Pivot Countries

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…?

Russian soldier mopping up conquered terrain in and around Sudzha. Notice the religious emblems on his outfit.

The EU under “Führer Ursula” is not a peaceful project, says Lavrov

A few days ago, this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to three Americans: Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, and Mario Nawfal. Judge Napolitano runs a popular YouTube channel Judging Freedom, Larry Johnson is a former CIA operative, while Mario Nawfal runs his own channel on YouTube. A few days prior to the Lavrov interview, the last of the three mentioned interviewed Belarus’ President Alexandr Lukashenko. The interview with Minister Lavrov lasted an hour and a half and was conducted in English without an interpreter.

Go and have a listen before it is not taken down by YouTube. If you think you can form your own judgement, you need to know what the other side to the conflict has to say. Especially from the horse’s mouth, so much so that Minister Lavrov did 95% of the talking. Below a few take-aways from the interview.

① Russia is a Christian country, a Christian nation with Christian values. The United States and Western Europe have departed from Christianity and have been pursuing deviant ideas of the alphabet sexuality, unisex toilets and the like.

② The West promised Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastwards by an inch and broke its promise. Even if it were not formulated in written form (it was), a man of honour keeps his word.

③ Security cannot be divisible, i.e. one country cannot provide for its security at the expense of another country. Expanding NATO may increase the West’s security, but it certainly decreases the security of the Russian Federation.

④ Ukraine itself is to blame for the losses that it has sustained. Had there be no coup d’etat as a result of which legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych was made to flee the country, Ukraine would not have lost Crimea; had Kiev abided by the Minsk I and Minsk II Accords, Ukraine would not have lost the four eastern provinces.

⑤ Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president who was toppled by the coup in 2014, had every right to reconsider Ukraine’s association with the European Union. There was no malice on his part, nor was he a Russophile. The decision of associating Ukraine with the European Union had very serious economic consequences. At that time there were no tariffs between Ukraine and Russia, but there were tariffs between Ukraine and the European Union. An association with the European Union meant lifting the tariffs between the EU and Ukraine, which would have meant the necessity of imposing such tariffs between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as the Russian Federation needed to protect its market against European products. Since Ukraine’s trade with Russia was way larger than that with the EU, an association with the EU would have meant huge economic losses for the country.

⑥ The European Union is not a peaceful project. Minister Lavrov quoted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who said that “peace in Ukraine could actually be more dangerous than the war that is currently taking place,” and quoted Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, who floated an idea of expanding the alliance or the alliance’s tentacles as far east as China, Korea and the Pacific Ocean. One of the most bellicose politicians of the European Union is its leader Führer Ursula, as Lavrov put it, and mentioned the 800 billion earmarked by her for the re-militarization of the continent.

⑦ All the anti-Russian campaigns like those centered around the downing of the Malaysian airliner, the Skripal and the Navalny cases, the Bucha massacre allegedly perpetrated by Russians were aimed at harming the international image of the Russian Federation. This is easy to prove because in each of the aforementioned cases Russia’s request to have access to the medical, chemical, legal and other documentation was denied.

⑧ Human rights have been weaponized by the West. Human rights only serve as a pretext to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations and as a justification for assaulting them militarily.

That’s Minister Lavrov’s understanding of the ongoing conflict between the West and the Russian Federation, that’s in a nutshell Russia’s view of the current political situation and its causes.

Zelenskyy talks to Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman, a rather well-known American YouTuber, recorded a talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Two hours and a half. We are not going to retell what was said during the talk: the reader is strongly advised to familiarize himself with it. It is far more worthwhile to have a first-hand experience with a leader of a nation rather than listening to hours of reports and analyses by experts from the proverbial CNN or BBC. Whether or not the reader is going to listen to the talk, we only want to offer our take on the interview.

