Nikolai Karpitsky. Life Under Shelling. Donbas 2014–2025. An Eyewitness’s Notes

Source: PostPravda.info 20.10.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/life-under-shelling-donbas/

Life under shelling. Opytnе 2015. Scene of a woman's death in her own apartment. Photo: author's archive

War constantly changes its nature, and so does the life of people living under shelling. Only one thing remains unchanged – the constant threat of losing one’s home, being maimed, or killed. As an eyewitness, Nikolai Karpitsky gives an account of life in the Donbas frontline zone over the course of ten years.

The War in Donbas: Avdiivka, Opytne, and Maryinka Under Fire

How do people survive under shelling? – I tried to imagine that thirty years ago, when I joined protests against the war in Chechnya. Ten years ago, I saw it with my own eyes in frontline Avdiivka.

April 2015, Avdiivka. A relative lull compared to the shelling during the battles for Donetsk Airport. The first shelling began in July 2014 and reached its greatest intensity at the end of January to mid-February 2015. There was no electricity, no water. Now the fighting is mainly taking place in the industrial zone, yet artillery shells and Grad rockets still sporadically hit the city.

The Baptist church, where I stayed, is located on the very edge of the city – beyond it lie fields, Donetsk Airport, and the positions of the pro-Russian militants. The church porch is pockmarked with tiny shrapnel holes. I had to sleep to the sound of artillery cannonade. The first night, my imagination painted scenes of a shell flying into my room, but soon I, like all Avdiivka residents, stopped paying attention to the roar of artillery.

There are many young people in the church. One of them was injured by shrapnel.

“Because he crouched instead of lying down,” – explained an older man. – “Mud, puddle – it doesn’t matter, you must drop to the ground right away. A shell exploded very close to me too, but I managed to lie down, and all the fragments flew over me. If I had crouched – the blast wave would’ve torn my head off. …It’s good they don’t use aircraft,” – he continued, – “we’re still lucky. Airstrikes are real horror – you can’t hide from aerial bombs.”

A few years later, in 2023, Russian aviation destroyed Avdiivka with guided aerial bombs (GBUs).

Wieś Opytnе (między Awdijiwką a lotniskiem w Doniecku), styczeń 2016.

January 2016, the village of Opytne, near Donetsk Airport. Seventy people remain in the village. Not a single undamaged building. It seems the “hot phase” of the war ended long ago, yet the village is shelled constantly – artillery, mortars, tanks, and even reconnaissance and sabotage groups sneak in…

“And Grads?” – I ask.

“Haven’t seen Grads since autumn,” – says a local.

People live in the basement of an apartment building – civilians and soldiers together, like in a communal dormitory. A pipe sticks out from the basement: the residents have made an improvised stove there. Near the entrance, there’s a log used for chopping firewood. On the side of the building, a huge hole gapes in the wall from a direct shell hit – the place where a woman was killed in her apartment.

June 2017, Maryinka. A clean, beautiful town. It is constantly under shelling, yet the debris is immediately cleared away. What stands out are the well-kept lawns with flowers. Half-ruined houses; a few hundred meters away – the occupiers’ positions. The street is within range not only of artillery but even small arms fire – and yet people still take care of the flowers. I turned onto a parallel street where no one lives – ripe apricots hung from the trees. The locals said that while I was eating apricots, the militants could probably see the color of my eyes through their scopes.

Now this town no longer exists – the Russians have destroyed it completely.

Life Under Shelling. Marjinka 2017. A destroyed building next to well-kept lawns with flowers. Photo: author’s archive.

The First Months of the Full-Scale Invasion

February 24, 2022, Kyiv. Sirens wail. People don’t know how to react or what awaits them. Many try to settle in the metro, as if one could wait out the war there. A colleague wanted to go with her friends to Bucha – she thought they could take shelter there while the fighting raged in Kyiv. Fortunately, she didn’t make it – the road had already been closed.

February 25, 2022, Sloviansk. The city is living an ordinary life – the war hasn’t reached it yet. But people who have already experienced occupation know what it means, and calmly prepare for the trials ahead.

March 2022, Sloviansk. The city has found itself in the very eye of the hurricane – a deceptive calm inside the storm of war. Fierce battles rage in the Kyiv region (we have yet to learn about the occupiers’ atrocities there), and terrifying news comes from Mariupol. A powerful explosion nearby – right as I was about to start a class with students – turned out to be the first echo of the war in Sloviansk. The news later reported that a cruise missile had been shot down above us.

It was already dark when I first heard the rising whistle of a ballistic missile – one that is almost impossible to intercept. I braced for the impact, knowing there was no shelter from it. A massive explosion followed, but the windows held. I went outside to look – a field was burning in the distance. For now, such attacks on our city were only occasional. I thought of Mariupol, where people were enduring horrors beyond imagination.

Many have equipped basements where they can take shelter during shelling, but not everyone does. My “basement” is a large pit inside a flimsy shed – if it collapses, it would bury anyone inside. So, it’s more dangerous to hide there than to stay indoors. Besides, a missile strike always comes without warning.

April – May 2022, Sloviansk. The cannonade becomes constant and gradually moves closer to the city. Izyum has fallen, then Lyman. From time to time, missile strikes hit Sloviansk, and damage in the city becomes visible. More frightening than the rockets is the fiery wall of artillery that annihilates everything in its path – but even worse are the Russian soldiers who come to rape, torture, and kill. No one knows where, or if, they will be stopped.

Summer 2022, Sloviansk. The city came under regular shelling from multiple rocket launchers and became almost completely deserted. The enemy was already ten kilometers away but couldn’t cross the Siverskyi Donets River. If they managed to deploy tube artillery against Sloviansk, the city would be entirely destroyed – but Ukrainian forces prevented that from happening. There was no gas, no water, and electricity often went out for long stretches.

Another night of shelling – I’ve lost count of how many in a row. Explosions, sometimes closer, sometimes farther from my house – I keep guessing whether this time they’ll hit me or not. It can go on for over an hour.

July 3, 2022, Sloviansk. There was no electricity at home, so I was working online in the Pentecostal Good News Church. Suddenly, a series of loud explosions – probably around ten – rang out. People in the lobby moved away from the window; some ran to the basement, others into the yard to see where it had hit. I went out too. Nearby, plumes of smoke were rising from residential buildings – to the right, to the left, and straight ahead. A second series of explosions followed, even closer.

“Everyone to the basement!” – shouted the church attendant, waving his hands.

I went back to the table, packed up my laptop, and went down as well. The intense bombing stopped, followed by three more single explosions – no one paid attention to those anymore. Oleksandr Reshetnyk came over. Someone had already sent him a video showing a panoramic view of the shelling of Sloviansk: columns of smoke rising all along the length of the city. We counted a couple of dozen, though there may have been more. Oleksandr said the attack had been carried out either by a Uragan or a Smerch system. Later, I read in the news that six people had died and fifteen had been injured.

Shelling of Slavyansk on July 3, 2022.

Autumn 2022, Sloviansk. A successful counteroffensive pushed the enemy away from the city, marking the start of a long period of relative calm. Once or twice a week, a missile strike could still be heard in Sloviansk, and sometimes people were killed – but compared to the summer of 2022, it felt like a lull, and residents began returning. Now, about half of the prewar population lives in Sloviansk again. Still, when I speak of calm, I’m not objective – I live alone. It’s hard to tell a mother that attacks are “not that frequent” when at any moment a Russian missile could kill or maim her child.

