Authors Must Document Russian Terror, Zelensky Tells Frankfurt Fair

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From The Kiev Post:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, Oct.20, made an impassioned plea at the world’s biggest publishing event for authors to write about the “terror” unleashed by Russia’s invasion.

War-ravaged Ukraine is in focus at this year’s edition of the Frankfurt book fair, with numerous authors and industry figures appearing throughout the week at the country’s large stand.

“Instead of importing culture, Russia imports death,” Zelensky told the fair, in a video address.

“So I ask you, please do everything to make people know about the terror that Russia brought to Ukraine.”

“Knowledge is the answer,” he went on. “Books, documentary scripts, articles, reports — these are the answers.”

Zelensky’s wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, is due to appear in person on Saturday, Oct 22, speaking at a side event.

Organisers and participants see such high-profile events as key to promoting Ukrainian culture in the face of what they say are attempts to wipe out the country’s identity with Russian propaganda.

Meanwhile Russian state institutions, which usually run their nation’s stand, have been banned, with prominent opponents of President Vladimir Putin instead given the stage.

. . . .

In his address, Zelensky also took aim at those who had not come out to condemn Russian aggression.

“We must be straightforward here — there are still plenty of public figures in Europe who are encouraging ‘understanding’ of Russia,” he said.

“These people are present in different spheres: politics, business, NGOs and media.

“Why is this possible?… the only answer is, the lack of knowledge.”

Link to the rest at The Kiev Post

In every video PG has seen where Zelensky is speaking, PG has been impressed by how effective he is at delivering a convincing account of the war and describing what his nation is suffering at the hands of the Russians.

On the other hand, a motion picture casting director could not locate an actor as effective at playing a dictatorial thug as Vladimir Putin fills that role.

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36 thoughts on “Authors Must Document Russian Terror, Zelensky Tells Frankfurt Fair”

  1. I need to make a brief comment and then I’ll get back to streaming the TV series The Good Place.

    – Zelensky is not the good guy.

    – Putin is not the bad guy.

    – In 2014 the US lead a coup in Ukraine to depose the Democratically elected President.

    – The US has done this all over the world, for decades, using the same system each time.[1]

    – Since 2014 the Nazi brigade that is part of the Ukraine government has been shelling Easter Ukraine killing up to 14,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians despite peace treaties ordering them not to do that.

    – Putin had to “invade” to stop the slaughter of the Russian speaking Ukrainians.

    – The US has been using Ukraine to do the germ warfare research that Congress declared to be illegal in the US.

    – The US has been using Ukraine to control the pipelines coming from Russia to Europe.

    – Putin built the Nord Stream pipeline to bypass the Ukraine chokepoint, so the US blew up the pipeline that was not under our control.

    – All the BS that has been presented in the mainstream media since the “War” in Ukraine “started” in February is simply the propaganda that the Biden Regime is pushing onto the world, while we pay tens of billions of dollars to a petty Dictator, and destroy the Western economy so that we can all “eat bugs and own nothing.”

    And everybody seems to be falling for the BS. Fascinating, because there is plenty of information available to show the lies and propaganda, especially if anybody had been paying attention since 2014. Oh, well.

    Back to The Good Place.

    [1] This is the trailer for the Oliver Stone documentary.

    Ukraine on Fire | Trailer | Documentary | Oliver Stone | Maidan, Crimea, Putin, U.S. interference
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBOJtMbGq6g

    This is the documentary itself.

    Ukraine On Fire – Oliver Stone documentary (2016)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfC7s1A1KjI

    • Okay, this isn’t the place for a full geopolitical analysis of Putin’s folly but I’ll leave you with this as proof only an idiot would go to war with a country in terminal degraphic decline:

      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_population_%28demographic%29_pyramid_%28structure%29_on_January%2C_1st%2C_2022.png

      Note the big decline in the population from 1990 on.
      (Only China is worse off.)

