🇵🇱 Колишній депутат Сейму повернув президенту Польщі свій "Золотий Хрест Заслуги" на знак протесту та солідарності з Україною.
За словами Пйотра Фоглера, рішення щодо позбавлення нагороди Зеленського є "дурним", а дії Навроцького дедалі більше перетворюють Польщу на посміховисько.
"Те, що зробив і що далі робить цей пан, якого називають президентом, – це жах, і для мене він не президент моєї країни, а непорозуміння"
This is a very strange war, probably one of the strangest I've ever studied or witnessed.
Off the top of my head I can name about 20 glaring strangeness — about Ukraine and about Russia alike — that defy any reasonable explanation.
Most of those strangeness will have to wait until the war is over, but one — about Russia — I'll go ahead and name.
Russia's death toll is approaching half a million, and by the time you read this, it may have already reached or surpassed that mark.
Losses can sometimes be justified if they yield dividends — but that's not the case with today's Russia or the war it's waging.
I genuinely cannot understand why, after the failed take Kyiv, Russian leadership decided to grind its army year after year, head-on, into Ukraine's most fortified and defended lines.
History has rarely, if ever, seen anything like it — a massive army taken and methodically, year after year, smashed against a wall for minimal gain.
Someone might push back: Ukraine, too, attacked head-on into the most fortified positions in 2023.
True — but after getting burned, Ukrainians drew lessons. What followed was the Kursk operation (a change of direction), robotization, a search for new military solutions.
And before that came the Kharkiv offensive, the defense of Kyiv, the liberation of Kherson through bridge-cutting and encirclement — and much more.
Ukraine's strangeness lies elsewhere — but certainly not in operational art. There they've demonstrated what any cat knows: touch fire once, don't touch it again.
And don't blame Soviet-era generals — even Soviet generals understood and could apply not just the ABC's of military art but higher concepts as well.
But forget the generals — even stranger is why the army itself goes along with it.
Fine, the soldiers — they're terrified, ground down, and cowed. But what about junior and mid-level officers?
Don't questions occur to them — elementary, basic questions — that with a front and theater stretching over 3,000 km, with directions that are either poorly defended or vulnerable, choosing again and again, year after year, the most heavily fortified theater and axis is, to put it mildly, a deliberate strategy to destroy your own army?
The Ukrainians have been slowly falling back all these years, methodically building new lines while simultaneously destroying and grinding down the Russian army.
Looking at that half-million dead, the thought creeps in — the one some Z-bloggers themselves have written about: that this isn't a war, it's a human sacrifice.
Calling it a war in any genuine sense is indeed difficult — because what Russia is doing is simply not how things are done, even when you're Soviet-trained and don't know how to fight.
Because if a man picks up a sword and starts stabbing himself with it — piercing his own hands and feet — you wouldn't say: well, he just doesn't know how to fence — Soviets, you understand...
A lot of lyrical prose has been written about this, and even more clever arguments and attempts to explain it rationally — but all of it misses the point.
The Kremlin is hundreds of people if you count only the very top, and thousands if you include the rest of the apparatus — plus the General Staff, plus senior and junior officers — that's tens of thousands of people.
And not one of them had the basic thought that you cannot smash an army to pieces and burn hundreds of thousands of men alive, head-on, directly into the enemy's fortifications?
The only case we've seen where someone tried to break out of this sacrificial meat grinder was Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group.
How that ended is well known — but what's not clear is why everyone else is fine with all of this.
And this isn't about humanism — it's about basic utilitarianism. You need an army, an economy, equipment — especially if you have ambitions.
And Russia has them.
But Russia is hurtling toward the abyss and shows no sign of stopping — and fine, the leadership are idiots — but why is everyone else okay with it?
History knows many wars — successful and unsuccessful, justified and not, long and bloody, fast and short — but the war the Kremlin is waging today is not just stupid, senseless, and bloody. It is also profoundly strange.
On a single day, Russian terrorists attacked:
- Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra
- National Dovzhenko Film Studio
- National Reserve «Mystetskyi Arsenal» (Art Arsenal)
- Innovative Terminal of Nova Poshta
- The building of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC)
- Educational institutions, including Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
- The House of Organ and Chamber Music in Dnipro
- The Center for Children’s and Youth Creativity in Sumy
- Kharkiv Zoo
- Energy infrastructure
- Residential districts and apartment buildings
- And other sites.