2025 – The War Has Changed Its Nature

Summer 2025, Sloviansk. Guided aerial bombs (GBUs) have started hitting the city – rarely, but their impact is catastrophic. An artillery shell can destroy a room; a missile, an entire building entrance; but a GBU obliterates the whole structure. Enemy drones have gradually become part of everyday life. At first, they came singly and infrequently; later – in entire swarms. Aerial battles with drones are especially visible on clear nights, when the sky is full of stars and the Milky Way is shining. The sky is sliced by the tracer lines of anti-aircraft fire, flashes flicker overhead. The thought that a drone might fall straight onto your house is deeply unsettling.

Sometimes the buzzing of drones is long and monotonous – like mosquitoes circling endlessly above you. It can go on for more than an hour. Sometimes the buzzing suddenly intensifies and ends with an explosion – that’s when the drones dive from high altitude, giving anti-aircraft guns no time to react.

July 13, 2025, Sloviansk. A quiet morning. Nothing suggests danger. Suddenly – the rapid, rising sound of air being torn apart. A second later – a powerful explosion nearby. A guided bomb (GBU). I don’t yet know the consequences of the strike – perhaps someone’s life has already been cut short.

August 2, 2025, Sloviansk. At the train station market – a loud blast somewhere very close. A Lancet strike. A single hit – no air raid siren was sounded. People calmly went on with their business. A shopkeeper stepped out of her kiosk and asked matter-of-factly:

“From which direction did it hit?”

I waved my hand:

“From that side. The echo came from here.”

While I was biking home, there was another blast. Everyday life.

Now Kyiv is being bombed just as much, but there’s a difference in how residents of Kyiv and those of Donbas experience air raids. The flight time of missiles to Kyiv allows people to track Russian attacks through social media and decide whether to go down to a shelter, hide in a bathroom, or ignore the alert. In Donbas, the flight time is so short that people don’t even try to track or hide – they accept what happens as it is and continue with their daily routines.

August 15, 2025, Sloviansk. The night before, there was heavy shelling – one strike landed very close, making the windows rattle. Luckily, I managed to cook dinner before the power went out. In the morning, I checked the news – a private house had been hit, just a few hundred meters from me. I went to look – fire trucks were there, and the air smelled of burning. The house was destroyed down to the foundation; trees were felled, and all nearby buildings were damaged.

There’s a huge difference between sporadic shelling, like we have here, and systematic bombardment. Here, firefighters and repair crews keep working – by morning, the electricity was already restored. These isolated terrorist attacks have no real impact on the city’s life. The market was crowded with people; life goes on as usual. It would be a different story if the shelling became systematic – turning the city into ruins.

September 2025, Sloviansk. The shelling has intensified. It’s easier for me – I have a calm job: writing, teaching online. But what about repair workers who have to work in any weather, under shelling… or surgeons performing operations instead of hiding in bomb shelters? And they do keep working – they don’t try to leave the frontline city, even though they know the shelling will only grow worse, and hospitals are in the highest-risk zone.

I talked with people in the surgical ward. Explosions go off one after another – very close by. Many patients have just had surgery and can’t walk, yet they calmly discuss the attack. Moving an entire surgical department to a bomb shelter each time is absolutely impossible, so everyone stays where they are. That’s the kind of “Russian roulette” people live with here. They know they could die at any moment. And not necessarily in Sloviansk: recently there was news about a young family who had moved from Sloviansk to Kyiv – and were all killed there in a missile strike.

September 2025, Kramatorsk. I observe how ordinary residents talk with one another – everyday conversations about household matters now naturally include the topic of shelling. Many have relatives in different cities of Donbas, so everyone is concerned about where the bombs fell yesterday and who was killed. I met a witness to the horrific strike on the village of Yarova, not far from here. On the morning of September 9, 2025, the Russians dropped an aerial bomb on a group of pensioners standing in line to receive their pensions. Twenty-five people aged between 53 and 87 were killed, and nineteen more were wounded. A woman told me that at the epicenter of the explosion, body parts – arms, legs – were mixed with soil, while those on the periphery were simply blown apart. She said that people hadn’t received their pensions for two months and had finally come to collect them. Naturally, she also blamed the local authorities for failing to ensure safety.

The Kramatorsk City Hospital is a place where you can meet people from across Donbas. An elderly man had just been discharged; his daughter had come to take him by car to Druzhkivka, a nearby town. They were sitting and waiting – it wasn’t safe to leave yet, as drones were circling above the hospital.

“Reconnaissance drones?” – asked a man in the next bed.

“No, combat ones,” – the daughter replied. The sound of anti-aircraft guns rattled outside.

“My relative was also driving from Druzhkivka,” – said the man in the next bed, – “and a drone started following him after the checkpoint.”

I imagined what it must feel like – driving while knowing that at any moment the drone hovering above could strike your car. The man himself was also staying with relatives in Druzhkivka – his own home was in Kostiantynivka, which Russian forces are systematically destroying.

Druzhkivka lies between Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk and is shelled very often, though repair crews quickly fix the damage after each attack. In Kostiantynivka, however, nothing works anymore – there is no electricity, no water, and only about six thousand residents remain. Before taking a city, the Russians first destroy it completely – they know no other tactic.

Life Under Shelling. Kramatorsk 2025. People are treated here. Photo: author’s archive.

I also spoke with a retired officer who said that even in Chasiv Yar, of which almost nothing is left, there are still people living – maybe three or so. Even in conditions of mortal danger, elderly people are extremely reluctant to leave their homes. Ukrainian soldiers once tried to evacuate an old woman from Chasiv Yar, but she managed to reach their command and complain, and the soldiers were reprimanded for “rough treatment” of the local population.

The difference in how Ukrainian and Russian soldiers treat local residents is reflected in his remark:

“Toretsk and Horlivka are twin cities, like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The Russians are grinding Toretsk into rubble, while in Horlivka there’s still electricity and water – Russian soldiers can rest comfortably there before battle. I understand that striking residential areas is forbidden, but at least we could target the power supply system. This is a war for survival, yet our forces are prohibited from hitting critical infrastructure. I don’t understand it.”

October 2025, Ukraine. What we are experiencing in Donbas is only the beginning of a great drone war. Soon there will be no rear and no front – only a war of drones that can no longer be contained within the borders of Russia and Ukraine.

Nikolai Karpitsky. What do the residents of the Donetsk region think about Russia?

Source: Postimees.ee 06.10.2025

URL: https://news.postimees.ee/8337562/nikolai-karpitsky-what-do-the-residents-of-the-donetsk-region-think-about-russia

There is a widespread political myth, as if the residents of Donbas long for Russia. This is a dangerous myth: for the Kremlin it is a justification for invasion, for Western countries it is a reason to talk about «territorial exchange». But does this myth have a basis, Sloviansk resident Nikolai Karpitsky asks.

The residents of the Donetsk region are primarily characterized by a local, that is, regional identity, but a common Ukrainian identity is also emerging increasingly quickly. There is no Russian identity there: no one longs for Russia simply because they consider themselves Russian. There have indeed been pro-Russian moods and partly they persist, but these can be explained by other reasons.

«This is my land, regardless of who holds power here»

The formation of national identity is always a long process. Before the war, local identity was dominant in eastern Ukraine. A friend from Avdiivka told me after their town was shelled in 2015: «This is my land, regardless of who holds power here, Ukrainian or Russian.» Many considered it most important to be part of their town or district. Ukraine remained abstract to them: they traveled little within the country and watched almost no Ukrainian TV channels. What mattered to them was the «open space» of the former USSR, where their relatives and friends lived. It was precisely this local identity that Russian propaganda presented as Russian identity and used in 2014 to justify its incursion into eastern Ukraine.

According to one myth, the residents of eastern Ukraine were harassed because they wanted to speak Russian. In reality, language was not a fundamental issue before the war: people communicated in the mixed Russian-Ukrainian language, surzhyk. Everyone understood Ukrainian, and difficulties with the literary norm were rather a consequence of educational problems, which are now being successfully resolved. Today the younger generation in Donbas knows Ukrainian much better than the older generation did.

