The Right is Wrong (about Ukraine)

What is wrong in American Right stance on Ukraine and US support of it against Russian aggression

There seems to be a common stance among right leaning commentators in the American politics and business circles that US should cease support for Ukraine against Russian invasion. It’s not our war, we should not waste taxpayer money on someone else’s problem, Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country, etc.

These are all valid concerns and generally I’m not the person to object to them, being American exceptionalist and isolationist like no other. But in this particular case this is not relevant as much as you may think and I’m about to show you why.

Let’s do a quick dive into Russian politics. It’s an easy task if you don’t want to delve into too much detail. Basically, it doesn’t exist. There’s Putin, his friends, his sycophants, his friends sycophants, massive bureaucratic machine that only steals money from the budget and does literally almost nothing else, businessmen loyal to bureaucrats, Putin, sycophants, etc. And a huge army of “law enforcement” who mostly enforce the law of being loyal to Putin. There’s some political opposition, which mostly emigrated abroad or incarcerated. And some silent opposition which sits at home and criticizes all of the above in low voice. We don’t even know, even remotely, how many of them are there. Some say “almost 0”, some say “50%”, there’s no way to even try to measure, because such an attempt could end you up in prison. Sociology as a science doesn’t exist in Russia. It’s a name for a bunch of people working together for federal and local budgets producing numbers these federal and local governments want to see. They don’t even hide this.

But. After the February 24, when the assault on Ukraine started and then we quickly realized that there would be no Victory Day Parade in Kiev any time soon, and then bombs start to fall on the Russian territory and then the Cult Idol - Crimean Bridge was blown up we witnessed something completely unthinkable in the last 10-12 years: the birth of an opposition nobody touches. It’s very vocal, has hundreds of thousand followers, channels on Youtube and channels on Telegram, but for people in power they like do not exist. They can call the war “the war” (a felony in Russia)

7 years behind bars for calling the war the “war” (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP)

They can call Putin a loser and Shoigu (Dept of Defense) a “Plywood Marshal”. And nobody rounds them up. They make public appearances, they talk to fans, they try to influence how the war is waged, they are opponents of Prigozhin (Putin’s cook, head of the private army assembled from a few mercs and hordes of murder/rape convicts they take from prisons).

Seems to be a good thing, right? Much democracy, such freedom! Well, not so fast.

They call themselves “A Club of Angry Patriots”. tl/dr; of their position is this: “Putin is a weak and incapable fascist, we can do better”. They call war the war, but they think it’s a wrong war. The right war would be a total war on Ukraine (at least) and complete annihilation of the opponent. Like in good old days, you know.

Now why I’m finally decided to write this piece: I stumbled upon the article¹ in a pretty innocent Russian online business publication, an interview with Alexander Lubimov, head of the “Center for Coordinating Help to Novarussia” (Novarussia is how they call the parts of Ukraine they “liberate” and “protect” now).

Flag of Novarussia

And so, the new young progressive fascist spills the beans:

1. We (Russians) need to destroy the old world and build a new one because otherwise “We will be largely physically gone, cut into pieces and deprived of any possible future. We will not have again the opportunity, as from feudal fragmentation, to come together into a unified state. We will be fragmented and destroyed forever.”

2. “After the annexation of Crimea, it seemed that we could completely eliminate the threat posed by the Ukrainian state.”

3. “Many, if not most, conflicts in human history are resolved simply by the disappearance of one of the parties. Accordingly, it would be desirable for that side to disappear for all eternity.”

4. (journalist asks to clarify “disappear”) “Of course. The destruction of Ukraine as a state, the destruction or expulsion of a significant part of the Ukrainian elite, replacing it with a new one in order to return the original Russian lands to historical Russia.” (kind of funny, because historical Russia is not Moscovia, but Kievan Rus², i.e. modern Ukraine)

5. (he refuses to call Ukraine Ukraine, because…) “If we call it Ukraine, we recognize it as non-Russia. And if we do not call it Ukraine, but something else, then, accordingly, we open the way for ourselves to form something else out of it.”

