Well, which one of them is the clown?

Reflections on the correspondence dispute between Putin and Zelensky about passports - publicist Igor Yakovenko

The dialogue between Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky took place. Correspondence, but quite complete. Putin, while in China, announced that he would distribute Russian passports not only to residents of the "DNR" and "LNR", but to all citizens of Ukraine.

“We do not only provide people who live in the “LPR” and “DPR” with this method of obtaining our citizenship. In general, we are thinking about granting Ukrainian citizens our citizenship in a simplified manner,” Putin said.

Zelensky responded with a lengthy Facebook post. In fact, this is a manifesto that outlines the new ideology of Ukraine, not only in relation to Putin's Russia. In fact, this text proposes a new identity for Ukraine.

“Firstly, I would not advise the Russian authorities to waste time trying to seduce citizens of Ukraine with Russian passports,” Zelensky explains, “perhaps someone will do this for the sake of earning money or in an attempt to hide from criminal prosecution. We can even provide Vladimir Putin with a list of citizens of Ukraine who will soon become very uncomfortable in a country that they cynically plundered by abusing high positions. Let Russia decide again where it needs such “professionals” the most – in Rostov or Magadan.”

The new president of Ukraine attacks Putin on his field: on the field of struggle for leadership in the post-Soviet space

Zelensky goes on to explain to Putin what a Russian passport is: “It is the right to be arrested for a peaceful protest. It is the right not to have free and competitive elections. This is the right to forget about the existence of natural human rights and freedoms. Therefore, one should not expect that many Ukrainians will want to become the “new oil” into which the Russian authorities are trying to turn their own people.”

“Citizenship of Ukraine is freedom, dignity and honor,” this patriotic “Zelensky’s triad” looks like an antithesis not only to the slogan that consolidates empire and lack of freedom in Russia – “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality”, but also to the patriotic “Poroshenko’s triad” – “the army , mova, vira".

This Facebook text can be viewed as the beginning of the information war that Zelensky promised Putin and which he is counting on in solving the problem of Donbass. The new president of Ukraine is attacking Putin in his own field: in the struggle for leadership in the post-Soviet space. “Ukraine will not abandon its mission to serve as an example of democracy for the post-Soviet countries,” Zelensky says, “part of this mission will be to provide protection, asylum and Ukrainian citizenship to all who are ready to fight for freedom ... We will grant Ukrainian citizenship to representatives of all peoples who suffer from authoritarian and corrupt regimes. First of all, to the Russians, who today suffer almost the most.” End of quote.

And in the end, personally to Putin, in response to his “we will go to heaven, and you will die”: “no one will immediately go to Paradise. First there will be Judgment.

Words cannot feed, win the war and return the occupied territories. But words mobilize supporters, demoralize enemies, and turn opponents into allies. Zelensky won the first round of the verbal duel with Putin outright. The distribution of Russian passports to residents of the "DNR" and "LNR" was a "friendly" bandwagon to the new president of Ukraine. Putin's "Chinese" statement that his appetites are not limited to the Donbass and that he needs all of Ukraine was a direct challenge to Zelensky. At the same time, Putin dismissively dismissed those who in Russia itself do not express enthusiasm for such an increase in the population. Putin called fears about a significant burden on the budget "horror stories." To a reasonable question, why was it necessary to arrange a pension robbery of Russians and immediately present Russian pensions to a million citizens of another country, Putin, as usual, referred to the Great Patriotic War.

“I think that our pensioners, many of whom still remember the years of the Great Patriotic War, understand the conditions in which people live today, and will not think that in this case we are dealing with some kind of social injustice,” Putin said.

Observation of the behavior of the Russian authorities allows us to formulate the immutable law of Putinism: if in Russia the authorities remember the Great Patriotic War, it means that they are preparing some kind of dirty trick, or have already committed it - they stole something or killed someone ...

It is impossible to find any logic and any sense in Putin's words and actions, except for the desire to harm Ukraine as a state and personally Zelensky as the head of this state. “People need to be supported,” Putin explains his intention to distribute Russian passports not only to residents of the “LDNR”, but to all citizens of Ukraine. Why only Ukraine? Why are the citizens of Belarus worse? And our former compatriots in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan are not people, or what? And there are 25 million more residents of the DPRK — “kindred spirits”, in the words of State Duma deputy Kazbek Taysaev (CPRF)… The choice of Ukraine as an object for the bitterness of “fraternal feelings” and frenzied “mercy”, as well as the moment of this bitterness and frenzy is associated with that a deadly threat to the Putin regime posed by an independent democratic Ukraine.

Russian TV made fun of the Ukrainians, they say, they chose a president - a clown. The first exchange of verbal political “blows” between Zelensky and Putin showed that Zelensky is definitely not the clown of the two

With the election of Zelensky, this threat may increase. The “may” clause is due to the fact that no one knows how Zelensky will be able to cope with the resistance of the internal opposition, which includes, in addition to influential political players, almost all the leaders of public opinion in Ukraine, almost the entire cultural and media elite. But if the opposition to Russia is built from the positions of the Ukrainian identity — “freedom, dignity, honor” — which was formulated in his Facebook manifesto, then this is a stronger challenge to Putin’s Russia than what was before him. Putin has a symmetrical answer to the triad “army, mova, vira”, since Russia has all three components, and as for the first, the Russian army is even stronger. But Putin has nothing to answer the triad of “freedom, dignity, honor”, ​​except for the rabid lies of the Solovyovs and Kiselevs, who are not believed by so many in Russia itself. In the absence of a substantive answer, the Kremlin will inevitably increase its anti-Ukrainian hysteria, it is quite possible that it will decide to test the new Ukrainian commander-in-chief “for strength” through military provocation.

In personalistic, and even more so in autocratic regimes, politics often becomes a hostage to the emotions of the autocrat. Russian TV made fun of the Ukrainians, they say, they chose a president - a clown. The first exchange of verbal political “blows” between Zelensky and Putin showed that Zelensky is definitely not the clown of the two of them.

Photo: news.nashbryansk.ru