Russia

Putin has lost this war

It is for some time now that Western politicians have been keeping saying that Putin has lost the war in Ukraine. As proof for that they quote the numerous sanctions imposed on Russia and the fact that Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. They may also add that the whole international community has condemned Russia. Has Putin really lost this war?

① In 2014 Russia incorporated Crimea – in other words, Ukraine, the West’s darling, has lost it;

② since 2022 Russia has been occupying almost the whole territory of the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia; it is not Ukraine that occupies Russian territories;

③ the popularity of Vladimir Putin in Russia is at an all-time high, even the Western media admit it;

④ the Russian nation is consolidated like never before for the last few decades;

⑤ Russia and China are politically and economically closer and closer and are more and more effectively opposing the West;

⑥ Belarus, which tried to have friendly relations with all its neighbours, has been compelled to unite with Russia as much as possible;

⑦ Russian tactical nuclear weapons have been moved to Belarus, i.e. closer to the borders of NATO states;

⑧ most of the international community have not joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia;

⑨ sanctions have backfired and inflicted damage on the Western countries;

⑩ Ukraine, the West’s dependency, has had its economy ruined while its population has been decimated due to war losses and mass emigration.

Putin has already lost this war? Really? Let us view the above from a different vantage point:

① in 2014 the West lost Crimea, a prospective area for Western military presence and the resultant control over the Black Sea;

② since 2022 Ukraine (i.e. the West) has lost control over the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia;

③ the international, political prestige of Western leaders due to their political ineffectiveness in Ukraine is waning;

④ the Western governments and nations are split over the issue of the war in Ukraine;

⑤ Iran and North Korea have gained powerful protectors in Russia and China, while Turkey is an unreliable ally of the West ;

⑥ Belarus has ultimately and probably irrevocably been lost for the West;

⑦ the utility of the West’s weaponry has proved not so effective in the Ukrainian battlefield as it has been thought;

⑧ the international community is backing away from the dollar and joining or wishing to join BRICS, where Russia and China call the shots;

⑨ Russian gas and oil has found recipients in no time, and these are China and India to name the two biggest customers, while Russian uranium is still being provided for American power plants, generating revenue for Moscow;

⑩ Ukraine’s political, economic and demographic future is dismal to say the least.

The West may join Austria and Switzerland to NATO to prove that Putin has lost this war, but has he? Napoleon was in Moscow and Hitler was on the Volga (take a map to see how deep inside Russia the river flows!) and in the Caucasus, and for all that they both lost to Russia. Today the West has not even made an appreciable incursion into Russian territory, and still its leaders keep saying that Putin has already lost this war. How mendacious one can be?

Gefira 86: Sapere aude

Freedom of speech is not what characterizes humanity, human societies. Only rarely does it surface, for a historically speaking short moment, and then disappears. Why? There’s always a ruling group that holds power, and in order to hold power as long as possible, this groups needs not only to have control over the finances and the law enforcement, but also of the collective mind. It is the mind where seeds of opposition can be sown and where they can sprout, it is the mind that sparks dissent and opposition, it is the mind that leads people to rise up against their rulers. That is the simple reason why genuine freedom of speech, freedom of expression is unthinkable. It is unthinkable because it is impossible, because it sooner or later undermines the authority. That is why freedom of speech must be controlled, channelled or otherwise influenced. The rare moments when freedom of speech resurfaces are those historical times of equilibrium between a descending and an ascending ruling grup.

In the modern world censorship has become a word evoking the worst possible connotations. Dictators resort to censorship, Communists used to apply censorship, but democracies are all about freedom of expression… except that they are not. What do democracies do to simultaneously have censorship and not have it? The solution is easy and as old as human history. Democracies abolish the word censorship without abolishing censorship itself, democracies invent new ways of censoring content without having to resort to the old primitive methods of physically gagging someone’s mouth are imprisoning someone for his words. Democracies invent terms like combating disinformation or misinformation, like protection of the populace against malicious or inciting false news and ideas. That’s it! Censorship in a democracy? God forbid! Yet, you will agree that lies need to be suppressed, will you not?

Humans instinctively want to know the truth and wish to be able to pass correct judgement. In order to know the truth and in order to be able to pass correct judgement, one needs information, one needs varied information coming from different, politically or ideologically opposed sources. Only then can truth be discovered, only then can correct judgement be passed. Hence the need for consulting various information sources. Audiatur et altera pars, as the Romans used to say: let also the other party have a fair hearing. An argument can only be accepted as binding if it has been confronted with opposing arguments and stood its ground, when the argument turned out to (more closely) correspond to reality, to truth. How otherwise can we justly and impartially decide about anything?

