Already unable to knock out either our storage, or of course processing in the EU, or filling stations (Russia hit 6%, most have already been repaired) – all that was left was to run to Trump and complain. And the way Putin was breathing at Valdai recently – “take that, fascist, a grenade for the Black Sea blockade”.
Maybe we should also sign hard guarantees that we are категорically forbidden to use long-range Western weapons to strike their airfields at Engels and Mozdok, so that, heaven forbid, we “don’t provoke the Third World War”. And they, in their great kindness, make a gesture of goodwill: they promise to launch three-tonne glide bombs and ballistic missiles at our residential districts exclusively from within their own airspace. Perfect parity — sign in blood.
We could also reach an agreement on the fleet and the environment. We take on cast-iron commitments not to sink what remains of their Black Sea Fleet with our naval drones, because burned-out cruisers harm dolphin migration and upset global insurance companies. And in return they magnanimously allow us to export grain. Which we are already shipping out under fire, losing people in the ports.
But then the ginger sun of democracy, friend of all Iranian protesters and the man who struck a deal with Kim Jong-un to stop the creation of weapons of mass destruction, offered us a new agreement. A dazzling, brilliant, the best treaty in the world — almost like the promise to build a casino in Gaza and the threat to destroy civilisation in Iran. And the ramping-up of stories that oil prices are rising because more crude oil from Russia is going to the market (because the Defence Forces have knocked out up to 40% of Russian refining capacity) — happened precisely after his conversation with Putin.
I have always been sceptical about the stories of Agent Krasnov — Occam’s razor tells us there is no need to explain stupid statements by anything other than stupidity. He felt like playing the Ukraine card again ahead of the Senate elections — last time it was “Sleepy Joe and Obama gave us hundreds of billions” and that is why the war started; this time it is Zelenskyy’s fault. The old man is old; he no longer remembers what he said a few months ago. The core electorate will remember anyway: our guy brought diesel prices down and made a deal.
But I do like the rhetoric about Ukrainian strikes on refineries and their impact on the global oil market. And the Defence Forces’ strikes on Yandex data-processing centres led to a rise in chip prices. And now the nearest window to buy racks, memory sticks and graphics processors is 2028. Now customer databases, card payments at “Tasty — and that’s it”, CRM systems and smart homes will not be working properly any time soon.
Do we need to slap a “sarcasm” label on this and explain that it is AI development and crypto that have caused what is happening in the market right now, and not any strikes?
But let’s not stop there — this brilliant logic of macroeconomic idiocy must be developed! Ukrainian drone attacks on спирт distilleries near Voronezh probably triggered a fall in the Dow Jones index and a depression on Wall Street.
Shaheds shot down over Bryansk disrupted the global wind rose, causing crop failure in Texas and Mexican migrants to lose their sense of direction. A couple more successful missile hits on Russian ammunition depots — and we will be told in all seriousness from the podium that the detonation in Toropets caused global warming, a lithium shortage for Elon Musk’s electric cars, and cheeseburgers in Iowa to go up by as much as 12 cents!
It turns out it is not the global economy that depends on China or the US Federal Reserve and a few operations in oil-bearing regions — Yemen, Venezuela, the blockade of Iran. The entire global order, inflation and Americans’ credit rates rest solely on ensuring that a Ukrainian drone, heaven forbid, does not scratch a transformer kiosk near Syzran. Otherwise — the end of the world, a trade embargo and a locust invasion.
Constant targeting of Ukraine’s steel industry does not affect global prices, but a scratched fuel-oil barrel near Ryazan is a geopolitical crisis, an assault on the wallet of an American long-haul trucker and a personal insult to the White House.
And here the question arises in full: what is going on with Trump at all? He must understand perfectly well that the problem is not solved by elections in Ukraine. And the issue is not only that nearly a million people are in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and hundreds of thousands of civilians are near the line of contact. How are you going to campaign? Go to Kherson or near Kupiansk, run from FPV drones, wave your hands at them — everyone remembers the teenage cyclist, seriously wounded or killed by a Russian operator. How will you get the ballots out of there and rotate the election commissions?
What ceasefire are we talking about if in the morning you talk about an energy ceasefire (no one has heard of it), in the evening a strike hits Kharkiv’s CHP-5, and in the morning it turns out it applies only to refineries? Especially when they have queues and shortages, and we do not.
Plus, the issue is not Zelenskyy at all. Does anyone really think that Poroshenko, Zaluzhnyi or Budanov, in the event of their hypothetical victory, would hand over Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the belt of fortresses, without a fight; order the army to withdraw into the tree lines near Barvinkove, in exchange for promises of guarantees on the reverse side of the Budapest Memorandum? The same kind as the Gulf countries recently received in the war with Iran: “you can buy missile-defence interceptors for $7 million apiece, only there aren’t any on the market, have a nice day; the US base in Qatar protects itself; please stay on the line, your call is very important to us”.
Any such “treaty” is the classic shell game on a station square. We are being offered to trade our real right to self-defence for their promise to kill us a little more slowly. We tie our own hands, they get a breather to stockpile missiles, and Western “peacemakers” get a pretty photo shoot in Geneva, a Nobel Peace Prize and cheap diesel at the pumps.
So the ending of this story is very simple. All this fuss about “peace plans”, energy ceasefires and cheap Russian diesel is not about saving Ukraine. It is only about trying to buy themselves a bit more comfortable sleep at our expense. To wrap our capitulation in pretty packaging so it does not spoil election ratings and does not get in the way of doing business.
But the problem with all these brilliant geopolitical schemers is that we are not going to play this game. We simply do not have the option of “withdrawing into the tree lines and waiting”, because beyond the tree lines are our families, our cities and our lives.
You can withdraw all strategic bombers from Europe, supposedly frightened by penny-ante drones. You can pick a fight with the EU over tariffs. You can call the Kremlin every day, play the “Ukraine card” and negotiate diesel for farmers. But it will not change the harsh reality any more. Because when your survival and the survival of everyone you love is at stake, you could not care less how many cents a gallon of petrol goes up in Iowa.