russia's war (I deliberately, like everyone else who considers russia an aggressor, write the name of this country with a small letter) against Ukraine is unlike any war known to the active and able-bodied generation of our planet. Of course, any small war means pain and suffering, but when the largest country in the world (in terms of size) with 140 million people invades the territory of the second-largest country in Europe with a population of 40 million, with 5 nuclear power plants (one of them, the largest in Europe, is still in the epicentre of hostilities), any sane person will say:"Who in the twenty-first century would think of creating such a tragedy?"

Of course, the resources involved in this war are enormous - money, weapons, people, technology. And, accordingly, the scale of the damage caused to all of humanity is proportional. Yes, this is indeed the biggest war on our planet since World War II. For almost 900 days of full-scale war, russia has lost more than 670,000 soldiers, about 9,000 tanks, 18,000 armoured vehicles, 20,000 artillery systems, 28 ships and boats, 369 aircraft, 329 helicopters, and 1 submarine. But it still does not give up on its goal.

The world has already experienced the biggest leap in military rearmament in the last 40 years. The most powerful countries in the world are indirectly involved in the war. And while Europe and the United States have sided with the Good, helping Ukrainians defend themselves, India and China are technologically and economically supporting putin's criminal regime, which no longer has enough resources of its own to reinforce its army.

But I would like to pay your attention to another feature of this war - hybridity. It means that this is not a classic confrontation between two armies. There is an information war and cyberwar going on in parallel, and they have already gone far beyond the borders of Ukraine and russia. In addition, moscow creates and fuels economic, social, political and religious conflicts. For example, by blocking the "grain corridor" through which millions of tons of vital products are delivered from Ukraine. Or artificially increasing migration flows to Europe, as was the case on the border of Poland and Belarus. On top of all this, russia, which is a major trader of gas and oil products, resorts to blackmail, bribing political forces and leaders of individual countries (such as Belarus, Hungary, Georgia, or Slovakia). And finally, and most audaciously, it is a very intricate and developed network of russian agents, whose cover in each country is the consulate, churches and cultural centres.

So, what can you conclude right now? russia has already demonstrated to all of us that if you let your guard down, the tentacles of the russian special services will be present in every area of your life. And this is exactly how putin's regime began its invasion of Ukraine - by bribing political forces, developing religious and cultural projects, through economic dependence and, unfortunately, a common history. In parallel, russia was building up its military capabilities. With the tacit consent of the United States and China. And when it took away a part of Ukraine by force in 2014, no one in the world reacted properly.

If you've studied history a little, try to remember how many military conflicts in different parts of the world russia (formerly the Soviet Union) has created or supported since the end of World War II? 27 conflicts (Wikipedia keeps everything). This is the essence of this state - without really having a great value and a useful great goal, to use a huge human resource to expand its spheres of influence, to build a superpower, to strengthen its power. That is why it is unlikely that any country can feel completely safe while such an aggressive dictatorial regime exists.

So what is russia's real goal? There are several:
- Expansion of spheres of influence, economic and political (among other things, Ukraine should be fully controlled by moscow, and Ukrainians should be a subjugated people),
- Weakening of NATO and the United States in particular (remember the Cold War in the twentieth century),
- building its own military alliances and undisputed leadership in the arms trade.

Why? To ensure that the dictatorial regime continues to exist. Because life in russia, outside the main metropolitan areas, is all poverty and drunkenness. Therefore, external "victories" are perhaps the only lever to keep the cult of the "wise ruler" of the state among his slaves and his army (i.e., the population) at a high level.

Once upon a time, the entire civilized world was united in the fight against Al Qaeda and ISIS, but these were just the petals. The real berries were ripening in the Kremlin. russia's actions have a clear sign of terrorism - intimidating the chosen victim by any means possible, including premeditated murder, in order to achieve very specific goals. Only in Ukraine is this resource-pumped terrorism reaching the scale of genocide.

russia has turned the largest nuclear power plant in Enerhodar into a military site (I don't know what higher power has prevented the worst case scenario from happening). In 2022, russia blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, causing the largest man-made environmental disaster in Europe. It continues to shell several others hydroelectric power plants and nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

Before the beginning of winter, russian troops targeted all energy infrastructure and major enterprises in Ukraine with all kinds of weapons, including ballistic missiles and air bombs, in order to deprive the entire population of electricity and heat. In many regions, electricity was available only 4–6 hours a day.

In addition, there are daily rocket attacks on hospitals (223 of them were completely destroyed), churches, cultural and sports facilities, and ordinary residential buildings (more than 280,000 were completely destroyed). The Ukrainian armed forces are not located in these places. These are targeted attacks on civilians to intimidate and force (through great suffering) Ukrainians to surrender and obey the sick leaders of the kremlin.

