Nikolai Karpitsky. Winter in Sloviansk: The Goal Is to Survive Together with Ukraine

Source: PostPravda.info 11.0.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/winter-in-sloviansk/

“This is the hardest winter in Sloviansk in all the years of the war,” says Nikolai Karpitsky. He has spent all four years of the war in this frontline city. Specially for PostPravda.Info, he tells how a resident of Sloviansk endures the cold, which the enemy uses as a weapon.

Winter in Sloviansk: Cold as a Weapon

Russia uses not only bombs and drones against Ukrainian civilians, but also cold. Objectively, shelling is more dangerous than cold, yet psychologically cold is harder to endure. You eventually get used to the danger of dying at any moment: at first, when explosions go off nearby, it is deeply unsettling, but later you stop reacting. Cold, however, is something you can never get used to.

I live close to the front line, and here cold is compounded by another factor that breaks people — uncertainty. Everyone experiences it differently; I can only speak from my own experience.

January was bitterly cold. As the frost set in, Russia began deliberately striking Ukraine’s energy system, trying to freeze the country. The main blow fell on Kyiv. People in high-rise apartment buildings without electricity find themselves trapped: there is no light, no water, it is impossible to use the toilet properly, and the building gradually freezes through. Where utility services relied on luck and did not drain the water from the radiators, pipes burst.

While the enemy’s attention was focused on the capital, things were easier in Sloviansk, where I live — power outages were rare and short-lived. If electricity had been cut the way it was in Kyiv, my house would not have survived.

Typical private houses in Ukraine are not designed for severe cold, and when they were built, no one imagined the possibility of war. I live in one such house myself. The kitchen is in an extension, separate from the main building; the gas boiler that supplies heat to the house is located there as well, with a pipe connecting the two structures. If the electric motor stops, the water will stop circulating, and the house will freeze very quickly.

At the end of January there was a thaw, but at the market people anxiously discussed the abnormal February frosts expected the following week. And then Trump said he had asked Putin to suspend strikes on energy infrastructure for a week because it was very cold. It sounded like fantasy, but one desperately wanted to believe it — there was no “Plan B” for a prolonged power outage.

Putin waited for the peak of the frost, and on February 3 the Russian army struck with everything it had managed to accumulate during the days of the “truce”: according to Zelensky, 32 ballistic missiles, 11 other missiles, 28 cruise missiles, and 450 attack drones. Trump confirmed that Putin had kept his promise — because, as he put it, that was exactly what the agreement had been.

Without Heating at Minus Fifteen

The twenty-four hours from February 3 to 4 were the hardest for me in the entire war. At the same time, they reflected — like a mirror — my perception of the war over all four years. The electricity went out during the day, as suddenly as the invasion began on February 24, 2022. On the one hand, you understand that this can happen; on the other, it is psychologically impossible to imagine it as reality. And when it does happen, you find yourself in a completely different reality for which you are unprepared — whether it is war or a power outage at –15°C.

The first reaction is hope that it won’t last long. The house is still holding heat; the soup has been cooked. The same hope existed in the first days of the invasion: we just need to hold out for three days… ten days… and then a miracle will happen — Western aid, a counteroffensive, Russia will retreat. But the war goes on, and resources are gradually depleted.

Night falls, there is still no electricity, and it becomes clear that something serious has happened. The most tormenting thing is uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of the city and find myself in complete informational isolation. I don’t know whether this is a local accident or a global one. Perhaps the electricity will come back in the next second — or perhaps never. I had the same feeling during our counteroffensive in the autumn of 2022: you hope the war will end with a quick victory, but it is just as likely to drag on indefinitely.

You want to fall asleep and wake up when the lights are back on. I fell asleep and woke up many times, and each time it grew colder. I had to take another blanket and two throws. In the morning, I put on a fifth sweater and a jacket and walk around the house to warm up. The frost will last a few more days — it’s impossible to hold out without electricity until the thaw. This is what a war of attrition looks like: who will run out first — the aggressor or us? Russia has incomparably greater resources and a constant influx of volunteers ready to kill us for money.

I left the refrigerator door wide open — let the cold in the house be of at least some use. I heat the soup over a candle. The pot gives off heat to the room almost as quickly as it receives it, but after two hours the soup is warm at last. While I pace back and forth around the room, the cold is still bearable, but with each hour it gets worse. If the temperature in the house drops below freezing, the radiators will burst, and then it will make no difference whether you are inside the house or outside.

There has been no electricity for almost a day, and the uncertainty presses harder and harder. Perhaps the pipe outside has already frozen through… My mind is torn between the hope that a light bulb will come on any second and my imagination drawing an apocalyptic picture of war in which there is no longer any hope of survival. Now the main task is not so much to wait for the electricity as to preserve inner calm. To do that, I detach myself from the expectation of the “next moment” and focus on what is “here and now.”

Hatred creeps up toward everyone who supported Putin, especially toward my Russian acquaintances. If I let hatred inside me, I will simply dissolve in it. To distance myself from hatred, I look for support within myself, in the moment of the “here and now.” No matter how terrifying life may be, each concrete moment of life has value in itself, and I strive to live it fully — even if in the next moment I might die in my own home from a drone or a bomb. Along with hatred, I let go of expectations and of the picture of reality that my imagination draws.

Why is it impossible to get used to the cold? I can, by inertia, go about my daily business while bombs are falling, but to warm up I have to make additional efforts. I walk around the room to keep warm, but how long can I do that — one day, two? Cold cannot be endured by inertia.

By inertia, one can carry on with everyday tasks even in moments of danger, as long as those moments do not require a struggle for survival. This is how habituation to war arises. Analysts and publicists who paint an optimistic picture of future Russian failures and Ukrainian successes contribute to this habituation. In the first year of the war, this supported us and helped mobilize our mental strength. But war has another side as well: sooner or later it reaches everyone, forcing them to fight for their own life. It is impossible to get used to this, just as it is impossible to get used to the cold, because constant effort is required, and human mental resources are limited.

Goal-Setting: To Survive Together with Ukraine

What does it mean to live in the moment of the “here and now”? If you perceive this moment from within the flow of emotional experiences, no amount of strength will be enough to endure what every single moment of war brings. One can live it fully only by relying on goal-setting that depends neither on emotional states nor on external circumstances. Only this reveals awareness of one’s own existence in the moment of the “here and now,” and this existence has intrinsic value. From this follows the volition — to live this moment fully despite the cold, the war, and the danger of dying the next minute. This volition is embodied in the goal-setting of surviving in spite of everything. But not surviving at the expense of others — surviving together with others. In wartime, this means surviving together with Ukraine, regardless of how strong the enemy is.

This goal-setting gives strength and endows life with meaning. Even when there is no electricity or internet, when it is impossible to turn on a laptop and I am forced to walk around the room to keep warm, I can still do something for Ukraine — for example, compose in my head the texts of future publications.

Electricity was restored after a day. The pipes froze, but not completely — the water barely flows through them, so the house does not warm up. It is not yet so hard for me. It is much harder for people with elderly relatives and children trapped in high-rise buildings. More frosts and new power outages lie ahead. The struggle continues.

"Responsibility". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 05.02.2025
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/personal-and-collective-responsibility/

What is responsibility, and how is a feeling of responsibility connected to recognizing a person as a free citizen rather than a serf or a slave? Why do some Russians acknowledge collective responsibility for the war, while others are outraged that responsibility for crimes of the regime – crimes in which they were not personally involved – is being attributed to them? To answer these questions, Nikolai Karpitsky, in another article of the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info, explains how personal and collective responsibility manifests itself.

Responsibility

Responsibility is manifested in a readiness to answer for one’s inaction, one’s actions, and their consequences, even if those consequences are shaped by circumstances beyond a person’s control. Guilt is a moral or legal evaluation of a person’s actions, implying moral condemnation or legal punishment. Responsibility, by contrast, is a person’s obligation to determine their attitude toward their past actions or toward circumstances that require certain actions in the future. Thus, guilt is possible only in relation to actions already committed, whereas responsibility can relate not only to the past but also to the future. For example, if an adult encounters a lost child, they become responsible for that child’s immediate future.

Since people tend to evade responsibility for their guilt, society has developed legal mechanisms to compel accountability.

Responsibility for factual guilt in the past is realized in a readiness to answer for the consequences; responsibility for the future is realized in actions; responsibility for others’ crimes, in which a person has become involuntarily implicated by virtue of place of residence or citizenship, is realized in expressing one’s attitude toward these crimes and their consequences. Therefore, ignoring a war of aggression unleashed by one’s own state is a manifestation of irresponsibility, for which a person bears personal guilt.

