"Trusting the Plan" in the Russian World Is Life Threatening
Believing a word that comes out of the Kremlin could interfere with your bare survival
Until the moment that Kherson withdrawal was suddenly announced on Russian state TV last week, the official line was that Russia would defend the city forever, but that residents should evacuate anyway due to some business with the nearby dam.
Well, what if you were someone who wasn’t worried about the dam, but you were satisfied that the Russian military would defend Kherson until the end of times as you were being actively told? In that case, you probably stayed.
And then you ended up like this:
Like this:
Or like this:
Or like this:
And these are just the cases publicized by the SBU or captured by Western media.
To be a Russian and to swallow official state truths “vaccination will be voluntary”, “war is unthinkable”, “mobilization is not on the agenda”, “we’re staying in Kherson forever” can be literally life-threatening. Critical thinking and distrust of the government is a skill that in the Russian World can be critical just to bare survival.
It is also quite absurd that for the longest time Moscow couldn’t articulate to the people what the war was for or about, and then when it finally seemed to have figured out something moderately convincing and inspiring it lasted all of five seconds. — That’s how long it took for anyone who bought into it to the west side of the Dnieper to be unceremoniously stabbed in the back.
On September 30th Putin announced Kherson was now Russia and threw a big party in Moscow. 40 days later Russia was pulling out.
Great powers do have the tendency to ultimately betray the locals who take their side in a difficult and messy conflict. But that usually happens after 10 or 15 years of fighting. Putin’s Russia did it after 6 weeks. It was a jet-powered stab in the back.
People of Donbass started the war as second-class citizens of the Russian World, subject to a general mobilization while Russia wouldn’t even contribute serving conscripts to the joint war. The annexation to Russia was supposed to start slowly changing that, equalize their rights within the Russkiy Mir. Indeed at least Donbass students are now ordered demobilized since they’re exempt from partial mobilization in Russia.
But for pro-Russian Khersonians the annexation just further exposed how expendable they really were. They were told that they were formally Russia. And then they were told that this didn’t matter, that their piece of Russia alone the Russian military would not defend. Worse, they didn’t even get a honest, non-BS warning to get the hell out. They were lied to until the very last minute.
Rybar reporting on November 10:
As a result, according to the available information, there are about 70-100 thousand residents left in the city. But after the withdrawal of Russian troops was officially announced in the evening of November 9, many people began to evacuate.
Boats and ferries to the left bank from Kherson still operate, but they cannot deal with the flow of people wishing to evacuate. People are crossing by boat, private citizens charge 500 UAH ($13) per person, saving lives. There is a pontoon crossing, but it has a small capacity.
Authorities have announced that boats will operate until November 11, that is, tomorrow. [In fact there were no boats as the Ukrainians entered the next day.]
It can be assumed that Ukrainian armed forces will enter the city in the next few days (according to some reports, Ukrainian troops have already reached Chornobaivka, and recon groups are already in Kherson city). Not all of those who wished to evacuate will be able to do so.
How did this happen? For a long time, Russian authorities were proving that they'd come to Kherson for good, and would not leave. Even before November 9, there were contradictory statements about the readiness to fight for the city to the end. And now, we are where we are.
Many of those who are now trying to leave Kherson risk dying if they stay. This includes the members of commissions that organized the referendum, whose info was handed to Ukrainian authorities. They face up to 15 years in prison or simply death via "filtration measures".
Russia is in the midst of the worst streak of bad luck it had in a 1000 years. Yes, there were individual bad rulers that popped throughout history once every 100 years or so, but to have three disastrous rulers in a row - I don't recall anything like that. Gorbachev (1985 - 1991), Yeltsin (1991 - 1999), Putin (1999 - present day).
Putin is the worst of them all, since he is a skilled, naturally gifted actor playing a patriot's role while while doing everything exactly the opposite to what any person who genuinely loves Russia would do. It was Putin who should have been "loaned" Oscar by Sean Penn since he played his role longer and more convincingly than Zelensky. It is really surprising how naive are the people of Russian Federation who in sufficiently large numbers still continue believing in Putin and his good intentions. Well, they are not alone - Ukrainians are even naiver in their nationalistic rash, but what about Americans, how much of the critical thinking poses the people who believe in honest competition in people's interests between the two ruling parties?
On Kherson withdrawal. It is going to go down as one of the most shameful episodes in Russian history if not the most shameful. For the evacuation. This time, unlike in Izium and Balakleya, they tried to help local people. Evacuation was running full scale for 3 weeks and people are maybe naive but not stupid. When it was declared by Russian federal authorities that evacuees will be getting a resettlement housing certificate (which evacuees from Donetsk never got) everyone knew that the city of Kherson is going to get abandoned. Why some of the people who collaborated with Russian authorities stayed behind is beyond me.
It was too good to be true that a modern ruler actually cared about his country and the people of it. The West did a great job at so vilifying Putin with the intended effect many of us were psyop'd that he was the one good guy left. Diabolically clever. I got taken in on this one. Never again. From here on out it's down to examining and describing evil in its manifestations.