Who does the opposition say to?

How the Russian anti -war movement ignores the reality in which Ukraine can lose the war

The editors may not share the opinions of the author. The question of the conditions for the end of the war should be addressed exclusively to the Ukrainian people and the democratic authorities of the country. The borders of 1991 for sovereign Ukraine are guaranteed by international law.

Ilya Yashin gave several software interviews in which he stated that Russian troops should leave the territory of Ukraine, and all the Russians who crossed its border are accomplices in the crime.

In this case, I am not about Yashin, to whom I treat with admiration for his courage and persistence in prison. I take his words as a generally accepted point of view among the Russian opposition. By default, it is considered necessary. Everything else, they tell us, are Putin agreements, "non -core -codes", fascists and zetniks.

Let's say directly, at the beginning of the war, during the shock from the invasion of the Russian army to the territory of the neighboring democratic state, this point of view was quite natural.

Since then, however, a lot of water has flowed, and this position has a lot of problems.

Firstly, the Russian army is currently a strategic advantage. The Ukrainian front is cracking and bends, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have nothing to oppose to the Russian fabs, a source in the Ukrainian army declares that 100 thousand Ukrainian soldiers could arbitrarily leave part , and in many units up to a third refuse to fight. In the history of mankind, it was simply not recorded when the winning army suddenly, for no reason, left large territories, including those where the population considers this army its defenders.

Secondly, there is not a single Western (and non-Western) policy that requires the same as Ilya Yashin. During the recent visit of Zelensky to the United States, neither Biden nor Harris did not say a word about the complete departure of Russian troops from Ukraine. Moreover, they have never said this since the beginning of the war. ( At the same time, US officials insist on the inviolability of the borders of Ukraine in 1991. - Approx. Ed. ).

As for other actors, they were expressed even sharper. The Economist, for example, called on the Ukrainian authorities to reconsider the goals of the war, and the Czech President Peter Pavel, one of the most faithful supporters of Ukraine, directly stated that Ukraine needs to "recognize the loss of part of the territories for years." Against this background, the wish of Yashin and other figures of the Russian opposition looks strange. No one demands from the Russian troops the borders of 1991-and here Yashin comes out, all in white.

Thirdly, the characteristic of all Russian soldiers and generally everyone who “crossed the border of Ukraine”, as “accomplices of crime”, also causes amazement.

I forgive forgiveness for the historical flank maneuver, but humanity is fighting a lot and often. Including Western humanity - from Athens and Rome to the US invasion of Panama or Iraq. The history of mankind is the history of the glorification of war, and it is not necessarily defensive. Alexander Macedon, Wilhelm Conqueror or Napoleon would be very surprised if Yashin called all their soldiers “military criminals”.

You can argue that it was in the past, so humanity was engaged in cannibalism - so, too, is it normal?

I will answer this that cannibalism - unlike military valor - has never been sung in Western civilization. And that, of course, in our society the perception of war has changed a lot (is it so good - a separate question). But still, in today's world, aggressive wars are being waged, and no, participants in these wars are automatically not criminals.

The United States, for example, in 1989 invaded Panama. The purpose of the invasion was the overthrow of the Panama dictator General Noriegi, whom they accused of drug trafficking. President Bush said that the invasion of Panama is self -defense (and we are still laughing at Lukashenko, who will show which side the attack was preparing!).

During the invasion of Panama, even according to the official statistics of the Pentagon, 202 Panama civilian civilian civilians accounted for 314 dead of the Panama military. That is, the number of civilians who died in the war amounted to 40%.

This, of course, does not make US troops military criminals. But this forces the question: how are all the Russian soldiers participating in the war turn out to be military criminals, according to Yashin?

The position “All Russian military-criminals” is a position imposed by the propaganda of Ukrainian national decolonizers. From a political point of view, it is counterproductive (you can, for example, Lenin, instead of anti-war propaganda, spoke to the Russian army during the First World War, that they are all war criminals?), From the point of view of international law, is absurd, and is completely insufficient for the National Decolonizers.

For them, no concession to which Russian scrap will go to them is generally not enough. If he recognizes the borders of 1991, then he will immediately require the “decolonization of Russia”, nuclear disarmament and support of RDK. Their goal is not to find a common language, but to drive into a corner and find an excuse to expose the Russian speaker.

However, this is only the beginning of our problem.

“Leaving the entire territory of Ukraine,” according to Yashin, also implies departure from Crimea.

The population of Crimea by 85% are ethnic Russians who speak Russian. This is not to say that their existence until 2014 was cloudless. Even under Yushchenko, for example, official documents were filled out only in Ukrainian, which led to the fact that the process of interaction between a citizen with the state was extremely strange. The Russian-speaking citizen, in order to serve the paper by the Russian-speaking official, was forced to look for some kind of interpreter who would transfer all this to Ukrainian. This was categorically not consistent with international humanitarian norms. Suffice it to say that in Israel, for example, the Arabic language, although not state -owned since 2018, has a special status. And you can turn to any state body in this language.

A referendum in the Crimea about joining Russia did not meet any international standards. But the presentation of the President of Zelensky that when the APU is approaching Crimea, the Russians will run away from it, and “civilians will help overthrow power”, from reality even further than the results of this referendum.

What fate does the President of Zelensky prepare the inhabitants of Crimea in the event of Ukraine returning the borders of 1991?

The official speaker of the presidential office Mikhail Podolyak answered this back in 2022. He promised that all his inhabitants who supported the annexation should be deported . Everyone, “who clapped their hands and said:“ Hurray! We wanted to see Russia on our peninsula ”, must bear the maximum responsibility for this ... That is, they will have to leave for Russia if we wanted to live in this poor country, which did not want to live in a leg with civilization,” he said.