Soviet nostalgia and Russia's influence

Local political forces exploited the nostalgia for the «open space» and relied on regional identity. It is telling that Viktor Yanukovych's party bore the name Party of Regions. In confrontation with Kyiv they shaped a discourse that outwardly resembled a pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian attitude. Yet this did not mean that the residents were striving toward Russia by supporting such politicians. They were simply looking for a force that was closest to their local identity. People tacitly adopted the local political discourse, but not the political ideas of the pro-Russian parties.

Ordinary elderly residents of Donbas, who grew up in the Soviet Union, find it difficult to accept borders. Out of habit, they do not watch Ukrainian but Russian TV channels. Even so, a Russian identity does not form in them. Above all, they feel like locals and evaluate what Ukraine and Russia can offer them from that point of view. The effectiveness of propaganda plays a big role. Ukrainian propaganda is chaotic, it lacks a unified center and monopoly, and in most cases it does not reach such a Donbas resident, who becomes an easy prey for centralized and systematic Russian propaganda.

That is why the most absurd myths spread among people with little education. Some are convinced that it is not the Russian but the Ukrainian army that is shelling their towns. Others, who have lost their homes, dream that when Russia comes they will get a job and a new apartment in Donetsk. Yet these people do not form a separate social group. The majority of Donbas residents did not support the so-called pro-Russian parties out of longing for Russia, but in the hope of their ability to «reach an agreement» with both Kyiv and Moscow. People just wanted to make their lives easier, for example, to visit relatives on both sides of the front line, but most of those who voted in the last elections for the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life by no means want to go to Russia and categorically reject the idea of «giving up land in return for peace.»

The so-called referendums organized by pro-Russian forces in 2014 in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be considered an expression of the people's will not only because they were legally void, but also because they took place without any public debate. The high turnout is explained by something else: people could not yet imagine the scale of the future war and repressions, but they felt afraid of what the future might bring. Participation in such a simulation of a referendum created the illusion of influencing the situation and became a psychological defense against helplessness. Many convinced themselves that they were not voting for secession from Ukraine, but only for the financial independence of the region, so as not to give everything away to Kyiv. At least this is how some residents explained their participation in the referendum to me.

The formation of Ukrainian identity in conditions of war

Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine accelerated the formation of a Ukrainian identity among the residents of Donbas largely thanks to their interaction with volunteers from all over the country. In 2016 I lived in a Baptist church on the outskirts of Avdiivka near the abandoned Donetsk airport for a month. Volunteers from Volyn, Christians, who delivered food to frontline villages, came to us. One of them asked me about the local youth: «How do we help them? They only hear pro-Russian propaganda and do not know how Ukraine lives.» I answered: «Do not try to persuade them, just invite them to Lutsk.» In this way the young people of Avdiivka could see with their own eyes that Ukraine is a normal European country. Over ten years, the views of many Donbas residents have changed significantly under the influence of such interaction. Whereas earlier many were critical of Ukraine, now they remain critical of the authorities but not of Ukraine, because they consider themselves part of Ukraine as well. Their attitude toward Russia has also changed.

The experience of shelling is fundamentally different in Kyiv and in Donbas. In the capital city, after seeing a warning on social media, people have a few minutes to decide whether to hide in the bathroom, go down to a shelter, or ignore the signal. In Donbas there is no time to react. Here a person gets used to living in constant danger. During shooting many continue their activities or observe what is happening with surprising calm. Gradually, the realization comes: an entire state is working to kill you, and you can only hope that the next strike will not hit you. Some cannot accept this realization and still believe that it is their own who are shooting, but most understand: it is Russia that brings death.

The fundamental contradiction of the aggressor's policy and its inability to understand Ukraine

In eastern Ukraine the situation is fundamentally different from the Baltic states, where Russian communities live separately and clash with the language barrier and foreign cultural stereotypes. In Ukraine there is no ethnic problem: society is not ethnically divided, and in the ten years I have lived here, no one has ever asked me about my nationality. Despite Russian propaganda, the Russian-speaking residents of Donbas do not consider language a problem: everyone understands Ukrainian and communicates calmly in surzhyk, and most are completely fine with that.

Putin can indeed speculate about linguistic and ethnic contradictions in the Baltic states. In the case of Ukraine he unfortunately had to invent a myth, as if the rights of Russian-speakers were being restricted there. And he did find support, though minimal. Yet the reasons do not lie in language or ethnicity, but in ideology: part of the residents, the so-called vatniks, perceive the «Russian world» as a substitute for the Soviet communist system.

The main contradiction is that Soviet ideology was internationalist, but the current Russian power uses its tools to carry out an overtly chauvinistic, essentially Nazi policy. This fundamental contradiction of Russian policy determines its future defeat, despite the fact that at present it is better mobilized for waging a war of attrition than Ukraine and other European countries.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Stockholm Syndrome and the Identity Crisis of Russian Krishnaites

Source: PostPravda.info 08.09.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/stockholm-syndrome-of-russian-krishnaites/

Do the most oppressed communities really constitute an opposition to dictatorship? The Russian authorities use the concept of “traditional religions of Russia” as the basis for persecuting all religions they deem non-traditional – in particular, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. In 2011, intervention from India saved the movement from a complete ban in Russia. However, today many Krishnaites trust anti-Ukrainian Kremlin propaganda more than their own fellow believers in Ukraine. Perhaps this is how Stockholm syndrome manifests itself, closely tied to the identity crisis of Russian Hare Krishnas.

Repression and Betrayal of Fellow Believers

The repressive apparatus in Russia develops according to the same logic as any bureaucracy in an authoritarian system: in order to justify its growth, it must constantly expand the circle of potential victims. The simplest way is to ban some religious organization from the “non-traditional” list. This opens new opportunities: bonuses, career advancement, expanding staff. For this very purpose, harsh laws restricting missionary activity were adopted in Russia, and in 2017 the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization was banned.

But repression could have started much earlier. Back in 2011, the Tomsk prosecutor’s office tried to declare the sacred book of the Krishnaites – the Bhagavadgita as It Is with commentary by ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada – as extremist by the court. Fortunately, they failed. Otherwise, as early as 2012, mass temple closures and arrests of Krishnaites on charges of extremism would have begun, along with parallel processes against other faiths.

Six months before the trial over the Bhagavadgita, in the village of Kandinka, Tomsk region, local authorities resorted to bureaucratic manipulations to achieve the demolition of Krishnaites houses built on legally acquired land. At that time, representatives of different faiths in Tomsk decided to support the Hare Krishnas and began holding regular meetings. Thus, the Tomsk Interfaith Dialogue was born 

I compare the position of the Interfaith Dialogue participants then and now, 14 years later. Back then, everyone sympathized with the Krishnaites whose houses were demolished. But at least they still had time to leave calmly and take their belongings. Now the Russian army is destroying entire cities in Ukraine, and many people find themselves in a far worse situation – forced to flee, abandoning everything. About half of the Interfaith Dialogue participants either left Russia, as I did, or went into internal emigration. Only those loyal to the regime remained, and the dialogue has turned into its opposite. If I had the chance, I would ask them: “What is the point of staying in a religion if you have abandoned your fellow believers in Ukraine?”

The Trial of the Bhagavadgita

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) had been preparing for the trial of the Bhagavadgita for a long time – at least two years, as far as I know – before handing the case over to the Tomsk prosecutor’s office. But it is unlikely that they themselves would have come up with the idea of targeting this particular book. During the trial, the prosecutor’s representative not only said nothing about the content of the book but could not even pronounce its title correctly. All the ideological framing for the attempt to ban this book was provided by Maxim Stepanenko, head of the missionary department of the Tomsk diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, while his immediate superior – the diocesan bishop – deliberately took a neutral stance.

