Vitaly Portnikov / Vilni Media
Russian officials have stopped being embarrassed. Just a few weeks ago, we could hear the familiar rhetoric about freeing Ukrainians from Nazis, the West’s dominance fighting against Russia, and the “one people,” forcibly separated by damned “nationalists.”
But now the deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma from Putin’s “United Russia,” Pyotr Tolstoy, calls for the destruction of Ukrainian cities and insists that there are no innocents in Ukraine. Meanwhile, State Duma deputy from another pro-Putin party, “A Just Russia,” Alexei Zhuravlev, calls the potential use of nuclear weapons an obligation of the Russian Federation and compares Ukrainians to… the Japanese, who became U.S. allies after the nuclear bombing. Although, isn’t it true that no one ever called Americans and Japanese one people, right?
Putin’s henchmen understand that the war is not happening as planned in the Kremlin. That the army isn’t advancing at the pace promised to Putin by his generals. That Europeans continue to help Ukraine even after the reduction of aid from the United States. That the blows to the Russian economy are creating serious problems for the future functioning of the Chekist regime. And they are ready to vent their anger on women and children, literally! Because the assault on Kyiv and the Kyiv region is literally compensation for the impossibility of achieving Ukrainian capitulation.
I won’t say that this is hysteria in agony. The agony of the Putin regime is still far, very far away, and I do not rule out that on the way to the collapse, the Russian president will organize several more aggressive wars. But this is a real confession for a war tribunal, true accounts of Russian intentions. What Tolstoy, Zhuravlev, and other Russian propagandists and officials are now saying completely destroys the legend of “brotherhood” and liberation. Russian chauvinists have never thought so, have always treated Ukrainians as strangers, and have always considered the capture of Ukrainian lands precisely as occupation – just read the documents from the times of the Pereyaslav Council and the Bolshevik blow to Ukraine to be convinced of this. But they always happily lied to justify the seizure of foreign lands, to explain why they kill, rob, and burn.
But now they have stopped lying. And demonstrated that we are dealing with the banality of pure evil, which no longer even tries to pass itself off as good. And indeed, why should the devil hide that he has a tail if everyone sees it anyway. Well, Tolstoy no longer hides it.
By the way, about Tolstoy, this cannibal and scoundrel, who is a direct descendant of the famous Russian writer. Exactly 117 years ago, Leo Tolstoy emphasized in an unsent letter to a high-ranking Russian official that he writes about “a very miserable person, the most miserable of all I know now in Russia. This man you know and, oddly enough, love him, but do not understand the full extent of his misfortune and do not pity him, as his situation deserves. This person is you yourself… I cannot understand the blindness under which you can continue your terrible activities, because with your current activities you have already earned that terrible reputation by which you will always be perceived as a model of rudeness, cruelty, and lies.”
Now these words of the Russian classic could be redirected to his deceitful great-grandson and to those whom he serves – to Putin, the Chekist and army generals, all accomplices in the declared murder of peaceful Ukrainians. Better than Tolstoy himself – only the real Tolstoy, and not the unwanted noise with a loud surname – you can’t say it. All these people are a model of rudeness, cruelty, and lies.
A model of cannibalism.
Photo: Olena Hrom