How about misinformation or disinformation? If misinformation or disinformation are allowed currency together with information, in the long run the last mentioned will win out. Truth always wins out. As someone said: you can’t deceive all people all the time. Conversely, if information is suppressed under whatever noble pretexts, if you are punished or intimidated or ridiculed for wanting to consult various sources of information, then you may rest assured that those who want to punish, intimidate or ridicule you have been feeding lies to you and are now afraid of you exposing their mendacity. That’s a litmus test available to all of us. You don’t need to be an expert on anything, you only need to be vigilant: if the powers that be don’t want you to look for other sources of information, it clearly means that they want to conceal something and are afraid of being confronted with the truth.

Quid est veritas? was famously asked by Pilate. Yes, what is truth? It may not be easy to discover truth, but one thing is certain: we will never discover it without consulting varied sources of information, without exposing our minds to varied, opposing arguments. At least that much is true. It may be that you do not wish to investigate into various phenomena, events and news: why, it takes a lot of time and effort, and we all have our lives to live, our work to perform, our families to take care of, our vocations to fulfil. Nothing wrong with that. That is why societies delegate few individuals – like journalists or historians – to do the job for the rest of us, to present us with the results of their research efforts. That’s the way it ought to be. The only task that we – the consumers of someone else’s investigative work – are set with is to familiarize ourselves with the investigations done by others with this however sound principle that we must consult opposing sources of information and argumentation. The moment we are denied it, we know that we are being lied to, we know that we are being separated from truth.

There are many, many people who are in favour of global peace. Many of them join organizations and take part in demonstrations in support of international peace. Yet, these are usually empty gestures. It is not enough to yell, Give peace a chance; what needs to be done is to encourage all of us to give the other party to a conflict a fair hearing. Peace disappears when only one argumentation is heard and, consequently followed. Peace disappears when one argumentation deemed as correct makes it impossible for us to understand our opponents. One argumentation turns us into reckless automatons who believe they know reality, who are certain that they know truth while they don’t. If you want to give peace a chance, encourage people to listen to and read what the other party to the conflict has to say; if you want to give peace a chance, declare war on those who suppress selected sources of information and argumentation. Once you learn the argumentation of the other party, your belligerent attitude will almost always be done away with, or at least significantly reduced. Contrarily, if you clam up in your own world of allegedly true ideas, you are going to end up in a vicious conflict of attrition so much so if the other party to the conflict does the same.

It takes intellectual courage to think. Yes, genuine thinking is an act of courage. It is an act of courage to admit a thought that my attitude to an event, my belief in an idea, my evaluation of reality are perhaps not quite correct, are perhaps wrong, or perhaps downright wrong? It is an act of huge courage to admit that perhaps my opponent is not quite wrong, that my opponent is maybe right, maybe… absolutely right. It is probably easier to go to physical war and fight in the trenches than to subdue your own ego and surrender your own cherished beliefs. It was not without a reason that Romans used to say, imperare sibi maximum est imperium, or, to rule yourself is the ultimate form of power. It is really much easier to command troops in the field, or to withstand hardships than to admit that what you hold as sacred truth is not true.

Gefira Financial Bulletin #86 is available now

The two ways of the Rus’ian world
Which way, Russia?
A still more striking analogy
What way does a political class choose

Upgrading of Russia’s economic outlook

“Russia’s economy will expand much more rapidly this year than previously expected (…) Gross domestic product is forecast to rise 2.6 per cent this year, more than double the pace the IMF predicted (…) The Russian upgrade, by 1.5 percentage points, is the largest for any economy featured in an update to the fund’s World Economic Outlook.” That’s what Financial Times has to say.

“Russia is expected to grow faster than all advanced economies this year,” announces CNBC and continues that “Russia is expected to grow 3.2% in 2024, the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook published Tuesday, exceeding the forecast growth rates for the world’s advanced economies, including the U.S.” The growth forecasts for other countries are: the U.S. (2.7%), the U.K. (0.5%), Germany (0.2%) and France (0.7%), as we can read in the same source.

Also the BBC informs us that “Russia [is] to grow faster than all advanced economies” and refers its readers to an IMF report:

Oops… So many sanctions (is it sixteen thousand by now?), so much anti-Russian propaganda, the freezing of Russian financial assets, and all for nothing! Yet, the collective West – its leaders – should have known better. When did ever sanctions had their expected effect? In recent history it was North Korea, Iran and Cuba to name just a few which were severely sanctioned for years and despite those efforts to break their leaders or populations they remain politically defiant. Drawing on examples from more remote history: Napoleon Bonaparte imposed a continental blockade of the British Isles and it, too, was to no avail. The whole continent against one isolated country and the country continued to scheme against Napoleonic France and eventually brought about Napoleon’s downfall.

