These days a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) controlled now by the Russian invaders. The scientists of IAEA were led through the ZNPP territory by a Russian representative to a hole made by an artillery shell. It was apparent that the shell came from the direction of territories occupied by Russia. But the Russian “guide” made an effort to “explain” that when the shell hits the ground, it (somehow) jumps and turns around, so that it actually must have arrived from the Ukrainian side.

This lie is very typical for Russians. This isn’t just an exaggeration or ideological framing. This is a complete and absolute bullshit… You know, “jumping artillery shells” – the ones produced specifically to turn around after impact to make Russia look bad. But as one German guy once said, the people would sooner believe a big lie than a small one, because when the people hear the big lie they cannot imagine that someone would lie in such a shameless way.

The main peculiarity of Russian propaganda is that Russians rarely try to craft a single attractive and consistent story. Instead they throw around many different (quite often contradicting) messages… and then they see which ones work. This might seem a strange, stupid or even schizophrenic approach, but the sheer number of people who listen to and follow the Russian narratives all around the world is astonishing.

The trick is that each message works for a different audience. This is a very postmodern approach where social bubbles and prejudices of various groups are exploited. The main aim is not to prove to the world that Russia is a great country (even Russian propagandists realize this is an impossible task), but to plant the seeds of doubt and distrust among the many big and small forces of the West, to make them feud with one another and to make them weak.

If there is one thing that truly disgusts me in the world’s reaction to Russian aggression is the naivety of the abstract calls to “stop the war” – without clarification WHO must stop it and HOW.

Such attitude trivializes the immense ongoing suffering of people in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and many other Ukrainian cities and villages. Like it’s not a true genocide, not the most ruinous war in Europe since WWII, but a mere fistfight of some teenagers in the school yard: “Oh, Ukraine, why can’t you simply be friends with Rashiya?”

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is built on a lie. And I want everyone in the world to understand that. This whole war – since the annexation of Crimea and fake “referendums” in Donbas in 2014 and up to the full-scale invasion on the 24th of February in 2022 – is based on a terribly, perversly fake pretense. Russian president as well as many Russian politicians on many occasions said that Russian speakers in Ukraine were somehow oppressed or that they are threatened by Ukrainian nationalists. This is the most absurdist nonsense I have ever heard in my lifetime. This I am saying as a person who was speaking predominantly Russian for the most part of my life.