New Banksy statue in central London
Magnificent Banksy! So much cartridge ink has been spilled to describe the indescribable reality of global disorder and the export-import of chaos, and he went and placed a statue in the middle of London—a precise symbol of today's Groundhog Day: a man in a jacket holding a flag that blinds him and taking a step straight into the abyss. Bruegel's blind men, 21st century. «The blind leading the blind» in one person. In the man, anyone can be guessed—either Putin or Trump, leaders without rudder and sails, blind and deaf, but with a flag around which everyone else is supposed to rally permanently. «If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit», — words of Jesus.
Lubyanka, sir!
Carefully learned blindness and deafness and stubborn movement in the direction indicated by «security interests» — the authorities' reaction to what is happening. Reaction to the fatigue and irritation of the masses, which breaks through in the most exotic ways even from Monaco; to the permanent depression and growing anxiety of the subjects; to the burning terminals and black rains; to the economy crumbling here and there and going into the negative. Everything is fine, «people are coping», everything is going according to plan, «the blind leading the blind».
Yes, Putin's ratings, and therefore the entire rest of the power system, have gone down, signaling bad moods—approximately at the level of the times of partial mobilization. The regime is saved by the amazing adaptability and indifference of the population, it has always relied on indifference. However, the excessive duration of the «special operation», the loss of a sense of security, and the permanent expectation of a drone overhead, now also the persistent intrusion of the state into the everyday internet environment of Russians (regardless of their political views) have somewhat shaken the model «the tsar is good, the boyars are bad».
«The boyars» signal in every way that they are only following orders. And it comes from the «tsar», which becomes obvious even to the most shortsighted. The «tsar» embodies not the will of the people, but the opinion of the special services corporation: apparently, he either no longer listens to what the civilian wing of the administration tells him, or they do not dare to tell him anything, realizing that they are not the main ones here, that the country is nominally governed from the Kremlin, but actually from Lubyanka. The financial-economic technocracy is left only, as in the old days, «to stand for high growth rates (unattainable), rather than sit for low ones». Perhaps the time of scapegoats is approaching in the genre of «and you will answer for the economy».
«Something from offshore»
Adaptability, including technological, of the population is such that they will get used to new restrictions and will perceive what is happening as a new normality. Maybe even the ratings will stabilize. But the residue remains. Moreover, the authorities do not stop—on the agenda of the civil war with society is further suppression of VPN, persecution by tax authorities of small businesses going into the shadows, as well as large businesses that, even going into the negative, are forced to share the last with the state, and sometimes fall under nationalization. Matvienko's need to «pull something from offshore» — the slogan of the day, and most importantly, a reflection of the amazing ideas of the highest authority about what is happening in the economy. Still to blame is Nabiullina or poorly sharing oligarchs, but the fact that the structure of the economy is distorted, the state budget is destroyed by militaristic expenses, there is no one to work in the country because people are at the front or in emigration—these seem to be secondary reasons for degradation. Officials and commentators name everything except the factor that really affects the situation in the economy—and that is the four-year battle for «returning and strengthening lands».
The SVO has become not so much a cause as a consequence of the lack of a goal in Putin's sultanistic regime. Instead of building communism or capitalism, a «movement» was provoked (this is Putin's own definition), intended to invigorate a nation living too well on oil and gas revenues, having forgotten its «thousand-year history». History returned, pouring out in drones, toxic rains, isolation from the world and investments. The nation was invigorated, filled with resentment under Solovyov's cries, but there is no happiness. And where we are going is not very clear. And how far we can go is also unclear. And whether it will be possible to talk about the «demography» of Russia after all this is a big question. But territories must be returned—without this, nowhere.
With Eyes Wide Shut
The military confrontation has reached its technological limit. About this—the notorious death zone, killzone, which cannot be passed—even Dmitry Medvedev spoke. Not in the sense that this is a clear reason to end everything, but in the sense that it must be somehow taken into account. The territorial dimension of the SVO over four years has turned out to be a dead end, simply outdated, even if you are a big fan of the sculptural man in a jacket by Banksy. Territories are now zones of ecological and economic disaster, where only a stalker from Tarkovsky's film should be sent.
While the great powers assert themselves in the style of Banksy, the nature of wars in different parts of the planet is changing, and small players are coming to the fore. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman noted, confrontations are becoming asymmetric, military success is not always measured by nuclear arsenals, and the use of artificial intelligence in this war of all against all can make failed states and terrorist organizations like Hamas dangerous.
In some sense, there is a Hamasization of military confrontations. Humanity may degrade to the club of a Neanderthal, the trouble is only that this club will be controlled by artificial intelligence.
The art of diplomacy has been completely lost, the task of which is not to finally solve unsolvable problems, but to restrain those who believe that they can only be solved by military means. There is no goodwill for this very restraint of both oneself and the opponent/rival. The desire not to lose face and to insist fundamentally on the only correct righteousness of the chosen path, not recognizing strategic mistakes, contributes to this movement of the leaders of global disorder in the style of Banksy's sculpture. Human life and human rights in this movement are not considered at all as any significant value.
But why can the man from Banksy keep going further? He has no feedback. And the signal sent through the transistor named Bonya made no impression on the authorities. Where decisions are made, they believe that the majority of the population will swallow everything—both absurd bans, and ridiculous accusations, and glaring incompetence. Blindness and deafness at the top are a reflection of the same learned indifference and strained muted feelings at the bottom. So far, fatigue, annoyance, irritation only affect the consumer shell of a Russian from the «spiral of silence». They do not penetrate everyone deeper, into the soul and consciousness, where not superficial emotions from the inconvenience of using a gadget live, but conscience, shame, reason.
It seems that for now, those at the top can continue their movement forward with eyes closed by a flag. And the lower classes, already reluctantly and cursing, remembering the «grandfather» with an unkind word, switching from VPN to proxy Telegram and back, still continue to follow them.
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a «foreign agent» by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
Photo source: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images.