So what is this if not terrorism? What about sabotage at enterprises in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and other European countries? In the last 2 years alone, 8 incidents have been recorded. This is definitely not a classic war between armies somewhere on the battlefield. The only way for Russia to achieve its military goals is to raze entire cities and towns that no longer have anything to support them. Scorched territory, turned into solid ruins - this is what all the lands that russia has seized since 2022 look like now.

Why is this deadly "virus" normalized or ignored in the twenty-first century? How can you be sure that such methods will not be applied to your country? If the kremlin sets its eyes on it. Afghans, Syrians, Georgians will not let you lie.

russia has one of the largest armies of cybercriminals. Although not the most powerful. Nevertheless, the number of people involved in large-scale cyber operations around the world is truly impressive. According to unofficial estimates, there are more than a million specialists. And while Ukraine has been able to create a serious defence during this time, most of the world remains highly vulnerable to cyberattacks from the kremlin and its satellites.

The United States has repeatedly recorded russian interference in elections, as well as hacking of government employees' and politicians' email accounts. The number of cybercrimes in the world today is the highest in history. And as long as such terrorist regimes have the necessary resources to do so, no one in the world can feel safe. Up to and including global cyberweapons, which (according to unofficial reports) China is already working on together with russia. And the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology only increases threats in this direction.

And most importantly, these are fakes, manipulations and substitution of concepts. “War for peace”. “Aggression is defence”. “Destruction for the sake of building something new”. “Sacrifice for the greater good”. Any crime is packaged as a good deed and carefully justified in the media and on various political platforms.

For russia, there is not a single law, statute or document that it has not violated. The UN Charter? Many times. The Geneva Convention? Hundreds of times. The Budapest Memorandum (an agreement that guaranteed Ukraine security in exchange for nuclear disarmament)? Unilaterally. The "Minsk agreements" that enshrined the peaceful settlement of the military conflict in Ukraine? Violations from the first day of signing the agreements. Despite the signatures in the recent "Istanbul Agreements," russia continues to attack Ukraine's port infrastructure and civilian foreign vessels transporting grain and other food products.

By these actions, the Kremlin is deliberately showing us that any treaty or law has no force if it is not beneficial to russia. This is called the cult of lawlessness, which has been carefully nurtured in russia for hundreds of years.

Any war is a powerful stress for the economy. It doesn't matter how far you are from the epicentre of events. The truth is that globalization immediately triggers the mechanisms of market turbulence. The more your country is integrated into the global economy, the more it will feel this stress. And then fuel or energy prices soar, food prices rise, large enterprises close, and so on.

But in the case of russia, which is rich in various resources, it is even more complicated. It acts like a bold cheater. At first, it lures with very attractive terms for long-term contracts worth billions. Later, when the "client" allows monopolies with russian roots to be established on its territory, the conditions will deteriorate a bit. And then comes the time for "political dividends," and the "client" is hooked. This was the case with Europe until 2022, when almost the entire continent was 90% dependent on the energy resources of one state with an aggressive dictatorship. And all this time, moscow was happy to manipulate and blackmail European leaders if they did not fulfil their orders. Fortunately, the European Union got rid of this dependence, although it was not painless. It is true that some countries, such as Hungary, Slovakia, and Turkey, are still very much connected to russia through the economy, and therefore are still humiliated by handshakes and hugs with the main terrorist of the twenty-first century.

And those who chose the free way, economic independence and dignity are immediately included in the list of enemies by the russian Empire. This is what happened to Ukraine. Through missile attacks, various sabotage, and paid political actions, russia is hampering Ukraine's economic projects in every way possible. And in some cases, such as in the agricultural market, it is aggressively trying to clamp down. And the truth is that these methods are not limited to Ukraine. Any economic dependence on the kremlin for any state will eventually lead to big problems.

All this is now being experienced in many countries in Africa and Latin America, where the influence of russian businessmen, private military companies and special services is very strong. russian evil always starts with an "attractive economic deal".

In the nearly 900 days of the great war, calls for a "diplomatic solution to the conflict" have been heard quite often. This principle is actively promoted by China, India, and Brazil through their partnerships with the kremlin. These are good slogans. But let's face it. Is a gang of terrorists like Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or Ayman al-Zawahiri really worth diplomatic efforts? vladimir putin's gang is no different from the aforementioned global criminals.

What other political regime in the world has committed 664 crimes against media workers in almost 3 years? Find at least one "worthy" of this achievement. In September and October 2024 alone, 27 crimes were recorded: https://imi.org.ua/news/664-zlochyny-skoyila-rf-proty-media-ta-zhurnalistiv-za-dva-roky-ta-visim-misyatsiv-i64439

These include murders, threats, shelling of journalists and media outlets, cyberattacks, and legal pressure. One of the latest victims was Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna. She died in russian captivity (not in the war zone), where she had been held for more than a year. All the circumstances of this crime are still unknown.

