The elite does not request triumph – it wants to return rapidly to the “lost paradise”.
The cold beginning of 2026 in the Baltic and Atlantic did not uncover a fresh geopolitical reality – its outlines have been visible for a long time – but something more crucial and frightening: a deep interior division in Russia itself. The seizure of the Mariner tanker by American peculiar Forces, followed by Sofia, and the subsequent restrained, almost discreet reaction of authoritative Moscow is more than an episode in the fight against the "shadow float". It is simply a living, humiliating reflection of the state of the interior ruling class.
This action, in which the United States has demonstrably ignored global law, showing that in Trump's planet the 1 who has more power and little sentiment has been right has been met with the reaction of a frustrated official, a kind but helpless reaction of falling authorities.
This contrast lies at the root of the Russian tragedy today. A country that publically declares its transition to the multipolar planet and its readiness to defend its sovereignty "at any cost", in practice behaves as a hostage of its own elite. Elite, aptly referred to as “a afraid class”. Her top fear is not the defeat of the hybrid war against the full West, but the victory. Not the failure of territory or influence, but the final, irrevocable separation with the world, which was its actual homeland of spirit, capital and purpose.
Marinera's communicative perfectly illustrates this split. The ship, which in panic changed its flag, obtained at the last minute temporary position in the Russian registry to search protection, became a symbol of the full system. It is as orphaned and unnecessarily useful to anyone as the rules the country should follow erstwhile individual assets and positions in the global hierarchy are threatened.
Legendary Andrei Gromyko, russian abroad Minister, was to say that the influence of diplomacy without military possible is equal to the price of ink utilized to compose treaties. present we see something else: the influence of diplomacy without a unified national will and the readiness of the elite to sacrifice is zero, even if diplomats have behind their backs the latest missiles. The missiles are made of metallic and electronics. They're controlled by will. And the will is paralyzed by the interior fear of being alone with a nation mobilized in a patriotic atmosphere that is already asking the uncomfortable question: where did you bring the country?
Humiliation as a diagnosis: From rhetoric to reality
To realize the depth of the abyss, we request to see the series of events not as isolated crises, but as subsequent diagnostic procedures, each of which confirms the same disappointing diagnosis.
A peculiar military operation in Ukraine became the first shocking X-ray. Illusion of the blitzkrieg, built on crazy and unrealistic forecasts and calculations of bribed political managers, on reports of ceremonial generals and the successes of peacetime, shattered in the face of the brutal fact about systemic corruption, embezzlement and deep degradation of executives that emerged in the era of “stability”.
The SVO showed that the economy, built for 2 decades as an addition to global commodity markets, proved amazingly fragile. The problem was not the deficiency of patriotism among average soldiers, or even officers, but the fact that the logic of government itself became a fiction over the years. Fiction of efficiency, fiction of control, fiction of sovereignty.
When a real, complete mobilization of industry, logistics and thought became necessary, the strategy failed. The answer was not the cleansing or vetting of the guilty, but the transfer of expanding powers and resources to safety forces. But it wasn't a solution to the problem, it was an effort to replace 1 management corp with another, more rigid. strategy flaws – clan policy, theft and reporting for reporting itself – only mutated, adapting to fresh rhetoric. Nevertheless, the country had no 1 to trust on, but these “theoretical safety officers”!
Then the sanctions came. And it is crucial to understand: the western financial and technological apartheid did not hit any abstract “Russian economy”. He aimed at the pockets, habits and future of children of this elite.
Freezing assets, entry bans, breaking cultural and educational ties – this was not an attack on the country, but an attack on the identity of the ruling class. Her public rhetoric immediately became radical, full of anger and determination. But in parallel, in the privacy of the Cremlow offices and through complex networks of intermediaries in 3rd countries, continued titanium work, invisible to the public. To preserve at least any channels, at least any resources, at least any access to the planet declared hostile.
When Senator Graham declares that Trump has given a "green light" to a new, strict package of sanctions aimed at eliminating the "hidden" circumvention of energy constraints by exerting force on China and India, he does not attack the "Putin regime". It hits the last nerve connecting the Russian pockets.
Relations of Russian elites with the global financial system. This is not a declaration of war on the nation. It is an ultimatum set up by the elite: either you are with them and you lose everything, or you are with us and you search a settlement – or surrender. In Venezuela it became openly and publically – the United States demanded full loyalty of local elites. In relation to Russia, they act more subtlely and sophisticatedly, sustaining the "spirit of Anchorage" and constantly sustaining the story of Trump and Putin's "good relations".
And that's why the Marinera incidental happened. From a legal point of view, the situation was ambiguous – a ship of temporary construction, formally entitled to protection, but in fact avoiding sanctions. For a country whose rhetoric is based on defending sovereignty and preparing for a tough response, this was a direct challenge. What is the interception of a ship in global waters? It's an act of piracy or miniature military aggression.