Only free and legally capable individuals can be aware of responsibility; therefore, to demand responsibility from a person is to recognize them as free and legally capable. Responsibility for the crimes of the state can be recognized only by specific individuals who represent it; if they refuse this responsibility, they lose the right to speak on behalf of the state. The demand that Russians take responsibility for Russia’s war of aggression and war crimes presupposes treating them not as slaves or serfs, but as citizens endowed with agency and free will. Refusal to take responsibility for the crimes of one’s own state means the loss of agency. Since this demand applies to all legally capable citizens of Russia, it presupposes the collective responsibility of Russians for the war.

Collective Responsibility

Collective responsibility for a war of aggression is the obligation to embody one’s attitude toward an aggressive war and its consequences in concrete actions. If personal responsibility is determined by a person’s own actions or by their involvement in the actions of others, then collective responsibility is determined by the situation and circumstances – in particular, whether a person is a citizen of the aggressor state, whether they live on its territory, and so on.

Involvement in the actions of others may be direct – when these are conscious actions aimed at supporting the war – or indirect, when a person goes about their own life, pays taxes, and may even, according to their convictions, oppose the war. However, through his daily activities, he unwittingly supports the state that is waging war. In both cases, responsibility is personal in nature, since it depends on the degree of a particular individual’s involvement in supporting the war. Thus, the degree of involvement of employees of military enterprises differs from that of pensioners, and so forth.

Collective responsibility is determined by circumstances – in this case, by the fact that Russia is waging war in the name of all Russians. Therefore, all Russians, including those who have left Russia and are not involved in the actions of the Russian authorities, nevertheless bear collective responsibility for the actions of the state. This responsibility may have moral, legal, political, and existential dimensions.

Collective moral responsibility obliges each citizen to define their moral attitude toward their own actions or inaction. If a person continues to live as though the war has nothing to do with them, the lived experience of those who have survived the war is devalued in their everyday life, which undermines the very possibility of communication with them. For this reason, many Ukrainians do not wish to communicate with Russians.

Collective political responsibility for the war extends to all citizens of the aggressor state, since they failed to stop their government from unleashing an aggressive war. This responsibility is manifested in consent to political punishment for the war: reparations, restrictions on the right to independently determine the fate of one’s country, partial or complete loss of state sovereignty, up to the dismantling of the state.

Collective legal responsibility for the war does not imply recognition of collective guilt and is manifested in the obligation of any citizen of the aggressor state to give an account of their own actions or inaction during the period of war for the purpose of legal assessment. Only if involvement in war crimes is established – for example, if a person programmed missile launches or conducted propaganda activities among schoolchildren – is the court obliged to determine the degree of their personal guilt and to assign punishment.

Collective existential responsibility for the war arises on the basis of identity and manifests itself in the form of shame for one’s country and community.

The Subjective Experience of Collective Responsibility

For some, collective responsibility evokes a feeling of shame; for others, a feeling of injustice because it extends to them as well. Many in Russia, including among those who support Ukraine, ask the question: “Why should I bear responsibility for the actions of Putin, whom I hate and who has ruined my life?” Some perceive collective responsibility as equating victims and executioners and ask: “Do the victims of Stalin’s Gulag bear the same collective responsibility for the crimes of the USSR as the executioners from the NKVD?”

However, Russia’s war against Ukraine is not being waged by isolated criminals but by the entire state system, which encompasses all citizens, including those who oppose the war. This causes people who do not support the war to feel shame for their country and for the crimes committed in their name. It is precisely this feeling of shame that leads to the awareness of collective responsibility.

Nikolai Karpitsky. The Existential Experience of War

Source: PostPravda.info 19.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/the-existential-experience-of-war/

Existential experience is everything that shapes one’s attitude toward life, and for many people today war occupies a central place in that experience – especially for those who live in frontline areas. The existential experience of war includes not only what a person observes – bombardments, the collapse of vital infrastructure, destruction, and the loss of life – but also what they experience inwardly. However, inner experience acquires existential value only when hatred is overcome through intention, fear and inaction through action, and a sense of uncertainty and illusory expectations through a vision of the future.

The Existential Experience of War Is Not Mere Knowledge, but Understanding That Changes a Person

In 2022, I decided to remain in Sloviansk. The city was under constant shelling, but the prospect of occupation seemed far more frightening. At that time, I was checking frontline news three times a day: the situation was deteriorating dramatically, and it was unclear whether our city would survive. I could have moved to the rear or gone abroad, but this is my home. There was another reason to stay: only direct proximity to the war could give me genuine understanding, enabling me to write about it. Knowledge and understanding of lived experience are not the same. Knowledge is the possession of information. Genuine understanding – in other words, understanding in the existential sense – is the interpretation of knowledge through one’s own lived experience.

Hatred in the Existential Experience of War

Hatred. You are living your ordinary life – work, everyday concerns, relationships – and suddenly someone, for no reason at all, tries to kill you. An entire state is working toward that goal. You turn to acquaintances and relatives in Russia, but instead of words of support you hear accusations of Nazism and approval of the invasion. After February 24, 2022, many residents of Ukraine lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones, and for the fourth year now have been forced to struggle for survival. It is therefore unsurprising that an all-consuming hatred toward everything associated with Russia has arisen among them.

In the first months of the war, this hatred helped Ukrainian society to mobilize, but over time it became increasingly destructive. Hatred cannot be kept inside – it simply burns you from within. A need arises to release it, at least on social media. But posts filled with curses directed at the enemy are not read by the enemy. They are read by friends, to whom this hatred is transmitted.

Thus, passing from person to person, hatred grows like a snowball, while its intended target remains unreachable. Neither Putin nor his inner circle read our posts. As a result, the accumulated aggression begins to shift toward closer targets: first toward corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats, then toward Ukrainian politicians, public and religious figures who remain silent about problems, then toward those who respect them, and ultimately toward everyone who, in one way or another, has failed to meet your expectations. Arguments begin within Ukrainian communities and among pro-Ukrainian activists, and in this squabble the main enemy – Russia – recedes into the background.

Intention. Once you allow hatred inside, it takes complete control of you. That is why I internally distanced myself from this feeling and turned my work on a wartime philosophical diary into a practice of transforming emotions into understanding. Instead of hatred, what took root within me was the intention to fight until the complete victory over the aggressor state and the punishment of all those guilty of war crimes. Hatred is a passion that flares up spontaneously and suppresses human will. Intention is the directedness of one’s own will–it orders feelings and mobilizes strength.

The fourth year of the full-scale war is now underway. The situation at the front continues to deteriorate. Russia is increasing its military potential. Europe increasingly feels the real threat of invasion, especially Poland and the Baltic states. However, the scale of these threats does not affect my intention, because it depends neither on my psychological state nor on external circumstances. Only the form of struggle changes. For me, it is work with words.

Inner Experiences in the Existential Experience of War

Fear. In a frontline city there is no time to hide from shelling – and I have nowhere to hide. So when shelling begins, you simply hope that the next shell, drone, or bomb will not hit you. At first it is terrifying, then you get used to it, and the shelling no longer distracts you from working on texts, even when you hear the roar of an incoming strike that makes the windowpanes rattle. Right now, as I write these words, a powerful explosion has gone off very close by – the house shook, and sirens wailed in the street. The electricity went out for a moment but was immediately restored, and I can continue working.

Fear is experienced differently in the rear than near the front. Sometimes it seems to me that it is even scarier deep in the rear. When death is nearby, fear becomes very concrete: shelling begins – it is frightening; it stops – relaxation comes, as if nothing had happened. A person cannot live in constant tension; the psyche dampens emotions on its own. But the farther you are from the front, the more frightening the future and the uncertainty of the situation become. Fear grows diffuse and turns into a constant background of perception.

Uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of Sloviansk, where phone coverage is poor. Sometimes, after shelling, electricity disappears for a long time, and you don’t know when it will be restored – or whether it will be restored at all. Then you remain in the dark, with a drained laptop, unable to find out what is happening around you. The enemy may already be close – and you would not even know it. Only the cold of winter nights breaks this sensory isolation from the world. The pump that circulates hot water through the radiators cannot operate without electricity. If the temperature drops below zero, the pipes will burst (fortunately, this has not happened yet). It's in moments like this that the sheer horror of a future unknown sinks in – work at the computer had kept those thoughts at bay, until the lights went out.