Is it really worth negotiating diplomatically with gang leaders who regularly fire on ambulances (including the Red Cross), hospitals, churches, and entire residential neighbourhoods? Or should the world find the determination to punish evil fairly? Complete economic, cultural, and political isolation with mandatory prosecution. But as life shows, such creatures simply do not live to see a trial.

A full-scale war leads to soil, water, and air pollution and damages Ukraine's nature reserves. In addition, the mining of the territories poses a serious threat to the lives and health of more than 6 million people. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 309 people have died due to the explosion of mines or other munitions. About 14,000 km² are considered potentially mined. 5531 cases of negative environmental impact have been recorded since 2022. For the first time in history, experts are confidently talking about deliberate ecocide (although this crime is still not reflected in international criminal law). Hundreds of cases of deliberate munitions damage to forest and steppe areas and destruction of protected areas have been recorded. One of russia's biggest environmental crimes is the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, which destroyed the lower waters of the Dnipro River and polluted the Black Sea. And how many millions of tons of explosives and chemical weapons, combustion products of building materials and plastic were released into the atmosphere? You don't think that all this huge mass of extremely harmful substances will stay and always be somewhere above the territories of Ukraine and russia, do you? Obviously, no.
Pollution of the Black and Azov Seas is another problem that has already reached Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria. Drifting mines, combustion products from ships and missiles, and the destruction of entire ecosystems in these seas are leading to radical changes. About 50,000 dolphins alone have been affected in the Black and Azov Seas.
And finally, a high-intensity war on such a large area significantly accelerates global warming (and completely offsets all the world's efforts to slow it down), and with it all the consequences we know about climate change and natural disasters. And add millions of explosions of varying power that directly affect seismic activity.
A recent example: in the occupied Crimea, near the city of Sevastopol, in December 2024, two ships transporting fuel for its army were damaged by a severe storm. As a result of the fuel and lubricant spill, a ‘state of emergency of regional significance’ was declared. The waves threw fuel oil onto the coastline from Kerch to the Opuk Nature Reserve. At the same time, the central government in the kremlin is simply silent about this environmental disaster in the Black Sea and is not taking all the necessary measures. According to available estimates, more than 6,000 tonnes of fuel oil (2.5 times more than has already leaked into the sea) remain in the sunken tankers. This means that the environmental situation will continue to deteriorate. This means that the contaminated area of the Black Sea will be unsuitable for marine fisheries and marine life for years to come.

As with economic projects, culture and sports are also just levers for infecting world powers with the "russian peace". But here we have learned nothing new. In Hitler's time, everything happened in the same way: Aryan culture and athletes were the first to carry the "seeds" of an empire that sought to crush half the world in its sick ambitions.

Nowadays, contemporary russian culture performs the same functions: it justifies the crimes of its "tsar" and his subordinates, demonstrates the "peacefulness and humanity" of the bloody murderers, and the greatness of the empire. Why did the Cannes Film Festival, such an honourable project, allow a film about putin's army to compete?

Why do athletes who served in putin's army and remain conscripts qualify for the Olympics? In all these cases, tolerance is directly used by the kremlin to its advantage. The more crimes there are, the more interesting cultural and sporting projects involving russia should be, because it is a whitewashing of its image in the eyes of the world, masking its bloodthirstiness with the fictional "russian peace". There is nothing else. No one in russia has freedom of speech. Especially cultural and sports figures. But almost everyone has an assignment from putin's special services.

And by the way, many cultural and sports figures from russia are actually covert agents. A striking example is the Fédération internationale des échecs (FIDE), which has been occupied by russians since 1995. Arkady Dvorkovich, the son of a former chess arbiter, made a successful political career, after which he received serious positions in the russian football union and later became the head of the world's main chess organization. Since 2018, he has been building the kremlin's influence around the world through sports, looking for sports figures and businessmen loyal to russia. Since 2022, he has been doing this covertly, but openly swearing to russian journalists that he is loyal to "true russian ideals". But the network of kremlin agents is a broader concept. It is especially easy to establish close relations with criminal groups in each country, with supporters of communism, socialism and chauvinism in the form of political and public organizations. And also with those who like easy, quick money. Are they in every country? Do you agree? That's right, the kremlin has been destabilizing Ukraine from within since 2014, offering a lot of money for various tasks: sabotage, information operations, espionage. That's right, the kremlin has been destabilizing Europe since 2022. And there is no reason to believe that the putin regime will stop in its methods and geography as long as it exists.
More details are in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jhnEnyqW1JE

The main support for the kremlin in other countries are criminals, corrupt officials, politicians-commercialises who make easy money, dishonest business, and people who are simply offended or disappointed with the authorities.

