War is a blessing while people are like grass

The war in Ukraine is dragging on. The end is nowhere in sight. It is dragging on and soon it will be entering its fourth year. Reason suggests that Russia with its demographic and industrial potential could put the hostilities to a rapid end. Nothing of the sort is happening. Reason suggests that Ukraine should lay down its arms since there is no way it can regain lost territories, not to speak of winning over its much stronger neighbour. Nothing of the sort is happening. Reason also suggests that the West should work towards ending the hostilities because if Ukraine’s defeat eventually comes, the EU will be politically worse off. Nothing of the sort is happening. Why?

Russia. Russia has been benefiting from the war effort just like the United States benefited from the First World War and the Second World War: at that time American economy was boosted, and so is Russia’s economy today. Russia is benefiting from the war also in terms of its society rallying around the head of the state. Precisely as it was the case with the United States in both world wars, so it is now in the case of Russia: it is not directly affected by the hostilities it. Yes, Russian soldiers are dying or are wounded, but Russian soil and Russian civilians remain for all practical purposes unscathed.

The European Union. The European Union is in decline. A decline caused by its deviant green ideology, by the indiscriminate acceptance of the influx of foreigners, and lastly by its economic problems brought about by the renunciation of cheap Russian gas. The welfare state is becoming overburdened, the governments and heads of state are increasingly unpopular while national and right-wing parties are on the political rise. Not infrequently people take to the streets and show their disdain for their leaders. The European dream is shattered. What then are the EU managers trying to do the save the day? Yes, they are trying to find a scapegoat for all the negative phenomena. This scapegoat is Russia. A very convenient scapegoat. All economic problems can now be blamed on the aggressor from the east, all shortages and shortcomings – on the ‘Mongols’ looming large on the eastern horizon. Europeans ought only to understand what is at stake, and rally round the EU commissioners in a joint attempt to defend the Garden against the Jungle.

The United States. The United States has used the war in Ukraine not only to weaken Russia, but also to subjugate Europe. Yes, Washington knows that Russia will eventually win, but in the process it will lose some of the people, and it will be kept busy, letting Washington more leeway elsewhere in the world. Europe has been conveniently rendered economically impotent, which is another gain for Americans. A competitor has been removed. The competitor’s reliance on Russian energy sources has been significantly lowered. Washington is cherishing high hopes that some of Europe’s industries and businesses will relocate to the United States, which will further deindustrialize the Old Continent and re-industrialize America.

What is the attitude of the three mentioned players to Ukrainians?

Russia. Russia recognizes in Ukrainians brothers by ethnicity. That is one of the reasons why Russian troops steer clear of destroying civilian objects and objects of cultural heritage. Concurrently, Russian troops are fighting hard culling the Banderite-type troops. This alone will render Ukraine less hostile to Russia. Also, the Russian army is destroying Ukraine’s military, thus making it no match to the Russian Federation in the nearest future. The destruction of the civilian infrastructure will make it barely possible for Ukraine to be accepted as a member of the European Union.

The European Union. The European Union couldn’t care less about Ukrainian life though, sure enough, the EU managers say they do. Ukrainian lives are pawns on the geopolitical chessboard and are willingly sacrificed on the altar of combating Russia. And what a paradox! The EU commissioners are gladly embracing ‘refugees’ from Africa and Asia who allegedly escape from war while they would gladly see all Ukrainian able-bodied men drafted into the Ukrainian army and sent to the front! The European Union accepts males from the Third World: why would it rather not accept all Ukrainian men who want to be drafted? True, Europeans are not as yet rounding Ukrainian men up in their cities and sending them back home, but such ideas have emerged now and again, here and there.

The United States. The United States views Ukraine precisely as Europe does: after all it was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American politician and political thinker, who famously framed the globe as a chessboard. That’s precisely how the big players think about nations and countries: nations are chessmen while their territories are black and white squares of the chessboard. Accordingly, you sacrifice a chessman or you let go of a square as the case may be. The United States is one player, Russia or China is the other. Anything between them is – as we have already said – chessmen and chessboard squares. That’s all there is to it.

That’s also precisely how the managers of the world view the common people and their countries. The European elites may be whipping up war hysteria, but they themselves will not handle rifles or lie in trenches. Far be it from them! Whatever they want to impose on the common man and woman, they themselves prefer not to be affected by. Immigrants by the million for the common European to live with on a daily basis, but the commissioners live in places where they do not need to bother about strangers. Is it any different with war? No. Consider Ukraine’s President Zelensky. How has he experienced the three years of hostilities? He’s been travelling the world over, has been warmly received everywhere, and has given hundreds of interviews and made hundreds speeches, issuing hundreds of statements. How about the members of the Ukrainian government, of Ukraine’s parliament, how about higher officers? Pretty much the same story.

