The persistence of public opinion of democratic Western states is crucial in terms of their mobilisation to further support Ukrainian war effort. This is simply a script in which a key origin may be the result of the US presidential election in 2024, if the war exceeded the visible ellipse of Joe Biden's current term.
We are at the start of the second year of the war in which Ukraine must defend itself against Russian aggression. The past 12 months have been full of many returns. There was terrible and overwhelming news about the terrible crimes of the Kremlin's messengers, but they were besides optimistic moments erstwhile the Russian army was falling apart, Ukrainians were recovering cities and villages, support for the West became increasingly real and meaningful, and solidarity shown by Polish and Polish Ukrainian refugees rightly gave us national pride.
Fortunately, the black scripts of the Russian blitzkrieg were not fulfilled. But there is besides no basis for hurraoptimism so far, that the coming months will bring complete liberation of Ukraine and restoration of its legal borders, i.e. those before 2014. Realia points to an indirect script – a long-term script (possibly long-term), a laborious war in which the front line will decision rather somewhat in different directions, and Russia will not only keep control of part of Ukraine throughout this time, but besides harass the remainder of the country with further violent attacks. This is simply a script in which the issue of the persistence of public opinion of democratic Western states will become an crucial question in terms of their mobilisation to further support Ukrainian war effort. This is simply a script in which a key origin may be the result of the US presidential election in 2024, if the war exceeded the visible ellipse of Joe Biden's current term.
From the point of view of the safety of both Ukraine and all another countries of the region of central Europe – including naturally Poland – the most crucial unknown is the future of Russian expansionism. The regaining of Donbas and Crimea by Kiev is simply a very crucial and fair war goal, but even more crucial is the condition of Russia after this conflict. Russia must not only be defeated on the battlefield, not only punished by the global community for its crimes, but besides severely structurally damaged, so as to lose the possible for aggression against another countries in the coming generations.
Poles, along with us Baltics, now have reasons for far-reaching satisfaction. Sad is, of course, satisfaction, due to the fact that it only comes from proving to the remainder of the Western planet the accuracy of the warnings that we have formulated in relation to Russia, and unfortunately this accuracy is confirmed by the terrible tragedies of Ukrainians. However, our “We told you so!” addressed to Berlin, Paris or Rome has all the grounds. The primary nonsubjective of Polish and regional abroad policy (which will most likely besides be supported by Scandinavian countries or the fresh Czech President) is to consolidate the current rejection of Russia by the collective political and business community of the West.
Many analysts indicate that Moscow has chosen the current decade as the minute of the crucial attack on Ukraine for a reason. With the advancement of the transformation of the world's richest states towards renewable energies, she had to be aware that the economy based solely on the sale of fossil fuels does not have a long future and that the "window of opportunity" for rebuilding the erstwhile empire would shortly close. This shows that the way to seal Russia's degradation in terms of its possible leads by 2 "milestones" – a) the humiliation of the Russian army on the front of the current war, which will origin an interior conflict leading to the dissolution of the Putinian power system; b) the refusal to return to economical and commercial relations with Russia so that there will be financial degradation of that state.
In his late published book Demons of Russia Witold Juras wrote that in Russia (as possibly nowhere else in the world) nationalism is two-layered. Of course, there is simply a common, widely known nationalism that is simply a nuisance to almost all nation on Earth, and which in Russia is presently in an intense ejaculation phase due to the emotions caused by the unexpected failure of the first year of war. It is simply a nationalism in the kind of Volodymyr Solovjov, spitting on tv about the usage of atomic weapons against Poland or Germany. specified nationalism most effectively “treats” just devastatingly compromising the army of the country on the battlefield and this therapy heroic army Ukraine is mostly effectively leading.
However, the second layer of Russian nationalism is ignorant, subliminal nationalism, which belongs exclusively to Russian specificity. It is profoundly anchored by decades of propaganda and influences of the supposedly wonderful Russian culture to believe of the unique position of its own nation, about its messianic mission, about its integrity, excellence and even innocence, whatever the people and its country actually do. This belief in Russian heads is the nature of mill settings, is simply a “natural” way of reasoning about relations with the world. And it may be incurable. It is due to him that the second milestone is so important, this refusal to contact down the financial strengthening of Russia through trade in the future. Only by depriving Moscow of the material foundations of building a military power and force threatening another nations will it be possible to permanently establish peace, despite the continued existence of a state, nation and Russian culture so polluted.
This “subcutaneous nationalism” in Jurassic is an even more complex plan of Timothy Snyder's reasoning of history. While the man of Western civilization treats past as a series of successive events, sometimes causally linked, but sometimes entirely random, which give human past a linear form (which opens up a possibly always a chance for progress, improvement, reform, improvement, innovation and beginning of a fresh charter/equipment in history), so Russian reasoning is spelled in the cyclical subordination of "eternality", where the same events are repeated one more time in somewhat altered appearances, where the present must be brutal and miserable, where the only hope for glory is to lead the homeland by a strong leader.
