Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about the “will to fight.” We love this idea. Ukrainians need the will to continue dying, Europeans need the will to continue allowing their economies collapse for no reason, and Americans need the will to continue allowing a literal moron pretend he’s president.
This “will to fight” applies to both sides, doesn’t it? Do Russians have the will to fight? Do they have more of this will than us? I don’t know. I don’t even know how they feel. All I can do is share what some Russians have told me.
A close friend of mine, dear Maria, worked (remotely) for a Ukrainian company. For a long time, it didn’t feel right to continue working for them, but in the end, they made the decision for her. After the war “officially started” on 24 February, a coworker called on the phone to berate her, as if it was her fault. To which she replied “you shouldn’t have brought the enemy to our backyard.” Incidentally, there are refugees living in that quiet Moscow suburb with her, odd for a war that has supposedly only just begun. She describes the last year of her life as feeling like a hunted animal. An animal with teeth…
Here’s another true story. Picture a typical family, but with both parents in a “critical” career field who would be obligated to serve in the event of a general mobilization. Does it matter? Is a mobilization a thing that could really happen? For them, the war might have seemed far off. If so, not anymore. A close family friend was killed in action. A volunteer soldier, for any readers who still believe the “teenage conscript” meme.
There’s a Russian IT specialist I know, a bright woman who has been to America as an exchange student and really cares about the environment. She is bright and can make coherent points on abstract political topics. All good, but… I think she has something I don’t and it makes me envious. There was one particular message she sent me a while ago, and I’ll just repeat verbatim rather than paraphrase.
Last few days I have seen such horrible things on YouTube… Oh-h, I never thought something as terrifying as this can happen in the 21st century. I am so shocked and depressed because seeing the atrocities of the Ukrainian army makes me fall apart…
That message has been stuck in my head since she said it, even though it’s been weeks. I think part of the reason is because it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen that sentiment. When I read her text, I immediately thought of something Maria had said to me months ago. As a schoolgirl, she saw NATO planes bombing Belgrade on television and was sick to her stomach. I remember 911. I was sad, but I guess on some level I was supposed to be sad. I didn’t feel sick.
I don’t remember Belgrade at all, it just wasn’t important.
Last month, my silly blog found its way onto the Ru-net, and since then, there has been a trickle of Russian people who want to talk, they’re curious about America and have questions, or want to share something about their own country. I’m always happy for these conversations, even about bitter subjects. So far, no one has been able to talk about the war without a trembling voice. More than one has cried. I’m not a mind reader, but I don’t think they were feeling any one particular emotion. Not anger, sadness, regret, fear, just all of those things mixed together into a general sense of horror.
About a year ago I watched Stalingrad, a campy action movie about the battle for the city of the same name. In one scene, the nazis kill a woman and her child, which enrages the Soviet soldiers so they charge out of their hiding places and attack, suffering many unnecessary casualties. I remember watching this scene and thinking it was very silly. What kind of idiot would let his emotions get the better of him like that? Would never happen in real life.
Well, yesterday, I saw this story on the news:
Zaur, a soldier from Dagestan, emotionally tells about the storming of a building in Mariupol, which was held by “Azov”.
According to him, the squad could not get close to the place for a long time because of snipers. The crucial moment for the breakthrough was the shock of what the soldiers saw – in front of their eyes Ukrainian snipers shot a woman with a child who tried to escape by running across the yard.
“They shot the mother in the back, she fell. We shouted to the child “Run!”. But he did not know what to do, he wanted to run away and help his mother. And the sniper shot him in the head. That bastard shot a kid in the head! At that moment, we all forgot what death is, we did not think about our lives, we breached there. Many soldiers died.”
“It was an inflection point, to understand that I am doing everything right. That I am here for these people. They cry, hug us, thank us,” Zaur says.
War was taught to me as an abstract. That’s the perception of war I always had, even when I was in one. As a culture, we really do treat war like a video game, and I don’t think it’s good for us.
