Collective Farm Cosplay

It's either under Dimon or under Mao that it's mowing down.

After the ultimatum from Volodymyr Zelenskyy a week ago, Rygorych went all out with his cosplay. Nothing original, nothing of his own, nothing personal. Watching him, you lazily recall: this has happened before; we’ve seen this before—and more than once. It seems Rygorych is going through a creative crisis. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s fear of Zelenskyy, or maybe he’s just tired and it’s time to retire with a gift from the administration—a cuckoo clock.

First, he cosplayed his like-minded colleague and ally Dmitry “Dimon” Medvedev. Remember how, during a trip to Crimea in 2016, he reacted to a local pensioner’s complaint that pensions weren’t being adjusted, she had nothing to live on, and prices were sky-high? Dimon replied: “There’s just no money right now. Hang in there, and I wish you all the best, good spirits, and good health!” Incidentally, that pensioner’s pension was raised—by a whopping 500 Russian rubles. She passed away last year. It’s strange that she managed to hang on for nearly ten years.

Lukashenko copied the scenario exactly, except he didn’t go to the Gomel region, just to be on the safe side. But through the governor, he conveyed a message to the region’s residents—who, in fact, were supposed to be the targets of potential strikes by the Ukrainian army in the event of noncompliance with the ultimatum’s terms—telling them not to worry or be concerned about anything there in Gomel. He added that his homeland has enough strength to repel an attack by any aggressor. Dimon—just like the real thing: hang in there, you folks in Gomel.

There’s nothing to worry about, no need to be anxious—we’ll repel any attack. As for combat readiness—here we can already see a cosplay of another minor historical figure, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf. He was Iraq’s Minister of Information during the reign of Saddam Hussein, nicknamed “Comic Ali,” who was laughed at not only by the whole world but also by the Iraqis themselves, including those who supported Saddam. Not even those who sincerely believed in the righteousness of the dictator Hussein could take his statements seriously. “Our initial assessment is that they will all die”—one of “Comic Ali’s” typical phrases.

It was he who, during the war in Iraq, held daily press conferences for foreign journalists—naturally, in military uniform and carrying an automatic rifle. The last press conference took place on April 8, 2003. At that time, al-Sahaf claimed that there were no Americans in Baghdad, while the reporters present in the room watched through the window behind the minister as American tanks rolled through the streets of Baghdad. A couple of hours after that briefing, a giant statue of Saddam was toppled, just like the regime itself. “We are ready to repel any attack by an aggressor”—that’s from the same series. The comical Rygorych.

And, of course, the meeting with the governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov—pure, unadulterated cosplay. Lukashenko secretly told Vorobyov that just recently, representatives of the Ukrainian president (who had likely also come for the Belarus-Russia regional forum) had been sitting in that very same chair where the Moscow Region governor is now perched. And our “brave soul” threatened Zelenskyy’s representatives, saying that Ukrainians shouldn’t even try to drag Belarus into a war here, because if we do get dragged in, it will be a war of an entirely different nature—one that will leave no stone unturned. The representatives passed this on to the appropriate authorities, and now Zelenskyy isn’t demanding anything else—because he’s afraid and has gone into hiding.

And this is pure Comrade Mao cosplay. “China’s Final Warning” is exactly about him. During the Taiwan crisis, American reconnaissance planes flew over China as if it were their own backyard, and after every flight, the United States received a warning from Comrade Mao. There were more than 900 of them in total. Of course, no action ever followed, and the phrase “China’s final warning” (which, by the way, has become an idiom in many languages) has ever since come to mean empty, meaningless threats that lead to nothing.

Comrade Mao, by the way, is not the only one Rygorych imitates. All sorts of nonsense, like hunting sparrows and creating Red Guard units, he adopts as his modus operandi and chains to Belarusian reality with rusty chains. And nothing of his own, no personal traits. That’s a shame, Rygorych. To earn a place in history, you need to be a person, not a cosplayer. Otherwise, future generations won’t even remember you. And they’ll say: “Back then, there was this guy in power… what was his name… I forgot. You know, the one who was sometimes following Mao, and sometimes—God forgive me—following Dimon.”

Irina Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org

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