15% hope

The coming week will mark one year since the start of the nightmare in Ukraine.

The Russian invasion took me by surprise. One year ago, it was totally unbelievable to me that a war of such scale could take place between Russia and Ukraine - two segments of my own heritage. 

Yes, there was fighting in Donbas in 2014-2015, with some exchange of fire taking place since then, but nothing comparable to what's happening since last February, with more than 200,000 deaths so far and a meat grinder of about 1000 souls per day at the current rate.

My reaction to the invasion, perhaps not very wisely, was to rediscover my connection with Donbas and more generally with my Russian and Ukrainian heritage. 

I looked for and found on the map the village where my mother was born (on the frontline, on the side controlled by the Ukrainian forces, currently under heavy Russian attack). I looked for and found on the map the town where she grew up as a teenager and where my (Ukrainian) grandmother and (Russian) grandfather are buried (on the frontline, on the side controlled since 2014 by the pro-Kremlin forces). 

Since last February, a number of Russian and Ukrainian telegram channels and podcasts have made it into my daily routine. I've learned a lot more than I knew before about the history and politics of Russia, Ukraine, and the wider region. I dare say that my Russian is now in much better shape than it was a year ago, while Duolingo informs me that I can boast of having mastered 604 Ukrainian words so far.

One year is a long time for a nightmare. The human psyche is not fit to deal with such horrors over such a long time. The mind finds mechanisms to cope.

For those like me living far from the frontline, without having to constantly dread the fate of friends and close relatives that fight or live on the frontline, coping is not that hard. The war appears from time to time on the newsreel, but it is not that hard to put it on the back burner and concentrate on more immediate concerns. 

For those more directly involved, coping is harder, but not impossible. 

On the Ukrainian side, the most common psychological coping mechanism is fairly straightforward. An invading force has come to get you - you need to take care of your physical survival. The enemy is pure evil. They shoot at you, torture you, rape you. Dealing with this is very hard, very painful, but psychologically, philosophically, it is rather straightforward - you fight or you die (or surrender, which in some cases may be an even worse outcome).

On the Russian side, a large section of society also seems to cope successfully with this nightmare. For them, it is not entirely clear why there is a special military operation for a whole year in Ukraine, but the 8-year limbo of Donbas had to end somehow. They believe there is a horrible ruling class in Ukraine, puppets of the evil West who, with the help of extremists, nationalistic propaganda, and money from the West, suppress and brainwash their fellow men and women. Some people die in the special military operation, but defending the pride of the nation comes at a price. The glorious history of Russia is built on the sacrifice of national heroes. No room for whining during historic times.

There is, however, a small section of Russian society that has no coping mechanism available - people holding western, liberal, humanitarian, scientific, materialistic outlook. A section that has to live with a never-ending, never quieting cognitive dissonance. A section that in some sociological studies is estimated to correspond to about 15% of society within the country and perhaps a larger portion of its diaspora.

They see the horrible crimes committed by their fellow countrymen, by watching, reading or listening to banned or suppressed sources, and they don't attribute these crimes to propaganda staged by the West. They see whole towns and cities raised to the ground by the artillery of their own army, towns and cities largely inhabited by people speaking the same language as theirs. People who lived for decades in the same country as them, with the same or similar cultural code as them. People who may be distant or even close relatives of theirs.

They cannot dismiss the perpetrators of these crimes as being genetically or culturally evil. They recognise that this whole tragedy is brought upon by their own kind, their own neighbours, their own family. They realise that they are genetically, culturally destined to be seen on the side of evil. For as long as they live, the crimes of their countrymen will tarnish their own reputation too. And they feel completely helpless to change that. The few that tried are rotting away, somewhere far away, in the cold, harsh colonies of the Russian penal system. 

This nightmare cannot end as aspired by the various cognitively settled archetypes described above. It will not end with Putin taking poison hours before the allied forces break into his bunker in Moscow. It will not end with Russia restoring its sphere of influence from the Soviet era. 

The nightmare will not end by fizzling out, slowly dropping off the newsreel until we all forget about it. Russia is too big, too close to Europe, to become a North Korea, a slightly annoying but largely harmless oddity. 

The crimes the Russian troops committed, the nuclear threats the country's leadership levied, have been too numerous, too odious to be forgotten. Russia slipping silently back into the world economy is also not a realistic scenario. 

The only non-apocalyptic end to this nightmare, in my humble opinion, is for that 15% of Russians with cognitive dissonance to become 16%, then 17%, then 20%, then enough percent so that it fights off, cuts off the cancerous monstrosity, the death cult that has taken over the country's leadership and the minds of the majority in their country.

15% is not much, but this 15% is our only hope.