Nikolai Karpitsky. March 29, 2022. Ukraine. Thirty-fourth day of war

Today I showed Slavyansk to journalists of Estonian television. The second day we get disturbing news - the enemy has bypassed Izyum and has been found in its rear. Fierce battles are going on, cannonade is constantly heard in Slavyansk. If the Russian military manages to get to Slavyansk for a cannon shot, they will begin to demolish the city. However, people are calm and walk under the siren’s wail exactly as usual. Even with children. I understand why. On the front, people react only to immediate danger, not hypothetical. In this case, they guessed that the artillery battles were far away, and the missiles were still striking unexpectedly, so that no siren would warn, and stopped fussing about it. That’s the psychology of wartime.

The Estonians and I talked to the city authorities. Of course, I was most interested in Izyum. As I understand it, there is a desperate battle going on, the Ukrainian military deters the enemy thanks to constant maneuvering. There are forests between Izyum and Slavyansk, where the defenders hide, shelling the occupiers. One can get through to Slavyansk only at the cost of huge losses. I believe they won’t get through, but we have to prepare for the bombardment.

The deputy head of the administration said that during the occupation in 2014 he stayed in Slavyansk. Only from the circle of his acquaintances, six people were arrested. People could be put in the basement even for the Ukrainian speech, but most often, they were grabbed without any reason as hostages to get a ransom for. He also noted that even now, there are pro-Russian people, but there are very few of them. The city’s residents are preparing for resistance, and even those who helped the separatists build barricades in 2014 are now helping to build fortifications to stop Russian invaders.

Before meeting with the Estonians, I recorded a conversation with Pavel Levushkin about how to preserve humanity in wartime and what spiritual practices can help. The talks with Pavel will be included in the cycle of programs «War from a position of religion», which I am going to conduct constantly. Paul asked me a very difficult question: how to deal with the commandment of love for enemies, if it’s impossible not to feel hatred for those who came to kill, shoot evacuation buses full of women and children, destroy maternity hospitals and nursing homes, raze the cities to the ground? In my opinion, one cannot simply ignore one’s hatred in such a sanctimonious way, but it must be worked out on a spiritual level. But to do this, we must first identify the reason for the irrational brutality of the Russian military in Ukraine.

The Moscow kingdom, and then the Russian Empire constantly waged wars of conquest, justifying them by an overvalued idea of land collection. It’s an idea that we’ve been given at school, and many still accept it by default. The essence of this idea is the negation of the value of independent life of people outside Russia. History has often seen empires, dictatorships, tyrannies who, like Russia, have waged wars of conquest. Of course, it is evil, but it is a social, human evil, not yet religious and metaphysical. When a military coup took place in Russia in 1999, the ideology of land collection mutated. If previously the independent life of peoples was devalued, but was not considered evil, now all the world around, which resists inclusion in the sphere of influence of Russia, is perceived as hostile and subject to destruction. 

So while the occupiers for the first three days believed that Ukrainians supported Russia and hated the Ukrainian authorities, they tried to do with a little blood. When they realized that everyone was ready to resist them, they began to treat all Ukrainians without exception, whether old people or even children, as enemies. And in relation to enemies, all evil is considered good, and good is considered evil.

This mutation of imperial ideology has caused evil and good to switch places. For example, killing civilians is considered good and helping them evil. On the basis of this position, such an internally holistic view of the world is built, which becomes a personal hell of man. However, he himself does not notice that, as he projects evil within himself on the world around him, which he considers to be hell. From the point of view of Christianity, this is a demonic position with which no compromises are acceptable.

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 27, 2022. Ukraine. Thirty-second day of war

At six o'clock in the morning, distant cannon began. Within a few tens of kilometers, the Ukrainian military is holding back the enemy, who wants to take my home and even my life. In a literal sense. Anyone who justifies the invasion thereby denies my right to exist. My and 40 million people.

Yesterday, the Ukrainians liberated the city of Trostyanets. Still, they can win! As much as I admire them, every time they surprise me again. Now the occupiers won’t get anything in the north of Ukraine, and all forces will be transferred to the east. That means that now the outcome of the war will be decided on the Donbas Arc, where for three weeks we have been restraining the enemy. There are going to be even hotter days, and the danger of encirclement remains.

Today I went back to the church «Good News». The route takes four kilometers, so you can see the city. Although it is cooler today, there were as many people as yesterday. The siren suddenly rang, but no one paid any attention. This time however there were no missile strikes. 

In the church I talked with Yuri Korotich. He still serves on the Internet. He said that Maryinka continues to be stormed, the city is destroyed, people live in basements and there is no hope of evacuation. It will be possible to help them not before the liberation of Donetsk. North of Maryinka - Krasnogorovka. There we have students and there is a lyceum at our university. The city is bombed, but at least not stormed. It is clear that they are all trapped there.

I met Gennady Lysenko, a famous volunteer who had been captured during the occupation of Slavyansk. He had just brought the humanitarian aid and was feelingly explaining to Yuri’s wife that the evacuation of children mustn’t be delayed, as the occupiers from the south were striving to break in to Ugledar and from the north-west to Lozovaya: «In no case should you put the sign "Children on board". This is a target! All buses from Severodonetsk with white flags or these signs were shot on the way. You continue to tell people they shouldn’t put up signs, and they still don’t get it! – "We’re civilians, how can they shoot at us?"»