Notice that it is the Western media and Western agencies that speak about flourishing Russian economy. No propaganda on the part of the Kremlin, you see. The West feels itself compelled to reveal such data, data that prove how ineffective the West’s sanctions are, data that undermine the West’s policies. What are they going to do now? Impose a further two or five thousand sanctions? But then I suppose they have run out of the items they can put on the sanction list… Besides, in the face of Russia’s developing close economic ties with most of the world – be it the BRICS group or otherwise – and in the face of Russia’s self-sufficiency in terms of resources and Russia’s growing autarky, any new sanctions will fail miserably. They will effect one thing, though: they will strengthen Russian resolve to defy the West and to rely on and develop self-sufficiency even more.

The Western leaders must really be uneducated. It was during World War Two that Americans and the British used to bomb German towns and cities on a more or less regular basis, razing them with the ground. The allies pinned their hopes on the calculation that the German people, the common people, being exposed to enormous suffering, would eventually lose faith in the victorious outcome of the war and would rebel against the authorities. As we know nothing remotely resembling a loss of morale or willingness to resist the allies occurred. Rather, quite the contrary was true. The people were united behind their leaders even if some of them did not hold those leaders in high esteem. Does anyone learn anything from the past? Does anyone study past events?

With all the natural resources in their territory, with a well-developed industry and millions of educated people, Russia can really develop an autarkic economy. If additionally the country can rely on the help from China, India, Iran, Brasilia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, then all the sanctions in the world are doomed. Why impose them then?

To save face. The Western world is in a position similar to that that the American Democratic Party finds itself in: once the party has rolled out Joe Biden, it feels compelled to stick to this candidate for president, even though it is clear that he is a sorry sight to see. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Relevance of century-old observations

“The Germans long before …14 sought to destroy the unity of the Russian tribe forged in hard struggle. For this purpose they supported and boosted in the south of Russia a movement that set itself the goal of separation of its nine provinces from Russia, under the name of Ukraine. The aspiration to tear away from Russia the Little Russian branch of the Russian people has not been abandoned to this day. XY and his companions, the former protégés of the Germans, who began the dismemberment of Russia, continue to carry out their evil deed of creating an independent “Ukrainian state” and fighting against the revival of the United Russia (Единая Россия).”

Sounds familiar? This remark was made more than a hundred years ago by General Anton Denikin, one of the four most recognizable leaders of the anti-Bolshevik Russia during the civil war of 1917-1921. The other three were Alexander Kolchak, Nikolai Yudenich and Pyotr Wrangel. General Anton Denikin fought for a few years in the south of the former Russian Empire against the Red Army, but after some initial successes, he was forced to leave his fatherland. It was at that time that the West was very much interested in disrupting Russia. The two revolutions – the first one, often referred to as the bourgeois revolution, took place in February and the second one, the Bolshevik revolution, took place in October 1917 – were sparked off with the support and blessing of the Western powers. The British had a hand in dethroning the tsar in February 1917, the Germans substantially supported the Bolshevik party in October 1917: the leaders of the coup d’état that was to take place in October were transported in a sealed train from Switzerland across Imperial Germany to Sweden, from where they made their way to Petrograd (that’s how in 1914 the German-sounding Saint-Petersburg was renamed after Russia began the hostilities against Germany). Americans, too, chipped in. While Vladimir Lenin enjoyed German protection, travelling across Germany, Leon Trotsky, having spent a couple of years in New York with his family and two sons, was financed to cross the Atlantic and be on time in Petrograd to disrupt the Russian state. It was not only the financial and political support that helped the revolutionaries of all persuasions to bring about the collapse of the empire: national or ethnic resentment was also exploited, with the Germans advancing the idea of a Ukrainian nation as separate from Russians.

There were a number of Ukrainian leaders at that time, with Symon Petliura being one of the most recognizable. He was backed by the Germans, he was later backed by the reborn Polish state. The Polish troops together with some of his Ukrainian units advanced towards Kiev and even occupied it for a week or two in 1920. Quite a Maidan, was it not, even if short-lived? These are the events that General Anton Denikin referred to in the text at the opening of this article. The full date the part of which we intentionally deleted was 1914, while the letters XY stand for no less a person than Symon Petliura.

