Is Putin a Zelensky Agent?
Paul Craig Roberts
Below is a translation into English of an example of the postings that are appearing in Russian social media. Gilbert Doctorow made it available (in Russian) on his website. Criticism of the absurd and Russia-destructing way Putin is conducting a war is becoming widespread in Russia and is no longer confined to elements in the military and foreign policy experts.
After five years of pretending to fight Ukraine at the expense of many casualties, Putin’s only result is to convince the world that Russia is a paper tiger. Some are even beginning to wonder if Putin is a Zelensky agent.
If Putin continues to avoid a military victory, the war will be relocated into Russia far from the Ukraine battlefield. In other words, Putin’s incompetence will have widened the war into a need for a dramatic response from Russia in order to avoid defeat. It seems the ever-widening, never-ending war I have been chronicling is closing in on Armageddon.
The title of the social media posting emphasizes that it is ordinary Russians who have been paying with their lives for five years while the Russian elites pretend to fight a war.
“Guys, what are you doing? Are you going to fight? Let me assemble a platoon consisting of the sons of oligarchs, bureaucrats and Duma deputies, and the war will end tomorrow.”
The enemy doesn’t care at all what kills you, as long as it kills you.
The enemy doesn’t give a damn about the elderly, children, women—the more Russians die, the better.
The enemy begs the West for weapons, and the West complies.
The enemy is ready to crawl on its knees if that’s what it takes to get weapons to kill Russians.
The enemy steals by the billions. We steal too, even by the trillions, but the enemy doesn’t hesitate to spend 15 drones on a single one of our servicemen, while for us that quantity is meant to last a long time, and God forbid one breaks or gets lost—you’ll have to pay for it.
The enemy strikes Kronstadt, oil refineries. The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum is covered in black smoke, and they try to strike Moscow almost every day. We report that we’ve captured the settlement of Shevchenko in Kharkiv Oblast, where the population was 0 as of 2022.
They’re fighting a war against us, while we’re jerking a limp dick (forgive the expression, but like most Russians, I’m, to put it mildly, bewildered by what’s happening). Guys, what are you doing? Are you going to fight? Where are the “systematic and consistent” strikes on the enemy?
Spending five years talking about scoundrels in power in Kyiv while protecting the scoundrels more than your own soldiers is not normal. Turning a blind eye to problems and thinking everything will sort itself out is not normal. Talking about negotiation signals disinclination to win. How does disinclination to win motivate soldiers to fight?
Of course, you can silence all of us, imprison us, hand out guidelines saying people shouldn’t write about issues that worry the public, but the problem isn’t us. The problem won’t disappear just because the media landscape has been scorched. Blocking the Internet won’t solve the issue of the growing swarm of UAVs flying deep into the rear. The enemy will continue killing us. You no longer need to open the Internet to know that something has been hit somewhere in Russia.
Being an anxious person is not a bad thing. Such a person thinks through every possibility, including the worst one, and prepares for it. I want our government to become more anxious. To stop ignoring the scale of the growing problems, stop celebrating for no reason, and stop wasting energy pointlessly, like Oreshnik. You need to be more serious. Your response to the enemy should be firm, and even ruthless—not yet another now-comical statement that everyone will be punished. Everyone who? They laugh out loud at the statements of Russian politicians. Not a single one has been punished. They’re all alive and continue striking us.
Zapashny once told a story about training a lioness. She obeyed him and was apparently afraid of him. But one day, in front of her, he stumbled. And she began hunting him. She realized that this man, who had seemed like a superhuman force to her, could stumble. He could be weak, lose control, lose his balance. We stumbled—and not just once—and we continue to show weakness by trying to play nice with all our enemies.
I don’t care what Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu, or even Stalin said. I live here and now. And here and now, I absorb and analyze information. Not just as a citizen of my beloved Russia, but as a mother of four children. I see that this game of giving way, this corrupt capitalism that has spread and penetrated both the army and the home front even at the grassroots level, raises questions about the very existence of my Motherland—and therefore the lives of my children.
I was born and raised in Russia. I have no other home and never will, and it is being destroyed not so much by the enemy as by those who allow the enemy to do it. Stop trading away Russia. Fight back against the enemy. Mobilize yourselves. When the elite mobilizes, that impulse will instantly spread across all industries and spheres, and the people will be energized by it.
It’s painful to watch our weakness now, because we are not weak. Especially painful and sickening was watching this St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where there is nothing deep, serious, or genuinely useful for the economy. It’s not an economic platform but a media one—another global press conference about everyone and everything, which in the end is about nothing.