"Week in Review" with Olga Maslova: September 22–26

      The feeling of an imminent large war in recent days has permeated Russian Telegram. While political talk shows strive to soften the West’s actions and rhetoric for a wide audience with humor, there the line “a fight is inevitable” is growing clearer. And the rhetorical “if” has been replaced by the quite concrete question “when.”

      BREAK WITH MOSCOW

      All of Donald Trump’s recent statements, made this week after his trip to London and his meeting with Zelensky in New York, are being interpreted by political scientists in Russia as extremely unfriendly, and they no longer look for a second, complimentary-to-our-side, layer in them.

      Behind the promise to continue supplying Zelensky with American weapons through allies, the comparison of the Russian army to a “paper tiger,” and the devaluation of dialogue with Russia, it is now hard to discern a sympathizer of ours.

      The incantations of Russian officials about the American president’s commitment to a peaceful settlement of the conflict increasingly resemble, if not our side stretching rubber (which will snap back at us), then communication with someone who has left the chat.

      Is it even important now under whose influence Trump was when, on his Truth Social, he effectively inspired the EU to wage war on Russia?

      “With time, with patience and with Europe’s financial support and especially NATO’s, the return to the original borders from which this war began is quite realistic. Why not? Putin and Russia are in serious economic trouble, and now is the time for Ukraine to act,” Donald Trump wrote.

      According to philosopher and political scientist Boris Mezhuyev, Trump has lost interest in further negotiations with Vladimir Putin.

      “Fyodor Lukyanov is right, what Trump said has little practical sense, but this is, of course, a demonstrative break in relations with Moscow. I find it hard to imagine the previous polite and evasive phrases about the American president who wished for Ukraine to also carve off Russian territory,” Mezhuyev writes on his Telegram channel “Russian Idea.”

      From the very start of negotiations with the US, Russia faced two paths — stopping hostilities on someone else’s terms for promised sweets (most likely poisoned) or what we have today — their continuation with the passive participation of the US on Kyiv’s side and a “very likely direct clash with Europe.”

      “I understand the desire to avoid this fork, but even while sharing that desire, I don’t see how it can be done,” writes Boris Mezhuyev.

      The sense that war is at the doorstep is shared by Mezhuyev’s colleague Alexander Gelyevich Dugin. He called Trump’s post “a sharp turn of escalation” and “a direct military challenge to Russia.”

      “Even if Trump’s words are unserious, we do not have the right to treat them carelessly. In essence, he said he does not object to the EU starting a war together with Ukraine against Russia. Pretending Trump didn’t write that post will not work,” Dugin writes on his Telegram channel AGDchan.

      The sting of the American president’s salvo also lies in the fact that he has still not commented on the latest gesture of goodwill by Vladimir Putin — the voluntary extension of the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms (DSNV), which expires in February 2026.

      Instead, hints of impotence flew toward the Kremlin, and Ukrainian drones flew to Foros, Moscow, Novorossiysk. As Socrates said, “If you are answered with silence, that does not necessarily mean you were not answered.”

      In the fourth year of our SMO, the West has finally become convinced of the full sanity of the Russian leadership (which, essentially, is what Trump said) and has consolidated the thought that Russia “will not dare.”

      “Contrary to Western hysteria about Moscow’s aggressive intentions, Russia has, in fact, so far shown exemplary restraint toward NATO countries that have effectively become direct participants in the conflict in Ukraine,” writes Dmitry Seims, co-host of the talk show “Big Game,” in his Telegram channel.

      “The problem for Russia in the conflict around Ukraine is not that it is suspected of aggressive intentions, but, on the contrary, that people think Russia will not dare to strike beyond Ukrainian territory. … To achieve a negotiated solution to the Ukrainian problem on terms acceptable to Russia, it is very important to demonstrate to the European patrons and accomplices of Kyiv that they are playing with fire — and to demonstrate it not with words, but with deeds.”