President Zelensky makes a bad impression overall. He talks a lot and he talks little sense. Watching the interview, you get the impression that the roles ought to be swapped and swapped in reality, not in imagination: Lex Fridman ought to be Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ought to take the interview. Lex Fridman looks elegant and talks sense; Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks like a member of a technical staff and spurts out a lot of meaningless verbosity. Lex Fridman cares about peace, about putting an end to the hostilities, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy only thinks about revenge and builds castles in the air to the tune of joining Ukraine to NATO or putting Russia’s president on trial.

Both gentlemen come from Ukraine, with this difference that Lex Fridman has lived for the last thirty years in the United States; both gentlemen are of Jewish descent; Russian is the mother tongue of either. Though they both are native speakers of Russian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy refuses to speak in Russian, although Lex Fridman encourages him to, although Lex Fridman more often than not uses Russian throughout the talk. Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a point of using Ukrainian or English, but since Ukrainian is not his mother tongue, he keeps switching from Ukrainian to English, to Russian and then back to English, to Ukrainian, to Russian. Volodymyr Zelenskyy keeps switching to Russian because that’s the language in which he can accurately convey what he means. If you decide to watch the interview, select at least for a while the original version, without English dubbing, without AI translation and voice-over: you’ll hear Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak the way he naturally does.

Though Lex Fridman adores his guest and lavishes the Ukrainian President with compliments, you get the impression that he grows irritated with him. Why? Because Volodymyr Zelenskyy has little to say, because Volodymyr Zelenskyy is fixated on a couple of ideas that are unfeasible, because Volodymyr Zelenskyy switches from language to language. While Lex Fridman needs an interpreter when Ukraine’s president speaks Ukrainian, to top it all Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s English is not fluent, which makes the communication hard. Just one tiny thing: the Ukrainian President keeps saying ‘wery’ rather than ‘very’, which is not a matter of accent as his apologists might be ready to say or a particular difficulty of English phonetics for a Russian-speaking man. No. Russian has the sound ‘v’ like in ‘very’ in all word positions, including words which like – вера /vera/ = faith, веры /very/ = of the faith – resemble the English word ‘very.’ Strange that he did not pick up the pronunciation of this one of the most frequently used words either at school or later in life. A detail? Yes, sure enough, but a detail that might reveal the Ukrainian President’s perception and cognition of reality: due to his frequent meetings with foreign politicians and diplomats, Volodymyr Zelenskyy hears ‘very’ almost every day several times and reproduces it as ‘wery.’ A small divergence from reality in terms of language that translates into a huge divergence from reality in other fields of the President’s. Russians occupy a quarter of his country, with the West being incapable of doing anything about it, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy is daydreaming about regaining all territorial losses, demands compensation and court martial for the aggressor; a million Ukrainian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy maintains that Russian casualties amount to 788.000; the West is slowly giving up on Ukraine, but President Zelenskyy says that Putin fears Trump, and so on, and so forth. Daydreaming, wishful thinking, conjuring up alternative realities, in a word: ‘wery’ replacing ‘very.’

While speaking Russian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses Lex Fridman with the familiar singular ‘you’ rather than the official plural ‘you’ (something like using French ‘tu’ rather than ‘vous’, or German ‘du’ rather than ‘Sie’), while Lex Fridman keeps addressing the President with the formal and respectful plural ‘you.’ One would expect reciprocity on the part of the President.

Now compare the command of the English language and especially the content of speech, of statements, the concisenesses and precision of thought between what the Ukrainian president presents and what Sergei Lavrov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, presents. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is lacking some dignity that becomes a diplomat, a dignity that Sergei Lavrov has. The Ukrainian President is fond of selecting words that are offensive – Putin is a killer, Putin is deaf (to arguments), Putin does not like his own country, Putin’s head is sick, Putin is a mammoth, Putin is about to conquer the world – words that make it difficult or impossible for the President of Ukraine to have any talks with the Russian leader. What if – just imagine – what if President Trump coerces President Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiation table with President Putin? Ukraine’s President will lose face, will lose his integrity: he’ll be forced to talk to the killer, the mammoth, the madman.

