The 1997 film "Brother" effectively portrayed the identity of contemporary, post-Soviet Russia and shaped the morals of the Putin era. One of those principles - advocated by the leading protagonist - is that no one should criticise their own side during a time of war.
While it is true that no one should be held accountable for everything that happens to their side during a war, that same person is also convinced that truth is where power truly lies.
These two beliefs obviously cannot co-exist in a healthy society since there can be no truth in a community free of any criticism or accountability. However, this is precisely the perverted world Russia lives in.
It has been almost a century since a lie was presented as truth.
One of the reasons the USSR was able to sustain itself for so long was the concept of “permanent revolution”, introduced by one of the founders of the 1917 Red Revolution, Lev Trotsky.
The concept of permanent revolution implied that there was no end to global revolution and that the USSR had to lead the charge for it to continue happening everywhere.
This permanent revolution also provided meaning and purpose to the Russian and then Soviet subverted and demoralised population.
Permanent war – the purpose of Putin's Russia
Putin’s Russia is now starting a “permanent war” against the West as a meaning and purpose for the country and its people.
According to the current Kremlin ideology, there is no end to the war, nor there could be an end to the war Russia has been waging against Ukraine even if Russia occupied Kyiv and the whole of Ukraine because the Kremlin has introduced and Russian population accepted, permanent and existential war Russia has been waging against the West and Western values.
This perverted but propaganda-effective perception of the world places Russia in a better ideological position than the West.
Western politicians’ indecisiveness and lack of proper understanding of Russia’s actual state of domestic affairs enabled Russia to seize control of already occupied Ukrainian territory.
While holding occupied territory in Ukraine, Russia is placing not only its society but also its industry on military rails.
Western politicians waisted a surprise effect when the Ukrainian army started to push Russia away.
That was a good momentum to inject powerful weapons into Ukraine. However, European career politicians wasted that opportunity purely because they ran for office on fundamentally opposite principles compared to those required during times of war.
The militarisation of Russia is going smoothly
Russian power is not in truth, but in the disenfranchisement of Russia’s citizens.
America lost 7000 of its men in Iraq and had to leave because of domestic pressure. Russia already lost twenty or even thirty times more men in Ukraine. An equal number of Russian soldiers has been wounded or lost in action. However, the Kremlin is not even considering withdrawing from Ukraine because Russian society exists in submissive silence.
The militarisation of Russian society is moving rapidly. The monitors located at the Moscow subway used to show social and commercial messages. These days, messages are exclusively about the Great Patriotic War, which Russian propaganda was skilfully able to combine with the war in Ukraine.
The Russian establishment clearly understands that Western politicians will soon have a hard time explaining to their voters why the West needs to assist Ukraine in the war against Russia.
War as a factor of social cohesion
Russia will not stop the war because the war is clearly the best unifying and mobilising factor for the Russian majority the Kremlin could imagine. The Kremlin needed this war to remain sustainable for decades, similar to the USSR in the past.
Western politicians are accountable to their voters, while the Kremlin, like the hero of the “Brother”, establishes his own reality and alternative truth without accountability.
Russia could comfortably kill many more thousands of its citizens by sending them to the HIMARS inferno. It could modify its economy, causing more hardship to its subverted and submissive population. It could go into the offensive by siding with Iran or even Hamas. European politicians could not do anything similar.
Fortunately for Russia, the reasons why the West must defend Ukraine have not been adequately communicated to Western citizens or even the political elite in the West.
Ukraine is just the beginning of Russia’s current permanent war against the West. However, the West still has a hard time understanding that the war in Ukraine is just the beginning of a new Russian Comintern that the Putin regime has erected to remain sustainable for a few more generations.
