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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?
I think that the leaders perform more like PR function and due to their power we cannot really think of terms we use for common men. Zelensky definitely played a role of inspiring leader and helped a lot in this war. But I suspect that Ukrainians would have fought bravely regardless and they are real heroes.
When people resist occupation risking their lives like in Bucha or the conductor was shot for refusing to play at the occupiers' concert, they are real heroes. If a robber comes to your house and at the gunpoint demands you to give all valuables, it would be insanity to refuse because your life is more valuable. However, during the war you are defending your country and if you are a civilian who decides to resist despite torture and risk of death then you are a hero. Many many Ukrainians turned out to be heroes.
There has been no independent inquiry in Bucha. It’s Ukraine / NATO claims without any real evidence for anything. No photographs of the faces of the victims, no consulting the family of the victims. Some of the corpse piles were surrounded by Russian aid packages, so to me it’s more likely to be “Azov killed innocents who took Russian aid” than “Random professional Russian soldiers randomly killed innocents after giving them aid packages”.
another blatant lie, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre :
An extraordinarily convenient line for the death of a pro-Russian politician. I love the idea of Russia being fine with soldiers killing influential pro-Russian politicians in key areas.
This is fake too, I imagine: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0gip7ibW_5Q
I am not claiming that Russian invasion was competent.
Ja niponimaju.
No idea what it is, I do not speak Russian. And RT branding and tiny account and that you posted it does not encourage me to spend time on it.
I don’t think anything would encourage you to spend time on a Russian-sourced claim.
As evidence for Bucha, you provide me with (1) the death of a prominent Russian-aligned politician whose son was murdered in 2018, (2) whom Russia was in contact with encouraging to flee Bucha, and (3) who we are to believe was killed by a random violent drunk Russian soldier, even though with certainty he would have had communication with the officers.
I am… not going to believe that.
Oh, I am doing this. I admit that I am limiting it primarily to "oh look what silly thing they are putting as an official claim" and to confirm things bad for them.
But well sourced claims also would be convincing, especially takedowns of Ukrainian lies. I am pretty sure that I become aware of Ukrainian official accounts posting game screenshots as real from such source (but it could be also Oryx retweeting them).
And I believed them as they provided an actual evidence.
I also spend some noticeable time on reading what Putin wrote (that blabbing how Ukraine is fake nation and so on). And self-published reports from Russians.
And treating RT with deep suspicion is well-warranted.
Yes, Red Army occupation tends to include pro-russian people getting killed by a random violent drunk Russian soldier.
In similar way how German Third Reich managed to convince people that USSR occupation is preferable (and similarly, how in some areas Gestapo managed to become preferable to NKVD). Both sides put massive effort on self-sabotage.
Going back to ongoing situation. Armies have loooooooong history of murdering random people. In fact, it is really impressive when such murders are non-existent or extremely rare. Which seems to be standard reached by Ukrainian army, but not Russian.
And obviously I am not trying to convince you, but other people reading this (and to have pretext to read more about this topics).
Given that you claim that Zelensky never visited Bucha and that all photos and videos from there are CGI I am not expecting to be able to convince you. In the same way as sometimes I may engage in discussion with flat-earther (or person running false-fag trolling).
No one claimed this
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