      Those are the core of the russian workforce moving forward, males 20-30. 8M total.
      Of those, 1M have left the tender mercies of tbeir “hero” Putin. All highly educated, with enough economic power to charter planes at up to US$25,000 a seat to Georgia Kazakstan, Finland, Mongolia, and any country that will accept them as refugees. They can’t return as long as Putin lives. By contrast, Ukraine has sent out 3M refugees, all women and children with mzny of the mythical “ukrainian” plumbers that had emigrated to the EU over the past few decades have returned to train and take up arms. That includes women.

      (Also note the continuing decline in births as documented in tbe younger cohorts.)

      To date, the war Putin started has cost him 100,000 casualties and he intends to call up as much as 1M more to send into the fray. That works out to 25% of the 20-30 cohort. A country already facing a demographic catastrophe can’t afford to lose the workers nor their genes.

      At this point, Russia has already lost, regardless of what else they inflict on Ukraine. They might kill millions more. They might leave it a radioactive wasteland. But Ukraine will get their revenge and, because they have a viable aerospace sector and Chernobyl, if faced with destruction they’ll have no reason not to “dust” Moscow.

      Peter the Great, Putin ain’t.
      The geopolitics that are *really* driving the war (not the ridiculous blather Putin and his paid apologists bleat) are actually worse now than before the war.
      The big winner in the mecium term is China. They are on record as wanting Vladivostok back and now they can also get eastern Siberia with its vast resources. Without having to fight a draining war. Unless Xi is as stupid as Putin and goes after Taiwan. Who also have plenty of nuclear material and are close enojgh to dust everything from Beijing to Shanghai.

      Note this from Wikipecia on taiwan nuclear weapons in the ’70’s:

      “The secret nuclear weapon program was revealed after the 1987 Lieyu massacre,[13][14] when Colonel Chang Hsien-yi Deputy Director of Nuclear Research at INER,[15] who was secretly working for the CIA, defected to the U.S. in December 1987 and produced a cache of incriminating documents.[16] General Hau Pei-tsun claimed that scientists in Taiwan had already produced a controlled nuclear reaction. Under pressure from the U.S., the program was halted. A study into the secret program concluded that at the time of Chang’s defection, Taiwan was one or two years away from being able to complete a deliverable weapon.[1] Chang claims that Madame Chiang Kai Shek and military officials loyal to her had expedited the development of nuclear weapons and even set up a parallel chain of command to further their agenda.[15] In 1987 the warhead design had a diameter of 60–70 cm with casing and a weight of 900 kg meaning that further miniaturization would have been needed to optimize the weapon for delivery.”

      Contrarywhat the idiot Putin thought, Ukraine was not defenseless and neither is Taiwan.
      And nuclear war isn’t just for the “nuclear powers”.
      It’s just a matter of time…
      🙁

      • Not clear on what “population surplus” means in the linked graph. If I had to guess, they might mean “above replacement levels.” Nevertheless, the question that has vexed me from the beginning has precisely to do with the population.

        Ignoring everything else (as I have), what I understood is that Russia is in a population decline, partly for the number of natives who don’t have kids, and partly for the number of natives who simply get up and go someplace else.

        Eight million total of a generation of men of family-starting age. And no replacements on the horizon. So starting a short victorious war in which you could lose even a quarter of this precise population makes no sense. Without accounting for any other he-said / he-said in this matter, this factor alone is why the whole venture never should have begun. Good guy, bad guy doesn’t even matter because whoever risks this 8 million for anything other than an existential fight, is clearly not the smart guy.

        The other members of Putin’s party can do math, too, right? If this were fiction, I’d consider it badly written because there hasn’t been a single coup attempt or riot. Not one single attempt at offering the 9mm retirement plan? Then again, a lot of what’s happening these days seems like a badly written dystopian simulation.

        Eight million. I vaguely remember Stalin once asked how many divisions someone else has. As if how many fighting men you can field and afford to lose might be important or something.

        Eight million. Risk an entire generation when your population is in decline.

        Not a great plan.

        • Exactly.
          Now add giving your target *eight* years to turn their pathetic army of 2014 into a modern mobile army trained by UK commandoes and Green Berets.

