Slaughterhouse 2/24

The fratricidal ruin of two countries

Alexander Rybin

It is shocking to observe the suicidal tenacity with which Russian servicemen go to their deaths, marching to their graves on the orders of talentless Putin generals like Rustam Muradov. Belogorovka, Ugledar, and Marinka are all names of cemeteries where Putin's generals send Russian servicemen, and the servicemen obediently go, all the while knowing that they are following an idiotic order.

Over the last six months, the patriotic Z-channels in Telegram have been increasingly active in reporting on the mediocrity of Putin's generals. With thousands of Russian servicemen killed, missing, or captured, when the main "success" of the Russian army has been the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, their eyes have suddenly opened. When it appeared that the Russian army was only able to take a completely destroyed village after several months of heavy fighting, the authors of the above channels even dared to criticize Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu – but never President Vladimir Putin. He remains immune, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, an aging dictator under whom the Russian army has become a pathetic spectacle, and under whom Ukraine has become a state hostile to Russia.

The patriotic channels continue to use the same flawed logic: the tsar is good, but the nobles around him are bad; they are the cause of all the problems in the Russian state. To make the daring assumption that the "turbo-patriots" may initiate a rebellion against the government (as is sometimes fantasized on social networks) is foolish. These kinds of "turbo-patriots" will sit tight until the tsar is either deceased or overthrown by others. These kinds of "turbo-patriots" will go obediently to the slaughter, sent by the Muradov generals they themselves criticized.

In addition to the "turbo-patriots," much larger numbers of men from poverty-stricken Russian towns and villages, ruined by the regimes of Boris Yeltsin and his successor Vladimir Putin, are sent to the slaughter: in order to earn money, or for the glory of the Fatherland. Then, having reached the front, these men are outraged by the stupidity of the command and the lack of normal supplies. They may express their indignation, may even record a video message, but then obediently follow the idiotic, suicidal orders.

In the Tver region, since the beginning of this year, 10-15 coffins arrive each week with the remains of those killed during Putin's special military operation (SMO), the goals of which are still not clear. Until the beginning of this year, the number of deaths of Tver Oblast natives in the SMO zone was one per week, not more than five per month. A lot of corpses are currently arriving from near Artemivsk (Bakhmut) – including the bodies of those who enrolled in the so-called PMC "Wagner group" while in prison. Many corpses are leaving Bakhmut (Artemivsk) and heading towards the other regions of Ukraine - the same men die, as on the Russian side: not demons from NATO, not devils from ISIS, but just the same men from the same villages and impoverished small towns. The mutual slaughter of post-Soviet people is the result of the collapse of the USSR, the rejection of socialist values in the name of the wildest forms of capitalism. Undoubtedly, the regime of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is also guilty of the current bloodshed – recall that Zelensky won the 2019 presidential election primarily because he promised to end the war in Donbas. He hasn't. He created the conditions for his colleague Putin to divide post-Soviet history into before February 24 and after.

The logical outcome, the best outcome of the current slaughter should be a fundamental change of political regimes in both Moscow and Kyiv. If the regime changes in one capital and remains the same in the other, there will be a new senseless and merciless massacre of fraternal nations. If the regimes hold out in both places... you can see it now.