Philosophy Discussion Forums

Fellow forum members,

I don't know if this or anything like this has ever been proposed but what I'm about to suggest makes much sense to me. I have always wanted to help Ukrainians to defend themselves against Russian terrorists and this is my first concrete idea which I feel may help them. It's not that big of an idea and I don't expect that it would make that much of a difference but I think every potential idea to help Ukraine needs to be fairly assessed and so here's what I think President Zelenski should do to defeat the Russians:

I think President Zelenski should move to rename his country, "New Russia". Other than this change of name, there should be the adoption of a new "New Russia" flag which would be only slightly different from the Russian flag. The fighters on the front line should also be adopting almost the same "Z" letter as the Russians do except for a unique font.

So, how would that give Ukrainians an edge? Russia has invaded Ukraine with imperialist ambitions: to grow Russia. With Ukraine renamed as New Russia, how much sense would it make for Russia to continue this war? They would have what they desperately want: their name all over another country. So, the motivation or incentive to realize their objective would no longer make sense and so they wouldn't know why they continue waging this war. They would think that they've won and if New Russia continue the fighting and defeat Russia, then it wouldn't come as an existential threat to Russia and so Russia wouldn't feel the need to use nuclear weapons which in turn would make it less of a scary thing for the west to sponsor New Russia with the right amount of weapons to win this war.

Also, on the battle field, if both sides have nearly identical signs, it will obviously increase the number of instances where soldiers kill friendly soldiers by misidentifying the symbols. I think that such confusion would substantially benefit Ukraine or New Russia because imperialist Russians follow authoritarian approaches which often lacks the spirit of innovation that you find in more free societies. The Russians would be less likely to come up with innovative ways to recognize themselves in the face of an enemy that attempts to appear very much like them.

So I would think that this philosophical approach to fighting Russians is required and that President Zelenski needs to act upon it now. What could go wrong with such a philosophical fighting approach?

Hello to you, Empiricist-Bruno.

It is a good idea, unfortunately not new - there's currently a political group in Ukraine revolving around an ex president's office spokesman named Arestovych who's proposed renaming Ukraine to Kievan Rus'/Rus-Ukraine [done] alone and also as a part of his plan named "The Fifth Project" [for Ukraine], if you do google auto translate this page focus .ua/uk/politics/529505-rus-ukraina-pyatyy-proekt-arestovicha remove the space between focus and ua, I'm sorry for posting an external link but I'm not sure if there are any other text format sources for this) you can read most of the stuff about it, there's no point for me to repeat the article. There have been ideas similar to it in the past but they never gained much attention.

Main points being that both Ukraine and Russia's roots can be traced back to that state so historically Ukraine would claim the birth center of the Slavic region (Николай Cергеевич Трубецкой. К украинской проблеме, 1927, Russian researcher), that people of territories that are now Ukraine were active participants in both Russian Empire and Soviet Union and that instead of embracing the role of the victim of the regimes, Ukraine should acknowledge its part in making of these and claim it (Khruschev, Brezhnev, etc.. There are coherent arguments against this worldview, but then it comes down to what role do the Ukrainians want for Ukraine and whether you view these people as Ukrainians who built the empire or as people of Ukrainian descent who were forced to give up their identity to build the empire), breaking the Karpman's triangle of victim (Ukraine) - abuser (Russia) - rescuer (West) mentality and becoming its own grand political player, being Kievan Rus' also possibly absorbing Russia later on.

Within Ukraine however that idea wasn't widely accepted for a variety of reasons, some of them being an idea that Ukraine should stay Ukraine and Ukrainian identity should be protected at all costs, that once Ukraine joins NATO all of their defense-wise worries will go away and they wouldn't have to take a responsibility of carrying all that burden of being politics-wise important country on their shoulders, maybe a general lack of understanding of the idea too.

Regarding non long-term political goals in your following paragraphs, Ukraine is not and will not be an existential threat to Russia in any case for as long as Ukrainians claim their goal to free their county and not go farther. There have already been major retreats of Russian forces throughout this whole thing on the Ukrainian territory [so to worry about Ukraine freeing the rest of its territory is nonsense], there have been Russian legion raids actually within! Russian territory, plus drone/missile targeting of Russian oil production places, strikes on Crimea [so to worry about any military action, planned out or accident done within Russia is nonsense as well]. Russian sovereignty is under no threat and the risk of usage of nuclear threats in any shape or form is minimal.

Speaking about the battlefield, the Z sign is not something universal for Russians so they could easily change it any time, if this strategy was beneficial for Ukraine then I think Ukraine would've already tried this. I have to add that, not being an expert on modern warfare, but it would seem artillery, aviation strikes, etc. play a much bigger role in terms of causing casualties than face to face combat in situations where one side isn't actively raiding another (when the battlefield is kind of stuck for time being), and when one side is actively advancing I don't think these signs would cause too much confusion as it's clear for you in which direction are your troops and in which direction are your enemies, for example when you are defending a village, so it's just not worth the effort.

At last, it's hard to predict what could go wrong with this approach, there have to be some issues to be looked into but they are unclear to me. A much tougher question is how do you get to the point when something gets wrong with this approach, as in, how do you get yourself into the position in which you are already inside that scenario. This plan requires restructuring the political worldview of the country in the middle of the war, educating Ukrainian citizens as to why it is happening, inevitably dealing with psy-ops (for sure by Russians and possibly by parties within Ukraine hoping to claim power for themselves trying to de-stabilize current government and gain political points for themselves) targeting Ukrainians claiming that this is the beginning of surrender to Russia or anything of this kind.

So yes, the plan is great, seemingly there's nothing wrong when this is done, but to do it would be an achievement of truly incredible historical significance for Ukraine and possibly the world.