Is this art, or can it go? As an outsider and “artist” (philosophy and painting at the art university in the capital), I’d like to add my obviously unconventional analysis here—assuming it’s allowed—simply because I strangely can’t seem to find this purely fact-based meta-analysis anywhere else.
The strange thing about this war—aside from the very first days and the failed attempt to push into Kyiv and overthrow the government in the usual fashion—is that Russia’s military efforts have been almost entirely focused on Crimea and the Donbas.
What the Russians are not attempting, for example, is establishing a “buffer zone” along the border to extend the warning time against incoming Western NATO nuclear missiles. This leads me to believe that the remnants of 20th-century strategic thinking—particularly the outdated comparisons to the Cold War, especially the Cuban Missile Crisis (as pushed by Krone-Schmalz and others)—are entirely off the mark.
So what exactly makes Crimea and the Donbas so interesting to Russia?
Because I consider the official justifications for the invasion (Nazis terrorizing the Russian population) to be staged, fabricated, and largely fake news.
(I mean, any idiot can wrap a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag around their arm and, for ten euros (97 rubles), pose with a machine gun in front of some Eastern European concrete block to “prove” that Ukrainian fascists are terrorizing the Russian civilian population—just as certain “photo evidence” circulating on Twitter and elsewhere online wants us to believe.)
At least two secondary reasons come to mind—now probably rather insignificant—and one main reason, which curiously no one seems to be talking about:
Firstly, Crimea was home to Russia’s main Black Sea naval base (Sevastopol). Secondly, Crimea was a traditional vacation destination for wealthy Muscovites.
But since Ukraine has now sunk many Russian warships, and Crimea, as a war zone, is no longer a great holiday spot, I believe that for “the Russians”—or rather, the profiteers behind the scenes—this war is ultimately about four things so valuable that they justify and finance this entire madness from a Russian perspective:
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The Yuzivka gas field under the Donbas—precisely where the fiercest fighting has been going on for years (see Image 1).
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The Scythian gas field to the west of Crimea.
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The Kerch gas field to the east of Crimea (see Image 2).
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The largest lithium deposits in Europe (see source: Tagesspiegel, paywall).
My absurd and exotic theory is that Russian oil oligarchs are solely interested in the billions—perhaps even trillions—in profits from plundering these resources on Ukrainian territory, and nothing else.
Not in restoring the Soviet Union.
Not in colonizing Europe.
Not even in total destruction via nuclear war—despite Russian hardliners voicing such threats and Western hardliners eagerly believing them.
Which brings me to my (absurd, exotic, but oddly reassuring) main thought:
The reassuring thing about my (insane, outlandish, and completely unrealistic) theory is that Russian oligarchs need someone to buy up these resources at high prices after the war.
And that’s why they have no real interest in a nuclear-contaminated Europe, nor in a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style Europe ruined by incompetent governments.
Which is why, for years now, I’ve been sleeping quite soundly—without spending my nights worrying about how to build a nuclear bunker in my backyard.
Instead, I do what one should do in times of structural change: pursue a meaningful career in my relatively crisis-proof field—art, as a qualitative enhancement of information in the digital information age.
Best regards.