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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.
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.
Also, it is not like Russia has history of performing successful precision attacks.
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