The Sunday Times May 22, 2022 V2 17
fact that some were in uniform and the
statues were boarded up.
Over the past few weeks ambassadors
have started returning. Melinda Sim-
mons, the British ambassador, came with
her nails painted Ukrainian blue and yel-
low, although she warned that President
Putin had not given up on Kyiv. Last week
even the Americans were back, hoisting
the Stars and Stripes.
Shops have reopened. The owner of a
boutique in the Mandarin Plaza selling
Gucci and Christian Louboutin told me
she worried that “selling designer clothes
in war feels trivial but then I thought we
need to restart the economy” — GDP is
estimated to have shrunk by 45 per cent.
Electric scooters are everywhere and
the 5.20am commuter train has
restarted. Scooters and trains make sense
given the queues at petrol stations — fuel
is rationed after two depots were blown
up and the remaining supply is largely
directed to troops fighting in the east.
But for all the outward appearances,
the pain does not go away. Larysa, a law-
yer, was in tears as she spoke of losing a
good friend in fighting the previous day.
Immaculately dressed, she downed
repeated espressos and told me how fear-
ful she had been about coming out, hav-
ing stayed for weeks in an apartment with
her elderly parents and their friend who
were too frail to leave.
In a coffee bar, Roman, an earnest
young barista who lectured me every
morning not to add sugar because it
would “spoil the flavour”, told me: “I was
chased by a Russian tank. I don’t know
how I am still here making lattes.”
It was hard to get a table in the trendy
Zigzag café, amid people drinking flat
whites and detox juices and eating salads.
There I met Svitlana Zalischuk, a former
MP, who told me her grandmother had
died last year and left a diary in which she
had written about life under Nazi occupa-
tion. “When I read it and all the atrocities
year-old granddaughter crying: “Mama,
Mama!”
But again and again there was that
astonishing spirit. While plumes of
smoke rose on the horizon from Russian
shelling, Kharkiv council workers were
mowing grass verges and planting orange
and yellow marigolds.
Two hours to the west is the delightful
town of Poltava, where the next day peo-
ple were sitting at pavement cafés listen-
ing to a violinist as if it were a normal Sat-
urday, even if the music was somewhat
maudlin. Later in my hotel bar, I met
Nikita and his friends from Kharkiv who
had fled the war for the night to celebrate
Natasha’s 28th birthday. They insisted we
joined them in endless toasts to everyone
from the Queen to Boris Johnson.
My last weekend was spent in Lviv. To
my delight I saw the grand old opera
house had reopened and there was a bal-
let that evening. The performance
started with an announcement — not just
to turn off mobiles but that in the event of
an air raid, we must head to the bunker.
Some performances had been inter-
rupted five or six times, I was told.
“We were very afraid when we
reopened,” said Vasyl Vovkun, the artistic
director, “but light must defeat dark and
life must defeat death.”
The hour-long performance seemed to
lift spirits and we walked out into a per-
fect May evening. Children were scam-
pering in and out of the fountains, cou-
ples danced to the music of a live band,
men on benches played chess or back-
gammon under flowering horse chestnut
trees. Stalls were selling war souvenirs —
chocolate bars decorated with the
downed Russian ship Moskva and T-shirts
proclaiming “Fight like a Ukrainian”.
Along the promenade a small crowd
had gathered. A man with a pellet rifle
was offering goes to fire at a picture of
Putin. “Super!” he said for each success.
@christinalambScooters are a common
sight in Kyiv amid a petrol
shortage. Top, café life
returns to the capital,
defences in a Kyiv park and
wrecked Russian military
hardware on the streetshe wrote about, I thought how could
people have possibly survived that?” she
said. “Yet now the same things are hap-
pening again here.”
As I travelled around the country the
brutality against civilians and the
destruction was breathtaking. In the sec-
ond city of Kharkiv, the mayor told me 25
per cent of residential buildings had been
destroyed and half its schools shelled.
Also hit were the art museum, the main
library, the cathedral, a pub dedicated to
Ernest Hemingway called The Old Hem
and what had clearly once been beautiful
shops where mannequins lay among
ashes and rubble.
What did the Russians think? That
bombing schools, shops, hospitals and
homes and raping and torturing ordinary
people would turn Ukrainians towards
Moscow? Even officials who had been
advocates of Russia in the past told me
they would never go there again.
Some faces were so haunted I could
hardly bear to ask what had happened.
Among the stories I know will always stay
with me was that of Valentina with her
white-powdered face and thinly-pen-
cilled eyebrows telling me how she had
been FaceTiming her daughter Natalya
when there was a blast, the screen went
blank and all she could hear was her two-Political Action Conference
(CPAC).
Quoting Winston
Churchill, Ronald Reagan and
even Sting, the Hungarian
leader likened what he called
today’s “wokeness” to the
communist ideology he
fought as a young activist in
the late 1980s before the fall
of the Berlin Wall.
Orban also claimed
Hungarians and Americans
alike were up against “the
same people: faceless,
ideologically trained
bureaucrats sitting in
Washington DC and
Brussels” and looked forward
to 2024, when there will be
elections to the Europeanparliament and for the White
House.
“The progressive left tell us
what is the truth and what is
not, what is right and what is
wrong,” he lamented. “And as
conservatives, our lot is to
feel about our nations’ public
life as Sting felt in New York:
like a ‘legal alien’.”
The 12 points he proposed
included “playing by our own
rules”, putting emphasis on
the church and families, and
pursuing a foreign policy
based on national interest.
Conservatives should also
establish their “own media”
to counter the domination of
outlets by those who had
“progressive left-wing views”,Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the
scourge of Brussels and
darling of American
conservatives, has outlined to
a gathering of US Republicans
a 12-point plan he claims
should enable fellow
rightwingers across the world
to gain and retain power.
Orban, 58, re-elected as
prime minister last month,
boasted of how he has
transformed Hungary over
the past decade into a
“bastion of conservative and
Christian values in Europe”
in a speech opening a
meeting in Budapest last
week of the US ConservativePeter Conradi Europe Editor Orban said, as well as set up
think tanks, institutes and
youth organisations to
propagate their ideas.
“Politicians come and go, but
institutions stay with us for
generations,” he added.
The principles outlined by
Orban have made him
difficult to vote out. But his
demonisation of migrants
and sexual minorities has
raised concerns about
human rights in Hungary
and he has been accused of
bolstering his power by
presiding over widespread
corruption, which he
denies, and placing
sympathetic figures in key
institutions.Tayyip Erdogan and pro-
government media outlets
kept up a steady stream of
outrage at what they claim is
Sweden’s lax attitude towards
Turkey’s security concerns,
particularly concerning
Kurdish militants.
Direct criticism of Russia,
meanwhile, has been
relatively muted.
“The Turkish government
is in an awkward situation,
stuck between the west and
Russia,” said Selim Kuneralp,
a retired Turkish diplomat
who has worked closely on
the Montreux Convention —
and is a cousin of Boris
Johnson through his Turkish
great-grandfather. “And the
longer the war goes on, the
more difficult this situation
will be to maintain.”
There was, he said, little
that Turkey could do to
strangle Russia’s ability to
trade and resupply through
civilian ships that are part of
the Russian navy’s auxiliary
arm. According to the 1936
convention, Turkey does not
have the power to stop and
inspect vessels passing the
straits. Yet it can block
passage to military craft in
times of war.
“As long as Turkey is not a
party to any war, it can’t close
the straits to non-military
traffic, so that’s that,” said
Kuneralp. Isik, the ship-
spotter, disagreed. “I think if
there was a will, there would
be a way to find it,” he said.
Any attempt by Turkey to
stop or inspect Russian
civilian ships sailing through
the Bosphorus would have
enormous consequences.
“Almost every hostility that
happened between Turkey
and Russia in the last 200
years pretty much happened
because Russia has
demanded or desired to have
uninterrupted access to the
Turkish straits,” Isik said.Meanwhile, satellite
photographs show that
Russia has continually stolen
grain from occupied
Ukrainian territories,
including Crimea, and
exported it through the Black
Sea and the Bosphorus
marked as its own.
A spokesman for the
Russian embassy in London
said: “Recent accusations
against Russia of creating a
threat of a global food crisis
by not letting cargo ships with
grain out of Odesa and other
Ukrainian ports have nothing
to do with reality.”
Last week David Beasley,
director of the World Food
Programme, warned that the
war in Ukraine had created
an “unprecedented crisis” of
sharply rising food prices,
sparking riots and pushing
millions towards starvation.
