The Russian counter-revolution at the gates of Europe

The Russian counter-revolution at the gates of Europe
Опубликовано: Thursday, 27 April 2023 06:43
Viacheslav Kazanevskyi | Cartoon Movement

After a year of Russia’s all-out war, it is crystal clear what Ukrainian resistance has spared the rest of post-Soviet Eastern Europe: gulags, kidnappings, deportations, torture chambers, and mass graves. Ukrainian art curator and political activist Vasyl Cherepanyn believes Russia’s war against Ukraine is a military coup against thirty years of European history.


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When Russian President Vladimir Putin in his televised address justifying the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine issued a warning to other countries not to meddle or they will face “consequences you have never seen in history,” many leaders in the West didn’t just freeze with fear but also breathed a sigh of relief—finally they got a legitimate reason to stay aside, hiding behind a looming nuclear threat.

After a year of Russia’s all-out war, it has become crystal clear, even for those not involved, what Ukraine has so far saved Eastern Europe (foremost its post-Soviet part) from filtration camps, kidnappings, deportations, torture chambers, mass graves, and other atrocities accompanying alleged annexations.



If it wasn’t for the Ukrainian military resistance, not only Ukraine itself but neither the European Union nor NATO would exist today in their current forms, and the West would be busy not with the number of tanks to be delivered, but how to deal with the Chișinău People’s Republic, Narva People’s Republic, Białystok People’s Republic…

This war has often been referred to as a war of aggression, a war of attrition, a continental war, sometimes a total war – which are all correct – but there is one specificity of Russia’s war against Ukraine that is usually omitted. Unlike most of the recent military conflicts, this war is not simply a war between two countries, it’s not just between two armies, and it’s not between an army and an insurgency – it is a war of one country’s military with the support and direct involvement of its population against another country’s people, who had been deprived of the right to exist.

The Kremlin’s genocidal self-negating argument goes as follows: you don’t exist, but since you do exist and you shouldn’t, you have to be eliminated. Actually, it’s not some exotic reference for Europe – quite the opposite, it’s historically very recognisable.


If it wasn’t for the Ukrainian military resistance, not only Ukraine itself but neither the European Union nor NATO would exist today in their current forms

Since Russia’s war has basically been aimed at disrupting the European political and institutional order, which itself is a main outcome of the defeat of Nazism, it’s not accidentally been conducted by revivifying and invoking some of the respective narratives and practices of World War II.

The Maidan revolution was the last successful European revolution and the ideological nature of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and Europe should be seen as fundamentally counter-revolutionary, based on historical resentment, regressing frustration, and political reaction. Whatever social realm or rhetorical wrapping, all the Kremlin’s undertakings have been serving one major purpose– preventing regime change.

Revolution has always been the biggest fear of Putin’s regime, and he’s been so much obsessed with Ukraine’s Maidan that he turned his whole country into anti-Maidan eliminating its even illusionary proximity by all means.

Russian society has become an anti-society as all the civil society institutions and representatives are now labelled ‘foreign agents,’ expelled from the country or imprisoned. Russian citizenship has become anti-citizenship as Russians themselves have been substituted with the pseudo-metaphysical entity of Russkiy mir (Russian world), which needs ‘protection’ wherever one can find a Russian-speaking population. And Russian politics has become anti-politics as it’s been literally turned into a permanent special military operation on all fronts.