Analysts’ forecasts rarely come true because it is impossible to calculate all the factors of war. We can only track trends – and right now those trends are very bad. But if the future is not predetermined, it can change despite even the bleakest expectations. There is always room for hope.

Inaction. No matter how exhausting work may be, inaction is far more frightening. In the summer of 2022, Sloviansk emptied out, and many of those who remained lost their usual occupations. You sit at home all day without electricity, with no way to distract yourself, simply watching your city being shelled. At the “Good News” Protestant church, an acquaintance told me: “I try to come here as often as I can because just sitting at home is unbearable.” Fortunately, I did not have this problem, because I was constantly working on texts. I knew I was doing important work and felt that I was taking an active position in life. That is why I reacted calmly to shelling and other difficulties, which become unbearable if you remain in passive contemplation. The most valuable thing in wartime is meaningful work that prevents you from sinking into inaction.

The Perception of the Future in the Existential Experience of War

Illusory expectations. When the front is close, you live one day at a time, without hoping for the future, and then you stop understanding people in the rear who live with illusory expectations. At first, everyone in Ukraine hoped for new weapons that would turn the tide on the front. Later, people counted on Russia running out of soldiers. A year and a half ago, when the Russians began advancing toward Pokrovsk, in Ukraine preferred not to notice it – everyone talked about local successes near Kharkiv and assured each other that the enemy would soon exhaust its offensive capacity.

When I said that there were no signs of exhaustion at all – on the contrary, that Russia’s military power was growing – my interlocutors reacted with extreme irritation, sometimes even aggression. After all, I was calling into question the illusions that morally sustained people. Yet the destruction of false hopes led to a painful disappointment. In this sense, it is easier for me near the front: no illusions – no disappointments.

Now, as the Russian army advances, the future looks bleak, and death is sometimes so close that it feels as if there is no future at all. Paradoxically, to bring it back, one must give up expecting it.

Distortion of perception and a passive mindset. The image of the future always diverges from reality. Moreover, the very expectation of the future distorts the perception of the present. Before the war, no one imagined that the future could be so terrifying, and for the sake of temporary economic gain Europeans, including Ukrainians, indulged a dictator instead of preparing for war. But even the war did not lead to universal awakening; it merely changed the nature of illusory expectations.

Expectation of a catastrophic future suppresses the will, while optimism in expectation leads to relaxation – and both prevent readiness for the future. In 2022, we waited: new weapons were about to arrive that would change the situation on the battlefield, and once we reached the 1991 borders, peace would come. Illusory expectations made it impossible to see that the war would not have ended regardless of the outcome of the counteroffensive, and that survival therefore requires preparation for a long war of attrition.

For many, their attitude toward the future is like a weather forecast – you accept it as inevitable. But if you absolutely cannot come to terms with it, you look for another, more optimistic forecaster… or military analyst. This forms a passive mindset. Its cost in wartime is excessive, and the future always turns out to be different from what we expected. An active mindset means that the future is not awaited but designed on the basis of one’s own decisions.

Vision of the future. Expectation always distorts the perception of the present. A vision of the future that is formed not from expectation but from an awareness of one’s own capabilities and intentions, on the contrary, allows for an adequate perception of the present. The future is not a fact given like a weather forecast, but a possibility that is constantly shaped by our decisions; it exists in our inner intention as the vector of our aspirations. This makes it possible to accept reality as it is, without reshaping it to fit illusory expectations. Instead, we change our internal priorities.

Reality is frightening: too much has been done wrong, too much theft and betrayal has occurred to expect victory over Russia passively. And there is no need to wait passively if there is an opportunity, within this frightening reality, to build an alternative project of the future – a project of victory over Russia. A vision of the future is not an expectation, but a system of priorities and a general vector of aspirations based on an understanding of reality without illusions.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Trilateral Peace Negotiations on Ukraine: Participants Seem to Be from Different Parallel Worlds

Source: PostPravda.info 27.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/trilateral-peace-negotiations-on-ukraine/

The trilateral negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States on settling the war concluded on January 24, 2026, in Abu Dhabi. The parties agreed to continue the talks on February 1. But is peace possible if the sides fundamentally fail to understand one another – because they think differently and inhabit different worldviews?

The participants in the negotiations perceive reality differently

Before the war, Europe believed it was living in the same world as Russia – a world in which wars of conquest were impossible. On this assumption, it did not prepare for war and even helped Russia grow stronger. Europeans proceeded from the idea that wars are meaningless because property rights and borders are determined not by force, but by legal recognition.

For a modern, civilized person, it does not matter whose soldiers are present in a given territory: its legal status does not change as a result. If someone seizes another’s property by force, they still do not become its owner. In Russia, however, a different notion prevails: whoever has force owns the territory and everything on it. Hence, for example, the widespread belief that the United States fought in Iraq for oil. When I asked how that could even be imagined – after all, American soldiers themselves cannot pump oil; it would first have to be purchased – people simply did not understand the question. For them, the very idea that ownership does not depend on military presence was incomprehensible.

This difference in perception became clearly evident in 2014. Most Russians believed that Crimea became Russian because Russian troops were stationed there. From the standpoint of international law, this is not the case: legally, Crimea remains part of Ukraine, and only Ukraine has the right to make legitimate decisions concerning it. A telling example is that of Alexander Butyagin, a Russian archaeologist from the Hermitage Museum, who conducted excavations in Crimea without Ukraine’s permission and later traveled to Poland, where he was arrested on December 10–11. It never even occurred to him that, under European law, he was committing a crime.

Even after the occupation of Crimea and part of eastern Ukraine, Europe for a long time regarded what was happening as an anomaly and continued to believe that an agreement with Russia was possible. After all, even the USSR recognized the principle of the inviolability of borders in 1975, and the last attempt to annex another state – the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait in 1990 – ended in severe punishment.

Russian public consciousness, however, remains largely archaic. In it, force is more important than law, and therefore the aggressive ambitions of the Russian authorities are understandable, while Europeans’ faith in the rule of law is not. In this worldview, Russia has the right to any territories that ever belonged to it, and if it can send troops there, the territory is considered its own – regardless of international law.

Negotiations: A Search for Solutions within the Legal Framework, a Venue for a Deal, or the Legitimation of the Aggressor’s Gains?

Europe’s profound misunderstanding of Russia’s position led to its diplomatic defeat in February 2015 – the signing of the Second Minsk Agreements with the participation of France and Germany. Under these arrangements, Ukraine was supposed to hold elections in the occupied territories before regaining control of the border, and then legalize the pro-Russian armed formations it had previously repelled by force. France and Germany insisted that there was no alternative to the “Minsk format,” failing to understand that this was not a political dispute within the framework of law, but the seizure of a country in the barbaric, medieval sense of the word.

Today the question arises: what can Ukraine actually negotiate with Russia, which recognizes neither Ukrainian identity nor Ukraine’s right to exist? In reality – only a ceasefire, because the parties’ conceptions of peace are so different that agreeing on a full-fledged peace treaty is impossible. But even a ceasefire is not on the table: Russia continues its offensive, and the United States has done nothing to force the war into a positional stalemate, without which ceasefire negotiations are impossible. Worse still, the current U.S. administration has its own vision of the world order – different from both the Russian and the European ones – which has turned the prospects for agreements into a mirage.

Russia’s vision of the world order has rolled back to the Middle Ages: the world is ruled by violence and cruelty. The European approach is the opposite – it is based on law and values that matter more than expediency. Donald Trump’s worldview is also archaic, but not to the same extent: it more closely corresponds to the logic of the nineteenth century. Trump does not perceive values as foundational; he believes that the world order rests on deals based on advantage and that stability is ensured by the dominance of the strongest power. He does not want wars and tries to force the parties into agreements through pressure, seeing this as grounds for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Europeans do not understand Trump, and he does not understand Putin: can negotiations be effective?

Discussions about the terms of peace are taking place between parties that perceive reality differently. European leaders do not understand Trump and believe that he is destroying the world order. Trump, for his part, is convinced that he is proceeding from self-evident truths and believes that he understands Putin. But this is a mistake: Putin’s reality is even more archaic than Trump’s.

This misunderstanding is clearly visible in concrete examples. Europeans cannot grasp the meaning of a “Peace Council” led by Trump with a one-billion-dollar entry fee, especially when similar tasks are already performed by the UN. To them, it appears to be a substitution of international institutions with personal dominance. For Trump, however, international structures cannot stand above national ones, and the “Peace Council” is simply a deal-making club in which the host sets the rules and charges for entry.

