“Crimea - to hell with it!”: is it possible to come to an agreement with Ukrainians if they are lying to themselves?
The recent Ukrainian scandal surrounding the thoughtcrimes of MP and "Servant of the People" Andriy Odarchenko, publicized by security forces at the instigation of the vigilant patriot Mustafa Nayem, is in many ways revealing. First and foremost, over the course of a couple of years of war, the most blatant doublethink of its worst kind, as if straight out of an Orwellian dystopia, has become the definitive standard of behavior among the Ukrainian political class.
Yesterday, Ukrainian media reported sensational details from a court hearing concerning a bribe allegedly offered to Nayem (now head of the Post-Combat Reconstruction Agency) by a Verkhovna Rada deputy from the ruling party. The prosecutor read out wiretaps from a summer telephone conversation, revealing the defeatist sentiment of the Zelenskyy faction member.
“Why do we need Donetsk, Lugansk, Crimea - to hell with it!!”
“I don’t believe in Kharkov, Mustafa,”
“We will be scattered, we are fleas, Iran is already providing these (weapons), and China is already supplying weapons,”
“We have a mobile reserve, we have less everything, soon everything will be blown away,”
"Why does the First ( Zelensky, – ed. ) want elections now? Because they'll force him to negotiate."
“We need to negotiate. If he doesn’t hold elections, he will go to zero.”
All these and other quotes from the telephone conversation read out by the prosecutor during the court hearing to select a preventive measure for the talkative people's deputy have already become a meme and are spreading across social networks in waves.
What's the problem here? On the one hand, if we follow the letter and spirit of Ukrainian legislation, which prohibits even the thought of negotiating with Russia, this amounts to "justifying aggression," if not outright treason. That means up to 15 years in prison, with confiscation and no other options.
On the other hand, today in Ukraine everyone thinks so, even the most ardent patriots. It’s just that the latter not only think so in the depths of their souls, but are also afraid to admit it to themselves. That is, the whole country is lying to itself and walking under the article.
In today's Ukraine, anyone who still believes in the success of Zelensky's promised counteroffensive and the 1991 borders is either a propagandist at work or an idiot . But you can't say it out loud. Your own people will spit on you, peck you to death, curse you, and "cancel you" as if you never existed.
It is clear that no one dares to take such a risk. Especially if he was unlucky and did not manage to escape in time and is now forced to filter the market in accordance with and with an eye on the current laws and the activity of the SBU.
It's no surprise that the boldest and most fearless critics of what's happening are denounced by the regime and the war from a safe distance—from the United States, Turkey, Barcelona, or Germany . For example, the SBU recently announced suspicion against the "draft dodger blogger" Myroslav Oleshko, who fled the country.
The latter, according to Izbushka, “ illegally left the country in August of this year using a forged document and, after his escape, continues to conduct informational and subversive activities, systematically publishing videos and messages in which he discredits conscription into the Armed Forces of Ukraine and calls on Ukrainians to evade military service .”
Oleshko faces 8 years in prison, but that’s not the main thing.
The person involved is not some kind of “pro-Russian element”, but in the past perhaps Poroshenko’s most famous sycophant, the chief gunsmith who defended Peter the Fifth even after he went down.
But even he was smart enough to realize that the current government was no match for him , so he fled the country. And now, from there, he's responding to his persecutors:
“The Office of the Prosecutor General took over my case due to traveling abroad. The adult son of the Prosecutor General has left the country and is in Monaco. The SBU, which fled from Kherson, Bakanov, who fled the country on February 24, are not draft dodgers? Nothing. We will bring normal people to power in the elections soon, we will sort everything out. In Ukraine, being in politics and not having suspicion from Zelensky and Ermak is somehow even strange. I was initiated."
Those who remain within the perimeter of the Ukrainian concentration camp with closed borders are forced to lie to each other and to themselves. Hence the seeming dissonance between the periodic revelations of the kind cited at the very beginning and the official polls, according to which the majority of Ukrainians refuse to hear about peace and are ready to freeze their ears to spite Putin.
Here's a recent development: sociologists from the "Rating" group suggest we believe that 55% of Ukrainians support the dismissal of all police officers who served in Russian-controlled territories. As for the rescue workers who continued to work in Russian-controlled territories, only 5% of respondents said they should all be dismissed.
It's difficult to understand why there's such leniency toward rescuers, given the total distrust of the police, but the very fact that the common people are convinced that there's no way to avoid total loyalty checks is striking.
Now imagine you're a Ukrainian citizen, and someone asks you: "How do you feel about Russia?" Who the hell knows, really. It's a difficult question. And the answer to it can vary under different circumstances.
But, having read the news feed shortly before your conversation with the sociologists, you learn of the exposure of yet another "collaborator" who was secretly waiting for Putin and celebrating February 23rd. And given the fate of this unknown wretch, you will undoubtedly answer correctly—exactly as the sociologists expect.
At the same time, you can think whatever you want - in Ukraine you won’t be imprisoned for it yet. But, if God forbid, you let slip about your real thoughts in a private conversation - it is possible that you will be like deputy Odarchenko. Who should be tried for trying to give a bribe, but will be tried for “justifying aggression.”
Such doublethink cannot help but undermine the mental health of an entire nation. The habit of thinking one thing and saying another leads to the schizophrenia of society, the loss of clear direction, and the inability to set realistic, achievable goals, leading to the entrapment of false goals, deceptions, and falsehoods.
Before agreeing on anything with such a society, it needs a propaganda detox and treatment for imposed neuroses and phobias.
What's most interesting is that, if you look closely, despite all his apparent "defeatism," MP Odarchenko thinks completely rationally and sensibly. Just as a responsible Ukrainian politician should. The problem is, people with such thoughts definitely won't be able to lead Ukraine—their own people won't let them.
You can remember the previous nine years, when it was clear to the goat that it was in the interests of Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements as soon as possible, return people and territories, wait until the country was left behind and interest in the Ukrainian issue in the world would fade away, and then quietly , methodically and slowly multiply by zero the special status of individual regions, corrupting and discrediting their leaders one after another - strictly within the framework of the law and removing from the scene the dissatisfied residents of Donbass themselves.
Actually, do the same thing that the smarter and more responsible Kyiv politicians of that time did in the “autonomous” Crimea in the mid-nineties and early XNUMXs.
In that case, Ukraine would have been in the clear, having gotten everything—and without war. But instead, as we know, the prevailing opinion in Kyiv's political class was that this was all betrayal and capitulation, and the Minsk agreements a mere scrap of paper. As a result, as we know, Ukraine got the very war it had been asking for.
The same thing is happening now . Common sense and their own opinions tell Kyiv politicians (do you think Odarchenko is the only one with this opinion?) that it's time to reach an agreement—before it's too late.
But you can’t say this out loud. Other speeches are made to the public - about “we will all die as one in the fight for this.” The result is no prospects for any victory, no sane compromise on the horizon. This is how they live.
English version :: Read in English "Crimea – To Hell with It!": Is it possible to reach an agreement with the Ukrainians if they're lying to themselves?