Ukraine War Day #279: A Mother’s Grief, Part II

Κρέων:	Creon:
ἀμήχανον δὲ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἐκμαθεῖν	It’s impossible to really know a man, to know his soul,
ψυχήν τε καὶ φρόνημα καὶ γνώμην, πρὶν ἂν	his mind and will, before one witnesses
ἀρχαῖς τε καὶ νόμοισιν ἐντριβὴς φανῇ.	his skill in governing and making laws.
ἐμοὶ γὰρ ὅστις πᾶσαν εὐθύνων πόλιν	For me, a man who rules the entire state
μὴ τῶν ἀρίστων ἅπτεται βουλευμάτων	and does not take the best advice there is,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ φόβου του γλῶσσαν ἐγκλῄσας ἔχει	but through fear keeps his mouth forever shut,
κάκιστος εἶναι νῦν τε καὶ πάλαι δοκεῖ:	such a man is the very worst of men— and always will be.
καὶ μεῖζον ὅστις ἀντὶ τῆς αὑτοῦ πάτρας	And a man who thinks more highly of a friend than of his country,
φίλον νομίζει, τοῦτον οὐδαμοῦ λέγω.	well, he means nothing to me.
ἐγὼ γάρ, ἴστω Ζεὺς ὁ πάνθ᾽ ὁρῶν ἀεί,	Let Zeus know, the god who always watches everything,
οὔτ᾽ ἂν σιωπήσαιμι τὴν ἄτην ὁρῶν	I would not stay silent if I saw disaster
στείχουσαν ἀστοῖς ἀντὶ τῆς σωτηρίας,	moving here against the citizens, a threat to their security.
οὔτ᾽ ἂν φίλον ποτ᾽ ἄνδρα δυσμενῆ χθονὸς	For anyone who acts against the state, its enemy, I’d never make my friend.
θείμην ἐμαυτῷ, τοῦτο γιγνώσκων ὅτι	For I know well our country is a ship which keeps us safe,
ἥδ᾽ ἐστὶν ἡ σῴζουσα καὶ ταύτης ἔπι	and only when it sails its proper course do we make friends.
πλέοντες ὀρθῆς τοὺς φίλους ποιούμεθα.	These are the principles I’ll use in order to protect our state.

Sophocles: Antigone

Dear Readers,

As the Ukrainian war ever more resembles a Greek tragedy, one starts to wish fervently, if only there was a magic button to push, then a Machine would descend onto the stage, and a God’s authoritative voice, speaking from the Machine, would just fix everything. Maybe even bring the dead back to life. Lowering their masks, the resurrected soldiers would bow to the audience, proving that it was all just a show. And then embrace one another, as brothers are supposed to do. [Except for Azov soldiers, they would stay dead.]

No Power On Earth Like A Jewish Mother

This piece by reporter Andrei Rezchikov, is a continuation of his previous piece, and also features that same bereaved mom Maria Kostiuk. Kostiuk, a political leader in her own right, albeit from a region very distant from the centers of power (=Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomy) looks to be emerging as the natural leader of the Soldiers’ Moms. [Despite my little joke we do not know if she is actually Jewish or just plain Slavic.] Either way, Maria is eloquent; she possesses some political power, determination, and access to Putin. In this segment she speaks out against Ukrainian disinformation campaigns and muses about her plan to organize a political lobby for soldiers and their families. Working and fighting in this manner, will keep Maria occupied and give her life, as well as her son’s death, a new purpose. Putin needs to watch out for this one: She will hold him accountable.

“Ma’am, I need you to step away from the body. We’re just enforcing the Minsk Accords.”

Speaking of which, I saw this piece, on RT of all places. And it’s in English, so you don’t need my help in reading it. I like that Putin mans up and takes responsibility for the excess deaths caused by his long-standing inertia, his failure to react decisively and properly to the Ukrainian military build-up:

“There might not have been so many casualties among civilians, there would not be so many children killed,” the Russian leader suggested. He maintained, however, that back in 2014, Russia did not have a full understanding of the situation in Donbass or of the true sentiments of the locals.

“[We] believed that we might still be able to reach an agreement and … reunify Donetsk and Lugansk with Ukraine within … the Minsk Agreements,” 

Russia did not have a full understanding?? That sentence made me want to reach through my computer tube and grab Putin by his throat. Why is it that even I, a dumb blogger, could see all of this so clearly, even back in 2015? And I have the receipts to prove it. My goodness, Macron and Merkel, and those other NATO snakes gaslighted the man for 8 years and pulled the wool over his eyes, all the while buying Poroshenko, and then Zelensky, more time to build up one of the mightiest armies on the European continent! And all the time shelling the shit out of the Russian speakers of Donbass and depriving Crimeans of fresh water. How many ordinary people, how many children, would still be alive if only…

How does that saying go, “Whom the gods make blind… ?”