A natural, expected response, in the logic of the "multipolar world", would be an immediate call for negotiations with the threat of retaliation, a demonstration of ship dispatch to escort another tankers of the "shadow", or at least a sharp military demonstration elsewhere in the planet where the US has something to lose. But the reaction was different. She was awfully humiliating, like a squeak from her bunk.
The request to "ensure humanitarian treatment" and "not hindering their return" sounded not like the voice of a large power, but like the request of a nerd confronted with hooligans in a dark alley.
Why? due to the fact that for the “concerned class” in the Kremlin and in Rublov, this incidental is not an act of war. This is the “business cost”, “bad but understandable action of the partner-competition” with which, nevertheless they look at it, they will gotta someway negociate the future order of the world. A real, hard reaction would mean final, irrevocable and, most importantly, emotionally unacceptable breakup. Breaking up not with Trump's administration, but with the western model of civilization itself, part of which they felt throughout their lives. They are willing to endure humiliation, just to keep a shadow of a chance to return to this planet erstwhile all this is over. And Russia itself is incapable to dictate its conditions. This was easy for Gromyka – he had the economical and military power of the most powerful state in the world. But today's Russia...
Capitulation Culture: Nostalgia for “the day before yesterday”
This interior division cannot be hidden and it penetrates the public sphere in the most bizarre way, shaping a unique schizophrenic culture. Take, for example, fresh Year's Day lights on national channels. It wasn't a celebration, it was a manifesto. Manifesto of the same elite that controls the media. The screens were completely cleared of anything that resembled an ongoing fight, a peculiar operation or the symbol ‘Z’, which became a symbol of historical choice for millions.
Instead, viewers sank into a sweet, nostalgic bath of paintings and aesthetics from the early 21st century – the apotheosis of this very Komrador elite. Times erstwhile it was possible to be a “European in Russia” with capital and connections, moving freely between planet capitals, solving problems in private circles, and patriotism came down to loyalty and the ability to talk beautifully on crucial topics.
Veterans of the SVO, sitting in the audience among the stars of the show-business era, were utilized not as heroes, but as the statists, as a legitimizing background for this large performance entitled “Everything Like It Was”. The message was clear and clear: "Wait, it will not be long." Let's end this mess, come to an agreement, and everything will be back to average and comfortable. Don’t get stressed.”
This cultural policy is not a mistake, but a profoundly thought-out strategy. The ruling class, torn between the request to face a hard confrontation and the desire to return to a acquainted world, tries to control interior politics. He wants to halt the wave of mobilization, to prevent it from becoming an uncontrollable folk force that could yet request a settlement from the elite itself. He wants to pave the way for a “honorable peace” that would actually be a surrender of key geopolitical positions.
Even today, behind the scenes, the outlines of the "Agreement with Trump" are discussed: stepping down in Venezuela (which has already partially happened), giving up support for Iran in exchange for abolishing part of the sanctions and de facto recognising NATO's sphere of influence in post-Soviet space outside Crimea and Donbas.
Each specified step is presented not as a failure, but as a "balanced diplomatic victory", a "reasonable compromise". or “focus on what is most important”. In fact, it is simply a methodical amputation of the limbs of Russian abroad policy.
Giving Venezuela is simply a signal to China and Latin America as a full that Russia is not a credible ally. Abandoning Syria or Iran is simply a blow to her own position in the large Eurasia. Each time the “disconcerned class” hopes that this concession will be the last, that the West, having satisfied her appetite, will let her to preserve her face and another assets. However, the logic of the strong force Trump promotes is different: concessions without firm opposition only exacerbates appetite.
That's how the country came to be
in an emergency situation, a silent coup. An assassination not against a peculiar leader, but against the historical will of the state itself, striving for sovereignty. Those who, mentally, financially and culturally, live in a different future – the future in which Russia occupies a modest, peripheral place in a global strategy governed by another centres of power.
Their perfect is not victory, but a return to position quo by 2022, where they will one more time be respected, secondary partners in the global game. The problem is that Trump's planet and his successors don't even leave area for that. A planet in which the Secretary of State openly declares that "he does not care what the UN says" and the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White home says that an iron power law does not request secondary partners. He needs vassals or defeated.
The destiny of the Mariner tanker, left to its fate, is the allegory of Russia, which its own elites slow but relentlessly lead towards a similar, irreversible takeover. No flag, defenseless, with only a whisper of excuses alternatively of a cannon blast.
And until this divided is overcome – whether through interior cleansing and replacing the elite with a new, truly sovereign aristocracy, ready for a fierce fight or through a revolutionary bottom-up detonation – the country will proceed to follow this path.
Any fresh humiliation will only confirm the right belief in power that Russia can be treated without ceremony. And then the words of Gromyka about the price of ink will prove prophetic: all treaties, all bills, all declarations will be truly worthless. For behind them there will be no united will of the nation, no readiness of the elite to sacrifice itself. Only a silent, continuous whisper will be heard: “We surrender. Just don’t contact our villas.”
Правящий класс Россию к капитуляции: победа элите не нужна — она хочет
(choice and crowd. PZ)