Russian officials have stopped being ashamed. Just a few weeks ago, we could still hear the familiar rhetoric about liberating Ukrainians from Nazis, about the dominance of the West supposedly waging war against Russia, and about “one people” forcibly separated by those damned “nationalists.”
But now Pyotr Tolstoy, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma from Putin’s United Russia party, is calling for the destruction of Ukrainian cities and insisting that there are no innocent people in Ukraine. Meanwhile, State Duma deputy Aleksey Zhuravlyov, from another pro-Putin party, A Just Russia, calls the possible use of nuclear weapons a duty of the Russian Federation and compares Ukrainians to… the Japanese, who became allies of the United States after the atomic bombings. Although one might ask: what do Americans and Japanese have to do with Ukrainians and Russians? After all, no one ever called Americans and Japanese one people, did they?
Putin’s servants understand that the war is unfolding very differently from what the Kremlin planned. They understand that the army is not advancing at the pace Putin’s generals promised him. That Europeans continue to support Ukraine even after assistance from the United States was reduced. That strikes against the Russian economy are creating serious problems for the future functioning of the security-service regime. And they are ready to take out their anger on women and children — literally. The assault on Kyiv and the Kyiv region is, quite literally, compensation for their inability to force Ukraine into capitulation.
I will not say that this is hysteria in the throes of agony. The Putin regime is still very, very far from its death throes, and I do not rule out the possibility that on the road to collapse, the Russian president may launch several more wars of aggression. But this is a genuine confession for a war crimes tribunal, a direct revelation of Russian intentions. What Tolstoy, Zhuravlyov, and other Russian propagandists and officials are saying now finally destroys the legend of “brotherhood” and liberation. Russian chauvinists never truly thought otherwise. They always regarded Ukrainians as outsiders and always viewed the seizure of Ukrainian lands precisely as occupation — it is enough to read documents from the time of the Pereiaslav Council and the Bolshevik assault on Ukraine to see this. But they always lied enthusiastically in order to justify seizing someone else’s land, to explain why they were killing, looting, and burning.
Now they have stopped lying. And they have demonstrated that what we are dealing with is the banality of pure evil, which no longer even tries to disguise itself as good. And really — why should the devil hide his tail when everyone can already see it? Tolstoy no longer bothers to hide his.
Incidentally, speaking of Tolstoy — this cannibal and scoundrel who is a direct descendant of the famous Russian writer. Exactly 117 years ago, Leo Tolstoy wrote in a letter to a high-ranking Russian official that was never sent: “I am writing about a very pitiful man, the most pitiful of all those I now know in Russia. You know this man and, strangely enough, you love him, but you do not understand the full extent of his misery and do not pity him as his condition deserves. That man is you yourself… I cannot understand the blindness that allows you to continue your terrible activity, because by what you are doing now, you have already earned that dreadful reputation by which you will always be regarded as a model of brutality, cruelty, and lies.”
Today, these words of the Russian classic could be addressed both to his deceitful great-grandson and to those he serves — Putin, the security-service and military generals, and all those complicit in the openly declared killing of peaceful Ukrainians. No one could put it better than Tolstoy himself — the real Tolstoy, not the worthless man hiding behind a famous surname. All these people are models of brutality, cruelty, and lies.
A model of cannibalism.
Author: Vitaly Portnikov