          As to surplus population, I think it refers to the sex ratio imbalance. The dark fringes along the edges. Russia is now looking at the opposite of China: surplus females instead of (tens of millions) surplus males.

          For added fun: they have been recruiting the bulk of their cannon fodder from the non-slav “republics” and immigrants, trying to minimize the russian ethnics. Turkish tribes, muslim, and kazaks, etc. A lot from siberia. Meanwhile, China has designs on those regions. Yeah, that is nice and stable, right?

          Russia is still a multi-ethnic empire.And nothing is as ugly as the collapse of empires.

          Russia was facing population decline but the threat wasn’t existential.
          Now it is.

            • This might have something to do with it:

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2v_N_dF3-w

              Kadyrov’s grip on Chechnya is at risk.

              Similarly, the Wagner Group, their deniable mercenary army has been chewed up in the north and have been recruiting from the prisons. Their most recent move is building up a defensive line at the *russian* border. They love killing Syrians and Africans but have no stomach for western style mobility warfare. They’ll leave that to the untrained recruits.

              Also, with the russians sending their Rosgvardia repressive internal security forces to Ukraine along with their best (and worst) troops their grip on the ethnic “republics” and “near abroad” is loosening. If the war goes on long enough they might need more troops at home than in Ukraine.

              Russia has never been a stable empire and they are running out of time.

              Short term, they are hoping the mud season will slow the Ukrainians enough to repzir the Kerch bridge anc scare up reinforcements and ammo. But playing for time only helps in the medium term.

              Long term, they are facing the prospect of the new army Ukraine has been building and training in Poland, Germany, UK, and even US. Those are learning to use F16s, A-10s, Leopards, and Abrams. That Army is going to look like a NATO army.

              Starting the war was stupid, not getting out now is even more so.

        • Update: I misremembered the size of the russian 20-30 cohort. It’s not 8 million…it’s 6.8 million. So a million leaving = 15%. Aside from the body bag ones thst didn’t leave…

          And the latest word is they are looking at drafting women for the next wave.

          The Ukrainians are feeling the hurt too but mostly casualties and not from hollowing out their young.

          Totally senseless but idiots gotta idiot.

    • I’ve resolved not to argue one-on-one with anybody about the stuff that I have been finding. If people don’t want to do the work, that’s fine.

      Over the past six months I have stumbled across so many lectures and books that explain the madness of the past few years, and I find myself once again ahead of the curve.

      – Most uncomfortable.

      I’ve been watching episode 51 of The Good Place, over-and-over, for a couple of days now. That is the end of the story, where they achieve their goal. The last bit that follows is the Coda where they take everything to its logical conclusion.

      – They started the series at the moment of change, then took it to the Steady State.

      They are 90% right. They captured the reality of an afterlife as understood by so many over the past few centuries. The other 10% takes the Story beyond even that into whole other series. This is a great source to mine. This will be a running theme in many of the things I write

      I need to watch the series every year.

      BTW, This is an example of the Trolley Problem.

      Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? Episode 01 “THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER”
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

      The whole Justice series with Michael Sandel seems to be available on YouTube. I bought the series on DVD years ago. I was instantly arguing with him when I started watching the series.

      It seems fairly clear that somebody on The Good Place writing team attended his lectures. They also fit the TV series LOST.

      • “If people don’t want to do the work, that’s fine.”

        Agreed.
        Just remember that I’m an engineer and in my world numbers rule, not opinions, good stories, or conspiracy theories. Doing the work involves spreadsheets and blueprints.

        I’m open to actual sources who bring the meat..

        If you don’t mind an hour, try this, to see the kind of evidence I buy into:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nzVDl6iZHA

        • Yikes! That scared the hell out of me. I knew things were about to get bad, but…, Yikes!

          Those people in the audience had no clue. They need to enter the industrial world, and it requires that their Elders step up, otherwise they are going nowhere.

          We have the large tribal lands here in New Mexico, and I have seen interactions that defy understanding. I can’t even begin to give examples that don’t sound insane. I have literal nightmares about this stuff.