Honestly, when the war began, I also thought that the Russian army would block Ukrainian units, besiege cities and solve political issues. Only on the third day, it began to dawn on me that this is a war of destruction being waged against all the inhabitants of Ukraine without distinction. I wasn’t the only one so naive. My colleague Yulia Fil from the Oriental Institute decided to go to the village for three days from Kiev, until things calm down, and she got into the zone of fighting for Makarov.

At first she wasn’t afraid, she didn’t even hide in the basement, thinking the military was fighting amongst themselves. They’re not gonna intentionally shoot at houses! Then it became clear there was no difference between the civilians and the military for the occupiers, and when she was leaving the combat zone, she experienced the primitive fear. 

It is clear why the evacuation buses are being shot. To accuse the Ukrainians themselves. Therefore I think anyone who believes that the Ukrainians spent eight years shelling Donetsk, oppressing the Russians and other absurd things, are as accomplices in the killing of children as those who shoot. When someone zombified from the Russian propaganda starts trolling here in the network, it is very difficult to restrain yourself. Difficult but necessary. The fact is that the war against Ukraine is being waged not only at the military and information level, but also at the emotional level.  

By manipulating information, the aggressor is trying to disseminate among people such a demonic picture of the world, within which they are surrounded by a hostile world on all sides, and it must be demolished. Along with Ukraine, of course. The bearers of this flawed picture of the world are also becoming flawed or degrading, so they need constant emotional nourishment from outside, including at the expense of our hatred, pain and suffering. This phenomenon is called psychic vampirism.

The fact is that people are able to feel emotional involvement, so there is a common emotional interconnection among people. War is like an atomic explosion in this shared emotional space. Emotions overwhelm people, wreak havoc on the inner world and burn people from within. In these circumstances, the enemy is doing everything to increase the chaos in the souls and to suppress people’s ability to act in an orderly and rational way. Internet trolls are the foot soldiers of the enemy army on the emotional front. They try neither to hear others, nor to understand anything, only to peremptorily declare any absurdity, to which it is not even clear how to respond rationally, getting a surge of negative emotions to feed on. We need the same resistance on an emotional level as at the military and information ones. To do this, it is necessary to turn the chaotic emotions burning from the inside into a cold resolve, which is determined only by the inner free self-determination of the will and does not depend on either circumstances or mental state. This resolve manifests itself as a conscious, purposeful force, through which a person ceases to feel himself a victim of circumstances, and in each moment begins to understand how to do the right thing here and now, rather than waiting passively for something to happen. This is how we will be able to mobilize our inner psychic forces that the enemy does not and cannot have.

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 24, 2022. Ukraine. Twenty-ninth day of war

Fighting continues throughout the Donbas Arc, but the enemy has not moved forward. In the morning, the Russian Defense Ministry set off a fake that supposedly they already have full control over Izyum – the key to Donbass. Taking it would threaten to surround the entire Donbas group, as well as enemy tanks right outside my house. Putin wants to take Izyum at any cost. But just as the last night before Yanukovych’s flight, citizens under bullets on the Maidan changed the course of history, now, holding a small ledge on the southern shore of Izyum, the Ukrainian military is changing the course of world history.

When the war began, the world collapsed. The inevitable has happened. It’s as if an asteroid crashed into the Earth, and overnight, the whole familiar world disappeared along with the usual communication, work, problems and little pleasures. There is only a void ahead. After a while – a new shock. It turns out to be not just a void, but destruction, suffering and death. After all, the occupiers are fighting not only the army, but all the inhabitants, killing without distinction children and old people. It’s an irrational Evil you can’t negotiate with. It can be stopped only by force. And now a new understanding is beginning to emerge – Ukraine defends not only itself, but also Europe, and maybe the whole world, which will be annihilated in the Third World War, if this Evil is not stopped here and now.

I decided to stay in Slavyansk because I felt I am more useful here. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for students to join classes online. Here’s a student from Liman, who says they’re quiet again, although there was a very big explosion just before. I also inform you that in Slavyansk we too are quiet, but yesterday all the time sirens were howling, and the day before yesterday there was a whole day of cannonade and missile explosions. One of them lay very close to my house. So, having exchanged the information, we begin the seminar.

I don’t usually hear missiles coming. Nothing foreshadows their blow, when the explosion suddenly breaks silence and calm, and then the sirens turn on. But that time, I could clearly hear a growing whistle, I had time to estimate the situation and I realized that there was nothing to do. There was just a sense of inevitability, like when you hit a wall at extreme speed. Some man just pushed the button in cold blood to kill you. And somewhere far away, ordinary people to whom you’ve done nothing wrong say Putin did the right thing, sending him to kill you. Some of them even begin to be hypocritical, to say that what is happening is terrible, although it is still everyone’s fault and yours too.

