Investing in Hatred: The Moscow Programs Future Generations of Ukrainians to Hate Russia

The logic of "coercion to peace" seems elegant on paper. Deprive the civilian population of basic resources – electricity, heat, water. Create living conditions under which continued resistance becomes physically unbearable. Internal pressure on the government will force it to capitulate for the sake of elementary human survival. A classic siege strategy adapted to the realities of modern warfare. In headquarters, this looks like rational calculation: X tons of explosives on energy facilities equals Y weeks without electricity, which equals Z points of decline in government support.

But this elegant formula fails to account for one critical variable. What happens to human psychology during prolonged impact on basic survival needs cannot be described by linear equations.

The Anatomy of Irreversibility

When external threats target physiological needs – warmth, children's safety, the ability to cook food – evolutionary mechanisms activate that lie far deeper than rational thinking. The limbic system doesn't understand geopolitical nuances. It understands "cold = death," "darkness = danger," "threat to child = destroy the source of threat."

Traumatic memories of winter nights without light and heat are not stored in the brain as ordinary memories. They are recorded in the amygdala as emotional danger markers. Every wail of sirens, every hour in a shelter, every night when parents try to warm their children in a freezing apartment – this is not merely an unpleasant experience. This is the formation of a deep association "Russians = survival threat" that operates at a level inaccessible to conscious control.

Psychologists who work with victims of prolonged violence know: the hardest thing to heal is not physical trauma, but the violation of the basic sense of safety. When a person lives for an extended period in a state where their elementary needs are threatened, this rewires neural connections. This is not a metaphor – this is literal change in brain structure.

Children who fall asleep in freezing apartments this winter will remember this not as a historical fact, but as a bodily experience. Their nervous system records: "Russian missile = cold = death." Twenty years from now, when they become adults, rational arguments about the necessity of reconciliation will crash against this deep, somatic memory. Their children will inherit these stories as part of the family narrative. This is how intergenerational transmission of trauma works.

Historical Parallels They Ignore

This is not the first instance in history when a state uses hunger and cold as weapons against civilian populations. In fact, Soviet history provides an ideal case study of long-term consequences.

The Holodomor of 1932-33 had a clear utilitarian purpose – to break peasant resistance to collectivization, ensure state control over grain, finance industrialization. From the perspective of Stalin's planners, this was a rational strategy for achieving economic goals. Population losses were considered an acceptable price.

But here's what's interesting: even ninety years later, the memory of Holodomor remains one of the most powerful foundations of Ukrainian national identity. Moreover, not only in those regions that suffered most. The trauma of collective starvation became part of the cultural code of the entire nation. No propaganda, no attempts to rewrite history, no economic ties could erase this memory.

Furthermore: this very trauma became the primary antibody against Russian propaganda. When in 2013-2014 the Kremlin tried to convince Ukrainians of the necessity of a Eurasian choice, appeals to Holodomor instantly destroyed any arguments about "common history" and "brotherly peoples." Trauma proved stronger than economic interests, stronger than linguistic proximity, stronger than family ties.

And now, ninety years later, the Russian state is methodically reproducing the same pattern. Only instead of hunger – cold and darkness. Instead of grain confiscation – destruction of power plants. But the psychological mechanism is identical: creating conditions under which physical survival becomes a daily challenge.

The difference is only one: Holodomor was attempted to be concealed, denied, erased from history. Strikes on the energy system occur in real time, with video recordings, with witnesses in every family, with documentation of every case. This trauma will be recorded in far greater detail, preserved in far greater quantities of personal testimonies.

The Error of Scale

The most astonishing thing about this situation is not the strategy of terrorizing civilian populations itself. The history of wars is replete with such examples. What's astonishing is the complete absence of strategic analysis of long-term consequences.

Russian leadership appears to think exclusively in categories of the current military campaign. Break the will to resist. Ensure advantageous positions in negotiations. Complicate Ukrainian armed forces logistics. These are all reasonable tactical goals. But they fail to account for a simple fact: war will end someday. But what is being embedded in the collective memory of the population will remain forever.

Even assuming the most optimistic (for Russia) scenario – Ukraine's capitulation, establishment of a friendly regime, economic integration – what then? How do you build long-term relations with a population that has a reflex-level association "Russians = those who froze my children in winter"?

History knows examples of successful reconciliation after brutal wars. Germany and France after World War II. Japan and the United States. But in all these cases there was a critically important element: the aggressor acknowledged guilt, went through denazification or demilitarization, publicly renounced the ideology that led to conflict.