I do not think the FSB or the prosecutor’s office cared about the doctrine of the Krishnaites; they wanted to ban the book for material and career benefits. For the head of the Orthodox missionary department, however, the fight against the Krishnaites was perceived as a struggle against enemies of the “true faith.” Although he spoke on behalf of Orthodoxy, in practice he embodied the opposite – a quasi-religious ideology of seeking an enemy to fight by all possible means. Today, it is precisely this ideology that the Russian authorities use to justify the necessity of destroying Ukraine. Its essence is the denial of other people’s right to exist. Back then, during the trial of the Bhagavadgita, it was about the Krishna devotees alone; now it is about all Ukrainians. From the standpoint of any religious tradition, such an ideology is considered demonic.

Nikolai Karpitsky at the trial of the Bhagavadgita on August 12, 2011. Photo: author's archive

Only the Selfless Defenders of the Bhagavadgita Now Selflessly Support Ukraine

It is often wrongly assumed that all Orthodox Christians support the authorities and the persecution of other religions, while the representatives of other religions stand for justice. In reality, things are more complex. There were Orthodox Christians who supported the Krishnaites and, during the trial of the Bhagavadgita, openly defended it. And today there are Krishnaites who support the war and refuse to listen to their Ukrainian fellow believers. How many are there? In 2024, Yulia Fil, a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, conducted research, asking Tomsk devotees an indirect question: “Under what conditions would you be ready to resume communication with your Ukrainian fellow believers after the war?”

The results showed:

– 27% are willing to communicate unconditionally and believe that one must ask forgiveness for Russia’s actions;

– 52% are willing to communicate on the condition that political disagreements are not raised – these are the ones who see their Ukrainian fellow believers as some abstraction and do not acknowledge Russia’s crimes against them;

– about 21% regard their Ukrainian fellow believers as enemies and do not wish to resume contact.

The Bhagavadgita was defended not only by Krishnaites but also by scholars and representatives of other faiths, including Orthodox Christianity – and as a rule, these same people still stand with the Ukrainian devotees of Krishna and oppose Russian fascism. However, when it comes to the former defenders of the Bhagavadgita within ISKCON, there is no such clarity. For example, on YouTube one can find a recording of Enver Izmailov, head of the Tomsk ISKCON community and one of the defenders of the Bhagavadgita at the trial. In this video, he engages in an indirect debate with the contemporary ideologue of Russian fascism, Alexander Dugin, adopting his intellectual framework and discussing how exactly one should justify Russia’s “special path.” Ukrainian Krishnaites were shocked by what they saw, but they had no opportunity to engage in dialogue with Enver Izmailov, since, in his opinion, they were “not yet ready for communication.”

This reveals the paradox: people who do not belong to the Hare Krishna movement but who selflessly rose to defend the Bhagavadgita turned out to be closer to the Ukrainian Krishnaites than many ISKCON spiritual leaders. My hypothesis is this: if someone who is not a representative of Hare Krishna takes up the fight for the movement, they expect neither material nor spiritual personal gain. For the same reason, such a person will just as selflessly support Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression. But if an ISKCON representative defends their spiritual tradition for the sake of personal spiritual or material well-being, then they will adapt to the authorities – even if that means supporting something that contradicts their own religion.

The Crisis of Religious Identity

Thus, a striking symptom of a crisis of religious identity: instead of supporting their fellow believers being bombed by Russia, a religious authority reflects on Russia’s special path. Unfortunately, this is not the only symptom.

The charitable vegetarian food distribution project Food for Life was initiated by ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada and became an important means of presenting the Krishnaites to society. However, the Donetsk branch of Food for Life, operating in the occupied territory, nowhere mentions its ties to ISKCON, and vegetarianism – which for any devotee has a religious meaning – is presented merely as healthy eating. At the same time, it publishes on social media expressions of gratitude from the occupation authorities for helping local residents and emphasizes its identification with the “vast Motherland,” i.e., with Russia. One can only wonder whether these authorities even realize that they are dealing with Hare Krishna.

However, religious communities differ from secular ones in that when they lose the ability to carry out their spiritual mission, they lose the very meaning of their existence – even if they continue to perform important social services. Under a dictatorship, many Russian religious organizations are forced to adapt in order to survive, which at times not only prevents them from fulfilling their spiritual mission but leads them to adopt positions that contradict their own religion. In such cases, identification with imperial Russia begins to conflict with, or even suppress, identification with their own religious tradition.

In Captivity of State Ideology

Unlike some other Russian religious organizations, ISKCON Russia did not take part in official events openly supporting the invasion of Ukraine, such as the roundtable “World Religions Against the Ideology of Nazism and Fascism in the 21st Century” on March 29, 2022. The organization granted each of its followers the freedom to determine their own stance on the war. The official position of ISKCON Russia is “law-abidingness,” without any public evaluation of the government’s actions. In practice, however, such “law-abidingness” often turns into demonstrative support.

For example, on October 1, 2022, Alexander Khakimov, a member of ISKCON’s Governing Body Commission from Russia and one of its most influential spiritual teachers, insisted on the necessity of complying with state demands when asked about mobilization:

“As for military action, this also applies to our martial duty, to the laws of the state. It is not simply an unjustly imposed obligation but something destined for me by fate. This is my duty… I submit only to the will of Providence and accept it as the will of Krishna. There is law – I must follow the law.”

Later, on October 17, 2023, he went even further, stating:

“It is duty… He who dies in the performance of duty is elevated, purified of his karma.”

Earlier, on June 5, 2022, addressing his followers, he expressed admiration for Putin, calling him the only ruler in the world among the leaders of secular states who allegedly acknowledges the supreme authority of God. Some less influential representatives of ISKCON Russia voiced even more radical statements, framing Russia’s war against Ukraine not in Vaishnava categories but in a Manichaean spirit – as a battle of absolute good against absolute evil, with modern Western civilization identified with evil.

When religious leaders compromise between their spiritual mission and accommodation to political power, they call into question the very meaning of their tradition’s existence. And when their followers begin to trust state propaganda more than their Ukrainian fellow believers, religion turns into its opposite – a quasi-religious ideology, which inevitably produces a crisis of religious identity.

Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm syndrome is a protective psychological mechanism that arises in situations of fear and helplessness. The victim subconsciously begins to identify with the aggressor, developing trust and even affection toward him. Its emergence is influenced by several factors:

– dependence on the aggressor, which drives the victim to search for signs of humanity in the aggressor's actions;

– learned helplessness, where even the slightest signs of kindness from the aggressor are perceived as something particularly valuable;

– fear, which the person defends against by self-suggestion, convincing himself that they are "on the same side" with the aggressor;

– emotional isolation, which leads to the transfer of positive feelings intended for close loved ones onto the aggressor.

All these signs fully describe the situation with the Krishnaites in Russia. The authorities created a threat for them – attempting to ban the movement, but at the same time, they showed "humanity" by allowing it to exist. However, this decision can be reversed at any moment, which creates a sense of complete dependence. In such a situation, the Krishnaites begin to look for positive aspects in the authorities, for example, in the fact that Putin talks about God and "traditional values"; they lose emotional contact with their co-believers in Ukraine and convince themselves that they, together with Putin, are "on the same side" in opposition to the "immoral West."

Naturally, the Krishnaites identify not only with their tradition but also with their country. This is what drives many Ukrainian devotees to defend their homeland with arms in hand, despite the fact that the core of their doctrine is the principle of ahimsa – nonviolence. However, even in this case, their religious identity dominates over their national one.

