Russians With Attitude

Если серьёзно, то читающим нас жителям Киева настоятельно рекомендую валить из города уже сейчас, т.к. дальше будет только хуже. Полагаю, что к зиме выбраться из Киева станет намного сложнее. Не обязательно ждать переезда Рады. Надеяться на авось я бы на вашем месте тоже не стал.

The Russian Ministry of Defence has issued a statement with political commentary — which is quite rare for them, usually it's very dry "so-and-so many drones were shot down" stuff.

They say that they have "taken note" of Zelensky's threat to attack more Russian oil refineries and will further "intensify" strikes on Kiev and other parts of Ukraine in response to this threat, and that Zelensky "bears full personal and political responsibility" for what's coming.

"The people of Ukraine should blame only the head of the Kiev regime for this"

What's effectively poisoning the Western, and especially Anglo-Protestant, conception of modern Russia is the assumption that our societies are fundamentally the same, and that it's simply the laws, institutions, or constitution that make them different. Hence all the easily quantifiable "freedom" rankings based on what the rules say on paper.

When they look at the Ukraine war, they naturally imagine their own society fighting in a conflict on that scale, then apply the rules they believe Russia is operating under and immediately picture what they think would happen: torch marches, a full-on war economy, all-encompassing propaganda, psy-ops and most importantly, a population heavily propagandized into becoming attack dogs of the regime. In other words, they imagine what the US/UK would look like if it found itself in Russia's position, and then project that image onto Russia.

But that's not at all what's been happening in Russia. Because beneath the laws and institutions, we are, in many fundamental respects, a different society. No matter how tyrannical the formal laws might look on paper, they are routinely ignored, circumvented, negotiated around, or simply treated as something belonging to a separate sphere of life. There is a real wall between the state and ordinary people. The state does not need, and generally does not receive, fanatical ideological support from the population to function.

At the most basic societal level, Russia is far more attuned to a "live and let live" ethos than it is generally given credit for. The Russian state can play whack-a-mole with particular dissidents, organizations, or troublesome individuals. It can make examples of people. But that's about the extent of it. It has relatively little interest in micromanaging the inner life of the average person, and even less ability to turn the entire population into true believers.

This is the part Americans have a hard time understanding. They're accustomed to having enormous parts of their lives controlled not even by the state, but by social expectations, opinion leaders, HR departments, neighborhood norms, cancel mobs, corporate culture and suburban Karens with 911 on speed dial. This type of control is informal and decentralized, which makes it almost invisible as coercion.

So when they imagine adding a genuinely powerful state on top of that, they picture something much more terrifying because, for them, it really would mean being caught between a rock and a hard place. Of course that would be a miserable way to live, which perhaps explains the strange pride Americans take in not having military parades, or even socialized healthcare. They're suffering enough as it is, and with the state's role expanding, they just know they'll be getting procedurally raped in a FEMA concentration camp next week.

Russians have spent generations becoming absolute fucking professionals at maneuvering around the state. You learn which rules matter, which ones don't, what can be worked around, who you need to know, and when the official line can be safely ignored. Call it "degenerate Slavic corruption", or a shining proof that Eastern Europe is doomed, call it whatever you want. I call that freedom.