I don’t glorify those, like Navalny, who legitimise state-sponsored terrorism, and who fail to denounce their government’s war crimes.
I’m writing you from Kharkiv, Ukraine, where Olga Putyatina, a
prosecutor of the Chuhuiv district, her husband and three sons were
burned alive in one of Moscow’s terrorist attacks.
The eldest child, Oleksiy, was 7 years old, the middle son, Mykhaylo, was almost 4. The youngest, Pavlo, was only 10 months old. Here is the AP footage from the funeral.
The featured image shows the relative social media attention to this latest russian atrocity, and to Navalny.
Everywhere I turn, I see posts about Navalny like he’s some martyred Martin Luther King Jr. I’ve no time for speculation, only for facts.
So let’s do the facts. The regime that today calls itself “Russia”, is barely older than the US. Before that, it was called Muscovy, a principality ruled by the descendents of tax collectors who made themselves indispensible to the Mongolian Khanate, and took advantage of a power vacuum as the Khanate collapsed, to become the local bosses. At no time was there an opposition of any kind: the Enlightenment that eventually brought us democracy, kindness, art, science, high culture, bypassed Muscovia. Anyone who became powerful enough to challenge the bosses, were disposed of. Sometimes someone like Bakunin managed to live abroad; and even then, they weren’t safe.
“Russia” on historical maps, pertains to the area of eastern Europe and the linguistic and cultural nation known as Ukraine. Muscovy was rebranded in 1721 as “Russia”, a colossal theft that keeps on stealing. Ukrainian history, including that of Kyivska Rus back into the first millenium AD, was appropriated by upstart Muscovy, as “Russian” history. The language, not worth studying, uses a dumbed-down version of Ukrainian grammer, with mostly foreign loanwords for any modern concept. Don’t take my word for it: a map project has compiled the evidence.
After the 18th Century rebranding, Moscow pretended that the Ukrainians and other slavic nationalities were “Little Russians (Malorosy)”. To this day, a sense of inferiority in Eastern Europe, and Russian-as-normative spreads through a well-funded propaganda machine which, since the 1920’s, has been organised as a continuing operation called “Active Measures (Aktivnye Meropriyatiya)”. Those are the facts to google. When you see a politican who’s behaving oddly, follow the money.
To think of the Moscow regime in terms of European values, capability of reform, becoming more “western” is to miss the point. Moscow sees this in us, as a weakness to exploit. There has never been, and never will be an opposition, so long as an entity that calls itself the “russian federation” exists. The closest Moscow had to democracy was the blink of an eye in the 1990’s, after which Yeltsin & his army shelled and then stormed Parliament. Can you imagine such a coup happening at; say, The Hague, Paris, London today?
In Moscow there has never been and will never be a Starmer, an Oppositionsführer Merz, a LePen, a Wilders, a Sophie in ‘t Veld, Olga Rudenko, Tiemo Wölken, nor an EU Parliament working to safeguard the voices of people who, whether you like them or not, put themselves (and their families) daily into highly vulnerable positions.
“Russia” is unfixable.
You say there’s opposition in “russia”? Fine, bring me facts.
Today, the only viable opposition to the Moscow imperialist regime is the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the European will to support these European defenders. Financially, matèriel, and volunteerism: I work on all 3 fronts. I say goodbye to dear friends, for Moscow takes the best of us.
We don’t need kind words, nor social media discussion, nor “as long as it takes”. We do need your full support. Want to help? Contact me using the button to your right! Or help out a reputable charity such as United24 or Dzyga’s Paw. And you are welcome to show up in person: Kyiv is even more beautiful in Spring!
What we do today, is what we answer to our grandchildren when they ask, “what did you do during the war?”. What we do today is history’s acid test, on which Europe and European values succeed or compromise.
I share with you now, the Netherlands Minister of Defence on F-16, drone coalitions and more, with the Kyiv Independent, the best comprehensive English-language source. The interview is about russia’s threat to Europe, on helping Ukraine establish air dominance: “We are all taking the security threat seriously.”
Slava Ukraini.