In different realities, or time for a tough talk

We find ourselves confronted with a 1,500-kilometer-long front, hundreds of square kilometers of dense minefields, and an echeloned defense of three-tiered fortified lines. This is the reality in which our offensive has begun and is currently underway.

None of our allies' armies have ever ventured to attack or even contemplate such a feat. According to their theoretical frameworks, it would be deemed impossible.

The theory is actually wise and correct, and in such conditions we should not attack. But in our reality, we simply have no choice, so we attack. And despite all these conditions and despite the predictions of the theories, we still continue the offensive and every day we gnaw away not just another meter of our land, but another position, another enemy strongholds and blocks, that is, slowly but surely, we are erasing the first of the three enemy defense lines from the map, along with its defenders. And we are inexorably approaching the second one, which is even denser...

“Meanwhile, in another reality, a well-fed Harvard professor of political science, who has seen the war only on TV, picks up a calculator and divides the distance to Sevastopol by the distance our soldiers have broken through in a day. And with a serious look, he writes that we have about 16 years left until the liberation of Crimea.”

He fails to realize that in war, distances are not linear - there is one kilometer that takes months to break through, and then there are hundreds of kilometers behind the defense lines, which can be covered in a day - if you have previously overcome that first kilometer. This is clear to anyone who has fought, but as for that arrogant Harvard guy, he sees a map on the Internet and considers it enough to draw wise conclusions.

This nonsense is printed by influential outlets, and it merges into a whole chorus of other publications, the general meaning of which boils down to one thing: the allies, who have not provided us with even one tenth of the resources that their military doctrines require for the offensive campaign we have launched, are "disappointed" with the slow pace of our advance, which "does not meet their expectations."

Our expectations are fine, at least in the army and those in the rear who are at least slightly involved in the war.

No one expected a repeat of the "Kharkiv miracle" of last fall, because the conditions were radically different. It's not that there was no surprise effect - on the contrary, the enemy knew all the possible directions of the offensive in advance, there were not many of them, and for exactly the entire 8 or 9 months that we were gathering resources for the offensive (including literally begging our allies for armor and artillery piece by piece), the enemy was digging in, building concrete pillboxes, mining the approaches to them, and preparing to repel our attacks. From the very beginning, the task was on the verge of being impossible, if not beyond it, and the surprise now is not the slow pace of the offensive, but rather the fact that it has been more or less successful so far (under theoretically impossible conditions), and that the enemy's losses in the course of our offensive far exceed ours (again, contrary to theory, according to which it should be the other way around).

“Thus, we have a paradoxical situation where the situation on the southern and eastern fronts is better than on the bloodless, but no less important, Western front.”

It seems that we are not only not on the offensive there, but we have to repel a powerful information attack, or even an offensive campaign, which determines changes in public opinion, which in turn directly affects the supply of vital resources to us, and how soon we will be forced to freeze the conflict, which is a disadvantage for us.

This is now becoming almost our main problem, so it is worthwhile to understand the essence of the problem and try to find possible solutions.

To begin with, let's put aside emotions and abandon the "offended by allies "stance, because we really have no one to be offended by and nothing to be offended about. Our allies are the ones we already have, we don't have any others, we can't change them and we can't make them see the world through our eyes, feel our pain, and think with our brains.

We might not have had such allies or even such assistance - we can recall how the world once refused to help first the Ukrainian People's Republic, then the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and compare it with the attitude towards us now. And we can also compare the amount of assistance to us with the amount of assistance we provided to the people of Syria or earlier to the people of Chechnya during the Russian bombing campaign, so that the question does not arise as to how our tragedy can be perceived so indifferently: in the same way we perceived the tragedies of others. It is a common human tendency to prioritize one's own interests and well-being over those of others, and both we and our allies are not exempt from this.

“Let's also not forget that it was not our allies who prevented us from preparing for this war. For some reason, even during the 8 years when the war was already underway, we ourselves did not prepare for the fact that it would be the same in essence, but completely different in scale, even though it was quite obvious. And that's why we now have to beg for every shell from our allies, even though we could have had all the necessary stocks of weapons, equipment, and ammunition, as well as a trained army reserve, in 8 years.”

For all those 3 or 4 months, when the Allied intelligence had already drawn all the arrows on the map, which the invaders actually followed, instead of making ambushes along these arrows, across the arrows of the defense line, arming the troops in advance and mobilizing in time, we were preparing to barbecue on May Day - and that is why all our victories in this war have been paid at an incomparably higher price than they could and should have been. 

That is why we need this desperate and extremely difficult offensive campaign now - even though it would be incomparably easier to hold the south in the spring of 2022 than to take it back now.

