An Undeclared War for All Mankind
Crossposting a report on how Russia formats identity and is trying to rule the world through a war on our minds. Research by Ukrainian historian Tetiana Boriak and originally published in InformNapalm
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Author’s note: I put on layers of emotional armor before surfing through my Twitter feed — now, an amalgam of Musk-promoted Russian propagandists, US traitors to democracy and democratic values, and truly amazing people from all over the world fighting against the fascist clickbait and for decency and reality. It’s been a long decade, and I survive due to the brilliant and beautiful minds I’ve met along the way. Thanks to Stephen Douglas of Decoding Trolls and Disinfolklore, I read the research by Ukrainian historian Tetiana Boriak in InformNapalm shortly after it was posted, and that led to our incredibly important four-part Speakeasy series with her. I just received the greenlight from the volunteers at InformNapalm to post her report “How Russia formats identity and tries to conquer the world with the help of mental war” in its entirety for the Bette Dangerous community. Please share with your networks.—hsc
How Russia formats identity and tries to conquer the world with the help of mental war
The research was prepared by Tetiana Boryak, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Faculty of History, Vilnius University. Especially for readers of the website of the international volunteer community InformNapalm. The report was translated from Ukrainian.
It was supposed to be an ordinary historical study. Not entirely ordinary because of the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine in 2014 and already opened up for all Ukrainians and the world in 2022. But in general, as a historian should, it is routine: formulate a hypothesis, work through literature and primary sources, present arguments in favor or refutation of the hypothesis and formulate conclusions. But when I discovered another original source, my breath caught in the literal sense of the word, and then, not figuratively, my heartbeat accelerated. It was the last puzzle I was missing. From the picture seen, in which the scattered details of the puzzle formed, it became bad. And I remembered a conversation with a French journalist who was interested in my point of view as a historian on Russia’s war against Ukraine. I tried to explain to him the logic of the actions of the Russian state. But the gap between democracy and racism turned out to be insurmountable: he looked at me with a poorly concealed sense of regret, and in his eyes it was read that “it was a pity for the woman, she was a little hit by the war and was biased.”
After systematizing the data, I got this picture.
1. Mental war through the eyes of Russian ideologues
Here is this quote that became the last puzzle in the puzzle for me. It was said in 2021 by the adviser to the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation (2015-2024). A. Ilnitsky (by the way, was born in post-war Lviv). According to him, humanity in the 21st century has entered a new stage of wars - “mental”, the purpose of which “is to destroy self-awareness, change the mental, civilizational basis of the enemy’s society... It is possible to destroy the state and destroy the country by changing the self-awareness, worldview, goals, values and priorities of society. Mental war is aimed at changing the worldview. Moreover, if the Armed Forces [armed forces] and infrastructure can be restored, then the evolution of the worldview cannot be changed. ... The information space is completely filled with “necessary” content. ... Mental wars are fought without declaring” (A. Ilnitsky, “Mental War”, 2021)
Are you a pacifist and for world peace? It doesn’t matter. Russia does not ask you and is already waging a war against you, which you have not even come to and which you may not know about. The Kremlin has reached a new level of global war, which is completely different from the projections of our knowledge about the Second World War in the 21st century. For a better understanding, Ilnitsky painted the strategic and tactical goals of mental war. 10-15 years (i.e., generations) he gives “to rebooting historical self-awareness, the system of education and upbringing, and therefore, the basic meanings and goals of society, that is, ideology, including the rewriting (resetting) of history, the destruction of traditions, ways, beliefs (religion) and basic values.” And the operational goals, which are implemented within 3-5 years with the help of “social technologies of manipulation of society”, are “attack on the existing lifestyle, dismantling, vulgarization and displacement of current norms of behavior, undermining trust in power, splitting society”. Directly to you “Manifesto of the Communist Party” on the latest racist system of the 2021 model.
The former adviser to the Russian Defense Minister cynically points to the “objects” of mental war: “everything - from news to analytical and sociological data, from training programs in higher education institutions and schools to television programs and available archival data.” Using its terminology, your brains are literally rebooted (”reformatted”), like old software that needs to be brought to the modern level. You were thrown off the pedestal, where human genius reigned, and lowered to the same infamous cog of the soviet system, which should work stupidly as a component of a large mechanism, handing over to the driver of this mechanism his “benvictions” and “worldview”, and receiving in return a Russian/rashist matrix.