The explosion was close, but the windows were intact. Went outside to look at the huge field of fire. Impressive! If this exploded near the house, no cellar would protect. The expression «Russian roulette» is filled with a new meaning. As long as single missiles are fired, the chance of being hit is relatively small, although people are dying. But the probability of death increases many times, when they begin to intensively shell the cities – Rubezhnoe, Severodonetsk, Izyum and Maryinka, which are being assaulted now. Perhaps the enemy will soon retaliate against us for the failures of the assault, then the danger for my students will also increase manifold.

The risks for my friends from the church «Good news», which under shelling take people out of besieged cities, are already comparable with the game of «Russian roulette» with a real revolver. Of several buses, one is bound to come under fire. All agreements about days of silence can be broken at any time. The occupiers are allowed to use their weapons at will against civilians. They can easily shoot up a bus full of kids knowing perfectly who is inside. This is the result of dehumanization.

Why do people behave so differently? Ukrainians even risk their lives for pets. In Kharkov, the citizens died for the animals, saving them from the zoo under fire from the Russian military. Dehumanization occurs when the inner core of the personality breaks down – his free will. After that, a man can be made into a monster that is willing to kill but unable to take the initiative.

The war has shown that motivation and spirit are more important than military-technical superiority. The Russian military was already broken before the invasion. They made no choice and were victims of circumstances. So the infernal circumstances led to the loss of their humanity. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are fighting consciously, understanding that they defend their dearest ones, so they defeat the enemy even in the most desperate situation, when it seems impossible. Their participation in the war is an internal choice, by which they retain their humanity in all circumstances, even in hell.

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 20, 2022. Ukraine. Twenty-fifth day of war

It was unusually quiet this morning. The day before yesterday, the sirens were constantly howling and explosions were heard - shelling Kramatorsk, hitting residential buildings, there were victims, and now there is silence. When you live close to the front, you only feel situational fear when the threat is imminent. Once it’s quiet, you feel relaxed, like you’re going back to the past, to a peaceful life... until the next shelling. That’s the psychology of war.

Since today is Sunday, I decided to walk the same route as a week ago - to the church «Good News». At that time, the streets were deserted, and now there are many people, whether the weather is good, or they just got used to the war. Indeed, they got used to it. As I was coming back, there was a distant single explosion from a missile strike, and no one paid attention to it. The church also had twice as many people as the last service, more than two hundred. In such moments, you want to forget the war, but in your head it knocks: «Mariupol... Mariupol...» Our tranquility here at this very moment is paid for by the death of Mariupol inhabitants.

I met Yuri Korotich in church, whom I met for the first time three years ago in Maryinka, a city directly adjacent to Donetsk. There, from the city center to the positions of the occupiers it is about twenty minutes walk. I told him that we have classes on the Internet as usual, although some students have to connect directly from the basements during the bombings. Yuri said that he has the same situation, and now he holds worship services with the community of Maryinka on the Internet. People are also staying in basements, the city is constantly bombed and attacked with armor. The capture of Maryinka would have allowed the occupiers to dismember the entire Donbas group in half, but the Ukrainian military has been there since the beginning of the war as stubborn and does not retreat.

For two weeks there is a grandiose battle on the Donbas Arc. The enemy has been pressing on several sides at once - Maryinka, Izyum, Border, Severodonetsk, Ugledar. This battle is as important as the Battle of Kursk for World War II. We have our own analogue of the blockaded Leningrad - Mariupol, which, however, is in a much more miserable situation, and is besieged by a much more ferocious opponent.

Last Sunday I asked the volunteers how it was in Izyum, on the southern shore of which the Ukrainian military has established itself. At that time, there was no certainty that it would be possible to withstand. The enemy greatly exceeded the military potential. Izyum is the last frontier, which is convenient to defend, if it breaks, there is a threat of a complete encirclement of the Donbas group. It has been desperately stormed all week. The Russian military did not pick up the bodies from the battlefield, wave after wave they went straight through the corpses like zombies. In fact, they are zombies, since they have all been sentenced to death by Putin.

I even wondered what I would do if we got street fights in Slavyansk. This Sunday I have already had hope. The enemy is running out of breath, and it is impossible to count how many he left killed. Therefore, they will not get into the official report. If in a week he did not break through the defense, it is unlikely now at all. The last few days, there have been street fights in Rubezhnoe. In the morning a message came that the city is under our Ukrainian control. It looks like we’ll stand on the Donbas arc. But Mariupol, where the enemy is systematically carrying out the genocide of the inhabitants, is now impossible to help.

It is an irrational war, with irrational brutality. Atrocities are constantly reported. In the city of Kremennaya (not far from Rubezhnoe) the tank just shot up a nursing home. 56 people were killed. A school in Mariupol where 400 people were sheltering was bombed. At the same time, Putin could not even clearly explain why he started the war and what he is trying to achieve, except for the purpose of the physical destruction of Ukraine. But this goal is too irrational to be functionally considered anywhere, for example, in negotiations. Therefore, it is not clear how negotiations are technically possible at all.