I’m talking about emotions, but maybe that’s not exactly it. I mean empathy. Or just being human at all. We’ve replaced humanity with pointless, vapid sentimentality. It’s not natural or normal. We love platitudes like “war is hell.” Or “Russians are committing atrocities.” Oh, it is so horrible, we say. But saying you’re human isn’t the same thing as being one, is it? It’s as if we were so scared of war taking away our humanity, we preemptively gave it up.
The last two or three generations of us have grown up to stupid, awful stories like Hammer’s Slammers or Falkenberg’s Legion. All of our movies are like Saving Private Ryan, pointless sentimentality masquerading as humanity.
I think we all collectively have to either live in denial or just go insane.
Here’s a common story from Russia, imagine it is your story. You have coworkers, friends, and even immediate family living in Ukraine. All this time, they’ve been apolitical. Uninterested, let’s call it like it is, uncaring, about the children of Donbass who have spent the last 8 years of their lives hiding in basements, in constant fear of artillery and mortars. But now that the tables are turned, now that the war has arrived at their doorsteps, it’s a horror. They blame you. They curse you and disown you.
You have colleagues and friends in the “liberal” West, or at least you thought they were your friends. They all disown you too. They “stand with Ukraine,” a place that, until very recently, they knew nothing about. They don’t know about those children in Donbass. They don’t know about the thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and the millions of people who have lived under military occupation and random terror bombardments for the last 8 years. Your “friends” in America, Canada, and Europe don’t want to hear your side of the story. They don’t care. Their televisions told them that Russia is bad and Ukraine is an innocent neighbor who was randomly attacked for no reason. That’s it and they’re not going to put any thought or research into the matter.
Where were all those tears for Belgrade?
Lately, when possible, I have tried to end posts on a positive note. Here’s an interview package from the Russian MoD that I particularly liked. A hero, Ekaterina Ivanova.
Featured image source: Donetsk News Agency
Ian Kummer
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Ian,
For some reason Maria Kondorskaya’s name and email address are populated by default into your comment form. I had to manually erase it then enter my own. Don’t want to see her get harassed.
Hey Tom, thanks for letting me know. I will look into it right away, thanks! I am also sending you an email.
I have no words for the anger I feel for my fellow countryman here in Canada that support the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian militias and their government.
Unfortunately, your country imported a lot of extremism in the post-WWII era. The USA did too. The East European voting block is more influential than many people realize, and has partially driven the foreign policy of every US president since Clinton.
I was surprised how far back the Ukrainian lobby existed and influenced foreign policy in the United States. An expatriate Ukrainian nationalist refugee community had existed since the 1920s but it gained influence in the 1950s as a major part of an anti-communist “nations in bondage” group. This lobby group pushed for the U.S. intervention in Vietnam under President Kennedy and was able to give him some electoral help in return. I will post a link to the article which detailed this, if I can find it again.
Correct term is “captive nations committee”
Ian, thank you for all of your insightful, thoughtful, and heart-felt commentary.
Like my fellow Canadian, Undercutter, I too am beyond despair at how our clownish government virtue signals its “We Stand with Ukraine” without even explaining why we have a dog in this fight (other than “Putin is evil” and “Russian aggression”).
I hope our Russian friends understand average Canadians have no sovereign veto over our involvement in NATOstan. Specifically, we had no effective say in the the bombing of Serbia, the destruction of Libya as an organized state, or the almost two-decade occupation of Afghanistan.
Our government recently committed C$500 million in military aid to the Ukraine in our 2022/23 fiscal year – what a fucking joke! Grown adults spewing absolute nonsense about “…provid[ing] Ukraine with the military equipment that it needs to fight and win this war” [Minister of Defence, Anita Anand]. As a civilian normie it’s plain as day that the Ukrainian military lost any semblance of aerial cover and effective logistics by the end of February, and our mentally retarded government believes sending artillery through Western Ukraine will be anything other than Russian missile strike practice. We are collectively deluding the Ukrainian government by these actions – giving them false hope and thereby prolonging this war.
