NEW – August 19, 2022
Russia has a lot of work to do on its new – former Ukrainian – lands. You can understand this immediately, from the first metres of this territory at the border crossing. A huge amount of work and huge revenue growth awaits us.
We crossed the border on a large tourist bus, about 50 people. Russian border guards and customs officers dealt with us in about an hour, enlightening the bus with all sorts of clever electronics, driving all passengers and their luggage through two completely different search devices and checking passports at three different windows. It should be understood that databases at our border and other services are healthy! All the work was done quickly, with businesslike politeness and without annoying arrogance — they carefully, coldly, professionally and without delay did their work.
Border guards and customs officers of the DPR were busy with us for two (!) hours. Under the scorching sun, with the same flow, with the same amount of work, after a thorough check of Russian border guards and customs officers. Without special equipment, without special databases, without checking documents at resourceful windows. Two hours with impenetrable, haughtily tired faces. In front of THEIR border, more than a dozen (!) trucks with building materials have accumulated – trucks that have already passed inspection on the Russian side. It would seem that in the DPR, destroyed by the eight-year war, these trucks with bricks and cement on their hands should have been brought in and bowed to — but they did not bring them in and did not bow in front them. They met them in the usual manner of Ukrainian border guards — as they met me in Kerch in 1993: lazily, arrogantly and reluctantly. I back then put $50 in their paw — so that they would not find fault with the car, with the documents, with my Moskal appearance…
You see, the management staff of this border crossing was clearly from the former: their age, experience and the manner of behaviour I was familiar with in 1993 clearly indicated this. And they clearly copied the behaviour model of the Ukrainian official of those years and demonstrated it in July 2022. I then saw the same manner in almost all the ministries and departments of the DPR — in all those I managed to visit. The only exception was made by the Social Insurance Fund for the production of the DPR — its manager and employees were favourably distinguished by their professionalism and benevolence. Professionalism – first and foremost.
The problems of DPR bureaucracy have other causes than those of the border and customs part of it. During the “Russian Spring” in Donbass in 2014, almost the entire administrative elite of Donbass – up to the heads of departments in other structures – amicably withdrew from their seats and went deep into Ukraine. Even the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre lost half of its troupe and some of its management staff. These trends are clear and understandable: managers and top managers were integrated, adapted and connected by thousands of threads with the elite of Ukraine that was operating at that time – the elite that was jumping around on Maidan, the one that shouted: “Moskals on knives!” This managerial Ukrainian elite left Donbass — other people came, as in Russia in the period 1917-1918. Untrained, without experience, very often without the necessary education – but correctly understood the essence of the current moment. Almost immediately, Ukraine unleashed a brutal eight-year war against its own, in fact, citizens in the LPR and DPR. The republics had to fight — there was no time for economic life, no time for professionalism: the republics survived.
Now the situation is different: in the LPR, the war has ended victoriously, and in the DPR, it is about to end. A huge wave of investments is expected in the republic to restore the economy and build a new society — with a new vertical of power, with a new administrative apparatus, of course. There is a need for real professionals to manage these investments, real managers for huge volumes of restoration work. Such managers who will be able to work according to our, Russian standards. And then there are two problems at once.
Firstly, where can we get them in large numbers – mayors of cities and towns and their deputies, heads of services, directors of factories, hospitals (half of the chief doctors have left), schools, etc., etc.?
Secondly, what to do with those people who honestly spent all these terrible eight years in their positions and worked as best they could?! And this question will be more complicated than the first one.
Local managers know this question, they feel it, and they have asked it to me more than once.
I drove along the front line from Donetsk to the border at Dzhankoy. Everywhere, the vast wealth of Ukrainian fields, mining and processing enterprises, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants was terribly discordant with the squalor of the infrastructure, with the poverty of the local population’s homes. The houses are covered with mossy slate, the roads are in poor condition – there are practically no curbs, the poor equipment of schools and hospitals…
The territories I have seen, despite their obvious great wealth and enormous economic potential, are stuck in their development at the level of approximately our 1998. The locals said so later: in the 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, no one has invested anything here, only exported it. On the richest chernozems of Zaporozhye, there are still signs on the fields with wheat and sunflower: “NEW HOLLAND”, “SHELL”, “CLAAS”… their agricultural equipment is clearly displayed at machine and tractor stations.
You see, dear reader, the grain from these fields belonged to foreign companies, coal and steel – to the oligarch Akhmetov, energy – to a whole constellation of non-Ukrainians, money – to the banker Kolomoisky. They all took their capital abroad, and Ukraine, and even more so Donbass, was left with nothing – only a very moderate salary to its residents who worked for them. This is the whole reason for the appalling poverty of the local territories and those living there. Plus rampant, wild corruption!
