As Russia's SMO Heads Into Its Fifth Year, the Struggle Lives On
Today marks the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the ‘Special Military Operation’, launched on February 24th, 2022. On this occasion, I wanted to write a few words and address a couple controversial topics surrounding this ongoing war, now heading into its fifth year.
First, a few contrarian takes. One of the most widespread narratives surrounding the war on both sides has been that it is an extremely wasteful “brother war” where Slavic people are senselessly slaughtering each other for the applauding Europeans. It’s an indubitable fact that huge amounts of Slavic men are perishing on both sides all for the purpose of bleeding Russia dry for the sake of people that in actuality hate both sides, including the Ukrainians, whom they merely pretend to “like” so as to use them as a battering ram against Russia.
But there are two things that can be said about this: Firstly, in the tradition of steel sharpening steel, there is a reason that Slavic people and Russians in particular have retained the most credible warrior culture of all ‘European’ peoples to this day. The fact that Russia remains constantly under attack from the West, mostly by way of proxies like in the Chechen war, has a side effect in keeping it militarily sharp and its people anchored to the martial culture they instinctively know may need to be used at a moment’s notice.
The outsize sacrifices of Russian people in each West-provoked conflict create a generational deterrence for true existential threats against the nation in the form of a global understanding that you can never break the Russian nation or people via direct attack. This is why proxy wars with throwaway “useful idiots” are always chosen, because the indomitable nature of Russian troops has shown the West the futility of winning any form of truly direct attritional war against Russia.
This is all to say that these conflicts—of which the Ukrainian war is a part—serve a distinct purpose of sharpening the Russian nation in a multitude of ways, despite it being superficially callous or perhaps impertinent to admit this openly. Many will have the kneejerk emotional response that nothing justifies such a scale of losses of life; but I beg to differ. I believe these conflicts are in some ways essential to the Russian ethos and future survival: they help maintain a sense of that ancient primal edge now missing in most ‘modernized’ nations and their people. This opinion may be controversial, so it’s understandable that many will disagree.
The second is even more controversial, albeit a bit whimsical—but it’s still worth saying on the occasion. In today’s world, which slips hourly into the irresolute crevasses of post-modernity, men in particular find fewer and fewer pure or truly worthwhile pursuits, much less reasons to exist altogether. Meaning is being entirely eroded by the frivolities, ambiguities, banalities, and outright psychological oppressions of our current digital, and now AI-en-sloppified, information-panopticon-age. In a spiritually dissolute—and desolate—world, where not only meaning has been lost, but the future feels for many not even worth living nor dying for, what more tangible and pure a mortal pursuit could there be than war?
Odd as it may sound, in this fractured age war can philosophically be argued to be one of the few morally righteous and noble undertakings for the simple fact that it revolves around directly tangible and existential objectives: protection of the homeland, family, the existence of your civilization. In our murky post-modern hellscape, there are few more directly impactful and meaningful things an ordinary person—particularly, a man—can aspire to do in their life than to engage in a struggle for the survival of his homeland, and the protection of his family. These are concrete things. And so, it’s arguable that there is no greater or more fulfilling a calling in the current age than righteous struggle for distinct things you can touch and feel with your hand. It is a cynical take, undoubtedly, but it will resonate with many.
This segues into the next related thought. Many on the pro-Ukrainian side, and especially in Western media, etc., continue to use the Soviet-Afghan war as an historical example and precedent for how “Russia can be defeated”. The problem with this is that the Afghan war was an unpopular military adventure somewhere out in the distant central-Asian mountains that was far removed from the concerns or comprehensions of the average Russian citizen. The Ukraine war, to the total contrary, strikes at the heart of Russian people’s understanding of the core civilizational dynamics of the generational, existential struggle against the combined West.