Europeans are also perplexed by Trump’s claim to Greenland – the very fact of which calls NATO’s internal logic into question. Trump is convinced that the world rests on the right of the strong, and that his claim to Greenland, as the leader of the most powerful country, should be self-evident. He considers it unfair that only Putin, and not European leaders, acknowledges this. Within this logic, his demonstrative friendliness toward Putin becomes understandable: if Europe is a competitor in the Arctic, then Russia is a military counterweight to Europe, useful for pressure and deal-making.

Perhaps the strangest episode was Trump’s taking of the Nobel medal from María Corina Machado. This provoked ridicule, but Trump sincerely believes that the medal belongs to him and that this should be obvious to everyone, since it is precisely his strong leadership that, in his view, stops wars. Therefore, he feels obliged to take the medal so that no one has any doubts about it.

Ukraine proceeds from European values and a legal world order. Trump operates within an archaic nineteenth-century worldview; Putin’s is medieval, rooted in the era of the Muscovite Tsardom. What, then, are the chances of successful negotiations under such conditions? Some may exist, but the overriding priority remains the strengthening of Ukraine’s defensive capacity.

 

Nikolai Karpitsky. Life in Occupied Kherson: An Eyewitness Account

Source: PostPravda.info 12.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/life-in-occupied-kherson/

I spoke with Vitaly about life under occupation. He is known on social media under the nickname “Vital Ustas.” Before the war, he worked in the police. After retiring, he became involved in the scouting movement. He lived through the occupation of Kherson, in the Korabel housing estate on Quarantine Island.

Russian Occupation: Only Death Is Worse

When the full-scale invasion began, what I feared most was not the shelling, but the occupation itself. At times, the electricity was gone for long periods, and with it the connection to the outside world – you don’t know what is happening on the front line near you. There is only one thought in your head: anything but occupation. After the liberation of Izium and Kherson, I realized that reality was far more terrifying than even the darkest images my imagination had conjured. In conversation, a resident of Kherson told me that Russian occupation is a state of absolute lawlessness; only death can be worse.

Russian occupation is not simply a change of power. It is the transformation of a person into a thing – something to which anything can be done. It is impossible to hide from occupation or simply wait it out at home. The occupiers will come into your house and decide whether you live or die, and that decision may depend on the mood of drunken soldiers. In addition, the occupiers deliberately hunt down those who, in free Ukraine, openly expressed their views or demonstrated a Ukrainian identity.

Lawlessness

Vitaly from Kherson (“Vital Ustas”) speaks about everyday life in the occupied city.

– In the first days of the occupation, we were in shock. Two or three days – and they were already here: flags everywhere, military vehicles driving through the city. We thought there would be some kind of defense… How did they end up in Kakhovka on the very first day?!

– This was right at the beginning. An armored vehicle pulls up to a mother and her son who were simply walking down the street. A soldier points a machine gun at them and says nothing. She told me about it herself later. The street was empty. The mother stood there, not knowing what to do – whether to walk or not. They stood there, trembling. Finally, the son said, “Well, let’s go, Mom.” “Let’s go.”

The right to life is like air: while it exists, you don’t notice it.

– Without documents, you are a piece of meat, – says Vitaly. –Compared to this, the gangster 1990s were a children’s fairy tale.

Like Vitaly, I too remember the lawlessness and crime of the early 1990s, but even then I knew for certain that I was considered a human being regardless of whether I had my passport with me or had left it at home. Under occupation, however, even having documents guarantees nothing – even if they are perfectly in order.

– You leave your house and don’t know whether you’ll come back, – Vitaly says. – You don’t know where you’ll end up by evening: in a basement, or shot at a checkpoint.

As an example, Vitaly recalls the story of villagers who regularly brought milk to the city and were therefore already well known at a checkpoint.

– Why do you frisk us every time? Who are you looking for? – they ask.
– We’re looking for Nazis.
– And how many have you caught here already?
– We don’t talk to them. If we notice anything, we shoot to kill. Our battalion commander told us: “If you see anything suspicious and there’s no resistance, you’re allowed to kill on the spot.”

Vitaly did not hear of anyone being shot at a checkpoint inside the city itself, but in the suburbs it happened frequently. In the city, checkpoints were more often manned by the National Guard (Rosgvardiya). There, they might still “think” before shooting, but at the slightest suspicion people were detained and sent “to the basement.”

At the Checkpoint

– I lived in the Korabel housing estate, – Vitaly continues. – It’s the island part of Kherson. There’s a shipbuilding plant there; from it, they were firing at Mykolaiv. Our district was cut off from the rest of Kherson by a checkpoint. To get from the island to the city and back, you had to pass through it – traffic jams were terrible.

– When you cross a checkpoint, everyone is tense, like a drawn string. Once you’ve passed it, there’s a collective sigh of relief. In the city, checkpoints were mostly set up at exits: roads were completely blocked. But from time to time, mobile checkpoints appeared inside the city – suddenly they would block a street for two or three hours, set up a machine gun, and start checking all vehicles: documents, luggage.

– Phones had to be “cleaned”: they were checked at checkpoints. They went through everything, which took a lot of time – minibuses stood and waited. Sometimes FSB officers would show up. Using special equipment, they checked phone activity over the previous six months. If they found anything suspicious, the person was taken away. Some later disappeared without a trace. In Bilozerka, for example, a man was taken this way, and later his body – bearing signs of torture – was dumped near his house.

– We’re crossing the checkpoint between our district and the rest of Kherson, and immediately they shout: “All men out! Documents! Strip to the waist!” They checked tattoos. They knew prison tattoos, but if they found Ukrainian symbols or anything resembling runes, they took the person immediately. And after that – torture. That’s why those who had tattoos tried not to leave their homes at all.

Vitaly also recounts another case, retold to him by the mother of two sons. The elder was 22; the younger, 18, had Down syndrome. The older brother was taking the younger one to the hospital. At the checkpoint, soldiers checked his phone and saw messages in Ukrainian: acquaintances from Kyiv had been writing to him on Telegram.

“Ukrainian language?! You bastard!” – they shouted and dragged him out of the minibus. The minibus stood there, the passengers watching as the young man was beaten. In the end, the soldiers decided to take him away, but the passengers began to plead, asking that the older brother be allowed to accompany the younger one to the hospital. Only because of this was the young man released, but his details were recorded and he was warned: if they ever saw Ukrainian-language correspondence again, it would be the end for him.

People could be beaten simply for saying the “wrong” word or for “looking the wrong way.” Vitaly gives the example of a 65-year-old man on a minibus who merely snapped back when soldiers started harassing him. He was dragged outside, beaten with boots and rifle butts in front of all the passengers, and then thrown onto the roadside. Sometimes women were dragged out and beaten in the same way.

Terror

Vitaly says that occupation is a constant expectation of something terrible.

– You wake up in the morning and immediately check the news. One day they announce some kind of “mobilization”: all men must register for military service. Another day it’s forced passportization. Then the hryvnia is abolished. Then they’re searching for someone. Then there are house-to-house raids. Then payment terminals are taken from shops. We paid with bank cards – and that infuriated the “rashists.” By August, terminals had been removed from a number of stores, though not everywhere. The worst thing is that you are completely rightless. There is no protection, no guarantee that you won’t be taken simply because someone didn’t like you.

– Sometimes, to intimidate people, the occupiers themselves posted videos of torture. At the very beginning, someone stole a car from them. They found that person and posted a video showing how they tortured him with electricity – attaching wires to his ears. The pain is unbearable: it feels as if your brain is being boiled.

“House-to-house raids” – this was the name given to planned searches of civilians’ homes, which Vitaly describes:

– A knock on the door, the first question: “Who is in the apartment?” They checked identities and searched everything, overlooking not a single detail. They didn’t manage to search all of Kherson, but in villages I know of houses that were searched several times.

– There were constant reports of people disappearing, – Vitaly says. – Once, young people went out for a walk after curfew – and never came back. In the morning, a mother stands at the police station: “Where is my son?” – “We don’t know.” He might have been sent to dig trenches or something even worse. Sometimes people never returned at all. To this day, no one knows how many people went missing. It’s impossible to count exactly – people simply vanished.

– There was a manhunt for participants in the ATO (the Anti-Terrorist Operation in eastern Ukraine) and members of the Territorial Defense. The rashists had lists – possibly handed over by collaborators. That is how the deputy commander of a Territorial Defense battalion was kidnapped. Two days later, his body, bearing signs of torture, was found in the Dnipro River.