It has always been so throughout human history. Napoleon Bonaparte had half a million soldiers killed, frozen, or maimed in Russian steppes, but he himself made sure to be able to escape from the enemy and the frost in a comfortable coach, wrapped in warm furs. Adolf Hitler and his entourage? After the Red Army had crossed the Oder and was approaching Berlin, he and his ministers and generals must have realized that the end was inevitable and that the end was just round the corner. Some of them must have already taken the decision to commit suicide, and yet in order to prolong their lives by mere three-four months they did not stop the war. Rather, they sent new waves of troops – teenagers and the elderly – and added hundreds of thousands if not millions deaths to the huge overall toll.

For the managers of the world affairs, war is a game, a game that thrills them because it is a game played in reality. It is not a computer game. Augustus II the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland conspired with Tsar Peter I of Russia to attack Sweden in the latter’s possession on the Baltic. The war, which began in 1700 and lasted till 1721, soon after its outbreak turned to be a catastrophe for Saxony and partly for Russia. Augustus was forced to draft new and new men to either defend his country or help his Russian ally. When someone pointed to him that so many men had died and so many more were about to die, he shrugged his shoulders and merely replied: people are like grass. The more you trample it, the more abundantly it will regrow.

The Spell that Has Lingered for so Long is Broken

Several generations back, India was under British dominion and the British monarch – Queen Victoria – was even crowned Empress of India. We need to understand that India up to the end of the Second World War comprised today’s India along with today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh. The monarch of a lilliputian country – UK – became a ruler of a subcontinent. Then came World War One and World War Two, which resulted at first in the weakening, and then in the disintegration of the British Empire. The world came to be dominated by the United States of America, which was on the one hand a change, but on the other it was not a very great change as the United States is historically the offspring of the United Kingdom or Great Britain. Though the pound sterling has been supplanted by the dollar as the currency of international exchange, the language of the world’s hegemon has remained the same: English.

As the Suez Crisis of 1956 eventually broke the backbone of both France and Great Britain along with their fast shrinking empires and disappearing colonies, the United States emerged as a hegemon which had only the Soviet Union to reckon with. In 1991, the Soviet rival ceased to exist and so – by God’s grace as President Bush senior framed it – America reported a global victory. It seemed the Land of the Free was destined to lord it over for a good couple of decades. If older standards were to be restored, American presidents could be crowned emperors of China and India or viceroys of Russia and Europe. It turned however out, soon enough, that the Middle Kingdom with huge American infusions into its economy gradually emerged as a potentate, and so did India. The mental or psychological inertia lingered, though. Both the Chinese and the Indians are rather prone to looking up to the former powers as something better than they are: English still plays such a role around the globe that Latin did in medieval Europe, while British and American culture is still craved by many Chinese and Indians. One might say that though the economic and political influence has somewhat flagged, the spell still holds. Or does it?

Today Beijing and Delhi are in control of their own countries and pursue an international policy that serves their respective interests. The time when the both capitals would occasionally turn to Washington for advice, aid or approval is gone. The mental or psychological inertia persists… but more on the part of the Western world. In his proxy war against Russia the American president has made an attempt to isolate Russia economically in that he threatened those that continued to purchase Russian gas and oil with exorbitant tariffs. President Donald Trump’s favourite tactics may have had some effect in the case of some governments, but when it came to India, the American president met with a decisive resistance. As soon as India was threatened with retaliatory steps for exports from Russia, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi immediately turned to Moscow and Beijing for help, and had the commercial deal with the American Boeing annulled. In an effort to put things to rights, President Donald Trump decided to quickly call India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi… to no avail. Political rumour has it that Trump made as many as four calls and none was answered. The rumour is spread by the respected Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung and confirmed by other unnamed sources.

