Ukraine: The Nexus of Cognitive Warfare - Perception vignettes 1
What is real? Your perception of reality is someone else's prize.
Intel Slava Z
A rolling feed of messaging, images and video pushing my mind into a frontline where I don’t speak the language. Words give way to intonation, gesture, expression and the pure visual. Accompanying messages usurp my own interpretation - for good, ill or something else - and steer me to parse the way someone else wants me to. Hardware I recognise but haven’t seen like this before. Vistas and cityscapes that draw out memories of time spent living near the Ukraine. Soviet era buildings blended with hints of something older and once grander; and flecks of newer architecture. Village life split between mass apartment blocks of standardised, soulless design and houses in various states of completion and destruction. Standards of living and surroundings that I once knew but could leave. Circumstances that those caught amongst cannot abandon for both love and money, or the dominant will of more powerful agents.
March 3rd
“Ukrofascists are shooting at civilians on the outskirts of Mariupol. The husband and wife tried to leave Mariupol, at the exit near the checkpoint with the radicals they noticed the shot bodies, they wanted to help, but fire was also opened on them from the checkpoint. They tried to escape, as a result, the woman was killed, the driver was wounded, now he is hiding with relatives in the Berdyansk region.”
Mobile video. Night. Illumination from the phone light. Driver’s footwell. Exit vehicle. In the headlights, a car in the roadside ditch, boot open, contents strewn. Another car. Approach the first. Front seats empty. A still body between the two cars in the snow. Blood from the face, from the eye. Unresponsive. Backseat, a still body slumps out. Blood from the head. A second face just visible beside. All dead. Shouting to his companion. Desperation, tension, compulsion. Driver’s seat. Male, green parka. Gunshot wound to the temple. First aid kit from the female companion. Another body face down in the snow, away from the cars. Another beside. Shouting more between each other. Fear. Gunshots. Running back to the car. Automatic fire. Woman screams.
Two vehicles were the scene of a mass execution for unknown reasons. The people who arrived and were filming could in no way help but they didn’t know and stopped. Even in the face of death, there was a thought to check and try to help. Gunfire was the reality check.
Then death came again.
Would I have stopped? Should they have? Would I have filmed? Maybe. Posterity. A record. Proof. Evidence of murder. Evidence that my wife died to the sound of gunfire, my shouting and her own screams. Would I want you to see that? What would override my grief, pain and private suffering to give my wife’s death to you? Real screams sound different to fake ones. Feel different. How far did he drive before he stopped and held his wife. Did he weep? Did he speak to her? Could tenderness penetrate his pain and grief and fear. Did she know he loved her at the end despite the violence? If she didn’t want to stop but he did, could she forgive him and could he ever forgive himself?
When someone is freed of the notion that they are accountable to law or answerable for their actions, they are truly free. One person’s total freedom can eradicate other people’s safety and lives. Law is a shared perception that carries the threat of punishment and retribution that comes after the fact. After the pain. After the crime. After the death. If it ever comes.
How much of this is real?
March 8th
A Ukrainian sapper in a protective suit carries an IED / Molotov cocktail to the playground. Then he leaves it behind one of the children's entertainment complexes, moves away and takes pictures.
And I would like to hope that he photographs only for a report to the authorities, in order to make an information propoganda, how “Russians mine playgrounds”, and what is not so repulsed as to leave it in a place where children play.
Looking down from a window. A troop in sapper bomb gear holds a rod with an object at the end that looks like a dangling bottle. He walks to a children’s playground “hut” and places the object inside or underneath. He steps away, the re-approaches with a phone, maybe taking pictures.
If I asked him, “why did you do that, and why there?” would there be any detectable rationality in his justification? Would I think, “Ah, I never thought of that. I see what you mean. Yeah, that makes sense because…”? How does he feel? Under threat? Fearful? Malicious? Cruel? Justified? Nothing?
