In Russia “Z” is ever present, though there’s some debate about what exactly “Z” stands for. Britain’s Evening Standard wrote: “The ‘Z’, a letter that does not exist in the Cyrillic Russian alphabet, was spotted being painted on Russian military vehicles weeks before the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.”
Newsweek joined in: “Spreading from the battlefield to rallies to social media like wildfire, the white Z now represents pro-invasion sentiments and has been incorporated into Kremlin-approved propaganda. But where did it come from and does it have any deeper meaning? The symbol gained international attention as it was spotted during the invasion of Ukraine, emblazoned on the side of Russian military vehicles.”
Kamil Galeev posted this explanation on Twitter:
Like Kennedy, Johnson, then Nixon who shared an obsession with Vietnam, Putin and his puppets have decided the Russian people need to fight in Ukraine. American presidents and generals were certain American dislike of communism would naturally breed a willingness to intervene in a civil war far away in Asian jungles. One disastrous escalation followed another. To this day we don’t really know the exact number of Vietnamese wounded and killed because of our hubris and stupidity, along with an estimated 58,000 Americans killed, and more than 150,000 wounded.
Now, Putin is similarly convinced that because Russians had suffered such devastating losses during the German invasion in World War II, they’d surely be vulnerable to the charge that Volodoymyr Zelensky and his Ukrainian government are just Nazis in disguise.
On February 21, 2022, Vladimir Putin offered a mix of grievances, claiming Ukraine isn’t really a nation, and that Ukrainians are merely deluded Russians, then placing himself at the very center of the critical need to restore the historical greatness of Mother Russia:
“Since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. So, I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia …
“The Ukrainian authorities—I would like to emphasize this—began by building their statehood on the negation of everything that united us, trying to distort the mentality and historical memory of millions of people, of entire generations living in Ukraine. It is not surprising that Ukrainian society was faced with the rise of far-right nationalism, which rapidly developed into aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism.” (Emphasis added.)
In a very Trumpian way, Putin turned truth completely on its head—it is Ukraine, not Russia that wants war: “The Kyiv authorities cannot challenge the clearly stated choice of the people, which is why they have opted for aggressive action … sending subversives to stage terrorist attacks at critical infrastructure facilities, and for kidnapping Russian citizens. We have factual proof that such aggressive actions are being taken with support from Western security services …”
Given the grave threat, it was necessary, of course, to send young Russians off to war. Or if one didn’t offer to fight, the least they could do—young and old—was don the “Z.”
Remember Maria Butina? Her fleeting moments of fame often centered on her affairs with American men of influence, but most people ignored her more important motivation. As Wikipedia explains: “She worked as an assistant for Aleksandr Torshin, a former member of the Federation Council, a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, and a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia. In this role, she worked to infiltrate conservative groups in the US, including the National Rifle Association, as part of an effort to promote Russian interests in the 2016 United States presidential election. The Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded that she attempted to persuade the Trump campaign to establish a secret communications back channel with Russia.”
After pleading guilty to conspiracy to act as an illegal foreign agent, and a five months’ sentence, she was deported back to Russia. There, she was quickly elected as a Deputy for Putin’s party in the Russian Duma and demonstrated that you could wear your “Z” and stylishly promote Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Many Americans have misappreciated the effect of Putin’s comprehensive campaign to use the internet and disinformation to wreak havoc on American life. Sadly, so many have bought Donald Trump’s lie that this was just yet another part of the Russia Hoax.
Over the past decades, there have been many times I sang along with Edwin Starr’s “War.” “Aaaaah, war-huh / Good God y’all / What is it good for / Absolutely nothing.” Having spent a lifetime organizing and protesting against what I regarded as America’s wars of choice, the Russian invasion of Ukraine made it clear that sometimes it’s absolutely critical to fight back—to wage a war of necessity. And now, despite all their so many “Zs”, it’s time for the Russian people, who are losing too many of their young because of Putin’s folly and misinformation campaign, to be singing, “War, huh, yeah / What is it good for / Absolutely nothing.”
As the Washington Post reported on April 11, 2022, it only took six weeks for Putin to experience “the sting of failure. Thousands of Russian battlefield deaths. Three front-line retreats by the Russian military. Millions of Ukrainians who will never forgive Moscow. More isolation than ever … after his forces failed to topple Ukraine’s government or wrest control of its biggest cities. All the while, questions are mounting about how a Russian leader steeped in security policy and known for railing against the folly of regime-change wars could have sleepwalked into a such a strategic morass.”
