A Letter From a Former Ukrainian Chinovnik

I reached out to some people that used to work for the Ukrainian government and asked for their anonymous takes on the situation and the developments of recent months on both Ukraine and the wider FSU world. I thought I’d share this one essay that I received. This man is retired and no longer serves in any capacity in the Ukrainian government. As you read his essay, it should become clear why. People like him were, at some point, simply no longer welcome in Kiev. I think his essay represents the viewpoint of many pro-Russian Ukrainians or people who self-identify as Russians who live in the Ukraine that have largely been suppressed by the Western media and by Kiev itself. Enjoy:

The special military operation that is taking place all over Ukraine took many people by surprise. The sheer size of a military effort is breathtaking. There is no question that for Russia the consequences of the operation will be harsh. There will be military losses, serious geopolitical pressure, and economic hardship. What is it then that they are fighting for in Ukraine?

I think the answer is simple. Russia, and all of us who associate themselves with the Russian world, have awoken to the fact that peace with pathological scoundrels – who are scheming to emasculate and subdue us through protracted ideological warfare, the purpose of which is corruption of elites and cultivation of treason among youth – is nothing short of a slow but sure death as a nation, as a culture and as a civilization. The collective West, or as the President called them, “the empire of lies”, has been pursuing this strategy of strangulation openly, as if taunting Russia, “what can you do about it?” They worked obsessively to overthrow friendly to Russia governments, the most recent attempts being the failed coups in Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2020 and 2021 respectively. In other countries around Russia, they succeeded. Well, they even had a nerve to attempt a coup in Russia itself in 2012! 

In 2014, they succeeded in staging a bloody coup in Ukraine and immediately set to work to tear the country and its people from everything connecting them to Russia. They were in a hurry, and to seal their bloody victory, they used Bandera radicals as their proxies to start a civil war in Ukraine. For nothing binds people closer together than heinous crime, the blood of innocent people on their hands. US closed its eyes on atrocities that followed the coup d’état, they even went as far as to conduct a “false flag operation” to down the Malaysian airliner to consolidate the wavering Western allies against Russia. All in the name of destroying any resistance to US dominance…

For eight years now, the West-sponsored Ukrainian forces bombed and shelled peaceful villages and large cities in the east of Ukraine. They did it to punish the revolt against the illegal pro-Western coup d’état, as well as to challenge our loyalty to shared culture, history, and tradition. You see, people in the east are Russians and Russophones, and that makes them bitter enemies of the new, progressive Ukraine and the arch enemy of its Western puppeteers. What has been happening for eight years could not be described by any other word than genocide. However, since the killings and humiliation were aimed at the Russian and Russophone population, it made it Ok in the West. Nobody said a word. For eight years. Not a word in defense of Russian and Russophone people of Donbass.

The military operation we are witnessing now is an act of defense. Russia finally arrived at the long-fought civil war to save its own countrymen and those Ukrainians who see themselves as part of a greater Russian civilization. In doing so, Russia has challenged the West in earnest for the first time since the end of the Cold War, and the West is upset about this kind of resistance. They thought they had Russia sleepwalking into a national disaster. They thought they had only to arm Ukraine a bit more, even if it meant reconsidering its non-nuclear status, subdue the insurrection in the east, force Russia to grudgingly accept its defeat, and then just work a bit more to turn Russian people against their authorities and instigate the bloody revolution that would destroy Russia forever. Clever plan, but now it is in shambles. Russia acted first.

Clearly, Russia is not planning to eliminate Ukraine’s statehood. However, it is very serious about eliminating any threats that have been placed there by the West. It means we have long and arduous years of work to change and rebuild Ukraine. There will be a new constitution in Ukraine, a new government and yes, a lot of clandestine activities aimed at undermining the renaissance of a friendly and brotherly Ukraine by the West. However, the squeaky wheel of history has turned started rolling, and there is nothing that can stop its motion until a new balance is achieved through blood and toil.