Be that as it may, the very idea that a leader of a country that used to be another country’s colony and used to rely on international aid for nourishing its citizens, plus the fact that one can spread news – rumour or no rumour – about any one leader refusing to respond to an American president’s phone four times is a telling mark of the change that is sweeping the whole globe. Narendra Modi’s sudden and decisive political swing towards China is a fact, a disturbing fact. The Moscow-Delhi-Beijing trio is to the United States an unpalatable event. Historically speaking, it was not so long ago when both China and India were under the West’s political and economic control. Today they have both thrown down the gauntlet to their former colonizers. Their ostentatious cooperation makes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s rumour look like fact. Trump’s remark on TruthSocial that we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China substantiates this rumour even further. While Queen Victoria was India’s Empress, Donald Trump is not even India’s respected partner.

US earns, EU pays, Ukraine dies

It’s that simple. Lindsey Graham, the senator, explained it in a few sentences. Americans will produce the weaponry, Europeans will finance the production, while Ukrainians will receive them. That’s what he said. He only omitted to add that Ukrainians would receive the weaponry in order to die. What else? No one in his right mind thinks they can win.

Is that the re-industrialization of the United States? Manufacture of military items alone is not exactly what makes for a healthy economy. For the United States to be an economic superpower, it needs to produce competitive automobiles, digital devices and all the rest that makes the world develop and prosper. More to it: the United States needs not only to produce such items, but also to outproduce China, and Taiwan.

Is that the benefit that the European Union gets from being allied with the United States? Paying for American military equipment will inject money into American economy, but how does that relate to Europe’s economy? With no cheap oil or gas, the EU is going to have a hard time.

Is that a real aid that Ukraine needs? Unlikely. Russia has gained the upper hand and its military strength is on the rise. Ukraine is on its last legs while its soldiers are alleged to be deserting the ranks in droves. Why then bleed the nation?

When Napoleon was defeated at the 1813 Battle of Leipzig, he was compelled to retreat to France. The allied forces – Russia, Prussia, Austria, England – were not quite sure whether they could eventually beat the Emperor, so they offered him a peace settlement which stipulated that France would retain the territories up to the Rhine River and some chunks of northern Italy, i.e. an area that France’s King Louis XIV (the Sun King!) wanted to control, but eventually could not because he did not manage to prevail over France’s enemies. What did Napoleon do? Yes, you know it very well. He defied the allies and continued the war effort. France, like today’s Ukraine, was exhausted by war but never mind! You can always count on a miracle. The result was that France lost and was reduced to the pre-war area, while Napoleon was made to resign from his throne, which was much to the joy of the common French people who by that time had had enough of his wars. What do you think Ukrainians dream of now? Of prolonging war? Of having Mr Zelensky on the throne? Give me a break!

Americans are running low on the stock of arms, the EU is running out of sanctions, while Ukraine is running out of manpower. President Donald Trump has threatened all the countries around to world to impose 100% tariffs on them if they continue trading with Russia. Well, if countries trade with Russia it means that they profit from it. Many of them have purchased American treasuries. In other words, they are American creditors. Will the American president punish American creditors? That would be another bad signal to all the world, another bad signal after the West’s freezing Russian financial assets back in 2022. Given such a development of events, how can particular nations trust the dollar as a safe store of value, and SWIFT as s safe system of financial exchange?

Are we not in a death spiral downwards? Are these measures not like reckless body movements of one drowning in a swamp? What an irony, especially when you think of someone wanting to dry up the swamp…

Rules for thee but not for me

On June 13 2025, Israel carried out air strikes against targets inside Iran. Tel Aviv has thus arbitrarily administered punishment to Tehran for allegedly developing Iran’s capabilities of constructing a nuclear bomb. A few remarks.

① There are politicians and journalists, political analysts and other pundits who condemn the Russian intervention in Ukraine, which began in 2022, and in the same breath they justify the military action performed by Israel. Both Moscow and Tel Aviv claim they were compelled to carry out strikes against Ukraine and Iran respectively because the said countries posed an existential threat to Russia and Israel respectively. Ukraine wanted to join anti-Russian NATO and possibly acquire nukes, while Iran sought to manufacture nuclear weapons with the intention of wiping Israel out of the surface of the earth.

Why is Israel justified in its action while Russia is not? Notice that Ukraine borders on Russia, while Iran is divided from Israel by Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

② Tel Aviv stands on guard not to let any of the Middle East countries to have nuclear weapons while Israel itself has an arsenal of such weapons.

Why should one country have nuclear weapons while any other be prohibited from possessing them? What is the moral or rational explanation? It might be that those who have weapons of mass destruction are likely to say that they are angelic warriors who are not likely to use them or to use them without justification while the other countries are the bad guys who certainly would use them without justification. Yes, such is the narrative, but then it does not require much stretch of imagination to realize that the so-called bad guys think along precisely the same lines with this difference, however, that they regard themselves as angelic warriors and others as villains.

