The Sources of Russian Misconduct

[SVPete]

The Sources of Russian Misconduct
By Boris Bondarev
November/December 2022
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/sources-russia-misconduct-boris-bondarev

As someone born in the Soviet Union, I found the attack almost unimaginable, even though I had heard Western news reports that an invasion might be imminent. Ukrainians were supposed to be our close friends, and we had much in common, including a history of fighting Germany as part of the same country. I thought about the lyrics of a famous patriotic song from World War II, one that many residents of the former Soviet Union know well: “On June 22, exactly at 4:00 a.m., Kyiv was bombed, and we were told that the war had started.” Russian President Vladimir Putin described the invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” intended to “de-Nazify” Russia’s neighbor. But in Ukraine, it was Russia that had taken the Nazis’ place.

“That is the beginning of the end,” I told my wife. We decided I had to quit.

Resigning meant throwing away a twenty-year career as a Russian diplomat and, with it, many of my friendships. But the decision was a long time coming. When I joined the ministry in 2002, it was during a period of relative openness, when we diplomats could work cordially with our counterparts from other countries. Still, it was apparent from my earliest days that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was deeply flawed. Even then, it discouraged critical thinking, and over the course of my tenure, it became increasingly belligerent. I stayed on anyway, managing the cognitive dissonance by hoping that I could use whatever power I had to moderate my country’s international behavior. But certain events can make a person accept things they didn’t dare to before.

The invasion of Ukraine made it impossible to deny just how brutal and repressive Russia had become. It was an unspeakable act of cruelty, designed to subjugate a neighbor and erase its ethnic identity. It gave Moscow an excuse to crush any domestic opposition. Now, the government is sending thousands upon thousands of drafted men to go kill Ukrainians. The war shows that Russia is no longer just dictatorial and aggressive; it has become a fascist state.

But for me, one of the invasion’s central lessons had to do with something I had witnessed over the preceding two decades: what happens when a government is slowly warped by its own propaganda. For years, Russian diplomats were made to confront Washington and defend the country’s meddling abroad with lies and non sequiturs. We were taught to embrace bombastic rhetoric and to uncritically parrot to other states what the Kremlin said to us. But eventually, the target audience for this propaganda was not just foreign countries; it was our own leadership. ...

Interesting on multiple levels: an over-view of post-Soviet Russian history; how sycophancy currently drives the current Russian government; Putin's planned aggression and imperialism.

[DefiantSix]

...I had heard Western news reports that an invasion might be imminent. Ukrainians were supposed to be our close friends, and we had much in common, including a history of fighting Germany as part of the same country.

Apparently, at least one of the elites of Russian government is so poorly educated as to not know that the Ukrainians never considered being part of the USSR a "friendly arrangement" from their perspective (20+ million dead in the Holodomor tends to chill friendships for a long damned time, doncha know), and they so disliked being held in the USSR at gunpoint that when the Germans invaded in 1941, many of them JOINED the Nazis in fighting the Russians.

To borrow a line from Marvel comics character Hawkeye:

"You and I remember [the Great Patriotic War] very differently."

[Eupher]

There is, then, only one way to stop Russia’s dictator, and that is to do what U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin suggested in April: weaken the country “to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

I'm surprised to read this. Everybody knows that Austin is full of shit and is incompetent. The "suggestion" probably came from some schmuck within DoD. No other way to explain it.