Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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Russian attempt to control narrative in Ukraine employs age-old tactic of ‘othering’ the enemy
By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager | November 30, 2023 8:37am EST
https://theconversation.com/russian-attempt-to-control-narrative-in-uk
raine-employs-age-old-tactic-of-othering-the-enemy-206154
Controlling the narrative has long been crucial to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine.
In the worldview he promulgates, the U.S. is an “empire of lies,” the West is bent on “tearing apart Russia,” and Ukraine is a “Nazi-run” country whose statehood is a historical fiction.
Through speeches and propaganda, Putin presents this narrative to his own country and the rest of the world. It is a worldview that is negative, historically and factually false and relies on provocative rhetorical framing. It is a framing that fits well the Russian phrase that translates in English as “who is not with us, is against us,” forms of which have been popularized through czarist and Soviet years and have returned with a vengeance under Putin.
It is also, as I explore in my new book, a popular form of what is known as “cultural othering,” which can be used to gain, maintain and exercise power.
Cultural othering, explained
Cultural othering is the process of defining a group of people – be it a racial, ethnic or national group – as different and then treating them as inferior. This “other” group is assigned negative traits to make them appear lower to the dominant group, and to marginalize them.
Othering has long been a tool employed to assert authority over marginalized groups, such as by European colonizers in Africa and Asia, or by settlers in Native American lands.
Putin and the Russian state are very skilled at practicing cultural othering and have deployed it against Ukrainian “enemies” as tanks rolled into Ukraine. In the worldview of Putin, their separatist vision was based on Russophobia, fascism and neo-Nazism.
Putin’s othering predates the 2022 invasion. It was seen in the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, the 2008 conflict in Georgia and the brutal Chechen wars from 1994 onward. All represented Russian attempts to reestablish its control over “others” – Ukrainians, Georgians, Chechens, the Crimean Tatars – that under the Soviet system had been reincorporated into an idea of a “Great Russia.” Their crime, as seen from Moscow, was that they were undermining Putin’s long-held vision for a return to that great Russian empire.
Soviet brotherhood, revisited
The curious thing about Putin’s othering is it focuses on national groups that he has simultaneously claimed to be of the same people as Russia.
From Putin’s perspective, these would-be breakaway neighbors are former “brotherly republics” cleaved from Mother Moscow only by the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s – an event Putin has described as the biggest geopolitical tragedy of the century. To push this narrative, Putin employs a warped view of history, invoking the “Kyivan Rus” – the medieval state that sought to unite the people of a vast land mass – and denouncing Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin as “the creator and architect of Ukraine” and encouraging nationalist ambitions.
Under Putinism, there are seemingly two options for countries that once formed the Russian, and later Soviet, empire.
The first involves total geopolitical and cultural submission, assimilation and acceptance of pan-Russian sameness, as is seen in Belarus under Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko. The second option is to seek national and cultural self-definition, but be subjected to the most extreme forms of cultural othering for doing so. In other words, it is the choice of being a brother or the other.
To Putin, nations that dared to break away from Russian hegemony and, like Ukraine, developed pro-Western ambitions, turned into an enemy.
Othering in historical context
Putin’s cultural othering of Ukraine taps into a history of Russia that goes back centuries. It was evident in imperial Russia and reflected in the literature of the time.
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Putin's solution to increase Russia's population: Ask women to have ‘8 or more’ children
By Manjiri Chitre | Dec 01, 2023 02:25 PM IST
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/putins-solution-to-increase-
russias-population-ask-women-to-have-8-or-more-children-101701414121970.html
Putin said that boosting the population of the country will be the “goal for coming decades”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week urged women in Russia to have eight or more children and make larger families a “norm” to increase the population in the country. This comes amid the increasing number of deaths in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
In a video speech at the World Russian People's Council in Moscow, Putin said that boosting the population of the country will be the “goal for coming decades”, reported The Independent.
“Many of our peoples maintain the tradition of the family, where four, five or more children are raised . . . Recall that in Russian families our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had both 7 and 8 children. Let us preserve and revive these traditions. The family is not just the foundation of the state and society, it is a spiritual phenomenon, a source of morality," he said.
Notably, Putin himself has publicly acknowledged having only two children - daughters with his former wife Lyudmila. However, reports have claimed that he has multiple children from his affairs with millionaire Svetlana Krivonogikh and Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Alina Kabaeva.
Speaking further at the conference, Putin added: “I would like to emphasise that the Russian world and Russia itself do not and cannot exist without Russians as an ethnicity, without the Russian people. This statement does not contain any claim to superiority, exclusivity or chosenness. This is simply a fact just like our Constitution’s clear definition of the status of the Russian language as the language of a state-forming nation. Being Russian is more than a nationality.”
