Mystery of the Bloody MadneZZ. The Illusion of Blackmail

Exclusively by “Borysfen Intel”
Previous parts of the publication (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Volodymyr Shevchenko
Andrii Savarets

“The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help wishing its government a defeat. This is an axiom. To give up defeat is to turn one’s revolutionary spirit into an empty sound or hypocrisy. If it had not been for the war and defeat in it, Russia could have lived for years and even decades without revolution”.
V. Lenin

A Special Look At the So-Called Special Military Operation

The world was wary of the Russian Federation’s large-scale military exercises on the borders of Ukraine, which began on September 10, 2021. However, the vast majority of politicians around the world, as well as military and civilian analysts (the authors included) perceived them as nothing more than a means of intimidation, as blackmail in order to force Europe to certify Nord Stream 2 as soon as possible, to obtain guarantees against the political risks of its launch and operation, and to achieve a number of broader political and diplomatic goals by the Russian Federation. Millions of Ukrainian citizens paid for this erroneous belief with their usual way of existence, health and even life, and many foreign politicians and heads of analytical institutes paid with their positions and reputation.

This global intellectual failure, without exaggeration, was evidenced by the general fact that such outright military pressure, seen as blackmail, turned out to be surprisingly effective:

• the “Helsinki-2” project was seriously discussed, in which Russia’s role was significantly strengthened;
• the concept of a “tripolar world” got firmly entrenched in the global political space;
• on December 29, 2021, head of Gazprom, Miller, reported at a meeting with Russian President Putin that at 12:58 Moscow time, Gazprom completed filling the second line of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with gas. Now both the first and second lines of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are under working pressure and are fully operational;
• on January 26, 2022, Nord Stream 2 AG, the operator of Nord Stream 2, registered a subsidiary in Germany (Gas for Europe GMBH) for the German section of the pipeline to unlock certification;
• on February 4, 2022, representative of the Ministry of Economy of Germany Beate Baron announced that Germany would resume the Nord Stream 2 certification;
• as of February 21, 2022, only a few days remained before receiving a certificate for the operation of Nord Stream 2 from the federal land of Mecklenburg.

However, at the time when the leaders of the Russian Federation were already, almost with absolute guarantee, achieving what they allegedly demanded from Europe and the world, they suddenly “turned the table over”. On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine, thereby not only completely leveling the consequences of its blackmail (without exaggeration, triumphant), but also turned all the achievements of the past decades of Russian development into its complete opposite. The world had to somehow explain this paradoxical fact. The most popular version of the causes of the Russian invasion is the sudden collective madness of the top military-political leadership of the Russian Federation, which continues to this day. This version was most fully reflected in an article in The New York Times dated May 9, 2023, with the eloquent headline “Vladimir Putin Is the World’s Most Dangerous Fool”. The author, Thomas L. Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, regular host of the column on foreign policy issues, provides, in his opinion, convincing evidence for this thesis. At the same time, the very thesis that Putin is an idiot is based on three postulates, namely:

• Putin is supposedly subjective;
• Putin allegedly proceeds purely from the interests of preserving personal power;
• subjective is the Russian people, whose opinion Putin allegedly takes into consideration.

In our previous publications, these three postulates were questioned, which destroys the entire semantic construction about Putin’s madness. But here a logical question arises: is it possible to explain what is happening differently? In this case, the logically indisputable, albeit paradoxical at first glance, but confirmed by the whole course of events, the version of what is happening will be as follows:

1. The aim of the concentration of Russian strike groups on the borders of Ukraine (which ended in the invasion) was not blackmail to certify Nord Stream 2 and broader integration of the Russian Federation into the international community, but on the contrary — preparation for a radical disruption of that project; termination and return of international integration of the Russian Federation; economic and political “pupation” of the system.

2. The reason for this attempt was the threat of leveling the political and economic influence of the “corporation” — Russian special services, which, in a union with criminals, until recently were the constant main shadow arbiter and regulator of political and economic processes in the Russian Federation.

Due to objective circumstances, international integration has radically strengthened the role of international political and, especially, economic arbitration institutions in the domestic life of the country, and also increased the role of opposed to special services centers of power — oligarchy, military-industrial complex and army, regional, regional-ethnic political and economic elites.