And all of this they call «retaliatory strikes» and claim that the «targets have been hit».
These are the kinds of targets they have… Can one possibly be an even greater monster?
From the headlines:
▪️Vladimir Putin branded 'Kremlin Antichrist' after setting 1,000-year-old church on fire in deadly Kyiv blitz, - GB News.
▪️'The Antichrist has struck.' Ukraine in shock after Russian attack on Kiev monastery, - Seznam Zprávy (Czech Rep.).
▪️Orthodox leader calls Putin 'Antichrist' for airstrike on historic Kyiv cathedral, - The Independent.
The fact that Russia is a child-killer state was well-known long before it's strike on Okhmatdyt children's hospital in July 2024.
The fact that Russia is an antichrist-state was well-known long before today's strike on Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. But today the status of the Antichrist was officially gained by Putin in Western media.
However, I'd suggest that calling Putin the Antichrist is a bit of an exaggeration, in his case even an honorable one, because he's a bit too small for that. All Russia is capable of is terrorizing people with its missile attacks. Which, of course, doesn't make things any easier. So let it be:
#kremlin_antichrist
At least the damaged structures of the Dormition Cathedral of the Lavra can be restored. What's more painful is today's yet another deaths - 10 people were killed. 5 in Kyiv, 5 in Kharkiv. In Kharkiv they were rescuers, who were hit by consecutive strike, as Russia always does, when they arrived to put out the fires.
#kremlin_antichrist
As a result of Russian strikes on Kyiv tonight, the building of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra caught fire.
In addition to drones, Russia is hitting Kyiv with dozens of ballistic missiles; civilians are under attack, as in previous times.
The chaotic nature of the strikes resembles agony: not knowing how to respond to Ukraine's precise and painful strikes, Moscow is flailing its fists in a blind frenzy.
I see Ukrainian channels and theologians already writing: demons and antichrists.
There is nothing to add: as you wage your war, so shall you be remembered.
Russia will be remembered as the killer of Ukrainians, a mass killer of Russian speakers, and a destroyer of Christian shrines.
Russian propagandist Karnaukhov, who works for Solovyov, openly called for striking Poland with an «Oreshnik» missile to «see the reaction.»
«What will you do to us, 'Psheks'? Declare war on us on behalf of NATO? Of course not. NATO is already fighting anyway. But NATO will never actually go to war against us... Poland will just wash its hands and quietly step aside - it's too dangerous.»
«And obviously, their bases will be moved to Romania. We'll deal with the 'gypsies' there. Much simpler - the gypsies definitely aren't going anywhere.»
It's funny that in one breath he says NATO is already at war with Russia, and in the next - that NATO will never fight Russia. The script is glitching.
What's not funny is that there really are no preconditions for a serious NATO response. And many have wondered why Russia still hasn't directly attacked a NATO country with combat weapons (the drone attack on Poland had no warhead). A deliberate strike with drones and missiles on a NATO military target could temporarily paralyze the Alliance. The response would most likely be stronger air defense and renewed calls for «negotiations».
Russian propagandist Karnaukhov, who works for Solovyov, openly called for striking Poland with an «Oreshnik» missile to «see the reaction.»
«What will you do to us, 'Psheks'? Declare war on us on behalf of NATO? Of course not. NATO is already fighting anyway. But NATO will never actually go to war against us... Poland will just wash its hands and quietly step aside - it's too dangerous.»
«And obviously, their bases will be moved to Romania. We'll deal with the 'gypsies' there. Much simpler - the gypsies definitely aren't going anywhere.»
It's funny that in one breath he says NATO is already at war with Russia, and in the next - that NATO will never fight Russia. The script is glitching.
What's not funny is that there really are no preconditions for a serious NATO response. And many have wondered why Russia still hasn't directly attacked a NATO country with combat weapons (the drone attack on Poland had no warhead). A deliberate strike with drones and missiles on a NATO military target could temporarily paralyze the Alliance. The response would most likely be stronger air defense and renewed calls for «negotiations».