In general, it is unprecedented - a war that is unleashed without any reason or ground, just because one inadequate person, who considers himself president, wanted to do so. Just as we in Ukraine were wondering before the war whether Putin would attack or whether he still retained bits of common sense, Europe is now wondering whether he will use nuclear weapons and strike them, too? On my own, the probability of this is quite small, about as small as was the probability of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. But that possibility came true. That is why Western countries do not transfer offensive weapons to Ukraine - they are afraid.

What is clear is that the war can end only when all the perpetrators of aggression are brought before an international tribunal. After this war, a new system of international security will have to be created, so that never again will the existence of civilization depend on the mental state of one inadequate human being.

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 17, 2022. Ukraine. Twenty-second day of war

Let’s imagine that ten years of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan would compress to three weeks. It is with such intensity and losses Russia is now at war in Ukraine. Yesterday, on several fronts, Ukrainian counterattacks led to record losses of the occupiers. I thought, when the Russian troops adapt, they would change tactics in the light of new conditions of war. I expected that it would be much more difficult to fight them soon. Nothing of the kind! They are not learning anything, they are still struggling with a failed plan, and as a result, a third of their army has lost combat capability. It figures. If you confine yourself to your own fantasy world, you become inadequate to reality, and in order to adapt to war, you have to accept reality, that is, abandon the false picture of the world. But in this case everything that holds the KGB regime, which has built a system of total evil, will collapse. 

The victories of the Ukrainian army, of course, cheer up, but the people under the bombings in the basements don’t feel easier. The enemy is getting ferocious, wants at any cost to succeed at least over in, where it has the advantage, that is, to erase Mariupol from the face of the earth and surround the Donbas group.

The day before yesterday, there was an attempt to encircle Izyum, but Ukrainian troops successfully counterattacked. However, it is now impossible for the inhabitants to leave the city, as the road to Slavyansk became a battlefield. It’s cold, it’s sub-zero, people have to stay in basements under constant bombardment without electricity or heating. The same situation is in Rubejnoe-Severodonetsk-Lisichansk. In the morning, it was reported on the news that today the occupiers terribly bombed over there, destroyed at least 27 buildings. A student from there never made contact during the class. Not all evacuation buses with people manage to get to Slavyansk. The day before yesterday, the church bus succeed to take people out of Severodonetsk, but the other one had bad luck - it was shot on the way.

Before the beginning of the class, we exchange information on who is where and in what danger - Konstantinovka, Kramatorsk, Liman (there the shelling is already loud), Lisichansk... - no connection to Lisichansk. I usually say that I am in Slavyansk, we are calm, the artillery is barely heard far away, sometimes there are missile hits, but the city has not yet been damaged. Students from the occupied territories do not get in touch. It seems everything is bad there. 

People from the captured suburbs of Kiev told that the occupiers shot the residents just for fun. They broke into houses, robbed and... emptied on household items. Although there was a toilet nearby. I think this psychopathological fecal fixation has something to do with necrophilia. What other than necrophilia explains the destruction with a super-heavy bomb of the drama theater in Mariupol, where 1,500 women and children were sheltering! Then they continued to shell, preventing to clear away and search through the rubble. That’s in light of the fact that on both sides of the theater there was a large inscription on the asphalt “CHILDREN”, easily visible from a height. This is already a pattern. Similarly, in 2004, Russian troops shot a school with children and parents in Beslan.

We are dealing with the phenomenon of dehumanisation, that is, the process by which man loses his human qualities. In Tolkien’s conception, orcs arose in a similar way, just not from men, but from elves. That is why in Ukraine the occupiers are called Orcs. The dehumanisation takes place in a picture of the world, where evil is understood as good and good as evil. Necrophilia is the result of the dehumanisation. This life-denying worldview forms the basis and builds the system of total evil, which has absorbed Russia, now turned into a large concentration camp. In Ukraine it is now simply called Mordor, but I think the term can be used in scientific discourse to denote a social system of total evil based on a picture of the world in which evil and good change places. Accordingly, the term “orcs” can also be used as a scientific term to denote the dehumanized representatives of Mordor.

I believe that Mordor is fundamentally not a national phenomenon but a phenomenon of idea; it cannot be equated with any country or people. It is an anti-system hostile to the whole world, which subdues the mind and destroys anything that has not obeyed it. For Ukraine, the struggle against Mordor is not just a war between two States, but a struggle for existence. That is why all Ukrainians so desperately resist, both military and civilian. Indeed, defeat would mean their annihilation not only in cultural, but also in physical sense.

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 14, 2022. Ukraine. Nineteenth Day of War

No one doubts in the victory of Ukraine. But everyone worries how long and with what victims? The enemy has no force to advance on Kiev and Kharkov, there it passes to the defense and throws all forces to the east in the hope of encircling the Donbas group of troops. So it’s gonna be hot here in the next few weeks. The occupiers are advancing from three sides - from the north-west to Severodonetsk, from the north to Izyum and from the south to Ugledar. If we hold out, this will be the last attack, if we retreat, the war will drag on for months.

