Head of RT Says: 'Like Us or Starve'

Russian drone attacks on Danube River port 200 meters from NATO member Romania's territory

I wrote an article in August of 2020, one of my first-ever articles here about the Russian psyche, titled “Smekalka: the Inner Workings of the Russian Mind.” The essence of smekalka is simple: Russians use our creativity and energy against us in negatively creative ways. This is what also makes them master chess players.

As a result, a “negative creativity” is generated that catches us so off guard that it is often the reason Russians beat us from time to time. To expand upon this mindset, which I am telling you from years of experience is a part of their DNA, Russians will usually do the last thing anyone would ever expect; they will act counterintuitively and in a way that is even likely to be completely against their interests — if we lose 20 men and you lose 3 but are too weak to stop our remaining 5 then we win. If it is the last thing that commonsense would expect, then the odds are they will do it.

Getting their asses kicked in Ukraine, and feeling the noose from the mix of sanctions and attrition on the battlefield, Russia is frantically looking for some negative creative acts to regain the initiative in both Ukraine and on the world stage. This partially explains why they are so avidly creating tension on the Polish and Romanian borders. Smekalka goes to work.

In reality, the unspoken part from the Russian perspective is that both incidents are also likely indicative that Moscow fears Putin’s “special military operation” is headed for disaster in the face of Ukraine’s slow but deliberate counteroffensive. In this sense, these two border provocations by the Kremlin were also intended to deflect domestic criticism of Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko at home in the absence of success on the battlefield (Putin Plays with Fire).

Most of the world except for Austria has figured out how to move forward with less or no Russian energy. Putin was certain that his tough-guy act on the energy front would break the West’s support for the war. It did not, though, thanks to Biden’s vision.

Getting obliterated at the front, Russia has deployed mines in ways that many mine-clearing experts suggest were diabolically genius. The deadly mazes are like nothing they have ever seen before and it’s exhausting and deadly clearing them: Creativity applied to achieve negative results.

The same now holds for the grain embargo. As the piggishly vile head of Russia Today (RT), Margarita Simonyan, said the other day in an interview, “Like us, or starve.” This is a sentiment that many Russians can get behind and even morally accept. Russians won’t regard this comment as sinful, inhumane, or even wrong because they view it as a tactic that has been creatively imagined by the Kremlin. The idea that millions could potentially starve instills pride in these Russians.

“Don’t mess with Russia because sooner or later, you will need us to survive and we will cut you off.”

The mood that “if they won’t like us, then let them die” is all they have left at this moment; and yet, Ukraine has come up with a way to export some of its grain out of the country thus overcoming Russia’s use of the negative creativity or smekalka.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces intercepted 11 Russian drones attacking the Danube port of Izmail, south of Reni, according to Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command. Even so, the attacks damaged a grain elevator and silos, a shipping company office, and a marine terminal, the office of the general prosecutor said. The Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure said 40,000 tons of grain had been destroyed at the port (As Russia Strikes Ports).

To date, Russia’s smekalka, which is inordinately punishing the citizens of many African countries, has destroyed 220,000 tons of grain and dozens of grain silos in Ukraine. One ton of grain feeds roughly 1550 people per day. Russians are gleefully, evening making jokes about it with memes, inventing new ways to destroy Ukraine’s grain to ensure that the citizens of Africa will starve.

I reiterate: Russia is evil. Of course, I don’t mean each person but the spirit of the society is dark and negative. The majority of the citizens blindly follow an evil human being who cares as little about them as he does Ukrainians. We can make all the excuses we want about Russians not knowing the truth and these are probably even valid — to an extent. This war has been going on long enough, and enough lies have been uncovered and reworked by the Kremlin, to mean that most Russians now understand that they are being lied to.

But they don’t care. They are morally lazy and so willing to accept this evil so long as the theaters remain open and they are left alone; only when the war takes one of their own do they begin to think about it. Losing a loved one, though, as I have seen personally and reported here, is still no reason to be against Putin’s war of genocide. It makes some even more ardent in their support.

The pieces to Russia’s puzzle are many and just when you think you are getting close to putting it all together, you realize that a few pieces are still missing. Check under the couch or the refrigerator, and look in the garbage to see if maybe a piece got tossed inadvertently. The key is to keep looking because sooner or later you will find them and one day that puzzle will be whole.

You just might be surprised, or maybe not, by what you see.

Smekalka is a Russian energy source that more morally-sound societies struggle to grasp. “Like us, or starve,” giggle-giggle, ha-ha — that’s a good one, Simonyan, keep it up. A day of reckoning will come.