6. “Let's be honest, right now we are bluntly destroying the bearers of the Ukrainian idea at the battlefront. In order to win, to stake our flags where they are needed, by this time a significant part of the active bearers of the Ukrainian idea will have been destroyed. Consequently, this will open up enormous propaganda opportunities and chances for Russian state-building on this territory. If we consider this war as a civil war within historical Russia, there are a bunch of historical analogies, starting with the so-called Reconstruction period after the end of the American Civil War in 1861-1865, when, on one hand, most of those ready to fight for the rights of the South, were physically destroyed, the economy ruined and undermined. In essence, the North built on those territories the statehood it saw fit.” (now look above at the flag, lol, isn’t it?)

7. “I am confident in our success, because the alternative is total catastrophe. You and I are looking at two options: the collapse and destruction of Russia or the dynamics of the conflict, its escalation, will only increase.”

8. “And what did we do in the Great Patriotic War? We marched from Stalingrad to Berlin, killing all those who disagreed with our point of view along the way.” (Great Patriotic War is WWII in ex-Soviet parlance)

9. “We know what we do not want--the defeat of Russia and its destruction in war. For this we must be prepared to destroy the world order and seek allies in this world.”

10. (journalist asks what “the world order” means, does this mean US hegemony?) “Simply put, yes. It is a kind of construction of how things work. U.S. hegemony is based on specific instruments through which they run the world, conventionally, the World Bank, the IMF and other structures. There are also political, economic, military structures of the world.

    In this case, we have to look for others who are dissatisfied with this distribution of wealth and make it clear to them that there is a window of opportunity now that may never come again. While we are fighting, they too can try to fulfill their aspirations.”

11. “But I'm not talking about the ambitions of big powers like China right now. It has an understanding of the framework in which it lives. I mean that there are a huge number of other countries. Anti-American uprisings somewhere in all sorts of forms, types, and purposes will demand intellectual, human, and monetary resources from the hegemon.” (“hegemon” is US, but I believe it’s clear now)

12. “But if Russia deliberately tries to destroy the world order, not in the sense of destroying the world with nuclear weapons, but specifically to undermine the structure of the world, economic, political and cultural relations, then a new world will be built from this, which for us is guaranteed to be better than this one.”

13. (journalist keeps asking where we need to “stake the flag”) “My hypothesis is that it will happen somewhere on Polish territory. Let's be honest: if we actually approach the western borders of Ukraine, it is likely that the Poles and maybe someone else will intervene on its side. Accordingly, our further successful advance would mean defeating a significant grouping of Polish and some other troops and entering Polish territory. At this point, the Western partners will have a choice: do they want to continue or is it time to end it.” (do you remember that Poland is the NATO member state? Article 5³ anyone?)

14. “Either we will win within a couple of years in the format I have described - with flags in Lviv and west of it. Or we will have (and this will be bad) another break for a few years, and then we will continue, because a conflict without the destruction of one of the sides has no tendency to end.”

15. (on who can be an ally, with whom Russia may have aligned interests) “With a huge number of Latin American countries, certainly with "black" Africa, a significant part of the Arab world. I am not just talking about states. I am talking about individuals, individual organizations, individual religions, even tribes, anyone. We must not get hung up on inter-state relations. We must look for allies, not friends among anyone.”

This guy is not some fringe crackhead. He’s one of the energetic leaders, collecting millions of dollars of donations, buying modern communications equipment, drones and other fighting gear for the volunteer battalions. Which kill, rape and rob now in the Ukraine and soon … (see above). Do you still think it’s just the local conflict between two idiots in Eastern Europe? Do you really want to save a few billions of freshly printed dollars, which mostly go right into the pockets of US weapons manufacturers, to have this “conflict” right at the doorstep and send our boys to die instead of Ukrainian boys who die now? And spend 10x if not 100x of the same dollars with much lower probability of success?

He doesn’t look like Adolf Hitler, does he?

1. https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/587218 (in Russian)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

3. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm