Yesterday’s visit by Zelensky to the hottest front line in Bahmut and his meeting with military heroes on the one hand, and Putin’s reception of propaganda garbage in the Kremlin on the other, vividly demonstrated how the two presidents and their countries and societies differ in the ongoing war.
Russian propaganda only instills in Russians the belief that they carry traditional, family and masculine values, including military courage and honor, against decaying homosexuals. But let’s ask ourselves who corresponds more visibly to these values — a president who has repeatedly visited the frontline areas, is among his soldiers and has a strong family, or a pumped-up, botoxed figure on high heels who hid from everyone during the coronavirus, held meetings at a comically long table, is afraid not only to approach the frontline but even to go out to his own people, whose meetings with representatives are simulated by FSO employees, and whose family, if it exists, is unknown?
The question is rhetorical, but fortunately for Ukraine and unfortunately for Russia, the answer to it reflects not only and not so much the difference between the two presidents, but the difference between the societies they represent. Because Ukrainian society demands that its president serve it and share its risks, even though they are not his fault. After all, Zelensky tried to prevent the war until the last moment and called Putin, who refused to talk, the last time on the eve of the war.
Russian society, on the other hand, either supports or simply tolerates (perhaps 50-50) a president who has thrown it into a war, throwing hundreds of thousands of Russians into his meat grinder, not coming close to the front, and rewarding with a smug look those instigators of this war who make millions from human suffering and hardship. Meanwhile, according to both President Zelensky and a number of Western experts, Russia’s losses in this war have approached 100,000 people, which already exceeds its military losses in the Afghan, both Chechen and Syrian wars. Yes, they are also significant for the Ukrainians. But Ukrainians know very well what they are fighting for — literally for their country and their freedom, to have accountable power that can be changed in the next elections, and not to become powerless and spineless slaves of the Botoxed Demon and his cynical propagandists.
As for what Russians are fighting for, the recently released series of videos advertising recruitment for the war of contracts speaks for itself — to buy an iPhone for their daughter, or to help their grandfather make ends meet, because in the «knee-jerk» Russia under Putin, millions of Russian men have no other option. However, in response to the ridicule of these videos, Kremlin propagandists tried to portray them as the work of the Ukrainian CSPO (Center for Special Information-Psychological Operations). But once again they stumbled when it was proven that both the videos were shot in Russia and the actors who appeared in them live there.
Meanwhile, what is definitely staged is Putin’s visit to the «combat zone,» which was retroactively announced yesterday in response to the footage of Zelensky in Bahmut. As the information-analytical «News Agency» detailed, the botoxed man didn’t even come close to the zone of hostilities and presented footage of meetings from the rear as his visit (https://t.me/agentstvonews/2162). Potemkin villages are the essence of Russia. They fight for it, wash themselves and others in blood.