These are the people russian special services work on first. And it is these people who become the Kremlin's hands, feet and eyes in your country. Ukraine, like Georgia before, and now Moldova, has felt this very much. Here, law enforcement agencies are still finding and exposing kremlin agents, as well as those who help russians circumvent sanctions. That is why we speak of "evil that has spread rapidly across the planet like cancerous metastases." The kremlin sincerely believes that everything can be bought for money, or the right people can be persuaded to cooperate through blackmail and threats. Therefore, it is important for every nation to understand in advance who will be the weakest link in national security.

The kremlin uses its agents, hired politicians, bought pseudo-journalists and experts to disperse hot topics in the information space. Experts call this "information psychological special operations" (IPO). These IPSOs polarize society, sow panic and fear, so that at some point certain people will offer a "magic pill" (made in russia). This is how one of the kremlin's biggest agents, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has remained in power for many years.

His party, which has serious financial dividends from trade with russia, regularly supports the fear in the media that imposing sanctions against russia, as demanded by the European Union, is suicide for Hungary. But this is pure manipulation. And there are many examples of this. moscow generously invests in marginalized people to achieve its interests. And the people of a country are the last thing they think about. What can I say: the kremlin does not care about its own people at all. What do they care about other nations?

russia's aggression against Ukraine, as you can see, is not just an armed conflict, of which there have been hundreds before. It is a threat of complete destruction of the world order and security system. The last puzzle in this story is the most horrific. This is genocide and mass deportations, which the kremlin is resorting to again after hundreds of years. Many peoples experienced this in the twentieth century. Many peoples were enslaved by the Soviet Union. putin has decided to revive this shameful practice.

Forcing children to change from one nation to another and erasing their identity is certainly a practice of genocide. russia has been doing this since the beginning of the invasion. The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for putin on the basis of these actions. We are talking about tens of thousands of children abducted by russia from the occupied territories of Ukraine. The fate of most of them is still unknown. russia is doing its best to conceal information about them. These are children from orphanages in the russian-occupied territories, children who lost their parents to russian bombs, and those who were separated from their families during russian filtration measures. Among them are babies, teenagers, and so many young lives that should not be scattered all over russia, where they are taught to hate Ukraine, but should be with their loved ones, in their own country.

And finally: 190 literary figures have been killed by russia since 2022, 27 of them as a result of torture and ill-treatment.

This is definitely not a conflict of armies or politicians. This is a conflict of world-views. Wise people say that if the kremlin does not lose now, evil will resume and hit the free world with even greater force. That's why Ukrainians, Latvians, Latvians, Estonians, Moldovans, Georgians, Chechens, Syrians, and other conscious people of other nations are pleading: OPEN YOUR EYES! It is now being decided what our world will look like in the twenty-first century. Wars, tragedies, crises and chaos? Or peace, security and cooperation for the benefit of the entire civilization? Make your choice and your contribution right now.

RSF recorded more than 175 war crimes against journalists by russia. Since 2022, russian troops killed 16 journalists: 15 – in Ukraine and one journalist, Victoria Roshchyna – during imprisonment in russia: https://rsf.org/en/175-journalists-victims-abuse-ukraine In 2025, three media workers died as a result of attacks by russian FPV-drones – French photojournalist Antoni Lallikan and two journalists of FreeDom – Aliona Gramova and Yevhen Karmazin. At least 53 Ukrainian and foreign journalists were wounded during their professional duties. 26 Ukrainian media workers are still in russian captivity, where they are under physical and psychological pressure. In 2025 three journalists were released from captivity: Vladyslav Yesypenko, Dmytro Khyliuk and Mark Kaliush.
RSF also recorded 25 attacks on the TV tower aimed at disrupting the dissemination of reliable information from local and independent sources. In 2025, two new strikes were documented – on TV towers in Dnipro and Chernihiv. RSF CEO Tibo Brutten called for exposing and holding accountable those who spread russian propaganda and disinformation: “Countering propaganda should begin with the discovery of its sources – people, narratives and funding.” According to him, instead of discussions with propagandists, one should focus on their legal persecution: “And I hope that one day we will bring them to justice. But propaganda leaders should also be matched – salovies, simonians and other intermediaries.”
The head of the RSF stressed that russian "war correspondents" are a tool of propaganda, not journalists. The Organization supports independent journalism and opposes moscow’s attempts to achieve international recognition of RT and Sputnik employees as journalists who allegedly died during the fighting. RSF believes that propagandists are responsible for aggression against Ukraine, destruction of the state and attempts to weaken support for democracy in Europe.