Throughout the interview Lex Fridman behaves like a statesman: serious timbre of voice, language that is toned down, elegant clothes. Contrarily, Volodymyr Zelenskyy behaves like a garrulous plebeian dressed in wacky garb.

This longish interview is disappointing and pretty boring. It does not compare in any respect with the interviews given by Vladimir Putin or Sergei Lavrov. Yet, watch it at least for half an hour. Evaluate the personality, character, manners of the leader of Ukraine. That’s a good insight into his psyche, his mentality. It somehow reveals how he guides his country through turbulent waters. And remember one more time: of the few ways of accessing this video, select the original three-language version at least for a while. Do not let the AI make you believe that Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s English is better than it is. In the introduction to the whole material, Lex Fridman explains how to choose a language version.

The 155th Anna of Kiev Brigade finger-points to the sinking ship

The 155th Anna of Kiev Brigade has recenlty made a name for itself: 1.700 soldiers are said to have gone AWOL before the unit reached the front line. The 155th Anna of Kiev Brigade was one of the planned 14 brigades that were supposed to be equipped and trained by NATO, with the human resources being supplied by Ukraine. That was the Zelensky plan. Indeed, the said brigade was formed in Ukraine, relocated to France, and then, again, deployed to Ukraine, the Pokrovsk region. As it arrived there, it transpired that it was diminished by the several hundred men, as mentioned above.

Desertion happens in any army, at any time. Some men have been made soldiers against their will, against their physical and mental capabilities; yes, some men have been professional soldiers and some have volunteered to join the ranks out of the patriotic sentiment or simply for money, but then the harsh experience of the real war in the trenches, the carnage and the death of the many comrades at arms have played havoc with their psyche, turning them into deserters.

As said, there is no one army where there is no desertion. What is important is in which of the feuding sides the number of soldiers going AWOL is larger; what is important is also which is the most prevalent driving force motivating soldiers to leave the ranks without permission.

It does not require much mental effort to realize that desertion afflicts first and foremost the losing side. Simple human psyche. We prefer to collaborate with or even serve the winners, but, conversely, we sever our connections with losers, even if the losers are somehow strongly related to us. Desertion haunted the Napoleonic troops trailing back from Moscow, desertion haunted Hitler’s troops when the Soviet cannonade could be heard in Berlin. Desertion is at present afflicting the Ukrainian army.

The war has long been lost. The comparison of human and material resources at the disposal of the warring countries tells the whole story. Lightweight against heavyweight. A lynx against a tiger. A sports car against a racing car. Who was silly enough to think that the former had any chance?

I hear you say: Ukraine had a chance because it was helped by the West. Was it? Let us assume it was. Go and help as much as you can a lightweight fighter against a heavyweight fighter; go and put a lynx on a dope against a tiger; go and equip a sports car in such a way as to make it beat a racing car. Good luck with your efforts!

Desertions are barometers. Deserting soldiers are those proverbial rodents (no insult intended) leaving the sinking ship. They know that the ship is sinking. Despite the statements and actions of all the crew and the passengers, when those small rodents who occupy the lowest social rank – just like rank-and-files in an army – leave, they know that the ship is sinking for certain. Those up and above the social ladder (on upper ship decks) may cherish silly hopes and harbour silly expectations, but those at the social and army bottom know best.

They know best because they have been bussified for months and sent to the meat-grinder. They know it best because they – we mean the common people – have been suffering these three years in the trenches, with their families suffering privation back at home. They know best because we all know that the United States wants to end this war.

Do you know that Ukrainians have coined a new word? We have used this word in the foregoing paragraph. The word is bussification. No need to reveal the association it evokes in everybody’s mind. Bussification, because Ukrainian men are hunted down and rounded up in the streets and shops and institutions, and then bussed and drafted into the army. Very often women turn up in defence of such a poor guy and try to chase away or at least shame and shout down the oprichniki of the Kiev government, those bounty hunters who perform this task.