Yesterday morning the windows rattled - missiles were shelled at a TV tower on Karachun. TV tower kept its balance. I decided to go to the church «Good News», which is also the most important volunteer center in Donbas. There were few people on the street, and no one paid attention to warning horns. It’s quite understandable - if the city is fired on by missiles, the sirens will not have time to warn, and if they fire artillery, the sounds of the sirens will be redundant. In the meantime, the battles are going on in Izyum and under the Lisichansk-Rubejnoe-Severodonetsk agglomeration. They don’t reach us, though far, surd explosions are constantly being heard.

There were more than a hundred people at the service, four times less than usual. The preacher compared the struggling Ukraine to the exodus of Jews, who were persecuted by the Pharaoh. Faith in God greatly strengthens faith in the victory of Ukraine. Then the refugees from Severodonetsk were brought - many students, children, elderly. The oldest woman was 82 years old. Fed, arranged and the next morning taken to evacuation trains. Everyday a hundred people. This is just a drop in the volunteer movement of Ukraine. 

Today the holidays ended and I was giving a lecture «Philosophy of human communication». At the beginning, we exchanged information, who is where and in what conditions. A student from Lisichansk listened to a lecture from a bomb shelter, so communication with her was interrupted. I devoted the lecture to the topic of lies, including the one that led to the war. While I was working with my students, I’ve got an information that one of the buses of the church I was in yesterday was shot at on its way from Izyum. The driver is wounded. It is no longer possible to evacuate from there.

If Izum falls, the next will be Slavyansk. However, Ukrainian troops firmly established in the southern part of Izyum and even conducted a successful counterattack today. Nevertheless, the situation in Donbass is extremely difficult. The Russian command needs at least some success, so it is now throwing all its forces to Donbass. Russian troops continue to systematically demolish Mariupol. The city has been left without light, heat, water and food, humanitarian convoys are not allowed, and refugees are not released. Volnovakha was bombed to dust, now this city no longer exists.

Reports of atrocities by the occupiers are increasing. Now the Russian army is officially under self-sustainment, that is, it should provide itself with looting. Yesterday, it was reported that near Kiev, the Russian military shot up an evacuation bus with women and children, and the survivors were driven back to the village. It is now becoming clear that Ukraine is fighting not just a hostile army, but a system of total evil that has already engulfed Russia and Belarus, and will expand further until it is stopped by force. In Ukraine it is identified with the «Russian world». In fact, the Kremlin regime used the ideology of the «Russian world» as a propaganda stroke, which is proved once again by bombing of the Holy Lavra, which belongs to the Moscow Patriarchate. For a system of total evil, everyone is perceived as an enemy.

Putin doesn’t care what ideology to use, because he doesn’t come from an ideology, but from a holistic view of the world, in which good is understood as evil, and evil as good. The whole hierarchy of power, rooted in this worldview, I call the system of total evil. Not absolute (since there is no absolute evil), namely total evil in the sense that anyone who agrees with this position will consistently choose evil not only in questions of principle, but even in trifles. In relation to any social system, this position of total evil stands as an anti-system with which no compromises are possible. Rather, compromises were constantly sought with it, but this led to war in Ukraine, and any further policy of compromise will end in World War III.

PS While writing the text, there was an explosion nearby. This is nothing compared to what happens fifty kilometers away. A student who has been disconnected while I was teaching a class just sent a message. I’m quoting it below.

It is frightening enough in Lisichansk. My house is located near one of the main roads. When the military equipment, from cars to tanks, drives down the road, it is very audible. Especially since the road was destroyed by tanks. The shelling is taking place very often and very loud. There are areas that are broken into rubbish. Many people have no water, no light, and no gas for two weeks. It will take a long time to restore all this. The primary school where I studied is half broken down. Near the gymnasium, where I was in secondary school, heavy military equipment is constantly placed. Given that the house I live in now is relatively close, every shot from the gymnasium is felt extremely acutely. In the very first days, a shell fell near the Lyceum, where I was in high school. No one understood whether it was an overclocking mechanism or, indeed, an unexploded ordnance. It is extremely dangerous to go outside. Even to the store across the street. There’s a big fight going on in Rubejnoe. Many intensive attacks in its direction from our side. Cities are burning. In places where my friends lived, hardly remained any houses.

Most of the roads are mined, the railway tracks are blown up. The question remains in the bridges. As soon as the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) are withdrawn, the bridges will be blown up. They are of strategic importance. Trying to leave now is like an agony of being cornered. A lot of false information, a lot of fakes about evacuation. You do not know where you find, and where you lose. Today our acquaintances left to Swatovo with the evacuation column at 8:30. To date, there is no connection with them. It is unknown whether they arrived or not. Whether they even alive...

I apologize for not answering during the class. It is difficult to catch more or less stable Internet in the basement».

Yulia Fil. ISKCON Temple in Lviv. March 12, 2022. Ukraine 2022

Yulia Fil's blog “Scholarly about India. View from Ukraine: Vaisnava life”

Krishnaites make an impression of otherworldly people. In some sense, they are, because the main aim for them is to reach Krishna's transcendental worlds and they don't care much about the events of the material world. But when the national war began it was not possible to stay aside for Krishna devotees. I had an opportunity to observe it with my own eyes when I came to the ISKCON temple in Lviv to join the "Food for life" program.  I don't know which factor was prevalent – their religious experience or the fact that Lviv is rear in comparison with other cities– but people in the temple werecalm and concentrated – no emotional small talks, no accusations, no panic. Devotees mobilized to help peopleat least on three different fronts. 

