Information Agency: Why should we not analyse Russia as we analyse the Western countries? Is there a society in Russia within the European sense and why propaganda plays a key function there? Michał Gołkowski – author of the book "Russian Mir" – in a strong, uncompromising message explains where Russian force comes from, how the strategy of power based on fear works and why there is no area for dialog towards the Kremlin, but for hard border setting. The speech comes from the debate of the XBW Foundation in the Light of Freedom.
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Michał Gołkowski: Russians are what their tv will do
The Russians are, and will be, as tv will tell them. We don't request any peculiar tools to understand. All you request to do is access the same printer where Margarita Simonian and Vladimir Solowov print their script for “60 Minutes” all night.
If Simonian and Solovov start telling the Russians they're gonna be different, they'll start reasoning about it after a week. After a month, they will accept that there are to be others, and after a year they will believe that they have always been and that they have for a long time encouraged everyone to do so, but nobody listened to them.
Michał Gołkowski: There is no society in Russia. There's a collection of people
The problem is that we are trying to analyse Russia, assuming that there is simply a society in our European understanding. meantime Russian society does not exist. There is no society in Russia – there is simply a collection of people. It was the same in the russian Union, in Tsar Russia and earlier, even under the Orda Mongols.
We went through feudalism, through your work for the subjects, through the origins of democracy. Russia never went through this.
Tribal reasoning alternatively of Responsibility
Russia functions at the tribal stage. They don't realize feudalism, they don't realize responsibility.
We, seeing the crests, see the meaning. They see gibberish due to the fact that it's more than 2 colors. Tribal reasoning is simple: half the face is covered with paint – his. Sidebar – Alien. A alien must be killed.
Therefore, we should not care at all what the Russian society thinks. It doesn't exist. These people will think precisely what propaganda will tell them, due to the fact that that has been the case for generations. They say, “Yes, things are happening.” And that's where the reflection ends.
Ukraine as a civilization rate
At the moment, there is something much bigger at stake than territory. To put it brutally, that's the question, which camp will have its corps of janchars. Whether it is the Russian Federation or the European Union and NATO.
Either we will have a straumatized country of respective twelve million people who will thank us for helping them win, or they will lose and then "thank us" in a terrible way. It's not like being or not being. This is our.
Crimea was not an annexation. It was an adjac.
For me personally, it's not a substance of hating Russia. This is classic, pathological. love-hate relationship. For years I had tremendous expectations and large hopes for Russia. In 2014, I even had any admiration for them due to the fact that the takeover of Crimea was a masterfully conducted geopolitical operation.
But it wasn't an annexation or occupation. It was administration – Bandit extortion with a threat of violence. “Give us what we want and nothing will happen to you.” precisely what the cruiser “Moscow” later said to the Snake Island defenders.
Michał Gołkowski: This strategy is not spoken to
Then you could see how this strategy began to degenerate in an increasingly absurd direction. In 2021, erstwhile the Russians began commasing troops at the border, I argued with my own father. He said, “They are going to war.” I said, "It's impossible."
Today I know that specified a strategy is impossible to talk to. It's like a social individual who comes to a recidivist, a drunk and a violent individual and tries to explain to him otherwise. This man is not reasoning about rehabilitation. He wonders if it pays him more to bargain or kill.
You don't talk to him. He's the limit.
Michał Gołkowski: Ukraine has already won this war
And 1 last thing: Ukraine has already won this war. No substance how the current armed conflict ends. Free, democratic, European Ukraine won it in 2013 – before green people appeared and Crimea was taken away.
Source: Michał Gołkowski's message during the debate of the XBW Foundation in the Light of Freedom during the debate around the book ‘Russian Mir’
Thank you for reading the text to the end. We urge another messages on the website www.agency-information.com. We want you an interesting reading. Information Agency
AI Reviews / KOB / Source: XBW Foundation / photograph Michał Gołkowski author of the book ‘Russian Mir’ – YT December 17th, 2025