Krishnaites honor the memory of their fellow believers who died for Ukraine. Photo: Facebook page “Spiritual Matter”

In Russia, however, the situation is different: the Stockholm syndrome of Russian Krishna devotees pushes religious identity into the background. The problem is not that they identify themselves with Russia, but that their image of Russia is not cultural but imperial in nature. For them, Russia is any territory where Russian power has been established. Accordingly, all peoples who resist Russian expansion are automatically perceived as hostile. This leads to a split in the common space of communication among followers of the Hare Krishna movement and, along with it, to the loss of integrity in religious worldview, which is replaced by an ideological quasi-religion that proclaims Western civilization to be the source of evil.

It should be noted that this process takes place much more rapidly in the occupied territories of Ukraine than in Russia itself. Similar processes can also be observed in other religious communities that the Russian authorities classify as “non-traditional,” for example, in Evangelical churches.

And yet, despite the pressure from the Russian authorities and their own religious environment, many Russian Krishna devotees—as well as representatives of other confessions—have managed to preserve genuine faith, remain morally on the side of Ukraine, and seek ways to ask Ukrainians for forgiveness for the crimes of their country. However, for obvious reasons, I cannot speak openly about them.

"Mordor". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 18.03.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/mordor-symbol-of-russia/

Why do Ukrainians use the images from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – Mordor and the orcs – to describe Russia and Russian soldiers, rather than references from zombie or vampire films and TV series? Is this connected to aesthetic intuition, the existential experience of war, or value orientations? These questions are addressed in another article by Nikolai Karpitsky for the Dictionary of War, which the editorial team of PostPravda.info is compiling.

Mordor

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Mordor is a land in the southeast of Middle-earth ruled by the Dark Lord Sauron. It is a barren, volcanic wasteland covered in ash, unfit for normal life. Yet the orcs who inhabit it feel entirely at home there and strive to turn all lands into the same kind of wasteland. Their purpose in life is to serve Sauron and spread his power, killing and dying for it.

In modern cultural consciousness, Mordor has become a symbol of inhuman dictatorship and slavery. The obsessive idea of domination seems to transform people into orcs incapable of independent thought, driven instead by instincts of servility, aggression, and hatred toward others. Initially, it was Russians themselves who began to call their country Mordor – those who found the strength not to hide behind comforting illusions. However, most Russians fail to perceive the horror of the state’s irrational violence, thanks to psychological defense mechanisms that create illusions. Fear and a sense of helplessness in the face of arbitrary power are displaced by faith in its humanity and the righteousness of its actions. But when the sheer force of horror destroys this illusion, Russia’s dark side is revealed – inhumanity, irrationality, and the unpredictability of evil. That is what people call Mordor.

Mordor Through Ukrainian Eyes

The spread of the image of Mordor as applied to Russia is not connected with propaganda or ideology. No one imposed such an interpretation or offered a theoretical justification for it. Russians themselves first began to perceive their country as Mordor based on their own existential experience. For Ukrainians, however, such an association did not exist until 2014. But after Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2014, they too felt an existential threat from Russia and began calling it Mordor.

Ukrainians perceive their own country as a home – one that may have many problems, but problems that can be fixed. The presence of Mordor, however, changes the perception of living space: part of the home is consumed by chaos, where existence is impossible. In the heart of Ukraine, life continued more or less normally, but the closer one was to the frontline with the horde of orcs, the more palpable became the chaos and the breath of death. With the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, that breath spread across the entire country – there were no safe places left.

The most terrifying thing in facing an existential threat is the enemy’s irrational motivation, which rules out the possibility of reaching an agreement. If Putin were pursuing political influence or material gain, his actions could be explained rationally, and one could seek compromise. It is precisely this illusion of rationality that Western leaders cling to, hoping to negotiate peace. However, Putin has declared an utterly irrational goal – the destruction of Ukrainian identity, calling it “denazification.” As long as Ukrainians continue to perceive themselves as Ukrainians, they remain his enemies, destined for annihilation. Thus, the motivation for the attack on Ukraine merges with a necrophilic drive for destruction. That is why Ukrainians perceive the Russian invasion as the onslaught of orcs, with whom no agreement is possible, and the war with Russia as a war of extermination waged not only against the Ukrainian army but against all Ukrainians.

Why Tolkien?

Ukrainians use images from Tolkien’s epic to describe Russia and its army because, first, his depiction of war corresponds to the existential experience of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and second, the value stance of Tolkien’s heroes coincides with that of Ukraine’s defenders. In his trilogy, Mordor’s aggression occurs not only on the material but also on the spiritual level, and any manifestation of moral relativism leads to defeat. In resisting Russian aggression, Ukrainians consider the unambiguous separation of good and evil, as shown in Tolkien, to be of fundamental importance. Any attempt at a relativist interpretation of good leads to justifying Russian narratives, including equating the victim with the aggressor.

The popularity of Tolkien’s imagery was reinforced by the screen adaptations of his epic. Yet far more films, TV series, and anime have been made about zombies and vampires – images that resonate not only with the necrophilic orientation of Russian power but even with the symbolism of Russian military units, “Z” and “V.” Russian command ruthlessly expends manpower in senseless suicidal assaults, as if that power were not living at all, and soldiers obediently agree to die in such attacks, as if they were zombies. Nevertheless, the carriers of aggressive Russian imperial ideology are associated specifically with orcs, not zombies or vampires. This is due to the aesthetic rejection of death symbolism in Ukrainian cultural consciousness, which refuses to extend it even to enemies. Although orcs embody evil, they are still alive, unlike zombies or vampires. Mordor is not an otherworldly realm or a kingdom of the dead, but the embodiment of evil in earthly life. Therefore, it must also be fought in our reality. If in Russia death is glorified, in Ukraine it is the struggle for life that is glorified. This difference is revealed in the way Russians and Ukrainians wage war.

Andrey Kuzichkin. Putin’s Imperial Project – Assimilation of Ukrainians and the Erasure of Ukrainian Heritage

Source: PostPravda.info 22.09.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/putins-new-imperial-project/

Does Putin really want to revive the USSR? In reality, he wants to restore control over the sphere of influence of the former USSR, but not the USSR itself. Putin’s new imperial project is based on a false historical construct in which Russia appropriates the legacy of Kyivan Rus. He seeks to create a Moscow-centric “Greater Russia” in which there is no place for Ukrainian national consciousness.

An Estonian publicist Andrey Kuzichkin from Postimees.ee, shows that the assimilation of Ukrainians and the erasure of Ukrainian heritage is the policy Putin pursues both inside Russia and in the occupied territories in order to implement his imperial project.

The liquidation of Ukrainian cultural centers in Russia

In my hometown of Tomsk, the Ukrainian cultural center Dzherelo (Spring), created by Ukrainian activists in 1990, was liquidated on August 21, 2025. This is just one example of the complete destruction of Ukraine’s rich heritage in Putin’s Russia.

​After the collapse of the USSR, Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, emphasized the paramount importance of national policy, since cultural ties in the post-Soviet space made it possible to preserve the illusion of unity of the former republics of the USSR. Thus, in 1998, an agreement was signed between Russia and Ukraine on the mutual creation of cultural centers.

In the same year, the Ukrainian National Cultural Center was opened on Old Arbat in the center of Moscow, which became an umbrella organization for many Ukrainian diaspora centers in Russian regions. However, after the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the start of hostilities in Donbas in 2014, this very center became the target of constant provocations by Russian ultras: they burned Ukrainian flags in front of the center building, smeared paint on the walls, and disrupted cultural events.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian National Cultural Center in Moscow was closed. The agreement on cultural centers with Ukraine was canceled by Vladimir Putin in 2024. The fact that the leader sitting in the Kremlin has a pathological hatred towards Ukraine and Ukrainians is a medical fact. But why did Ukraine become the object of Putin’s manic pursuit? To understand this, let’s look at the pages of history.

