They are like soap bubbles, multicolored. They go through these fifty tragic days of staid war and trot after their future as if they were facts, realities. They are the legends of war, the legends of all wars. I mean the legends, not the war lies. They resemble the accidents to the means of transport, always mysterious, a jolt, everything stops, no explanation, slowly you come to persuade yourself that they are inventions of the devil to prevent you from arriving. The same happens with legends, they come out of nowhere and then they are there, as concrete as the motionless train. Analyzing them, discussing them, getting angry and feeling more optimistic or more desolate thanks to them, we move towards an unknown, unimagined ending.
I am not talking about the minor legends, militarily banal: that it is the mud that has bogged down the Russian ” blitzkriegh ” as if the means of Moscow were built and imagined under the warmth of the Caribbean. Nor that the Ukrainian army, taken by surprise and having primitive means, stopped the invaders with the Molotov cocktails and the Friesian horses made by heaping up the wardrobes. Without forgetting the pulverized tanks thanks to DIY-bought drones.
I speak of the heaviest, most accepted, political strategic legend, cited in every debate to prove the validity of other arguments: Putin’s plans, the risk of an atomic war behind the door, the slaughterhouses of some and the epic resistance of the others. I’m talking about the date of next May 9th.
Through various convolutions, revolutions, world wars, Stalinism and thaws, Walls in crumbs and restorations, that is the day of the official festival of Putinism, with a grand parade on the red square, with missiles and casting cadets for the Miss Moscovia contest. Once there was a parade in November and the Bolshevik “politburo”, numb and with a fur hat, defied homicidal colds, almost always in vain. We checked in the stands who was and who was no longer there, if someone had advanced from the second row to the proscenium and books of what was called kremlinology came out. Defunct science. Now everything happens warmly and there is only one person on stage, Putin. And it’s not necessarily a step forward for the good health of the world.
A few weeks ago the legend of the 9th of May was born, namely that to celebrate this Putinian birthday the Tsar will announce the end of the special operations in Ukraine. And, more or less, victory. In short, it will be peace or at least a truce, a de facto ceasefire, the longed-for end to a nightmare until May 8 without final dates.
There is nothing that offered a concrete element to this prophecy, something that would make it grow up and become its mistress from being the servant of a war full of mysteries. There is no point in looking: not even a tiny “anonymous source” that ever evoked the fateful date from the Kremlin or Rostock. Yes, there are Russian spokesmen who occasionally repeat that the Ukrainian operation will end “soon”. But it is a propaganda strategy to demonstrate that the thread of the tangled war skein is still in hand. Instead, May 9 is a specific day. And the legend is drunk from large goblets.
How was it born? Difficult to answer. Perhaps from a simple observation of historical chronology, of those that if there were no war they are neither hot nor cold, they are not even felt. But what do you throw there, in a moment of great anguish and passion, while we all see these days lengthen with a heaviness of lead, for the piling of hopes, for a concourse of simple words, thickening, swelling, gradually lead us where everyone we would like to go, to a conclusion of the war.
Because if you can fix a final date then everything is explained: as in the detective stories if you have the imprudent idea of reading who the killer is first. For example, it is understandable why Putin’s generals did not attack Ukraine like the invaders of good cloth, in the summer, when the ground is nice and hard and there is not that damned Sarmatic mud that bogs down horses, trucks and pedestrians. Is already. Because they had to close by 9 May as the domineering boss had ordered.
But the date is perfect even if you reverse the conversation: now it is clear why instead of wiping out the cities of Donbass like an exterminating fire, the marshals and generals took it easy, they had until 9 May! But now we need to accelerate.
Is Putin laughing maliciously at the threats to see the gas contracts with Europe cut? Because he knows that on May 9th it will all be over and he will be able to continue to collect millions and billions with the great sigh of relief of his clients.
In war, nothing is more unbearable than knowing and understanding nothing. After all, Putin’s moves, who adopted a strategy opposite to that of the Zelensky torrential, are shrouded in total mystery. Nobody knows what he was proposing at the beginning, perhaps not even his closest advisors: to occupy Ukraine? Get a new Yalta that reshapes the world in its image and likeness? Raking a few miles of mud and old coal mines in the Donbass? If we put an end to the mystery and believe it totally, then we relieve anxiety and life smiles at us like the most splendid of inventions. Because if Putin on the ninth proclaims peace, his peace, we got away with it without too much damage. We can start talking to him and doing business again since he’s come to his senses. As for the Ukrainians, we will help them rebuild and everything will be forgotten. The old world hasn’t fallen apart. That’s better.
While in reality what should worry us is precisely the fact that the 9th of May, unfortunately, parade or not, will only be the seventy-fourth day of the war, and will pass like all those who preceded it. And perhaps Putin’s purpose is precisely to keep us tied to this anxiety and he will have a good excuse to the Russians to stay there, overflowing with power.