Protests

The threat of occupation is more frightening than shelling – that is exactly how I felt during the bombardments in frontline Sloviansk. That is why I was struck by how the residents of Kherson, from whom the occupiers were trying to take away even the right to life, went out to protest under the barrels of machine guns.

On March 5, the first mass rally of Kherson residents took place on Freedom Square, with Ukrainian flags and slogans such as “Kherson is Ukraine” and “Russians, go home.” The military fired warning shots, but the rally did not disperse. From that moment on, protests in Kherson became a daily occurrence.

Over the next two days, people also took to the streets in other cities of the Kherson region – Nova Kakhovka, Hola Prystan, and Oleshky. On March 6, in Nova Kakhovka, the military used weapons against protesters, wounding five people. On March 13, the largest protest took place in Kherson, with around 10,000 residents participating.

From March 19, violence against protesters in Kherson escalated. The occupiers shifted from tactics of intimidation to outright violence: harsh detentions and beatings, the use of stun grenades, and tear gas. By April, the protests became fragmented and decentralized, shifting toward brief gatherings and symbolic actions.

The last mass protest against the Russian occupation in Kherson took place on April 27. The Yellow Ribbon movement organized a peaceful march under the slogan “Kherson is Ukraine,” with about 500 participants. During the brutal dispersal, some participants were injured.

All of this I knew from social media – at a distance – so I asked Vitaly to describe what he felt as an eyewitness.

– The rashists initially assumed that everyone here would be unanimously pro-Russia. Instead, the people were hostile and tense. A Rosgvardiya officer gets on a minibus and asks, “Why do you all look so sullen?” Everyone stays silent – they know that no matter what, they can’t say anything. Say a word, and they can drag you out of the minibus and tell the driver, “Drive on, we’re keeping him.” When they saw the protests, they realized that this was a hostile environment for them.

– The rallies began on March 5. At first, the occupiers simply observed. Then they started moving closer – fully armed, with assault rifles, masked, riding on military vehicles. People stood there, chanting. At first, thousands gathered; then fewer and fewer. I attended rallies during the second week – it was terrifying. They were filming everything, and a drone was flying overhead. I was afraid I’d end up in some database and then be taken away later for participating in the rally. For about three weeks, the protests continued actively, and then they moved from Freedom Square to Shevchenko Park. There, eight or nine people would gather by the monument.

– There was a hunt for everyone who had “shown up” on social media and taken part in the protests, – Vitaly explains in response to a question about the risks of participating in rallies. – First and foremost, they went after those who had been especially active during the first month of the occupation. One woman I know was noticed at a rally – or perhaps identified through social media. Later, she was detained and taken to a basement. There, they laid a naked young man on a table in front of her, and three soldiers raped him. After that, they told her: “If we see you at rallies or checkpoints again, the same will happen to you.” From then on, she stayed quiet as a mouse until the end of the occupation – went nowhere, afraid of everything.

Collaborators

The occupiers wanted to govern a functioning city, but to do so they needed specialists in many different fields. Vitaly explains:

– Once they realized that the city was fully under their control, filtration measures began. At first, they expected people to voluntarily go to work for them and inform on anyone who supported Ukraine. Some did, but there were too few to quickly build their own system of governance. Then they began deliberately searching for civil servants and municipal workers – at every level.

– They decided to revive the orchestra at the drama theater. This was about two months before liberation. They found the conductor, Yury Kerpatenko, and told him: “Come on, the theater has to function. You’ll work for us.” He refused. An argument followed, word by word – and they shot him right in his own home.

– In July, the rashists began working with children – in a militarized format. In Kherson, they organized the first “Young Army” club and found some teachers. I was afraid they would come after me too, because I had previously worked with the scouting movement in the National Scout Organization of Ukraine. And before that, I had worked in the police.

– If I saw a former colleague on the street, I tried to cross to the other side just to avoid running into them. I didn’t know whether they were “with us” or “with them.” What if he said right there in the street, “Come work with us – the pay is good,” and you replied, “No, I don’t want to”? Then the question would immediately follow: “Why don’t you want to?” That’s how they pressured former civil servants and municipal workers: “Come work for us! … Why don’t you want to? … Out of principle? … Oh, so you’re for Ukraine!” And after that, anything could happen: blackmail, the basement, torture.

– There was a case in Kherson well known in police circles. A retired police officer with the rank of major went to work for the rashists and promised to bring along his co-godfather, Oleh Khudiakov: “We’re co-godfathers, friends – we worked together for so many years. He’s competent; he’ll definitely work for you.” But Khudiakov categorically refused. He was held in a basement for three days – what they did to him there is unknown. In the end, he agreed to cooperate, and they released him. He returned home and hanged himself.

– We were afraid even of acquaintances. There were people we had been friends with for many years, and then suddenly it turned out they were rashists to the core: “Hooray! Hooray! We’re with Russia!” What to expect from them next was impossible to know.

– For example, I know a singing teacher at a cultural college. He never openly declared his political views, but one day acquaintances came to him and said, “We’re going to report you.” – “For what?” – “You taught classes in Ukrainian for so many years!” That was enough to label a person a “Nazi.”

Connection with the Outside World

– In April, Ukrainian internet and mobile communications were cut off, – Vitaly recounts. – The occupiers routed internet access through Crimea – with restrictions similar to those in Russia. Mobile service was switched to special SIM cards on which Ukrainian numbers were blocked, making it impossible to call relatives in territories controlled by Ukraine.

– In March and April, people were leaving en masse via Mykolaiv. My co-godfather was traveling to Oleksandrivka – it’s in Kherson Oblast – and had to pass through about twenty checkpoints. At some, the soldiers were sober; at others, drunk, but searches were conducted everywhere. At that time, there were still no registries of ATO participants at the checkpoints, so many people managed to slip through – even in May, people were still able to leave.

– By June, leaving had become extremely difficult. Huge traffic jams formed in front of the checkpoints, and cars were searched for up to an hour. One acquaintance managed to leave only on the twenty-seventh day. People stood in line a month, renting housing just to spend the night. Sometimes the rashists started shooting – they wanted to scare people into dispersing – but no one backed down.

Schools

– During the occupation, from March until mid-May, schools were not operating, – Vitaly continues. – At the end of May and the beginning of June, about four schools reopened in Kherson – one per district. In those cases, principals made deals with the occupiers. There were few children, and classes were incomplete.

– Lessons did not last long and stopped once the Armed Forces of Ukraine began striking military bases with HIMARS. The occupation authorities started claiming that the city was “dangerous,” although there was no threat to schools: the strikes were very precise and targeted military facilities, including Rosgvardiya bases. We applauded when the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck.

– After that, the schools were closed, and children began to be sent to “camps” – to Krasnodar Krai, to Crimea, to Belarus. Entire classes were sent, and then they were never brought back. As a result, the children either remained under occupation or ended up in Russia.

Kherson. Historical Background

On March 2, Russian troops occupied Kherson. In September, Russia announced a so-called “referendum” and on 30 September signed a “treaty of accession,” declaring the incorporation of Kherson Oblast into the Russian Federation. On November 11, 2022, the city of Kherson was liberated from Russian forces after 256 days of occupation. Before the occupation, Kherson’s population was about 279,000; today it is approximately 60,000.

At the beginning of the occupation, repression was chaotic, and random people became victims. As repression became systematized, a deliberate search for the “unreliable” began. During the occupation of Kherson, the repressive machinery did not have time to complete the transition from mass, chaotic repression to the targeted, systematic persecution of the kind now practiced in Russia.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Will Iran Follow Russia’s Path, or Is There Hope for a Better Future?

Source: PostPravda.info 21.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/will-iran-follow-russias-path/

The January protests in Iran were suppressed with inhumane brutality in the name of a regime that proclaims the primacy of religious morality. Yet such brutality contradicts any morality and any religion. At what point does the religious and moral motivation of the Iranian authorities become necrophilic? Is the degeneration of ideological totalitarianism in Iran into necro-imperialism inevitable – by analogy with what has occurred in Russia?

The Scale of Violence in Iran Is Unknown: What We See Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg

The Iranian authorities imposed a strict information blockade and shut down the internet, leaving us without a full picture of what is happening – the true scale of repression and the number of victims. Nevertheless, even fragmentary data indicate that the level of violence and cruelty is unprecedented, even by Iranian standards. The number of those killed is estimated in the thousands, the wounded in the tens of thousands.

