War is a way of settling disagreements. Only, unlike a fight, it involves not individual people but states. More precisely, it is states that both organize and wage wars. But, just like a fight, war is simply a method of conducting a conflict, while the conflict itself may have different causes and different participants. A fight can be between thugs as well as between nerdy intellectuals. And it always has a cause, and there is always one who is more in the right and one who is more at fault.
I think it is no secret that in the case of Russia and Ukraine, one of the main causes of the war is freedom. The Russian state is very concerned that Ukrainian citizens, not only lived for 20 years without its oversight, but also dared to throw out the legitimately elected local boss. Before you know it, the infection will spread to sovereign democracy and take root in the heads of trusting Russians. Actually, everything that is happening boils down to the task of preventing such a turn of events. For this, Putin “terrorizes the khokhols,” showing how bad it is not to love legitimate power and what happens for it. For this, insane Kremlin propaganda works, whose task is to repeat to the Russian every second that the power in Kyiv was overthrown not by the same desperate people as him, but by some “Banderites,” organized and funded by the West.
That is, the Russian state is concerned about Ukrainian citizens and now is waging war against the Ukrainian state. The moment when the Kremlin people persistently call the Kyiv bosses a “junta” that came to power through an “armed coup” is very revealing here. In reality, the political result of the Maidan was Yanukovych’s flight, not the sudden appearance of Turchynov in two capacities at once. There was no, is no, and cannot be any “Maidan power,” since the only thing that united the Maidan was the removal of Yanukovych from power. Even if “people from the Maidan” had occupied all the cabinets in the government, such power could not be called “Maidan.” If we add to this the fact that representatives of the same political deck that has been shuffled for 20 years remained in power, and they were appointed by the parliament elected under Yanukovych, then there is no talk of any “junta.” However, despite the obvious absurdity, the thesis that “Maidan people” are in power is not questioned in Russia. It is needed to bind the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian citizens into one whole, which considerably facilitates war.
In general, we have three sides of the conflict—Ukrainian citizens who chased away the bosses and who are carriers of freedom, the frightened Ukrainian state, and the Russian state, highly excited by the behavior of Ukrainian citizens and now waging war against the Ukrainian state to punish Ukrainian citizens. Quite an intricate disposition.
Now let us return to our analogy of war and fighting. Individuals, subjects, participate in a fight. For our example, it is important that in achieving their goals, subjects are always faced with a choice of using the scarce resources they own. If a thug regularly beats a nerd because the latter is a nerd and not a thug, then the nerd will have to spend his resources (time and money) on, say, hand-to-hand combat lessons. However, it is very unlikely that to defeat a thug, the nerd will become a thug himself. After all, in this case, his losses are not only the costs of self-defense courses but also a new, unpleasant personality sitting right inside himself, loss of friends, environment, etc.
With states, everything is different. They have nothing of their own; everything they possess has been taken from us, and everything the state does, it does not do to itself but to us. Moreover, a “good” state differs from a “thuggish” one only in the degree and character of its interference in citizens’ lives. At the same time, any state is always interested in its own expansion, that is, in reducing our freedom. Therefore, the choice in a fight between a “good” state and a “thuggish” one is always to become a thug oneself.
Crises and wars are gifts for states; they always use them to expand and reduce citizens’ freedom. History is overflowing with such examples. Right now, America (in the form of its people) is losing the war on terrorism (regardless of whether it exists in reality or not), because the American state is gradually turning into a police state. The same thing, only much faster and more dramatically, can happen to us. “Discipline and order,” understood as censorship and expansion of the already unlimited rights of punitive organs, and now also of the army, will quickly equalize Ukrainian and Russian states in thuggishness. Actually, Putin’s goal—to punish the Ukrainian people and make the spread of the infection of freedom to Russia impossible—will be achieved. Let the thuggish Ukrainian state be extremely hostile to the Russian one, but it will be its own, beloved, non-dangerous, and extremely useful in the household enemy.
Factually, if everything continues as it is going and no special circumstances arise, you and I are headed for a simple outcome: either non-freedom in the name of Putin, or non-freedom in the name of his Ukrainian version.
However, I am writing this not to indulge in relaxing pessimism once again, but to talk about the possibility of remaining free. This possibility exists and will exist until the very last moment. It consists in the fact that since Putin is trying to wage war against Ukrainian citizens, citizens must have the opportunity to respond. For this, it is not at all necessary to capture Moscow. It is enough that people have simple access to weapons and can form self-defense units. Right now, the Ukrainian state stands between us and Putin, which has its own interests and which, I repeat, like any other state on Earth, dreams of expanding its authority. One day, green men may appear in your city, capture some ritual column, and after reading a spell, will “reassign to Russia” you and all other residents. And even if you have “100% for Ukraine” in your city, you will live in Russia, because the local police turned out to be in collusion, or did not receive an order, or come up with another 150 respectable reasons.
Local residents, even not too well trained, but armed, can easily and simply solve the problem with the green men. And, this is the main thing, local residents not under the aegis of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Ministry of Defense, as our “useful idiots” want, but independent, self-defending. After all, subordination to the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Internal Affairs means that the necessary order may not come and there will be all the same 150 other reasons. Self-organizing citizens themselves analyze the situation and make decisions.
As long as the choice between Ukraine and Russia is a choice between relative freedom and its absence, free acquisition and carrying of weapons is the only way to preserve what we still have and hopes for what may be better in the future.