3. That is why the real ultimate goal of the so-called SMO was (and still is) the transformation of the political system of the Russian Federation into a totalitarian unitary state with a single center of power, similar to what was created in Iran, where power legitimately and undividedly belongs to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (analogous to the Russian FSB).

4. The whole history of the Russian state clearly testifies that this kind of transformation, which affects the very foundations of the functioning of the state, is impossible within the framework of legitimate constitutional processes (and even with the help of palace plots), but is possible only through the strongest and most large-scale upheavals of a revolutionary nature.

5. In the natural course of events, there were no prerequisites for such upheavals in the Russian Federation, and the interested authorities made a conscious decision to create such conditions artificially. At this, the initiators of such a process rely not only on a detailed theory of the revolution, but also on the historical experience of many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, in which many of them were active participants. They had no reason to doubt that such theory and practice are “omnipotent because they are true”.

6. According to this theory, “only an imperialist war and the defeat of one’s own government in this war can create conditions for truly revolutionary transformations in the country”.

7. That is, the very process of war is a “bloody trap” for the current structure of the Russian government and most of its elite groups with predictable catastrophic consequences for them.

8. In order to establish post-Putin Russia as a super-totalitarian monster, controlled from a single center of power, any losses (economic, reputational, human, as well as the destruction of the administrative vertical headed by Putin) are seen as acceptable costs. Just as tens of millions of victims of the Russian Civil War a hundred years ago were considered quite acceptable and justified by Soviet historical science.

9. In this approach, Putin’s figure is seen as a completely puppet one, and his halo of “an almighty dictator and a wise tough ruler” is just an ideal cover for Russian special services to implement the necessary decisions. Russian special services deliberately subjugated a psychopathic person living in an artificial world specially created for him and with the halo of a powerful dictator, of the Stalin and Hitler level.

Thus, they received a unique resource: the President and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, fully controlled and subordinated to the interests of the “Corporation”.

However, Putin, a protégé and spokesman for the interests of the special services, bears the main personal responsibility for the implementation of the cannibalistic plan:

• being implemented by the use of tens of thousands of war crimes on the territory of Ukraine;
• aimed at seizing total power over the Russian Federation by a cohesive group of moral “thugs”;
• while depriving Russia of any positive civilizational future and turning it into a gloomy totalitarian fascist state.

10. Relying on people treated by many years of propaganda, as well as on the Russian Orthodox Church, which is vitally interested in the success of the goals set by special services, they play their criminal game, outwardly devoid of any logic, go to any sacrifices and do not agree to any compromises until the true goals of the so-called SMO are achieved.

We have devoted our previous numerous publications and speeches to the proof of the above provisions, and this point of view is gradually gaining more and more supporters both in Ukraine and abroad. However, the most important question remained unanswered: how did the interested forces in Russia before the eyes of the whole world and the most influential Russian elites managed to drag the country into a large-scale war in the center of Europe with predictable tragic consequences in conditions when such an action objectively contradicted the interests of both, the world community and the above-mentioned legitimate centers of power in the Russian Federation itself? The world saw and felt the answer to this question between September 10, 2021 and February 23, 2022, but did not attach due importance to it.

The only effective strategy to achieve this goal — to draw Russia into the war, bypassing possible obstacles, interested forces inside the country needed to create the ILLUSION of BLACKMAIL!!!

The “Illusion of blackmail” is the well-thought-out and the only effective strategy in these conditions, in the process of implementation of which:

• domestic Russian elites had to be absolutely convinced that large-scale military exercises near Ukraine’s borders were successful blackmail, nothing more;
• the world community should have thought so too (and did think so based on the findings of its intelligence agencies and analytical structures).

That is, in a practical sense, the task of preparing for the invasion was reduced to solving a managerial task: how to deceive everyone — to pass off as blackmail many months of preparation for war in front of “insiders” and “outsiders” (but first of all, “insiders”). And the task was successfully fulfilled (which radically contradicts the theory of “sudden collective madness” of the Russian military-political leadership and radically changes the perception of the picture of what is happening).

Proceeding from the foregoing, we can also formulate objective parameters — the task of “imperialist war, which alone can lead to revolution”, and then compare them with reality. Such parameters can be divided into internal and external.