What if South Korea wanted to acquire nuclear weapons? Reason? Because North Korea has them. Reason enough. We may rest assured the United States would have nothing against, so much so that South Korea might also be employed as an ally against China, allegedly America’s life-threatening rival. Why, the United States might not have anything against Japan acquiring nuclear weapons. Again, Japan might be used against China and – who knows – against Russia.

What if Tehran were rabidly anti-Russian? Would then Iran not be allowed to have nuclear weapons? If the idea of Ukraine possessing such weaponry was seriously considered at a time, then certainly an anti-Russian Iran would be given free rein in this respect.

③ Are American attempts at bringing international peace worth anything? President Donald Trump is helpless in brokering peace both in Ukraine and in the Middle East. The question arises whether the American leader is simply incompetent or… or whether these peace initiatives are only make believe. If the United States is a superpower, why cannot Washington project its political leverage on Ukraine and Israel? If a superpower cannot control much smaller states, then something must be the matter. What? It might be that Washington does not serve American interests. Is such a thought substantiated? Of course, it is. One only needs to look at the European leaders and their entirely anti-European policies whether it is the ethnic replacement or green economy or the anti-moral agenda.

④ What is the credibility of the American president? The Israelis have decapitated some of Iran’s military and civilian management precisely while talks were held between Washington and Tehran. It is obvious President Donald Trump must have known about the preparations for the attack. If by any chance he did not because he would have been against and the American powers that be desperately wanted to hit Iran, then his reliability as an American leader is even worse: why talk to a president who does not control his own country, his own agencies and his own underlings?

⑤ Iran lashed out, and lashed out successfully. Israel was hailed with missiles and the famed Iron Dome that was supposed to protect the country’s territory proved to be quite penetrable. Now Tel Aviv might request missiles and anti-aircraft systems from the United States to make up for the depleted stocks of their own missiles. What will then remain for Ukraine? Certainly Israel rather than Ukraine is Washington’s priority.

⑥ Will the United States army be drawn into war against Iran? That might mean splitting American military and other resources between the Middle East, Ukraine and China. Is that not too much even for a superpower, especially a superpower with domestic problems caused by – some say – thirty million unregistered aliens who flooded the country during the Biden administration and earlier? A civil war or a wave of terrorist attacks at home, an involvement in Ukraine, a military engagement in the Middle East, and muscle flexing in Washington’s dealings with the Middle Kingdom – is that not a huge overreach?

Whichever way you look at the events, one thing should strike you immediately: one attack is justified while another is not. Rules for thee but not for me.

Pearl Harbor 2?

The Western European elites along with the American democrats were just overjoyed! Ukrainians carried out Operation Spider’s Web and hit targets deep inside Russia, thousands of kilometers away from Ukraine, by means of drones that were smuggled into the Federation and remotely controlled. Damage was inflicted on industrial objects in places located in the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions. The former is close to the northern parts of Finland, the latter is as far east as Mongolia! Quite an exploit on the part of the Ukrainians. Surely, they will have been aided by the Western intelligence or else they would never ever have been able to precisely locate the targets, some of which were military aircraft.

Though the action is a feat – rumour has it it took one and a half years to prepare it – its political and military impact is questionable. The assault seems to be orchestrated with yet another round of Istanbul talks. Why? Did Kiev want to disrupt the negotiations or merely gain a better position at the negotiating table? The Western journalists and politicians were just beside themselves with joy; some began comparing the event to Pearl Harbor, a Japanese attack on the American navy on 7 December 1941. The comparison shows the general stupidity of the people running the media and being in charge of the Western countries. Their historical knowledge is certainly as small as to be deplorable, but even in this case they should have reflected for a second or so. If they had reflected, they would have immediately remembered that within a few months of Pearl Harbour Americans successfully retaliated at the Battle of Midway, and within a few years of Pearl Harbor Japan was on its knees. Are those journalists and politicians aware of this sequence of events? Is there among them at least one man like Admiral Yamamoto, who after the Pearl Harbour attack said: We have awakened a sleeping giant?

What did the planners of this operation think they could achieve? Did they hope to compel Russia to give in? Did they really? Maybe they thought the Russian nation would be scared out of their wits and beg Putin to put an end to the war and ask for peace terms? If they thought so then, again, they have a very poor knowledge of even recent history. It was during the Second World War that the Americans and the British mercilessly and ruthlessly carpet bombed German cities and… and they only strengthened German resistance and caused the Germans to rally around their leaders. The same is true of Russians, the some has always been and will always be true of any nation.

