Podcast | Real Ukraine, Future russia, and Tools Three and Four

This week brings a little more of Outflank Dugin, Don’t Rebut, and a bit of the principles of Infolklore. It also brings the end of Future russia, Real Ukraine. Or, as I now call it, Real Ukraine, future russia, with a small r.

President Zelenskyy is playing a blinder

My view is that President Zelenskyy is playing a blinder, as the English would say. He has been dealt quite a bad hand over the last few weeks. We are going through one of those cycles we have all been through many times before.

He has flushed out Donald and Putler by offering this ceasefire. He knows, of course, it will never be taken up. So it is a safe offer. He also knows that no action he takes, or Ukraine takes, will help get aid from the United States and from Donald. So he models peacefulness and a wish to make a deal. It will not help with America. But it builds capital for after the midterms, and for the long term.

I see him trolling America, Donald and russia along. He knows well what Donald and the people around him do not seem to understand, or do not care to, because of whatever compromise is going on. The more you offer peace to the russians, the more they think you are weak. That goes for Donald too. So they think Ukraine and America are very weak. Constitutionally, peace is almost impossible for them. Remember Lavrov’s and Peskov’s words this week: no, we will not take a break. So it is very easy to troll the russians. Reflexive control works very well on this front.

I focus on the front. What may be happening east of the Donets River is a very important milestone in Ukraine’s battlefield success. The mid-range strikes go on. There are these Academy Award-winning strikes on the data centres, and now Sberbank’s, which is a beautiful hit.

When I was a diplomat in Dnipro, I went to see the board of PrivatBank when the state took it over. We talked about the vulnerability of data centres. It never crossed my mind, as I sat in that room with the then CEO of PrivatBank, that Ukraine would one day destroy Sberbank’s new data centre. Let’s hope to see more of those. That is what I focus on, rather than all the Starlink noise.

Real and future russia

Real and future russia is my new analytical lens. I use it to look at any national or nationalist movement. Such a movement may define itself by looking backwards. But it must mainly define itself by looking forwards.

In Ukraine’s case that means building a modern European state without corruption, along the lines the European Union models