Mikhail Podolyak also promised “to completely close everything regarding the Russian cultural space,” and said that “collaborators” and “traitors” are all who received a Russian passport.

In the same way, the team of Harry Kasparov spoke and, in particular, its representative Ivan Tyutrin : everyone who approved the accession of Crimea to Russia will have to leave him. In fact, we are talking about ethnic cleaning. Mr. Tyutrin expressed the desire to lead this cleaning so that the process took place, as it put it, "without excesses."

In addition, the Ukrainian authorities launched a large PR campaign, which claimed that three hundred thousand Ukrainians escaped from Crimea and a million or one and a half million Russians had been brought to it. Russian statistics are drawing another picture: about 23 thousand people left from Crimea to Ukraine after 2014 (that is, they did not return), and about 16 thousand were not a net to Crimea from Russia.

In total, 166 thousand people arrived in the Crimea, but at the same time 70 thousand of them arrived from Donbass/Lugansk, and another 80 thousand left Crimea to Russia.

The numbers about the million Russians settled in Crimea look like an additional justification for deportation. The ethnic cleaning of the inhabitants of the Crimea, who had the misfortune of “clap your hands” of Russia, in the case of the abandonment of the peninsula by Russian troops, is more than likely. The question arises: Ilya Yashin is sure that such a cleaning corresponds to the national interests of Russia?

Crimea is, of course, an extreme example. The situation in the Donbass and Lugansk, and even more so in Melitopol or Berdyansk is much more complicated. There were and there are many supporters of Ukraine, including Russian -speaking ones. But still the supporters of the "Russian world" are also decent there, and even more - swamps. That is, those for whom both sides are either acceptable or equally disgusting.

You can say that the ethnic problems of Ukraine are the ethnic problems of another state. And this state is democracy. Whatever they have in the Crimea, Donetsk or Lugansk happened - they could vote if they did not like it. (They voted - for Yanukovych). It was their business, and it was not necessary to get there.

Everything is so. But already climbed.

Therefore, let's say directly. The Russian intelligentsia has a commendable feature: it always finds shortcomings in its own state. And this state, which at the moment puts on likes, lies about buch and turns from authoritarian into totalitarian, is now terrible.

But when it comes to a neighboring state, then the Russian intelligentsia is amazing myopia, comparable only with the myopia of Western “useful idiots” admiring the 1937 Moscow processes.

In Ukraine, we see the cancellation of the elections that is justified by the war for democracy. All this - against the backdrop of crazy, overwhelming corruption, money in the amount that the Ukrainian elite has never seen, and the incredible concentration of power in the hands of the ruling elite. The degree of this concentration, probably, is no longer inferior to Putin for a year in 2006-2007.

What would Ilya Yashin say if this happened in Russia in 2007?

That's right, he would say that this hysteria is used to build the illusion of pseudo -paints, when people who have an opinion different from state propaganda are afraid to express it out of fear that they will be canceled. In order to make it easier to build a dictatorship and steal under the unsuccessful choir of impossible pseudopatriotic slogans.

Then why is the Russian opposition afraid to say this about Zelensky?

The President of Zelensky had a chance - to build a free, prosperous, democratic country. (Just like Putin had a chance to use power 20 years ago to develop Russia). The President of Zelensky instead chose another way. He decided that now he was a new Churchill. That in exchange for the deterrence of Russia, the United States will be forced to support everything: the cancellation of the elections, the concentration of power, the National Decolonizing rhetoric, endemic corruption.

In part, these manipulations are really successful. And partly they are one of the most important reasons why in Europe and the USA they want to freeze this war.

Despite all the spells about the fact that it is not good to “violate the state borders”, this war - as well as the Israeli war with Hamas - indicates the onset of a new historical reality.

This new historical reality lies in the fact that the international taboo, aimed at the ban on the use of military force with civilized states, suffers its historical collapse. This taboo established after World War II led to two results. Firstly, in a world where power is not used, it began to use impudent ones.

Secondly, it gave rise to a lot of gray zones-zones that turned into international belfers who lost the war, but did not disappear and therefore believe that everything should be and all of them are allowed.

At the beginning of the war, we believed that Hamas would be on the east side of the future line of the Russian-Ukrainian demarcation. And from the western side there will be South Korea. But now it is at least doubtful.

That is why recently The Economist, in this case, expressing not only his point of view, advised Vladimir Zelensky to moderate his ambitions and change goals in this war. Perhaps the same should be done by the Russian opposition.

The approach, according to which everyone who crossed the border, is criminals, and Russian troops must immediately leave the territory of Ukraine and so on, today is not realistic and excludes for the opposition any opportunity to come to power in Russia. And if the purpose of such statements is to please Ukrainian propaganda, then here the matter is even more hopeless.

It is enough to go to the reflax under Yashin’s tweets and read that he is a vile impressor and a genetic slave that the Russian Federation should be diluted, and RDK - enter Khabarovsk. These answers-once again-in no case are a reflection of real public opinion, just as Russian Z-channels are not a reflection of real public opinion in Russia. But they are a reflection of the propaganda that Zelensky uses to strengthen his own power in Ukraine.

There was no opposition in the USSR, but it contained the Voice of America and BBC, and everyone listened to them. They explained about the market and democracy. They explained to members of the ruling elite that they could not live in a three -room apartment with a Polish set, but to be the owners of newspapers and steamboats.

Who does today's Russian opposition address? She promises the elite of dispossession, the military - the borders of 1991, and to ordinary citizens - the flows of refugees from the Crimea, and it is good if not forced attendance of the decolonizers courses, who will probably conduct the same social activists who are now conducting “conversations about the important” and who will teach Russian children to repent for their imperiality from three years old.

And all this - against the backdrop of the success of the Russian troops and the more persistent desire of the United States, Europe, India, China and Turkey freeze the war along the front line.