The war between Russia and Ukraine entered its second winter this year with thousands of people being killed and displaced every day. According to the UK's defence ministry, the number of Russians dead in the war has likely crossed 300,000, reported The Independent. Meanwhile, an independent Russian policy group claimed that around 820,000-920,000 have fled the country.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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US aid to Ukraine continues to be a wise investment.
By Michael John Williams | December 1, 2023 • 10:36 am ET
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/dont-stop-now-us
-aid-to-ukraine-continues-to-be-a-wise-investment/
The allocation of US military assistance to Ukraine stands as the most strategic defense investment in at least two decades. Congress’s refusal so far to bring to the floor President Joe Biden’s supplemental budget request — which includes $61.4 billion in additional Ukraine funding — is a significant error. The synergy of US aid with Ukrainian courage and resilience has yielded success on multiple fronts. Withholding additional support for Kyiv at this critical juncture would not only harm the ongoing war effort but also diminish US global standing, injecting uncertainty into the world.
Total US assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s illegal invasion in February 2022 is a modest seventy-five billion dollars. The United States spent trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with very little to show by way of positive developments in either campaign. In stark contrast, Kyiv has judiciously utilized US and international assistance to significantly weaken what the US Department of Defense calls a “near-peer competitor.”
Since the conflict’s onset, Russia has suffered, according to one report, the loss of 11,000 pieces of battlefield equipment, including 1,300 main battle tanks destroyed and 548 captured by Ukraine. Additionally, Ukraine is reported to have taken down 1,600 infantry fighting vehicles, more than 200 armored personnel carriers, 100 helicopters, and 75 combat aircraft. Despite lacking a substantial navy, Kyiv has even sunk eight Russian warships, including the flagship Moskva, a Slava-class guided missile cruiser named after the Russian capital. Beyond the material losses, the Kremlin has incurred significant personnel casualties.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin is not defeated on the battlefield now, it will cost the United States far more to deter and defend against future Russian aggression.
With an estimated 120,000 soldiers killed in action and 170,000 injured, Russia’s personnel losses have been staggering. And Russia’s losses are not just constrained to enlisted men — seven Russian generals have been killed on the battlefield, including Roman Kutuzov, leader of the Fifth Combined Arms Army, central to the assault on Ukraine. As retired general and former Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus put it, Ukraine is “picking them off left and right.” Equally critical is the loss of more than eight hundred junior officers, essential for executing tactical maneuvers within larger battalion and brigade efforts. The absence of these young officers weakens Russia’s combat effectiveness in the short term and threatens its ability to form coordinated, effective fighting units as it calls up more enlisted personnel. However, the impact of US aid to Ukraine extends far beyond the battlefield.
Firstly, the aid underscores the United States’ commitment to upholding international law and the established liberal world order, countering perceptions of a retreat from global leadership. This sends a powerful signal to those seeking to revise the international order that there will be a significant price to pay should they attempt to do so. Ideally, adversaries’ belief in US resolve will make the United States’ global deterrence posture more believable and effective. Secondly, aid to Ukraine reassures friends and allies worldwide, projecting stability and security. A perception of US unreliability could prompt allies to pursue independent security measures, risking nuclear weapons proliferation and regional arms races — neither of which are in the United States’ interest.
Cutting off aid to Ukraine, as some in Congress propose, would undermine the immediate war effort in Europe and diminish the deterrent power of US military force globally. A solid 61 percent of Americans support assistance to Ukraine, according to a Septemb
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Quote:TRUE. We have broken every agreement, contract and treaty and stabbed our "friends" in the back, including Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Panama, Libya, and even Ukraine and the EU.
Originally posted by second:
Russian attempt to control narrative in Ukraine employs age-old tactic of ‘othering’ the enemy
By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager | November 30, 2023 8:37am EST
https://theconversation.com/russian-attempt-to-control-narrative-in-uk
raine-employs-age-old-tactic-of-othering-the-enemy-206154
Controlling the narrative has long been crucial to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine.
In the worldview he promulgates, the U.S. is an “empire of lies,”
Quote:TRUE. SECOND'S re-posts of western media said exactly that
the West is bent on “tearing apart Russia,”
Quote:
and Ukraine is a “Nazi-run” country whose statehood is a historical fiction.
PARTLY TRUE.
The presence of Nazi troops and internal security limits Zelenskiy's options.
Historically, the Russian empire was centered in Kiev, and Catherine the Great founded Odessa and other southern cities. Ukraine did not become independent until 1991.
Quote:So far,this article is negative, factually false, and reliant on provocative rhetorical framing.
Through speeches and propaganda, Putin presents this narrative to his own country and the rest of the world. It is a worldview that is negative, historically and factually false and relies on provocative rhetorical framing.
Quote:
It is a framing that fits well the Russian phrase that translates in English as “who is not with us, is against us,” forms of which have been popularized through czarist and Soviet years and have returned with a vengeance under Putin.
