Russia — not a federation, of course, but a state in transition from feudalism to absolutism — is held together by: a) the feudal loyalty of the elites, b) television, which tunes the entire population to a single cultural and political wave, a unified linguistic space, and c) the Federal Security Service.

But the main thing is the ingrained sense of the eternal nature of Russia within its current borders. Sure, the Soviet Union shed its national minorities, but that's not Russia. Not the real Russia, anyway. The real Russia is here, where we live. Nothing will ever happen to it. The maps haven't changed in twenty-three years; a generation has grown up with these maps. People don't believe in the possibility of collapse or disintegration; they don't even want to think about it. In their minds lies the main centripetal force that holds our Motherland together. Thank you, of course, for banning us from calling each other to separatism. But for us, even thinking about it was taboo.

However, a taboo is a tricky thing.

A taboo is sacred only as long as people believe in it and honor it. Once someone breaks a taboo, its power vanishes. What seemed forbidden and utterly impossible becomes routine. So it is, for example, with the desecration of temples, the justification of racism, or the acceptability of violence. Humans quickly get used to everything, humans instantly become brutal, and any war is proof of that.

When the police used water cannons against protesters on Maidan in the winter, it was called brutality. Then anonymous snipers started shooting at the crowd, and that was called brutality. And now, Ukrainian artillery is shelling residential areas of Ukrainian cities, and even that no longer impresses anyone. Television has cauterized our nerve endings. At first, it was painful to watch, but now it doesn't affect us at all.

And yet, all this isn't happening in Burkina Faso. From Donetsk to Moscow is only a thousand kilometers, like to Kirov, for example. And the people there are just like us… or rather, they were like us before the war.

Before the civil war, which was brought upon them by volunteers with Russian passports and military training, armed with Russian equipment with obscured identification marks.

Sorry, but we had to. Nothing personal: it's not about you at all. It's all for our internal consumption. You just happened to be in the way. We just needed to teach our people a lesson.

After all, this endless bloody performance by the "militias" and the Ukrainian ATO forces playing along is for Russian television. Its meaning is simple: this is what happens to a country where a popular uprising, funded by a malicious and duplicitous West, overthrows a legally elected government. It's the answer to the question: "If not Putin, then who?"

Look, says the television to the Russian people, this is what awaits you if, God forbid, the president is ever overthrown. Blood, great blood, and beheaded infants, and desecrated maidens, and fire, and plague, and famine.

In every Russian family, there is a Ukrainian relative, and in every Ukrainian family, a Russian one. If there is a truly brotherly people to the Russians, without the condescending grimaces of Soviet political correctness, it is the Ukrainians. And Ukrainians have always called their relatives here on weekends, always compared themselves to Russians, and Russians to Ukrainians. And they still call — to argue. You live freer, but poorer. And we, at least, are well-fed, and to hell with freedom. And you have fascists in power. No, it's you who have fascists in power.

They compare all the time. And it cannot be that the comparison is not in our favor. Our authorities categorically cannot allow it. Hence the painful reaction to the first "Orange Revolution": here, I remind you, the entire civil society was put on a tight leash after it. And hence all the commotion after the victory of Euromaidan.

All because Ukraine is a model for Russia. For everyone: for the common people, for the West, for the authorities.

And yet, it was just two years ago that a hundred thousand people came out to Bolotnaya Square, to Sakharov Avenue. They demanded fair elections, the resignation of the government, and whatnot. But Putin then pretended to be unshakeable, put on a poker face, unscrewed the valve on the pressure cooker of popular anger, and all the anger whistled away. Putin portrayed unshakeability so convincingly that a hundred thousand people bought it. The whole country believed that Putin's Russia was forever. It passed.

So how can a brotherly nation be allowed to overthrow a president similar in essence? It might give our people crazy ideas! Therefore, everyone must be shown how Orange Revolutions end. And so they show us: on the first channel, the second, the third, and however many there are, on all of them. Have you asked yourself why we are being bombarded with Ukraine? Because it was all started for us. And the LNR, and the DNR, and the Borodais, and the Motorolas, and the Grads, and the Saur-Mogilas, and all the other graves, thousands. So that we see, so that we remember, so that we fear. That's who, if not Putin: Satan. At least here, infants aren't crucified in the squares.

For some reason, the collapse of Russia has become a topic of discussion in the last two years, although there were no prerequisites for it before. Suddenly, people started fearing it, but why? Tatarstan has been appeased, Chechnya tamed, Yakutia shamed, and the others didn't even stir. So why suddenly introduce harsh criminal penalties for separatism now? So that no one dares to doubt the annexation of Crimea? Or is there something in the FSB's analytical reports that we aren't being told?

I know one thing: by making a year-round TV show out of the collapse of the Ukrainian state, out of the civil war, out of the dismemberment of a country that seemed as unified and indivisible to its residents and us as our own, they aren't scaring us with collapse, but showing us with terrifying ease how possible it is. By sending unknown soldiers without insignia into Crimea, and then into Donbass, they show us that such soldiers can enter here too. By changing the rules of life and death for Ukrainians, they change them for Russians too. Wanting to protect Russia, they knead the plasticine brains of the population, accustoming it to the fact that any taboo can be broken. Now even the scariest scenario of Russia's future no longer seems like fantasy, because the Kremlin and Ostankino have already cheaply filmed it in Ukraine.

Come to your senses. Don't you understand?

By dismantling Ukraine, you're dismantling Russia.