Internal Parameters:

The overall task is to provoke maximum destabilization of the situation in the Russian Federation.

Therefore, the war must:

• be carried out without any real conscious goal (or in the face of many constantly changing goals);
• be as bloody as possible for the population of the Russian Federation;
• significantly affect the economic, moral and psychological state of their own people;
• be conducted in the most inefficient way (both in the human and military-technical dimensions);
• continue for a long time to overcome the inertia of thinking and influence the moods of own people;
• lead to discrediting of key (opposed to special services) centers of legitimate power in the Russian Federation (army, oligarchy, existing bureaucratic vertical);
• lead to the destruction of the country’s legal system, legal nihilism, desacralization of its Constitution and blurring of the state borders of the Russian Federation defined by international norms.

External Parameters:

The common task is to maximize internal destabilization in Russia through the reaction of the external world. Therefore, the war must:

• violate any norms of international law as flagrantly and demonstratively as possible (that is, to be carried out as an endless series of war crimes not caused by military necessity);
• for the external world to have a clear, meaningful and voiced at the highest level aggressive goal — the seizure of the territory of a sovereign state;
• be accompanied by all sorts of international military and economic blackmail, as well as brutal disregard for the leaders of other states;
• be accompanied by demonstrative deviant behavior of official representatives of the Russian authorities and their statements questioning their mental health.

The true purpose of the Invasion is to engage in a process that meets the above parameters and leads to real goals, not false ones.

As we can see, the so-called SMO FULLY MEETS ALL OF THE ABOVE-MENTIONED PARAMETERS.

Now we can return to the technical side of the strategy of “Illusion of blackmail”.

Deception Technology
(How the “Corporation” Really Outplayed Everyone)

If we analyze the events in the Russian Federation that preceded the war, then the above point of view begins to acquire its factual justification. As we have already noted, on the eve of the Invasion, the initiators of unleashing a real war faced an acute issue of working with two different target audiences: internal and external, whose inevitable and unambiguously negative reaction could have led to the collapse of the project.

The external target audience is foreign political institutions that develop decisions for their politicians.

For the outside world (China included), a real war in the center of Europe inevitably threatened with large-scale and difficult to predict crisis phenomena of an economic and geopolitical nature. In case of firm confidence in the reality of the Invasion, the world community had many mechanisms (including direct preventive military assistance to Ukraine and the organization of appropriate defensive measures) by which an invasion would be impossible from a military point of view. And if this happened, it would not meet the specified necessary parameters that were critical for the initiators of the Invasion. Practice has shown that deceiving external observers was not a difficult task, provided that the internal observers were effectively fooled. Not a single intelligence agency in the world or any world analytical institution could fully believe in the idea of the Invasion — in an adventure frankly predictable in its catastrophic consequences for the Russian Federation, irrational in nature.

The Euro-Atlantic community (and, above all, Europe), according to its military and political analysts, understood that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was suicidal madness. At the same time, based on the analysis of the previous activities of the Russian elites, it was not without reason hoping that the leadership of the Russian Federation, neither collectively nor individually, had lost its mind. At the same time, theoretically, the possibility of military developments was still allowed. But this possibility was below the threshold needed for taking really decisive and effective political-military measures. And it was decided to eliminate this insignificant probability by satisfying the publicly declared geopolitical and geo-economic ambitions of the Russian Federation. The fact that European politicians under the pressure of these doubts demonstrated a conciliatory position (which guaranteed the transformation of the Russian Federation into a recognized third center of world power and closely irreversibly integrated Russia into the world political and economic system) in no way satisfied those who in Russia were preparing destabilization for their country through a “bloody military trap”. It should be noted here that the US administration, judging by its statements and a number of practical actions (in particular, supply of defensive weapons to Ukraine), has significantly higher estimated the chances of the blackmail turning into a real war.

The internal target audience is Russian elites, bearers of elements of legitimate power.

The situation with the internal target audience has become much more complicated due to its exceptional proximity to the decision-making center. But they coped with this task perfectly well.

It was simultaneously work for an external audience within the framework of a rather cynical but effective stratagem, which says that “for effective deception, one must first deceive insiders, and then outsiders”. Because since the collapse of the USSR, Western intelligence agencies have very wide opportunities to obtain information from the internal “kitchen” of almost all Russian administrative structures, of the highest levels included.