I’m sure American intelligence analysts who have studied Vietnam appreciate the delusion that infects powerful, arrogant leaders who imagine everyone wants what they want. In Central America and Cuba, we backed vicious dictators like Somoza and Batista, then foolishly intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As for Putin: “What emerges, those officials say, is a picture of a hubristic and isolated leader, beset by biases and skewed information, pressing forward with a calamitous decision without consulting his full cohort of advisers … Underpinning his assumptions: misconceptions about Ukraine fundamentally rooted in Moscow’s colonial past …”
Not surprisingly, Putin never acknowledges the real story of Ukraine’s most recent battle for independence: How the thoroughly corrupt former President of Ukraine, Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovych, stole billions from his people, suppressing all attempts at democracy, betraying the desire of most Ukrainians to move closer to Europe, pushing instead to make them more dependent on Russia. Then when impeached, Yanukovych fled to Moscow. Much like the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968, the great majority of Ukrainians regard Soviet influence as occupation and are fiercely fighting back.
Ironically, the ones most resembling Nazis in this story are Putin’s puppet Yanukovych and Putin himself. Coincidentally, as The Washington Post reports, far right wing Germans of the Alternative for Germany party are travelling to Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine to counteract what they regard as the Western media’s one-sided coverage.
Putin has ratcheted up the rhetoric about Ukraine and magnified the distortion: “Now, almost every day, they are shelling settlements. They have amassed large troops. They are using vehicles and other heavy machinery. They are torturing people, children, women, elderly people. It does not stop. We have seen no end to it.”
We have our own experience with the faked Gulf of Tonkin incident (a supposed 1964 attack by North Vietnamese torpedo ships on the U.S. Maddox and Turner Joy that President Johnson and Congress used to justify yet another escalation of the War in Vietnam).
The Times explains how Putin has attempted to justify war as an appropriate response to NATO expansion:
“‘It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns …
“‘For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty …'” (Emphasis added.)
Then resorting to his own version of the culture wars:
“‘They sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within … attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature. This is not going to happen …
“‘If history is any guide, we know that in 1940 and early 1941 the Soviet Union went to great lengths to prevent war or at least delay its outbreak … The attempt to appease the aggressor ahead of the Great Patriotic War proved to be a mistake which came at a high cost for our people … We will not make this mistake the second time …
“‘This brings me to the situation in Donbass. We can see that the forces that staged the coup in Ukraine in 2014 have seized power, are keeping it with the help of ornamental election procedures and have abandoned the path of a peaceful conflict settlement.
“‘We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us …
“‘The leading NATO countries are supporting the far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine, those who will never forgive the people of Crimea and Sevastopol for freely making a choice to reunite with Russia …
“‘Citizens of Russia … It is our strength and our readiness to fight that are the bedrock of independence and sovereignty and provide the necessary foundation for building a reliable future for your home, your family, and your Motherland.'” (Emphasis added.)
Both sides point to the Donbas, where the Russians orchestrated a sophisticated campaign of destabilization. The New York Times provides details: “in 2014, pro-Russia protests exploded. Armed separatists seized chunks of the Donbas right under the authorities’ noses. Two so-called People’s Republics were declared. Russian troops stormed in … setting off a now eight-year war that has claimed thousands of lives.” As a justification, Putin has continuously asserted that these separatists are defending locals from extermination.
And now, Putin has decided to duplicate this strategy in the rest of Russian-occupied territory. The Times reports: “President Vladimir V. Putin also insisted that his top war aim—‘liberating’ Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region—remained unchanged and announced his support for referendums that would see that region and other occupied Ukrainian territory become part of Russia.
“A day earlier, Russian proxy officials in four regions—Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, which are collectively known as Donbas, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south—announced plans to hold referendums over several days beginning on Friday. Russia controls nearly all of two of the four regions, Luhansk and Kherson, but only a fraction of the other two, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk. The scheduling of the votes, which appeared to be coordinated, followed swift advances by Ukrainian forces, who routed Russians from the northeast in recent weeks and are on the offensive in the east and south.”
A day later, Putin announced “a new campaign that would call up roughly 300,000 reservists to the military while also directly challenging the West over its support for Ukraine with a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons …
“Mr. Putin accused the United States and Europe of engaging in ‘nuclear blackmail’ against his country and warned that Russia had ‘lots of weapons’ of its own.
“‘To those who allow themselves such statements about Russia, I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and some components are more modern than those of the NATO countries,’ he said.”