      THE GREAT GAME IN BEADS

      About the idea that forgiveness and pacifism in a situation where people want to kill you more closely resemble pearls cast before swine writes the author of the Telegram channel “Pod Led” (Under the Ice), journalist Svyat Pavlov. He was prompted to this thought by the public forgiveness granted by Erica Kirk to the killer of her husband, MAGA activist Charlie Kirk.

      Pavlov drew a historical parallel with another unsolicited forgiveness of a murderer by a widow, this time in Russia. He recalled how after the murder of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich his widow Elizabeth Feodorovna brought an icon to the cell of the terrorist who had killed her husband, Yanek Kalyayev. “In response, Kalyayev produced a public letter full of insults directed at the princess,” the “under-ice” author recalled.

      “Moral superiority is good, but as historical practice shows, it is of little use. Killers and terrorists mostly perceive such acts as weakness. Therefore, killers and terrorists should be liquidated, not toyed with in nobility,” Pavlov writes.

      YOU DON’T SAY

      Something biblical is also reminiscent in the denouement of the drama with the arrest of Udmurt resident Evgenia Rogozina* (*included in Rosfinmonitoring’s list of extremists and terrorists) for a comment about the Minister of Agriculture. The Court of the Central Military District showed mercy and sentenced the woman at the very bottom limit of the punishment provided by the criminal article.

      Sverdlovsk ombudsman Tatyana Merzlyakova, who participated in the fate of the woman from Mozhga, thanking those concerned for Evgenia Rogozina*, did not say the main thing. When learning the gist of the charge, almost everyone put themselves in the place of this unfamiliar woman, because there is no one in nature who has never vented anger on the Internet. It is to Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky that the famous aphorism is attributed: “The absence of a criminal record on your part is not your merit, but our shortcoming.”

      At the same time, the case of the 38-year-old Russian woman jarred with the silence of officials and investigative bodies after Alla Pugacheva’s interview, in which the singer, who has spat on the Motherland, according to RT, praises the former leader of the “Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”* (*a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) Dzhokhar Dudayev. “He was such a decent, honorable, intelligent man,” RT quotes Pugacheva as saying.

      Bloggers are certain that Pugacheva’s actions fall under the same article as Rogozina’s* (205.2 “Public calls for terrorist activity, public justification of terrorism or propaganda of terrorism using mass media, including the Internet”).

      It cannot be said that the interview of “the woman who sings” was left without proper legal assessment. A civil suit against Pugacheva was filed by the well-known lawyer Alexander Treschev. The lawyer also filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee.

      Treschev asked the Savelovsky Court of the capital to recognize the information disseminated by the defendant as untrue and defamatory of the plaintiff’s honor and dignity as a citizen of Russia, a combat veteran and a patriot of his country, to oblige the defendant to issue a retraction and to collect compensation for moral damage from her.

      But the Savelovsky Court left Treschev’s lawsuit against Alla Pugacheva without action.

      TERRORISTS AT THE UN PODIUM

      “The photo of the week” could have been the frame of Vladimir Zelensky speaking at the UN General Assembly before a half-empty hall. But it turned out to be another photo in which he, the “servant of the people,” is depicted with the current, no more legitimate than he is, ruler of Syria — the ex-leader of the Syrian branch of “Al‑Qaeda”* (*a terrorist organization banned in the territory of the RF) Mohammed ash‑Sharaa (in wanted notices referred to as Al‑Julani).

      Everyone notes the strong resemblance between the two politicians. “Yes, of course, at first you don’t immediately understand where the Islamic terrorist is and where the head of a state — a candidate for EU accession,” wrote the author of the anonymous Telegram channel “historian-alcoholic” commenting on the photo. “One faith, one people, one language,” Svyat Pavlov echoed, pointing to the Nazi stamp of rule of both leaders. “And remember, not so long ago it was fashionable in the world to fight ‘international terrorism’?”