In 2014 we saw a kind of historical repeat. The Western powers made themselves felt in Ukraine, but especially in Kiev, and caused the legitimate president to flee the country. Also, a crawling civil war commenced in the Donbass, while Russia in response to all these events reclaimed the Crimean Peninsula, all of which led to the war that broke out eight years later. Today Anton Denikin might write something like this:

“The collective West long before 2014 sought to destroy the unity of the Russian tribe forged in hard struggle. For this purpose they supported and boosted in the Ukraine a movement that set itself the goal of antagonizing Ukrainians and Russians. The aspiration to tear away from Russia the Little Russian branch of the Russian people has not been abandoned to this day. Volodymyr Zelensky, Yulia Tymoshenko, Leonid Kravchuk, Petro Poroshenko, Vitalii Klichko (you name them) and their companions, the protégés of the West, who began the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, continue to carry out their evil deed of creating an independent “Ukrainian state” and fighting against the revival of the United Russia (Единая Россия).”

by the way, the phrase United Russia (Единая Россия) that Anton Denikin employed overlaps one to one with the name of the “Putin” party, which holds power in this largest post-Soviet republic.

This time, too, it is the United States, Germany and Great Britain along with Poland that are busy playing Ukrainians off against Russians. This time, too, they have found present-day Petliuras ready to serve them. Today, too, war is being waged, and today, like yesterday, it looks like Ukraine is on the losing end. So it goes. Will we be witnesses to yet another historical repeat in… 2114/2124?

During World War Two, after the Germans had attacked the Soviet Union, they approached General Denikin, who lived at that time in France, with a proposal of backing the Third Reich against the Bolsheviks. Anton Denikin was very much opposed to the Bolshevik rule in Russia, which is putting it mildly. Yet, he did not for a moment think it right to ally himself with the enemies of Russia, even Red Russia. Anton Denikin flatly refused and warned those Russians – and especially Ukrainians – who were willing to serve the Third Reich against the Bolsheviks. Anton Denikin tried to convince them that they were going to be miserable tools at the hands of the Germans, to be discarded the moment they were not needed.

It is said that the civil war in the Soviet Union did not end in 1922 – when Denikin, Wrangel and Yudenich were forced out of Russia, while Kolchak was taken prisoner and put against the wall – because the civil war in the form of resentment and a deep division running through Soviet society festered. It only ended when the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany. It was only then that the overwhelming majority of Soviet citizens of whatever political persuasion rallied around the Soviet leaders to defend Russia. Has not the same been happening since 2022 in Russia? Even those Russians who did not hold Vladimir Putin in high regard changed course and rallied around him. War and especially the resultant hardships were supposed to turn the people against the Kremlin: as it is, the opposite is true. Sure, there are some who have betrayed their country – there were some also during World War Two, like General Vlasov – but the majority have expressed their unwavering support for the leadership. Does anyone learn anything from the past? Does anyone study the past?

The legal case of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidency

On May 20 Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidential term expired, which poses a very interesting legal and political case. Russia does not recognize Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s authority any more. Which is not a malicious act on her part. The argument is that any agreement, accord, whatever signed by someone who simultaneously is not the head of a country entails grave political problems. Any next president of Ukraine may either feel bound by the agreement that Ukraine entered into with Russia under the presidency of Volodymyr Zelenskyy or may renege on it as signed by someone who did not have the legal authority to act as the country’s leader. Why should the Kremlin even bother to consider any talks with Zelenskyy if such is the case?

As of now, the West recognizes Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s power despite the expiry of his presidential term of office. Yet, the same legal case might be used by the diplomats in Washington, London, or Paris in any later development of events in Ukraine. They, too, might one of these days make a statement that they do not feel bound to honour any international settlement signed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy if only such a political move suits their purposes.

As is known, it is the interaction of the real military and economic factors that are at the disposal of the international players that matters. Diplomacy is merely a reflection of those real factors. Hence, if the West feels coerced to enter into an unfavourable settlement with Russia over Ukraine, it may intentionally make Volodymyr Zelenskyy sign it with the hindsight that the settlement is going to be revoked the moment the balance of powers tilts in the West’s favour. The fact that the legality of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidential authority is questionable might be viewed as a wild card in any future diplomatic dealings between the West and Russia if the latter agrees to honour Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s signature.

At present, Ukrainian jurisprudence might recognize the current Ukrainian leader as the country’s legitimate president. That may change overnight. Particular legal provisions can be construed to mean whatever pleases the powerful. We all know that.

Nawalny the Saviour

Yes, it happened some time ago now, but it is symptomatic of our times, of what we can observe on a political stage, hence worth taking a look. It was Easter Friday this year when German Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck had a sermon that attracted the attention of the media, which are otherwise not interested in what the clergy say (unless some of them dare to challenge new morality, which they usually don’t). Why did the sermon attract the media’s attention? Well, in a long, longish text about truth and notions that are allegedly connected with truth, Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck compared the imprisonment and death of Alexej Nawalny to the trial and execution of no less a person than Jesus Christ. A breath-taking statement.