Only a few days before, Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times made three-dimensional the dispute about the now Russian-controlled Donbas: “In Chasiv Yar, it was like a poison had been injected into the town’s bloodstream. The issue of language suddenly became fractious. Ukrainians have argued forever about whether it is right to speak so much Russian. A critical aspect of Ukrainian independence was reviving the Ukrainian language, marginalized during Soviet times. But those arguments were typically confined to social media posts or intellectual debates, until this moment …
“What became clear only later was that all of this had been orchestrated. Mr. Putin had done something similar in 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions of Georgia, and before that the Russians had meddled in Moldova, backing the breakaway Transnistria region. The tools were generally the same: bankrolling pro-Russia political parties; deploying intelligence agents to foment protests; sowing disinformation through Russian TV …
“When Ukrainian forces rolled in to quell the rebellion, some residents saw them as occupiers. They spoke a different language, hailed from a different region, embraced a different culture—or so went the pro-Russia narrative …
“Mr. Putin dispatched thousands of Russian troops to support the separatists, later saying he had been ‘forced to protect’ the Russian-speaking population. Towns like Chasiv Yar were occupied by separatist fighters, then liberated by Ukrainian troops a few months later. By 2015, the heavy fighting had died down. But it was not like Mr. Putin forgot about the Donbas …”
Gettleman explained an interview he had with Oleksandr Khainus, “Mr. Khainus, who has deep green eyes and permanently tousled hair, took his first job here 23 years ago, sorting bricks. ‘It was exhausting,’ he said. ‘But my hands got really strong.’ Mr. Khainus is not what I had expected to find in the Donbas. Many people had told me, before I arrived in July, that the only people still living here were those who sympathized with Russia, derisively referred to as ‘the Waiters’ because they were believed to be waiting eagerly for the Russians to come.
“But Mr. Khainus, who grew up speaking Russian (like many here) and has deep family roots in this part of Ukraine, said, when asked if the Donbas should be part of Russia: ‘Are you kidding? That would be a complete disaster. There would be no development, no normal life, no law.’
“Instead, he serves as a local representative for Power of the People, a liberal political party trying to pull Ukraine away from Moscow’s clutches …”
It’s worth taking a moment to imagine how differently things might have gone for Ukraine if our President was Donald Trump rather than Joe Biden. Biden and the Democrats regard the Russian attempt to absorb Ukraine back into a renewed Soviet-style empire as unacceptable. Trump would have found a host of reasons to forgive and permit Russian aggression. Just remember how Trump made military aid to Ukraine a bargaining chip trying to extract President Zelensky’s cooperation in pursuing Hunter Biden. For Trump, Ukraine was not about the sanctity of independent nations and territorial integrity, but merely a discardable pawn in the political chess game he was playing to remain in power.
Just recently, the U.S, State Department has vindicated the work of Craig Unger and David Corn and Michael Isikoff who wrote persuasively of Russia attempts to nurture and develop a relationship with Donald Trump and to intervene on his behalf in 2016 and 2020. The New York Times of September 13, 2022, reports on State Department research: “Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections, according to a State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review.
“Russia has probably given even more that has gone undetected, the document said …
“Ned Price, the State Department spokesman … added that Russian election meddling was ‘an assault on sovereignty,’ similar to Russia’s war on Ukraine. ‘In order to fight this, in many ways we have to put a spotlight on it,’ he said …
“The document named two men, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Aleksandr Babakov, both close associates of Mr. Putin, as involved in the influence or interference campaigns …”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, also known as Putin’s Chef and one of his closest advisors, is critically involved in the war in Ukraine. The recent successes of the Ukrainian counteroffensive have created a pressing need for additional fighting forces. As The Institute for the Study of War reports the task of replenishing soldiers has fallen somewhat to Prigozhin: “Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is being established as the face of the Russian ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Prigozhin gave a recruitment speech on September 14 announcing that Russian prisoners have been participating in the war since July 1 when they were instrumental in seizing the Vuhlehirska Thermal Power Plant. A Russian milblogger noted that Prigozhin is introducing a ‘Stalinist’ method that allows the Kremlin to avoid ordering a general mobilization that could ignite social tensions in Russian society.”
NBC News reported on a video: “The video posted to Russian social media sites shows a man with the voice and likeness of Prigozhin addressing a large group of prisoners, all wearing navy-colored uniforms and assembled in what appears to be a concrete yard. He tells them that their sentences would be commuted if they served in Ukraine for six months—but that anyone who changes their mind would be shot as a deserter.