For a better understanding of the context, let’s turn to the rhetoric of the ideologist of racism V. Surkova. This is a former advisor. Putin, the author of the quasi-ideology of the Russian world and the concept of “sovereign democracy”.
In his last three articles from 2019, 2022, and 2025, he cynically emphasizes the reformatting of the world with the help of the ideology of the Russian world. Surkov writes about the “special, sovereign” development of the Russian Federation; about the “natural and only possible state of great [Russia], growing, one that gathers the lands of the community of nations”, about the need of Russians for a “tsar”.
He states that since the 2000s, Russia “began to produce meanings itself and went on to an information counteroffensive to the West.” Surkov transfers the concept of “mental matrix, archetypes of our national consciousness” to the sphere of foreign policy. Ukrainians have probably already heard this formula in the form of “Russia’s interests that must be taken into account,” when it comes to NATO near the borders or the “orient“ sphere of Russia’s interests in the former post-Soviet space, and that Russia, so offended by ignoring its interests by the war with Ukraine, protects its needs. He says that work is being done with mental spaces that are influenced by the “mythical environment, the relief of collective historical memory,” and only then is politics used as a tool for achieving goals - but emphasizes that politics is based on previously prepared boundaries: on already implemented changes in the heads.
He admits that since 1991, Moscow’s goal has been to return Ukraine to Russia’s sphere of influence. And the current war helps to separate Russians in Ukraine from the “anti-Russians” (he does not even use the term Ukrainians), cynically quoting the Gospel of Matthew about the separation of righteous and sinners at the Last Judgment (sheep and goats, in his presentation - which is no longer like quoting, but dehumanizing Ukrainians by depicting them as animals and in the denial of the right to self-name, not to mention the right of Ukrainians to exist).
It is significant that in one video Surkov frankly admitted that he was looking for a fig leaf to cover Russian imperialism - and this element of clothing, which hid the imperialist inside of the Kremlin from the world, became the phrase Russian world (Russky mir). The latter, as he says, “has no borders. The Russian world is everywhere where there is Russian influence, in one form or another: cultural, informational, military, economic, ideological and humanitarian... In other words, it is everywhere. Sometimes it is difficult to notice because Russia adapts the tools of its influence from region to region, but it is “never zero. And so we will spread in all directions, as far as God wills and as strong we are.”
The world can observe the consequences of the introduction of Russian measure in the occupied territories of Ukraine: within the framework of Russian genodical rhetoric, Ukrainian identity is erased - just in accordance with the methodological principles of mental war.
Such statements mean an undeclared war in the cognitive sphere for all mankind, which only Ukraine knows for sure as the object of Russia’s racist war of genocide against it, where the occupied territories have become the object of an unprecedented experiment to change their own identity and plant someone else’s identity, and the unoccupied ones experience constant aggressive informational pressure and influence. But, just as ignorance of the laws does not exempt from responsibility, so not declaring a war does not exempt from the fact of its conduct (after all, the aggressor will not notify the object of its action about the beginning of a mental war).
2. From theory to the legislative consolidation of mental warfare
The above arguments can be easily refuted by the fact that the quotes are theoretical layouts and have nothing to do with real life. Unfortunately, they have. This is confirmed by the legislative framework of the Russian Federation, on the basis of which hundreds of thousands of educational and cultural institutions of the aggressor country function and millions of workers in this sphere, this “cultural” front, operate. The term used does not mean recognition of culture in the Russian Federation by the author, but only by the definition proposed 100 years ago by Lenin and the People’s Commissar of Education A. Lunacharsky - once again testifying to the Bolsheviks’ understanding of the contemporary and recent role of cultural factors in the creation of a person with a new type of communist/Russian worldview.
The analysis of a number of fundamental normative documents, including the Constitution of the Russian Federation, led to disappointing conclusions about the practical implementation of the theoretical statements of Ilnitsky and Surkov.
In 2020, and especially after the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the Russian Federation made amendments to a number of strategic documents at the legislative level, which strengthen both the limination of the Russian space of the humanities (literature, art, cinema, social sciences, etc.) and education, as well as the control over the correct, carefully censored and ideologically verified filling of the information field and the expansion of the latter’s influence on the rest of the world.
Amendments to the Russian Constitution of 2020 contain such unconformous terms as “historical truth” and “historic pride,” which Russia is called to protect. The threat to the state is declared “distortion of historical truth”. Since historians do not operate with such terms at all, the transformation of historical science (or rather, its remnants and simulacra) into weapons is revealed here. The continuity of all state entities that were once part of the Russian state was also proclaimed. So Russia here is not original from the point of view of the roots of the Russians, as they claim: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Cossack state, according to the main law of the Russian Federation, are now also components of the Russian state formation, history and mental map.
The concept of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy (2023) is an undisguised application for conquering the world through mental war. Here and about the “thousand-year experience of independent statehood” (such antiquity gives indulgence to past, present and future crimes - author), and about “deep connections with traditional European culture” (this passage is needed to climb into the European information space and rooting there - author), and about the “harmonious coexistence of different peoples” (an incredible euphemism to hide occupation and colonization - well, yes, in the Gulag concentration camp, political prisoners of different ethnic groups lived harmoniously in one barracks, being equally disenfraged - author), and about the “sovereign center of world development” based on the victory over Nazism and “neo-Nazism” (invocation of Nazism/fascism as a universal lock for branding the enemies of the Russian Federation - author), and about the “undermining” of the “costative civilizational role” of Russia by the West (the image of the “besieged fortress” for mobilizing its population - author), and about strengthening the role in the “world humanitarian space” (even a special term was invented: “Russian sovereignty in the global information space”).
The clause on “promoting the preservation of historical truth and memory of Russia’s role in world history abroad” is extremely dangerous. The declared protection of both the Russian language abroad and “from discrimination against domestic achievements in the fields of culture, science, education, and art” also looks threatening. The thesis was made about the “decisive role” of the USSR in the defeat of Nazism and, as a result, about “countering the distortion” of history, which “touches the interests of Russia”.
How can the above regulations be implemented in practice? The person mentioned the occupation of Europe by the Union after World War II - weakened the memory of the role of Russia, therefore Russophobe, because the fight against “Russophobia” is also declared in this concept. In 2024, there was even talk in Russia about the adoption of a law on Russophobia. If you don’t want to see a Russian singer who supports aggression against Ukraine or Putin, you discriminate against the “great Russian culture.” And in the light of the desire to rewrite international international law, the accusation of Russophobia may soon become an article of the criminal code of a number of countries or an international convention binding on the signatory states.
After all, the Concept of Foreign Policy openly declares that instead of “rules” in international law there should be the right to express the will of “sovereign states”. Ukraine has seen how these states “sovereign will” since the Bolshevik occupation of 1918, with further scaling of experience in Finland, Western Ukraine, the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe, Moldova (Transnistria), Georgia (Abkhazia), and the ORDLO.
In general, there is a vector of intentions to reform international law by Russia as one of the last bastions that allows it to exert economic and political pressure on the Russian Federation and maintain at least some order in the world. The first step in this direction is a declaration of response to “unfriendly actions” against historical and memorial Russian objects abroad and sanctions against Russians. The second is the intention to change international standards in the field of human rights protection and the media.
And while Russia changes international legislation, its other legal norms can combat the “distortion” of history - in particular, “historical memory” proclaimed one of the traditional Russian values. And the protection of values is proclaimed by a decree on values an integral part of Russian sovereignty. And the latter is protected by the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The circle is closed.
A special message is also given for Ukraine, certifying both the place of culture in the functioning of modern states in the global information space, and the imperial worldview of the Russian Federation: “formation of a single [with Russia] humanitarian space”, “preservation of centuries-old civilizational and spiritual ties”, “common statehood, ... interdependence, common language, close to cultures”.
Russia modestly called itself one of the centers of “civilization” and defined itself a “key role” in maintaining “regional security.”
The concept of foreign policy acts as a kind of umbrella, under which other strategic documents related to the information space of Russian society and its mentality are hiding. The other four doctrines (concerning cultural policy, historical enlightenment, values and youth) somehow position the Russian Federation as a state with “traditional values”, expressing concern (which is rather a threat) for compatriots abroad and guaranteeing their rights to preserve Russian “cultural identity” and Russian values. In fact, such phrases are a sign under which the Russian Federation will interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, as well as an application for the spread of the Russian world, which in itself has no borders (Surkov), from a country whose borders do not end anywhere (Putin). Moreover, Russia is proclaimed the “core of the civilizational community of the Russian world“ - a rather inclusive, democratic and attractive formula for foreigners, which gives a pass to the world of the “state-civilization”, which, as the bearer of true “values” and the winner of Nazism 80 years ago, is allowed everything in international politics under the mask of fighting Nazi enemies.
Russia has legislated its role as the defender of “traditional values” and “historical truth,” in particular, values associated with the biographies of Russian leaders. Does this mean that the fact, for example, that such a figure has no children (which does not correspond to modern Russian demographic policy) will lead to his overthrow from the pedestal of the “great” pantheon? The authors do not specify, leaving a wide space for censorship. At least the place of birth of M. Gogol is no longer identified with Ukraine in modern Russian textbooks.
The term “cultural sovereignty” is also introduced. This isolation of Russian heritage from foreign influences in the cultural space looks especially cynical next to the bombing of Ukrainian immovable material heritage and the destruction and looting of the movable. In addition to the declared protection of fellow citizens abroad and their “Russian identity” at the same time as promoting Russian culture outside the Russian Federation, this means preserving Russian culture with appropriate narratives of imperial greatness and militarism within the state with simultaneous aggressive promotion of it to a foreign audience.
The proclamation of Russian “values” and “historical experience” becomes eerie as a factor of unity, a “recorence point” and a “spiritual and moral landmark” for “all humanity.” The messianism of the Russian literary and philosophical heritage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (in the form of communist doctrine), grew in the 21st century into such a frightening ideology of the Russian world/racism.
The aforementioned strategic documents refer in one form or another to the glorification of the Russian army and, accordingly, its actions. In particular, the Russian cultural strategy openly proclaims the goal of increasing the participation of children in activities on “military-historical topics”, with the cult of “Great Victory”, as well as transferring events from military history to mass culture and art. At the same time, the strategy of youth policy proclaims the “popularization of military service” and the transformation of young men into a “defender of the Fatherland”.
Keeping your finger on the pulse of modern technologies suitable for influencing the mass consciousness, the promotion of young people who create content aimed at strengthening “Russian values”, as well as the creation and promotion of images of “heroes” of our time (and as of 2024 - the Russian army) in literature, cinema, animation, etc. In general, in cinema and art (as the most suitable for export - T.B.), the image of the Russian Federation as a country with a rich culture, with articulate pride in the state, history and the army should be created. The corresponding product should be aggressively promoted abroad as part of artistic events. But not only films – the Russian language should be infiltrated into the national education systems of foreign countries (sic!).
The main conclusion about the strategies for the development of culture, “historical enlightenment”, foreign policy and youth is that Russian “values”, historical memory and truth are associated with national security, deriving the humanities from the cognitive sphere of human activity and turning it into a tool for implementing state policy to spread the Russian world, blurring mental boundaries, and substituting meanings to achieve the goal of mastering as many countries as possible through mental (cognitive) war.
Read also on the topic: “Reflexive control. Analysis of the offensive tactics of the Russian Federation’s actions in the information space”
3. Practical embodiment of mental warfare in the humanities and the sphere of culture
Keeping in mind the legislative consolidation of ideologies associated with mental war, I will now give examples of the practical implementation of what is prescribed in Russian official doctrines.
A number of Ukrainian historians analyzed the latest line of Russian textbooks created under the guidance of the infamous V. Medinsky (head of the Russian Military Historical Society since 2012; his last career step in 2025 - chairman of the Union of Writers of Russia; also a native of Ukraine, was born and raised in the town of Smili in the Cherkasy region).
They summarize:
the presence of imperial and soviet resentments;
glorifying the collective heroism of the Russian/Soviet people;
desubjectification of Ukraine, which is also confirmed by the message of one of the publishing house’s employees who printed the mentioned Medinsky’s textbooks, about the instructions from above to avoid the name “Kyiv”, “Ukraine”);
the interpretation of all the lands that were once part of Russia as specific to Russian;
the absence of Russian occupation wars, because the lands of the Russian Federation themselves were “historically collected”, and the peoples “voluntarily” joined Russia;
foundation of the sacred cult of the infallible homeland;
presence of lies and manipulation.
That is, we are talking about the consolidation of the image of the Holy Motherland, which historically owns the lands that are currently part of other states (the roots of the narrative about “returning one’s own” among propagandists), with the simultaneous blurring of mental boundaries between Russia and other states, the appropriation of other people’s cultural traditions and the glorification of the military narrative and violence (the basis for the cliché “Russia did not start wars”, “Russia never lost”).
The threat of the rooting of the imperial worldview among the specific Russian population, caused by Russian textbooks, is obvious. The problem with foreign textbooks is not so obvious. We are talking about the infiltration of Russian narratives into textbooks on geography and history of a number of countries. Thus, 28 Italian textbooks already contained passages about the “civil war”; “return to Russia” of Crimea; Kyiv as the mother of “Russian cities”; “Russian region”, which includes in particular the Baltic countries, etc. And in a few years, these former students of Italian schools will have the right to vote in their own country, and will evaluate the realities of their time on the basis of the attribution of a particular phenomenon or object as Russian laid down by these textbooks.
In the Russian Federation, meanwhile, the works of Orvel and Kafka disappear from school programs, instead, the work about the Russian military and Putin is included. The alphabets for children are full of glorified images of Russian soldiers and military equipment, and the kindergartens have turned into a year-round demonstration of children’s parades of the “Great Victory”, causing the militarization of preschoolers’s consciousness and turning war into the norm at this age. The baton is taken over by schoolchildren thanks to textbooks, extracurricular activities, cadet classes and the “party of heroes” initiative. Lectures on history at universities anchor the worldview orientations of Russian youth in the Russian world.
Russian museums have turned into helpers of criminals through the theft of Ukrainian museum exhibits and their inclusion in the Russian museum fund, the glorification of war crimes and the representation of imperial narratives about the greatness of the “state-civilization” - while Russia remains a member of the International Council of Museums, using membership as another platform for legitimizing its crimes against the cultural heritage of Ukraine and Ukrainians in general. Interactive museums “SVO” are being created, currently in 19 regions. There are 26 interactive parks “Russia - my history” (in particular, in the occupied Melitopol and Luhansk), the purpose of which, according to the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation S. Kravtsov, is to “create a unified system of worldview on the territory of the entire state.” So these parks work in parallel with textbooks to form an alternative reality, in the center of which is placed eternal Russia-Russia with a monopoly on violence and war crimes, glorified as heroic pages of the past and provided from behind by a collective heroic God-chosen Russian, whom everyone always insidiously wanted to attack. The correct formation of expositions in museum institutions is supervised by representatives of the FSB - at least in the occupied territories; but there is no reason to think that on Russian territory the practice of curating meaningful institutions by special services will be different. Museums that do not fit into the agenda are closed (Lend-Lease and Gulag museums).
Reflecting Western practices of creating institutions and platforms designed to realize the creative principle of man, the development of the arts and cultural diplomacy, the Russian Federation creates its equivalents of “Eurovision” and the American Film Academy, involving the countries of Asia and the global south in the participation. These platforms become “political tools” for the formation of a positive image of Russia, “identity protection” (N. Mikhalkov) and the promotion of the Kremlin’s necessary narratives. The state does not spare money for such activities: in addition to billions for the functioning of RT and other propagandists, in 2025 alone, the Russian Federation allocated 444 million euros for initiatives in the field of culture. One of these projects, the “Zemsky Worker of Culture,” despite the fact that zemstvos existed from 1864 to 1917, seems to visualize the reverse modernization and the movement of the time machine in the opposite direction. Others were the festivals of military Z-poetry for children in the occupied Luhansk region and the training of military patriotic announcers in the occupied Crimea. The “85+4” program also operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, within the framework of which the Ukrainian identity of children in the occupied territories is erased and “spiritual and patriotic education” is planted.
