Stories that Volodymyr Zelensky is a modestly successful comedian, that he has no support inside the country, that time is running out, that Ukraine exists only because of American aid, and most importantly – that Ukraine should never have started the war (compare to "Russia doesn't start wars" Russian propaganda narrative), that we should have negotiated from the very beginning instead of fighting, and that Ukraine is to blame for everything – I heard all of this long before Donald Trump voiced it. These were things told to me by Russian interrogators and local collaborator guards when I was in Russian captivity, particularly in the Luhansk prison. The full set was mostly voiced by officers of either the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) or military counterintelligence (no one, of course, introduced themselves during interrogations). They didn’t yet speak of Zelensky’s illegitimacy or the lack of elections – it was still the hot summer of 2022, and it was too early for such narratives to emerge: Russian TV would begin spreading them only in about a year and a half. These Russian occupiers and their collaborator accomplices voiced another idea that was missing in Trump’s verbal flow: that Ukraine is nothing more than a puppet of the United States, that Kyiv does everything Washington wants because it is completely dependent on it. No wonder Trump didn’t mention this point: because the latest developments, particularly regarding the deal for Ukrainian rare minerals extraction, showed even to those who held this view that this was far from the truth.
I think it is precisely due to the fact that this idea of the occupiers was not confirmed, the newly elected U.S. President became so irritated. Clearly, not believing in the will, initiative, and agency of Ukrainians (just as of any other people), he unexpectedly encountered the fact that these supposedly obedient Ukrainian subjects in distant savage lands – are neither obedient nor subjects, and for some reason refuse to accept the rules of the game devised right at the playing field and imposed through blackmail – because those rules are obviously, glaringly unjust. This is something Trump and Putin have in common: both do not believe in the agency of peoples and collectives, seeing them only as inert masses, herds to be manipulated and controlled – since they are driven by primitive instincts, and there is always a risk that someone will take the initiative and manipulate them better. In fact, for Putin, Ukraine is an instrument that should be held in the claws of the two-headed Russian imperial eagle, but instead, the West grabbed it; and one of the goals of the current war is to take it back. The fact that this "instrument" suddenly had its own will, desires, and aspirations, and even the ability to resist, infuriates the Kremlin, because it does not fit into the worldview of the "Russian world", “Pax Russica”. And both the guards and especially the Russians in their conversations were still surprised, and sometimes enraged, by the fact that Ukraine had the Maidan uprising (of 2013-2014) – and the majority of Ukrainian prisoners of war, POWs, did not intend to recognize it as a mistake or failure, but defended it as an act of free choice, expression of will, and the manifestation of dignity.
On the 11th anniversary of the day when most of the Heavenly Hundred (Ukrainian Maidan protesters, who paid for freedom of Ukrainians with their lives) were killed by the that-time government’s special forces, these two autocrats, with their contempt for the will and aspirations of nations and individuals (unless those individuals are themselves), openly showed the world how much they have in common. The President of the United States, the highest official of the country – the former greatest ally of Ukraine in its defensive and liberatory war against Russian invaders: publicly accused those who were attacked of aggression; condemned those defending themselves from Russian violence for trying to protect themselves; and handed over all the initiative in peace negotiations to his counterpart with a similar worldview, a war criminal, and the ruler of the Russian Empire. For someone with my experience as a former POW, he did this in the style of a modestly successfully trained officer of Russian law enforcement agencies, such as the FSB, Investigative Committee, or the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service. Never before, probably, has the language of Russian law enforcement sounded from such a high platform and been broadcast worldwide. If you’ve been lucky enough not to be in Russian captivity (yet), but unfortunate enough to have poor information hygiene, being familiar with Russian TV, you’ll probably find a different analogy. The text voiced by Trump literally echoes the narratives of Russian propaganda: from the mouth of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, speaks Russian propagandist Olga Skabeeva, or one of her colleagues. However, the audience of this special edition of "60 Minutes" (a propaganda TV show featuring Skabeeva) was the whole world. I doubt the Kremlin, which generously pays its propagandists to support and expand Russia’s genocidal war against the Ukrainian people, will have the budget for its new American mouthpiece. It is hard to believe that Trump, who is most interested in discussing money, decided to volunteer for Simonyan (the chief Kremlin propagandist); his interest will likely become clear later.
I don't know how this looks for American voters – while not only for them, but for all of us, we will have to get used to the idea that the man they’ve put in the seat of the world's greatest power leader, speaks either like a Russian law enforcement officer or like a Russian propagandist. There is a certain distance between words and actions, but it is shrinking more and more. If the President of the United States switches from merely speaking to acting accordingly – we will find that on the opposite side of the Maidan barricades we have set up in our vision of the world while defending our freedom, our adversary, the Russian Moloch, will be joined by the American Baal. Let’s hope that this doesn’t happen, though the process has already begun: with Trump’s input, world media are already discussing who really started Russia’s war against Ukraine, whether Ukraine could have made peace at the very beginning of the war, and whether a democratically elected president of Ukraine is a dictator. The devil's work (because we remember who is the father of lies, especially such blatant and large-scale ones) is in full swing. All we have left, just as 11 years ago, is to remember who we are, what we are fighting for, to believe in our values, meanings, and in those who give us the strength to continue this struggle (people and/or God, depending on who is relevant for you), to put hope in them, and to love them and each other, protecting this love and what matters. We have no better option, and we never will.