In this attack, Ukrainians claim to have destroyed a number of bombers. Russians own up they lost a few aircraft. As usual the numbers differ: the attacker overrates, the attacked underrates the hits. Be it as it may, the number is not important. Not only because the number of lost aircraft is not likely to change the course of the hostilities, but first of all because the loss of the airplanes translates into a loss of something far more significant. For why were the Russian bombers successfully hit? Because they stood on tarmac, without any type of cover. Why did they stand on tarmac for all to see from outer space? Was it because the Russians were too self-confident or because they were incompetent? Neither. The aircraft stood on tarmac because it was agreed between the United States of America and the Russian Federation (New START, 2011) that military airplanes capable of carrying nukes are to be visible to the other party of the agreement through satellite monitoring as a kind of reassurance that no surreptitious attack was being prepared or was under way. It seems that the West has compromised this part of the said agreement only to spite Russia. Now, the Russians might as well start concealing their strategic aircraft. How will that benefit the West?

As could be expected, the attacks strengthened the willingness of the Russians to punish Ukrainians and especially to punish the West. President Vladimir Putin is under enormous domestic pressure to retaliate. Russian patriots call for launching an Oreshnik missile at London, as everybody knows that the British are the enablers of the attack. Putin is being compared by the Western media and politicians as being another Hitler, yet, he shows a lot of restraint. Imagine another leader of the Russian Federation and his response to such an attack… If it is true that a few days earlier Ukrainians were close to pulling off a drone attack on a helicopter with the Russian president and if that attack had been successful, then a retaliation for both events might follow, turning the local hostilities into another world war. Who wants such a course of events?

How can Ukraine gain by it? How can Europe gain from it? Imagine a full-scale war in Western Europe. Will all those Moroccans and Afghans, Algerians and Kenyans fight for France and Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden against Russia? Please… Already, they live in separate societies and regularly go on the rampage in the Western cities. They will never ever identify with their adopted countries. After all, they haven’t come to France and Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden to experience war and deprivation. To the contrary, as we are told they have escaped from their countries because of war and deprivation. Do the likes of Starmer, Macron and Merz understand it? Fat chance of that!

Europe is on a crusade. Europe is fighting the Crimean War Number Two (the first one took place between 1853-1856). Europe, seeing the oncoming disaster, is throwing temper tantrums, like a teenager. Let us pull off something to show that we matter! Yet, again, if the journalists and politicians knew just a bit of history they would remember the charge of the Light Brigade – a spectacular debacle of a British unit during the Crimean War. And they might remember the crusade led by Emperor Napoleon and how it ended, or the crusade led by Führer Hitler, and how that one ended. In both cases the invading troops were multinational, in both cases they had initial success and in both cases the crusade was miserably lost.

Operation Barbarossa (attack on the Soviet Union) and Operation Typhoon (Battle of Moscow) would eventually come to a grinding stop, while the counteroffensive blows known as Operation Uranium (encirclement of the German troops at Stalingrad) and Operation Bagration (pushing the Germans back to the Vistula line) broke the back of the invaders. What do Europeans and Ukrainians expect might happen now?

Isn’t it all childish? Ukrainians hit targets as far as Mongolia, and yet they cannot avoid losing 20% of their territory… Ukrainians have destroyed several Russian aircraft, and a bridge and what not, and yet their population has been halved while their infrastructure has been put mostly out of order. It’s like giving your enemy a sting, and receiving a knockout in return. Pities. Pathetic. Fatuous.

Doomed to make the same mistakes

Nations are in very many aspects just like individual people: some are stronger, some are weaker, some are capable of controlling others, and some are prone to falling prey to such control. Nations seem to be like individual people also in this respect that they appear never to learn from the past or that they appear never to draw inferences from the mistakes made by others.

Yes, stronger nations tend to control weaker nations. Still, just as it is among individual people, a weaker partner is not doomed to being controlled by a stronger partner. You become controlled mainly because you let yourself be controlled. Similarly, you become cheated because you let yourself be cheated. Within the European Union it is such small nations like Hungary and Slovakia that do not toe the EU party line. They are small, and yet they are following reason more than ideology. They are small, and yet they know how to defend their own interests. On the one hand we have much bigger countries and their leaders have brought them to utter ruin.

