The Dangerous Illusion of Anchorage

Talks that weakened Russia

It wasn’t Anchorage itself that was the mistake, but the talk about it. It:

• demoralized the patriotic core inside Russia itself,

• gave false hopes to the internal defeatists, which saw it as a green light to sabotage Victory, and

• created in the West the illusion that Russia is simply incapable of playing a symmetric escalation game. This meant that the West could impose any escalation model it found advantageous (on the assumption that Russia wouldn’t respond and would simply wait for reconciliation).

None of this is true. But that’s exactly how it looked. The error wasn’t in the actions themselves, but in the image and the information framing.

This has already cost us dearly. And it will cost us even more.

In Ukraine, nothing short of the complete capitulation of the current regime and the transfer of the entire territory of Ukraine under our strategic control will satisfy us. Full stop. Achieving this won’t be easy—we need to break out of the inertial scenario. Let’s do it. There is simply no other way.

(Translated from the Russian)