For centers of power that compete with Russia’s special services domestically, real war had inevitable risks and catastrophes (lost profits of hundreds of billions of dollars, sanctions, detection of terrible abuses and theft, human losses and economic decline).

That is, if fact that “exercises” are not blackmail, but real preparations for a real war, had been realized, it would have caused extremely strong resistance from the above-mentioned centers of power in the Russian Federation by intensifying struggle within the ruling elite with an unpredictable consequence for the initiators of a real war. And the fact that key representatives of Russia’s military, bureaucratic, economic, regional and religious elites have publicly stated that they were unaware of the impending real war can hardly be considered an attempt to reduce their future responsibility. Given that from a legal point of view, the responsibility of someone who initially did not know about the crime being prepared, but actively participated in the process of committing it, is not much lower than the responsibility of someone who was aware of the criminal intent from the very beginning. So, most likely, they really did not know.

We may speak about the existence of such a massive deception of the Russian elites not only on the basis of their own statements as vitally interested in concealing the opposite fact, but also on the basis of their actions, or rather, absence of ones. It is an absolutely indisputable fact that they had done nothing to preserve their huge capital and property from the risks associated with the outbreak of an aggressive war. The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) concluded that the FSB was directly involved in the planning and implementation of the Invasion at the initial stage, which, according to the Institute, began preparing a plan for the Invasion in Ukraine back in July 2021. At the same time, the Financial Times claims that the General Staff and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation were against making blackmail a reality. That is, those who were affected by the plan in the first place and to the greatest extent were against the war.

According to The Times, Putin was talked into starting a war by secretary of the Russian Security Council Patrushev and director of the FSB Bortnikov. According to the Financial Times, Putin spent the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic at his residence in Valdai in the company of his old friend Yuri Kovalchuk, who is closely connected to Russian special services. The latter allegedly “inspired Putin to think of his historic mission” which prompted him to think of an invasion of Ukraine.

That is, the idea and initiative of the Invasion does not belong to the army (and especially not to representatives of oligarchic business), for whom it was critically dangerous, but to the special services and their agents of influence in the highest echelons of power of the Russian Federation, for whom it was critically important.

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul also said this in an interview with Voice of America: “Russian generals: Is this a good thing for them? Absolutely not. This has been a disaster for them. And I think there will be a big blame game between them and this, you know, the intelligence officers, the FSB people that dragged them into this war with bad intelligence”.

According to Financial Times, Russian elites have opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and do not support the war now, but cannot influence President Putin. He does not give reason to believe that he is ready to stop the Invasion and shows increasing determination to bring it to an end… Besides, the decision to launch an invasion was so sudden that its potential opponents simply did not have the time and physical ability to contact the Russian President.

If we proceed from the fact of the unprecedented information closeness of the Russian President from reality confirmed by many sources (he does not use the Internet, but obtains information from daily reports put on his desk by special services, as well as from Russian TV fully controlled by special services), then the picture is unambiguous. Objectively, only one elite group in Russia needed war, and this group, through the President, ensured the act of invasion. In addition, the so-called SMO within the framework of the necessary destructive parameters for the country is also carried out through the President, who is in a tightly controlled information space.

A very important clarification should be made here.

Russia’s key elite groups, although victims of the deception that dragged them into a criminal military adventure — suicidal for the country and extremely disadvantageous to them personally — did not turn into innocent victims. Based on the new reality, they accepted the rules of conduct proposed to them and fully participate in criminal and terrorist activities, which makes them full-fledged participants in an international crime:

• the Russian military, carrying out criminal orders, began to massively kill Ukrainians, using all types of weapons, erase Ukrainian cities from the face of the earth, carry out mass deportations of Ukrainian citizens, use torture, loot property of Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian enterprises;
• the Russian economic elite responded to the call of the authorities and resorted to “parallel” imports and “gray” exports, thereby contributing to the preservation of Russia’s ability to wage an aggressive war, and the map of missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian civilian energy infrastructure was prepared by Russian energy experts;
• regional elites actively began to form new units and formations of the Russian army within the framework of mobilization plans, as well as to conduct propaganda activities in support of the so-called SMO;
• the Russian Orthodox Church, together with active propagandists of the Kremlin, has become the most massive and brutal agitator of the so-called SMO, sanctifying and justifying war crimes.

