West Approach to Russia was a Mistake

Disclaimer

I am not complaining. This post is not about how I personally was affected by the conflict, but just some abstract thoughts about strategy that other countries selected to help Ukraine in this conflict and why their tactic could be much more effective.

The story begins with Russian soldiers entering Ukraine. Almost immediately, Europe and the US react. They predictably decide to help Ukraine and oppose Russia. Media hop on the trend and start fighting against Russia as well, but this time in information warfare. This is where Western strategy went wrong.

All the media need you to feel more emotions. That way, you will probably spread more of their information, and they will get more views. They don’t get paid for truth and rationality but for the views counter instead. Therefore, they tend to exaggerate and shift your focus.

They didn’t need to tell you the difference between the Russian government and the Russian people. You are always being told what evil Russia is. And nothing about Russian people assuming they are part of the evil. Or even worse, some media explicitly blame the Russian people for decisions made by the government.

This strategy is understandable. Or, the absence of strategy is understandable, I should say. If you fight on that battlefield against Russia, there is an easy way to make the Russian people responsible for the decisions of their government. Intuitively, this seems right. And if you think emotionally, you won’t ever question it.

Yet, this approach is not effective. There is an agreement in Europe regarding Russian actions, and there is no such in Russia itself. Do you think this is because the Russian people always supported the actions of their government? From inside, you can see this is definitely not true. In my opinion, the reason why there is no consensus in Russia about the government’s actions is the following choice for a regular Russian guy:

• I am responsible for all the evil my country made; the Westerners say I am almost a terrorist, yet I am just living my life (and maybe never had a chance to vote against the incumbent because there are no fair elections)

• It’s all complicated, you’ll never get to the truth, they Westerners are no better than our government

• (No third choice, because in Russia ‘everyone understands everything’ – from the Russian saying ‘все всё понимают’)

What do you think the majority of the people will do? Investigate and fact-check all the information just to find out that they are terrorists? No, that’s not how it works.

What’s interesting is that there is a consensus in Russia that on TV you only see propaganda. You can find several people who do believe in TV, but it’s much less than you might expect. And all those people who don’t believe TV wouldn’t accept that narrative that they are terrorists, so they just assume you can’t trust anyone.

The more effective way would be to make Russians victims of the regime much like Ukrainians. Emotionally, this might seem controversial. Russians don’t have their houses destroyed, or families killed (even though they do, but on a lesser scale). Emotionally it seems that Russians don’t suffer enough to be victims.

Yet logically it would be more effective. If everyone understands that there is propaganda on TV, the West could be as friendly to Russians as it is to Ukrainians and get consensus and support from Russians as well. Including, but not limited to, more financial support.

What we get instead is the absence of strategy and aggression addressed to Russia (including the Russian people) that helps the Russian government to make people polarized. Thank you, West.

From Russia with love.