Oprichniki or oprichniks were a corps of the state police in Rus’ under Tsar Ivan the Terrible. They were feared by the nation, by the common people. Bounty hunters were individuals in the Old West who would pursue an outlaw and either catch him or kill him for money. Those Ukrainian units of oprichniki or bounty hunters do pretty much the same: they either get paid for hunting people down or they let themselves be bribed in return for leaving someone out of the draft.

All of which haunts the common people, those who do not have money or connections, those who did not manage to leave the country. The billionaires and the millionaires enjoy themselves in the West; the politicians are not drafted by definition; the officers usually are somewhere in the rear. The common man bears the brunt.

With all this in mind, soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers, are confronted with a life decision of either going AWOL or being killed or maimed, as the case may be. If 1.700 soldiers desert from one brigade alone – a brigade can consist of anywhere from 1.500 to 5.000 soldiers – if – assuming the brigade counted close to 5.000 men – one third goes AWOL with all the supervision and discipline, it speaks volumes.

In 2024 the Ukrainian parliament issued a special law that all deserters who came back to the units before the end of the year would be pardoned for desertion. Few came back. Does a law like that not reveal the problem? The problem of massive AWOL cases? You do not draft laws unless there is a need – a pressing need – for them.

To wind up this sad reflection: Which indicator about the prospects of the ongoing war carries more weight: a bellicose declaration of a NATO Secretary-General (or any other personage of this status) or the fact that cannon fodder has said that enough is enough? You can take a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Rutte or Biden (or Trump for that matter, or Macron, or Scholz, or Starmer, or Zelensky) can bussify Ukrainians, but they cannot turn them into soldiers, even in France. Enough is enough.

AU10TIX or how Israelis act

AU10TIX is an Israeli identity service that verifies people or companies on the Internet. For example, people who want to earn money on Twitter (X) have their identity checked and authenticated by AU10TIX. So far, so good, but there are two appalling facts about the Israeli company:

1. AU10TIX has close ties to Israeli intelligence. It was set up by members of the Israeli elite intelligence services Shin Bet and Unit 8200. Ton Atzomm, its CEO, was a member of Unit 8200 has been committed to the surveillance of Palestinians and has been utilizing the information gained in the process to politically persecute and divide them. Edo Soroka, the Vice President for Sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, previously worked for the Israeli startup AnyVision, which is accused of monitoring Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Erez Hershkovitz had earlier been employed by the Israeli company Voyager Labs, which was sued by Meta for using dozens of fake Facebook accounts to collect data from more than half a million users.

2. AU10TIX suffered a serious security breach that exposed the personal data of millions of its users. Customers that fell victim to the June 2024 scandal include some of the world’s most renowned companies, such as X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Coinbase, eToro, PayPal, Fiverr, Upwork, Bumble, and Uber. Names, dates of birth, nationalities and images of identification documents such as driver’s licenses and passports, facial scans and authentication metrics for documents and photos were disclosed. It was a massive security breach with unforeseeable long-term consequences. The exposed data could be used by cybercriminals for various illegal purposes such as identity theft, financial fraud or even blackmail.

Several questions could be brought up:

1. How does all that square with the U.S.-Israeli friendship and alliance?

2. Why does the Israeli intelligence agency want to collect – manage – control the data of millions of Americans?

3. Why do the US services do not hinder such deep intrusions into the security of US citizens?

Babies pierced with pitchforks

There was a time when Poland was officially an ally of the communist Soviet Union. There was a time when Polish communists with the help of their Soviet comrades took over Poland and established themselves as rulers of the country. The Polish nation throughout its history had barely had Russians – irrespective of whether they were white or red – in high esteem. The Polish nation certainly despised the red variety of Russians even more intensely as the latter proved to be culturally rather not sophisticated. On top of this, Soviet Russians – or Bolsheviks – were busy suppressing some of the elements of Polish culture and they churned out primitive propaganda, one of the tenets of which was to convince the Polish nation that Russia, and especially Soviet Russia, had always been well disposed to the Polish people. True, there were individuals among the Polish nation who were ready to rise to the Soviet bait, and there were some who could be politically neutralized. Those who were prone to collaborate with the new masters thought that after the Second World War Poland had no choice and was doomed to stick to Moscow. Realpolitik. There was, however something, that was a thorn in the conscience of even ardent pro-Soviet Polish communists. This something was an event collectively known in Polish history as the Katyn Massacre. What was that?

When in 1939 Poland was attacked by Germany, by the German Third Reich, within two weeks of the beginning of the hostilities Poland’s eastern territories were invaded by the Soviet Union, which step by the way had been agreed with Germany in the run-up to the war. In autumn of 1939 the Polish territory ended up been occupied by Germany and Soviet Russia in a rough proportion of fifty-fifty. Both occupiers were hellbent on subduing the Polish nation and both saw it fit to first of all do away with the Polish elites: with teachers, doctors, priests, writers, engineers, military officers and the like. Both occupiers understood that a beheaded nation – the intellectuals were regarded as the nation’s head or mind – was much easier to control. They both – Germany and Russia – started to eliminate the intelligentsia in one way or another, with mass executions taking place on a regular basis.

After the war had come to its end, the German crimes were systematically exposed and condemned: Germany was a defeated nation, and there were many trials of German administrators or officers responsible for war crimes, not only in Poland but anywhere in Europe. Though guilty Germans were tried for their reprehensible deeds, the guilty Soviets were not. Why? That’s simple. After Germany had attacked the USSR, Soviet Russia became Poland’s (and the West’s) greatest ally and as such its image could not be dragged through the mire in the eyes of the Polish nation by exposing Russia’s exterminating operations executed against Poles. Yet, the Poles knew that Russians had been as cruel in their dealings with the Polish nation as Germans had, carrying out deportations, imprisonments and mass executions of not only the Polish intelligentsia but vast swathes of other social classes. The Katyn Forest (in the neighbourhood of Smolensk) – just one of the many places where such mass executions were performed – became an icon in the collective memory of the Polish nation. After 1945 every Pole in Poland could openly condemn the Germans for what they had done during the war, none could say anything against the Soviet Union. The nation was forced to live in a kind of schizophrenia: though both Germans and Soviets were the nation’s henchmen, the latter were to be viewed as friends and allies: as morally impeccable friends and allies. No mention of the Katyn Massacre found its way into history textbooks, no discussion about it was allowed even among historians. The nation’s mouth was gagged.

Sure enough people knew the truth and the truth spread by word of mouth, not to be suppressed by anybody. The more it was officially denounced, the greater currency among the nation it enjoyed.

When in 1989 communism in Poland collapsed and the country opened up to the so-called Western freedom of speech, the literature – popular and scholarly – about the Katyn Massacre became suddenly available to anybody who cared to familiarize himself with it, and, of course, this historical fact found its way straight into school textbooks. Numerous monuments were erected and commemorative plaques placed on the walls of important buildings to make a point, to show that the nation remembered, and to pay homage to those who had been murdered.

Monument to the Katyn Massacre, Wrocław /VRATS-wahff/, south-western Poland.