One of the reasons for this lies in the intricately interwoven nature of the Ukrainian and Russian people, with many intermixed families living on both sides of the border. Russians deeply understand the societal rot that has inflicted the Ukrainians by way of Western and NATO propaganda. The violent persecution of Russian-speaking people, the hostile and sadistic erasure of Russian culture is something deeply and personally felt by Russians at home. The war in Ukraine is entirely different to some vague operations somewhere on the murky ‘periphery’.
The Ukraine war is felt by Russians as a stab by NATO and the West into the very heart of the Russian civilization, a step too far. It is internalized as a personal and spiritual conflict, which is why the notion of simply “fatiguing” Russians of the war is a nonsensical one. In fact, with every passing month that Ukraine and the West are forced to escalate their provocation spiral, Russians become more and more certain that the war must be fought to its decisive end. Ukraine is in a kind of lose-lose circumstance because without major provocative escalations, it feels it cannot make the war “costly” enough for Russia. But with each such provocation—for instance, hitting Moscow directly, etc.—Russians become progressively indurated to the necessity of a truly decisive victory over the West, which spurs volunteer signups and boosts moral and the spirit of resistance in Russians. In its efforts to out-escalate Russians, Ukraine is conversely hardening them to the cause.
The latest came just today when Putin announced that according to the SVR intel service, France and the UK are considering smuggling a nuclear weapon into Ukraine:
For Putin to have made the announcement himself likely means the intelligence on this is not some trifle to be written off. Does the West actually think threatening Russia with nuclear escalation will lead Russians to sour toward the war in the way of Afghanistan? That is simply inconceivable: it can only indurate Russians to a maximalist mindset and to the understanding that the war must be won decisively at all costs. Hell, if you think about it, the closest Russia came to ‘disaster’ in the war was literally over the argument that Russia is not fighting maximalist enough, rather than the converse, when Prigozhin marched on Moscow in attempt to supercharge the war to a higher intensity. And even all fantasies of taking out or usurping Putin lead to the same logical conclusion: that only a far more nationalistic and maximalist figure could possibly take his place. For Ukraine, there is little prospect for some kind of favorable ‘soft landing’ or off-ramp in this way.
Let us end on a lighter note and celebrate the “heralds” of the West’s many famous takes from the start of the conflict.
Recall, for instance, the prophecies of one of the West’s most revered military ‘analysts’ from the very onset of the war:
And how can we forget the illustrious Anders Aslund, who’s been famously predicting Russia’s collapse from as far back as the ‘90s.
All the top luminaries are ignobly represented:
Now that you’ve had a laugh, here are a last couple unique videos from the very first days of the assault on Gostomel.
One of the few amusing videos from the first days of the start of the special military operation.
A Ukrainian pilot from Gostomel on his way home encountered Russian paratroopers who had already taken the city, but did not realize it and spoke with them as if they were Ukrainian soldiers.
Realization of the situation came only after they explained the rules of conduct to him and let him pass further.
And here a rare time that CNN got to be ‘embedded’ with Russian forces, something never repeated since by any other Western media:
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I can't agree with your extolling the great benefits of war. It is a grimy, dirty, awful business, and the grunts in the trenches just try to survive, dreaming of home and safety. They'll lose limbs and live with ptsd if they live at all. The meaning of war is an illusion.
No leader should prolong it needlessly, and Putin has. Additionally, his wimpiness has resulted in a long and escalating series of violations of supposed red lines leading, unsurprisingly, to rumors that nuclear weapons will actually be introduced after numerous attacks on Russian soil and even the nuclear triad. Preventing this was the absolute ultimate goal of the war. None of this absolves the west of its guilt, of course.
Just today a bunch of western members of the Epstein club visited Kiev with a feeling of absolute untouchability. All that scum could have been cleaned up in one fell swoop, but yet another opportunity was allowed to slip slide away.
Ukraine being a different country is a western mindset. Many of the greatest Russians in history came from what is now Ukraine such as A Tolstoy. Ukrainian place names are woven through Russian history all the way back to Kievan Rus a thousand years ago. It's about reclaiming heritage and history, totally unlike Afghanistan or any other Soviet war abroad.