Easter Ceasefire Brings Brief Glimmer of Humanity Amidst the Chaos

Putin announced a surprise Easter ceasefire yesterday. As can be expected, it again divided the commentariat, with the ‘turbopatriot’ contingent damning the dovish leader for his constant perceived concessions to the West, while others praised him for a 5D chess move to expose Zelensky’s intransigent warmongering.

AUTHOR: Simplicius

Apr 21, 2025

image credit: Economic Times

Arguments can be made for both sides: on one hand it’s undeniable that Zelensky’s image suffered as even MSM outlets were forced to report of Ukraine’s ‘rejection’ of peace; on the other hand, we must consider how Russian servicemen agonizing in the crucible of the frontlines feel when their leader repeatedly signals ‘conciliatory gestures’ during the midst of a brutal conflict that is wiping out their friends left and right.

Indeed, both sides have merit.

But we must be reminded that wars are no strangers to special ceasefires for holidays and religious observances. The first world war, for its part, saw quite a few of them, including the famous Christmas Ceasefire of 1914, which featured troops from both sides crawling out of their trenches to share a moment of camaraderie in the frigid heart of ‘no man’s land’:

There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carolling. Hostilities continued in some sectors, while in others the sides settled on little more than arrangements to recover bodies.

Of course, that was the beginning of the war. Later, after the carnage had accrued, things were never so jolly again. In the midst of a bitter third year in the Ukrainian war, there were no such occasions of merriment, but simple collection of bodies. Well, there was one claimed video from the Ukrainian side of a small group of Russians allegedly parleying with Ukrainians—though it’s hard to tell which is which:

The Russian side was allowed to collect its casualties from the field in Zaporozhye under a white flag with medical cross, as filmed by Ukrainian drone:

And the Ukrainian side doing the same:

At least one video appeared of Ukrainian drones still attacking Russians despite the above white flag:

A Russian evacuation group under a white flag tried to remove the dead, but they were attacked by the enemy. 1:30-first arrivals, 4:30-kamikaze arrived, 5:20 – arrival from a tank, 5:50-kamikaze strike, 7:40-repeated kamikaze strike

The comparison to earlier truces does occasion an odd thought. The type of mutual respect shared ‘between Saxon and Anglo-Saxon’ in WWI is nearly unthinkable in today’s Ukrainian war. The Germans who met their counterparts in no man’s land were said to have been ‘confused’ as to why the British were even fighting there. The two peoples had mutual respect, and the soldiers of each side had likely understood the inscrutable vagaries of politics had brought them to a fateful and unnecessary clash.

But in the case of the Ukraine war, two nations which should have been bound by a brotherly commonality share a kind of enmity unheard of even between the opponents of past world wars. It is nigh unthinkable for a Ukrainian soldier to praise or even look upon a Russian one as an equal, or an object worthy of even a momentary olive branch of respect. The Ukrainians have been taught to dehumanize the Russians at every turn, in every form and category of civil expression: from the strict adherence to minusculing the name ‘russia’, or intentionally bastardizing it as ruZZia, Rascia, etc., to a long laundry list of overtly racist slurs—in mimicry of Nazi racialism, no less—describing Russians as everything from orcs to izgoi to outright subhumans, depicted in this Ukrainian-circulated meme meant to evoke the typical ‘ruZZian orc’ of Putin’s “mir” known as ‘Mordor’:

These misbegotten sentiments have been lifted straight out of the CIA and MI6 playbooks, bred into the Ukrainian nationalist psyche since the days of 1948’s Operation Aerodynamic. But it’s part of a much broader psyop to target all Russian culture, which continues operating to this day, wherein anything of Russian origin is made to be slandered and curbed at all costs, anything even remotely adjacent to Russia curtailed and marginalized so as to never allow the Russian side of the story in the world’s greatest geopolitical struggle even the slightest hint of expression.

Just consider the explosion of ‘Ruscism’ as a term over the past three years: an information campaign designed to reduce Russian culture to a kind of perverse and backward cargo cult led by the caricature of Vladimir Putin as a dictator-illusionist in one, weaving a spell over his impoverished flock drunk on long-past Soviet glories. Funny how the Ukrainian variant of ‘lustration’ never caught fire in the same way.

Though the sentiment certainly exists on the Russian side—albeit in mostly justified doses, given the unprovoked attacks on Russian language, culture, and institutions initiated by the Ukrainians—to an immeasurably greater extent, Russian soldiers typically resign themselves to a kind of reluctant pity for their Ukrainian ‘younger siblings’, who are seen as propagandized into fighting against their will by the tyrannical Atlanticist machine..continues

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