According to the human rights network HRANA (Human Rights Activist News Agency), as of January 18–19, 2026, 3,766 deaths had been confirmed during the suppression of the protests; more than 2,000 people were seriously injured, and approximately 24,000 were detained. And this is only the tip of the iceberg: the real number of victims may be several times higher. After the protests were crushed, the death toll is likely to continue rising due to those tortured in prisons and executions.

There is extensive evidence of shoot-to-kill tactics aimed at the head and torso, as well as cases in which the wounded were deliberately shot. One documented incident involved security forces storming a hospital in the city of Ilam, where patients and doctors were beaten. These episodes – mere fragments of a much larger tragedy – demonstrate that the authorities treat their own country as an occupied territory.

Why Does the Iranian Government Perceive Its Own Country as Hostile?

As in the Soviet system, the state in Iran is subordinated to a suprastate ideological hierarchy. Real power belongs not to the president, elected by universal suffrage, but to the rahbar – the supreme religious leader. This position is currently held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He exercises direct control over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij organization – a youth paramilitary force under IRGC authority – as well as key judicial and religious institutions.

The IRGC functions as a “state within a state,” accountable to neither the president nor parliament. It constitutes a parallel power structure with its own ground forces, intelligence services, and judicial-investigative bodies.

It was precisely the IRGC and the Basij that treated the people of Iran as “alien hostile,” with whom they shared neither a national nor a religious bond. A dictatorship that proclaims the defense of religion and morality as its priority eventually comes to view the population of its own country as enemies to whom moral norms do not apply. This means that there is no longer any shared identity – neither national nor religious – between the Iranian authorities and Iranian society. These two Irans – the Iran of power and the Iran of citizens – are no longer capable of peaceful coexistence.

History has already seen a precedent for such a split in the country: the Red Terror unleashed by the Bolsheviks after they seized power in Russia. They treated the population of their own country as the inhabitants of an occupied territory, physically destroying clergy, entrepreneurs, and other “hostile elements” merely on the basis of their belonging to a particular social group. What distinguished them from the Iranian theocratic regime was only the atheistic nature of their ideology; the structure of ideological power itself was essentially the same.

The Bolsheviks succeeded in destroying old Russia and building a totalitarian Soviet Union in its place, founded on a new ideological identity. However, historical logic led to its subsequent transformation into the form embodied by contemporary Russia.

The historical logic of the evolution of a totalitarian regime can be described as follows:

• an ideological superstructure is formed above the state (the party, the rahbar), which justifies total control over state institutions and the everyday lives of people through some “higher” idea (communism, Shiite theocracy);
• for the practical implementation of this control, a repressive apparatus and security services are created (the Cheka, NKVD, KGB, IRGC);
• over time, ideology loses its capacity to mobilize and subordinate society, while the security services free themselves from ideological oversight and begin to be guided primarily by the instinct of self-preservation and the retention of power;
• representatives of the regime’s security services come to power but prove incapable of solving complex social and economic problems and therefore instinctively seek to simplify the social system through violence and the destruction of the disloyal;
• social necrophilia takes shape – a worldview in which death becomes a universal means of solving problems. As a result, ideological totalitarianism is transformed into a necro-imperialism that is devoid of a clear ideological direction and cynical in its essence.

Iran: Threats and Hope

Historical logic is the inertia of the course of events; it does not determine the specific decisions people will make. It can be likened to the current of a river, which must be taken into account in order to navigate, yet from the current alone it is impossible to predict where and when ships will arrive. That is precisely why one should caution against arbitrary generalizations: in any historical process, different – sometimes opposing – tendencies coexist, and it is only the decisions of people themselves that determine which of them will prevail.

Unlike the late Soviet Union, Iran’s population remains young. This is evident from population growth – from approximately 37–38 million at the time of the Islamic Revolution to 88.5 million today. Political opponents and activists can be destroyed, but it is impossible to destroy an entire generation of youth – active, dynamic, and unwilling to live in a totalitarian society. Whether this new generation will be able to prevail remains an open question.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appears as decrepit as Iran’s state ideology, which in many respects recalls that of the late Soviet Union. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other repressive institutions are far stronger and more aggressive than the security services of the late USSR, and in their struggle to retain power they will stop at nothing. It is possible that the authorities will succeed in suppressing the protests and freezing the regime along a North Korean model. Another scenario is also possible – a repetition of the Russian path: after the fall of the dictatorship of the ayatollahs, the country may move for a time toward democratic forms of government, only for the heirs of the IRGC to seize power and establish a new dictatorship, as happened in Russia – one based not on ideology but on a necrophilic instinct.

The historical logic of such a development is not a predetermined future, but a threat we are already confronting today. At the same time, the historical logic in which a new generation rejects the theocratic totalitarianism of contemporary Iran does not guarantee a better future; it merely offers hope for one.

Nikolai Karpitsky. War Against Ukrainian Identity: Why Russians Do Not Believe Even Their Relatives in Ukraine

Source: PostPravda.info 18.11.2024.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/war-against-ukrainian-identity/

Photo by Cédric VT on Unsplash

 
Can a national identity be false? The question may seem absurd. After all, if people perceive themselves as one nation, then that is how it is, and no one has the right to judge whether this is correct or not. But what if a national identity is built on the denial of another identity? Moreover, what if this denial has become the basis for mass support of a war against another people?

If the war against Ukraine were supported only by morally degraded or poorly educated people, this could be explained by propaganda and manipulation. But the war is supported by respectable Christians, by members of the intelligentsia, by scholars. More than that, they trust Putin more than their own relatives, colleagues, or fellow believers who live in Ukraine.

Why Russians Do Not Believe Even Their Loved Ones in Ukraine

In the spring of 2022, many stories circulated in online media about Russians refusing to believe their relatives in Ukraine when those relatives said they were being bombed at that very moment. For example, a daughter calls her mother in Russia from Kharkiv to say that residential neighborhoods are being shelled, that explosions are very close – and in response she hears: “Don’t make things up!”, “No one is bombing you!”, “Our troops will come soon and liberate you – no one will even touch you with a finger!”

Today, such stories are no longer circulating, because Ukrainians have stopped trying to persuade Russians – it is pointless. I can confirm this from my own experience.

In 2011, I was one of the organizers of an interfaith dialogue in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Representatives of different religions shared their spiritual experiences, sought to understand one another’s positions, and tried to find a common ethical foundation in order to overcome xenophobia. In 2015, I went to the Donbas, collected testimonies about the lives of Christians under conditions of war, and wanted to share these accounts with my fellow townspeople. However, participants in the interfaith dialogue said they were “outside politics” and refused to listen to me.

After the full-scale invasion in 2022, it was no longer possible to hide one’s position behind the mask of apolitical neutrality. Some supported Ukraine, but they were forced either to leave Russia or to retreat into internal exile. As a result, only those remained in the interfaith dialogue who believe that there are Nazis in Ukraine and that Putin must therefore carry out its so-called “denazification.”

I suggested that they speak with their fellow believers in Ukraine and learn from eyewitnesses what is really happening. My proposal was categorically rejected. This was strange.

Even if a person is completely brainwashed by propaganda, they still remain a witness to everyday life in their own country. For example, if I were to meet a resident of North Korea, I would not listen to their communist propaganda, but I would try to learn from them – as a witness – about everyday life in their country. If Russian Christians, Vaishnavas, or Muslims believe that all their fellow believers in Ukraine are brainwashed by Nazi propaganda, why do they not at least ask how this supposed “Nazism” manifests itself in everyday life? What is most depressing is the complete lack of such interest, along with the unshakable conviction that they know better than Ukrainians themselves how life in Ukraine actually is.

From this it follows that they believe Kremlin propaganda because they themselves want to believe it, and therefore fear communicating with those who might call that belief into question. In other words, they want their worldview – based on an imperial identity – to be confirmed by facts, and so they deliberately seek out fake stories about Ukraine in order to believe in them. This means that their Russian imperial identity outweighs their religious identity. And this imperial identity is built on the denial of Ukrainian identity.

A similar phenomenon can be observed in the scientific and academic community, where, seemingly, erudition and a critical attitude toward information are cultivated, and therefore this behavior can no longer be explained by the effectiveness of propaganda alone. How many people in this environment support Ukraine? After the full-scale invasion, several of my colleagues from Russia contacted me with words of moral support. Among them was one world-renowned scholar who, through me, reached out to Ukrainian colleagues to apologize for his country. But this was an isolated case: the majority either remain silent or openly support the criminal war.