Ukrainian colonization of lands outside Ukraine

In the 19th-20th centuries, after the abolition of serfdom in Russia and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, a mass resettlement of Ukrainians began in several regions of Russia. In a good climate and on free fertile lands, people from Ukraine very quickly established prosperous settlements, applying their national talents as farmers and herders.

Thus, in the southern part of Russia, Malinovyi Klyn (transl. Raspberry Klyn) was established in Kuban, Zholtyi Klyn (Yellow Klyn) in the forest-steppes of the Lower Volga region, Seryi Klyn (Gray Klyn) in Southern Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, and Zeleny Klyn or Zelenaya Ukraina (Green Klyn or Green Ukraine) in the southern part of the Far East. Klyn it is what Ukrainians called a plot of land. Later, it became a general name for all areas where Ukrainians lived outside of Ukraine.

In the aforementioned areas, the share of Ukrainians in the local population was up to 70 percent. Many travelers noted at the beginning of the 20th century that in the villages of the Far East “you cannot hear Russian speech at all, only the “malorussian” dialect (the dialect of Little Rus), and the fairs there are held exactly like somewhere in Myrhorod near Poltava.”

In 1917, after the abdication of Nicholas II and the formation of the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg, the national self-awareness of Ukrainians in Russia began to grow rapidly. A session of the Rada, an advisory body convened by local Ukrainians and Cossacks, was held in Kuban. The Rada proclaimed the creation of the Kuban Republic.

The First All-Ukrainian Far Eastern Congress was held in the Far East, the delegates of which demanded that the Provisional Government grant Ukraine and Green Ukraine national autonomy within Russia. To combat the consequences of forced Russification, Ukrainian schools were opened in Green Ukraine, Ukrainian-language newspapers were published, state authorities were formed, and national armed forces were created.

The civil war that broke out in Russia and the offensive of the Red Army put an end to all these plans: the Ukrainian self-government in Kuban and the Far East was destroyed in 1920-1922, and those who participated in it were shot.

Putin’s New Imperial Project: Greater Russia without Ukrainians

It is not surprising that the attempts of the peoples of the former empire to achieve independence became a trauma for all subsequent rulers of the USSR, and this was also inherited by Putin. Already in 2016, Vladimir Putin reproached Lenin in his public speeches, who, in his opinion, unnecessarily and in defiance of Stalin, defended the right of peoples to self-determination up to the point of secession.

Stalin supported the autonomy of the republics and was against the national independence of peoples. But Lenin’s model won. In Putin’s opinion, this laid a “historical mine” under the USSR, which destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991. However, this is, in Putin’s opinion, “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century,” because “historical Russia, which was created over a thousand years, collapsed.”

By equating the USSR and historical Russia, Putin actually announced his plans to restore the lost heritage. Many experts believe that this is about Putin’s attempts to restore the Russian Empire in a new form. However, I think that Putin does not want to step on the historical rake a second time: he does not need a multinational federation, where the right of peoples to self-determination will be preserved only formally, but still. Putin needs a united and indivisible Greater Russia. where the Russian ethnos will undoubtedly become dominant. In accordance with the concept of the “Russian world”, in which Russia appropriates the legacy of Kievan Rus, the Russian ethnic group will undoubtedly be dominant in it.

For two decades, Putin’s regime has followed this path, curtailing the rights of national republics, liquidating national schools, restricting the teaching of national languages, rendering once economically independent regions subsidized and completely dependent on Moscow. However, Ukrainians, as the most numerous diaspora with their own state outside of Russia, became for Putin not just a challenge, but a looming threat that disrupted plans to revive Greater Russia that included Moscow Russia, White Russia (Belarus) and Periphery Russia (Ukraine). There was a danger that Ukrainians in Russia could have become carriers of European political ideas and thus a new mine.

Anti-Russia in Putin’s mind and reality

Vladimir Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” was published on the Kremlin website in July 2021. In essence, it was a manifesto that envisaged the forcible integration of Ukraine into the Russian national space by military means.

At the end of the article, Vladimir Putin mentioned the “anti-Russia” project eight times. The Kremlin leader claimed that Western countries were actively turning Ukraine against Russia, setting the fraternal peoples at odds with each other. Numerous European experts rushed to jointly refute Putin’s claim.

But I think Putin was right that by 2021, Ukraine had indeed become anti-Russia. If you don’t count the Baltics, of all the post-Soviet countries, Ukraine developed the furthest on the path to democracy in the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR. The short period of democratization in Russia ended with the revenge of the Chekists and oligarchs when Putin was elected president. Ukraine, however, having experienced two Maidans, firmly set out on the path of European integration.

Political competition, the dependence of power on the people and an independent judiciary, civil society control over the power structures and the army, the absence of censorship, freedom of speech and creativity, respect for human rights and the primacy of the individual over the state – all of these ceased to be just slogans and became a strategy for the Ukrainian state, which in the name of the people declared its intention to become part of Europe.

Ukraine is a dangerous example for the Putin regime for Russians

However, for Putin’s Russia, which moved from a moderate autocracy to a military dictatorship, all these plans of Ukraine became a challenge, a threat and a slap in the face. For Putin, the danger also lay in the fact that Ukraine became a modern state and the center of Russia’s creative and political elite shifted from Moscow to Kyiv.

The Russian entertainment industry and entrepreneurs in general opened nightclubs and restaurants in Kyiv and Lviv, built ski resorts in the Carpathians, and invested in Ukrainian startups. Until the annexation of Crimea in 2014, over 70 percent of Russian TV series were filmed in Ukraine in collaboration with Ukrainian directors and actors. Among other things, six seasons of the extremely popular TV series “Svaty” (“The In-Laws”), the executive producer of which was Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were filmed there from 2008 to 2012.

Ukraine became a country that others, not just liberal and creative Russia, followed suit. Even Russian officials, seeing that no presidential candidate in Ukraine won the first round of the elections or received 90 percent, asked each other in astonishment: “Oh? Is this allowed?!” This is exactly what Putin could not forgive Ukraine for.

The failure of the plan for the political subordination of Ukraine

Putin wanted Ukraine to become another “Belarus” – a puppet state with a crazy dictator whom the Kremlin itself would put on the throne. When Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian leader of the Donetsk mafia, became president of Ukraine after the fifth attempt in 2010, the Kremlin decided that the game had been won, everything was going according to plan, and Ukraine’s fate as part of Greater Russia had been decided.

But in 2014, Yanukovych fled from the rebellious people, and an angry Putin declared war on Ukraine, annexing Crimea and using separatists in eastern Ukraine as his proxy forces. But gradually, the sharp confrontation in Donbas from 2014 to 2018 instead turned into a simmering conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy essentially fulfilled his election promise by 2020 and stopped the war in the east of the country (according to the UN, 26 civilians died in Donbas in 2020 and 25 in 2021 as a result of military activity). Realizing that the Greater Russia plan was in danger, Putin decided to finally resolve the “Ukrainian question” by launching a large-scale aggression against Ukraine. Russia’s anti-Ukrainian policy reached a new level.

Cancellation of the Ukrainian heritage

Russia has a long history of dispersing Ukrainian ethnic identity. Already in Tsarist Russia, the political conjuncture forced Ukrainians who wanted to pursue a career in the civil service to declare themselves ethnically Russian.

Nothing has changed in Putin’s Russia. Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, whose mother bore the surname Bublei, prefers not to recall that she was born and spent her childhood in Ukraine. First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Sergey Kiriyenko bears his mother’s Ukrainian surname, his mother studied in Odesa. Gennady Timchenko, a pro-Putin oligarch with a Ukrainian surname, spent his childhood in Ukraine and graduated from school in the Odesa region.

However, they all consider themselves Russian, hiding their Ukrainian roots. And here are the astonishing figures: from 1989 to 2021, the number of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation decreased by 5.5 times – from 4.4 million to 0.8 million. It is quite obvious that there was no devastating plague among Ukrainians – Russians simply massively abandoned Ukrainian nationality, which had become politically unstable, and embraced Russian nationality.