FALSE. Russia works well with nations such as Turkiye and India that maintain a neutral stance. It's the USA that bullies, sanctions, and threatens nations that don't swear fealty. "With us or against us" was GWB's phrase.
Quote:And continues to this day.
It is also, as I explore in my new book, a popular form of what is known as “cultural othering,” which can be used to gain, maintain and exercise power.
Cultural othering, explained
Cultural othering is the process of defining a group of people – be it a racial, ethnic or national group – as different and then treating them as inferior. This “other” group is assigned negative traits to make them appear lower to the dominant group, and to marginalize them.
Othering has long been a tool employed to assert authority over marginalized groups, such as by European colonizers in Africa and Asia, or by settlers in Native American lands.
The west has "culturally othered" Russia, China, and the whole world.
We call Russians stupid and subhuman.
Chinese are a society of ants.
Josep Borell said that Europe is a garden and the rest of the world is a jungle.
Quote:
Putin and the Russian state are very skilled at practicing cultural othering and have deployed it against Ukrainian “enemies” as tanks rolled into Ukraine. In the worldview of Putin, their separatist vision was based on Russophobia, fascism and neo-Nazism.
Putin’s othering predates the 2022 invasion. It was seen in the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, the 2008 conflict in Georgia and the brutal Chechen wars from 1994 onward. All represented Russian attempts to reestablish its control over “others” – Ukrainians, Georgians, Chechens, the Crimean Tatars – that under the Soviet system had been reincorporated into an idea of a “Great Russia.” Their crime, as seen from Moscow, was that they were undermining Putin’s long-held vision for a return to that great Russian empire.
Crimean Tartars are a tiny portion of Crimean people. But to the extent that want to live in Russian Crimea, they're welcome.
Georgia fired it's missiles first.
Chechnya was a jihadi terrorist base, used to launch attacks, most notoriously on a school, killing 200 children.
Once attacks against Russians ceas
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Zelensky concedes counteroffensive failed but insists that’s no reason to surrender
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zelensky-concedes-counteroffen
sive-failed-but-insists-that-s-no-reason-to-surrender/ar-AA1kQ6IO
Ukraine’s Zelensky Orders Construction of Defenses to Hold Back Russia
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-s-zelensky-orders-constru
ction-of-defenses-to-hold-back-russia/ar-AA1kQqqF
Quote:
Ukraine Finally Starts To Build Defense Lines
After wasting ten-thousands of men in hopeless battles the Ukrainian comedian has finally acknowledged that his army's performative 'counter-attacks' and hold-to-the-last-man defenses have made no sense.
Politco's Dreamer of the year finally calls for building defensive lines:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for a faster buildup of major defensive lines amid Kyiv’s stalled counteroffensive and concerns that Russia could attempt to take more territory.
Zelenskiy urged greater speed and efficiency in building defenses in a video statement on Telegram after a meeting with key military and security officials Tuesday evening. He encouraged local communities to pitch in and pledged to make money available for the effort.
“Our country will definitely have enough mines and concrete,” he said. He didn’t provide details on where the fortifications would be built or how extensive they might be.
It took the Russian army several months and lots of money to build its extensive defense lines in the southeast of Ukraine.
Zelenski has neither the time nor the money to build solid lines but he wants many of them (machine translation):
According to Zelensky, he held a meeting on fortification in all major directions – first of all on Avdiivka and Maryinsky, as well as on Kupyansk and on the Kupyansk – Liman line, in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
In addition, fortifications will be built along the entire border with Russia and Belarus.
"We will work with our partners to strengthen our defensive lines," the president added.
Earlier, Zelensky already spoke about a "special" meeting of the Stavka, where they discussed strengthening the fortification.
Comments Strana (machine translation):
This is quite a landmark statement. It sounds like an announcement of the construction of large-scale defensive lines-similar to the one that Russia has built in the south.
And more broadly, this can be interpreted as a transition to a defensive strategy, which began to be talked about more and more often after the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine actually stopped, and the Russians themselves switched to large-scale attacks.
But officially, the authorities do not talk about the transition to defense, and the main thesis remains that the APU is preparing to attack, and there is no deadlock (which even the commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny wrote about) at the front.
Zelenski called for private companies to build the new fortifications. In the context of Ukraine that means more corruption - lots of it - as government officials will ask for kick backs for any contract they may sign. Previous attempts of privately build defense lines had ditches that were too shallow and of little utility. Some concrete was poured but in the wrong places and shapes.
Quote:
Zelenskyy ready to hold election BUT... says Ukrainians oppose it as war rages on
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Give the Kremlin an Inch and it Will Take Half of Europe
By Julia Davis | December 1, 2023
Signs of Western hesitation over support for Ukraine encourage Russian propagandists to speculate on which country might be the next victim.