I asked Anatoly Akhutin, a well-known Russian philosopher who emigrated to Ukraine, whether his colleagues from Russia had contacted him to apologize or to express moral support to Ukrainian colleagues. He replied that, of course, he has friends in Russia who support Ukraine, but that among philosophers and intellectuals no one had reached out to him. On the contrary, many had stopped communicating with him altogether.

To my question of whether the issue really lies in Russian identity, Anatoly Akhutin replied:

“I think the issue is not simply ‘Russian identity,’ but the fact that this ‘identity’ is imperial. I am not talking about political imperialism (of which there is more than enough), nor even ideological imperialism (Moscow as the Third Rome, and so on), but about something much deeper – on an irrational, subconscious level.

Note that the word ‘Russian’ is an adjective, and what kind of ‘substance’ stands behind it is unclear – it can be whatever we like. This imperialism feeds on a messianic idea (stolen from Byzantium), on the self-awareness of a ‘God-bearing people’ (stolen from the Jews), and on reliance on a great history that was stolen – or, in fact, alas, gifted – from Ukraine itself, which makes Ukraine all the more hateful.

Thus, the denial of an independent Ukrainian identity also grows out of a fear of hanging in a historical void – as some kind of bastard offspring of the Horde – of suddenly finding oneself without Roman heritage, without succession to Byzantine Orthodoxy, without one’s own history: an empty adjective without a noun.”

In support of Anatoly Akhutin’s idea, I can cite a story that was told to me at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Before the full-scale war, a Polish Vietnamologist from Warsaw, Leszek Sobolewski, visited the institute. In a conversation with the then head of the department – now the director of the Institute – Viktor Kiktenko, the Polish scholar asked for his patronymic so that he could address him politely. The Ukrainian colleague replied that the form of address “Pan Viktor” was perfectly polite and even sounded better, as it was less formal and more personal.

Later, Pan Leszek recounted this story to his Russian colleague, also a Vietnamologist, Ilya Usov, who reacted with extreme indignation. He was outraged that in Ukraine people use the forms of address “pan” and “pani,” and immediately began to argue that a supposedly Russian-speaking population had risen up in Donbas and that there were no Russian troops there. Pan Leszek was taken aback by this reaction. What business is it of a Russian scholar how his Ukrainian colleagues address one another? And why was he outraged specifically by Ukrainians, rather than by Poles, who use the same forms of polite address?

It should be emphasized that this was the reaction of a scholar who, by virtue of his specialization, ought to understand questions of national identity and contemporary politics. I believe that in the forms of address “pan” and “pani,” the Russian scholar perceived a demonstration of Ukrainian identity as independent of Russian identity – and it was precisely this that provoked his outrage. In other words, the issue here is not propaganda, but a worldview in which Ukrainian identity itself is perceived as a hostile, anti-Russian ideology.

A Worldview Based on the Denial of Ukrainian Identity

Imperialism in the Soviet Union was instilled from the school bench. In school lessons, we were taught that Russian history begins with Kyivan Rus. Its development was supposedly interrupted by the Tatar-Mongol invasion, after which Kyiv somehow ended up outside Russia’s borders, but Bohdan Khmelnytsky later “reunited” Ukraine with Russia, after which their histories allegedly became inseparable. Ukrainian school education eventually freed itself from this false imperial interpretation of history, and imperial sentiments largely disappeared in Ukraine. In Russian schools, however, this narrative is still taught in essentially the same form today.

As a result, most Russians by default accept the pseudoscientific premise of a “triune Russian people” – Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians – as the collective heir to Kyivan Rus, and therefore do not perceive Ukraine as a separate country with its own culture and history. In reality, there was no single people either in ancient times or today. On the territory of Kyivan Rus lived many different peoples, including Slavic tribes that migrated in different waves and were, in essence, distinct peoples.

The concept of the “triune Russian people” is a false construct of imperial ideology that supplants historical consciousness. Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church has invoked this concept to justify claims to Ukraine as part of his church’s canonical territory. Putin, however, has gone further. He adopted this idea from Russian nationalists in a more radical form, according to which neither the Ukrainian people nor the Ukrainian language exist at all, and Ukraine is merely a borderland of Russia.

According to this worldview, the West has always sought to destroy Russia and, to that end, imposed upon the Russian population of Ukraine the idea that they are Ukrainians rather than Russians. Ukrainian identity, in this interpretation, was invented by Russia’s enemies: it is portrayed as an Austro-Hungarian project in which an artificial language was allegedly created on the basis of rural Ukrainian dialects and borrowings from Polish.

Following Russian nationalist thought, Putin perceives Ukrainian identity as a hostile ideology akin to Nazism, from which Ukrainian society must be “liberated” – that is, subjected to “denazification.” In practice, this means the destruction of the Ukrainian language and of Ukrainian cultural and historical consciousness. Consequently, in the occupied territories of Ukraine, all those who in any way manifest Ukrainian identity are subjected to repression.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the formation of new civic nations began in both Ukraine and Russia. In Ukraine, this process advanced at an accelerating pace, and external aggression only hastened it. Because Ukrainian self-identification manifests itself in diverse forms, this process has been accompanied by intense public debate, including mutual accusations that are often unjust. Nevertheless, a shared basis for mutual understanding has already emerged: the Ukrainian civic nation consists of all those who take responsibility for Ukrainian culture and language. In other words, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation, a person is Ukrainian if they consider themselves Ukrainian and assume responsibility for Ukraine.

In Russia, by contrast, the process of forming a civic nation was impeded by imperial consciousness. When the security services came to power under Putin, this imperial consciousness mutated into a new form – necro-imperialism. To justify their claims to Ukraine, Russian necro-imperialists portray Ukrainian identity as a Nazi ideology. Yet for such an absurd assertion to be believed at all, one must first transform one’s own identity into an ideology.

It is precisely this ideological transformation of identity in mass Russian consciousness that led to the abortion of a Russian civic nation. Today, nothing unites Russian society except violence and imperial ideology. In other words, in place of a national identity, a void has emerged – one filled by ideology. This void only intensifies fear of Ukrainian identity, especially against the backdrop of the rapid formation of a Ukrainian civic nation. For this reason, many Russians refuse to believe even their closest relatives in Ukraine.

Is There a Way Out?

We can now answer the question posed at the beginning. A national identity can be false when identification is based on allegiance to a political regime or to power itself, and when it depends on the denial of another people’s identity. Such a false identity condemns societies to endless wars: the end of one war merely marks the beginning of preparations for the next.

As long as Russians do not abandon this false identity, they will be unable to believe their loved ones in Ukraine and will continue to support the war. Consequently, it is not enough merely to defeat Russia militarily; it is also necessary to support the formation of new identities among the peoples of Russia – identities that are not bound to imperial ideology.

Nikolai Karpitsky. The Uprising of the Archaic: Why Do People Choose Dictatorship

Source: PostPravda.info 14.05.2025.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/the-uprising-of-the-archaic/

Thanks to information technologies, a global space of communication has emerged. The world is now in a transitional state on the path toward a new information society, in which conflicts over territorial control should lose their significance. It is precisely during this transitional period that an uprising of archaic thinking against modernity has begun.

The war against Ukraine constitutes a second front in a broader war against modern civilization. The first front was opened by international terrorism, beginning with the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001. This war confronts us with a fundamental question: Why do so many people choose evil? Is it a coincidence that the establishment of dictatorship in Russia, the rise of international terrorism, and the transformation of the internet into an element of everyday life are all occurring within the same historical period?

What Caused the Uprising of the Archaic?

All transitional historical periods are accompanied by social upheaval. This occurs because many people fail to adapt to change and instead struggle to restore archaic forms of life. One example that directly concerns me is the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which led to the establishment of a totalitarian regime with imperial ambitions. It concerns me personally because, just last night, not far from where I am, Geran drones – developed using Iranian technology – once again struck nearby.

Today, it is not a single region but the entire world that finds itself in a transitional state; consequently, there is a danger that local wars may escalate into a Third World War.

The transition to an information society is associated with the emergence of a global space of communication in which state borders and language differences have ceased to be barriers to interaction. The human psychotype itself is changing. Modern children are rarely alone – they are in constant contact with one another. No one yet knows how this will transform human nature. Some people use the opportunities provided by information technologies for self-development and creativity, while others retreat into informational bubbles of like-minded individuals, where absurd and dangerous myths are born.

Characteristics of Archaic and Modern Consciousness

The uprising of the archaic encompasses both archaic dictatorships and modern democracies. A defining feature of modern civilization is the priority of the individual over society as a whole. Modern society differs from archaic society in that human rights form the foundation of the legal system, and respect for personal self-identification lies at the heart of morality. A moral attitude toward a person is determined by their individuality, not by nationality, social status, or membership in a particular community.

