Russian 'patriots' will not allow Moscow sign a hasty peace treaty with the West

There is no such thing as Ukraine’s “peace plan”, said yesterday Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman of the Russian resident. And, he adds, in any case, such a plan has to include such a reality as Russia’s four new territories.

Peskov means the formerly East Ukrainian regions, populated mostly by ethnic Russians and comprising about 20 per cent of Ukraine before 2022, and incorporated into Russia on 5 October.

And then, on the previous day, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, participated in the TV show which I attend frequently, namely The Great Game. Lavrov has confirmed that Russia’s goal in Ukraine is, first, to safeguard the four new territories, and, second, to attain guarantees against any threat to Russia’s security, coming from Ukrainian territory.

That’s when the huge and growing community of Russian hyper-patriots heaved a sign, but then some of them are still suspicious about a possible Kremlin softness. That’s a new and previously unknown phenomenon, the patriots who nurse deep misgivings about their government’s resolve in this war.

An average patriot is impatient with the slow tempo of the Russian advance in the centre of the battle line. He – or, very likely, she – was horrified, when the Russian troops had left half of Kherson city in the south, so as to form a defence line along the Dnieper river and concentrate resources on the offensive in the centre. The patriots are in the know (and are indignant) about any problem with supplies for the troops. They also are apprehensive about the political leadership’s suspected intention to negotiate away all the victories already achieved.

There is a noticeable change in the public attitude towards the war. All the recent surveys show that the number of people recognising the necessity to start that war on 24 February remains basically unchanged (70 – 80 per cent). But the numbers of those in favour of peace negotiations are going down rapidly, while those who want Moscow to strike harder are getting more numerous.

Politologists are watching that trend with caution. One of them, Vitaly Trophimov, is saying that patriotism is a quiet and natural state of the collective mind, that tends to need fuel all the time. Patriotism is mostly backwards-oriented, as in cherishing a nation’s past glory, it surges at some dramatic happenings, but then goes back into slumber until troubled or boosted by unexpected current events. So in many cases, like now, the political class is not quite prepared to deal with it. There are a lot of petty politicians or artists trying to capitalize on that trend, failing in the process.

But there are also Russia’s military adversaries who are learning to play on patriotic strings in people’s souls, so as to enrage the public and push Moscow into making mistakes. So, it seems, that adversary found a way into our collective thinking by promoting a simple, if not dumb, idea: Russia is losing, and Russia is stuck.

There is nothing new in that narrative. Only the day before yesterday, in the mentioned TV show, the host demonstrated the headlines in leading Western publications. March: Russia is running out of missiles. April: Russia is not producing enough ammunition. May… and so it went, month after month, week after week, but somehow there is no lack of missiles or artillery shells that hit with the same precision and regularity Ukraine’s military installations and their infrastructure.

In fact, that’s not only about ammunition. If you just look at virtually all such headlines, from the very start they all have been trying to claim that Russia is losing. “Putin’s Last Stand – The Promise And Peril Of Russian Defeat”, a headline in the Foreign Affairs in the US, is only one recent example.

So, who is the target of that psychological campaign? You are, of course, as well as many other readers in the world, relying only on one-sided reporting. But the same goes for the Russian public, which is getting at least a trickle of this brainwashing, augmented by around 200 thousand-strong IT Army of Ukraine (and that’s only one army of many), not to mention US Cyber Command (around 6 thousand specialists) and many, many other such shadow fighters.

So, you better stay very resilient and cool-headed to be a Russian patriot now. And you need to avoid passive and angry surfing of the internet, concentrating on doing something useful, instead. So, a dozen all-national volunteer organizations sprang up. They collect money to buy medicines, books, warm clothes, tiny drones, portable stoves and tent baths, you name it. These people have rapidly established ties with local authorities of the four new territories, and are getting all the necessary feedback. We are talking about uncounted thousands of volunteers, who are not angry patriots, they are busy patriots. And they know firsthand that if someone is losing that war, it is not Russia.

But even in these circles “negotiations” is a suspicious word, so far. The general mood is in favour of complete demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would like the idea of the continuation of the existence of a regime that is notorious for torture chambers and murder of prisoners, closure of churches and bans on the Russian language, spoken by virtually all of Ukraine.

That means that no serious negotiations are coming in the near future. Is Moscow content with such a situation? Here I have to refer you, once again, to our TV show. A brief discussion happened there these days when we were still waiting for the cameras to switch on. Who benefits from the continuation of the present situation as it is, I asked a former Ukrainian MP, who is a Russian politician now. “We do,” was his answer. “Time is on our side, we have no need to hurry,” he said.

The West thought that it was interested in dragging the conflict as long as possible, only to discover that the reverse is true, every day of Russian unhurried and cautious advance in Ukraine is increasing the Western problems, not of Russians.

Dmitry Kosyrev is a columnist for the Russian State agency website  ria.ru , as well as for other publications. Views are personal 

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