@LouiseElisabet
Business, pages 2 and 3When the war in Syria was
at its peak, Russian naval
warships would transit
regularly through the straits
to resupply their allies in
Damascus. Early this year,
however, Isik noticed that
rather than heading out to
the Mediterranean, Russian
warships were coming home
from their far-flung fleets in
the Baltic and North seas.
“Given that the Black Sea
fleet actually has plenty of
landing ships, bringing
additional ships was the first
sign that Russia was planning
a military operation,” he said.
Russian officials said at the
time that the ships were
returning home for military
exercises. A few weeks later,
the war began — and Russia
imposed a naval blockade on
Ukraine, preventing it from
sending desperately needed
exports of grain and
sunflower oil via the Black
Sea.US Republicans flock to Budapest
for Orban’s lessons on leadership
The TV host Olga
Skabeyeva made
little attempt to
restrain Mikhail
Khodaryonok’s
criticism of the
Ukraine warIt is not usual to see criticism
of the regime on Russian TV
now that the Kremlin has
closed its fist on the media.
Less usual yet to hear it on
political talk shows that are
closer to George Orwell’s Two
Minutes Hate than Newsnight.
Nonetheless, that was what
happened last week. But it
did not suggest a loosening of
control. Rather it suggests
that President Putin is
recalibrating his narrative
and digging in for the long
term. According to Putin’s
ideology, Ukrainians are
proving difficult to conquer
because they are Russians...
they just don’t realise it yet.WAR IS NOT EASY
The criticisms of the Kremlin
came from Colonel Mikhail
Khodaryonok, a retired
officer who served a tour in
the Russian general staff ’s
main operational directorate,
the division known as the
“brains of the army”. He then
became a defence columnist,
and before the invasion had
published an article, “About
enthusiastic hawks and
hurried cuckoos”, in which
he criticised the glib
assumptions that a war in
Ukraine would be quick or
easy.
It is one thing to write a
column in a relatively niche
defence newspaper, another
to go on the prime-time TV
programme 60 Minutes and
call the Ukrainian soldiers
“professionals” willing to
“fight to the last man”, such
that the Russian position “will
frankly get worse”. Above all,
“we are in full geopolitical
isolation”.
60 Minutes fits into a
distinctive genre, in which a
strident, hawkish host
presides over a shouting
match between pundits
competing to come up with
the most alarmist conspiracy
theories and bullish
nationalist rhetoric. Yet
Khodaryonok was listened to
largely in respectful silence.
Even the host, Olga
Skabeyeva, whose on-screen
persona could be described as
headmistress-meets-
dominatrix, made only a few
interjections.NEW NARRATIVE
Shows such as 60 Minutes are
carefully stage-managed, and
there can have been little
doubt as to the kind of
commentary Khodaryonok
was going to provide. Have
even the flagships of state TV
propaganda gone rogue?
Hardly. Instead, what this
reflects is an important shift
in how the Kremlin’s political
technologists seek to redefine
the narrative. In particular,
how an apparent variety of
perspectives can nonetheless
combine to form a picture
that suits the Kremlin’s
needs.
An apparently different
contribution, for example,
had come from the former
parliamentarian and current
think tanker Sergei Markov in
the tabloid KomsomolskayaMark GaleottiPravda a few days earlier. He
too addressed the question of
why the Ukrainians were
putting up such dogged
resistance, but came up with
what could charitably be
described as an imaginative
spin.
“The Ukrainian army is an
amazing and very strong
combination of a Russian
soldier, a fascist officer and
an American general.” In
other words, although
secretly controlled by
Washington and under the
thumb of an officer corps that
has been “Nazified” such that
it is “ideological, motivated,
ready to die and to kill”, it
owes its backbone to the fact
that its ordinary soldiers are,
if they but knew it, Russians.
Putin’s take on Ukraine is
that this is not a real country,
but a temporarily mislaid part
of the wider Russian world.
Therefore, Ukrainians are
Russians, and it is as true that
Russians are winning as that
they are not.
