Nikolai Karpitsky. November 24, 2022. Ukraine. Two hundred and seventy-fourth day of war

It's exam time. Both my students have blackouts, then I. We catch moments when we can connect. If you look at it from the outside, the situation is absurd: there's a dirty dog sitting in a bunker, doing harm to millions of people, confident he's the most important person in the world. For some reason, in books and films, villains are much more interesting than positive characters. Perhaps the artist simply has more opportunities to put his talent into the complex and controversial image of the villain. Only here in life the real villains are primitive to disgrace. Yesterday, such a villain was going to defeat NATO, threatened with a nuclear war, and today he is playing dirty tricks in impotent rage. What a petty nature! He is not even worthy of a feeling of disgust, those who believe him are disgusting.

Suddenly the lights flickered and then went out, which means that it was not just a planned shutdown, but an accident, and it could be for a long time. It's nighttime, and the only thing left to do is to meditate.  When it's dark, damp and cold outside, and you find yourself locked in the darkness of home, you discover the simple truth that you can't wait for the future, for example, like when they finally give you the light, otherwise reality will become unbearable. You can just feel alive in the present moment, whatever it may be, without waiting for anything. It's hard to do, because when you're sitting in total darkness, you can't help but wait for the light to come on, and your thoughts tend to drift off somewhere else. However, true freedom is only possible when you build such a self-sufficient state within yourself regardless of external circumstances. Because life is the present moment, and the constant preoccupation with waiting for something is the denial of the real for the sake of something that does not yet exist. It is this denial that makes life unbearable.

Still, our conditions are still tolerable, we have gas, water, electricity is regularly restored. I know from those who are under occupation that in other cities it is much harder. For instance, in the occupied Lisichansk there is no electricity or water at all, although the gas supply has been restored - it is necessary for the occupiers themselves, who have settled in other people's apartments. Only elderly people remained in the city, who were afraid to go into the unknown. The occupiers announced that they would confiscate any apartments if their owners did not present themselves with property documents within a short period of time. At the same time, it is difficult to get into Lisichansk even from the direction of Luhansk, from time to time it is completely closed for entry and exit. However, the soldiers do not even comply with these formalities - they can break into any apartment, not paying attention to the owner. Some apartments were broken into several times.

If you drive away from the frontline deep into the occupied territory, somewhere beyond Donetsk and Luhansk, it is quiet there, and the locals have no idea what the shelling looks like. The locals are mostly women, as the men are either already mobilized or hiding, afraid to go out. Unless in case of an extreme necessity early in the morning or late at night, as they can be stopped and sent to the front at any time. And it’s dangerous for women to walk around, especially for girls - there are drunken soldiers who can make sexual advances. This distinguishes the cities on the other side of the front from our frontline cities. In the summer, when the front was only ten kilometers away, there were also a lot of military men in Slavyansk, but you feel safe around them. At no time did I see drunken soldiers or hear them swearing, which is the usual thing in the occupied territories. Riding through the city on my bike, I constantly met girls walking alone or mothers with children. In the occupied cities, people don’t just walk around, they go only on business, and mostly where it’s crowded.

Life in such cities seems to have stopped in 2014 and is slowly degrading. The roads have not been repaired, in some places they have become completely impassable. Young people are infantile in their masses; a twenty-year-old is psychologically equivalent to a fourteen-year-old. There are no special places for them to meet and communicate. Many do not have the slightest idea about life in the free territories of Ukraine a few tens of kilometers away.

There are many pro-Russians among the locals, and even round-ups of men cannot change their minds. They can admit that, yes, it somehow turned out badly: people just went to work, and were caught and sent to the front, but they immediately correct themselves that they are being protected from the Nazis, therefore have to tolerate. They live in their nightmare world and are absolutely persuaded that it cannot be better. When they are told about a normal life in a free Ukraine, they simply do not believe that this is possible, being convinced that the Nazis walk the streets with swastikas there, and don't listen to eyewitnesses. I remember in the Soviet Union people also believed that there was poverty in the West, while their own life in poverty, with shortages and queues, was perceived as the only possible world, which could not be better. Back then, too, people supported the government because they believed that there was no other way.