Look at Ukraine. It has let itself be used as a tool at the hands of the collective West. It has put all its trust in the seemingly all-powerful Western world and it has lost miserably. The best proof that Ukraine has been and continues to be the West’s instrument (against Russia) is the fact that whether the hostilities are prolonged or are about to be stopped depends entirely on either the United States or the European Union. The decision-making lies outside Kiev. The talks that are held at present over the war in Ukraine are the talks between Moscow and Washington, with Kiev acting as a supporting actor at best. The fact that Ukraine decided to wage war with Russia was in turn the result of the diktat on the part of the European Union, and the Biden administration. Now the United States wishes to end the war, the European Union wishes to continue the conflict till 2029. Ukraine appears to have absolutely no say. It has been serving two masters and now when these masters have divergent interests, Kiev is falling between two stools. The question is, could Ukraine’s leaders not have envisioned it long ago? Of course they could. A cursory knowledge of recent history of their own country would have been enough, let alone common sense.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War Ukraine was split between the Soviet Union (the greater part) and Poland (a much smaller part). Ukrainian chauvinism was particularly rampant in the Polish part because the Polish government was not so ruthless as its Soviet counterpart and because it is in the westernmost part of Ukraine where national sentiment is the strongest. This part was outside Russia the longest. Ukrainians let themselves be used and abused many times in their history, but we want to call the reader’s attention to the events occurring in the run-up to the Second World War, during the same war and in the wake of it. Strange that present-day Ukrainian leaders did not have a similar reflection, strange that they did not want to learn from the recent past of the nation.

Just as the tensions between the Third Reich and the Polish Republic grew in the 1930s, Ukrainian nationalists operating on Polish territory saw a ray of hope: they dreamed about Germany weakening Poland and helping them gain independence of Warsaw. Germany, sure enough, was more than willing to employ Ukrainian national sentiment and Ukrainian readiness to fight against the Poles. Germans launched a project of creating clandestine Ukrainian military units. It was planned that they would sabotage the Polish war effort once the hostilities between the Third Reich and the Polish Republic erupted. Then war broke out. Germany launched an all-out assault on Poland, which gave rise to the beginning of what later would be termed Second World War. The Polish state was swiftly subdued, the Polish government collapsed and fled abroad, while the armed forces were defeated and dispersed, with some of the soldiers and officers working their way to other countries, with some others of the soldiers and officers being taken prisoner of war, with still some others – going underground and continuing the fight. The campaign was so swift that the Ukrainian clandestine unit did not manage to participate in it, though there were some 400 instances of Ukrainian saboteurs thwarting the Polish war effort. With Poland defeated, one might think, the hour of Ukrainian independence or at least autonomy had eventually arrived. Alas!

It had been a few days prior to the outbreak of the hostilities that the Third Reich and the Soviet Union struck a deal (Ribbentrop-Molotov) partitioning Polish territory between the two aggressors. Neither of the signatories to this deal included in his plans Ukraine’s independence. The whole of Polish Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union and joined to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. That was not precisely what Ukrainian nationalists had hoped for.

Even if Germany had conquered the whole of Poland and had occupied all of its territory, would they have carved out a chunk of it and allowed Ukrainians to have an independent state? What kind of state would that have been? Landlocked, small, with few natural resources, wedged between mighty Germany and the mighty Soviet Union. This Ukrainian state would have had to act as dictated to by Berlin. Think for comparison about the then Slovakia, a country – a nation – that with the aid of the Third Reich gained independence from Czechia only to become fully dependent on Germany.

We don’t even need to think about what if Germany had conquered the whole of Poland because three years later as the Third Reich attacked the Soviet Union all prewar Polish territory was occupied by Germany. Did Berlin think about creating a Ukrainian state, even one with limited autonomy? Hell, no! A part of Western Ukraine was joined by the German authorities to the General Government (German: Generalgouvernement), which was the administrative region under German rule recognized by Berlin as (occupied) “Poland”. So, territories around the city of Lvov became again part of Poland, even if occupied by Germany. And these were the territories with the strongest Ukrainian national sentiment! Neither did a Ukrainian state emerge later on although Ukrainians served the Third Reich hand and foot, even forming in 1943 the notorious 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) made up of Ukrainians, which fought on the eastern front. Did Ukrainian leaders draw inferences? Did they learn a lesson? Far be it from them! They continued to serve their perceived protectors and their perceived benefactors.

