Mikhail Khodorkovsky - about war, chances for peace and the Stockholm syndrome of Russians

This is the third week of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, however, as note Even independent researchers, more than half of Russian society (52%) actively support aggression, while only about 30% of Internet users speak out against war. Meanwhile, in the very first days after the invasion, Russian opposition politicians and public figures in exile created the Anti-War Committee of Russia.

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Как organizers reportThe Committee has two main objectives. First, the participants demand from the governments of foreign countries maximum support for the victims of aggression and punishment of war criminals. Secondly, the members of the committee are trying to convey to the Russians the truth about what their country is doing and to consolidate the true patriots of Russia "in the fight against the aggressive dictatorship of Vladimir Putin." Another committee initiative project "Ark", designed to help the Russians who left the country because of the war with Ukraine. Ark volunteers help refugees find free housing in Yerevan and Istanbul, as well as consult on obtaining documents and opening bank accounts in other countries.

About how possible it is at the moment to break through the information blockade and whether the Russians are able to hear the truth, ForumDaily spoke with one of the members of the committee, in the past - the head of the Yukos company and a former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Threats of "biological weapons"

The former head of Yukos shares the observations of sociologists. In his opinion, public support for Putin in Russia has grown at the moment, and this is a natural consequence of military mobilization.

«The effects of the sanctions have so far been felt on a limited scale and have not yet affected large segments of the population. Warehouse stocks still allow maintaining a relatively slow rise in prices. It should take another couple of weeks before people start looking for an answer to the question "who is to blame", he believes.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky notes that the Kremlin is groping for the most acceptable motive for people to support the war, and so far fear has come to the fore. As arguments proving the "forcedness" and "inevitability" of war, fakes are used on the creation of nuclear weapons by Ukraine, fears around the American biological laboratories operating in the country, and so on.

On the subject: An 11-year-old boy from Zaporizhia traveled alone a thousand kilometers to Slovakia to escape the war

The last theme has received especially wide development. March 10 Head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops of the Russian Ministry of Defense Igor Kirillov held a briefing saidthat the Pentagon was allegedly engaged in military biological research in Ukraine. According to him, during the project, the possibility of spreading especially dangerous infections to Russia through migratory birds and bats was studied.

«This is confirmed by the course of the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection.", - said Kirillov. Also a Russian official claims that “one of the tasks of the United States and its allies is the creation of bioagents capable of selectively affecting various ethnic groups of the population”, in the first place - the Slavic ethnic group.

View of scientists

Meanwhile, experts assure that statements about biological weapons in Ukraine are a deliberate lie. How He explained representative of the alumni community of the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University Evgeny Levitin, the documents of the Ministry of Defense list conditional pathogens that are used in any epidemiological institute.

«Plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera - all this is not in the published documents. The calculation is simply that people do not read either Ukrainian or Latin and do not know the names of pathogens", - the expert notes.

American colleagues agree with him. In their opinion, it is basically impossible to develop such a weapon, and even aimed at the Slavs.

«This requires that a particular ethnic group has a sufficient number of unique genes that are not found in other groups. Even theoretically it is very difficult, but as far as Russians are concerned, it is simply impossible.", - sure Peter Lidsky, employee University of Californiaа in San Francisco, considered one of the best medical research centers in the United States. In an interview with Forum Daily, the scientist recalled that the genes of different peoples are mixed in the Russian ethnic group, which in itself excludes the possibility of creating an “ethnically directed” weapon.

“Russians are still able to perceive human misfortune”

Nevertheless, Mikhail Khodorkovsky admits that so far the propaganda has been working quite successfully, and its result has been the formation of a kind of Stockholm syndrome among the majority of the Russian population.

«The information that the Ukrainian people were not going to fight with Russia, and we are at war with the Ukrainian people, is available. Obviously, Ukraine is so weak compared to Russia that it never intended to attack it. The arguments that allegedly NATO tried to attack Russia from the territory of Ukraine are also ridiculous. Firstly, the Ukrainians would never agree to this, and secondly, we see how today NATO is afraid to defend Ukraine even from a weak Russian army, fearing a nuclear war. But the Russians are not yet able to hear logical arguments”, explains the former political prisoner.

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According to the oppositionist, demonstrating the weakness of the source of this syndrome - Putin and his army - can affect people more than rational arguments.

«We see that the Russian army is really weak, and even the Ukrainian army, which is not the strongest in Europe, successfully resists it. In addition, people are able to perceive objective materials about specific horrors and tragedies that the war brought to Ukrainians. Western journalists and directors are quite talented in showing human misfortune. Human suffering is international and looks the same anywhere in the world”, Mikhail Khodorkovsky explains.

Putin's plans and the threat of a nuclear strike

The opposition politician notes that Putin himself will soon realize his defeat in Ukraine. In this case, he can both retreat and decide on a tactical nuclear strike.

«If Joe Biden и Boris Johnson as guarantors under the Budapest Memorandum, do not show that they are ready to defend Ukraine in this part, then the likelihood of such a strike increases. Another thing is that from a military point of view, a tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine is not capable of bringing great benefits to Russia - today Ukrainian military units are quite dispersed. In a political sense, such a blow would destroy the remnants of support that Putin has left in Europe.”, says Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In his opinion, the most likely version is that at the moment Putin is still planning to persuade Vladimir Zelensky to actual surrender, after which the Ukrainian president will lose the support of most of the society and the army, and Russia will be able to initiate a coup d'état in Ukraine.

Read also on ForumDaily:

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