          In the late 80s, early 90s, we were subject to many lectures about “Future Shock!” similar to this lecture, and most of the people required to attend were just as low level and clueless.

          Think the movie 2012, where the Author was the only one who could surf the wave of destruction successfully, pulling everyone along with him, despite always being called “crazy”.

          Been there, done that, didn’t realize I had to start surfing destruction again.

          Thanks for the video.

          • Beyond the topic, take note of his methodology: data driven, options and consequences, be rational players (not idiologues) and choose your own coldly path. All numbers based.

            He has been beating the post-globalization message for over a decade but it is only post-covid that people and organizations have caught on to the reality the numbers revealed. His fifst thred books sold okay, enough that tradpub hung with him, but his latest (from june) hit instant bestseller.

            He has two other big presentationx on youtube: one at Fort Benning (search for Zeihan Fort Benning on youtube) on pure geopolitics and one on *agriculture* in IOWA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI

            If the one on minerals scared you, the swine days presentation will terrify you. The 2020s were always going to be bad. Covid and Putin made it far worse. Still to come. The numbers are ginormous.

            The kicker: he is, by his own admitted inclination, an old school liberal internationalist. The very world that is dying. But he isn’t letting his inclination overrule the numbers.

            I like his data (freely available elsewhere, thus beyond question) and many of his conclusions. But not all.
            I do think he underestimates the power of ideologue stupidity in the US (and Canada, as he pointed out) and he vastly underestimates the bloodymindedness of the CCP. Specifically, I can easily see the CCP triaging their elderly, post-productive population rather than letting their pension and health care needs drag down their economy back to pro-Deng levels. And tbose numbers are zombie apocalyse level.

            Zeihan is an optimist.
            The Americas and Europe are in for rough times but nothing like what awaits most of Asia and Africa. And watch out for the neo-colonials.

            Oliver Stone and company will go apoplexic…if they survive.

            Thing *will* get better for the survivors; this is “THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM” as George Friedman (another big time geopolitical analyst) points out in his latest book.

            Lots of sources have been expecting this and so have those interested in the fall and rise of societies.

            (Moi.)

            Oh, and Zeihan is not only a good public speaker, he (or his ghost)is an excellent non-fiction writer:accessible, clear, concise, and complete. With bits of humor here and there. A style worth study.

            • I think the lesson is that globalism can’t be imposed from above because then any nation state can sabotage it. The US and EU are the two largest trading blocs, each with a defined set of states and nations. And that took a very long time to build.

              Shallow thinkers preach globally. Real leaders fix things and build stuff, starting locally and gradually moving out..

              • Well, in a way, the ending age of globalism *was* imposed (although facilitated and supported is more accurate) from above by Breton Woods.

                And as part of that cold war security strategy the US put up with a lot of crap in the economic sphere…
                …until it decided not to.

                For globalization to work everybody has to play by the rules but over time a lot of countries prospered by cheating. National champions, regulatory barriers, currency manipulation, product dumping, subsidies, bribery… The list is long.

                But for well over two decades the US has grown more isolationist, less internationalist, less interested in foreign affairs, presidency by presidency. 9/11 slowed it for a while but the underlying trend started by Perot has been running ever stronger.

                Covid exposed how the quest for low labor costs had created unsustainable supply chains and that brought globalization to its knees and left it on life support, running on inertia. The War removed the support and the CHIPS Act this summer put fini to it.

                The US has finally given up the fight against the concept of national industrial policy. Instead of sacrificing in the economy for the sake of security, the US is now sacrificing security (courting a big war) for economic reasons. I doubt the gerontocracy fully understands what they’ve done or the long term consequences.

                Globalism is giving way to regionalism and neo-colonialism. A new age of merchant empires.

                The US already has its (forgive the term) client states. We all can name most of them.

                China, if it survives the decade, will get theirs. If not, Japan might slip out of the US orbit and build their own. Russia? Not holding my breath.

