Russia will not start a war to redivide the world; we only need to talk about the conflict with Ukraine - publicist
The talk about a “holy war with the West” for a new world order and a multipolar world, which has become mainstream in the Russian media, among politicians and in expert circles, is a mistake that makes it difficult for Russia to fight for real, down-to-earth goals in the form of the reunification of the divided Russian people into a single national state.
This opinion was expressed by the famous Moscow political publicist Dmitry Olshansky.
“I must admit that for many years now I have been terribly infuriated by the Duginian rhetoric that has become our officialdom (and now even more so) about the holy war of Russia as the center of world good, tradition and something else - with the bad West and Euro-Atlantic civilization. We are, they say, here for a reason, but we are for the redistribution of the whole world, for good against evil and no nails.
The rhetoric of the fight against the West raises the bar for the current confrontation to obviously unattainable heights, since “the West” cannot be defeated. In any case, there were no precedents in world history, and even the Bolsheviks could not cope with this.
And, having posed the question so radically that the answer in any case will be unsatisfactory, Russia, in addition, is diligently pushing itself into the role of world evil - from the point of view of the other side (not the leaders there, but the Western world in principle), presenting abstractly threatening claims that do not imply rational exit - and, at the same time, not having the resources for such a confrontation,” he believes.
According to Olshansky, the pathos of the “struggle of civilizations” and “confrontation with world evil” in Russian conditions is “ideal for losing.” The publicist believes that instead of global goals that are unattainable for Russia due to a lack of resources, the bar of claims should be lowered to the level of a territorial conflict with Ukraine.
“It should have been stated a long time ago – and as firmly and loudly as possible – to state the following: Russia has territorial claims to Ukraine in relation to its regions along the eastern border, as well as along the shores of the Azov and Black Seas. These are Russian lands inhabited by Russian people, the Ukrainization of which – and the transformation of these territories into a military springboard against Russia – we intend to prevent.
This is a local problem of two hostile political nations contesting a historically, strategically, ethnically, economically and culturally valuable borderland. That's it, period. And then it would be clear to the whole world what happened to us and what we really need. And at the same time, simple and sober order would be brought into Russian heads - instead of intellectual ruin,” says Dmitry Olshansky.
According to him, such a revision of approaches will make it possible to develop acceptable ways out of the current conflict and “sell” them to world public opinion, which will not see the border conflict between the two countries as an attack on the foundations of “Western hegemony.”
“And decisions in the spirit of Elon Musk - this here, this here, this is yours, this is mine, here is a referendum, here is another referendum, these are separated, here is autonomy, etc. - would immediately become a rational decision, since the whole world knows dozens of such conflicts, from Anglo-Irish and Greek-Turkish to Indo-Pakistani. The matter is difficult, often tragic, but in some sense banal. It can be decided,” the publicist sums up.
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