Zelenskyy advisor: Moscow Victory Day parade is a nightmare, with Putin dragging Russian people into his "schizophrenic world"

Mykhailo Podoliak, Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, has said that today’s Victory Day parade in Moscow is evidence that Vladimir Putin is living in a world of his own imagination. According to Podoliak, Putin’s reliance on clichés and symbolic gestures is preventing him from either reviving the Russian Empire or being able to justify the war in Ukraine.

Source: Mykhailo Podoliak on Telegram

Quote from Podoliak: "What was that? Panic, primitivism, and the classic emotional self-justification of the aggressor: ‘They made me murder, rape, and loot.’ This is who Putin is today: the person who has once and for all put an end to Russia as an empire and to attempts to bring back the USSR and Victory Day [...]

Trite repetitions of (falsely alarmist) clichés (‘They attacked us!’) against the backdrop of total mobilisation in the regions of the Russian Federation, which has become an obsolete and barbaric country – this is what 9 May in Russia looks like.

Putin today is a perfect embodiment of what psychoanalysis textbooks call ‘split consciousness’. He has invented his own imaginary world in which he sees himself as an important geopolitical strategist, with the ‘world’s second army’ to back him and the compulsory recourse to Lenin, Fomenko and Ilyin as creators of a ‘just universe’. [Vladimir Lenin, founding head of government of Soviet Russia, Anatoly Fomenko, author of the New Chronology conspiracy theory, and Ivan Ilyin, a conservative monarchist philosopher, are all seen as Putin’s ideological touchstones – ed.] He then started a large-scale war, and is now murdering civilians en masse, organising forced deportations, razing large and small cities to the ground – and whining about being treacherously attacked when he receives any pushback.

But…[We live in an] information age. Everything is laid bare. Everything is broadcast live. It was the deplorable Russia that unleashed this war, a country that spearheads international terrorism willingly, eagerly, and with great pleasure."

Details: Podoliak explained that Ukraine is an independent state, and "whatever happens here, whatever social and political processes unfold", it is none of Russia’s business.

The advisor also said that Putin’s "whining about the ‘2014 coup d’état in Ukraine’ only bears out the Russian political ‘elite’s’ total lack of relevance and competence."

Podoliak stressed that "whatever happens in Ukraine, it has nothing to do with Russia. We became independent states 32 years ago, and each of our countries is going its own way. Ukraine’s revolutions or international alliances have nothing to do with the Russian barbarians."

He added that Russia is exhibiting "outright violence", and this has nothing to do with civilisation, international relations, ideology or "multi-vector policy" and everything to do with "crimes, future trials, punishment and reparations".

Moreover, Podoliak is convinced that Russians will have to "pay their bills", even if they are used to impunity. "History already has the powerful noose of the special tribunal waiting for Russia [...]," he believes.

Quote from Podoliak: "A parade? No. Only darkness. Russia is being consumed by panic and doomsaying. The people that Putin has dragged into the imaginary and schizophrenic world of the ‘neo-empire’ will have to be brought back to reality and pay out of their own pocket for decades of indifference and tolerance of evil."

Background: 

• Russian dictator Vladimir Putin held the traditional Victory Day parade in Moscow on 9 May 2023, despite heavy fighting in Ukraine and enormous losses in the war. As in 2022, the parade’s flight programme was cancelled, and only one tank, a WWII-era T-34, was featured. 
• Putin told a succession of lies during his speech at the Victory Day parade, claiming that Russia has no enemies among other countries and wants to see a peaceful and free future, while adding that the war in Ukraine is the most important thing today.
• The presidents of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, and the prime minister of Armenia, agreed to join Putin at the Victory Day parade in Moscow.
• Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War believe Russia was using them to demonstrate its influence in Central Asia.
• Ukraine considers the attendance of the leaders of Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan at the Victory Parade in Moscow alongside war criminal Vladimir Putin to be an immoral and unfriendly move.

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