Despite everything, there are a lot of adequate people in the occupied territories who support Ukraine. What surprised me most from the stories of those who are from there is that they can immediately see who is for Russia and who is for Ukraine. These are anthropological differences that are immediately apparent. For example, when you see a person for the first time, you immediately understand that you can say, "Glory to Ukraine!" despite the fact that for any careless word in a public place you can be arrested and thrown in the basement.

If a person is some kind of unpleasant with the seal of aloof unsociableness, behaves as if everyone owes him, then he will be for Russia anyway. In fact, this is the seal of that hellish world, which he perceives as the only possible reality. Because of this, he is unable to adequately understand normal people. At first I wanted to call it the loss of the ability for social communication that allows us to understand each other. Thanks to this communication we perceive the world adequately, distinguishing what is possible from ridiculous fakes and propaganda. However, they communicate perfectly well with each other, and it is we who seem to them to be unsociable in their perverted perception. It would be more correct to call it a loss of the ability to communicate on the basis of empathy. They can communicate, but they are incapable of feeling the interlocutor, and for this reason they become unpleasant. Instead of empathy, they have such a common emotional wave, which is produced by the mood of their hellish world. On this wave, they understand each other perfectly, but at the same time they cease to understand normal people. In contrast, normal people who are for Ukraine easily recognize each other by the empathic connection that naturally establishes between people, makes them open and inspires a sense of trust.

Nikolai Karpitsky. December 13, 2022. Ukraine. Two hundred ninety-third day of the war

Fifty-second post since the war started. I sleep or work, guided not by the time of day, but by spontaneous blackouts. We are lucky - winter is warm. While it's thawing, I rode my bike around Slavyansk. Cars on the roads as in pre-war times, now again you have to be careful when driving. Sometimes you can hear the shooting, but not to compare with how it was in the summer. There are hits to Slavyansk, but more often - to Kramatorsk. 

Now the whole burden of the war falls on Bakhmut. It is right near it where the invaders concentrated all their forces. Well, it's still very hot near Avdiivka. If Bakhmut is abandoned, the next line of defense will pass near us. But I don't believe it will be abandoned.

I thought that after fleeing from Kherson, the occupiers would throw all their forces at Ugledar, since a breakthrough in this sector would allow them to enter the rear of the Ukrainian troops near Donetsk. However, the Russian command is guided not by a strategic perspective, but by Putin's mood. They need to rehabilitate themselves for the defeat near Kherson, and now it is easier for them to attack than to explain the need to change another offensive direction.

The Bakhmut meat grinder has been going on for several months, and the occupiers are paying for every hundred meters of advance with thousands of dead. And this without any strategic perspective, solely for the ego of just one person. The battle of Bakhmut resembles the Verdun meat grinder of World War I, and will end the same way: it is here that Russia will use up its last offensive potential, after which Ukraine will be able to liberate all its lands. This will end the first stage of the war and begin the second, remote, by mutual firing of missiles and kamikaze drones. No matter how much we want the war to end as soon as possible, it will continue in any case until the total collapse of the necro-empire.

Soldiers are thrown into the attack on Bakhmut in continuous waves, regardless of losses. This is their necrophilic offensive tactics. The more people die, the more space will be freed up for the new mobilized. They are deliberately sent to death.

In 1991, the KGB allowed the democratic revolution to win in Russia in order to get rid of the control of the CPSU. Surely they already had a plan to come to power and restore the totalitarian empire. They correctly calculated that there are enough military and economic resources for this purpose. But people's consciousness is changing, becoming indifferent to the old ideologies. Therefore, the imposition of imperial ideology after the KGB coup in 1999 led to its mutation into necro-imperialism.

