Ukraine is in the focal point of the Western world. War is being waged on its territory and the Western leaders and elites make believe they did not expect such a development. Are they frank? For years we have seen the ideological hostilities and observed cutting barbs being tossed at the Kremlin: Russia was kept busy bypassing the many sanctions, answering accusations levelled at Moscow with regard to the Boris Nemtsov, Sergei and Yulia Skripal or Alexei Navalny cases, handling the political upheavals in Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and especially Ukraine. The Russian president was habitually termed a dictator, the Russian government – a regime, though Vladimir Putin (indirectly called a killer! by President Biden) took great care to always refer to Western politicians as Russia’s partners. The way leading to the war that broke out on 24 February 2022 had been paved for many, many years. The Maidan revolt of the year 2013/2014, the ensuing annexation of Crimea and the Russia-induced uprising against Kiev in the Donbass region could have been viewed as a dress rehearsal for the current events. Syria was yet another scene where this dress rehearsal took place. With all the sanctions (NordStream 2), accusations, clashes by proxy, insinuations and what not, how can anybody say he did not expect the eruption?

Americans love the phrase red line. They impose certain requirements on their opponents and if they are not fulfilled, Washington strikes. Recall Syria. It was something like that: one day President Obama said the United States would launch missiles if the Syrian rebels used gas and on the following day they did use gas, most likely to please the Americans and provide them with the pretext to attack. The leaders on the Potomac drew the red line and, seeing it crossed, reacted as they had promised. Moscow, too, had no other choice as to set down its own red line which was: Ukraine must not become a member-state of NATO or else. When Ukraine’s NATO membership did not cease to be constantly on the table, and when – to top it all – it began to be discussed whether Kiev should not be allowed to have its own nukes, Russia struck. Such are the rules of the game. If you lay down your red lines and then sit idly by watching the red line being crossed again and again, you become a political nonentity that nobody reckons with. By the way, the same is true of individuals, not only states. Adhering to American political language in which all US interventions are termed peaceful operations or operations aimed at preventing a humanitarian disaster, so did Russia label its intervention in Ukraine as a military operation aimed at the demilitarization and denazification of the country. If you do not see the parallelism, then you are unfairly prejudiced against Moscow.

Gefira 62 does not deal with the unfolding war in Ukraine directly. Rather, it presents the reader with a psychological portrait of Russia, taking him on a journey from monument to monument dedicated to Russia’s past and from speech to speech occasioned by the unveiling of those monuments – insightful messages from the largest Slavic nation to the world outside, messages revealing the nation’s soul and ambitions. These messages should have been received, read and properly interpreted. Alas, the overwhelming majority of the Western world ignores everything Russian (also Ukrainian, Serb, Croat, Polish, Czech), has very little knowledge about those regions of the world and heavily relies on the mendacious and biased media for the information about the nations mentioned above. If Russian sources are sometimes studied, then they are hopelessly misunderstood. Compare the interpretation put on Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” masterpiece in the 1958 American drama film with Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Mel Ferrer with that given by the 1966-67 movie featuring Sergei Bondarchuk, Ludmila Savelyeva and Vyacheslav Tikhonov. How many readers are familiar with the former rather than with the latter, if they are familiar with the book or the said motion pictures in the first place?

The original sin leading to the hostilities and the hate among nations is the inability to listen to the other side to the conflict, the inability (or even conscious unwillingness) to let the other side be heard. Cross your heart and say honestly: have you ever for the last several years listened to the Russian argumentation concerning Navalny, Syria, NordStream 2 or Ukraine? Have you ever tried to access Russian patriotic media outlets (we do not mean the Russian so-called dissidents who echo CNN or BBC) of which some are in English, and have you tried to adjudge the conflict between the West and Russia impartially? Gefira 62 with its accompanying website www.gefira.org are doing their best to help you hear the other side to the conflict.