My War in Ukraine

Yesterday, I cancelled an interview with a journalist who repeated the feeble-minded canard about thousands of NATO troops who have died fighting for Ukraine, how Russia’s military is well run and triumphant, and how the West instigated the war for its own ends. When I hung up on her she called my conduct idiotic and blamed me for being a part of the cancel culture. So much for her research skills: I may well be the former (idiot), but by no stretch of the imagination am I the latter.

Increasingly, useful idiots (useful fools) in the West – journalists, businessmen, public intellectuals, academics, politicians, and lobbyists - parrot the Kremlin’s propaganda bullet points. The global wave of populist contumacious and self-hating anti-elitism rendered these otherwise risible conspiracy theorists instant stars.

It is not that the West is blameless or that Ukrainians are saints – it is not and they are not.

Both provoked Russia mightily and repeatedly. Poking nuclear armed bears has predictable consequences and the outcomes are neither pleasant nor sustainable.

The West is fighting a proxy war to contain the emerging Russia-China axis and its BRICS corollary.

Ukraine was less than benevolent with its Russian-speaking minority.

Far right groups gained too much sway in the politics and economy of a corrupt Ukraine.

Both parties committed war crimes.

All true.

But only one side committed crimes against humanity.

And only one side started an open, total war (incidentally, granting an ever more united West the perfect pretext to encroach on Russian borders).

Russia is the aggressor in this war against civilians. I am saying Russia and not Putin or his inner circle because the vast majority of Russians support Putin the same way the vast majority of Germans adored Hitler who could do no wrong in their eyes.

Public intellectuals have an obligation to make sacrifices and assume personal risks when faced with injustice or evil. I have gone through the same ordeal in Macedonia, having confronted and criticized two regimes.

Watch this video about four types of (Macedonian) public intellectuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMQK4mWFnv8

When the war started, I did not renew my appointment as visiting professor of psychology in Southern Federal University in Rostov on Don in Russia. I spent 5 wonderful years there and was heartbroken to have to give up the whole thing. Rostov has become a main staging ground for this heartless botched Blietzkrieg. I could not in good faith even be seen to support Russia.

More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/rebuttal.html

When I was approached by Dr. Rajeev Fernando of Harvard Medical School and the charity Chiraj.org and the indomitable Cheriekah Ramirez I immediately volunteered to offer my help to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the first lady of Ukraine. I was asked to train Ukrainian mental health practitioners on how to treat PTSD among raped women, orphaned children, and dazed soldiers.

Watch an Interview I gave to Newsweek Romania about PTSD among Ukraine’s population

Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvhsNp1C5ZQ

Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaR7E5a42tI

My Russian friends and Russia as a state were not happy with my “betrayal”. A month after the war started, I gave an interview to Izvestia, an informal mouthpiece of the Russian state. I criticized the way the war was handled, predicted a stalemate, and advocated for limited goals.

Setting up the interview with Izvestia – click HERE: http://samvak.tripod.com/izvestia.zip

The interview with Izvestia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pabcLbgLE-c

As the war and its atrocities progressed, I became way more critical of Putin, calling him a hypochondriac narcissist and a psychopath and exposing the clandestine workings of his inner circle as I came to know them in my 6 Russian years.

Watch the interview I granted to RTL TV is Hungary

English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSFm09K2tIU

Hungarian https://rtl.hu/fokusz/2022/10/27/sam-vaknin-pszichologia-professzor-vlagyimir-putyin-mentalis-allapota-haboru

I fully expect retaliation. When not poisoned or shot outright, Russia's adversaries are accused of a bewildering array of economic crimes or personal peccadillos ("kompromat").

But I cannot keep silent in good faith. No one can or should. What is happening in Ukraine is plain wrong. It must stop. Everyone agrees, even Russia’s allies such as China.

Putin painted himself into a corner: defeat in Ukraine spells his demise, political and maybe physical. He is fighting for his survival on the trampled and bloodied bodies of children and women. His acolytes are sycophantic but fickle. So he is driven to escalate, crossing the thin line between geopolitics and evil.

And here, on this thin line, all of us should stand firm and exclaim: no pasaran! They shall not pass.