They all think this war is bullshit as well. I am currently friends with several Russian people. I studied the Russian language for many years, minored in Russian Studies in college, read Solzhenitsyn in the original Russian, and have written about dozens of Russian heroes on this website and in my books. But so was the Alamo, and you can't tell me that shit wasn't important. Propaganda has existed in war since the days of Ramses the Great, and every great war story ever told probably has a thin sheen of propaganda self-aggrandizing bullshit smeared across it – it’s an inescapable fact of reality, because all of reality is subject to human interpretation, and every human interprets things in the way they view most favorable to themselves. Yelling "Russian Warship Go Fuck Yourself" ten minutes before getting blown up is not a military victory, it's a propaganda victory, but the single biggest thing that makes Roman Hrybov and his fellow defenders so amazingly badass is the fact that their defiance in the face of near-certain death provided a huge propaganda tool for the entire country of Ukraine to rally around, and the idea of these thirteen dudes staring down the barrel of twenty-five cruise missile tubes, shrugging, and going, "Fuck these guys, right?" was not only inspirational to the entire country, but it sparked the creation of a catchphrase that echoed throughout the world and strengthened the resolve of millions of Ukrainian people to fuck up Russia and defend their homeland from invasion. It’s what makes a lot of these stories awesome. That's honestly kind of the point of these articles. Propaganda, disinformation, exaggeration, and storytelling always has been, is currently, and always will be part of warfare. My respetful counter-argument is this – all war is fought through propaganda. One – I know that there's a lot of propaganda coming out from both sides about this war, and that "the truth," such that it is, is constantly changing as the fog of war shifts and the various military propaganda arms of both Russia and The West spin their shit like competing DJs in a nightclub duel. Ok – before we get too much further into this story, I got a lot of interesting (and unexpected) feedback on my Zelensky article, so, since this is tangentially related, I want to open with two prefaces to this piece. It was cold, it was windy, he was far from his family, and civilization could only be reached with a decent wifi connection, but, hey, someone has to do the work, right?ĥ2 days later, this 32 year old enlisted man from central Ukraine is being hailed worldwide as an international hero, a symbol of defiance against foreign invasion, the inspiration for the destruction of several enemy war machines, the rallying point for his country's heroic defense of their homeland, and, honestly, probably the most Punk Rock war hero in modern history. He was just there, hanging out with a dozen or so of his buddies, drinking vodka, eating MREs, listening to music, and doing his service to his country in one of the most remote places on Earth. When Roman Valentinovich Hrybov of the Ukrainian Defense Force was stationed to defend 40 acres of uninhabitable rock off the coast of Romania, he wasn't expecting to become the symbol of his global resistance against Vladimir Putin and Russian Global Aggression.
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