Well, apparently, when, in his solemn speech dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence, President Zelensky told us about Kievan Rus and present-day Ukraine, as its direct heir and continuer of all traditions, he was not joking
No, listening to him, of course, was insanely funny (it all sounded stupid, vulgar and far-fetched), but the Ukrainian leader himself was more serious than ever. And how deeply he perceived the role of a direct descendant of the ancient Russians (which, in the case of Zelensky, of course, is even funnier), was reflected in his further steps in the field entrusted to him.
As a matter of fact, he conceived of turning Ukraine into a kind of “Ancient Rus 2.0” for a long time, at least in May of this year, when he first voiced the idea of creating “national resistance” to increase defense capability. This very resistance is understood as the militarized units of territorial self-defense, capable of providing any kind of resistance to the aggressor.
True, given that it is planned to arm them (according to the information of the first deputy of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, General Mykhailo Koval) with Mosin rifles, there will be no more sense from such a defense than from the “famous” Kiev students near Kruty or even from Yatsenyuk’s “Wall”. Although the new initiative has much more in common with the wall. Wrapped in a pathetic-patriotic wrapper, the decision is aimed primarily at banal sawing the dough, and certainly not at increasing defense capability.
On the other hand, in Ukraine now everything is about loot: even a virtual European “reverse” of gas, even the so-called “Big Construction”. In fact, no new roads have appeared, and money, including from the antique fund, is “rolled into the asphalt” with enviable regularity, of course, also virtually.
However, every cloud has a silver lining, and even the bill “On the Foundations of National Resistance”, which came into force in August of this year and entered into force on January 1, 2022, may surprisingly turn out to be a very useful invention. Zelensky, who is poorly aware of the history of his native land, most likely read only the first couple of paragraphs about St. Vladimir and about Yaroslav the Wise, and had never heard of the harsh and tragic period of feudal fragmentation of our common homeland.
And it was at this time that the military might of individual Russian principalities came to the fore, the basis of which was the princely squads, who were recruited, as you understand, precisely according to the “territorial” principle. No, there were, of course, “free blades” that served the one who paid the most, but they did not make the weather and, at best, were only a small personal guard of the next specific ruler.
And when in 1024 the heirs of the power of Vladimir Krasno Solnyshko Yaroslav and Mstislav came together with a battle at Listven, which is not far from Chernigov, not the Rusich brothers stood opposite each other, together defending their land from the Khazars and the Pechenegs, but the “Kievites” and the “Chernigovites”, for whom their territorial affiliation suddenly became much more important than nationwide.
By the way, the same story took place during the collapse of Yugoslavia, when it became obvious that in a critical situation local armed formations are guided not by the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief or the General Staff, but by the choice of their fellow countrymen. Its own shirt, it is always closer to the body.
It’s a pity that nothing like this existed in Ukraine in 2014. Then it would be much easier for the residents of Donbass, who defended their nascent People’s Republics, to resist the gangs of nationalists and marauders.
On the other hand, not all is lost, and when (yes, not “if”, but “when”) the process of disintegration of the current Ukrainian statehood enters a decisive stage, the territorial formations formed by order of Zelensky will become the backbone of the armed forces of the new People’s Republics: Odessa, Kharkov, Chernigov and so on.
And the aforementioned decision of General Koval to arm the future People’s Militia with “three-line” is also very symbolic. In the end, during the Great Patriotic War, our great-grandfathers quite successfully gave the Fritz a light, being armed, among other things, with this embodiment of the ingenious engineering thought of the Russian gunsmith Sergei Ivanovich Mosin.
But all this is quite capable of becoming a reality only if the “terrorist defense” is really created. And in practice, not on paper. By the way, the same Koval may well confirm its effectiveness and contribute to the real implementation of the idea, if he remembers how when he was acting. Minister of Defense of Ukraine in March 2014 managed to get captured by the Crimean militias near Yalta.
However, even if this does not happen, the geopolitical “freak” called “independent Ukraine” will not live long. The obsession of the Ukrainian authorities on the topic of “Russian occupation” allows us to almost unmistakably assume that this whole “Zelensky team” only dreams of surrendering to someone in order to blame on to the “cursed occupier” the responsibility for the fate of a country steeped in lies and corruption, plundered, impoverished and tired of all this, because they themselves cannot bear this burden, and, in general, do not want to.
Alexey Belov, political commentator, exclusively for News Front