"When you tell authorities 'you're wrong,' you stay within a model of respect that doesn't frighten them. When you say 'you've lost your fucking minds,' it means questioning their very legitimacy. And that scares them."
(Oleksandr Rachev, strategist)
The slogan "I need a system that works for me" would be fine for intellectuals. But "Why the fuck do I need a system that works against me?" reaches ordinary people's minds. "Because that's exactly how they talk."
This difference reveals an ironic truth: Western youth don’t know how good they have it. They’ve never lived without independent courts, free press, or anti-corruption agencies. They can afford to attack these institutions because they’ve never experienced their absence.
(Alya Shandra, journalist)
When Ukrainian Gen Z hit the streets to defend anti-corruption agencies, they turned protest signs into an art form. Armed with cardboard, markers, and three years of war-induced gray hair, they created what might be the most literate protest movement in recent memory.
These weren’t your typical angry slogans. Protesters quoted Taras Shevchenko alongside modern poets, mixed classical Ukrainian literature with creative profanity, and crafted messages that read like Twitter threads gone beautifully offline. “Do cattle low when NABU is whole?” riffed on 19th-century novels. “Nations don’t die of heart attacks—first their NABU and SAPO are taken away” played with national poetry. And yes, plenty of signs just said “fuck” in various creative arrangements.
(Christine Chraibi, translator)
But more often, cyber operations are part of a strategy of Russia’s hybrid war, in which Russia aims to alter the decision-making processes of its adversary. A cyberattack targeting infrastructure is unlikely to cause significant permanent damage, but it will definitely spread panic among the government among the general population, who start feeling insecure, start protesting, being afraid, and blame the government. And that is exactly the goal of such an attack.
(Shandra, above)
“War strategy will focus not so much on capturing territory as on depleting the enemy’s resources and capabilities, creating chaos and ultimately eroding the nation’s capacity to resist,”
“But by then, both demographic and economic constraints will make large-scale territorial warfare prohibitively expensive."
“Half of winning is knowing what it looks like,”
(Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to Britain)
“Large-scale attacks by autonomous swarms of cheap precision drones using entirely new navigation channels will destroy not only frontline personnel, weapons, and military equipment, but also the enemy’s critical economic and social infrastructure,”
"The challenge is scaling successful innovations while protecting the infrastructure that keeps the country functioning."
“Society is probably afraid of its heroes who will return from the front. How to receive them, what to feed them with? It is clear what to feed them with. And not only and so much to feed, but to nourish. A little social preferences, redistributed from other social groups, and a lot of ideology. That same state-civilizational national-imperialism and the "Code of the Russian Man" - and more of it. You are great, spiritual, you do not need material things, the "elites" will eat well for you. And you are heroes, and that is enough.”
“But will such a replacement of the material with the spiritual be able to calm the demobilized (in all senses) society? Will the Cold War, replacing the special operation, be enough to preserve sufficient elements of anti-Western mobilization?”
“The inertial degradation of political, economic and social systems continues unabated, no matter how much you tighten the screws and frighten the population with external and internal enemies. And there is a complete lack of ideas about the future and an understanding of the goal-setting of the authorities and society. A long, unhappy, meaningless life.”
"A greater threat to Putin’s war effort may lie in the economy. Defence spending now accounts for 40 percent of government expenditure. Drawing from the country’s National Wealth Fund has helped stimulate growth – for now. Yet the pivot to a war economy, coupled with sanctions, is creating distortions."
"Labour shortages pushed wages up 18 percent last year. Interest rates have risen to 21 percent, deterring investment. Inflation is biting. The price of fruit and vegetables jumped 20 percent last year, straining households."
