Darya was an ambitious young woman. She leveraged her father's *international* brand to build herself a network in Russia. She was indeed smarter than an average golden kid and viewed herself as a potential national leader
In the last months she would not shut up about bad Russian military performance. She constantly criticised Shoygu (privately) and insisted that if *she* was a minister of defence, it'd be alright. For some reason, she was trying to pitch herself a a minister of defense, Idk why
Becoming a minister of defence was a new topic that emerged only recently. Previously to that, she was obsessed with Le Pen. She constantly talked about how great, amazing and misunderstood Marine Le Pen is, boasted how well she knew her and clearly viewed Le Pen as a role model
What was interesting about Darya was an extreme contrast between her public and her private discourse. Publicly, she largely followed her father's footsteps. Publicly she complained about too gentle mode of war in Ukraine and called for the tougher measure against "nonhumans"
On public Darya was fiery and uncompromising. Privately though she was the opposite of that, a sort of chameleon. She'd figure out what her interlocutors think and present herself as their thinker. If a (useful) interlocutor was against the war, than she was against the war too
On public she was a hawk, calling for escalation, tribunals in every Ukrainian city, lynching Azovstal defenders, etc. Privately though, she would mock the entire DPR/LPR project, Russian irredentism, etc. if she felt that would help her to win her interlocutor's sympathy
Audience largely perceived her as dad's attribute. Publicly she played by the rules and leveraged it. Privately though, she hated that. She wanted to be seen as a political figure in her own right. That's why she took "Platonova" nickname and tried to brand herself as such
Whenever Darya felt it could win her a sympathy, she mocked and criticised her dad's insane and ridiculous agenda. She would also argue that most of her social circle (other Russian golden kids) share this feeling. Most feel only contempt towards their fathers
Psychologically this may be understandable. Imagine yourself as a golden kid. On the one hand, you owe your dad everything and you would be a total zero without his resources. On the other hand, you want to be seen as great and amazing in your own right, not a dad's attribute
In search of glory and self-affirmation, you'd rather distance yourself from dad. But the more you do that, the more of zero you become. The world doesn't give a damn about you as an individual. For them you are and will always be the Daughter of Dugin
Of course you'll hate him
Didn't you find it funny that the media are describing this 30 year old woman as a child or a kid? On the one hand, it sounds kinda absurd. On the other hand, it is very, very true. Darya never could brand herself to the outer world as an independent person. Only as Dugin's child
Many describe Darya as "innocent". But she was the opposite of that. I don't rejoice at the death of conscripts or rural idiots lured into the army by high wages. But a golden kid who leveraged war and genocide to boost her career, that's as close as you can get to unmixed evil
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THREAD Let's start a long thread about how Russian book market prepared Russians for a full-scale war against Ukraine, NATO, the West, and promoted stalinism and nazism, and how this was ignored by the West. Keep seat belts fasten, you will see a lot of nasty things here.
One of the first indicators of Russia preparing for a full-scale turn to dictatorship and a global war was the mass production of books about cool sides of Stalin and Stalinism and about upcoming war against the West. These books appeared on Russian bookshelves in early 2010s /2
The appearance was so massive that it could not be a coincidence on a book market which was under a strict control of secret police FSB. "Be proud, not sorry! Truth about Stalin Age" "Stalinist's Handbook", "Stalin's Repressions: A Great Lie" and "Beria: Best XX Cent Manager" /3
Chinese-Russian alignment is much like Schroedinger's cat. It's alive and dead at the same time. Let me illustrate this on example of the Russian military industry, which contrary to the popular opinion is *not* backed by China. It's backed by Europe🧵
Consider this great article by Vershinin. The West largely lost its industrial warfare capabilities, but Russia did not. Its military strategy is based on capacities to produce lots of missiles and shells. Way more than the US is able to produce
Russian missile and artillery centric strategy is possible only due to the superior capacity to mass production. Russia can afford firing so many missiles and shells, because it produces many of them, way more than the US can make
It nearly 6 months since the Russian invasion of #Ukraine began. Today, I explore Ukraine’s potential counteroffensive in the south, and the considerations for planning and conducting such a large-scale campaign. 1/25 🧵
2/ First, a little history. In 2002-3 I attended the @USMC School of Advanced Warfighting. Its focus was campaigning and campaign design. We used history to foster these skills, including designing a campaign to successfully invade Russia in 1812 with Napoleon! @MarineCorpsU
3/ So campaign design is something that I really enjoy studying, and I have done a bit of it for real overseas as well. Why does this matter? Well, I use my experience, my schooling and my studies over two decades when I look at the Russian and Ukrainian campaigns in this war.