So let's not blame Biden, Trump, and Sullivan for all our sins, and let's not consider ourselves "white and fluffy" - we got to this point, including complete dependence on foreign aid, and the need to liberate almost every fifth square meter of our country from the occupiers, first because of a series of our mistakes, and only then did strange "red lines" in the minds of our allies add to our problems. 

“But now we are doing everything possible and impossible, and now these "red lines" and "cockroaches" in the minds of our stakeholders are the biggest obstacle to our victory.”

So, what's wrong? Do we lack arguments? Are we unconvincing or incomprehensible? Not at all. Our arguments are absolutely convincing and understandable - for those who are ready to hear and consider them at all. However, it seems that we have already exhausted the resource of those people in the West who were ready to hear us.

First, we exhausted the resource of empathy and compassion. This resource is generally more humanitarian and very personalized, and it has almost no impact on the scale and nature of state military assistance. 

Empathy is about accepting our refugees. It is about Western volunteers who bring us trucks of humanitarian aid at their own expense. It's about volunteers who gave up everything and came to fight for us. But it's not even about the Javelins or the Stingers, let alone the Abrams and the ATACMS.

Next, we mobilized all those who do not perceive us emotionally, but instead rationally understand the Russian threat to themselves and how the entire world order depends on the outcome of this war. 

The Baltic states and Poland, Britain and Scandinavia gave us everything they could give us and even a little more, Scholz became a hawk and shook out almost everything from the Bundeswehr that had not been rotten and scrapped over the years of inactivity, and France, for these reasons, provided us with at least a lot of weapons and suddenly became our lobbyist in NATO.

“And now there is a distant overseas country that helps us the most, but at the same time restrains us the most with a bunch of bans and limits the range of supplies.”

In fact, it is the position of the leaders of this one distant country that is decisive in terms of our non-accession to NATO (yes, it looks like in 10 days in Vilnius we will face a huge "bummer" - instead of an invitation to join the Alliance, we will be offered a piece of paper with yet another "security guarantee" not much different from the Budapest one), and in terms of not providing us with aircraft, long-range missiles, etc., and in terms of the shameful ban on taking the war to the enemy's territory.

We have overcome many obstacles that seemed insurmountable a couple of years ago, but now seem to have hit an impenetrable wall in the mind of grandfather Biden. And this wall is not his personal "prejudice," unfortunately, it is much worse.

The recent events involving Wagner in Russia have brought to light what we have long been aware of – that the Russian state is not as powerful as it appears, is built on a fragile foundation and may well collapse in the very near future. And it is precisely this perspective that has forced the part of the Western political elite that is currently fully shaping the White House's position to finally take off their masks and show their true motivations.

Here is a link to the New York Times article and its Ukrainian translation. The author is Thomas L. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a journalism star, and one of the "opinion leaders" in the Democratic camp. Reading it, we can imagine that we are reading the thoughts of Sullivan, Kirby, or Biden. The article is short, you can read the whole thing to get a general idea of what is going on in the minds of the current leaders of the world's most powerful state. But the key thing for us is formulated in the last paragraph, and I quote verbatim:

"If Putin wins, the Russian people lose. But if he loses and his successor is disorder, the whole world loses."

The conclusion is obvious - of course, better the "Russian people" lose (there is no mention of our people at all) than the "whole world" lose. In other words, Putin's victory and the preservation of his regime are presented as the lesser evil, and the alternative is portrayed as chaos with a bunch of new uncontrolled regimes with pieces of the nuclear arsenal in the hands of each of the numerous Prigozhins and Kadyrovs.

“It is exactly this fear that determines the limits to which the White House is willing to support us, and it seems that we have already hit that limit. It's time to recognize an extremely unpleasant fact: our main ally is simply afraid of our victory, and therefore wants to avoid it.”

This is the best explanation for all those twists and turns in "non-assistance" to us that may seem strange, illogical, and inconsistent.

In fact, this is a very consistent policy, albeit both immoral and short-sighted. And part of this policy is the chorus of journalists and Harvard "experts" who "express disappointment" with the pace of our offensive.

The essence of this policy is simple: prevent Putin from winning - yes, not to let us defeat the Russians - no, because "the whole world will lose." And it seems that none of our well-thought-out rational arguments can break through this fear, because irrational fears are among the strongest human motivations.

We can appeal to values as much as we want, but we've already done it, and it didn't work. We can explain that such a position is not really wise, that it is not a "pragmatic calculation" but just the unwillingness of lazy and well-fed cowards to step out of their comfort zone. And that they will have to leave their comfort zone anyway, sooner or later. And that it is in the pragmatic interests of the United States to support our undeniable and compelling victory, while also preparing to navigate potential disruptions in Russia. But we have said all of this before, and our previous efforts to convey these messages have been met with unwillingness to heed them.