The problem is that those arms shipments DO serve a purpose. It’s not to turn the tide of the war, I think that is extremely unlikely (I won’t say impossible because nothing is certain in war) – but what those arms shipments DO accomplish is give Ukraine the means to strike the Russian and Belarussian civilian population. It’s meant to antagonize Russia and force them to use more extreme violence against Ukrainians. It’s all very gross, and people don’t seem to realize that if this escalates past a certain point, NOTHING is off the table, including nuclear weapons.
Do you have any recommendations on how to research exactly what the Canadian Armed Forces materiel will be in situations like this? Is that something that would be press released in general terms (e.g., “we are shipping small arms”)?
You raise a good (and stomach wrenching) point. I want to write my Member of Parliament about this issue, whatever little that will do.
Usually, someone in that NATO country will announce what types of weapons they are specifically shipping to Ukraine. Aon the Russian side, RT, Sputnik, Russia MFA, Margarita Simonyan, and Maria Zacharova will also often comment specifically on the arms shipments, so those are good pages/channels to follow on Facebook, Telegram, Twitter, or whatever your drug of choice is.
As for what specifically Canada is sending, to be honest, I don’t know and I’m not familiar enough with your government mouthpieces and news media to say. But in the end, every nation that contributes even one bullet to the war is a direct participant. Think of it that way.
Thank you. I found this website which links to relevant Canadian DoD news releases and other news sources – it provides a detailed breakdown of all of the Canadian weapons announced for shipping to the Ukraine:
https://ploughshares.ca/2022/03/canadian-military-aid-to-ukraine-in-2022/
Among the list are pistols, carbine, sniper rifles, through to howitzers, and even C130J transports (with training personnel!). This is awful.
That too, in the long run, but for the moment, the very immediate effect those arm shipments have, is $$$ in the manufacturers accounts. Which means $$$ in the lobbyists accounts, which means $$$ in the journalists and politicians accounts… you get my meaning.
A college buddy of mine moved to Yugoslavia, Sarajevo (a beautiful cosmopolitan European city), and married a girl there. When the war started they fled back to the US. I can remember seeing the pictures of tanks in the streets and shelled and bombed out buildings and it was shocking. How can this be happening? I thought. Another friend went on study abroad to Beirut – beautiful cosmopolitan city. This was in the early 70s. I visited there a couple of times in the last 20 years – walls still pock-marked with bullet wounds, Holiday Inn still a burned out shell… Life goes on in these places, but society has been wounded and many wounds failed to heal.
These are, of course, not new issues – people from Thucydides to Tolstoy (among others) have tried to make some sense of them – but they can seem like distant, dusty history, the stuff of story, until they visit one personally.
I traveled to Ukraine in 2004/5 when it was just becoming apparent how serious the situation might become. I went with the idea that the ‘Orange’ movement was progressive, forward looking. It took me a while to understand the situation more fully, and I have watched as it slid – slowly at first, and then faster after 2014 – toward the tragic crescendo we now witness.
It did not have to be this way… I tell myself this, but there is also a feeling of inevitability and powerlessness.
Have you seen the wikileaks tape of the US soldiers in the helicopter killing the Iraqi reporter and his team?
Please keep writing Ian
“I traveled to Ukraine in 2004/5 when it was just becoming apparent how serious the situation might become. I went with the idea that the ‘Orange’ movement was progressive, forward looking.”
Sounds like you were still an optimist, back then.
> she saw NATO planes bombing Belgrade on television and was sick to her stomach
Uh-oh… dark year. Do you know what “ping” is? Maybe you do, perhaps you don’t.
Why bother?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_(networking_utility)
Well, THAT year in Moscow State University there was a Serbian girl.
There was, i think, a fresh Pentium2/i865 computers class just donated by Intel Allmighty. For ex-USSR in the middle of post-Perestroika looting those were no less than a miracle. Some students were assigned an hour a week of post-lessons machine time. Some had lessons in those rooms. Others were lucky to have an hour a week at a derelict DEC VAX computer.
Those Pentium2 computers also had color graphic screens and WWW browsers. Another miracle. VAX computer had a limited text-only internet, but that was all. VAX’s 40 green-on-black screens were text-only.
