Easter Ceasefire Brings Brief Glimmer of Humanity Amidst the Chaos

Putin announced a surprise Easter ceasefire yesterday. As can be expected, it again divided the commentariat, with the ‘turbopatriot’ contingent damning the dovish leader for his constant perceived concessions to the West, while others praised him for a 5D chess move to expose Zelensky’s intransigent warmongering.

Arguments can be made for both sides: on one hand it’s undeniable that Zelensky’s image suffered as even MSM outlets were forced to report of Ukraine’s ‘rejection’ of peace; on the other hand, we must consider how Russian servicemen agonizing in the crucible of the frontlines feel when their leader repeatedly signals ‘conciliatory gestures’ during the midst of a brutal conflict that is wiping out their friends left and right.

Indeed, both sides have merit.

But we must be reminded that wars are no strangers to special ceasefires for holidays and religious observances. The first world war, for its part, saw quite a few of them, including the famous Christmas Ceasefire of 1914, which featured troops from both sides crawling out of their trenches to share a moment of camaraderie in the frigid heart of ‘no man’s land’:

“British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches" The subcaption reads "Saxons and Anglo-Saxons fraternising on the field of battle at the season of peace and goodwill: Officers and men from the German and British trenches meet and greet one another—A German officer photographing a group of foes and friends.”

There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carolling. Hostilities continued in some sectors, while in others the sides settled on little more than arrangements to recover bodies.

Of course, that was the beginning of the war. Later, after the carnage had accrued, things were never so jolly again. In the midst of a bitter third year in the Ukrainian war, there were no such occasions of merriment, but simple collection of bodies. Well, there was one claimed video from the Ukrainian side of a small group of Russians allegedly parleying with Ukrainians—though it’s hard to tell which is which:

The Russian side was allowed to collect its casualties from the field in Zaporozhye under a white flag with medical cross, as filmed by Ukrainian drone:

And the Ukrainian side doing the same:

At least one video appeared of Ukrainian drones still attacking Russians despite the above white flag:

A Russian evacuation group under a white flag tried to remove the dead, but they were attacked by the enemy. 1:30-first arrivals, 4:30-kamikaze arrived, 5:20 - arrival from a tank, 5:50-kamikaze strike, 7:40-repeated kamikaze strike

The comparison to earlier truces does occasion an odd thought. The type of mutual respect shared ‘between Saxon and Anglo-Saxon’ in WWI is nearly unthinkable in today’s Ukrainian war. The Germans who met their counterparts in no man’s land were said to have been ‘confused’ as to why the British were even fighting there. The two peoples had mutual respect, and the soldiers of each side had likely understood the inscrutable vagaries of politics had brought them to a fateful and unnecessary clash.

But in the case of the Ukraine war, two nations which should have been bound by a brotherly commonality share a kind of enmity unheard of even between the opponents of past world wars. It is nigh unthinkable for a Ukrainian soldier to praise or even look upon a Russian one as an equal, or an object worthy of even a momentary olive branch of respect. The Ukrainians have been taught to dehumanize the Russians at every turn, in every form and category of civil expression: from the strict adherence to minusculing the name ‘russia’, or intentionally bastardizing it as ruZZia, Rascia, etc., to a long laundry list of overtly racist slurs—in mimicry of Nazi racialism, no less—describing Russians as everything from orcs to izgoi to outright subhumans, depicted in this Ukrainian-circulated meme meant to evoke the typical ‘ruZZian orc’ of Putin’s “mir” known as ‘Mordor’:

These misbegotten sentiments have been lifted straight out of the CIA and MI6 playbooks, bred into the Ukrainian nationalist psyche since the days of 1948’s Operation Aerodynamic. But it’s part of a much broader psyop to target all Russian culture, which continues operating to this day, wherein anything of Russian origin is made to be slandered and curbed at all costs, anything even remotely adjacent to Russia curtailed and marginalized so as to never allow the Russian side of the story in the world’s greatest geopolitical struggle even the slightest hint of expression.

Just consider the explosion of ‘Ruscism’ as a term over the past three years: an information campaign designed to reduce Russian culture to a kind of perverse and backward cargo cult led by the caricature of Vladimir Putin as a dictator-illusionist in one, weaving a spell over his impoverished flock drunk on long-past Soviet glories. Funny how the Ukrainian variant of ‘lustration’ never caught fire in the same way.

Though the sentiment certainly exists on the Russian side—albeit in mostly justified doses, given the unprovoked attacks on Russian language, culture, and institutions initiated by the Ukrainians—to an immeasurably greater extent, Russian soldiers typically resign themselves to a kind of reluctant pity for their Ukrainian ‘younger siblings’, who are seen as propagandized into fighting against their will by the tyrannical Atlanticist machine.

Here is an example, posted by Russian Major General Apti Alaudinov just days ago on his TG channel:

In fact, I want to point out that even when they are our enemies, I feel sorry that the Ukrainian people are losing so many men, and really, if this continues, the Ukrainian people will cease to exist as an identity. Representatives of this people cannot understand that they are really fuel only for the enrichment of the leadership of this country. For this people, the loss of so many men is, I believe, a humanitarian catastrophe.

Don't you understand that we, Russians, are not your enemies? We are not your enemies. We are not fighting the Ukrainian people. We are not fighting Ukraine as a state. We are fighting the fascist regime that leads Ukraine. We are fighting the NATO bloc, which is precisely the army of the Antichrist-Dajjal.

I think that sooner or later you will wake up and throw off the Satanist leadership that controls you. We know that we are on the path of the Almighty and we are fighting for religion, we are fighting for our people, we are ready to carry out any order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. And we know that we will win. This is a clear question. Wake up!

You will be hard pressed to find a similar humanistic appeal from any Ukrainian commander, much less soldier. The only one that has come close has been ex-presidential advisor Arestovich, who has lately adopted the stance that Ukraine’s downfall was truly born of the mad dehumanization of Russians elevated to a kind of state ideology. Of course, in Arestovich’s case, the gleaming ‘realization’ comes down merely to political posturing, and the desperate desire to apple-polish his way into favor as a ‘reasonable’ moderate candidate for the post-Zelensky playing field.

As of this writing, the ‘ceasefire’—or what was left of it—has passed, and the guns are once more fulminating in the distance. It’s hard to say how much of anything the spectacle achieved, and whether it was some ‘cunning ploy’ by Putin to denude Zelensky on the global stage, or done merely in the genuinely pious spirit of mercy befitting the holiest of Christian days.

But mercy is certainly not a virtue ever to be extended in good faith to Russia by the seething misanthropes cowering in their dusty dens in the bowels of Brussels and the City of London. As such, it will be wise for Putin to keep the spectacles to a minimum, and continue prosecuting the war until the guns fall silent not as consequence of political theater, but by the crushing demise of the enemy’s resistance.

After all, the wicked preach godliness while secretly plotting the total erasure of the Russian way of life, and as Putin once rhetorically remarked about what need there’d be for this world without Russia, we can conclude:

Fiat justitia, ruat caelum—Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.

I leave you with the timely Russian Easter ad from the “12 Temples” project focused on “strengthening moral values and increasing interest in the topic of spiritual development.”

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