In his homily Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck used the word truth a hundred times or so, and intertwined it with – how otherwise? – love and freedom, not forgetting about democracy and ecology. He also drew a comparison between Alexei Nawalny with the assassins of July 20th, 1944, the White Rose circle, and the fate of protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One more time to let it sink in: Alexej Nawalny was made to appear as a historical figure of immense dimensions and biblical proportions. He is the man who – Christ-like – represents or even embodies the truth, and who courageously stands up to his prosecutors – to his Pilate (read Putin). The listeners could read into the sermon also the comparison between the Russian Gulag (mentioned in the sermon), where Nawalny was imprisoned and the place of Golgotha (not mentioned).

What can you make of it? Why Nawalny found himself in jail – no word. He was incarcerated because… he defended the truth and was the embodiment of truth. He found himself behind the bars, and was later murdered just like the Scholls or Bonhoeffer or Stauffenberg the resistance fighters in Hitler’s Germany. In other words, he faced another Hitler and paid the ultimate price just like the German historical figures mentioned in the sermon. That was – as far as the mass media are concerned – the most thrilling part of the Easter Friday message delivered by German Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck.

As said above, the whole text is peppered with the word truth that occurs in a myriad of collocations which are made to put across meanings whose only purpose is to please the expectations of the listeners without regard for logical connectivity. Take one example from the very end of the bishop’s sermon, which reads: Truth is this power that comes from love and enables us to be friends with all people [Wahrheit ist jene Macht, die außer Liebe stammt und uns zur Freundschaft mit allen Menschen befähigt]. It certainly sounds nice to a casual ear of an average listener. But hang on for a moment and consider the sentence. The statement puts together and connects truth, love and friendship. Let us have a closer look at the trio. Truth comes from love? How can one say that truth comes from love? Truth is truth and love is love. Truth is about the correspondence between statements and facts, love is an emotion or also – especially as theologians and some psychologists want it – an act of will. Yes, Bishop Franz-Joseph Overbeck saying love, may have meant Christ himself, but Christ said about himself that he is the way and the truth and the life (not love), but with preachers you can never tell. Then we hear that truth enables us to be friends with all people [emphasis mine]. Really? Does it enable us to be friends with – dare we say it – Putin or Hitler himself? Judging by the contents of the sermon, it certainly does not! Hey, your excellency, has your argumentation just fallen apart in the last sentence of your homily?

Truth is truth, it has nothing to do with love and still less to do with enabling us to befriend all people. Everyday experience tells us that we are incapable of making friends with all people, and only hypocrites can say they respect each human. The truth which uncovers shameful or evil acts performed by certain individuals may just as well make us dislike (to put it mildly) those individuals in the name of… the truth about them.

Making use of such logic, a logic that combines the uncombinable, his excellency can “prove” whatever he pleases (in fact, whatever is politically expected of him because, somehow, the message overlaps with the political demand, does it not?), also a thesis that Alexej Nawalny is an embodiment of Christ while Pontius Pilate has reincarnated in Vladimir Putin.

This comparison between Jesus Christ and Alexej Nawalny is faulty at least in one respect. You see, Alexej Nawalny had the financial, political, psychological support of the whole West in his subversive activities against his motherland. At present this support has been transferred to Nawalny’s wife: Yulia Nawalna receives the same applause and lets herself be used as a battering ram against Putin just as her husband did. Did Jesus Christ enjoy support from a worldly power? Was his orphaned mother on anybody’s payroll? Were his disciples protected by any political entity? Why, no. It took some time and a lot of suffering along with personal sacrifice for their truth to be recognized as such. Alexei Nawalny and his adherents have all the acknowledgment, assistance and finances of the powers that be. They have even more than this: they have constant positive presence in the Western mass media. No need for them to travel long distances on donkey’s back, no need to fear persecution. Even in “scary” Russia they are not going to be crucified, are they? Really, his excellency should have known better while preparing the sermon. Even the Scholls, Bonhoeffer and Stauffenberg did not enjoy the West’s support. Worse, the world learnt about the Scholls and Bonhoeffer relatively late after the war. Your excellency, even your comparison drawn between Nawalny and the figures of the German resistance during the Second World War does not stand! Alexej Nawalny is not another Saviour (or Scholl, or Bonhoeffer, or Stauffenberg), as you would like him to appear, not by any measure.