Why the invasion of Ukraine is a symptom of the Kremlin’s powerlessness and worry

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Slavoj Žižek, one of many main thinkers of the West, who has  his origins within the “Communist East”, wrote the opposite day in The Guardian:

‘Sure, the liberal west is hypocritical, making use of its excessive requirements very selectively. However hypocrisy means you violate the requirements you proclaim, and on this approach you open your self as much as inherent criticism – after we criticise the liberal west, we use its personal requirements. What Russia is providing is a world with out hypocrisy – as a result of it’s with out world moral requirements, practising simply pragmatic “respect” for variations. We have now seen clearly what this implies when, after the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, they immediately made a cope with China. China accepts the brand new Afghanistan whereas the Taliban will ignore what China is doing to Uyghurs – that is, in nuce, the brand new globalisation advocated by Russia. And the one method to defend what’s price saving in our liberal custom is to ruthlessly insist on its universality. The second we apply double requirements, we are not any much less “pragmatic” than Russia.’

Russians worry they’re shedding Ukraine for good

One of many nice causes of battle – the Russians say it out loud – is the worry of shedding Ukraine for good. That’s, Ukraine has entered the part the place will probably be misplaced eternally. And never essentially within the sense of an administrative territorial part, however in a a lot deeper sense.

We’re speaking about Ukraine being lower off from Russia in an virtually metaphysical sense: of whole alienation, of getting radically completely different values. That, from a typical cultural area, it turns into a overseas and even enemy area. And it’s the identical with Belarus. Russia fears that it’s shedding its affect and enchantment in an area it considers to be intimately part of itself. And that lack of identification is their abyssal worry.

This worry of a complete lack of Ukraine, out of attain of the “Russian world”, is a horrible Russian dread and anguish. Ukraine is a symptom of their worry of self-destruction. How actual this worry is I can’t inform. However there is a vital trigger right here. Actually, there may be a couple of.

I’ve had these discussions many instances with Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian buddies. For greater than 15 years. 

Greater than ten years in the past I had espresso in Kiev and Minsk and talked with buddies of my technology. The factor that stood out to me was that every one the youth and all of the city hipsterism was related to Warsaw, Berlin, London, Budapest, the Central European College, the USA. 

Moscow and Saint Petersburg, which is simply across the nook from them and is their former outdated capital, was of their creativeness one thing additional away than New York. This distancing occurred in simply 20 years. Their mother and father and grandparents who have been educated within the two capitals of the empire had grandchildren and kids who needed nothing to do with the 2 new centres.

The place is your tender energy?

I repeat, this occurred in 30 years at most, throughout the Putin regime, even when it began within the Yeltsin period. The break started radically, with my technology within the perestroika period, after we declared ourselves to be “the final People” – we have been extra American than the People. It is a lengthy story: in my guide, The Final Dingo Kids, I clarify this phenomenon.

My line is straightforward: rebiata, my pricey ones – you’ve got received the technique all flawed. Which means that you Russians, the Russian state, the 2 capitals, the main city centres, don’t have anything to supply them: “love by drive is rape” says the Russian proverb. The place is your tender energy? Vâ je Imperia, sila? as Pelevin says in Era P – aren’t you the Empire, a smashing drive?