Ukrainian nationalist leaders and ideologues along with the commanders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army were somehow tolerated by Berlin during the war and by Bonn after it. Tolerated, yes, that’s the word for it. The leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – Stepan Bandera – ultimately found refuge after the war in West Germany. It is noteworthy that during the war he was arrested by the Germans for a time, including in… the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp! Why? His political aspirations concerning creating a Ukrainian state were too high… Bandera wanted to serve Germany, to ally Ukrainians with Germany and those were his wages… And yet, he was to be used further after the war in the political combat between Washington and Moscow. Did he learn his lesson? As if! He could be used again after the war but at the same time his war record and the record of the deeds of his followers was such that his presence and political activity in Germany was not particularly palatable to his new German masters. The world got word about the numerous massacres that his subordinates and his followers perpetrated during the war against tens of thousands of Polish, Jewish and Russian civilians. So he became more of a political and moral burden, and as such was not protected enough by West German services. The effect was that a Soviet agent could track him down and eliminate him in broad daylight in Munich. No hint.

It is relatively recent history. It was some eighty years ago that Ukrainians let themselves be used against Poland and then against the Soviet Union by Germany. The result? Germany lost the war, Poland emerged from the war without any part of Ukraine, while the whole of Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Was that what Ukrainian nationalists had been dreaming of? Not really. Is it not similar today? Ukraine let itself be used by the collective West against Russia. After three years of devastating war, Russia is emerging victorious, the United States seeks to wash its hands of this war, while the European Union puts a bold face on its political, economic and military impotence. Ukraine? Ukraine has suffered enormous losses. Millions of people have been killed or physically and psychologically mutilated, millions of people have left the country for good. The economy is ruined, the state territory has shrunk, white the country’s debt has skyrocketed. Today even Yulia Tymoshenko, known for her passionate hatred of Russia, was shocked as she heard Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius say that war in Ukraine ought to last till 2029 to allow the European Union to prepare for a conflict with Russia. Even Yulia Tymoshenko awakened to the realization that Ukraine had been used as a tool to weaken Russia, that Europeans or Americans do not care two hoots about how much Ukrainian blood has been spilled, is being spilled and is going to be spilled.

Ukraine sustained enormous losses because Kiev’s leaders wanted to join NATO and because they thought that Russia would be intimidated by the West and do nothing to prevent Ukraine from becoming a member of this alliance. Ukraine’s leaders sacrificed millions of people and territory and billions of dollars to join a military alliance. They could have stopped the war in its tracks during the Istanbul talks, but they preferred to trust in the collective West, they preferred to part with commonsense. Now it is clear to everybody and anybody that Ukraine is not going to join NATO. What was this war for then? There seems to be virtually nothing whatsoever that Ukraine might gain from the three years of suffering, the three years of bloodshed, the three years of sacrifice. The country’s leaders preferred to obey Ursula von der Leyen and Boris Johnson, to act at the behest of Joe Biden and Jens Stoltenberg rather than serve and spare their own nation, rather than look for guidance into recent history. What a bitter outcome! What a bitter lesson. Yet, a lesson that will not be learned. You may rest assured that in a few decades’ time precisely the same mistake will be made by Ukrainians and – for that matter – by any other nation whose leaders wish to please their Western overlords more than to work for the benefit of their own people. Look at the Baltic states. Tiny though they are like mice, their leaders are as bellicose as tigers. So it goes.

Two explanations for such policymaking on the part of the leaders of such small nations can be offered. Either they are patriotic but deprived of the faculties of reasoning (in which case why they are leaders in the first place?) or they are placed as governors by the stronger states, governors who do not care about their nations, governors whose families and bank accounts are outside their own countries, governors who can always rely on a safe landing promised to them by those from whom they take their orders.

The Trojan Horse of Sudzha

Almost 16 kilometers in darkness, four long days, with little oxygen, with little food or water, almost suffocating from the remnants of methane. Four long days of marching, half-bent, inside a disused gas pipeline with a diameter of merely 170 cm. Man after man after another man, five hundred of them, tenaciously pressing forward. High spirits, excitement of adventure, and the awareness of being part of something grand. Four long days, kilometer after kilometer, gasping for breath, sharing the little food that they have and the little water that they are supplied with. They reach the proverbial end of the tunnel but it is not the the end of their trail. What follows are Jonas-like two days of wait, two days of lying low in the whale’s maw. Their emergence from the maw must be coordinated with the efforts of the comrades in arms operating in the open. They can hear the pounding of the guns, they can hear the movement of the tanks and that of the armoured vehicles. A thought that their presence might be detected prematurely by the enemy sparks anxiety in their minds. These two days of inaction are perhaps the most difficult.

