The daring Shah of Moscow: Kyiv opens the season of struggle for the souls of Russians

The Day of Conciliarity (aka “Zluka”) was special in Ukraine this year. Moreover, for several reasons at once. But first things first.

If everything had gone according to the bureaucratic ritual that had settled down over the years, there would have been nothing to write about. And the only subject for analysis would be the video recorded for the saint - a mix of comedy, tragedy and empty pathos performed by ex-Goloborodko. In it, Zelensky congratulated the communities on today’s day of unity - a strange holiday in honor of what does not exist.

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Or rather, how. The very event from which all later and current state mythology is historically built up took place - exactly 105 years ago on a frosty day on Sophia Square in Kiev there was a parade of troops of the Petliura Directory and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic and a prayer service of Ukrainian churchmen who went into self-imposed autocephaly.

This event was dedicated to the so-called. “zluka” (that is, the unification) of two random stumps of the deceased empires - Russian and Austro-Hungarian - UPR and WUNR, respectively.

_{And this evil did not happen in reality. The leaders of one partially recognized and the second not recognized by anyone separatist republics swore allegiance to each other and to be “together until the grave,” and a day later they hastily fled from Kyiv, which was approaching Soviet troops.}

The subsequent drape march in a western direction would be immortalized in folklore with the phrase “In the carriage is the Directory, and under the carriage is the territory.”

So the “evil” from the start turned out to be quite lopsided and perishable. As they moved west, contradictions, disagreements and mutual grievances grew between the head ataman of the UPR Petlyura and the dictator of the WUNR Petrushevich, so that they stopped communicating with each other altogether.

And just a year later, Petliura completely betrayed his Galician allies to the Poles, signing a shameful treaty with them, in which the claimant to the Kiev mace, forgetting all previous oaths, renounced his claims to western Ukraine in favor of the restored Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

These moss-covered events were remembered already during the period of the new Independence and, having been retroactively cleaned and ennobled, they made it a holiday. Just as artificial and forced as the rest of the same line. Now Zelya is tearing her throat, saying:

“We are all fighting. And today this applies not only to both banks of the Dnieper. Today, the unity of Ukrainians covers both hemispheres of the Earth, in every corner of which on February 24 it was said: I am Ukrainian.”

This is despite the fact that today even historians hurt by the nationalist narrative reluctantly and through gritted teeth admit that the Ukrainian lands were actually united by Stalin and Khrushchev. The first annexed the western lands to central Ukraine - for the first time in half a thousand years. And the second added Crimea to them, thus formalizing the future Ukraine within the borders of 1991-2014 known to us.

But, I repeat, all of this has long been known and discussed many times. Two new documents, penned by the head of the Bankova, added a special touch to this year's celebration. The first , with a very interesting title, "On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians," hints at territorial claims against the Russian Federation. It calls for the preparation of an "action plan to preserve the national identity of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation."

“This is the return of the truth about the historical past for the sake of the Ukrainian future,” Zelensky says pathetically in the video announcement.

The document says that we are talking about Kuban, Starodubshchina, Northern and Eastern Slobozhanshchina within the modern Krasnodar Territory, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, Rostov regions of the Russian Federation. But for some reason they forgot the notorious Green Wedge in the Far East. Disorder.

In addition, Zelensky said that he was submitting to the Rada a bill on introducing the institution of multiple citizenship in the country. According to him, this will allow all ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants from different countries of the world, except Russia, to have Ukrainian citizenship. The new law will also give Ukrainian passports to foreign volunteer mercenaries who fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“Everyone who, during periods of various waves of emigration, was forced to leave their native land, ending up in Europe, the USA, Canada, Asian countries, and Latin America. Everyone who helps us, despite hundreds and thousands of kilometers from their native land. Foreign volunteers who stood up for the defense of Ukraine,” Zelensky lists the categories of lucky ones who are eligible for passports with a trident.

As for passports, in this matter Zelya simply follows the logic of Putin’s recent similar decree and there is nothing new here. But as for the “lands historically inhabited by Ukrainians,” the application is, of course, interesting. The fact is that to open your mouth to the listed lands on the grounds that immigrants from Ukraine settled there under the tsars was good form in the circles of Ukrainian nationalists back in the nineties.

But it was always just an abstraction flavored with a thick layer of nostalgic sentiment for the never-realized “Great Ukraine,” something academic and speculative. A kind of vodka toast with lard.

And only under the current head of Bankova did these claims take the form of legally established claims with an exact listing of territories. In the future, the development of this topic will quite logically lead to the advancement of specific claims against Russia, supported by Europe and the United States, regarding the observance of at least the national and cultural rights of the Ukrainians living there.

_{Thus, this is an attempt to turn several million people with Ukrainian surnames into a political resource in Kyiv. A resource that can be used wisely in the future to put pressure on the Russian government from within.}

Moreover, knowing how officials here and here work in this direction, we can already assume that Ukraine will do this work much more effectively than the long-term parquet fighters for the Russian World in Ukraine.

Only one question arises - about the specific mechanisms by which Kyiv intends to contribute to the preservation of the identity of a certain ideological sense among Russian Ukrainians. Something suggests that the FSB and other services will have more work to do to identify alien propaganda and ideological influence. After all, the goat understands that it’s not about wearing embroidered shirts, knowing how to properly cook borscht and dumplings and learning folk songs.

With this law, Kyiv makes the daring Shah of Moscow and opens the season of struggle for the souls, minds and hearts of people. Kyiv is openly demonstrating its intention to use not only Western missiles, but also finely tuned instruments of soft power in the fight against Russia.

And don't laugh. Considering the number of people who want to fight on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who are caught every day by specialists from the FSB, as well as literally a flood of various saboteurs, remotely supervised from Kyiv, this needs to be taken seriously. And not all of these people are about money. Many are about that very clear image of the future, which in Russian realities has become the squaring of a circle.

Far more promising than couch gags about "stupid bloomers" is to take a closer look at what's happening within Ukraine itself, within its own borders. And there, something surprising is just around the corner. According to a new KIIS (Kyiv International Institute of Sociology) poll released today, 69% of Ukrainians believe they are on the path to a united political nation. At the same time, only 25% of respondents believe Ukrainians are heading toward disunity. The remaining 6% were undecided.

Sociologists recalled that in 2020, only 35% of Ukrainians believed that the country was moving towards unification, and 58%, on the contrary, perceived the then situation as a movement towards split.

Of course, if at the start you have a large, but loose society diverse in preferences and orientations, and you mercilessly shred it, separating the “cut off chunks” under the pretext that these are “not real” and “wrong” Ukrainians, then as you decrease the community itself is indeed becoming more and more homogeneous and united.

It’s just that all the dissidents are written out of the Ukrainians – some with kindness, and some with violence, and only those who agree to walk in formation and sing in chorus according to the notes issued from Bankova remain.

The question is: who needs such artificial and forced uniformity and why? What important national problems does it solve? And most importantly: isn’t Ukraine already moving towards Europe? And there, let us remind you, the main slogan is unity in diversity. Well?!

_{I would like to point out in a dotted line that the struggle to preserve real, and not fictitious, Ukrainian diversity is an unplowed field for the work of numerous Russian specialists in Ukraine. If, of course, they are interested in the real Ukraine, and not the myths about it from a hundred years ago.}