I think when in 1991 the chekists were making plans for revanche, they could not even imagine that in three decades their protege would go further, aiming not at conquering, but at destroying the neighboring peoples. Putin himself said that the purpose of the special military operation is the denazification of Ukraine and showed in practice that this word means the destruction of the Ukrainian cultural consciousness, the Ukrainian language and the Ukrainian ethnic group.

If for the totalitarian imperialist the main goal is power, for the necro-imperialist it is destruction. And there are three reasons why the mass consciousness in Russia accepted necro-imperialism so easily: indifference to any political ideologies other than the ideology of finding an enemy, fear of the complexity of the world, and lumpenization.

In this context, an event that I only learned about yesterday is symbolic. My friend, Maxim Evstropov, was put on the federal wanted list. I've known Maksim since he was a student, we worked in the same department with him for a while. Formally, he is being persecuted under the article on insulting the feelings of believers. Maxim expressed what he thought about Patriarch Kirill and his support for the war. This criminal article is false, because it is not used to prosecute for insulting religious feelings, but for dissent and protesting against the regime. Because if it really was used to prosecute for insulting religious feelings, then first of all they should have brought to justice Patriarch Kirill himself, Sergei Ryakhovsky, Talgat Tatjudin, Bhakti Rasayana Sagar Swami and other religious authorities. From a religious standpoint, any use of the authority of religion to justify Russia's actions in Ukraine is an insult to God and introducing their fellow believers into demonic temptation.

In fact, they want to put Maxim in jail for something completely different - for the fact that he created the Party of the Dead, known for its public actions. He created it in 2017 in response to an attempt of the authorities to appropriate the dead and use them for their political purposes, such as voter fraud or events like the Immortal Regiment.

Of course, there is epatage in the party's actions, but Maxim is not the kind of person who would joke about death. For the necro-imperialists, death is the last point of triumph of their undivided power, because they fear even their own victims, as long as they are alive. Therefore, necro-imperialists look at death from the angle of their right to kill and see it as a way to free themselves from the fear of the complexity of the world. However, Maxim, from his life experience, knows death from the opposite side - from the side of an unjustified senseless tragedy.

Maxim has his own philosophical position, different from mine; he can tell about it himself, but I will only say how I see his actions from my standpoint. I believe Maxim has the right to speak on behalf of the dead, for his existential experience allows him to remain himself both among the living and the dead. In the actions of Maxim, death ceases to be what necrophiles seek - a way to simplify the world and confirm their absolute power. Necrophiles in power want to turn people into nothing, and he let the dead refuse, at least in a symbolic form, to be victims and turn into nothingness. Therefore, even in such a symbolic demonstration, necrophiles feel danger.

Most of all, necrophiles are afraid of being among the dead themselves, and Putin is ready to send everyone to death in order to prolong his life at least a little. Thus, he has already condemned the living to death and perceives them as dead, and therefore is also afraid to be among them, fencing himself off with a giant table. It turns out that he has no place either among the living or among the dead.

Nikolai Karpitsky. We need the idea of de-imperialization. 15.06.2022

URL: https://ochevidcy.com/en/filosof-karpitskiy/

Nikolai Karpitsky is a philosopher and public figure from Tomsk. He spoke out against the wars in Chechnya. And against communist ideology. He defended the Bhagavad-Gita in court - remember that resonant trial over the book? Nikolai Karpitsky has been living in Ukraine since 2015. For the past three years he has been living in Slavyansk, on the outskirts of which he bought a small house three years ago. Since February 24, 2022, he has been conducting the "Chronicle of the People's War". Fragments of it, along with a story by Nikolai Karpitsky, are in the "Eyewitnesses" project.

