: Trump's conversation with Putin and the Russian's "psychological attack"

On the morning of November 11, 2024, Russia took off with its strategic bombers and several MiG-31 Kh-47M2 "Kinzhal" missile carriers. Given that Russia is using old Soviet bombers, some of which were disabled by accurate strikes by Ukrainian drones, almost all the "Bears" and "Backfires" that Russia is capable of launching in principle were smoking old Soviet engines. Ukrainians know what such attacks mean. It means launching missiles at Ukrainian cities. The Russians often lose some of these missiles on their own territory. More precisely, in the waters of the Azov Sea, where Russian cruise missiles of various types marked "Kh" fall uncontrollably after being dropped from launch platforms due to engine failure. But a significant number of these missiles reach Ukraine. And it's good if, having lost control, they fall somewhere in the field. But many "Kh" ("Х") hit buildings. In July of this year, for example, the Russians hit the oncology building of the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv with an Kh-101 missile.

Photo by Bohdan Kutepov

This time, Russia conducted a "simulated" attack. This is how the armies of the 18th century used to launch "psychic" attacks – to the beat of drums. Instead, sirens were blaring throughout Ukraine. I wonder why the Russians didn't fire missiles? After all, the day before, the winner of the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump, had a conversation with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. And the actions of the Russians after this conversation can be interpreted as a kind of response to America. Wasn't this "psychological attack", which Ukrainian warning forces qualified as perhaps the largest attack in recent times, a demonstration that, look, we could have struck, but we didn't? A kind of signal to Washington that we are ready for a dialog with the Americans. More precisely, with Donald Trump. The Russians, I must say, have been sending signals to Washington for some time now. Recently, in a speech in Valdai, Russian dictator Putin once again outlined his conditions for ending the war. These conditions are nothing new. Putin continues to insist on the actual surrender of Ukraine and the dismantling of Ukrainian statehood. He insists on turning Ukraine into a territory that is virtually devoid of defense and open to Russian capture at any time that the Russian leader sees fit.

In other words, Putin is drawing conclusions after the failure of his own blitzkrieg in 2022 and wants the United States to support these conditions of "peace". When they say that we don't know what Putin will do, that he is all mysterious and unpredictable, this is also part of the myth created by FSS technologists. Putin is systematic. He is too systematic and disciplined in his belief system. Because he is a product of the Soviet KGB system. Putin thinks in terms of clichés and schemes of past wars and past victories, imposing them as a copy on his own action plan – from the Gleiwitz provocation, which the Nazis organized as an information support for the outbreak of World War II, to Moscow's war in Afghanistan, when Soviet special services (primarily the KGB) implemented a blitzkrieg with the seizure of the presidential palace and the assassination of Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin. The plan for Ukraine was not much different from the previous offensives – Russia planned to tie up and cut off combat-capable Ukrainian units in eastern Ukraine and, with strikes toward Kyiv from the north and south, seize the current government, destroy it, and proclaim its proteges as the leaders of Ukraine. But Putin's plan immediately went awry. Because Ukraine is not Afghanistan.