Why are we giving account of this story? Because much has changed and it looks as if little has changed. Now, more than thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and seventy years after the end of the Second World War (more than seventy years since the Katyn Massacre) the same old story seems to repeat itself. Now Poland has found a new friend and ally in the east. Yes, this friend’s name is Ukraine. Ukraine used to be a part of the Soviet Union, so naturally Ukrainians were also a part of the Soviet repressive system, but never mind that. Ukrainians could easily be exonerated as acting under the Russian yoke. The point is, however, that Ukrainians themselves executed yet another Katyn Massacre against Poles (or, to be precise, a long series of such massacres) quite independently of their being subordinated to the Soviets. When in 1941 the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, they relatively soon took possession of Ukraine, and being involved in the bloody conflict further to the east, they did not have either time or resources to fully control Ukraine. Ukrainians saw a chance for themselves in the fact that Soviet Russia was being defeated. Ukrainians seeking to have their own state, allied themselves with the Germans and began to lay corner stones for their statehood, starting with ethnic cleansing. They targeted Poles and performed more or less regular bloodbaths in the territories that had ethnically mixed populations as located between Poland proper and Ukraine proper. The year 1943 was especially cruel: it is 11 July of that year, when in Huta Pieniacka /HOO-tah pyen-YAHTZ-kah/ in Volhynia the bloodiest massacre took place, and it is this particular date that was selected as the remembrance day for the whole series of events that are collectively known as the Volhynia Massacre.

The Polish nation was, thus, ethnically cleansed twice: by the Soviets (of which the majority were Russians, but also Ukrainians and Jews) and by the Ukrainians. The two iconic names and dates are Katyn (1940) and Volhynia (1943), with both being just symbols of series of extermination operations. In the period between 1945 and 1989, when socialist Poland was an ally of the Soviet Union (which means of Russia and Ukraine, the two largest Soviet republics) the Katyn Massacres were officially recognized as a German or Western anti-Soviet propaganda, while the Volhynia massacres were recognized as such. Why? Whence this difference in attitude? Simply, the image of the Soviet Union, the communist paradise for all humanity, could not be stained, while that of Ukrainian nationalists could. You see, it was not the Ukrainian communists who murdered the poles: it was Ukrainian nationalists. As a result, in post-war Poland films were made and books published about Ukrainian cruelty, though all this was significantly limited, not to be impolite towards Ukrainian communist comrades. The Volhynia events only received full coverage in the media, the popular culture (movies, books) and the universities after 1989. The Western-like freedom of speech, you know. Do I sound sarcastic? Yes, because I mean to.

The moment Ukraine found itself at war with Russia, Ukraine became Poland’s most important and friendly ally. As such, Ukraine could not be reminded of its past and so the Polish authorities duly began to suppress or limit or discourage anything that might keep the memory of Ukrainian atrocities alive in the Polish mind. Such policy began even years before the eruption of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow. Warsaw’s political instincts have always been anti-Russian, which meant that the Polish authorities – by the way: of all political petty persuasions – naturally looked to Kiev as allies against Moscow. The memory of the Volhynia Massacre became as inconvenient to the non-communist Polish authorities as the memory of the Katyn Massacre was inconvenient to the communist Polish authorities. While – as mentioned above – a number of monuments were erected to commemorate Katyn after the period of socialist Poland, few have been put up to commemorate Volhynia, and even these few that have been put up received no or little government blessing. Isn’t it Orwellian!

It is on the initiative of a small local community that a monument to the Volhynia Massacre has been erected and is going to be unveiled this July in south-eastern Poland. Take a very close look at it, and bear in mind that he Polish baby on a Ukrainian pitchfork that you will see in the centre of the monument is no artistic figurative vision. You see, the Soviets, or Russians if you will, were much more humane at Katyn: they would shoot their victims at the back of the head. Ukrainians would thrust pitchforks into the bodies of their victims, they would crucify them and burn them alive; they would not refrain from cutting open pregnant women’s wombs. Russians made an apology for the Katyn Massacre, Ukrainians made none for the Volhynia Massacre, and still the former are Poland’s mortal enemies while the latter are Poland’s dear friends.

Fragment of the monument commemorating the Volhynia Massacre to be unveiled on 14 July 2024 in Domostaw, south-eastern Poland, on the local community’s initiative. Watch the two-minute video footage of the monument.