How the Army Was Deceived

Deceiving the army was a key subtask to resolve the issue with the domestic audience. The army of the Russian Federation is a powerful competitor for the special services in their struggle for power, since, in alliance with the military-industrial complex, they have enormous legitimate power and monetary resources. Such an opponent can be removed only by its complete weakening and discrediting. And not of individual officials, but of the institution as a whole. And it is possible to discredit the army and its leadership only by showing their failure in the main direction of activity, that is, in the process of a real war. The question arises: how to force the army to make a blatantly unjust and objectively unmotivated invasion of a neighboring sovereign state?

Considering that:

• firstly, the army lived well in peacetime and had not the slightest clear motive to fight;
• secondly, the military-industrial complex, closely connected with the army and led by corrupt officials, due to objective circumstances, had to be subjected to the strictest and most impartial “revision by war” in the process of ensuring real, rather than game and cartoon hostilities.

War is the strictest and most uncompromising auditor. And why should such a tough revision be needed by generals headed by billionaire Shoigu, who knew firsthand about the state of the Russian army, because he himself robbed it all the fertile time of “Russia’s rising from its knees”? The answer is: An army that does not want to fight can only be drawn into war by cheating. And then the “Illusion of blackmail” showed its effectiveness.

The task of drawing the army into the war had objective difficulties, as at the time of the invasion of Ukraine the Russian military-political leadership had comprehensive objective information about:

• the real, far from ideal, state of the Russian army and the Russian military-industrial complex;
• satisfactory condition of the Ukrainian army and serious mobilization potential;
• strong anti-Russian sentiments of the Ukrainian society;
• very dubious results of subversive activities of the Kremlin’s agents of influence in Ukraine and embezzlement of funds allocated for this.

And all this information was not in favor of the Invasion.

It is enough to refer to the analytical materials of known military experts in the Russian Federation, which were widely published on the eve of the war. In particular, the chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, as well as Colonel Yuri Kotenko.

General Ivashov in his address to the President and citizens of the Russian Federation, in particular, wrote: “In case of an attack on Ukraine, Russia will definitely be included in the category of countries that threaten peace and international security, will be subjected to the most severe sanctions, will turn into an outcast of the world community and is likely to be deprived of the status of an independent state”.

To check on what in reality was spent the money allocated to V. Medvedchuk since 2014: on pro-Russian agitation in Ukraine, subversive activities and creation of an extensive network of agents of influence, or on luxury goods for Medvedchuk’s family, one could simply ask any person in Ukraine who was at least indirectly involved in Ukrainian politics. It was for this sphere of activity that the FSB was responsible, and no one has answered for such a fantastic failure.

The most important point is the fact that even in Soviet times, KGB experts analyzed in detail the experience of the Afghan war lost by the USSR, which began with a seemingly ideal situation for the aggressor — the rapid capture of the capital, assassination of President Amin, rapid occupation of almost all major cities of Afghanistan and the Soviet army’s controlling key roads and mountain passes.

Both the Afghan experience and the scrupulous study of Ukrainian history and reality clearly showed that Ukrainian people in their spirit and potential to resist aggression are not inferior to the Afghan people. And even if Kyiv is captured or the territory of Ukraine is seized along the Dnipro, or even along Zbruch, Ukraine will turn into a second Afghanistan, only in the center of Europe with unequivocally fatal consequences for the Russian Federation.

That is, regardless of from which side one approaches an objective analysis of the situation, there was only one conclusion: victory in the planned military adventure cannot be achieved. If victory is understood as the establishment of post-war peace, which is more beneficial for the Russian Federation than the pre-war one. And from this point of view, the victory of the Russian Federation was impossible in principle. But if you agree with the theory of the existence of rational meaning in the so-called SMO, then this was precisely the real goal. The suicidal nature of the future war (regardless of the presence or absence of purely military successes) was a decisive factor in deciding to invade. For an outside observer, this circumstance was a guarantee that the future invasion was not a real but a fictitious action. Based on the foregoing, the technology of preparation for the Invasion had two, to some extent, mutually exclusive aspects: preparation for a real Invasion and creation of the “Illusion of blackmail”.