The creeping elimination of Ukrainian culture in Russia has been going on for quite some time, but it is especially associated with Putin’s reign. As early as 2010, a court closed the only state library of Ukrainian literature in Moscow, and in 2018 it was finally liquidated on charges of distributing extremist books.

Over the past 20 years, nearly twenty Ukrainian national-cultural associations have been closed in southern Russia and the North Caucasus (the former Malinovyi Klyn). Until recently, five Ukrainian national centers operated in Krasnodar Krai. Their liquidation began in 2008.

The last of them, Sodruzhestvo Kuban-Ukraina, was closed in 2023. In 2021, a court liquidated the Prosvetitelstvo Center for Ukrainian Spiritual Culture and Education in the Far East in Primorsky Krai (the former Zeleny Klyn). In 2020, the Ukrainian cultural center Syry Klyn was liquidated in Omsk.

Ukrainian national-cultural associations in Astrakhan (the former Zholtyi Klyn), Rostov-on-Don, and Taganrog were closed. Some centers are being closed even despite their active support for the war in Ukraine. For example, the Ukrainian People’s Union of Kalmykia was closed in 2021, even though its leader, Vladimir Omelchak, approved of the annexation of Crimea.

There are exceptions. For example, in 2022, a new Ukrainian center, Slavutych, was established in North Ossetia. The organization’s chairman, Viktor Hamaza, often talks on social media about how Caucasian Ukrainians are sending humanitarian aid to Russian servicemen participating in the invasion of Ukraine.

The fight against the Ukrainian language

From September 1, 2025, the Ukrainian language has been removed from the school curriculum in Russia. This means the abolition of compulsory teaching of this language in primary, basic and secondary schools in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which Putin already considers Russia.

Already in 2017-2019, the use of Ukrainian as a state language was banned in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. The constitution of annexed Crimea still maintains the status of Ukrainian as the state language.

However, this year, all Ukrainian schools in Crimea and the Russian-controlled territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions will be closed. Under the conditions of Russian occupation, Ukrainian is taught secretly, in secret apartments.

Putin’s obsession is the destruction of Ukraine and its cultural and historical heritage. This is the personal mania of the leader sitting in the Kremlin, which has become Russian national policy. And only the collapse of the Putin regime can stop this madness.

"Agency". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 11.08.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/russias-lost-agency/

Under the UN Charter, respect for the right of peoples to self-determination is a fundamental principle of international relations. UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960) states: "All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status..."

However, not all nations have agency. If a people that in no way manifests its agency is burdened with responsibility for the state, it is likely to hand over the power to decide its fate to a dictator. Will the Russian people have the right to self-determination after their defeat in the war, or will their fate be decided by a coalition of the victors? To answer this question, it is necessary to clarify the concept of “agency,” to which Nikolai Karpitsky has devoted another article in the Dictionary of War on PostPravda.Info.

Agency

In the broadest sense, agency is the ability to act as an independent actor, to make one’s own decisions, and not to be subject to the will of others. In the social sense, it is the ability to be an independent agent of influence and to assert one’s interests in society or on the international stage.

The agency of an individual is determined by their free will, which is expressed in actions. Collective agency is possible only through free collective action, in which an individual fulfils themselves and receives recognition from others. However, collective actions can also be coerced, leading to the loss of collective agency and the rise of authoritarian or totalitarian social systems.

The bearer of individual agency is a free person conscious of their ability to act and make decisions independently. The bearers of collective agency are free individuals who, despite differences in beliefs and interests, voluntarily unite to express a common stance. They embody collective agency in particular social forms – a people, civil society, the state, a religious movement, and so on. If collective actions are carried out under duress, this leads to the collapse of collective agency. Collective agency does not require unanimity, for it is grounded in the common actions of free people who may hold different beliefs and frequently diverge in their views on many issues. Unanimity arises when a people renounces its agency in favour of dictatorship.

The Agency of a People

Recognition of another’s agency is expressed in the recognition of rights – in the case of a person or an association of individuals, and in the recognition of sovereignty – in the case of peoples and states. The principle enshrined in UN documents, respect for the right of peoples to self-determination, entails recognition of their ability to shape their own agency. The sovereign right of a people is enshrined in many constitutions, which declare that the source of authority lies with the people. However, if a people fails to exercise its agency in practice, a dictator will almost certainly usurp it.

Thus, the German people lost their agency when Hitler came to power. The Stalinist regime created a new “Soviet” agency that displaced the agencies of other peoples. The Palestinians did not succeed in forming their own agency, distinct from the pan-Arab one, and when the Gaza Strip effectively gained independence in 2005, the agency of the Palestinian population was usurped by the terrorist organization Hamas.

The Agency of the Ukrainian People

A people’s agency is expressed in historical moments when society succeeds in breaking social inertia. Ukraine, like many other post-Soviet countries, remained for a long time caught in the inertia of the post-Soviet era. However, society asserted its agency by rising against the post-Soviet corrupt oligarchic system, which led to the Orange Revolution (2004–2005) and the Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014).

As a rule, in times of war, a rigid power vertical is established, and the agency of society diminishes. However, following Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the agency of Ukrainian civil society has grown; it has asserted itself as an independent force in the country’s defence alongside the state. This is evident in the growth of the volunteer movement, the large-scale improvised production of drones, and the supplying of servicemen at the front with everything they need. Moreover, when the public believed that the authorities had passed a flawed law, mass protests broke out in many Ukrainian cities on 23 July 2025, forcing the authorities to listen to the public and alter their stance.

How do Ukrainians perceive the agency of Russians?

At the beginning of the war, many Ukrainians believed that the Putin regime was waging war against them and turned to their friends, relatives, and fellow believers in Russia in an effort to achieve mutual understanding. Today, Ukrainians are largely convinced that all of Russia is waging war against them, and attempts to reach an understanding with Russians have all but ceased. In other words, Ukrainians no longer perceive the Russian people as possessing their own agency, distinct from that of the authorities. For the same reason, they do not regard the Russian opposition, which speaks on behalf of an imaginary “other Russia,” as having genuine agency. Respect is reserved only for individual Russians who openly oppose the Putin regime and support Ukraine, but they are seen not as representatives of Russia but as solitary heroes. They are treated in the same way as anti-fascist Germans during the Second World War. After all, at that time, despite their struggle, no one recognised the agency of the German people as distinct from that of Nazi Germany.

Who will decide Russia's fate after the war?

The Russian Constitution enshrines the principle that the people are the source of power. But if the people have renounced their agency in favour of the regime, they have thereby also renounced their right to self-determination. This delegitimises Russia as a subject of international law, and it continues to be taken into account only because it poses a military threat. This raises the question: who will decide the fate of Russia in the event of its defeat in the war – the Russian people or a coalition of the victors? This issue is not yet under discussion, but history offers a precedent.

The German people, having relinquished their agency in favour of Hitler, lost the ability to determine their own post-war future, and the fate of Germany was decided by the victorious powers. Different models of agency took shape in the divided parts of Germany. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans expressed a desire to integrate into the agency of the German people of the Federal Republic of Germany.

If, after Russia’s defeat in the war, the victorious countries also do not recognise the agency of the Russian people, this will create opportunities for developing new models of agency for the peoples of Russia. In some regions – Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and the Caucasus republics – statements asserting their own agency are already being voiced. In other regions, such as Siberia and the Far East, new models of agency have not yet taken shape, but the preconditions are already in place.

