Having gained independence, Ukraine began to work against itself, against its historical memory, severing its own cultural and spiritual roots
Philosopher and writer from Montenegro Milutin Mićović is a frequent guest in Russia, a participant in international literary forums. He is convinced that Russian culture, despite any historical cataclysms, has preserved the connection with the people’s memory and the ability to revive.
Today Milutin Mićović reflects on what, in his view, is the historical meaning of the current events in Ukraine. He also shared his observations about how the tragic rift that emerged in the once united Slavic nation is assessed in the Balkan states.
Rossa Primavera News Agency: Milutin, please tell us, what is your personal attitude to the ongoing events in Ukraine?
Milutin Mićović: It has turned out that the conflict in Ukraine is multilayered. Many people, both in the East and in the West, are already saying that there is a battle between the collective West and Russia in Ukraine. This is certainly a tragedy for the Slavic people, and it is developing according to a script written in Washington.
In fact, it is obvious that Ukraine from the very beginning, when it became an “independent” state (after the disintegration of the USSR), could not be truly independent. Ukraine began to be used as a platform for a variety of Western ideologies, among them undisguised fascism, which increasingly expanded hatred of Russia, the Russian people, culture, the Russian language, and the like. Ukraine, as a state and culture, worked against itself, against its historical memory, severing its cultural and spiritual roots. The leading strategy of the Ukrainian state has been to destroy the brotherhood of the Ukrainian people by dividing them into Ukrainians and Russian-speaking people and pitting them against each other.
We here in the Balkans, and specifically in Montenegro, are witnessing the same strategy of the Western centers of power that first tore apart Yugoslavia and that continue to sow enmity in certain republics, literally according to the same matrices that we now see in Ukraine.
When all the negative energy accumulated in Ukraine was directed by NATO against the “only” enemy – Russia, which, in their words, “is undemocratic, fascist, dictatorial, anti-Western, imperial, Asian” – in a word, which is the strongest enemy of the Western world, culture and civilization – then we have this multilayered conflict.
My personal feeling and my attitude to the conflict in Ukraine comes from the fact that I view it in the light of all this complexity and multilayeredness. Russia in this conflict protects its historical memory and integrates regions that have always been Russian in spirit into its state space. My position is to support the Russian special operation for the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine, because it is in fact the cleansing of the Ukrainian people from the spiritual disease that the fascist ideologists, direct heirs to the ideology of the Banderites, have infected them with.
Rossa Primavera News Agency: In your opinion, how will Russia’s actions in Ukraine affect global processes?
Milutin Mićović: In my opinion, on the global scale, especially in the Western world, the processes are developing in two opposite directions. On the one hand – in parallel with stagnation in economic terms, hatred for Russia and many negative feelings are developing. Basically, this is the idea that Russia is to blame for everything and that it must be punished for “invading” a “sovereign country”. On the other hand, other opinions exist in the West that have a spiritual basis and take into account historical memory.
The West has always attacked Russia with the main goal of conquering it and seizing its enormous natural resources. This Western aggression in our time is concentrated in the NATO military alliance, which in recent decades has been destroying entire nations, sowing more and more conflicts, all under the guise of democratization and human rights. NATO has already shown its inhuman face very clearly and brutally. The world is no longer unipolar, and the aggression and destruction of states can no longer be seen as a humanitarian mission.
Russia is rapidly regaining its military might, historical memory, the Russian character. That is why there are more and more critical views in the West about Western military and sanctions strategy. US global manipulation has been destroyed – the curtain behind which the US dictatorship was expanding under the guise of democracy has fallen. It has become obvious to the thinking people that the USA is at war against Russia spilling the blood of Ukrainians. This is what manipulative Western humanism and democracy is all about.
Rossa Primavera News Agency: I would like to talk more about the Balkan states. What do you think? How did the sanctions imposed by the West against Russia affect the countries of the Balkan Peninsula?