1/ A 34-year-old former Russian paratrooper, Pavel Filatyev, has published a remarkable in-depth account of his experiences of the Ukraine war. He served with the Feodosia-based 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment and fought in southern Ukraine for two months. A 🧵 follows.
2/ Filatyev was part of the force that captured Kherson in February and was hospitalised with an eye injury after spending more than a month under heavy Ukrainian artillery bombardment near Mykolaiv. By that time, he was completely disillusioned with the war.
3/ While recuperating, Filatyev wrote a scathing 141-page memoir titled 'ZOV' (after the recognition symbols painted on vehicles of the invasion force) and published it on VKontakte (Russian Facebook). Not surprisingly, he's now been forced to flee Russia for his own safety.
Darya Dugina's assassination was almost certainly organised by the Russian FSB. Assuming this is true, then:
1. Order must've been explicitly/implicitly given by Putin 2. It was Darya, not Alexander who was the target 3. Alexander knew it ofc. He's just making show for a public
If Alexander was notified about the impending assassination of his daughter Darya, that explains the strangeness with changing cars. Alexander took *her* car, while she took his one. Why?
Most probably the plan was to present Alexander Dugin as the real target of assassination
That had an additional benefit. If we make the world believe that assassins targeted Alexander, but got Darya, the entire operation looks clumsy. It looks as if it is done by someone who does not have full control over the situation and over the territory. Not by Russians
Many argue that only few Russians travel to Europe. Fair enough. But those in power not only travel, they're relocating. The family breadwinner must stay, but he'll send kids abroad. Zolotov commands the Russian National Guard. His grandson Artem studies in Cranleigh School, UK
Zheleznyak is one of the United Russia party leaders. His daughter Anastasia McClymont. She studied in London, worked at the BBC, married her Scottish co-worker and changed her surname from Zheleznyak to McClymont
Dmitry Peskov is the Putin's spokesman. His daughter Yelizaveta has long lived in France. She had an internship in the European Parliament, then worked in Louis Vuitton
Moscow non-ruling elites may declare themselves "Putinist" or "anti-Putinist". But they are all closely tied with friendship, colleagueship, kinship. More importantly, they share a strong corporate interest in guarding their privilege, much like the non-ruling nobility did
When you think about the non-ruling elites of today, think about the non-ruling nobility of the early modern period. Many French noblemen had zero saying in how the kingdom was governed. Still, they enjoyed the ultra privileged position, were aware of it and wanted to guard it
Darya Dugina belonged to the non-ruling nobility of Moscow and the said nobility viewed her as one of their own. Her death terrified them. Nobility is not much interested in sufferings of peasants, but suffering of another noble - that what is truly appalling
The thing is: we don't really understand other societies. We don't really understand their realities, balance of power or mechanics of functioning. There is always a cultural barrier preventing this understanding. We tend to assume that a foreign society works just like ours
Smart PRmaxers can leverage this assumption to brand themselves abroad more successfully than at home. Consider a Ukrainian (pro-Russian) oligarch Medvedchuk. In Ukraine he is always styled as Putin's "kum". If A baptised B's child, A and B become "kum" after that
I'd argue that before 2014 Ukraine had almost zero *Ukrainian* right-wing movement. Because the right wing movement it had was inseparable from the Russian far right. Back in 2011 the leader of Azov proclaimed confederation with Russia (with capital in Kyiv) as the ultimate goal
Sounds crazy? That is a good indicator that we lack historical reasoning. We have no idea how drastically and quickly the things change. We fundamentally underestimate how much the present is different from the past, and thus how different the future will be from the present
We also underestimate the fundamental is the effect of what happened after 2014. Prior to 2014, the Ukrainian state, the army, the state security, the military industry, and of course the far right were tied with *tons* of connections with their colleagues in Russia
I saw a grain of a factual counterpoint in your comment, so I'll answer
I think you are delusional. This war won't end with some moral catharsis with all the bad guys punished proportionately to their guilt. Nope. The unlucky ones will. But that's only because they're unlucky
I understand that you would like to interpret some war criminal getting a shell to his trench as a moral retribution. But it isn't. He just was unlucky enough to get a shell, that's it. Were he more lucky, he would return home with a handsome loot
*Any* regimes that may emerge on the territory of the Russian Federation or what used to be the Russian Federation will have to employ people with guns. And they will depend upon those who either fought in Ukraine, or guarded the Putin's regime back at home. That's reality