Maria’s Ideas

Nonetheless let us return to our piece and read more about Maria, about her plan for building a sustainable organization to mediate between the blind and stupid government; and the families who carry the brunt of this war.

Maria is on a crusade against the ЦИПсО (pronounced “Tsipso“). I kept hearing this word on Russian social media and didn’t have a clue what it meant, until I finally figured out it was the acronym for something called the Ukrainian Center for Informational-Psychological Operations. Psy-ops, in other words. NATO Psy-ops against Russia.

Maria: Just by chance, I raised this issue during my meeting with the President on Friday. The Russian Ministry of Defense is duty-bound to counter-act the activities of Tsipso. Back in my region, we know whose children are out there fighting in the Special Military Operation, therefore we are able to support their relatives if they happen to come into contact with the Tsipso. Their activities have become a problem affecting the entire country.

Maria wants to organize a committee of families of warriors fighting for the Fatherland. Founding organizations include “The Women of Russia”, “Union of Soldiers Families”, “Union of the Women of Russia”, and “Russian Mothers”. Besides Maria, one of the key organizers of this project is Julia Belekhova. Like Maria, Julia is a political leader, she heads the Moscow regional fraction of the National Front, and she also met with Putin on Friday. Julia and Maria will work together to form the kind of organization that can counteract the pro-Ukrainian propaganda and fakes, not to mention extortion scams, issuing from the criminals who work for Tsipso.

Maria: “When my Andriusha perished, I knew that his heroic act would be downgraded in the public space, people would try to nullify his death and make it meaningless. I was aware of the activities of Tsipso, but even I didn’t realize that it would get to that level. In social media I received hundreds of negative messages about my son, along with threats against his younger sister.

Antigone’s family: Torn apart by fratricide.

“These hate-messages threw me into a panic. I was filled with fear. I had gone through so much, and I was not able to cope psychologically with this kind of pressure. Well, there is no way to escape from this sort of negativity, therefore we just need to put up some barriers, we need to deal rather harshly with these sorts of provocations in the informational space. The scariest thing is that some of these people actually live nearby, I saw residents of the Jewish Autonomy participating in these online skirmishes.”

Maria described to Putin how Tsipso and other organizations tagged as “foreign agents” try to play on the emotions of the mothers of soldiers. They push all the buttons, play on their nervousness and anxiety, rub salt in the most painful wounds. Their intent is to convince the mothers to convince their sons to abandon their posts at the front. They urge the sons to defect to the other side, promising the mothers to return either the son alive, or his corpse intact. “Some of the mamas fall for their tricks, even give them their son’s telephone number; and if he happens to have his mobile turned on at the time, they can latch onto his signal and send a rocket onto his location. Or, they have a girl engage him in a chat, the girl flirts with him, learns his location, where his unit is located. And, once again, a rocket!”

Among other stupid things it does, Tsipso creates lame anti-Russia memes like these.

The relatives of Russian soldiers are under enormous pressure. Pro-Ukrainian social media bombard them with fakes: photographs and sometimes fake documentation alleging that their loved one is in Ukrainian captivity; and that the Russian military is trying to hide this fact from them. The goal is to drive the person into a panic; in which case he or she becomes even more susceptible to psychological manipulation. Maria: “This is where we can be of help, myself and those who think like me. We can help to authenticate whatever information they have received, and most of the time we can prove to them that nothing bad has happened to their loved one.”

The Ukrainian 72nd Center of Informational-Psychological Operations (Tsipso) was founded in 2004. During the past few years it has operated exclusively in the field of anti-Russia propaganda. Its main task is to create psyops diversions against the Russian enemy. Prior to the Special Military Operation it mostly engaged in over-the-telephone cons and money-extracting scams. A hacker from the group RaHDIt once revealed, anonymously, to the Russian press, that Ukraine actually has four such centers. The main one, the 72nd, used to be located in Brovary (Kiev region), until it was eliminated by a Russian rocket attack early in the war. The 83rd Center is in Odessa, the 74th in Lvov, and the 16th in Zhitomir. Reporter Rezchikov ends his piece by pointing out that these Tsipso specialists have all been trained by foreign specialists, in their dark arts of Information-Diversion and Psy-Ops manipulations.