Appearing on the Own Truth show on NTV last Friday, writer Dmitry Lekuh said that Poland is “the next candidate to be thrown under Russian tanks.” He asserted that “dividing Poland between Russia and Germany is our national pastime.”
Moscow mouthpieces do not limit themselves to the redrawing of European maps. Another favored theme has been the need to punish Russian exiles and so-called enemies of the state through assassination.
This is an old and familiar path for Russia. As far back as the 1930s and 1940s, Stalin’s henchmen led by the legendary spymaster Pavel Sudoplatov, plotted and carried out assassinations of individuals including Leon Trotsky. In more recent years, Russian assassins have used radioactive and nerve agents in the UK and in Russia itself.
More at https://cepa.org/article/give-the-kremlin-an-inch-and-it-will-take-hal
f-of-europe/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to increase the maximum number of servicemen in the Russian armed forces by 170,000 people, the Kremlin and the Defence Ministry said on Friday.
According to the document, the regular strength of the armed forces is now set at 1,320,000 servicemen.
"The increase in the full-time strength of the armed forces is due to the growing threats to our country associated with the special military operation and the ongoing expansion of NATO," the Russian defence ministry said. Putin's troops have also reportedly suffered heavy losses in recent weeks as the war in Ukraine rages on toward its 22nd month.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said on Friday that more than 452,000 people were recruited to the Russian military under contract from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, 2023.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-increases-maximum-size-arm
ed-forces-by-170000-servicemen-2023-12-01/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Notice how NATO always expands FIRST?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Why “Not losing" is not tantamount to winning
Can Putin wait for the West to give up on Ukraine?
By Lawrence Freedman | Nov 23, 2023
https://samf.substack.com/p/why-not-losing-is-not-tantamount and
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2023/11/vladimir-put
in-still-wants-to-win
In an article last weekend, Mark Galeotti, one of the best informed of all Russia-watchers, reported that Putin had just enjoyed one of his best periods of his war with Ukraine. His views are not out of line with other commentators, for example Shaun Walker in the Guardian, all reflecting a more downbeat mood after the optimism earlier in the year that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would see the liberation of much more territory and add to the pressure on Putin to seek a way out of the war.
The starting point for the gloom is that Ukraine’s offensive operations, though not yet abandoned, have yielded only limited territorial gains, and as the winter mud makes movement difficult there are unlikely to be any major advances until the ground hardens next spring. The Russians have shown themselves to be adept at defensive operations and have improved their use of drones and electronic warfare capabilities. In recent weeks most attention has been focused on a Russian offensive, targeted on Avdiivka, in Donetsk. This thus far has also achieved little, and at a high cost in Russian casualties, but the effort to hold it has required Ukraine to pull back forces from more promising operations elsewhere.
For the coming months Russia is in a better position in terms of shell production. The EU is falling short in its ambition to provide Ukraine with a million artillery shells and rockets by March, while Russia is now on a war footing in terms of production and has benefited from an influx of North Korean shells. Because of the surge of expenditure on the war effort its economy is growing fast. Over time Moscow has found more workarounds to limit the impact of Western sanctions. Through financial incentives it is able to keep up the flow of new recruits to feed the front lines.
Political tensions in Russia are kept well below the surface. Critics are cowed if not in exile or prison and Putin is looking forward to his rigged presidential election in March. By contrast, the frustrations of the past year have unsurprisingly led to tensions at the top in Ukraine, notably between President Zelensky and commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny. Zaluzhny’s candid interview with the Economist in which he described the war as stalemate irritated Zelensky who wants to stay upbeat. Yet while stalemate may not be a good description of the situation, the problems to which Zaluzhny alluded are real. Getting sufficient ammunition and recruits will be a challenge over the coming year. At the same time, the West has been distracted by events in the Middle East, which means that the effort required to support Ukraine has been lacking, especially when there is a need to get another bill to support Ukraine through a wholly dysfunctional Congress. There have been reports that US military supplies otherwise intended for Ukraine, including 155mm artillery rounds, have been diverted to Israel, though this issue tends to be overstated as their military needs are quite different.
There are, as Galeotti notes, some contrary trends that might lead Putin to worry about short-term military advantages evaporating during the course of next year. The economy is already showing signs of overheating leading to high inflation. He also notes recent polling which
‘for the first time found more Russians in favour of peace talks (48 per cent) than continuing the war (39 per cent) — and only 21 per cent thinking the economy will improve, while 43 per cent assume it will worsen.’
So whatever satisfaction Putin may feel at the moment, the issue is whether he can be confident that Russia’s relative position will strengthen even more over the coming year. Galeotti argues that Putin’s ‘real strategy is to attempt to outlast the West’s interest in Ukraine
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Fuck Ukraine.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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