“‘You won’t be any different from us,’ the man in the video tells the prisoners, according to a translation for this article. ‘I’m taking you out alive. But don’t always return you alive.’ NBC News’ social newsgathering team geolocated the video to a jail in the city of Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of Russia’s central Mari El Republic, about 500 miles east of Moscow. It is unclear when the footage was filmed. It first surfaced this week in Russian Telegram channels and social media accounts, and was shared by opposition activists.”
Today we are witnessing how—and the “Z” Campaign is a perfect illustration—Putin is using a disinformation campaign on his own people. Yet, as Marina Butina discovered here in the States, there are times when deception fails, and the lie is discovered.
Wikipedia notes that “As of September 19, 2022, nearly all of the oblast is under the occupation of Russia and Luhansk People’s Republic separatist state, which claims the oblast as its territory.” And yet here is evidence that what began as affirmation—“Zs” to be found throughout the land—proof of a nation united in war, is fast becoming a sign of a contagious failure. A tank and its “Z” captured and abandoned in Luhansk:
Thankfully, the Western Alliance and the U.S. have enabled the Ukrainian people to absorb the first shocks of the Russian invasion, regroup and begin to retake their territory. The Defense Department detailed the more than $13.5 billion in financial assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration. The assistance has also consisted of a remarkable array of military equipment, including over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, over 8,500 Javelin anti-armor systems, more than 700 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems, 126 155mm Howitzers and up to 806,000 155mm artillery rounds, 16 105mm Howitzers and 108,000 105mm artillery rounds, 20 Mi-17 helicopters, and much more.
Meanwhile, it appears momentum has shifted: “Ukraine pushes to retake all land from Russia, calls for Western arms” is the Reuters headline for September 12, 2022. The article goes on to explain, “Ukraine said on Tuesday it aimed to liberate all of its territory after driving back Russian forces in the northeast of country in a rapid offensive, but called on the West to speed up deliveries of weapons systems to back the advance.
“Since Moscow abandoned its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, marking its worst defeat since the early days of the war, Ukrainian troops have recaptured dozens of towns in a stunning shift in battleground momentum.”
On Tuesday, September 13, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Magyar told Reuters that fighting was continuing to rage in the northeastern Kharkiv region. She explained that Ukraine’s forces were making good progress because they are highly motivated and their operation is well planned.
“The aim is to liberate the Kharkiv region and beyond—all the territories occupied by the Russian Federation,” she said to Reuthers on the road to Balakliia, a crucial military supply hub recaptured by Ukrainian forces late last week, which lies 46 miles southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
Still, there are so many dreadful consequences to Putin’s distortions. Convinced that Russia’s very survival is at stake, and that Ukrainian Nazis are fully prepared to commit heinous crimes against Russian civilians, Russian soldiers have brought an unbridled brutality to the battle, bombing schools and medical clinics, raping and looting. As a result, as the Ukrainians advance, they are finding that the Russians have filled unmarked mass graves with the bodies of civilians and their soldiers, tortured and with their hands tied behind their backs.
Defense of Ukraine tweet from September 15, 2022 showing mass graves in Izium.
The New York Times reported on September 16, 2022: “A mass grave site uncovered in the city of Izium in northeastern Ukraine could hold the bodies of more than 400 people who died during the six months of Russian occupation, Ukrainian officials say.
“Two days after President Volodymyr Zelensky raised a flag over the newly reclaimed city, teams of war crimes investigators and prosecutors were dispatched to the site, in sandy soil in a pine forest, on Friday …
“Russian forces took control of the city in late March after a three-week siege, turning it into a military stronghold and staging ground for its assault on eastern Ukraine. They fled in disarray last weekend as Ukrainian forces routed the Russians across the northeast and reclaimed thousands of square miles of terrain.
“If it is confirmed that hundreds were killed by Russian forces, it would be the largest such mass grave to be uncovered in the seven-month-long war.”
The Washington Post details another consequence of Ukrainian military success: “After a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeast of the country, the messy war that Russian President Vladimir Putin started is now being fought directly on his doorstep, with artillery strikes hitting military targets in Russia and Russian officials in cities and towns along the border ordering hasty evacuations …
“On Friday, Ukraine reportedly struck the base of the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division near Valuyki, just nine miles north of the Russia—Ukraine border. Russian officials did not acknowledge that a military target was hit but said one civilian died, and the local electrical grid experienced a temporary disruption.”
The Institute for the Study of War recently an interactive map provided a map that is useful in revealing what is happening on the ground.
We began with Vladimir Putin’s intensive campaign to generate Russian public support for his invasion of Ukraine—“Z’s” everywhere. We end with an abandoned “Z” and the sense that Ukraine is prevailing. So, for now, at least, “Z” is for Zelensky.