For the bearability of this vision, the nation receives its own permanently assigned metaphysical good. — Alexander Dugin said: “In fact, the Russians are very good due to the fact that they are the Good. all decent man on Earth is Russian), and the remainder of the planet threatening him is inherently evil. Hence these to the ear of the Western man, free from the burden of “eternality”, bizarre simultaneous accusations of the another organization about Nazism and about favouring “the spoiling of homosexuality”. Russia's opponents deserve contempt and hatred due to the fact that at different stages of history, erstwhile the cycle of past reaches the time of confrontation with Russia again, they carry evil under different disguises, but it is fundamentally the same evil—in fact, it includes all types, forms and calculations of evil "Satanism". The only salvation for a non-Russian Satanist is to become a Russian. This imperialism is so dangerous due to the fact that it has the belief that any man can become Russian. It's seldom voluntary, but maybe...
It is hard to anticipate that people who think so about another countries will feed their nationalism, chauvinism and imperialism. Evil doesn't deserve mercy or indulgence. Its fight against all available methods is legitimate, justified and fair. Morally, therefore, the crimes of Buczy and Irpia, torture of captured people, rape of soldiers (with the “blessing” of their wives), robbing private homes of victims and refugees of anything that can be unscrewed from the level are morally unproblematic. A strong argument for the fact that in the background of these behaviours is the reasoning of "everlasting" let the reflection be that these behaviours are no different from those of the Red Army in 1945, and so no moral advancement has been made in the Russian people for 80 years.
It's an impossible civilization difference. Witold Juras powerfully in his book emphasizes never to forget it. In its imperialist strategies, Russia is more likely than most of the world's empires to bet on violent, bare strength, but that does not mean that it does not realize or apply at all soft power. On the contrary, for 200 years, the Russians have been creating a high-flight culture, which, in many respects, is to match Western culture, to make the appearance of cultural proximity and to usage this infatuation of naive Europeans for violent strategical objectives. Jurass writes very clearly and is incapable to sign it: “In time I realized that this very made [Moscow’s - PB] audience, which absorbs large music, or... a wonderful culture, is not culturally closer to us. (...) I have the impression that the Russians played the advanced virtuoso culture by seducing the West with it. The West, which assumed that if individual loves and knows Verdi or Mozart, then he is 1 of us. Nothing more wrong.” And indeed until February 2022 the Russians applied culture washing, they set up beautiful symphonic orchestras of young musicians to love the Western Europe's imagination of its dependence on Russian energy sources so that Nord Stream's designs would look nicer to fight for the neutrality of Western Europe during the planned massacre of Ukraine.
Unlike Germany for the most apparent reasons, unlike the French who feel that the burden of the Vichy government is heavy, unlike the Americans for racial segregation – the Russians will never apologize for the crimes of the USSR. They will not apologize to “collective amnesia” but to the collective failure to see any blame in these crimes. They were, in their opinion, then legitimate and present they are justified again. They will undoubtedly be legitimate in the future. What a terrible mistake to think of Russia is (was it?) the belief that the origin of its behaviour is comparative poverty, the weakness of a country contaminated with corruption and injustice. Convincing that by improving the standard of surviving in Russia and enabling the Russians to build a more efficient state, their lust for violence, frustration and desire to pay back to the remainder of the planet would be channelled and suppressed. That would be precisely the opposite. Russia's more resourceful, prosperous, with a better structured state would have more possible for aggression and would be much more dangerous. It is simply a large happiness for Ukraine (and not only for it) that in Russia it is average that military decision-makers bargain from their own army, that corruption devours all levels of command and administration, that nothing works as it should, that drunkenness and laziness are omnipresent, that the command center does not scope everywhere, and institutions disintegrate in stitches. In any case, after the war has been concluded, it is not appropriate in Russia to search tried solutions specified as nation-building, applied to another States defeated in war by their generous winners. This is not the case. The cultural and intellectual contamination of Russia requires a strategy of controlled keeping this state in a state of permanent weakness and infirmity. Only by specified Russia can 1 live a reasonably safe life.
Finally, let us quote 1 of them, Peter Chaadayev, for he comes to the point erstwhile he writes of the Russians: “Lone in the world, we have given nothing to the world, we have taken nothing from the world, we have brought nothing into the realm of ideals of humanity, not 1 thought. We did not contribute in any way to human progress, and all we could get from it was warped. Since the first moments of our social existence, nothing has come from us to benefit the common good of men, not 1 useful thought has sprouted in the barren land of our homeland, not 1 large fact from us."
For once, we agree.