Real Preparations:

• September 10, 2021, the West-2021 military exercise started, which lasted until September 16;
• October 31, 2021, the Russian Federation resumed its military build-up near the borders with Ukraine;
• December 1, 2021, Russia began military exercise in the Southern Military District, which borders on Ukraine in the east;
• January 11, 2022, new exercise began, and from February 10 to 20, the joint military exercise of the Russian Federation and Belarus Union Resolve 2022 began;
• February 20, 2022, the exercise was supposed to end, but the troops did not return to their places of permanent deployment;
• February 21, 2022, a meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation was held, at which the issue of recognition of the so-called LDPR was discussed;
• February 22, 2022, Putin signed the relevant decrees;
• February 22, 2022, the Federation Council unanimously supported Putin’s request to use the Russian army in the “DPR” and “LPR”.

As part of real preparations, mobile hospitals, stocks of medicines and blood were also purchased, even 45,000 packages for corpses were prepared.

Creating the “Illusion of Blackmail”:

The disinformation campaign was forced to create the “Illusion of blackmail” on a practical level. Therefore, it was necessary to abandon a number of important preparatory measures, which, if they were held, would fully reveal the intentions of a real invasion, both to internal and external target audiences. The intelligence agencies of the world are accustomed to rely on the “’mathematics of war” — on the analysis of resources and concrete practical actions, rather than on external demonstrative actions and propaganda. Due to these circumstances, the Russian Federation entered the war, having a huge number of unfulfilled tasks, which in the conditions of a real war are mandatory:

• informing the command of the army and its personnel about the aim of operation;
• providing clear battle orders to military units and formations with reference to time and place;
• providing up-to-date topographic maps of the area;
• providing tactical intelligence to advancing units;
• providing them with air cover;
• providing reliable encrypted communication;
• establishing contacts and activating underground sabotage groups;
• providing the advancing troops with reliable information about the forces and means of the Ukrainian army, its moral and volitional characteristics, the mood of the population in the planned theater of operations, etc.

Besides, the military-industrial complex was not brought into appropriate readiness. There are several typical examples of the level of training of the Invasion army.

In the defeated columns of Russian troops near Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Ukrainian military found parade dress uniforms. Almost all Russian troops captured in the early days of the war claimed to have orders to either follow the military exercises or claimed they were going to arrive in Kyiv, parade and return. That everything is agreed, and the population of Ukraine is waiting for the “liberators” with flowers.

Regarding up-to-date maps of the area. For example, the commanders of the Russian Motorized Rifle Battalion of the 138^th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade used topographic maps of 1969. On those maps, there were no Saltivka residential area of Kharkiv, the Traviansk and Murom reservoirs, and the state border between Ukraine and Russia was drawn with a ballpoint pen. In Dnipropetrovsk region, a group of occupiers used German topographic maps dated 1930. And it was a massive phenomenon.

This situation completely suited the organizers of the Invasion: to get involved in a bloody, clearly hopeless and demonstratively terrorist war.

An important element of the “Illusion of blackmail” was the Invasion map “leaked” into the public space, which later turned out to be original (the UK Ministry of Defence created a visualization based on the “obtained” intelligence). It caused well-founded skepticism in foreign headquarters, since such a plan violated all known principles of offensive operations (Soviet and Russian ones included).

The foreign headquarters concluded that it was impossible to succeed with such a plan and with such forces, and that the invasion was a sham (especially if all other factors were taken into account).

As a result, the preparations made by the Russian Federation for the world community looked like the complete absence of a meaningful goal, obvious madness and the absence of a huge number of critically necessary accompanying elements of preparations. The “mathematics of war”, as well as the Afghan experience of the USSR, were also not on the side of the Invasion. So there was a clear message across the board: “Don’t worry, it’s blackmail. Although the exercises are as similar as possible to preparing for war, this is not the case”.

Of course, the command of the Russian army knew about the inconsistency of preparations for the implementation of a real task, but completely ignored this fact obvious to any strategist for the only reason — they did not plan to fight!!! So, in what was engaged the Russian army?

