking a back-seat. Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have taken a hardline approach to Russian aggression and have poured money, weapons and taken in refugees.

But the reality is that Russia has been humiliated by the Ukrainians who have stood up for their identity throughout this war, however terrible the Russian’s have behaved. The story is far from over, the war drudges on and the Ukrainians still need the weapons that they need to defeat the Russians. But there are voices that argue for the type of Russian ideology to sweep through Europe, Majorie Taylor Greene in a speech to her faithful argued that the type of support the Ukrainians have been receiving should not be given. Her rallying cry was that this is a war that America has nothing to do with, but the reality is that if the Ukrainians were not fighting, then NATO would have to be active right across Europe.

A Russian commentator argued that Russia was like an old shoe, comfortable, threadbare and scuffed. The point that she was making was that Russian’s could not live outside Russia, however elegant, new and beautiful a shoe was, but this metaphor seems not to apply to the 300,000 who have left Russia. Elements within are tired, imprisoned or without voice. The old shoe dictates a well worn metaphor for the factors that affect most in their daily lives, but without a free press and the young moving on from the mainstream media and finding voices through using VPNs to find voices that are willing to tell the whole story, there is a disconnect between the old and the young professionals. The bodies being returned are to small villages, towns and cities in the south and east, where once the military provided a safe, well paid existence.

But the young professionals have left, they were the natural resistance to the power, so there are no longer any voices that challenge the power of the Kremlin, and those that have the political will and ability to take Russia by the scruff of the neck and bring it back into line with international law are in jail. Alex Navalny is serving fifteen years for pointing out the corruption within Russia, but most of all he has been jailed to keep his voice clear of the madness of President Putin and this war.

Dasha Navalnya, the daughter of Alex Navalny, is a student at Stanford, writes about what her father is going through in Time magazine.  She is proud of her father, the fact that he stood up for Russians and exposed the corruption of Putin, She talks about the poisoning of her father, the fact that he was in a coma and the physiological symptoms that he is suffering from since the poisoning, but it is where she writes quoting Navalny at his trial. “Everything has a price and in the Spring of 2022, we must pay this price. There’s no one to do it for us. ‘Lets not be against the war.’ Let’s fight against the war,”

Navalny is being punished, he has been placed in punishment cells, his daughter argues that the real reason that he is being punished is his condemnation of the war in Ukraine. Dasha Navlnya documents that her father uses every opportunity to demonstrate his anti-war sentiment, during a hearing, he said: “Your honour, I declare that I am an innocent person. And I believe that I and others like me did everything possible to prevent what is happening now. And we will continue to do so. And I call on all citizens of Russia to fight this regime, this war and mobilization.”

The place where Navalny belongs, the Duma, has been corrupted into a blind alley, and like anything it is trapped by the power of the Kremlin. Those who want to move upwards into the stratosphere of power, visit the frontline and dress in fatigues. But all is not going right for them as well, they are being called out for their weakness, the governors of the states are staying silent and questions are being asked who will move first, whether as Tim Willseley Wilsey CMG argued that it was a matter of time before someone moves on Putin.

Nikolay Mitrokhin claims that it is a type of nationalism that identifies the Putin regime. He argues that “few remember that in 2008, Putin referred to his successor Dmitry Medvedev as “a Russian nationalist like me, in the good sense of the phrase.”” This means the argument about the war itself is determined by nationalist sentiment, but the concept of what nationalism means challenges the political argument of its identity. Putin has always argued that he does not identify with Ukraine, instead Ukraine itself is a modern creation determined by a perspective that it is just an extension of Russia. After Putin defined Medvedev as a nationalist, ten years later at the Valdaj Forum, Putin argued that he was the “most proper, genuine, and most effective nationalist.”

 But does this idea of nationalism explain the bloodshed and horror that he has built as an argument, Nikolay Mitrokhin argues that after the demise of the Nazis in Russia, a new breed of nationalism took its place. Maybe at this point it is easier to explain through American politics and why Majorie Taylor Green increasingly identifies with Putin rather than Ukraine, with the break up of the Nazis, it “spawned a group of largely insignificant radical organizations that increasingly resembled white supremacists and neo Nazism.” That thousands of these groups turned into nationalist organizations, which was in itself an argument of returning to a state as it had been before the break up of the Soviet Union. It was mainly an argument of identity and how Russia identified with the outside world through voices that were nationalist and neo-conservative at the same time. It’s a complex rationale that has not quite been determined whether Russia’s identity is communist, fascist or ultraconservative, but underpinning this rationale is a nationalist sentiment that borders on fascism.

Arguing that Putin commands the high ground is not necessarily true, there are some Russians who have been radicalised, but according to opinion polls, most people are not politically active. Those that agree with the official stance do so for a number of reasons, I.e. I support the war because I have to, others worry about their family members or compatriots fighting on the front line and some fear a Russian defeat and a return to instability. But as a whole the majority do not actively engage with the war and as for the elite, they are generally interested in their own lives rather than agreeing with the wars supporters, who tend to be an older generation.

Where Russia goes from here is difficult to understand, there is also the question of the West growing tired of the conflict and forcing the Ukrainians into an agreement, there are the Presidential elections in 2024, but there are also elections in Russia, and what Putin wants most is a victory of any kind before he returns to the country for elections…..