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How do you know a hero when you see one? Can we predict heroism or cowardice?
Typically I’m more in the “Great Forces of History” camp than the “Great Men of History” camp, more Hobsbawm than Carlysle. Current events might be changing my mind.
The conventional wisdom from Kofman to Ilforte to my Polish cousins seems to be that Putin made a tremendous blunder in invading Ukraine and attempting to implement regime change. That the balance of forces was always against Russia, and that invading only made that apparent. But I’m not sure that follows the available evidence available before the invasion. Putin’s strategy meetings might have amounted to “Lads, it’s Tottenham”; but they were wearing Tottenham jerseys after all.
It seems to me more likely that Putin took a gamble, a good gamble, which had positive expected value, and came up absolutely snake eyes on the heroism of a relative handful of Ukrainians. It’s wildly unfair to blame Putin for not expecting this guy would start acting like a Slavic Churchhill, when one could have expected a performance more akin to Ghani or at best like Tsikhanouskaya. If you really drew an org chart with leadership roles and dates of events, there were maybe 100 Ukrainians, from TDF and police commanders who chose to fight in Kyiv at key moments to key governmental figures without whom the whole Ukrainian resistance project would have collapsed, to a handful of nationalist psychopaths who chose what seemed like certain death over letting down the side.
But let’s focus on the guy at the top: Zelensky. His early life contains few signs of heroism, or even of particular nationalism or patriotism, very little of obvious self-sacrifice and duty. He’s been in the media industry for his entire adult life. Nor in media was he some Mishima-esque hyper-patriot, he voiced Paddington Bear in the dubs and some of his movies were banned in Ukraine under nationalist laws he opposed, not a bloodthirsty nationalist. Obviously I lack the language skills to really delve into his oeuvre or personality, but there’s little there that would predict that when the chips were down he would stay in Kyiv..
I’m having trouble tracking down citations, but I recall pre-war and in the early war the theory that NATO would immediately evacuate Zelensky and enough of his government to form a reasonable government-in-exile for Ukraine, while funding/arming terrorist groups inside Ukraine, gleefully described as “making Ukraine into Russia’s Afghanistan.” Had Zelensky chosen to go along with that plan, I think Kyiv falls by the end of March, even with a higher assessment of Ukrainian skill today than I had then. [It’s in the nature of asymmetric wars
that demonstrative symbolic victories
are critical to maintaining popular support. Fleeing was a choice he very much could have made, that many leaders have made, that some would call not the cowardly choice but the humanitarian choice to spare his people the suffering of war. But he didn’t.
And I’m left asking, can we predict that? How can we predict how leaders will react under pressure? How can we predict how wars and matters of state will conclude if they hinge on these personal decisions of individual, fallible, men?
Maybe we can blame that on systems. Maybe hyper nationalist Ukrainian networks were ready to kill him if he jumped, and the guy was stuck between picking how to die. But that strikes me as a little too pat an explanation, eliminating the individual by inventing a system that we can put our faith in.
Or maybe there’s some psychological profile? Surely the armies of the world have looked into this, studied this? What conclusions have been reached, and how can we apply them?
He is alleged to have fled to Lviv early in the war.
Some of the early videos were thought to be done using bluescreen..
It looks suspicious, the mismatch in lighting and color alone is somewhat odd, and there are many more anomalies.
Later came the the hard to believe trip to Kiev by various prime ministers from staunchly anti-Russian countries. Hardly believeable, because at the times there were Russian units within artillery range of the rail tracks, etc.
A American journalist in Russia wrote an article that claims Zelensky fled to either Lviv or a NATO base in eastern Poland.
I've checked the various claims about the layout of train station, and yes, the Kiev station doesn't look like the one purporting to be the Kiev one in the photos.
Again, truth is immaterial, of interests only to weirdoes and autists; what matters is what people believe. And they believe Zelensky is somehow the next Churchill(ha!). Ukraine was reportedly ready to make peace in March, not sure on what terms, but that was scuttled by BoJo playing messenger boy, saying "we are not ready for peace now".
Why?
I want to remind about August 12, 2008 in Tbilisi. President of Poland visited it during ongoing invasion by Russia.
And yes, it was quite risky but it was done when situation was relatively stable and expanding Russia is a nightmare scenario for Poland/Estonia/Lithuania and so on. So yes, it was risky - but politicians actually did what they should be doing for once.
"journalist"
This website has following articles on its main page
Yeah, very reputable journalists. This article is likely to be true - as much as that article about Israel nuking USA on 9/11 and Beirut. To say nothing about UFO.