From September 2021 to the end of February 2022, the Russian army was engaged in creating a show as close to reality as possible. The Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation received exactly that sort of task. And this did not cause any internal dissonance, despite his being a recognized master of creating spectacular military show programs for the Russian President, such as the storming of the plywood Reichstag and the annual All-Russian tank biathlon.

Did Shoigu know about the plans for a real invasion? Many facts suggest that he did not. The true task was set before him just a few days before the Invasion by the “great and terrible” dictator Putin, “’to whom everyone is afraid to say No”. According to some respected insiders, this shocked the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff. What is logical: Shoigu a priori should have been against the war, because he knew the state of the Russian army like no one else. Therefore, he was not engaged in decision-making on the Invasion.

How the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Was Deceived

In any state, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is one of the key elements in the system of preparation for an aggressive war. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs performs most important tasks, among which the most important function is the diplomatic isolation of the future enemy in the international arena.

Back in the 5^th century BC, the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said that first of all, it is necessary to defeat an enemy’s alliances, and only further in importance is the task of defeating his troops, and worst of all — a long siege or assault on fortresses (it was the latter that the Russian army was engaged in during this period of the so-called SMO). What does the Russian Foreign Ministry do on the eve of the war? All “exactly the opposite”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs actively creates anti-Russian alliances and expands the circle of unfriendly countries.

In April 2023, Putin’s Press Secretary Peskov complained in an interview that “we did not expect the United States and NATO to be so actively involved on the side of Ukraine”. This statement is all the more surprising because the Russian Federation, before invading Ukraine without declaring war, made a series of demarches through the Foreign Ministry, which under certain circumstances can be regarded as the announcement of military ultimatums to the USA and NATO. December 15, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over to the American side “a draft treaty between Russia and the United States on security guarantees and a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and member states of NATO”. The document, in particular, says that the United States must eliminate its nuclear infrastructure abroad (in Europe and Turkey) and return all deployed nuclear weapons to its territory.

January 9, 2022, before a meeting “on security guarantees” with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that NATO “should take all its stuff” and go back to the 1997 borders”.

It is believed that presenting a military ultimatum with pre-impracticable demands is not a prelude or preparation for war — IT IS ALREADY AN ACT OF WAR. In preparation for a real war, this is an absolutely crazy step, and within the framework of a blackmail campaign — a completely acceptable action.

Such obvious madness of Russian diplomacy, which previously had a reputation of very pragmatic and effective one, once again convinces the external target audience that if representatives of an authoritative and long-established diplomatic school suddenly begin to forget the basics of diplomacy and behave like patients of a psychiatric clinic, then we are dealing not with real processes, but with their imitation. And it is quite possible to agree with the information of respected world media that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov did not know about the preparation of a real invasion. According to The Times, the Foreign Minister was tasked with trying to secure major concessions from the West to avoid war. Lavrov himself, the author writes, wanted to achieve a peaceful outcome of the confrontation and was convinced that Putin also wanted this.

According to the Financial Times, Lavrov learned about the outbreak of war on the night of February 24, a few hours before the start of the invasion by Russian troops, and therefore could not take measures to save his property in the United States. Lower-ranking Russian diplomats were also sure that they were engaged in qualitative, plausible, so to speak, “on the verge of a foul”, but blackmail.

How the Oligarchy Was Deceived

For years, President Putin has been surrounded by oligarchs close to him who manage financial flows of hundreds of billions of dollars. For them, a radical change in the role of the Russian Federation in the international arena from a partner to the role of an international terrorist was guaranteed to threaten with disasters and devastation. Characteristically, none of them, even the closest one, on the eve of the war made even an attempt to insure their capital in case of a negative international reaction to a real war. They were fully convinced of the impossibility of turning blackmail into an invasion and, naturally, were against a possible war, as they stated in their numerous interviews before war began.

According to The Times, even now, most of Putin’s administration and the government’s economic bloc privately oppose the war but feel powerless. Some Liberal officials even unsuccessfully persuaded the President to stop the invasion, which had already begun.

Conclusions

1. The most popular version about the reasons for the beginning and mechanisms of the so-called SMO as a manifestation of the collective madness of the top leadership of the Russian Federation has many logical contradictions and leads to an incorrect assessment of the motives of the top leadership of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, to incorrect forecasts about future events related to the war.