Ukraine’s successes are
furthermore down to western
assistance, from American
weapons to British
intelligence and virtual
brainwashing. Ukrainians
have been taught that
Russians are “subhumans,
orcs and vatniks” — the last,
literally meaning “quilted
jackets”, being a slur used for
poor Russians who
unthinkingly swallow
patriotic propaganda.SAME DESTINATION
Gone are the days of airily
pretending all was well. That
was necessary before the May
9 Victory Day celebrations, to
ensure no unhelpful truths
sullied the nationalist
festivities. This could never
be sustained in the long term,
as more men fall in battle, as
the economic pressure
mounts and as conscripts
who fought there come
home. Hence the shift to a
new line.
A key tactic of Russian
propaganda is to create the
illusion of pluralism but
ensuring that the composite
message is the one the
Kremlin wants to convey. In
the words of a former Russian
diplomat: “Everyone can take
whatever road they want, so
long as they all end up at the
same destination.”
Khodaryonok’s heartfelt
critique and Markov’s
fantasia came from different
sides of the argument, but
they came to the same
destination: the Ukrainians
are putting up a tough fight
because they are backed by
the West, and that this is
therefore going to be a long,
hard war. Furthermore, it is a
war not for territory but to
uphold the honour of Russia
and against those who would
characterise its people as
beasts and barbarians.WEST IS TO BLAME
Russia is portrayed as nobly
standing up for what it thinks
is right, against the
assembled might of a United
States bent on global
hegemony and its debauched
and craven European
puppets. This was signalled
by Putin in his Victory Day
speech, where he sought to
compare his “special military
operation” with the Great
Patriotic War — the defeat of
Nazi Germany — and claimed
that Russia launched a “pre-
emptive attack againstaggression” that was being
prepared in Ukraine but
planned in Washington,
because the Russians had the
temerity to stand up for their
own independence and
culture.
This has become the
standard line. The real war is
against the “collective West”,
and the Ukrainians are their
brainwashed cannon fodder.
Such a line is useful to the
Kremlin in all kinds of ways. It
provides an excuse for the
underwhelming performance
of the military, and prepares
the ground should Putin
decide to admit that this is a
war so that he can mobilise at
least some reserves. This is
also about trying to frame
Russia’s hardships in heroic
terms. As one commentator
put it, “When we give up
foreign cars and foreign
holidays, we are doing our bit
on the home front, like our
grandparents did in the Great
Patriotic War.”
More broadly the new line
signals that Russians ought to
be digging in for a long war.
Managing expectations after
the initial promises of a
quick, easy victory will be
crucial, especially as and
when conditions get more
difficult.
For the next few months,
Russia can survive on its
reserves, just as many
Russian families can use
savings to offset rising prices.
However, by the autumn
these will have been
exhausted. Local and
gubernatorial elections are
due to be held in September.
Unemployment is likely to be
rising, and winter will loom.
Pressure will be intensifying
in Russia.EXPELLING TRAITORS
Handily the new line also
delivers a rationale for Putin’s
increasingly authoritarian
rule. In a video conference
with ministers in March,
Putin warned that “the
Russian people, will always
be able to distinguish the true
patriots from the scum and
the traitors, and just spit
them out like a fly that
accidentally flew into their
mouths”. He called for a
“natural and necessary self-
cleansing of society”. In other
words, now is the time for all
Russians — oligarchs, oil men,
technocrats, teachers — to
make a choice: are they
patriots or are they traitors?
This is a chilling message,
reflecting the Kremlin’s
growing concern about the
potential for dissent and
division. The massive outflow
since the start of the war of
middle-class Russians critical
of the regime (or those seeing
little future at home) has
perversely been welcomed by
a regime which is willing to
accept this loss of talent as
the price for, as one hardliner
put it, “draining the abscess
of liberal defeatism”.
But there are more than
enough disillusioned Russians
left — including a growing
body of nationalist critics of
the regime and unhappy
workers who could unleash a
wave of labour unrest later
this year. That is why the
Kremlin is getting ready for a
long war at home, too.
Professor Mark Galeotti is
director of the consultancy
Mayak Intelligence and author
of The Weaponisation of
Everything (Yale University
Press, £20, 2022)The new line in Moscow: We’re
losing to the West, not Ukraine
Ukraine
army is a
mix of
Russian
soldier,
fascist
officer
and US
generalCHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES; PAULA BRONSTEIN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMESIn the ever-changing
propaganda battle,
a Kremlin apologist
says Ukraine’s success
is down to its troops
‘being Russians’