From this group article about "Masonic Rothschilds" and Jewish Jesuits are most likely to be true, and that is saying something.
Because prime ministers are well known for going by train into combat zones and dodging artillery shells. Yes, yes. that's what they do.
US media is tightly controlled, if you are not on message you won't get published. Hence why e.g. Steve Sailer has to publish over at unz.com.
Could you not be an NPC and look at the actual claims ?
Look at the Uke photos of the visit. Look at the railways stations photos.
I did. The article seemed to check out, and I found the idea that multiple prime ministers would make a very risky trip into a place where their train might get bombed. (gee, we thought it was carrying munitions, sorry) just plain crazy.
You've been warned four times now to stop with this low-effort, dripping-with-contempt antagonism.
This gets you a three day ban. Stop doing this.
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Some of them do. Some of they overdo, plenty of Polish politicians died in Smoleńsk as result of overly risky visit (and in that case it was a really dumb risk).
Tbilisi and Kiev visits were more useful and ended well.
And "A very rarely do Y" is a good starting point, but not enough to convincingly reject claim that specific event happened.
I have limited time and I refuse to treat seriously website that published claim that 9/11 and Beirut explosion were an Israeli nuclear attack. I would treat it more seriously if article would be published on Substack or self-hosted website.
Reading Ukraine-adjacent conspiracy theories by you and coffee was mildly amusing but I am not going to spend a lot of time on it. Especially if it is published on garbage tier website filled with blatant low quality garbage, and by all indicators is also a garbage.
I am curious: are you claiming that Beirut and 9/11 were an Israeli nuclear attacks?
There was little threat of enemy action there. It was a typical case of politicians, being macho probably telling pilots to stop being pussies, disregard problematic weather and just land. (I don't know if this was the case but it very often is in celebrity crashes)
Going by train into a half-besieged city in the middle of the most kinetic war since '45 is something qualitatively quite different.
It was published first on as self-hosted website. The images there were improperly hosted and would not load, hence I posted the VT link.
It's also hosted on 'nakedcapitalism', whatever that is.
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Why would it benefit Russia to accidentally blow up Boris Johnson? Why would the Poles hate Russia less if Duda gets got? Why would the EU change their policy after he blows up a bunch of their diplomats?
I wouldn't doubt it was communicated backchannel to Russia, because they don't want to get into a thing with NATO either.
Not Boris Johnson. Kaczynski, Fiala and Slovenian PM.
But given the performance of the Russian army so far, would you be willing to trust they'd refrain from shooting ?
Why even go into artillery range in a major war for .. no good reason, really.
They'd say NATO prime ministers have no business being deep inside a country they're fighting with and that they could've just as easily met at the border.
Which is almost certainly what happened if you look at the alleged 'Kiev' station pictures..
Really, if you go into Kiev for a photo-op, why wouldn't you take picture at some minor landmark while you're there ? Or snap a picture in front of the presidential palace they say they visited? All we got was a very carefully composed group photo in front of a train, and photos from windowless meeting rooms.
The risk is realistically very low. Even presupposing that Russia isn't actively trying to avoid killing major NATO government ministers, my opinion, the risk that any random person in Kyiv gets got on any given day is exceedingly low. It's a city of millions that has suffered civilian casualties (and military casualties from indiscriminate air strikes/artillery bombardment) in the low thousands.
Against that very low risk is a very good photo op. For the first few guys to show up, they looked like brave heroes because it did seem very risky with bad information at the time. After that, it became increasingly important for everyone else to do it, because once someone else did it, it reflected poorly on you if you didn't.
So which is it? You can't have it both ways. Either the Russians would want to kill the NATO potentates and claim it was an accident, hence they wouldn't take pictures at landmarks; or Russia doesn't want to kill them, in which case it isn't that dangerous to enter the country openly.
I tend towards the latter view. If anything, when Boris Johnson entered Kyiv he probably casts an aura of protection over the area he is in. The Russians benefit Zilch from killing a NATO minister.
We're not talking about any random person, we're talking about a train.
Civilian trains in Ukraine have been hit because they apparently put military equipment on them and Russians really do not care to fall for that kind of ploy.
Well, you think so? Most Russians would be happy that has happened.
They allegedly went into the fucking presidential palace, a distinctive building. Snapping a picture or better shooting a quick video in front of it while you are there is zero risk and would definitely prove they were there.
No picture. No video. No picture of them having been at Kiev train station either.
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Also, it is not like Russia has history of performing successful precision attacks.
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At least in my case, that would improve my opinion of Russia.
To be fair, when someone suggested Biden visit my first thought was "As long as Nancy and Kamala ride in the same car."
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