Subedei gazed greedily at the panorama unfolding from the Vyshhorod forests burned by his army. Khan Batu’s regiments had already passed through many Rus’ cities, and now he understood that in each of them, even the smallest, one could feel the shadow of this, as yet unfamiliar and invincible presence.
The church domes gleamed, rivers that flowed straight through the city were discernible, dividing it with their banks. And the great river beyond its hills looked especially solemn here. Yes, this was not just a capital. This was a heart.
He struck his horse and rode up to Batu, who also stood nearby and was also viewing Kyiv.
“Destroy this – destroy everything!” was all that Subedei, the brave commander, hope of the Ulus Jochi, conqueror of China, Georgia, Bulgaria, destroyer of Ryazan and Vladimir-on-Klyazma, said to Batu.
The Khan only squinted his eyes wearily.
Almost eight hundred years after that terrible assault, which ended in the fall and burning of the Rus’ capital, the Supreme Khural of the Republic of Tuva – the very country on whose territory Subedei was allegedly born, established an order in honor of the great commander, the same warrior who conquered and destroyed Rus’. The order will be awarded to those Russian servicemen (of course, born in Tuva) who show exceptional courage during the war of Russia against Ukraine.
The appearance of this award in modern Russia (as we see, nobody thought to stop Tuva’s leadership, although in any other cases the Kremlin closely watches local government initiatives) represents for me a civilizational openness. Russians – in the broad political sense of the word, because Tuva is part of Russia – have recognized that they are fighting, continuing the same war, trying to complete what Batu and Subedei ultimately failed to accomplish. Yes, they destroyed and burned Kyiv, but the ancient capital managed to resurrect and become, maybe not the center, but a part of another, European and free world. And yet Moscow (incidentally, also destroyed by Subedei) preferred to become the shadow of the conquerors and replicate their statehood on its own land. And yes, Moscow’s tsars, princes, and emperors always eyed not only the ancient lands of Rus’ but also the lands of ancient Mongolian conquests (Tuva was conquered by Jochi, Batu’s father) – that’s why the territory of Tuva became one of the last lands annexed by the Soviet Union.
When on a sunny autumn day in the 1990s, I strolled through the streets of Tuva’s capital, Kyzyl, trying to understand, perhaps for the first time, this thought arose so clearly – who absorbed whom? Russia – Tuva or still the Ulus Jochi – Russia? The people who passed by me seemed much more natural in the interiors of this rather Asian, than Soviet city, than Muscovites, who desperately pretended to be Europeans. Here, in Subedei’s homeland, everything reminded who was truly the victor, even if in Moscow they tried not to acknowledge it and used the Kyiv myth for this purpose – our history, our civilization, not theirs.
But now the masks are off. Now on the chests of those who would like to destroy Kyiv, there will be an order in honor of the one who truly destroyed it. Let’s remember that in the Second World War, Stalin tried to adhere to another myth – of a common Motherland and brotherhood, so alongside the new orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov, and Prince Alexander Nevsky, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR also established the Order of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, primarily awarding Ukrainians – for the liberation of Ukraine. Stalin tried to portray the war as a struggle for the liberation of “all Rus’.” But now in Putin’s Russia, they will be awarding for its destruction.
It’s unfortunate, of course, that now I have no contacts in the leadership of the Supreme Khural of Tuva, as I once did in the early decades of my journalistic work. Because I would certainly advise awarding the new order not only to Tuvan participants in the “SVO,” whom Moscow bought so that they would desecrate foreign lands.
I would advise awarding the Order of Subedei to the one who daily gives orders to bomb Kyiv and Chernihiv, Lviv and Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa, who follows in Batu’s footsteps – and, like him, travels with reports and requests to the real capital of the empire, to Beijing. The one who kills Ukrainians and destroys their cities. The one who does not know how to survive without capturing Kyiv.
I would award this order to Putin.
