As Russia continues to attack UA’s energy infrastructure, today more than ever we are at a crossroads in the Russo-Ukrainian war. And Western govts, individually, need to recognise that & make a decision
🧵 I split my time betw my home in Kharkiv & my home in the UK. I see the ugly & heroic parts of the war & then I see how much ppl in the West tend to simplify.

In Western imaginations there are two wars:
1/

A new day, a new message to say someone I know has died. The third this week

Last night I fell asleep to the sound of bombs dropping on Kharkiv region

Thread🧵 Meanwhile, publishers ask me to review books from US-based Mearsheimer stans on how it’s west’s fault Russians are destroying Ukraine

Fellow Westerners: get a grip already. I feel ashamed of us.

This week I have given public talks across 🇺🇦 plus my usual hanging out with soldiers in Kharkiv

Ukrainians often ask me ‘Why doesn’t the West…’ questions that I don’t have answers to. I will share common qs below 🧵

Ukrainian followers, please add more 1) Why does the West care about the ‘cancelling’ of Dostoevsky but not about the killing of Ukrainian writers on the front, the burning of our books in the occupied territories, the bans on Ukrainian language, the looting of our museums?

I see Meduza getting some flack for this, imo, brave decision.

1) these views are only of war-supporting readers & don’t represent Meduza readers or all liberal Russians
2) it is important to post this bc it gives us insight into some reasons even anti-Putin 🇷🇺 agrees w war

https://twitter.com/drjademcglynn/status/1665070006655131648

It is an invitation to move beyond tiring binaries. Yes, there is brave opposition, yes, there are some enthusiastic war supporters, but more often there is a tacit acquiescence driven by human psychology, fear, propaganda, Ukrainophobia, solipsism, & a range of other dif things

What happens when a country stares too long in narcissism’s historical mirror? It enters a looking glass world, possessed by the history it suppressed

That is the story of Russia’s last decade, as told in my book: Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia 1/ You can pre-order here or you can read the rest of the thread (which is rly depressing and will put you off the book) 2/

@BloomsburyBooks

bloomsbury.com/uk/memory-make…

I wondered if 2023 would be as odd as 2022

Today my article in @Telegraph is being critiqued by 90s popsters Right Said Fred. So, yes, is the answer I guess.

As it is paywalled, here is a 🧵 of my arg as to why negotiations now won’t bring peace & the West’s realistic options Even if we pretend Ukrainians have no agency & the West forcing a peace wouldn’t result in overthrow of govt, Zelensky, & insurrection on EU borders, what can the West even give Putin? Not much 👇

Today 🇷🇺 Ministry of Culture published a list of ‘priority themes’ that filmmakers who want funding should use in their work. The list follows 🧵 1 preserving, creating & propagating traditional values
2. family, children, defending & supporting them
3. Russian Science: innovations and tech

Agreed. There’s a snobbishness in academia to studying 🇷🇺 popular culture though

🧵

I recall dept head @ top London uni dismissed my PhD proposal abt uses of history in 🇷🇺 propaganda (incl on 🇺🇦 ) as ‘unimportant’ & said my 5 yrs in Russia wld hinder my research!?
1/?

https://twitter.com/drkevorko/status/1550853814739148800

But u/standing what most Russians watch & like to watch/read, plus time in country, is key to understanding context that forms ‘mentality’
2/

One flaw in calls ‘not to humiliate Russia’* is that it already feels humiliated. The Kremlin is adept at amalgamating personal and national humiliations 🧵

1/

*I don’t think delib humiliating Russia is wise but I just don’t think how Russia feels should be the main worry. This is most obvious in Rus treatment of the 1990s, painted (esp since 2014) as a period when West broke up USSR and then exploited Russia(ns).
90s was a humiliating time for many&loss of personal status&wellbeing coincided w national loss of great power status 2/

I am obsessed with Victory Day salads (‘for men’). I think it is a combination of sincere effort and inappropriateness as a means of commemoration/celebration

Some selected pictures:

1/ Standard ‘Tank’ Salad 2/ Red Star Tank Salad

Can you imagine the amount of mayonnaise that goes into this!?

A thread of Victory Day and why its celebration is so important to Russia's ongoing war on Ukraine
🧵

1/ 9th May is the day when Russians celebrate WWII, or the Great Patriotic War (as they call the Soviet experience of WWII, 1941-1945).

To Westerners, Victory Day probably conjures up images of military parades on Red Square, soldiers marching, a general 'celebration' of war 2/

Like almost all articles, ignore the headline here.