First of all, they intensify the "Food for Life" program, which was established back in 70’s and aimed to supply hot meals for people in need in hot spots all over the world. Unfortunately, Ukraine is the world's largest one right now. So, Vaishnavas feed people on the railway station, on block posts, and on the border with Poland.

Lviv Vaishnavas also distribute humanitarian help from Poland to other cities of Ukraine. It naturally happened that Lviv is the main transportation and products distribution hub in Ukraine now. Kyiv urgently needs food and it is still possible to transfer vans with humanitarian help there.What we unfortunately cannot say about Mariupol, where russians ignore the rules of green corridors. Kyivan temple on Zoryanyi avenue has not been abandoned, there are still people there. 

The third field of activity is to help their brothers and sisters Vaishnavas to reach the border. Male-drivers bring people to the border passing them to female-drivers there. 

Temple is overcrowded. People slept on the second floor right on the ground. But this space is not enough for all refugees, so the decision to allow people to stay in the altar hall was taken. 

Life is extremely dynamic at the temple these days. The atmosphere is quite fussy but not chaotic. Everyone knows his place. Devotees don't forget about their main aim - worship to God, to Lord Krishna. Kirtan goes its way and one can hear the sweet sound of bhajans during the day. And, as Balachandra Das said, there is strict solidarity among people - everybody knows who is the aggressor and what are they fighting for.

I’ve been here in 2019, before all that COVID stuff. In 2022 I noticed how much Lviv Vaishnavas have done for the temple. Step by step devotees make improvements in the God’s house - the altar wall and ceiling was installed, much other stuff was provided. We just hope that it is only the beginning and Vaishnavas proceed to dress up the temple as well as all of us will proceed to upgrade Ukraine in the nearest future.

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 10, 2022. Ukraine. Fifteenth Day of War

The fifteenth day of the war is ending, marked by the fact that it was during this period that Putin planned to finish the complete occupation of Ukraine. Before our eyes, a total military catastrophe of the Russian army, which has moved to medieval tactics of terror and civilian extermination, opens.

I was lucky, Slavyansk was not injured. I counted four cruise missiles, the explosions of which were heard from my house. There were more. Ukrainian air defense works perfectly. It's cold and it's quiet today, so I feel relaxed after yesterday when all the time with a few breaks warning horns were howling. The cellar in the yard is cold and sitting there all the time is not an option, so I just ignored the air alert. Fifty kilometers away from us in Izyum there was a heavy battle. The success of the Ukrainian forces on all fronts was certainly gratifying, but that is little consolation if the Russian occupiers breakthrough here on our side. After all, Izyum is the key to the entire Donbass, that’s why the occupiers could choose it as a main direction of attack and push the defense with their superior forces. Then the next point on their way would be Slavyansk, and just on the side where my house is located. How Russian troops act on the offensive - everyone knows. They’re just tearing down all the suspicious houses, not asking if anyone is there, and so they’re moving through the city.

To be captured by the Russian military is even more terrible than to stay without light, heat, and water in the destroyed house. I have a Russian passport, so they wouldn't go easy on me as a «traitor». They could have shot me. However today it became known that the Ukrainian troops grinded down enemy forces and kept the southern half of Izyum on our side of the river, so my house is safe now. Immensely grateful to the Ukrainian military!

Along with the successes on all fronts, there’s tragic news. Russian troops bombed the operating maternity hospital in the besieged Mariupol. It wasn’t an accident, they knew there were women and babies. The same way they bombed a maternity hospital in Grozny twenty-three years ago. As in that war, right now they are demolishing the neighborhoods of Mariupol and Kharkov. They’re mining green corridors, shelling refugee buses. In Mariupol, people not only die from bombing but also cold and thirst. Then in 1999, I publicly called the actions of Russian troops in Chechnya genocide. Now, in 2022, I assert that the Russian occupiers are subjecting all the inhabitants of Mariupol to genocide in the literal meaning of the word.

Also in other cities, kindergartens, schools, and hospitals have been targeted. There are increasing reports of massacres of civilians. The Wagnerians are particularly vicious, having experience in both Syria and Africa. Now they have managed to «distinguish» not only by killing civilians but also by torture.

We face irrational evil, or rather, its specific variant - necrophilia, which manifests itself not only in atrocities against civilians but also against own soldiers. The Russian command is chasing them to certain death, a column by column without military cover. Yesterday, the columns thrown on the Crooked Horn were shot on the march. And so is everywhere. There is no point in these attacks. Meanwhile, more than half of the Russian army consists of ordinary conscripts of eighteen and nineteen years.