The intentions declared in the normative framework to promote the Russian language and culture did not remain an empty declaration. In particular, since 2017, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has launched the project “Russian Teacher Abroad”, which is implemented in 28 countries. More than 600 teachers teach not only Russian, but also “cultural and educational events”, causing an increase in the number of foreign students in Russian universities. Such adherents will later turn (consciously or unconsciously) to the peculiar pillars of the Russian world at home, to consumers and relays of racism. The speed of transmission of the necessary Russian narratives among young people will also be facilitated by the work of Russian propagandists. We are not only talking about RT, but also about free courses of so-called journalism for foreigners in English, French and Chinese; since 2020, such courses have been operating in Russian. One can only imagine what will happen to the official policy of their homeland when the number of such newly converted Russians will reach a critical mass. Then there will be an opportunity to rewrite international legal norms and officially judge for “Russophobia”. Was Surkov’s article “The foggy future of a lewd world/world [the content of the article does not allow us to determine whether it is about peace or peace through the use of one word of measures in Russian to denote these phenomena - author]” and that the West only seems to have a choice, not been described a week before the invasion in 2022.
The phenomenon of “victory” and “dedivoy” on May 9 became the object of a series of studies. Their conclusions are generally similar and agree on the use of May 9 to consolidate imperial and Soviet optics and mentality, mobilize the population and solve geopolitical problems. The central figure here is the figure of Stalin, to whom more than 100 monuments have been erected in Russia today (the last one was opened in 2025 at the Moscow metro station).
The British intelligence service finally recognized the militarization of Russian education in 2025. Although you don’t have to be a scout to not see 1.6 million members of the Youth Army, and 6.5 million members of the “First Movement” as of 2024. Data on cadet classes seem to be classified, but as of 2018, there were already 200,000 such students. It is clear that their number is only growing during the war, including in the occupied Crimea. Recently, information was published about the occupiers’ intention to open about 200 cadet classes in the occupied Zaporizhzhia, which leaves no room for high school students outside this hellish militarist machine for turning Ukrainian youth into ready-made soldiers of the Russian army.
It is the mental war that explains the Kremlin’s desperation about the dominance of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine - because it is the Ukrainian language that narrows the base of people as objects (whose consciousness the Kremlin is trying to change and harmonize with its Russian imperial optics), and the tools of the same war (which can be used to displace the pre-existing worldview principles of the individual). Language is a “national code” (linguist A. Hrytsenko), which forms the mentality and the subconscious picture of the world. Therefore, the “protection of Russian speakers”, which is legally enshrined in Russia, is simply a screen for covering the true intentions of waging a mental war aimed at replacing native Ukrainian codes and meanings with Russian ones.
We have a clear example of what the Russian world looks like, against which the Armed Forces of Ukraine - Belarus - is fighting. A recent study recorded Russification there, starting with a kindergarten; Russian control over the presentation of history in textbooks; change of identity under the cover of “advanced training” for Belarusian teachers and under the guise of “healing” - children and adolescents through their export to Russia (the same export was recorded in the occupied territories); the substitution of Belarusian culture with Russian; constant narratives about Belarusians and Russians in the context of a “common historical space”, “one homeland” and one people.
It seems that the brains of Russians are “reformatted”, following Ilnitsky’s terminology, with the help of imperial-Soviet-military memes, ideologies and codes that inhabit this mnemotic space of the “state-civilization” and make up the backbone of the Russian measure. In this coordinate system of Russia, everything is allowed because of its greatness / resources / territory / history / thousand-year history / victory over Nazism / belonging to Russia (emphasis added). It is these ideas about themselves and the world that are considered as the basis of Russian power and nation-building, and are a prerequisite for the further expansion of the empire through traditional military campaigns in combination with mental war (the correct use of which, according to its initiators, leads to the conquest of the state without a single shot).
