Special operation, Ukrainian army and society
The beginning of the military special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine showed that one of the elements of the strategic planning of the command was political counting on the consciousness of the Ukrainian people, on the instability of the current regime and the lack of motivation for military operations on the part of some part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army
I confess that in February 2022, it seemed to me that a massive strike on the positions of the armed formations of Ukraine would cause not only the collapse of the front line in Donbas, but also lead to the complete disintegration of the army. But the harsh reality disproved such calculations.
The stability and viability of the armed forces of Ukraine is explained by a combination of factors, some of which were not known to the general public.
So, it turned out that about 40 Ukrainian servicemen - and this, one might say, a whole army - went through NATO training. And here it is not the transfer of experience or the acquisition of skills that is important, since the experience and competence of NATO instructors raise reasonable doubts, but the pumping of trained soldiers with the ideology that the United States and the West will help Ukraine, provide weapons and military support. Ukrainians were taught to fight specifically against Russia, to hate Russia and perceive themselves as an outpost of Western "civilization" in the face of the threat of Eastern hordes. 40 thousand is a large number of people, and they, distributed throughout the Ukrainian army, are the backbone on which the stability and morale of the armed forces rest.
In addition, it turned out that numerous fascist battalions, also trained by NATO and well-armed by the Ukrainian oligarchy, were thus built into an operational-tactical formation with the armed forces in order to act as detachments, maintaining discipline and instilling more fear than Russian troops.
And the last thing that was clear from the beginning was that the modern Ukrainian state was originally built as a nationalist, pro-Western and anti-Russian, and over the past eight years it has been transformed into a base for preparing an attack on the Russian Federation. This state actively and very aggressively processed the population, pumped up the army under the guise of patriotism with fascist ideology, cringing before the West and hatred not even for Russia, but for the peoples living in Russia and for that part of Ukrainian society that is loyal or sympathetic to Russia. The official attitude to the facts of the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the uprising of the people of Donbass became the basis of the new Ukrainian state ideology, the Ukrainian authorities self-determined the nation through the necessity, inevitability and validity of the war in the east. For eight years, Ukraine has raised a generation of young people whose worldview is shaped by fascist propaganda, Ukrainian nationalism and admiration for the West. They formed the basis of the mobilization appeal, also strengthening the moral and psychological stability of the armed forces. The Ukrainian government managed to create in the army an atmosphere of defensive, liberation, patriotic, national war.
Of course, the fire impact on the front lines greatly sobers up some soldiers. Under the explosions of mines and other shells, they involuntarily begin to think about their pawn role in preserving the Ukrainian regime, but these processes are still episodic, although they are growing as the special operation develops. There were even cases when Ukrainian soldiers, drugged by the delusions of propaganda, preferred inevitable death to captivity. But they were observed only before the fall of the Mariupol garrison.
Ukrainian society
Another thing is the political stability of the regime and the state of Ukrainian society as a whole. They came as a real surprise even to the Americans, Zelensky and his gang. In the first month of the special operation, careful observation of the Ukrainian propagandists, the military-political leadership and its curators from across the ocean showed their caution, their pre-panic state. And they were afraid not of the Russian army and its successes, but of Ukrainian society itself. It seemed to them that internal contradictions in Ukraine were the weakest point in the situation. But when they saw that nothing was happening, that the opposition humbly swore allegiance to the authorities, that the people meekly fled to the West, picking up and even developing all the main propaganda theses, they straightened their shoulders, felt confident in their abilities and, with triple zeal, began to lie about “crimes rashists”, “victories on the fronts” and the imminent “liberation of the Crimea”. As a result, Ukraine lives in virtual reality, where the “ghost of Kyiv” shoots down planes in batches, some big-mouthed beauty burned fifty tanks, a nineteen-year-old boy shot down ten planes, the swearing “did Tolya” will announce the collapse of the Crimean bridge the other day, Putin is about to die either from a deadly disease, or from a bullet fired in the forehead, and Russian troops commit monstrous, often unthinkable crimes.
