War between Ukraine and Russia. For a Russian writer and journalist, the Putin regime, having drawn the country and people into a war that no one wanted, is trying to “denigrate” everyone and shift the blame.
Why is the Kremlin telling us to call this war a “special operation”?
Because no one in Russia wanted war. Because everyone was afraid of war. Because war is when people leave their homes alive and zinc coffins return. Smoldering ruins instead of flourishing cities. Because war is an eternal fear. Poverty. Hunger. This is collective madness.
This war was not wanted by ordinary people who pay for it with their heads. With broken, broken families. Not companies that will pay with a crash. Our so-called elites, who would be cut off from the world and lose their feeders, did not want this either. All the people did not want war, as it put an end to normal life and led to an existence under martial law.
Putin personally declared war on Ukraine. For an hour, through all channels, he explained to the people why the war is necessary: only because Ukraine is a substate that, by definition, does not deserve to exist. Personal animosity, that’s all. There were no other reasons for the war, everything else was just excuses.
Putin wanted only for himself the glory that this war would crown him with. He counted on a blitzkrieg: on the day the invasion began, television propaganda programs with enthusiastic laughter promised to take Kyiv before dinner. On the other hand, Putin was not prepared to take on the responsibility alone.
That is why, before the invasion began, he convened the Russian Security Council – everyone who might later say “did not know” – and drove its members into a corner. Moreover, he made them say out loud: “I’m for it.” Desecrate anyone who could try to negotiate peace with the world separately. It’s not me,” Putin told the world. It is we – all those who really govern Russia. The West has no one to negotiate with here. So, if one day there is a hearing in The Hague, there will be a whole group of people in the dock.
But they were also afraid of such responsibility – just watch the video of the meeting of the Security Council. It seems that they were not even informed in advance about the plans to go on the offensive. To save them from fear, it was decided to extend responsibility to the entire regime. Deputies and senators were also not informed in advance. They, too, were summoned, confronted with a fait accompli, and forced to take an oath. It is not possible to vote against or abstain. Inner helplessness and learning did their job. And again, they agreed only to the use of the Russian army on the territory of the pirate republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Only now our tanks went not to Donetsk, but to Kharkov, Kyiv and Kherson. So it really was a war – and people were not accommodating. A week later, it became clear that instead of a blitzkrieg against the mythical Nazi battalions, Russia was conducting a major offensive against the entire Ukrainian army and against the entire Ukrainian people. The armed forces of the Russian Federation, marked with a strange letter Z, are bogged down today. Our losses are in the hundreds. Our artillery began to fire blindly, destroying residential areas of Ukrainian cities. Perhaps soon we will talk about war crimes.
Therefore, it was necessary to turn the crimes of the regime into the crimes of the whole people. Desecrate everyone. So that we could not say that we do not know or do not agree, they decided to make us accomplices.
The cannibalistic hysteria unfolding in all the propaganda media is designed to engrave the letter Z on the forehead of every Russian. It is designed to remove from Putin and his regime any responsibility for the fratricidal war, the destruction of peace in Europe, the return to the nightmarish past. To let them hide behind ordinary people. Convince the West that it is not fighting a group of obsessions, but the entire Russian people. To prove to the Russian people that they are waging a war of survival.
To denigrate all Russians, the authorities stage popular support. They organize car races with the Z flag in eighty regions of Russia. Form a Z in the snow with the terminally ill children of the Kazan orphanage to photograph them from the sky. It is urgent to come up with, after the fact, new explanations for the bloodbath: Ukraine had chemical weapons, bacteriological weapons, Ukraine wanted to create an atomic bomb, it wanted to attack first. We must prove at any cost, with any lies, that this massacre makes sense, that it is necessary for the people, and not just for the Kremlin.
But we must remember that by supporting Z, we support the bombing and shelling of peaceful Ukrainian cities. Destruction of hundreds of schools. The expulsion of two million people from their homes. The rupture of fraternal ties – both within families and between our countries in general – is forever. We support Russia’s silent isolation from the civilized world, its inevitable weakening and transformation into a resource colony of China and its digital technologies. Those who buy into propaganda today should remember that the Russians are already seen as invaders around the world. Soon we will be considered war criminals. And it will forever remain a part of our history. We are all stained with the blood of Ukrainians, and our conscripts sent to “exercises” in hell.
This is not our war, and we must remember this. We have to say it. We must not let them speak for us.
Translation by Veronica Dorman