Photo from the personal archive of Nikolai Karpitsky

February 24, 2022. Ukraine. The first day of the war. My first post since the war began. I wrote here on Facebook on February 9 that Russia has enough power to launch a first crushing strike against Ukraine and destroy much of its economy and military capabilities, but Ukraine has enough power to handle an invasion. So now I believe that the first crushing blow won't work either..."

- On February 24, I was in Kiev. I woke up in the morning and looked out the window: a siren was blaring. I took the train to Slavyansk. I started chronicling what was going on day by day. My first reaction was: could we withstand a blitzkrieg or not? Because the enemy always plans a blitzkrieg, not a protracted war. If we hold out, then we can talk about Ukraine's chances. After three days of war it became clear that the blitzkrieg was not successful, and the second phase of a terrible bloody war began. Which will inevitably result in the extermination of the civilian population.

"February 27, 2022. Ukraine. The fourth day of the war. The spring thaw. Huge losses of Russian equipment are also due to the fact that it is impossible to advance in the fields now - abnormal heat, the equipment will simply sink in the mud. We have to drive on the highways, getting into ambushes. The Ukrainian army withstood the first blow and now the initiative slowly begins to pass to it...".

- When the offensive began, a picture of the world began to take shape. For the first three days, the Russians wanted to surgically remove the government. There had been no targeted bombing of residential areas yet... But when they had to evacuate refugees from Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Izyum, and Lisichansk, it became clear that buses with refugees were being deliberately shelled. Then the nature of the war became clear. Wars can be civilized and waged to destroy. It is clear that the war in Chechnya and the war in Syria were uncivilized. Cities were destroyed there. But here the hope was that this invasion was purely political. That they would block cities, military units, but there would be no targeted destruction of the population. I had such hope for three days... Now people in general understand who they are dealing with. They understand that this is a war of annihilation. Even those who used to support the separatists are horrified by what is happening.

"March 1, 2022. Ukraine. The sixth day of the war. The situation can be imagined as if a huge boogeyman had attacked a teenager, who, though badly beaten, managed to resist. The big guy realizes that he can't win by leaps and bounds, and now, having evaluated the situation, he's going to attack again. He is in fact a berserker, and can feel no pain, and is incapable of reasoning. If we were talking about an ordinary dictator, albeit a sadist and a scoundrel, but a pragmatic one, then after inflicting substantial losses on the invading army, it would be possible to negotiate peace with him. But we are dealing with Putin, who proceeds from a holistic picture of the world, in which everything is reversed - evil is perceived as good and good as evil. This is a worldview for which I do not know the scientific name, but in Christianity it is called Satanism..."

- I stayed in Slaviansk to describe the situation from the inside. I try to write not so much about events, because everyone writes about events. I try to explain their context. And to write about people's experiences. How to experience it, how to relate to it. When you are involved in events, you awaken a special historical intuition, allowing you to feel what is real and what is impossible... I decided to stay in Slaviansk in order to be able to feel how events are happening. Right now, as we were talking, there was a bang.

«March 14, 2022. Ukraine. Nineteenth Day of War. 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. <…> 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.…».

- I live among Ukrainians, I am emotionally connected to them. I walk the streets, I go to meetings. There is a Protestant church here that deals with refugee removal. I meet with them, look at their sentiments. Of course, in Kiev the start of the war was a shock, people couldn't understand and accept the reality. It took them some time. And some reactions were naive and strange. They could sit in the subway all day long. But clearly, if the war is for a long time, you're not going to sit in the subway all the time. You would have to get used to it and live a normal life. Despite the bombings and rockets. When I came to Slavyansk, I found that people here were already used to it. They had already seen the war and had a calm attitude. Pragmatically.

"March 24, 2022. Ukraine. Twenty-ninth day of war. When war broke out, the world collapsed. The inevitable happened. It was as if an asteroid had crashed into the earth, and overnight the whole familiar world disappeared, along with daily communication, work, problems, and little joys. Only emptiness lies ahead. After a while, a new shock. It turns out that it is not just emptiness, but destruction, suffering and death. After all, it is not only the army that is at war with the occupiers...".