What is fair in love and war? Where are the lines drawn? If there are no lines inside me, no lines inside him, can any lines outside matter?
March 18
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation showed a video of the combat work of the strike group of Ka-52 helicopters. The footage shows a tactical landing at one of the military airfields in Ukraine.
Headcam. Left seat of a Hokum. HUD read-out visible. 150’, maybe 80 knots, left bank. Aligned with a gap in the trees. A volley of rockets “shoosh” to the horizon leaving filthy smoke trails and light grey impact blasts. Cut. Flying over a runway. Cannon thud bursts in to a clump of trees. View tracks left, looking for a target in the brush below. Video freezes with a big red circle over a big bush. I’ve no idea what’s camouflaged there. Cut to another rocket volley. White smoke from a fence line at the strike point. Another red circle highlights some object. Cut. More rockets. A cannon burst. Look left. Think I see some hardware this time. Easy spot. Wingman just on the horizon, maybe 300m away. Turning to cross behind. Cut. Cannon burst into smoke, a second attack. Cut, look left, two large trucks. The pilots are speaking, no idea what though. Flying forwards beyond the trucks, towards open fields. Lower, lower. Talk, talk. Landed. Why? A red flashing light from the panel. Shutdown. Cut to other pilot’s headcam, disembarking, rifle muzzle. Goes prone besides the chopper. On the other side, the other pilot. Rifle cocks.
Growing up, I loved flight sims. Microprose’s AH-64 Gunship on the ZX Spectrum 48k+ was amazing. A thick manual could be studied as the game took its five minutes plus to load. In there, a wealth of educational material about the technicals of helicopter flight, controls, weapons, targets and basic tactics. Vector graphics that were “cutting edge” in personal computing. I made it all the way to General. Hunting targets, executing pop ups from behind hills, manoeuvring to strike from blind spots. The satisfaction of the run home and a safe touchdown. If you crashed or got shot down, there was no aftermath. Just the results screen and frustration for my shortcomings and failure. Maybe a reload. Minimal stuff you could do to manage an emergency. No soldiers waiting to capture you. No allies nearby to save you. Just a game. Just a limited sim. But super cool. I was flying. I’d love to do this for real. How cool would it be? Hovering amongst the trees in ambush.
When I watched Vietnam movies, I never wanted to be the ground pounders, the infantry, the cannon fodder. I wanted to be the Huey pilot, getting them in and hauling them out while bullets flew around us and things got hairy. The wump-wump-wump of the iconic Huey.
Flying is flow. Systematic, semi-autonomous, calculated, instantly reasoned actions and communication combine with tactical and strategic awareness. Where am I? Where am I going? What’s happening? What’s going to happen? What have we got? What haven’t we got? Anticipate, react, analyse, decide, act. Add speed, add traffic, add problems, add distractions. Flow through the work. Lower. Lower. Control. Focus. Step back, assess, think, adapt. The real-time constant test of learned skill. Deeper satisfaction comes from the hardest days. Processing and reflection happens at different times to different degrees. Add weapons, targets, enemies. Add mortal fear. Add moral doubt. Add failure. Add death. Some things cannot be simulated. Some things can barely be imagined.
March 27th
A resident of Mariupol told how neo-Nazis shot civilians: “Let the whole world know that Azov and Right Sector killed us. They are fascists."
Civilians. A middle-aged woman in a big red coat, beany hat, front and centre, in front of a tyre wall, maybe in a queue, speaking, pointing. Left, side-on, middle-aged man, greying beard, beany hat. Her voice breaking. “Fasciste… …Azov, Azov…” is all I can pick out. A desperation and despair inside her. Pain. Tragedy. That anger that takes you to the edge of tears.
What is her future? When and how does that pain subside? In vengeance? In escape? What could help her to cope or forget or transcend? Did she lose people, or leave any behind? Is there a rebalance or justice? Is there truth or just perception? What did she look like to those fascists? What did they think she was?