Author : Zaza Bibilashvili
The Year of Our Lord 2022 has ended with a visible and not-so-insignificant a miracle, a miracle whose creative hero is the Ukrainian people and the group of leaders who are leading it at the moment of this historic ordeal. Who could have imagined that the barbaric war launched by Putin in the early hours of the 24th of February, conceived as a blitzkrieg of a few days, would turn out in such a way that in ten months the aggressor would have to repel Ukrainian attacks on its own territory?
The war is not yet over, but it is safe to say that its fate has been decided. Just as by the end of 1943 the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War was beyond doubt, and only the contours of the future world remained to be determined, so today the intrigue is over what terms Moscow will surrender to the West, and what the new world, free of the remnants of the Evil Empire, will look like. Just as the invention of the truly unique V-2 ballistic missile at the end of the Second World War (against which the world had no means of defense at that time) was of no help to Hitler, no agonizing steps from Putin can change the final fate of this war. There is an international consensus on the Russian state – the coalition of civilized nations considers Putin's government to be a terrorist regime. And this means only one thing: The brutal Moscovia that emerged from the Golden Horde and sought its mythological roots in the Kievan Rus is coming to an end of its existence in Kyiv.
Time will pass and some historian will publish a massive monograph entitled The Rise and Fall of the Russian Empire. It will be a dryly written, thick book about how the empire, which reached the height of its territorial expansion in the 19th century, began to decay in the same period. Then comes 1917, the revolution, the coup, the first wave of disintegration, the Civil War, 70 years of the Bolshevik reincarnation called the Soviet Union (which, from a historical perspective, is nothing, and almost half (!) of which was the era of Stalin), a new break since the late 1980s, 1991 and the collapse of the “Prison of Nations” called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, the chaos of the 1990s, the bloody rise of Putin as the last battle of the empire, and finally the logical end of it all – right where it all began.
To our shame, Putin has found the Achilles' heel of Western democracy and, through a combination of propaganda, manipulation and bribery, has managed to fool the West for 20 years – making Europeans and Americans turn a blind eye to such barbarities as the explosions of apartment buildings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk (which this malicious, worthless little man needed to start the second Chechen campaign), the death of the Kursk sailors, the tragedies of Nord Ost and Beslan, the cold-blooded murders of Litvinenko, Yandarbiev, Politkovskaya, Magnitsky and Nemtsov, the invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, and the shooting down of a civilian airliner full of children (MH17). It is horrifying to even consider that the country that did all this was, until January 2022, a full member of the world community, and its maniacal leader was a valued participant in summits and cordial meetings with democratically elected leaders.
Engaging so as not to alienate, cooperating so as to control, trading so as not to lose leverage – these are at best foolish and at worst criminal (and not always altruistic) illusions that have cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the impotent imagined himself omnipotent, the loser imagined himself macho, the knife-wielding thug became giddy from a series of successful blackmails, and Putin made a critical mistake in Ukraine. He assumed that everything was going to be fine again. Amid confusing reports from Biden and the newly elected leaders of the major European powers, he assumed – perhaps not unreasonably – that if the war were to be over quickly, the West would accept the “new realities” as it had done so often before.
But Putin did not consider the Ukrainians – that, in his view, non-existent nation that has shown not only bravery and self-sacrifice, but also intelligence, courage, humor and, above all, an indomitable will to win in the defense of the homeland against barbarians. A nation whose leaders tell us that they have no right to leave the Russian problem to their children.
Well, let's wish them victory. Let's wish them what Georgians, hardened by centuries of fighting for freedom and somewhat relaxed today, wish each other at every meeting.
VICTORY
Victory as the most solid foundation of freedom, peace, and happiness.
Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the heroes!
God bless Georgia!
Next year in Sokhumi!