- As for medications, you can buy simple drugs, but not every pharmacy has them. There is always something missing. The assortment in the stores has decreased by three times. But everything you need is there. At the bazaar, the number of people has decreased by 5-10 times, but people are there and trade. In addition, there are various humanitarian missions. They bring aid. There is a problem with public utilities. Since the water intake is in Mayak settlement, which is on Northern Donets, where Russians are advancing, it is impossible to repair it. The city has been without water for the second week. Some have wells, somewhere water is brought. But there is no opportunity to use water freely now. As for electricity, the high-voltage wires get broken and have to be repaired. Sometimes you are without light for a day or two. The most difficult thing is the uncertainty, because there is no Internet, no communication, and you don't know what kind of danger threatens you.

"March 29, 2022. Ukraine. Thirty-fourth day of war. The Moscow Tsardom, and later the Russian Empire, constantly waged wars of conquest, justifying it with the super-valuable idea of gathering lands. This idea was inculcated in school, and many still accept it by default. The essence of this idea is the denial of the value of independent life outside of Russia. History has often seen empires, dictatorships, tyrannies, which, like Russia, waged wars of conquest. Of course, this is an evil, but an evil that is social, human, but not yet religious or metaphysical. When the military and Chekist coup took place in Russia in 1999, the ideology of gathering land mutated. If before the independent life of the peoples was devalued, but was not considered evil, now the entire surrounding world, which resists inclusion in the sphere of influence of Russia, is perceived as hostile and subject to destruction ...

- I try to assess the danger. And I assess it this way: I just ignore rocket attacks, I don't pay attention to sirens at all. I have a basement in my yard, but it is not equipped. Sitting there is not an option at all. Being hit by a missile is like being hit by a car in a city with a lot of traffic. There's no getting away from it.

"April 6, 2022. Ukraine. Forty-second day of the war. There came a time when the cannonade began to calm me down. I can already distinguish by ear when ours are beating the occupiers. Judging from what I heard yesterday, the fighting on the way to Slavyansk is desperate...".

- Ukraine's victory in the war depends on Western weapons. The Soviet weapons, which were there, have unfortunately run out. The first victories of the Ukrainians were due to the fact that there were still enough weapons. Now they are used up. But the Russian reserves are not limited... If there is a lend-lease, everything we need is here. The Ukrainian army is mobilized, it is superior to the Russian army, it is not surrounded. And no one will throw soldiers as cannon fodder. In the event of a Russian takeover of the whole of Ukraine, this entire army would go to the partisans. Of course, Russia would lose, but at a huge cost to Ukraine. If weapons came, there would be no need to pay such a price.

"May 28, 2022. Ukraine. Ninety-fourth day of the war. Yesterday there was no light, wrote until the laptop battery died, today finished the work. Therefore, the first part relates to yesterday. This week the Donetsk region was finally cut off from gas. In the morning we got water, so we could take a shower. At first it feels strange to be in the shower during shelling or the roar of a siren, but then it becomes indifferent. The lights are still out. I write until the battery runs out. I drove around the city. There are not many people, the stores are out without lights. I like to ride my bike out of town, it's the most beautiful places there, you can't give them up to orcs. But you can't go there now, there's a war going on. There's a lot of banging going on. I cooked potatoes on the fire in the yard - the first time, no experience yet, but I think I'll get used to it...".

- I know that in Russia there were calls to go to rallies - it's the same as in the Soviet Union to rally against the Afghan war ... But everyone in their place can sabotage unconstitutional decisions. And the second point. Without a clear idea of what to strive for, the goal cannot be achieved. This idea has not yet been formulated. Replacing a bad president with a good one will not change anything. We need the idea of de-imperialization. A rejection of the imperial form of government. This idea needs to be communicated. It is quite possible and realistic.