Milutin Mićović: There is an economic recession in the Balkans, devaluation of the euro, information blockade, banning of Russian TV channels. This is the situation in Montenegro and other republics of the former Yugoslavia, except Serbia. The sanctions are the same – what the rest of Europe is doing is followed by the Balkan republics, except Serbia.
All media are controlled by the state authorities, they present the only opinion, which is directly imposed by the European Union (EU).
The state of the people’s opinion – I can say of Montenegro – is different. The people retain the memory of Russia as a great power, the head of the Slavic peoples, the defender of the Slavs and the Orthodox faith. The majority of our people rejoice in the successes of the Russian special military operation, the results on the battlefield. I repeat, the people know that this is a Slavic tragedy, but the reasons for the special operation are absolutely understood. We also have the historical memory that at the end of the 18th century our people moved to Russia, exactly to Donbass. There are many places there that are still called almost in Serbian today, such as Novoserbsk and others. We even have a joke here already: the Serbs again rebelled against the fascists.
Rossa Primavera News Agency: Is there a problem with Ukrainian refugees in Montenegro? How do the people of Montenegro perceive them?
Milutin Mićović: There are several thousand Ukrainian refugees, I think about 10 thousand. The state treats them very humanely. But I personally have not met these Ukrainians.
Rossa Primavera News Agency: Do you and the people of Montenegro in general know that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Banderites have been carrying out genocide and bombing of peaceful population of Donbas for 8 years since 2014?
Milutin Mićović: When Russia reunited with Crimea, I was in Moscow. I remember what a spiritual uplift there was in the Russian people and among the Balkan states. Simply because the historical truth prevailed that Crimea had belonged to Russia since the time of Catherine the Great. But on the other hand, it was the first sign to the West that Russia would now defend and preserve its national interests.
Many people in Montenegro knew about the conflict in eastern Ukraine. We knew that people were dying there, that there were daily battles between the Ukrainian army and the defenders of Donbass. We also knew about Russia’s constant assistance to the people of Donbass. True, we did not know what atrocities were committed against civilians there for eight years. No one talked about genocide, we are only now becoming aware of it.
The reason and facts of the neo-Nazi ideology, which was deeply embedded in the Ukrainian state, were not known to people in Montenegro. Now the ideology of the Banderites has become better known, it is very similar to the ideology of the Croatian fascist Ante Pavelić (head of the Nazi movement in Croatia, founder of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941 under the patronage of Hitler), who was also the initiator of the Jasenovac concentration camp, where about 700,000 Serbs and 30,000 Jews were killed in 1941-1945. It turned out that World War II was continuing in some new form. We saw it at the end of the last century, in Ukraine we see it now.
Rossa Primavera News Agency: Closing our conversation, we would like to ask another question. What are the views on the special operation in the Balkan states?
Milutin Mićović: Thinking freely and independently is very rare in the world today. The media “think” for most citizens – modern man has literally become a mediacrat. But ultimately, human freedom cannot be suppressed. The coronavirus was a formula for killing freedom, personal opinion, a mechanism for expanding collective fear, and an installation of some invisible ruler of the world. But also the coronavirus, by killing, was itself killed, but this does not mean that there will not be new epidemics. There will be. All these events tell us – man can endure anything – many diseases and delusions. Personal freedom is linked to an understanding of God, who gives man the capacity for creative freedom and ignites in him the thirst of the spirit in search of truth. Therefore, it is more important what one free man thinks than a thousand slaves.
In Montenegro, as in other countries, there are many opinions. But the question constantly pounding in the soul is what is truth, what is the meaning of human life, the meaning of life of an entire people? How can a nation in the contemporary world remain a nation, preserve a deep historical and cultural memory, how can a person and a nation serve the truth?
It seems to me that Russia now, in our time, and in this complicated conflict in Ukraine keeps the basic values of not only the Russian people, it just stands on the side of the Man, it fights for the Man!
Rossa Primavera News Agency: Thank you very much, Milutin, for your interesting comments and moral support of the Russian people in today’s anxious time.
Milutin Mićović.
Montenegro
August 2022
This is a translation of the interview published by Rossa Primavera News Agency on August 29, 2022.