2. Our proposed approach can be confirmed by the fact that the Russian leadership during the so-called SMO fully fits into the parameters of waging this war, which are the most destructive for the Russian Federation itself and must inevitably lead to upheavals that are revolutionary in nature.

3. Waging the war, strictly observing the framework of the above-mentioned destructive parameters, is the task of the highest official in the Russian Federation — the President and at the same time the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Actually, Putin’s role in this is exactly that.

4. Key Russian elite groups, although they became victims of deception that dragged them into a suicidal for the country and extremely unprofitable for them personally criminal military adventure, are not innocent victims. Based on the new reality, they have accepted the rules of conduct proposed to them and fully participate in criminal and terrorist activities, which makes them full-fledged participants in an international crime.

5. Based on the analysis of the events preceding the Invasion, it can be concluded that the operation ‘Illusion of Blackmail” is one of the most successful operations of special services in modern history, along with the large-scale disinformation operation against the leadership of Nazi Germany, which was conducted by the British intelligence before the landing of the Allies in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

The indisputable axiom is that the initiator of any war leads it in order to have a certain benefit from it. The world expert community did not see the benefits for the Russian Federation from such a war (the key word being “at all”), and did not classify the Russian military-political leadership as crazy. No one considered the idea of conducting the SMO as a means of revolutionary transformation of the Russian Federation and did not even ask such a question. And that is why the plan “Illusion of blackmail” ended in success.

Additional evidence in favor of the effectiveness of the operation is the obvious and indisputable fact that 15 months after the start of the so-called SMO, the world cannot explain for itself either the true reasons for its beginning, or its real goals, let alone predict the reaction of the Russian authorities to the most important initiatives and actions of world powers, constantly returning to the version of “madness”.

In addition, the operation “Illusion of blackmail” was conducted in conditions of absolute information transparency of the modern world, where:

• using satellites, one can track the movement of every car, train, ship or aircraft;
• movement of commodity flows is observed through customs databases;
• through the banking system one can see the movement of every dollar;
• every citizen has a mobile phone with a video camera and there are social networks where one can post almost any information;
• human and technical intelligence can close almost any gap in a holistic information picture of what is happening.

6. The fact that the transformation of the Russian Federation into a super-totalitarian Russia is already being carried out and guided by the initiators of the so-called SMO through the President of the Russian Federation is evidenced by a number of numerous and indisputable facts, to the analysis of which a separate study will be devoted in the near future.

P.S.

If we proceed from the “theory of madness”, then the implementation of “exactly the opposite” to the publicly declared goals of the so-called SMO (and there are about thirty of them at the moment!!!), would seem to fully confirm this theory. However, it has a number of fundamental contradictions.

One can also proceed from the thesis of the preparation and conduct of the so-called SMO as a manifestation of the complete degradation of Russian political and military elites. To this, “angry Russian patriots” respond that there is no level of incompetence that could lead to such a result. But there is a deliberate betrayal.

The approach we presented proposes to move away from both the “theory of madness” and “espionage mania”. It proceeds from the fact that during the 15 months of the war, the Russian leadership, receiving catastrophic results obvious to everyone, does nothing to change this trend. On the contrary, it aggravates the situation with its decisions every day.

It is logical to assume that such a plan is laid down in the so-called SMO. And the plan is successfully implemented in the interests of powerful internal forces. Moreover, the forces concerned firmly believe that the true and not publicly declared goals of the so-called SMO will be achieved.

It is also important that neither the ‘theory of madness” nor the “theory of degradation and betrayal” allow making any meaningful predictions of the development of the situation due to the absence a priori of a single rational core in their basis.

The system of views on the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine, proposed by the authors, based on the eternal biblical truth “You Will Know Them by Their Fruits” and on the postulate of Roman law, Cui prodest (“Who benefits”), provides for the possibility of making a forecast (which was done in previous publications), the implementation of which can be compared with reality.

About the Authors:
	Volodymyr Shevchenko, the former aide to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Doctor of Philosophy
	Andrii Savarets, Chairman of the Center for Digital Economy Development, Lawyer

Read the full article in the next issue of the “BINTEL” Journal