For them, what's happening is hell. At night they have to freeze in the fields, as it is dangerous to stay in cities and villages - they can be set on fire, for they are hated by everyone. No food, no fuel, and death waiting around every corner. It’s pointless to wait for the rotation since the «commander-in-chief» has put all the reserves and now only requires them to go into suicide attacks. The purpose of the war is unclear, and there is no question of victory. The entire 200,000 army of invasion awaits the same fate as Napoleon’s army in Russia, either captivity or death. And no hope. There are different circles of hell, this one is the hell of hopelessness.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Mordor

At first, Russia was called Mordor by Russians themselves when they faced the irrationality of violence from the authorities. Irrationality is frightening, for a rationally explained evil can still be tolerated. The fear of irrationality is so strong that it motivates many to live in some fictional Russia, but once the illusions are dispelled, you find yourself in Mordor. If it were only a kleptocracy dictatorship and corruption, no one would consider Russia Mordor. It is turned In Mordor by the unpredictability of the evil, for which it is impossible to be morally prepared. This is what the Ukrainians, who haven’t noticed Mordor earlier, faced in 2014.

It was frightening to be unable to understand what Russia was trying to achieve, where it would stop and what to expect next. It is impossible to explain aggression as a material benefit, as the invasion entails only losses. Of course, there are many bad things in Ukraine, but this is understandably rational. What Ukrainians could not imagine was the irrationality of evil, so the idea of a war with Russia seemed ridiculous to them. Confronting an irrational hostile force changed the perception of the world. The irrationality of this force is as follows:

- Irrationality of ideology, arbitrarily dividing people as their own and others.

- Irrationality of violence in conditions of law arbitrariness. How can we explain the tortures and killing of civilians who were unable to offer any resistance by force?

- An irrational super-task. Why to collect lands and revive a collapsed empire at all?

Mordor is a symbol of slavery to an irrational, overvalued idea of domination that dehumanizes its hosts, turning them into hordes to destroy the world. But the image of Mordor has become so common not even because it is understood as such, but because it is felt as such. The Mordor presence is perceived as an existential threat to the very way of being, which alters the perception of the world, including the perception of the cosmos.

Before the Russia’s attack, Ukrainians perceived the space of their country like the space of their home. When in one of its corners there was wild mayhem, chaos broke the integrity of cosmos. The archaic mythological consciousness is characterized by a concentric heterogeneous space: in the center is a native home, and the chaos grows with the distance from it. But for the Ukrainian the entire Ukraine is their home, so the heterogeneity of Ukraine’s space turned out to be not concentric, but frontal: in the West Uzhgorod is adjacent to Slovakia - the country of Western civilization, in the East Maryinka directly abuts upon Donetsk, where the boundary separating from the territory of violence and arbitrariness runs between the courtyards of residential buildings.

The presence of Mordor is felt before it is realized, and in different parts of Ukraine it is felt differently. Kiev is a European civilized city, here a peaceful life vibrates, and the war seems to be in another dimension, although the transition to it is very fast - only ten hours drive. From this distance, the whole East of the country merges into one gray area adjacent to the realm of chaos, but this illusion dispels when you come to the Donbass and see a diverse peaceful life. 

Walking through Slavyansk, a beautiful peaceful city with lakes, resort, famous healing mud, it is hard to imagine that here, in time of fighting, civilians were grabbed, tortured, and sometimes killed without a reason. When the destroyed buildings of Semenovka - the suburb of Slavyansk, remind about it, you remember that all this goes on just a few dozen miles away.

If from a distance Slavyansk appears to be somewhere on the periphery in the gray zone, nearer it is perceived as a deep rear, while the periphery is the zone of the front-line cities reached by missiles: Marinka, Krasnogorovka, Avdeevka and others. 

For the first time I was in Avdeevka in the spring of 2015. There were explosions and automatic fire within three kilometers - the breath of Mordor, which left the city in destruction without light and water. The heterogeneity of the cosmos here is obvious: you ride your bike on the street towards the Royal Hunt area and see more and more destroyed houses, as if the forces of chaos increase as you approach the Mordor.

However, on the frontline the perception of cosmos is quite different, as if the whole gray area was compressed at the very boundary line so that Avdeevka itself is perceived as a deep rear. That’s how I felt the next time the volunteers and I brought the dumplings to the soldiers on the frontline - the last few defenders between us and Mordor. Then we turned into the village Opytnoe, from where one can see the ruins of the Donetsk airport. There are no surviving houses in the village. The remaining inhabitants moved into the cellars with the military, as shells and mines flew in from time to time, even in the lull. It was recommended not to walk in the deep snow because of probability to stumble on a trip wire. 

Although it would be a mistake to depict the front-line zone only in gray tones. Once there’s a lull, people start repairing their towns. In Krasnogorovka, when people got accustomed to pauses between shooting in the daytime, they began to go out with children to a huge park in the center of the city. In the evening, when the shooting begins, the children are driven home, as shells occasionally fly into the city. Just before I arrived, one shell tore down the corner of the hospital next to the dorm I was staying in. Meanwhile, the city is absolutely clean. Looking at the craters, I thought how much dirt they should have scattered around, but after the shelling people do the cleaning immediately. Much rely on the initiative of evangelical churches, which in addition to cleaning bring water, food, and help to repair houses. There is a lot of destruction in the city, but there are considerably more of newly renovated houses. 

