Is Russia The New “Christ Of Nations”?
Continuing to incur sacrifices due to the belief that Ukrainians are fraternal people who thus shouldn’t be inconvenienced or harmed if it can be helped instead of decisively doing what’s needed to end the conflict on as many of Russia’s terms as possible is Christ-like but entails tremendous costs and risks.
Putin continues to sincerely believe that Russians and Ukrainians are still kindred peoples as he argued at length in his summer 2021 magnum opus “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” despite all that’s happened over the past four and a half years of the special operation. With this worldview in mind, he continues rejecting pressure from the elite and society alike to escalate the conflict, not wanting to further inconvenience nor harm what he truly considers to be the fraternal Ukrainian people.
For this reason, he won’t authorize the complete destruction of their country’s powerplants nor any of the bridges across the Dnieper that continue carrying NATO military-technical equipment to the front. Apart from occasional strikes against military targets in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital remains extremely safe, so much so that celebrities continue paying regular pilgrimage to Zelensky there. Putin won’t even authorize the symbolic destruction of the Rada or even the GUR headquarters.
Even though “Ukraine’s Spree Of Strikes Against Russia Is More Showmanship Than Strategy” during these early days of Zelensky’s 40-day influence operation, which is expected to see the ramping up of such strikes, “Russia Must Defeat Ukraine Before Trump 2.0’s ‘War Of Attrition’ Really Gets Going”. If it doesn’t and the “war of attrition” persists, then battlefield and civilian casualties on the Russian side will continue to grow, while Russia’s energy and other industries will continue being degraded.
Even more worrying, “[Russia will] be more vulnerable than ever to the ‘cordon sanitaire’s’ invasion threats around 2030, thus compelling it to either capitulate or resort to nuclear weapons in self-defense” as was recently explained here. The timeline might even be moved up in the worst-case scenario if NATO develops new weapons for destroying Russian airfields, some of which function as part of its nuclear triad, and then having Ukraine systematically use them like Moscow just warned against attempting.
If this started happening and Putin kept exercising restraint due to continuing to consider Ukrainians to be fraternal people like he did after summer 2025’s “Operation Spiderweb” against that same part of his country’s nuclear triad, then former top Russian spy Andrey Bezrukov’s warning might become reality. He warned in June during a session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that the West wants to neutralize Russia’s nuclear triad. Russia can’t allow that to happen otherwise it’ll cease to exist.
Poland ceased to exist twice during the Partitions and then World War II, the first experience of which inspired the famous Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (equivalent to Russia’s Pushkin) to unforgettably describe his lost country as the “Christ of Nations” due to what he believed to be its martyrdom. He and his compatriots also believed that Poland has a special historical mission similar in spirit to what many Russians believe that their own country has. Hopefully it won’t cease to exist like Poland twice did.
To be clear, Russia won’t cease to exist under Putin’s watch, but the potentially decades-long “new war” that Bezrukov warned his compatriots to brace themselves for is an existential conflict, so it’s best for Russia to act decisively in order to win it soon before its sacrifices pile up. Russia shouldn’t allow itself to become the new “Christ of Nations” during this “war of attrition” that might last decades so it would thus be best if Putin hardens his heart, changes his views about Ukrainians, and does what’s needed.
Andrew, Anatoly Karlin recently posted on X about a Russian girl who got the highest score in everything from math to computer science, to chemistry, I think, on the big exam high schoolers take in Russia. I asked if Russia tracks these kids and what they do after, and someone commented that he was one of the high scorers, and now he works for an AI startup in Shenzhen.
Has Putin done anything to retain the smartest young Russians, or attract some of them them who are expats to come back? It seems like a colossal brain drain for these people to be working in Silicon Valley and China. Even from a short term perspective, these people might help Russia deal with Ukraine's drone threat, or otherwise expedite an end to the conflict on more favorable terms for Russia.
I agree, Andrew, however, the problem is not Ukraine. The problem is the globalist group that truly rules both the EU and the USA and pulls the strings of the leaders of these states: 'Who made you king?' I think that striking Ukraine excessively would be a mistake. It would only strengthen NATO's PR campaign depicting Russia as an imperialist barbarian (the height of irony...) and it wouldn't solve anything in Ukraine. All Russian elites say it and repeat it, rightly so, it's a NATO proxy war. If NATO's true leaders think that time is against Russia, it is them who must be deterred. Because Ukrainians defeated by force will not prevent terrorism directed from Langley, London, or Paris.