Putin's blitzkrieg as a matrix of his thinking

Putin's plan to capture Ukraine and its capital in 3 days and bring to power pro-Russian forces like Yanukovych-Medvedchuk, who were supposed to "lead" a puppet government, although Russian structures would have controlled the occupied Ukraine, failed in the spring of 2022. It was then that Putin made an unpleasant discovery: a significant majority of Ukrainians do not want to become Russians and live in Russia, and are ready to put up fierce resistance to the aggressor. But now, at the end of the almost three-year cycle of the so-called "great war" that Russia started in 2014, Putin is behaving like a classic murderer who has committed a crime whose consequences are visible to the whole world, but now he has no choice but to continue to explain to his own citizens and to Russia's supporters abroad that both Putin and Russia are doing the right thing. That the killing and maiming of people in Ukraine, including pregnant women and children, by the Russian army and Russian missile and drone strikes is the right policy to contain the United States in the region. And while it is not difficult to convince ordinary Russians that large-scale violence and war crimes are legitimate Russian policy and that by destroying Ukraine they are only protecting their interests, Putin's main focus in this rhetoric is on people outside of Russia. Including serious crimes such as murder, violence, and rape. Thus, even before the trial, each "serial" killer has his own legend – why his crime is not a crime, and why he is "saving" humanity with his actions. And in this, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is somewhat similar to the hero of the novel by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, the murderer Rodion Raskolnikov, who killed an elderly woman with an axe to rob her. And at the same time, he explained to himself the logic of this murder: the old lady was old anyway, so she didn't need the money anymore. And he is a man in his prime, promising and capable of "improving" humanity and civilization with this money. Isn't this a system of beliefs that, according to its author, fully justifies his actions? This allows Putin, in his own mind, to take on the functions of God and decide at his own discretion which nations have the right to exist and which do not. After all, it is Putin who denies the existence of Ukrainians as a nation, categorically explaining to Russians their right to kill and destroy: in Putin's philosophy, Ukrainians simply do not exist. There is "only one nation, the Russians." And behind this formula is Putin-Raskolnikov's desire to appropriate Ukrainian assets: natural resources, Ukraine's geopolitical location, incredible agricultural sector (which is a sensitive factor for friends in the global South who need food), the location of seaports on the route from the "Barbarians to the Greeks," nuclear energy, reserves of lithium, titanium, uranium, and rare earth metals – all of which Putin obviously planned to interest his Chinese comrades.

But let's get back to how the Russian dictator justifies the legitimacy of the war against Ukraine. One of the most important theses that should impress the anti-American part of humanity is Ukraine's desire to join NATO. This thesis is accepted in China and Latin America, where there is still a powerful cult of the Marxist leader Che Guevara. And it works. At the same time, Putin lets go of such a "trifle" as the fact that Russia attacked a non-aligned, previously disarmed Ukraine, which, in fact, in exchange for the leading powers of the world recognizing its independence, gave Russia the 3rd largest nuclear potential, and with it non-nuclear munitions that could be a deterrent against a potential aggressor. Such as 575 cruise missiles, and the best, most advanced bombers at the time.

People in distant Brazil or India usually do not detail the situation and often do not know that Ukraine's legally enshrined aspiration to join NATO was formalized by the introduction of this provision in the country's Constitution only on February 7, 2019. At that time, Russia had already been waging a war against Ukraine for 5 years using its own armed forces and occupied part of Ukrainian territory – Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Moreover: Russia started the war not only against a formally neutral state. Russia started a war against the country that hosted the largest Russian military base in the region. The Russian Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea, which became the basis for the invasion and occupation of the peninsula. In other words, Russia attacked, in fact, an "allied" state that kept a Russian military contingent on its territory, which influenced the balance of power in the Black Sea region and which Russia used to implement its aggressive policy in its military operations against Georgia and Syria. At that time, Ukraine's accession was not considered at the legislative level, and the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit actually rejected this idea for the foreseeable future. It is interesting that in the same year Russia attacked Georgia... Should Ukraine have been even more active in not joining NATO and deploying even more Russian military bases on its territory to prevent Russia from attacking?

Putin's demands are voiced primarily to Trump

Putin's other plans for the "demilitarization" and "denationalization" of Ukraine, once again announced at Valdai, are not subject to any criticism. The Russian dictator is raising the bar on his demands as much as possible in anticipation of possible negotiations. He also needs these negotiations like oxygen. No matter how much Putin puffs up his cheeks, Russia is also collapsing. Just look at the discount rate of the Russian banking system. But with his maximalism, Putin is trying to signal to Trump that he is ready to help him fulfill his election promise to stop the war. Of course, on his own terms. To translate from Putin's language: give us Ukraine and then peace and "just bussines" will reign in the world. The implementation of such a plan would mean a catastrophe for the West itself in some time. But this is another story. One that Washington doesn't really believe in yet.