When Vladimir Putin ordered the attack on Ukraine, the Kremlin was certain: Ukraine would be defeated in a few days. The three days estimated by Kremlin propaganda for Russian victory have now become proverbial. But nothing came of the lofty plans. The war is now entering its second year. And while propagandists like Vladimir Solovyov try to explain to the Russians why it was still the right thing to do, the Russian commander-in-chief refrained from any explanation. Instead, Putin conjures up a horror scenario intended to show his subjects the supposed necessity of bloodshed.
The West has only one goal, Putin claimed in an interview with the state broadcaster Rossiya 1. And that was the fragmentation of the former Soviet states, above all Russia. “Perhaps they will include us in the ranks of the so-called civilized peoples. But each part separately. Why? So that they can push these parts around and bring them under their control,” said the Kremlin boss, and imagined what would threaten Russia in such a case would. “If we follow this path, the destiny of very many peoples of Russia, especially the Russian people, will change radically. I don’t even know if the Russian ethnicity can then be preserved as it exists today. Then it will be the Muscovites, give the Urals and so on.”
Amazing words for a president who has never tired of emphasizing in recent years that Russia is a multi-ethnic state that offers everyone a home. In total, more than 160 ethnic groups live in the giant empire. Many minorities such as the Chuvash or Bashkirs have been discriminated against and disadvantaged for centuries. And now Putin is worried about the existence of the “Russian ethnic group”.
The Kremlin boss does not see Russia’s cohesion endangered by such statements, but by the alleged lust for power of the ominous collective West. In recent weeks, Kremlin propaganda has elevated the break-up of the Russian Federation to a new nightmare scenario. The war in Ukraine must not be lost. Otherwise, the federation is threatened with being broken up, according to the motto of state television. Chaos, arbitrariness, decline – the disintegration of Russia into its individual republics is glorified into a doomsday scenario.
On Monday, Dmitry Medvedev joined his elderly man and helped stoke that fear. In an article for the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, the sidelined former president glossed over why war in Ukraine was said to have been inevitable. Medvedev sees the core of evil above all in the collapse of the Soviet Union: “After all, what we are seeing now happened more than once – at the moment when another world empire came to an end,” says the completely independent deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council.
“Every collapsed empire buries half the world under its rubble, if not more,” writes Medvedev. “It seems that those who first ruined the Soviet Union and are now trying to destroy the Russian Federation do not want to understand this.” It is a delusional illusion to believe that Russia, like the Soviet Union, could be sent to the afterlife without a single shot.
“This is a very dangerous mistake. (…) If the question of the existence of Russia is raised seriously, it will not be decided on the Ukrainian front. But together with the question of the continued existence of all human civilization. And here it should there can be no ambiguity. We don’t need a world without Russia,” Medvedev postulates.
“Of course, one could continue pumping weapons into the neo-fascist Kiev regime and blocking any opportunity to revive the negotiations,” writes Medvedev, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explains at the same time: “At the moment we do not see the conditions for the matter to be resolved could take a peaceful path”.
For Medvedev, however, it is the “enemies” of Russia whose “aims obviously lead to a total fiasco. To the defeat of all. To the collapse. To the apocalypse. So that the former life must be forgotten for centuries until the smoky ruins stop emitting radiation. “
Of course, Medvedev does not explain what the difference is between today’s Russia and the Soviet Union. Nor whether Russia is an “empire” and why it cannot collapse when all empires have collapsed. But nobody in Putin’s power apparatus has been bothered with such subtleties for a long time. What is important is the message that should stick in people’s minds. And it is clear: a defeat of Russia will mean the apocalypse for everyone.
Even if the most important addressee of Putin and Medvedev is the domestic audience: Their messages also catch on abroad, as Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht demonstrated at a demo in Berlin last weekend. “Is the goal of the Russian withdrawal from the areas occupied since February 24, 2022?” Schwarzer asked a rhetorical question. “That would be legitimate and certainly achievable in negotiations by both sides and with compromises. Or is the goal not just to weaken Russia, but to destroy it? That would be neither legitimate nor realistic,” she said. Apart from Putin and his followers, no one ever spoke of the destruction of Russia.
“You can’t defeat the great nuclear power,” Schwarzer added, quoting Medvedev almost verbatim. Is it all just a coincidence? “I don’t think so!” Putin’s propagandist Dmtri Kiselyov would say.
