Blackmail, alcohol, Putin's death, and other dreams of defeating Russia

In the second year of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine and the tenth year of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the mention of such stories is important

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In the midst of the war that Russia has waged against Ukraine, the US president calls the Kremlin from the Oval Office. The Russian president-dictator picks up the phone. The American leader asks the Russian to abandon his interpreter and communicate himself. The reason: what the Russian president hears is better not heard by anyone else in Russia. The US president then blackmails the interlocutor. Either the Russian army leaves Ukraine, or the whole world learns that the Russian president personally orders his opponents to be poisoned with polonium. If you don't agree, the US president says, your own subordinates will kill you, the old KGB guard. However, Russia is still keeping Crimea to save face.

This is how the leader of the free world forces the Russian autocratic dictator to stop his invasion of Ukraine with a slight wave of his hand. Or rather, this is how the American writer Tom Clancy saw and described this victory in his novel, The Right of Final Judgment, which was written and published back in 2013, six months before the Revolution of Dignity. Unlike many, I am far from recognizing Clancy as a prophet. After all, Russian aggression does not require additional evidence. Knowing its revanchist appetites, it is not difficult to model a similar situation. This is what not only creative people have been doing in their stories, but also historians, military, and political analysts in reality. Despite the warnings, Russia attacked anyway and is preparing to attack further. This was said out loud, particularly at the recent security conference in Munich.

But let's get back to the realm of culture, books, and movies. In 2016, the American general and former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe Richard Shirreff wrote his first fiction book, The War with Russia. It already describes the invasion of Ukraine, the occupation of part of Donbas, but then a direct armed conflict with NATO. Then Russia attacked the Baltic states, and America entered the war and won. But - and this is where the fears of the so-called collective West are shown - without the use of nuclear weapons.

Americans are generally afraid of weapons of mass destruction, and with good reason. After all, it was the United States that dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945, thus breaking Japan's resistance and bringing the end of World War II closer.

Plots of adventure novels often feature having to neutralize weapons of mass destruction. James Bond, the hero of Ian Fleming's novels, was the first to excel in this area. In Moonraker, which was published in 1955, agent 007, risking his life, climbs inside a nuclear warhead aimed at London that is ready to launch and manually changes the course on the instruments. It is worth clarifying that the attack on the UK is a cunning plan of the Kremlin, realized by the hands of an unseen Nazi criminal. Thus, ten years after the end of the Second World War, Fleming equivocates between communist Russia and Hitler's Germany. At that time, Stalin had been dead for two years. But this did not mean Soviet Russia was safe and peaceful.

Fleming is an Englishman, but dreams of such victories over Russia are still primarily American. Another interesting example is Stephen Hunter's novel The Day Before Midnight, published in 1989. In the story, Russia again threatens the world with an atomic bomb. The decision to launch it had already been made, but at the last moment, one of the executors realized the depth of the threat and repented. With no other way to stop the launch, he floods the facility with Russian vodka. This is not a comedy or a parody. It is an action movie that claims to be realistic. By the way, Hunter's characters confront Russia and Russians in almost every novel, no matter what time of day he describes. In three of his stories, the Russians are planning to assassinate the US president.

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In the second year of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine and the tenth year of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the mention of such stories is important. They testify to the stubborn and, at the same time, naive desire of not only America, but the West in general, to curb Russian aggression without making any effort. Someone, some God from a machine, has to do it. There is a twist in ancient Greek drama that allows for the sudden, unmotivated, and unprepared intervention of outsiders, usually stronger than the enemy. Such intervention brings victory to Good and punishes Evil.

According to the political scientist Petro Oleshchuk, Alexei Navalny was considered a version of such a God from a machine in Europe and the United States until his death, or rather, his almost outright murder. The West was making a serious bet on this Russian opposition politician: sooner or later, they said, Navalny would become the face of the coveted civilized democratic Russia. Once he wins the election and takes Putin's place, that's it. This would be tantamount to a change in the course of a deadly warhead, following the example of James Bond. However, this has not happened and could not happen.

There is also another recipe for defeating Russia in this war. We need to pour vodka on the nuclear bomb launcher. In a broader sense, let Russia destroy itself from within. Tom Clancy hints at this: either the Russian president ends the war himself, or his subordinates will kill him. Thus, Putin's physical death is increasingly seen as the only possible way to stop the bloodshed. Hence, the regular rumors about the Russian dictator's fatal illnesses and psychics' predictions of how long he has left. This is confirmed by the plans of Ukrainian filmmakers to make the comedy Putin's Funeral and the finished film The Death of Putin, directed and produced by Polish director and producer Patrick Vega.

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We shouldn't assume that only Western artists and politicians are naive. Our fellow citizens are not too far removed from them. True, Ukrainian analysts no longer predict a palace coup in the Kremlin. Instead, they stubbornly, persistently, and groundlessly predict the collapse of the Russian Federation. However, as historian Serhiy Gromenko recently noted, there are no grounds for this, and there will not be in the medium term. He also reminded us of the fears of today's Western democracies to openly fight Russia. Again, we go into the circle. Again, we recall the deadly Russian bombs. Unfortunately, they cannot be reprogrammed from the inside, let alone spoiled by alcohol.

The only hope is that the so-called collective West will realize this sooner than some author somewhere writes another utopian action movie.

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