“I'm afraid that in order to address deep-rooted fears, it may be necessary to confront them with an even more powerful fear. And it seems that it is time for us to add to the arsenal of our argumentation "horror stories" that will counterbalance the horror of the "unknown future of Russia" in the minds of our allies.”

Perhaps it's time to draw a picture of a possible future for our allies, compared to which the arbitrary Prihozhing Russia will not look like the worst option.

We should explain to our friend Borrell (a genuine friend, he really does his best) that he is not entirely right when he says that without Western weapons supplies, we "will lose the war in a few days and turn into a new Belarus." Yes, we will lose, but not in a few days, but in many months. During these months, hundreds of thousands will die, and another 15 to 20 million will join refugee camps in Europe. Rather than becoming a  "second Belarus,” the situation could resemble a "second Afghanistan," where a bloody guerrilla war will not stop for years or even decades right next to the EU border, with all the "added benefits" for our neighbors.

We should tell our enemy Orban that, by some unfortunate turn of events, his efforts to assist Russia prove fruitful, resulting in our defeat as he predicts, the last order to our million-strong army, hardened in battles with the second largest army in the world, will be to retreat to neutral countries in Europe with all weapons and equipment and intern there. The chosen route for this retreat would not traverse the territories of the countries that extended their assistance to us but would exclusively pass through Hungary. Along this journey, our army would also be tasked with establishing a humanitarian corridor, ensuring the safe passage of millions of civilian refugees, also through Hungary. After all, shouldn't the Magyars know what it looks like to march thousands of kilometers through someone else's "forcedly hospitable" lands in search of the "promised land." History sometimes makes paradoxical somersaults, and they should consider this.

We should explain to all these Harvard-Pulitzer "experts" that a Ukraine forced to a "non-winning" and a truce, part of which will remain under occupation, will certainly not be able to become part of NATO and the EU, no one will invest in it, etc., and that we will make it not only our tragedy, but also their headache.

“This half-defeated and abandoned country, despite its poverty, will invest all its resources in the war, including bone-deep efforts to build nuclear weapons, and it has a very good chance of success. And if the CIA does manage to prevent this, then the so-called "dirty bomb" will be assembled in almost every basement in Ukraine, and no one will be able to deal with it.”

In the absence of reparations and investment, we will also have to fight poverty by any means necessary, including becoming one of the world's hubs for the trade in illegal weapons and other goods undesirable in "cultured" countries, a laundry room for laundering shadow money, and so on.

So maybe it would be easier for the White House to hand us over to Russia than to have problems with such a country crippled with PTSD? Also no, because the country may cease to exist, but there are too many Ukrainians to be physically destroyed by the Russians.

A million veterans with unique combat experience, feeling betrayed, without jobs and prospects, will go around the world to compete successfully with Wagner mercenaries, or form such criminal groups that the Balkan and Italian mafias will be nervously smoking in the hallway.

The children of the fallen soldiers will grow up as refugees in European orphanages and will nurture hatred not only for the occupiers, but also for those who betrayed us at a crucial time. And since it will be difficult for them to reach Moscow, their anger will be channeled into revenge against those who can be reached - Western politicians who once contributed to our defeat. 

If only 0,01 % of the expected 20 million Ukrainian refugees become vigilante terrorists, we will have a 2,000 strong underground of people well integrated in Western countries - no match for al-Qaeda...

All these and other similar horrific images must be shown the Friedmans, Sullivans, and Bidens, and become more real nightmares for them than the very abstract "mess in Russia." And lead them to understand that the only way to avoid all these nightmares is for a victorious Ukraine that, with the help of the West, has completely defeated Russian troops, liberated all territories, joined NATO and the EU, and in return must continue to be polite, controlled, follow the rules of the "club" and coordinate its actions with allies and investors.

Of course, not all such messages can be publicly voiced by our state (although Ambassador Melnyk's successful experience proves that it is often worth being rude and even brutal to be heard). But in addition to official spokespersons, there is also the press, expert communities, and many other channels of communication and message delivery. Perhaps it's time for these channels to stop being afraid of irritating our allies, and vice versa, to start informing them about our version of the "apocalyptic mess."

Yes, this will not make us more loved. But we have already used the potential of love and compassion to the maximum, and we will not squeeze more out of these noble feelings of good people. And to win, we need more, and much more. 

It's time to reach out to the bad people, to those who don't like us anyway, and to reach them through the only thing that motivates them enough - apocalyptic fears. 

If we can't reach an agreement in a good way, we'll have to talk tough. After all, we have no choice - winning is our only option.

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About the author. Yevhen Dykyi, scientist, serviceman.

The editorial staff do not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.