A hallmark of an archaic worldview is the priority of the collective over the individual. This is expressed in the denial of the right to self-identification: a person is not entitled to independently determine their religious, national, social, or gender identity – these are instead decided by the collective, clan, estate, society, or the state. Even the choice of whom to love in a patriarchal society was determined not by the individual, but by their parents.

Let us imagine the patriarchal life of a village. For centuries, almost nothing changed there: invasions, changes of power, and revolutions passed it by. Yet there is no hiding from the ubiquitous internet, and through it the wider world penetrates this closed environment – bringing with it attitudes toward tradition, religion, upbringing, and sexuality that are alien and unacceptable to it. To the horror of the elders, their children adopt these foreign norms. The most common reaction is denial – a refusal to acknowledge the changes. Yet there are always those who join radical or terrorist movements, believing that the modern world embodies evil and that any crimes committed against it are justified. This is how ISIS, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and similar organizations emerged, in which good is declared evil and evil is declared good.

The Right to Self-Identification

A person has the right to self-identification, including identification grounded in archaic values. Archaic consciousness is neither good nor bad – it is natural. What becomes unnatural is its distortion when it collides with modernity, giving rise to hatred and a perception of the surrounding world as evil. Islamic extremism is no longer archaic; it has nothing in common with traditional Islam. It is a new phenomenon that emerged from the conflict between the archaic and the modern.

However, it would be a serious mistake to divide people rigidly into “archaic” and “modern.” The same individual may be guided by archaic values in some areas of life while being entirely modern in others. Thus, Elon Musk, while modern in scientific and technological terms, has revealed himself to be markedly archaic in aspects of his personal life – specifically, in his inability to accept his child’s gender identity, which has influenced his political views.

Nevertheless, I do not mean to suggest that modern views are inherently “better” than archaic ones. I am generally opposed to such hierarchical evaluations. Both archaic and modern beliefs deserve equal respect. The only unacceptable beliefs are those that lead to harm being inflicted on others. That is why the defining feature of a modern state is a legal system that protects the rights and identity of every individual – including the right to uphold both archaic and modern values.

Fear of Modernity and the Denial of Reality

The conflict between the archaic and the modern continually arises and is resolved with each generational change. This is a natural condition of human history. The problem lies not in the conflict itself, but in the fact that fear of modernity can give rise to new phenomena that transform archaic consciousness into a dangerous form. This fear is reborn as hatred and leads to situations in which conservative people, who previously lived by traditional values, suddenly begin to support evil.

One of the conditions for such a transformation is a defensive psychological reaction – the denial of reality. There is a specific term for this phenomenon: denialism.

Denialism is a worldview based on the irrational rejection of reality, especially when it contradicts a person’s beliefs. It includes the denial of empirically verifiable facts about which there is broad consensus within the scientific community. Examples of denialism include the denial of viruses that cause AIDS and COVID-19, various conspiracy theories, Fomenko’s “New Chronology,” the anti-vaccination movement, the Flat Earth theory, and similar beliefs. Under stable social conditions, adherents of such views are perceived as marginal, but during transitional periods their influence increases sharply.

Why Do Conservative Believers Support Cynical Populists?

One of the most paradoxical phenomena accompanying the uprising of the archaic is the alliance between cynics, the ochlos, and conservatives oriented toward traditional moral values.

The term ochlos is used here to denote poorly educated people focused on immediate self-interest and unconcerned with questions of morality or politics. Until recently, they had little influence on political life; however, once they entered the global space of communication, they instinctively began to support populists, perceiving cynicism and egoism as social norms. This has led to a situation in which provocative behavior – lying, sexual scandals, and public outrage – which once could have destroyed a political career, has now become a key factor in the success of cynical populists.

Why, then, are such politicians supported by representatives of the conservative intelligentsia and religious communities? Moreover, they often justify this support by appealing to moral values. This phenomenon is most vividly expressed in religious circles. Political populists present themselves as defenders of conservative morality – and, in essence, as protectors against change itself. Many believers see such leaders as the last barrier to the moral degradation of society and therefore forgive them personal moral failings and even criminal behavior.

However, not all defenders of public morality possess a personal ethical position formed through inner self-determination. In a religious context, such a position is shaped through personal communion with God. At the same time, religion also confers its authority upon the moral system prevailing in society at a given historical moment. Thus, if in the Middle Ages the dissection of corpses was considered immoral, Christian morality condemned it; today it does not, because society’s attitude toward this practice has changed.

Since patriarchal morality predominated in archaic societies, it is precisely this moral framework that believers who have not developed an inner ethical position of their own often set in opposition to modernity. It is within this milieu that support for cynical politicians emerges – politicians who are perceived as defenders of public morality.

At What Point Does the Position of Conservative Believers Transform into a Rejection of the Modern World?

In 2014, all attempts at dialogue between conservative evangelical Christians in Russia and Ukraine collapsed, even though prior to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine they had been friends and perceived no significant differences between themselves. Russian Christian leaders explained their support for Putin by appealing to conservative values; however, the very fact that they positioned themselves in opposition to their Ukrainian co-believers indicates the loss of a shared religious and moral foundation. Put simply, their religious conservatism was transformed into Russian fascism, also known as rashism.

At the same time, many Ukrainian evangelical Christians supported – and continue to support – Donald Trump, which has drawn criticism from other co-believers. However, within the Ukrainian evangelical community this did not result in a schism, because their conservative consciousness did not undergo the same transformation that occurred among their Russian counterparts.

A similar pattern can be observed in other religious traditions. In 2011, I was one of the organizers of an interfaith dialogue in Tomsk that brought together representatives of nearly all confessions. The goal was to encourage participants to listen to perspectives different from their own and to refrain from imposing their views. This task was handled particularly well by a Krishna devotee, whom participants trusted, sensing her sincerity and openness to dialogue. At one point, she remarked that she wanted a safe world for her children, and that such a world was possible only if there were a shared moral understanding common to all confessions.

However, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, she morally supported Putin’s position and the actions of the Russian army and categorically refused dialogue with Ukrainians – even with Ukrainian co-believers. This led to a rupture in the interfaith dialogue and to its effective transformation into a closed sect.

I recall that in the prewar period, when we communicated quite well, she would sometimes speak out against vaccinations and sometimes against democracy, calling it “demon crazy” (that is, the rule of crazy demons). I regarded this as mere eccentricity and did not attach much importance to it. As it turned out, her moral position was merely a reaction to fear of modernity – a kind of psychological defense mechanism. With the start of the full-scale invasion, another defense mechanism was activated: blind faith in a leader. I observed similar “eccentricities” among other participants in the interfaith dialogue who now refuse to communicate with their Ukrainian co-believers. This was not simply eccentricity, but a form of denial of reality which, under the conditions of a necro-imperial dictatorship, transformed into a worldview so far removed from their religion that they lost the capacity for dialogue even with fellow believers.

What Do Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, and Xi Jinping Have in Common?

In the politics – and even in the political rhetoric – of these three leaders, the concept of human rights is virtually absent. Yet it was precisely an orientation toward the value of the individual and the protection of human rights that enabled the West to prevail over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. All three leaders operate within the conceptual framework of archaic imperialism.

The United States and India are the world’s largest democracies, and the resurgence of the archaic in these societies will likely continue until a new generation comes of age. China, however, thanks to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, transformed from a totalitarian empire into an archaic empire. For this reason, it remains unclear how long China can remain in this intermediate state and in which direction it will ultimately move – toward democracy or back toward totalitarianism.

Trump, Modi, and Xi Jinping understand one another well and believe that they understand Putin – but they are mistaken. Although Putin draws on archaic elements, he has come to preside over an entirely new political system: necro-imperialism.

What Is Necro-Imperialism?

The goal of archaic imperialism is prosperity for oneself at the expense of others. For this reason, warring empires could negotiate peace once they recognized that continued war was no longer profitable. The goal of totalitarian imperialism, by contrast, is power in the service of an idea, even if that pursuit ultimately harms the empire itself. Peace with such regimes can be achieved only when their ideology and power are fundamentally threatened.

The goal of necro-imperialism is to make the world “simpler” through death and destruction. Any peace agreements with such a system are meaningless. Necro-imperialism can be stopped only by force. This is precisely what Western leaders failed to understand when they attempted to integrate Russia into the international economic and political system. As a result, they were unprepared for open confrontation with a necro-imperial regime whose consolidation they themselves had helped to enable.