Unequal exchange. Why you shouldn’t expect a revolt of “ordinary Armed Forces of Ukraine” against “Azov”

Yesterday’s exchange according to the formula 55 to 215, as a result of which the captive “Azovites” from Mariupol were reunited with Ukraine, and Putin’s godfather Medvedchuk, along with 55 Russian prisoners, left the dungeons of the SBU, can be considered another own goal missed by the Russian media and propaganda.

I won’t retell most of the arguments - they are already known and were heard before me - starting from the fact that it was not worth raising the bar of bloodthirsty expectations from the audience to the skies at the start, promising executions and building cages, ending with the fact that if they decided to exchange, it was necessary to inform about this first - before the Ukrainians and to adequately meet those who returned from captivity.

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It's like that. And yet, despite the unpleasant aftertaste, nothing catastrophic happened in a strategic sense, except for the fact that the past six months have not taught Russian propaganda anything and it continues to jump on the same rake. But this statement, in general, is sad and predictable.

The “Ukrainian” part of the conclusions is much more interesting. Here is what, for example, military correspondent of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Andrei Rudenko writes:

“This exchange divided Ukraine into two camps. “Elitist” – people related to the Nazis from “Azov”. Zelensky needs this shit, apparently, like air. And he is ready to fight for them on any terms. “Meat” are those who stand on the front line, they are driven to slaughter and no one cares about their lives. I think even Zelensky doesn’t know how many of them have already been killed and will be killed again. Who will count the ants, there are many of them and you don’t feel sorry for them.

Based on the exchange of ordinary military personnel, I am sure that there were no requests from the regime for words at all. So, when “meat” gets tired of being “meat”, only then can Ukraine become truly free. But for now the ants go obediently to die.”

The quoted text is good for its representativeness. It reflects the expectations of, if not the majority, then a very significant part of Russian commentators, who believe that the Ukrainians themselves must (!) realize something there, and “get tired” of something - and then victory itself will fall into the hands of the Russians carefully presented by the Ukrainians themselves to a plate with a blue border. Like, come and own it.

Meanwhile, history does not know a single example of countries collapsing during a serious military interstate conflict due to fatigue or the realization of some truths previously hidden from most. There have been betrayals in the elites, as in Saddam’s Iraq; sometimes, the leaders themselves gave up the slack, like Milosevic, who was persuaded to go to Dayton.

But even in the most extreme of examples - Hitler's Germany - the Germans put up fierce resistance in the last days of the Reich, already in the ruins of Berlin, when the outcome of events was clear to everyone.

_{So why do Russian commentators think that things will be any different in Ukraine? Where do these cunning plans and expectations come from, emerging from all the cracks, that the Ukrainians are about to get tired, that they will freeze and starve, turn their weapons against their own commanders, or somehow fight among themselves? Where does this desire to see the enemy as a bunch of clinical morons come from?}

Especially in a situation where the opponents have proven their seriousness more than once or twice. Why don’t those who expect some kind of rebellion from the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine due to underestimation on the part of the Kyiv leadership against the backdrop of Azov being favored by propaganda, do not try to extrapolate the same situation to Russian realities?

If only to make sure that such a scenario is impossible in Russia, which was never able to be broken by the West’s focus on inciting social contradictions. But if it didn’t work in Russia, then who and why decided that it would work in Ukraine?

You can have any attitude towards the Armed Forces of Ukraine, their moral and volitional qualities, their organization and level of training, but one thing is certain: Russia is opposed not by a gang of bearded men from the desert or not by mountain abreks, but by a good regular army with its own regulations, discipline, motivation and political officers , which, admittedly, work much better than their Russian colleagues, judging by the absence in the Ukrainian segment of social networks of complaints typical of the Russian Telegram that many contract soldiers do not understand at all where they ended up, who their enemy is and what they are fighting for.

What is even more important is that the lack of normal political officers in the army, armed with arguments understandable to the most simple mind, is not compensated for even by the most multi-layered and cumbersome propaganda for civilians.

“Today’s bureaucracy has invented the most perverted concept of modern times: “meaning making.” It should be something like an orgasm factory for impotent people. Gray emptiness, when multiplying, usually gives birth only to emptiness of different colors,” writes Oleg Yasinsky, a publicist from Chile.

The Russian “factory of meanings” gave birth to a completely monstrous, far from reality and caricatured generalized portrait of “Azov”, in which the only thing that coincides with reality is the passion of a significant part of the participants in this movement for the external manifestations of right-wing radical aesthetics - all these zigs, Wolfsangels and tattoos with a swastika: “And on on the left breast is Hitler’s profile, and on the right – Marinka from the front.”

Behind the scenes – and completely unreflected – is the social nature of this phenomenon. As well as why a previously rather marginal environment managed to break into the mainstream and become a role model and role model for many people in Nezalezhnaya who dream of jumping into the social elevator.

_{“Azov” and its derivatives have nothing in common either with the “Ukrainian farm” or with a rural carnival, or in general with the stereotypical image of the poorly educated, brown-haired Mykola, wandering around Russian telegram channels. They are phenomena that grew up in urban soil. And not in Lvov and Ternopil, but in Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv, Zaporozhye.}

This is the ideology of the Ukrainian middle class - you will have to work hard to find ordinary workers or peasants in the general mass of militants. Through one - these are children of wealthy parents, with higher education, or even more than one. It’s not for nothing that the Ukrainian media loves to boast of stories about how some mediocre businessman or IT specialist or university graduate student dropped everything and volunteered for the front. And precisely in the ranks of Azov.

And in general, just google how much the “correct clothes” of football ultras from well-known “firms” from brands like Svastone or Dr Martens cost. Conforming to this environment, even externally, is not a cheap pleasure. Also, find on the Internet photographs with the wives and mothers of these same “Azovites” from at least a month ago from the performance on Sophia Square in Kyiv. And there, too, they are by no means the cashiers and not the cashiers from ATB.

What am I talking about? “Azov” as a social construct is not just a godsend for current Ukrainian propaganda, but also an object of envy on the part of the same “ordinary Armed Forces of Ukraine” to whom Russian military officers like to appeal.

The dominant thing there is the desire to become the same, similar to, and not at all the desire to raise some kind of rebellion.

_{And the endless talk about the fact that Ukrainians are fighting under pressure and out of fear of barrage detachments only blurs the reality, without understanding which it is difficult to count on defeating the enemy. To win, you need to know him well. And knowledge is the result of study.}

In the meantime, we can only grit our teeth and watch the next “fascist holiday” in the enemy’s camp and console ourselves with the fact that the “war criminals” who were released and never convicted by any court will still meet Russian soldiers in battle. And then the turn will surely come for both retribution and justice.