                Don’t count on all of Europe remaining allied to the US. And don’t count on the EU surviving whole. The fracture lines are already visible. France and Germany are already feuding and Eastern Europe is growing tired of the brusselcrats. Look up “Intermarium” and The Three Seas initiative. Regionalism will redefine alliances.

                Wars will follow. Central Asia for sure, central africa likely.

                Lots of terrors ahead for writers to document in the 21st.

            • Whoa. I’m working my way through the Zeihan lectures. Watch these two in this order.

              Keynote – Peter Zeihan – 2022
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA-jOLF2T4c

              Keynote – Peter Zeihan – 2019
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyrURHpUcM

              Notice what he was saying in 2022 vs 2019. Yikes!

              Hindsight is 2020(pun intended), yet he was actually looking forward. That is so rare.

              The lecture at Fort Benning was disturbing. He basically told them that they had to step up and educate the politicians about how the world really works. The one comment that we are back to a pre-WWI world is significant.

              I’m reading the sample now for his latest book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning. In my life, I watched everything as it came together, now it’s falling apart.

              Being this far ahead of the curve is not comfortable.

        • It’s not fine if the people who don’t want to do the work are elected and Senate-confirmed officials in the government of “the world’s only remaining superpower™” — which was my uniform experience (pun intended), and regardless of party, etc.

          Then there’s the question of appropriate sources for that work. Let’s just say that the Russians have been adept at “misinformation” for a couple of centuries — ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, the first definitive/documented/irrefutable examples aren’t until the late 1830s — specifically including a bunch of “everyone knows that…” material that not only does everyone not know, but can’t be verified using open sources. We’re not going to get into the history of fooling some of those open sources, either.

          I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist, who knows all too well that the only way a spy comes in from the cold is in a pine box (just long enough for the sparsely-attended funeral).

          • It’s not good but it’s what we get.
            No other alternatives are left.
            Even the pretense of competence and rationality is gone.
            It’s all about emotional appeal and demonizing each other. ( In Pennsylvania, if the polls are correct, they will soon knowingly send a literally brain-damaged politician to the Senate. Beats knowingly voting in a corpse, which has happened, but not by much.)

            Like I said, Zeihan has his facts straight but he underestimates the stupidity of the IdiotPoliticians™ and the harm tbey create. I’m not a pesimist either but I don’t see a clean exit from the messes before us.

            “Ours is but to grin and bear it.”

    • Since 2014 the Nazi brigade that is part of the Ukraine government

      Not even commenting on the Ukraine situation per se, but this line is a perfect example of why I think people should have pushed back harder on using Nazi as an insult. My first sarcastic reaction is that the Ukrainians can’t possibly be Nazis, because they’re not Republicans.

      Nazi, fascist, racist, whatever other -ist or -phobe, those words have lost all descriptive power because they’re flung around so mindlessly that it now means “someone who disagrees with the accuser.” I mean, I don’t think it’s impossible there’s a faction running around who wants to put other races / religions in ovens. But ironically, I will not know that’s what they are if they’re actually referred to as Nazis. The Boy Who Cried Wolf factor is strong.

      Might want to note that for anyone actually writing a dystopian. Won’t be me, real life has proven to be an unusually stupid dystopian story, and every other day someone just has to hold someone else’s beer. I need for stories to make sense.

      Anyway, carry on. I never watched this show you’re binging, but you might like this:

      Binging with Babish: Nachos from The Good Place (plus Naco Redemption)

  2. An interesting development over tbe weekend is that just as Ukraine announced they now have a 1000KM drone to work with, right afterwards Putin started crying “dirty bomb”!
    Pooh poohed by the west but actually quite doable as Ukraine has tons of nuclear waste in Ukraine and the robots to extract it. Now they have tbe delivery vehicle and a reply if Putin orders a nuclear strike. Not auite M.A.D. but getting there.

    If this were a movie we’d be entering the third act.
    Unfortunately it’s too real and now every country at risk of war will want their own versions of the drone and either the bomb or the waste. And the waste is easier to get.

    Still don’t see a good ending.

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