Maryinka is a ten-minute drive from Krasnogorovka on the highway, which is shot by snipers. The first time I’ve been here was shortly after the decisive battle, when pro-Putin separatists broke into the town and were defeated. Since then, major offensive operations have ceased. Maryinka along with Krasnogorovka was badly injured then, but the next time I arrived, I was surprised how well groomed the city was. It is a rare sight in Ukraine. You can buy hot coffee on the beautiful central square, everything is similar to the center of Kiev. The renovated houses look like new, but the fences are covered with small fragments - you can see there was a lot of damage, but everything is repaired quickly, except for some buildings that are no longer worth repairing.

Marinka adjoins close to Donetsk, and the separating military can see each other in sight from a distance of a hundred meters. On the street leading to Donetsk, the destruction is noticeably larger, this part of the city is shot not only from artillery, but also from small arms - in fact the line of demarcation is only twenty minutes walk. Despite the shelling, there are well-maintained lawns with wonderful flowers along the street, taken care of by the residents of nearby houses. This is the counteraction to chaos on a mystical level. It would seem that the breath of Mordor should freeze everything on the approaches to it. But on the contrary, it is as if light forces have concentrated in people here, and that helps to feel again all Ukraine as a home.

February 8, 2020

Nikolai Karpitsky. March 6, 2022. Ukraine. Eleventh Day of War

It is the eleventh day. In short, the occupiers have a technical advantage, but they are fighting as obtusely as possible while the Ukrainian army fights as professionally as possible with the modest means it has. These two factors counterpoise each other, but the balance of power is slowly changing in favor of Ukraine. Despite the huge losses, the occupier continues to advance wherever they can. Yesterday, the enemy again tried to break into Kiev through Irpen and again unsuccessfully stormed Nikolaev. Right now, Makarov is being shelled again in an attempt to capture the Zhytomyr highway to Kiev. Trying to cut off the Donbass, they are advancing on Izum, where my friends volunteers from the Good news Pentecostal church are taking out refugees directly from under the fire.

Unable to take large cities, the enemy seeks to seize strategic positions and cut communications. Either he succeeds, or he walks into a trap. After all, his own communications are stretched, while ordinary peaceful people have risen to fight – they ruin the roads, burn the wagons, steal or just spoil the equipment, while hungry soldiers are busy looking for food. The war literally became a national war. 

The bombardments of cities and the terror of the civilian population in the occupied territories are on the increase. They purposefully target residential areas, try to destroy civilian infrastructure – power plants, warehouses with food. Kharkov is systematically bombed by air and fired by jet systems directly from the territory of Russia, the city is being ruined block by block. There’s already a humanitarian disaster in Irpen and Mariupol. The armament of a huge destructive force - the missiles «Dot-U» and the complex «Tor» is pulled up to Kiev, indicating a firm intention to destroy the city. Only the Ukrainian army can rescue Kiev, Kharkov and other cities from the total destruction, and it has to maneuver constantly against superior forces.

Nevertheless, yesterday Ukrainians set a record in the number of downed aircraft and helicopters, and conducted a successful counterattack near Kharkov, having captured a lot of equipment - another contribution to the rearmament of the Ukrainian army. Now both sides are showing initiative, the struggle is on an equal footing, the Ukrainian army, retreating and counterattacking, retains itself and at the limit of its capabilities retains the front, while the enemy pays for the offensive in deaths of its military units. So far, the Russian army has lost more than half of what the Soviet Union lost during the ten years of the Afghan war.

There is no safe place in Ukraine, any city can be bombed. I admitted the possibility of a large-scale invasion, but I could not imagine that Russian troops would use the same tactics of cities total destruction, as in Chechnya and Syria. I thought they’d just be besieged and extorted by cutting off the lights and the water. It is now clear that the goal of the war is not just a change of power and establishing Russian influence, but the destruction of the country as such. As long as Ukraine resists, the occupiers will simply kill civilians, but should it surrender, it would be even worse – repression, starvation, and forced mobilization to send cannon fodder to war with other European countries. Along with this, there is a realization that it is not just a war between two States, but between civilization and barbarism. It so happened that Ukraine is now protecting not only itself, but also the entire world. Right now, ordinary citizens are blocking the roads, burning the supply cars, and thus changing the whole geopolitical situation in the world. Until recently, the country was not even a subject on the international scene, and now it stops World War III confronting the second world army, while the whole world is watching the outcome of this battle with fear and hope.

However, the question is: what is the point of atrocities against civilians? Why do the occupiers not focus on purely military tasks? While the war is waged between States for some political reason, accidental shelling mostly kills the civilian population. The civil war is bloodier, as ideological opponents are killed mercilessly. Though again, apolitical civilians can stand aside. Now the enemy is waging war not for political reasons, but for metaphysical reasons stemming from the worldview that assumes the entire civilized world is an evil, and Ukraine is offered a choice to either renounce its identity and obey or be destroyed. That is why the bearers of this worldview expected that the inhabitants of Ukraine would greet them as liberators, and when they saw that this was not the case, the entire population of Ukraine began to be perceived as enemies. And no one cares neither about their nationality, nor about the language they speak.