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When Ivan the Terrible’s bodyguards would execute a prisoner, they had a phrase they would shout.
“Goida!” they would scream at their unfortunate victims.
At a concert on Red Square on Friday in honor of Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, one speaker re-upped the Medieval chant for modern times. That speaker proclaimed that Russia was waging a “holy war,” and had the crowd chant “Goida” against the dishonest, perverted, “old world” of the West.
You can watch the video of the spectacle here. It’s worth getting a sense of the energy even without understanding the language. But it speaks to a larger theme of Putin’s decision to annex nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory. It’s not only that Putin’s regime is Medieval in its brutality and its bizarre exhortations. It’s that they’re trying very, very hard to scare us.
Putin himself accompanied the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhiya, and Kherson regions with a lengthy speech accusing the West of “Satanism,” while pointedly remarking that the U.S. had set a “precedent” with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These statements sound – and are intended to sound – terrifying. But they mask the reality on the ground: Putin had to admit that he was losing by launching Russia’s conscription campaign. Reports from the ground suggest that Russia is on the verge of losing another key city in Ukraine’s east – in a region that it just annexed.
Ukrainians, for their part, continue to regard the situation with a mixture of worry and gallows humor. One Ukrainian friend joked to me this week that Kyivans are planning an orgy on top of the tallest hill in the city to greet nuclear armageddon. It’s dark humor, but is effective at countering the kind of fear-mongering and lies that the Kremlin dishes out to achieve its aims.
Take Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who has deployed forces in Ukraine and whose company was indicted in the Mueller investigation for interfering in the U.S. election. Today, he effectively admitted to that, issuing a statement in which he remarked that he always “felt good-will towards America, and even helped them correct their internal political problems.” The truth only comes out from these people in the form of more lies and taunting, years after it matters.
More on other news below. Let’s dig in.