This is a thoughtful piece from Ivan Krastev that builds on our discussions during an event last week with @mkimmage 1/

https://twitter.com/Sasha_Etkind/status/1518063301439143936

The video for that discussion is here for people who are interested in these arguments with a bit more nuance than can be included in ~1000 words 2/

Starting an ongoing🧵 on ‘Who do Russians say they are fighting in Ukraine to justify/distract from their ineptitude, cowardice and cruelty?’

1) Nazis
Already a bit tired. Luckily, Russian propagandists are always ready to freshen up their material

news.sky.com/video/putin-we… 2) US world domination (a few tankies seem to be taken in by this line…)

businessinsider.com/russian-foreig…

Russian efforts to destroy Ukraine can hardly be overstated

But, now and over the last 8.5 years, it is often the small things that reveal the depth of the Kremlin’s and its many supporters’ hatred towards Ukraine

1/ Eg pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts have started deliberately misspelling Киев (Kiev) as Кыев (Kyev) to mock Ukrainian requests that Western orgs use the Ukrainian spelling of their own cities’ names (Kyiv, Kharkiv, etc) 2/

Russian nationalist channels are sharing this old video of (recently deceased) Zhirinovsky talking abt how Russia has been saving the world for 100 years but gets no gratitude. This idea that the world owes 🇷🇺 a sphere of influence/great power status is persistent and pernicious This is most obvious wrt WWII (see Putin’s National Interest article abt West letting Red Army bleed out and constant sniping that Poland, Baltics and most of Soviet-occupied CEE saw it as, well, an occupation not as genuine liberation 2/

As before (MH17, gas attacks in Syria, etc), Russia reacted to condemnation of Bucha slaughter by

1) spreading lots of alternative takes to distract &sow doubt then after some time passed

2) pushing a counter narrative coherent w their broader line (here: denazification)1/2 So while dif sources voiced dif versions this morn, now most 🇷🇺 sources are cohering around the line that Bucha’s dead civilians were pro-Russians killed by Azov battalion as part of their genocide against Russians 2/

This is a great thread from @YudinGreg. I’d add that denazification narrative is also so effective bc it has been used for so long.

Accusations that supporters of an independent Ukraine are just Nazi collaborators have been used to delegitimise 🇺🇦 sovereignty since 1991

https://twitter.com/yudingreg/status/1510577039279071232

Accusations that anyone who promoted a non-Soviet version of the past or development of Ukrainian language were banderivtsy (an accusation that just means Nazi collabos to Russians) were also prominent during 🇷🇺 coverage of Orange Revolution

Do Russians support the war? Well, any answer here requires some guesswork but I worry there is currently an overemphasis on trying to prove that most Russians don’t support the war, even though there isn’t much evidence for this assertion

Thread 🧵 I too am sceptical of recent polls (incl Levada) showing surges in Putin’s approval for same reasons as most ppl (new censorship laws, ppl frightened, etc).
Living in the safety of London, I also really respect the risks anti-war Russians have taken in speaking up or protesting

Several people have put it to me that surely, once lots of young Russian men start coming back in body bags, Russians will turn against the war. I am not so convinced. Let me explain why:

Thread 🧵 There are lots of stories of Russians refusing to believe the truth about Ukraine from their relatives, or even their own POW sons. The story below is abt a mum whose son died in 🇺🇦. She responds to his death by arguing that sth went wrong but this means Russia must fight harder

https://twitter.com/StalinGulag/status/1507712404834201603

There is a popular and weird video post on tabloid KP’s Telegram. Watch here: t.me/truekpru/67460 see translation below

Apparently it shows China’s view on 🇷🇺 and 🇺🇦

‘Over 20 years ago, Ukraine divorced her husband, Russia… 1/ ‘They had had children. The husband was magnanimous, he left Ukraine a large amount of money and even paid her debts (200 billion dollars)

‘After the separation, the wife started flirting with the village yob - the USA - and gang of thugs (the West) 2/

Through the looking glass with Russian propaganda… 🧵

Headline from very popular Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda

‘ Russia can no longer be ignored: facing the threat of destitution, the West begins to admit the truth’ 1 kp.ru/daily/27375.5/… The premise of this article is that some in the West are waking up to reality (ie unreality or the need to denazify Ukraine)

Those who realise the truth are the super smart (‘authoritative experts’) and ‘ordinary folk’ 2