"Rashism". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 26.06.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/rashism-is-ideology-of-russian-regime/

Over the years of the war with Russia, the word “Rashism” has become firmly established in Ukrainian usage, although some political scientists regard it as a vague and unscientific notion. However, Ukrainians clearly understand what rashism is and how it differs from other forms of fascism. On May 2, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a definition of the term “rashism,” enumerating its main characteristics. This definition is descriptive in nature, and has therefore become the subject of another article by Nikolai Karpitsky for PostPravda.Info’s Dictionary of War.

Rashism

Rashism is a modern form of Russian fascism, an ideology of violently suppressing or destroying other cultural and national identities in order to expand the sphere of Russian identity’s dominance. 

The term “rashism” (from “Russian” and “fascism”) is used to denote a form of fascism that shares features with its historical manifestations – Italian fascism, German National Socialism (Nazism), and others. The ideology of rashism developed from the tradition of Russian chauvinism, which has historically had an imperial character.

Within rashist ideology, a special place is reserved for Ukraine. Rashists claim that Ukrainians and Russians are one people. Ukrainian identity is tolerated only as a provincial variant of Russian identity, while those Ukrainians who refuse to accept Russian identity as the sole valid one for themselves are treated as enemies. Whereas Hitler’s Nazism defined an enemy on the basis of race, rashism defines one on the basis of identity. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is justified by the supposed necessity of “bringing Ukraine back” and eradicating Ukrainian identity as an independent identity.

Rashism and Russian Chauvinism

Russian chauvinism has accompanied Russia’s development for centuries, manifesting both at the state level and in everyday life. At the level of state ideology, Russian chauvinism has taken various forms, from the concept of “Moscow, the Third Rome,” to the idea of communism, used to justify dictatorship, and up to the current concept of the “Russian world.” Yet its essence remained the same: the justification of military and political expansion, and the imposition of a single ideology in matters of culture, language, history, and religion. 

In everyday life, Russian chauvinism manifests itself in the belief that territories once conquered by Russia – such as Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Yakutia – automatically become an “integral part” of Russia. Residents of these regions are deprived of political subject status, including the right to self-determination. They are expected to adapt to the dominant Russian culture, speak Russian, and conform to the everyday norms familiar to Russians.

Meanwhile, Russians who move to these regions are not required to respect local languages and traditions. This attitude is evident in the so-called national republics within Russia, where even in major cities such as Kazan, landlords often openly state that they rent housing only to Russians. This discriminatory practice is treated as normal.

This trend was enshrined in law in August 2018, when the Law on Education was amended to remove the national languages of the republics from the list of compulsory school subjects. However, even before that, school remained the main tool for imposing the imperial version of Russian history on all the peoples of Russia.

The turning point that marked the transformation of Russian chauvinism into a fully fledged ideology of rashism came in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Donbas. It was then that Russian propaganda began actively employing chauvinist narratives to justify military aggression and terror against the Ukrainian people. Rashism is no longer merely cultural or political arrogance, but an ideological justification of war and of war crimes committed in the name of eradicating another national identity. Even someone who does not openly support aggression but propagates narratives that justify its aims – such as the idea of a “single people” or the mission of the “Russian world” – can also be regarded as an adherent of rashist ideology.

Rashist Ideology

Rashism is an imperial ideology built on the image of an enemy, mythologised history, and the concept of Russia’s special mission to expand the so-called “Russian world.” In the rashist worldview, the modern world is a battlefield between the “soulless” West and “spiritual” Russia. 

In this discourse, Ukrainian identity is regarded as unnatural, supposedly imposed by the West to weaken Russia. By this logic, Russia “must” reclaim Ukraine by force, and Ukrainians who reject Russian identity are to be regarded as traitors and enemies. 

In rashism, the ideological constructs of “Russian culture” and “Orthodoxy” substitute for both genuine culture and genuine religiosity. This artificial construct borrows elements from both the Soviet and the Tsarist eras, creating a self-contradictory system, yet rashists themselves generally fail to recognise these contradictions.

Rashists and Their Stance

Supporters of rashism largely back Putin’s regime, as they see it as an instrument in the struggle against Ukrainian identity. At the same time, they may express dissatisfaction with the government in other areas, such as corruption, social policy, or economic management. Within the rashist camp there is also a radical wing that opposes Putin, believing him not decisive or harsh enough in the struggle against Ukraine.

In Ukrainian public consciousness, a distinction is drawn between ideological rashists and those who support rashism passively and unthinkingly, without firm conviction. The first category includes rashists in the strict sense of the word – people who knowingly justify Russia’s aggression. The second category includes the “vatniki” – ordinary people who avoid responsibility for moral choices and are inclined toward relativism: “not everything is so clear-cut,” “everyone is guilty in the conflict,” “only God knows the truth,” and so on. A separate category is made up of the “orcs”. These are criminals who joined the army for material gain or to avoid criminal punishment. Their motivation is not ideological: they commit war crimes driven by personal cruelty and a sense of impunity.

What rashists, vatniki, and orcs have in common is a lack of empathy for the victims of aggression and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for their country’s actions.

Rashism and Necro-Imperialism

If rashism represents the ideological stance of the Russian authorities, then necro-imperialism describes the actual state of Russian public consciousness and the political system. The difference is like that between communism as an ideology and Stalinism as actual practice: while the ideologically justified goal was the struggle against “class enemies,” in reality Stalinism manifested itself in mass denunciations and the repression of innocent people. Accordingly, if rashism denotes the ideology of expanding the “Russian world,” necro-imperialism describes, on the one hand, the authorities’ treatment of the population as a resource to be expended in pursuit of their goals, and, on the other, the people’s own willingness to accept such a role – evident in their readiness to die pointlessly on the front lines in Ukraine.

The ruling clique in Russia, made up largely of former security service operatives, is not bound to any particular ideology. Their attitude toward ideological constructs is purely instrumental: these constructs are used only insofar as they help maintain power. This cynicism was inherited from the Soviet security services. However, shifts in ideology according to political conditions do not alter the worldview underlying necro-imperialism.

Thus, rashism is an ideological conceptualisation of the fear of the world’s complexity and the drive to destroy everything that cannot be dominated, while necro-imperialism is the manifestation of this drive in social consciousness and the political system. 

Legal Definition of Rashism

On May 2, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Resolution “On the use of the ideology of rashism by the political regime of the Russian Federation, and on the condemnation of the principles and practices of rashism as totalitarian and misanthropic” (No. 3078-IX).

In its statement, the Verkhovna Rada defines rashism as “a new variety of totalitarian ideology and practices that underlie the regime formed in the Russian Federation under President Vladimir Putin, based on the traditions of Russian chauvinism and imperialism, the practices of the Soviet communist regime, and National Socialism (Nazism); … the characteristic features and consequences of rashism are:

– systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms;

- cult of power and militarism;

– a cult of personality around the leader at the top of the power vertical, and the sacralisation of state institutions;

– the self-glorification of Russia and Russians through the violent suppression and/or denial of the existence of other peoples;

– the use of practices aimed at spreading the Russian language and culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, the media, political and civic institutions, and the promotion of the ideas of the “Russian world” among other peoples, in order to implement expansionist state policy;

– systematic violation of universally recognised principles and norms of international law, including respect for the sovereignty of other states, their territorial integrity and internationally recognised borders, and failure to observe the principle of the non-use of force or the threat of force;

– the creation, financing, and armed support of unlawful armed groups and separatist movements on the territory of other sovereign states, and the creation and support of terrorist organisations;

the use of prohibited methods of warfare and the systematic commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity;

– the systematic organisation and perpetration of mass killings, executions, torture, deportations, the creation of artificial conditions leading to famine, other forms of mass physical terror, genocide, and persecution on ethnic, national, religious, political, or other grounds;

– the systematic use of economic and energy coercion against other states;

– regular threats to use nuclear weapons against other states and to cause technological (man-made) disasters.”