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OPINION

Repressions against military: Pandora's Box

Kate Kikot
24 January, 2025 Friday
21:10

By unleashing the jackals from the State Bureau of Investigation on the military and turning on the dirty robe factory (the Pechersk Court), the Presidential Office has shot itself in the foot. And eventually, maybe in the head

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But before that, the attackers committed a number of crimes. 

First of all, it was demoralization of the troops:

  • commanders see that they will be held responsible for failures. It increases the number of hesitations, it adds passivity - “I don't care if I'm the one to blame for everything..." 
  • it adds to the sense of injustice - sorry, maybe a combined battalion of the State Bureau of Investigation and fire support from the Pechersk judges' division will show a master class of unmistakable victories? 
  • this is an accentuated absurdity - since when did civilian judges of the Pechersk Trash Court become experts in the nuances of military affairs? On the basis of what knowledge will they decide “good/evil”?

This is a stark injustice - who is presenting charges against the military? 

Those who ignored the preparations for the war and spent 2021 waiting? Those who evacuated their families and left thousands of civilians to die, who instead of the announced barbecue received occupation? Those who told the military where to run, how to attack? Those who methodically and pathetically cleared the Mariupol raid and withdrew the Armed Forces to the fields from their equipped positions? Those who snorted at Minsk, but praised Oman and Istanbul? Those who f*cked up the missile program, disbanded military units, left Hostomel and Zhuliany defenseless, and who supplied defective mines to the army? Seriously?  Did they decide to play a game of showdown? 

The second is a moral crime. Trying to shift the blame for the war onto the military, ignoring your own total inadequacy, is pure politics. 

It is evil to involve the military in politics. Yes, this is the beginning of the whitewashing of the government before the elections, whenever they happen. 

This is a prelude to the moment when they will tell the people that someone was powerful, and the military “has what it has.” That is, all the good things are on one scoreboard, and all the negative things are on those uniformed ones. This is cynical, unfair, and untrue.

The third is the use of official position by the authorities - the military cannot respond to the authorities in the same way during the war. 

And the military has a lot to say. About the idiotic ideas generated by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff, about stamping their feet “I want an offensive”, about selling the air to the public about “two weeks". 

The authorities themselves are pushing the military to start talking. Someone is sure that the massive purge of generals of the Zaluzhny era will not have consequences. Someone is testing the society's reaction with the cases of Galushkin and Lapin - “what will you do...”. Someone is firmly convinced that he will not be harmed, and the boomerang will not come.

Or will it? Are senior officers ready to talk about the fatal mistakes of the political leadership? When will the red line be drawn, when “it's no longer a matter of shoulder straps or career, it's a matter of justice”? 

Of course, coming out with an open visor will reveal many unacceptable things in the army. And those senior commanders, officers, who will go into this battle for justice, will have to admit their own mistakes and miscalculations. Organizational, bureaucratic, professional, interpersonal. All of them. There are no illusions, the problems of the Armed Forces are a mirror of the problems of society - there are the same people. There is sycophancy, bending to the rank, incompetence, corruption (God forgive me), nepotism, and inconsistency in both. But judicial raids do not fix these troubles. And if we want a fair (!) clarification (!) of the causes of the problems for the sake of understanding (!) how to fix (!), and not to appoint the guilty... then we need not courts, but openness, flexibility, willingness to listen, and readiness for atypical decisions and actions.

Well, and the alphabetical one - only those who have similar knowledge can draw conclusions about the correctness or incorrectness of the actions/decisions of the military. That is, the military. This should be a separate court where all parties can speak in the same terms, situations, and experiences (!). This is not the case now. 

To conclude... By launching judicial attacks on the military, the government is not even sowing wind, but a storm. If only the harvest would affect only the sowers. In fact, there is no longer any reason why society and the military should not ask the Supreme Commander and his avatars about THEIR faults. They can ask in court. But not in Pechersk. This is already a special tribunal in terms of responsibility. The price of the issue is 20% of the ruined country and hundreds of thousands of deaths. A high price. 

This is an open Pandora's Box.

Of course, after the war.

Source

About the author. Vitaliy Haidukevych, journalist.

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of blogs.

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