However, in addition to the genocidal war against Ukraine with its catastrophic consequences for the Ukrainian nation and state, there are other actions with similar destructive consequences - and this is not just occupation or control over territories in one way or another, not just spreading their influence. This is the creation of an alternative reality, currently not only with the help of traditional and social media, but also the contamination of AI with lies by training language systems based on millions of Russian fake news thrown into the network. Thus, AI learns not from objective data, but from messages pushed by Russian propaganda. In this parallel world, created with the help of lies and half-truths, memes, social networks, symbols and the glorification of power, the Russian world will reign undividedly, offering:
imperial view of the world;
blurred boundaries between truth and lies (clichés “not everything is so unambiguous”, “everyone has their own truth”, “Poland and Ukraine are guilty of wars” are just a manifestation of such blur, and not an innocent phrase or point of view);
transformation of the victim into an aggressor and vice versa;
the cult of violence, which will change the force of the right to the right of force;
collective for the sake of the state instead of individual genius of man in the state;
glorification of Russian “greatness” (sports, language, art, science, culture, etc.), which should dominate over others;
These features of alternative reality already affect Ukrainians in the occupied territories and are now scaling to the world, which, combined with the largest war in Europe since World War II, the growing support for Russia in a number of countries (which increases its resource capabilities and influence through the structures of the UN and other international organizations), the turbulence of international relations, the migration crisis in Western countries, creates the ground for the establishment of racism under the cover of the Russian world with Pushkin and all such culturally beautiful things on the facade. This is how the restoration of the USSR looks like, which the Kremlin and the population of the Russian Federation dream of, only on a much larger scale than the borders of the Union were actually.
And the participants of such a creeping conquest of the world through symbols are Russians-”outside of politics” who have already committed hundreds of thousands of war crimes in Ukraine alone. Similar war crimes have taken place before (only in the last 40 years – in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria), and their Russian organizers and perpetrators did not bear any responsibility, as if inviting unpunished evil to return to a much greater extent. Russians already live in an alternative reality, where they are “chosen by God” members of the majestic thousand-year “civilization” and the heirs of the “Great Victory” of 1945, thanks to which they have the right to dictate to others how they should live, what language to speak, who to put up monuments to, whose works to study in schools, and those who do not agree to bombard with conventional or unconventional (information in the form of art, literature, history, fake news, etc.) weapons. They are allowed everything – it has already been imprinted and continues to be imprinted in the subconscious of more than a hundred million Russians.
During the occupation of the settlement in the Chernihiv region, the Russian occupiers, driving in military equipment, in front of shocked local residents paid tribute to the monument to the victims of the Second World War, which was located in the center of the village. Such a Kafkaian salutesifies to the total reformatting of the subconscious, achieved by the Russian totalitarian-total information and education industry as of 2022. And now Russia continues to strengthen the identity of the sects of the Russian world. It seems that the crystallization of the supporters of racism has passed the point of no return - they speak their own language, think in their own codes in their alternative reality, where they want to drag the rest of the world. Ukrainians who have relatives in Russia, on their experience of communicating with them, can assess the consequences for a person of such a long stay in a parallel world, inhabited by fictional events and false heroes.
Unfortunately, we are not talking about individual perversions and distortions of individuals (separate textbooks, individual fakes or victory for May 9 as certain exceptions). Existing documents and Russian realities allow us to speak affirmatively about a frighteningly logical construction that combines ideology, manipulative techniques of mass consciousness, public sphere, army, politics, economy in order to scale aggressive, military and militaristic, chauvinistic Russian identity in the form of Russian peace (racism, as Ukrainians have formulated it) all over the world - where with weapons, where deception and pressure in the information field (mental war).
And finally: The analysis of the statements of Russian ideologues involved in the formulation of the theoretical foundations of mental war in general and the genocidal concept against Ukrainians in particular, as well as the post-2022 legislative framework of the Russian Federation, indicates that the Russians have done on the mistakes they believe caused the collapse of the USSR. They are convinced that the USSR fell not because of the occupation of other peoples by the Kremlin and the national movements of such enslaved peoples, but because of the weakening of control over the “brains” of Soviet citizens. For the second time, they prefer not to make such a mistake.
The research was prepared by Tetiana Boryak, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Faculty of History, Vilnius University. Especially for readers of the website of the international volunteer community InformNapalm. The report was translated from Ukrainian.
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