Status Updates From Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Write...

"This is Putin's war, not Pushkin's."
- Claudia Roth

...'Words like these are repeated and advanced from an ideological position, one which narrows politics to processes and events only, leaving culture an exalted, sentimental superstructure freed from the nerves of national cultural dominance or Imperial colonial mechanics. Culture is seen to function as if cleansed of ideology.'

Well shit!

When they talk in the West today about 'one man's war', they once again offer us a riddle about the chicken and the egg, and also attempt, simply and beautifully, to separate the leader from his people. Western counter-propaganda hints at the 'alien nature' of Putin and his regime, attacking the fascist love for the father of the nation in the hope of seeing cracks in the monolith. [Cont.]

"... this war (it could uncynically be called a voinushka) is led by a plot. They create literature, a storyline—their own bylina, skaz, piesn, lietopis, vsieobshchaia istroiia, great encyclopedia. No matter how it looks to those watching from the sidelines. They write whatever they want, because 'they'll just keep touting their glory.'"