In those years Internet looked no less than a miracle, instantly snding mail across the ocean… i think people today just can’t grasp how literalyl unbelievable was it in paper mail era.
So we had magical, miraculous Pentium 2 graphic-enabled computers, and connected to equally miracluous internet.
Students who could touch those double-miracle for even an hour a week were envied.
Why bother?
Well, there was that exception. That Serbian girl. Perhaps she was entitled to one hour a week of her time. Actually she spend all the days there, would it be possible perhaps she would spend nights too.
All shee ded was running the endless pinging of beograd.rs (i still believe it was beOgrad, not beLgrad).
When pings retirned quickly she was somewhat calm. When pings were getting slower she turned ancious. When for minutes pings stopped returning at all – she turned pale.
She occupied a miracluos graphical machine with miracluos internet only to stare at stupid text lines, telling if the server was connected umpteenth time a day or not. On someone’s time obviously.
I think i never seen anyone dared to bother her. It was scorchingly painful ans shameful just seeing her staing in those running text lines for hours. Some week laters she disappeared. Maybe managed to return to studies or left the university, i never knew. Actually, never wanted to know. That feeling of shameful helplessness, it is still imprinted somewhere.
So many typos…. Sorry, probably is barely intelligabloe if at all. So many years later i should no more feel a thing, just a funny ancdote to share with friends on occasion. But seems some imprintings run deep.
There was – is? – something unconditional inside saying like, the world where sudden hopeless desperation exists can not be, should not be. It is a crime – everyone’s with no exception – if it does.
This stupid voice is of no use, practically. And it is more impulse than longeivity. And turning away from it is not that hard, actually even required to go on with your life. But once in a while there come’s something. Like that girl, like Gorlovka’s Madonna, or Odessa Massacre. And this voice just comes back and you have pathetic nothing to answer it.
I believe if in 2014 spring a nuclear WW3 would be kickstarted large part of Russian population would not give a flying f.
Hello Arioch,
Thank you for sharing these stories. That poor Serbian girl. I have heard of Glorovka’s Madonna and the Odessa Massacre… unfortunately, the vast majority of people in the USA have not heard of them. It’s just something our media is not interested in discussing.
I’ve heard about Gorlovka’s Madonna, but only after the fact. The Odessa Massacre is something I was developing at the time. Can’t forget that one, not sure that those who could, should forgive. Many joined the breakaway republics, so probably not going to happen.
Very touching story about that girl.
I was developing at the time (sic)
I saw developing at the time
Please stop putting your self down ie “ my silly blog etc.”
You are a very talented writer. Factual and to the point, simply telling the truth.
Ukraine Nazi’s stab POW in the eye another with legs cut off, more with throats slit while their hands are tide behind their backs. Shoot POWs in the knee caps. Then there is the question of civilians murdered after Russian troops vacate town.
What’s not to be shocked and disgusted by it all.
Canada needs to be ashamed. Add Australia sending weapons etc…and the EU forever shamed.
My respect for Canada only remains for the Truckies and their families , EU nil. Germany and France forget it, their histories of conquest and murder has returned to consume them.
Don’t put yourself down, we live in a world full of people prepared to do it for free, jealousy, hate and then there’s also the Americans…… hate with rage.
A close observation of everything that is going wrong for the US/EU at every conceivable level is reminiscent of the End Times prediction.
A world that has elected so many incompetent foolish leaders all at once concentrated in the West against a quiet and methodical East, is truly an out standing coincidence.
Who has the power to organise such a trillion too one “Game Set and Match?”
I found this site when discussing with a friend the Ryanair ‘plane that received a bomb warning and landed in Belarus.
https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/recently-detained-belarussian-neo-nazi-journalist-pratasevich-served-in-canadian-backed-neo-nazi-azov-battalion
I was quite surprised to find that Canada had a group supporting the Nazi’s, although I recently read that a lot went there after WW2..
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/na0623-nazis
Your email address just popped up on my iPad? Does this mean everyone is exposed on this ste?