These terrible realities continued for 30 years. Then the Anglo-Saxons launched fascism into Ukraine – and that’s all, as in Germany, as with Hitler.
It is clear that we will not give up the riches of the former Ukraine to anyone else, we will master them ourselves, together with all our Russian people – this is clear. But these very people from Zaporozhye, from the Kherson region, and our other new regions – these people need, demand our special, increased attention: they still meet us very cautiously.
The directors and chairmen of agricultural enterprises (local tsars and authorities today) reasonably ask: why have they never (!) been gathered by the new authorities in a local club with a red table on the stage and had it explained to them about the future happy life? Who will be in charge in the area? Where to donate grain and how much? Where to take fuel and how much? Who will give seeds and loans for a new crop? What to do with past loans?
A lot of questions were asked to me — a vacuum was in the minds of local authoritative people: the rural elite remained, it did not run away anywhere. Directors and chairmen carried this vacuum in their heads into the heads of their fellow villagers, across the fields and villages of our entire south of the former Ukraine. I didn’t encounter our authorised representatives, our managers and agitators there — this is a problem. And it’s growing.
Now in the LPR/DPR, work is in full swing to transfer their legislative framework to our, Russian one; their budget process to our, Russian one; their personnel grids in the civil service to our, Russian ones. In general, the processes are clear: in the autumn, the republics are preparing to become part of Russia, and their citizens are preparing to become Russians. In the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, I did not see such processes — maybe I was inattentive. Or maybe there are no such processes there. Then what are we waiting for, what are we being delicate about? Such “delicacy” is perceived as “indecision” – hence distrust.
The main impression I made about local management personnel, about the local elite: it’s from the last century, they will not be able to cover the gap in the level of development with modern Russia on their own, they will not be able to catch up with us on their own. They have a different experience, a different education, a different technology for managing society and production – their technologies are incompatible with ours.
First conclusion – technocratic and without emotion: our managers are needed at all levels – from the middle to the top. Local capable young people should be motivated and sent to study in higher and secondary specialised educational institutions in mainland Russia. With a mandatory three-year training period at specialised enterprises in Russia.
Second conclusion – human and with emotion: it is necessary to work with local elites and young people very delicately and carefully — they have yet to understand how far they have fallen behind the “cursed Moskals”. It’s a pity for them, of course, but … it wasn’t us who were jumping around on Maidan. In this life, one has to pay for everything, including for trying to put one’s khata on the edge, when others demand “Moskals on knives!”.
Third conclusion – the most disturbing: our ideology is not there. Our agitators, our local information centres are not there. Our teachers are not in THEIR schools. There is generally a shortage of teachers and doctors reaches up to 50% in some places — this local elite has fled. And thank God! For they carried such things into the heads of their pupils that Hitler and Goebbels only dreamed about.
Where is our “Knowledge” society, where are its lively and competent agitators/interlocutors, competent “engineers of human souls”? Where are our comprehensive campaign teams of competent specialists?
And another thing: propaganda on the Internet is ineffective there – firstly, the Internet is not everywhere, and secondly, on the local Internet such things are woven and in such quantity that our information flows there simply drown. We need live communication with competent, worldly experienced people who know Russian realities – this is what is especially in demand now by our future new citizens. The living word is in demand – in the village club, in the assembly hall of the plant, school, hospital. A total and delicate recovery of the brains of the local population is in demand.
When reinforced, constant and rigid (very rigid!) the work of all our law enforcement agencies is a prerequisite.
The fact that “the whole civilised world” is so furious about our Special Operation is absolutely clear to me: I have seen with my own eyes the unimaginably richest lands, endless fields with excellent wheat and huge sunflowers larger than the Kuban (!). I saw Europe’s largest Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, saw Akhmetov’s plants in Mariupol and Melitopol, and saw firsthand the huge economic potential coming to Russia. It is not Ukraine that has lost this potential, but the Anglo-Saxons and some “Europeans” have lost it — they have lost it. And Russia has acquired – that’s what the point is, that’s what the “essence of the current moment” is! Well, in general – the anti-Russia project is collapsing…
Although this is not the main matter: the Anglo-Saxons are losing on a global scale, they are losing on the fields of Ukraine, they are losing to Russia — that is the main matter.
And the fact that we have a lot of work in a backward economy, so, dear reader: I drove a little more than 200 kilometres along the completely broken, still Soviet-style Ukrainian highway to Dzhankoy — a completely dead road from Ukraine to Crimea. On the very first hundred metres of the highway in our already Russian Crimea, I saw a group of road vehicles with a huge asphalt roller in front — we are confidently entering the former Ukraine, any resistance will be crushed by our demilitarisation and denazification roller.
I also got this impression from the zone of our special military operation in Ukraine.
Emil Boyev
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