One would think that the Internet, which allows you to look into the insides of Ukrainian society, distorts perception, since an army of Ukrainian propagandists with tens of thousands of bots is working on its open spaces. Therefore, until some time, I was skeptical about the picture that follows from network activity. I could not believe that the Ukrainians believed the arresters and Gordons. But now I had a chance to talk face-to-face with Ukrainians whose relatives live in Ukraine, and collect some information from the first, second and third mouths, which served as test material for general analytics.
So, I will share an interesting story of one young woman from Artyomovsk (Ukrainian fascists renamed it Bakhmut), which since 2014 has been turned into the most powerful fortified area in the Donbass and for which fighting is now underway. Artyomovsk became the patrimony of one of the fascist groups. This wonderful woman is a nurse who studied at one of the Kharkov universities in 2014, but was forced to flee to Russia to her relatives after receiving a summons from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In the family, she spoke Surzhik, and in Russia it was not so easy for her. I had to overcome the accent and some neglect from the locals, sometimes hiding that she was from Ukraine and even from the Donbass. But with hard work, she took place in the profession, graduated from the university and continues to work in the hospital. She got married, received Russian citizenship and had a child. But many of her friends, parents and other relatives remain in Artyomovsk. Even then, in 2014, some of her entourage assessed the trip to Russia as a betrayal, but did not focus on this and did not break off relations. After the beginning of the special operation, she became an enemy for old acquaintances and even for relatives. She is not only insulted, but she even received threats that if she dares to appear in her small homeland, she will be punished. Her own father, brother and aunt retell tales of numerous “crimes of Russians” and are amazed at how she can live in Russia, because this is hell on Earth. All counterarguments and appeals to sanity have no effect, her friends and relatives firmly believe that she was brainwashed.
And I heard several such tragic stories about family breaks, and they were all about the same. Ukrainian "patriots" repeat the evils of official propaganda, but it is important to note that not from the standpoint of the justice of the armed resistance of the WFM and the fact that Ukraine is allegedly waging a patriotic war, but by emphasizing the alleged crimes of the Russian army. They revel in stories about mass executions, rapes, looting, roughly speaking, they believe that the Russian Federation came to Ukraine to rob and rape. Obviously, the main factor in the formation of such a worldview is not political training, but some kind of mental influence. That is, the official “great power” chauvinism and Westernism that propaganda promotes do not take root among the people of Ukraine, but fakes and absurdities go with a bang.
Of course, Ukrainian society is far from homogeneous. There is Western Ukraine, where the people are generally saturated to the core with nationalism, there is Eastern Ukraine, where a significant part of society is glad to break with the Kyiv regime and is not against joining Russia. There is an intelligentsia that considers itself an "elite" who immediately rushed to Poland, a scandal in order to get a better job, but there are workers and peasants who have nowhere to go and have to somehow adapt to the situation on the ground. There are townspeople, there are villagers who have a different way of life and who suffer differently in the zone of combat and non-combat operations. All these layers, strata and strata are now undergoing an ideological split along the line of attitude to the special operation and the fact of the transfer of territories from the control of Kyiv to Moscow. And, unfortunately, the ideological influence of the West and the Kyiv authorities on the people exceeds both the level of critical thinking and the degree of ideological influence on the part of the Russian Federation.
The lessons of history that follow from how quickly Ukrainian society - our former, Soviet people - turned into what we are seeing now, once again prove the truth that breaking is not building. Unity and friendship among peoples are achieved with great efforts and great expenditure of time, while discord and hatred are sown quickly and easily. Of course, conscientious and decent historians have yet to comprehend the causal relationships between all armed conflicts on the territory of the former USSR and the collapse of our common Motherland, but it is already clear that without uprooting fascism there can be no question not only of the friendship of peoples, but also of good neighborliness. And the West only successfully uses our fragmentation and our mutual conflicts.
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