As is known, warfare is not merely a clash of arms. Nor is it merely a contest of strategical thinking. Warfare involves also subterfuge. The most famous is represented by the iconic Trojan Horse. The Achaeans did not conquer the city of Troy by arms, by the ten-year siege, betrayal of some of the Trojans. The Achaeans won the war by means of an ingenious stratagem, by means of cunning and deception, by means of surprise. Similar feats would be employed in the centuries to come by various contesting parties. Such military feats are also pulled off today.

It was in August 2024 that the Ukrainian military forces decided to break through the front line in the direction of Kursk. As the Russians were taken by surprise, Ukrainians managed to conquer over 400 square kilometers and pursued their goal of capturing the nuclear power station in Kurchatov. What was the intention of the Ukrainian general staff and the Ukrainian civilian leaders?

First, the Ukrainian authorities wanted to raise the morale of the society. Months of retreat, months of Russian advance had played havoc with the will to fight or to resist the enemy.

Second, the Ukrainians had hoped to distract the Russian forces from the other segments of the front line and thus make it easier for Ukrainian soldiers to withstand Russian assaults there.

Third, the Kursk region, if captured and permanently held by Ukrainians, might become a bargaining chip in future negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. Kursk could be exchanged for one or a few or all the provinces claimed by Russia.

So far, so good. It was to the Ukrainians’ disadvantage that Russians had numerical superiority in manpower and equipment, so they could quickly mobilize troops that had been held in reserve and launch a counteroffensive. Strictly speaking it was not a counteroffensive in the true meaning of the word. Rather, Kutuzov-like harrowing. The Russian troops limited themselves to pounding the enemy by means of their artillery and drones, and severing the enemy’s supply lines. It took a lot of time but it proved to be successful. That’s what General Kutuzov opted for when Napoleon invaded Russia. Rather than fighting a series of spectacular battles, he enticed the enemy deep inside the country and let the European troops overreach themselves, to exhaust themselves. Didn’t Ukrainians know about it?

One of the focal points during the fight over the Kursk region was the town of Sudzha. It is here where the Trojan Horse comes into play. It happens so that a disused gas pipeline runs by Sudzha and this pipeline was to be employed by some five hundred selected Russian soldiers. At first the engineers presented the blueprints of the pipeline. They were available because the pipeline was constructed during the times of the Soviet Union. Then some of the remnants of the gas was pumped out as much as it was feasible. Despite these efforts, a lot remained inside. Next, the selected fighters entered the dark chasm. It took four days for the 500 soldiers to move almost 16 kilometers along the pipeline whose diameter is 1.7 meter. They had difficulties breathing and they were running low on their food and water supplies. When they reached the outlet of the pipe, they they stayed put two more days, waiting for the opportune moment to emerge and attack the enemy. When they eventually carried out an assault, the Ukrainian troops were taken by surprise and went into panic. You can only imagine the feeling of suddenly discovering that the enemy is shooting not only from the front but also from the rear.

Though the place from which the Russian troops were emerging was soon localized by Ukrainian drones and consequently shelled by the artillery, the overwhelming majority of the Russian fighters (if not all of them) had already left the belly of the Trojan Horse – the chasm of the pipeline – and were engaging the enemy. The days or rather hours of the Kursk salient were counted. Before the month of March expired, Ukrainians lost the Kursk salient to Russians.

The Kursk salient! It resonates with Russian historical memory! It was in this Kursk region that the greatest battle of tanks was fought during World War Two between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. It was fought in 1943. Who would have thought that eighty-three years later Russians would fight in the same place… this time against Ukrainians? Who would have thought back then that those Russians and Ukrainians who were united within the ranks of the Red Army would in eighty-three years’ time be at each other’s throats? Who would have thought back then that in eighty-three years one Slavic tribe going by the name of Ukrainians would be equipped with German – German! – tanks and combat the other Slavic tribe known as Russians? The Führer must have made a terrible blunder back then. He sacrificed precious German blood in a war against Russians and Ukrainians making up the Red Army rather than pitting the latter against the former, rather than providing the latter with his Tiger and Panther tanks and idly watching the two ethnicities bleeding themselves dry! Who knows, maybe at present this blunder is being put right…?