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Reminder: The Kremlin said the troops were massing for peaceful purposes and would never cross the Ukraine border. In the first weeks of the “special military operation” Russian civilians refused to believe their own relatives who told them Russia was shelling their buildings, and soon the Kremlin said the Ukrainians were shelling themselves. Remember?
And of course the constant blasting of all the civilian power stations is justified by Putin, “they started it” after a single blast to the only military supply bridge to the Crimea.
People enjoy the humour of Misha Firer, on the e-mail social media Quora, but they keep wondering if he is going to survive—he writes from Moscow. Recently he wrote a metaphor, non-funny, to answer a question. I will pray for him: (italics mine)
QUOTE
Misha Firer
Writer Jan 1
What should this war be called, Ukraine/Russia war or Russia/America proxy war in Ukraine?
(After posting a black and white photograph of him and his mother)
With my mother Elena. I was an intense boy.
When I was nine, my mother took me on a trip to visit our distant relatives in Kiev. Back then it was the capital of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic.
It was for the most part an opportunity to see “near abroad” – all my extended family lived in Russia and 14 republics were distant lands to us.
We stayed at the large apartment of our relatives in a new middle class neighbourhood. I can’t remember its name only that we kept getting lost there because all the apartment blocks looked identical to us.
After sightseeing, I would play with Sasha, their son, who was two years younger than me. Sasha was a sickly boy with compromised immune system due to Chernobyl disaster that had happened two years prior.
One time we ran around the living room with a skipping rope. In the heat of the game, I grabbed the skipping rope from Sasha and swung it real high and the heavy metal handle smashed into the chandelier. The chandelier came crashing down and broke into a thousand shards.
Adults heard the noise and filed into the living room – Sasha’s father and my mother.
“It wasn’t me!” I said quickly.
Sasha’s father and my mother didn’t press us into confession of who did it although by the position of the skipping rope on the floor and my flushed face they knew it was me.
I was in bed when mother came to wish me goodnight.
“It’s important to take responsibility for your actions,” she said gently prompting me to say it was I who broke the chandelier.
I wasn’t afraid of punishment as Sasha’s father looked chill and wasn’t mad at us but rather I was ashamed of coming clean this late and preferred to stick to the lie. “I didn’t do it!” I said stubbornly.
“When you’re ready to say the truth I’m here. Good night.”
This whole thing weighed very heavy on me. I couldn’t look into Sasha’s eyes or his dad’s eyes, because I knew that they knew or at least suspected, and the fun trip was turning into agony.
Finally, two days later, when mom came to wish me goodnight, I burst into tears and said, “I did it! I broke the chandelier with the skipping rope! It wasn’t Sasha. It was me! It was my fault.”
It was a great relief to say the truth and move on.
I didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident. I broke the chandelier.
Taking responsibility of one’s action felt like being a grown-up, and further adjusting behaviour to prevent further accidents.
I’ve often recalled the broken chandelier story during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In 22 years, Putin’s personalized regime had created Homo Putinicus – a special type of people who by default aren’t responsible for the consequences of their actions, and never hold accountable the people in power that represent them.
They shell Ukrainian towns and blame Ukrainians for it.
They destroy power infrastructure to freeze Ukrainians and leave without lights on, and say it’s all their fault.
This striking lack of empathy for others is but one facet of Homo Putinicus.
Russians who have embraced Putin as their dear supreme leader, and then in a blink of an eye, step away and shrug their shoulders and say, “It was Putin’s army. I have nothing to do with those deaths and damages.”
“I’m just a little person. Nothing depends on me. Leave me alone.”
After the end of war, pinning responsibility on Russians will prove to be the most frustrating act in human history.
No amount of videos and pictures as evidence of wrong-doing will ever be enough proof.
They gonna wriggle like eels with devious excuses and refuse to be held accountable.
It will be like that top to bottom – from Putin’s closest friends and accomplices who gonna say they were chekists’ hostages down to mothers incapable of connecting cause with effect and blindly following propaganda orders and sending their sons to kill people in a sovereign country.
Russia of today is a society of children.
There’s never a moment of catharsis stemmed from repentance but an endless string of tragedies blamed upon the powers beyond their control.
A perfect clay for the next dictator whoever he might be and whenever he might come, or alternatively a wonderful student material to educate and bring into responsible adulthood.
UNQUOTE
… …
I wonder whether Russians find self help books to be as charming as I do?
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Blessed in the west,
January
2023
Update: The Ukrainian president, who’s native tongue is Russian, would probably agree with Misha above, as he spoke to the Russian people about the latest missile attack destroying a civilian apartment block:
QUOTE In his evening address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted he had received many messages of sympathy from around the world and condemned the Russian people’s “cowardly silence” over the attack.
Switching to Russian during his message, he said he wanted to address those “who even now could not utter a few words of condemnation of this terror”.
“Your cowardly silence, your attempt to ‘wait out’ what is happening, will only end with the fact that one day these same terrorists will come for you.”
UNQUOTE
~Misha’s piece on Quora includes, “Russia of today is a nation of children.” (Italics mine) One of the replies was a person lamenting something like, “I thought after college I’d be out among adults, not two-year-olds!”
A child says, “It got lost.”
An adult says, “I lost it.”
Blog note: Next week I’ll post a guest travel-piece