It's hard to imagine a scenario in which the Russian state acknowledges the terror of civilian populations as a mistake. Most likely, on the contrary – these actions will be justified as forced necessity, as a response to security threats, as legitimate warfare tactics. And this means the trauma will not be processed, will not be worked through at the level of collective therapy.

Instead, it will be preserved and deepened with each attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

Culture of Enmity as Heritage

What is happening now is not simply a deterioration of relations between two states. This is the formation of a culture of hostility that will become part of an entire generation's identity.

For a child who froze in a cold apartment this winter, hatred of Russia will not be an ideological position. It will be part of personal history, inseparable from childhood memories. Just as the generation that survived Holodomor could not perceive Soviet power neutrally, regardless of their political views.

This hatred will be transmitted through family stories. Parents will tell children how they tried to preserve warmth, how they sat in shelters, how they listened to explosions. These stories will become part of family mythology, shaping perceptions of Russia in subsequent generations.

No propaganda can rewrite this. Because personal experience is always stronger than official narrative. A person may not trust politicians, may be critical of media, may doubt government rhetoric. But they trust their own memory. They trust their parents' stories.

In cultures that have experienced mass trauma, the phenomenon of "duty of memory" emerges. To forget becomes an act of betrayal – betrayal of those who suffered, betrayal of one's own experience. To renounce hatred means to diminish the significance of what was endured. Therefore, this hatred will not be something people want to get rid of. On the contrary, it will become a marker of moral choice, a symbol of fidelity to one's history.

Geopolitical Catastrophe

From the perspective of Russia's long-term geopolitical interests, creating this type of hostility in a neighboring state is a strategic catastrophe.

Even if Russia achieves all its military objectives, it will have on its border not a neutral country, not an ally, not even an ordinary adversary. It will have a population with survival trauma, for whom hostility toward Russia will become part of cultural identity.

This means a constant security threat along the entire length of the border. This means the necessity of maintaining enormous forces to control territory. This means the impossibility of economic integration, because any attempts at economic cooperation will be perceived by the population as betrayal of national interests.

This means that every internal political conflict in Russia will have a hostile population across the border, ready to support any forces directed against the Russian state. This means that any weakness of Russia in the international arena will be instantly used by Ukraine for revenge.

History shows: states that use terror of civilian populations as a policy instrument rarely achieve long-term success. Short-term advantage turns into decades of hostility that make any constructive coexistence impossible.

The Roman Empire understood this after suppressing the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judea. Such brutal repression created such deep trauma that the Jewish diaspora maintained hostility toward Rome for centuries after the empire's fall. The Ottoman Empire created a similar problem in the Balkans. The Soviet Union – in the Baltic countries.

In each of these cases, short-term control over territory turned into long-term impossibility of integrating the population, a permanent center of resistance that exploded at the first opportunity.

Questions Without Answers

The biggest mystery in this situation is whether Russian strategists understand this.

There are three possible explanations.

First: they don't understand the psychology of collective trauma. Perhaps the people making decisions are simply unfamiliar with basic concepts of post-traumatic stress disorder, intergenerational transmission of trauma, formation of traumatic identity. This seems incredible for a modern state with powerful analytical resources. But if we recall the Soviet tradition of ignoring psychology and sociology as "bourgeois pseudosciences," perhaps this knowledge gap has been preserved.

Second: they understand but don't consider it relevant. Perhaps the time horizon of their planning is limited to a few years. Achieve tactical goals now, and we'll see what happens. This is typical logic of authoritarian regimes, where leadership's personal survival is more important than the state's long-term interests.

Third: they understand and consider it an acceptable price. Perhaps in their logic, a hostile population across the border is a smaller problem than a lost war. Perhaps they're counting on such complete control that population opinion won't matter. Perhaps they simply aren't planning peaceful coexistence and are building permanent conflict into long-term perspective.

The most terrifying fourth explanation: they consciously create this hostility because an external enemy is needed for internal mobilization. A population with survival trauma is guaranteed to remain an enemy, and this means constant justification for militarization, repression, isolation. From this point of view, creating hatred is not a mistake but an investment in maintaining the regime.

Whichever of these explanations is correct, the result is the same: before our eyes, a region with built-in conflict is being formed that will make peaceful coexistence impossible for generations to come.

Irreversibility Already Now

The saddest thing about this story is that the process is already irreversible.

Even if the war ended tomorrow, even if new Russian leadership came that publicly apologized for terror of civilian populations, even if a program of reparations and reconstruction began – the trauma is already embedded. Memories of cold winters, of children in dark apartments, of wailing sirens have already become part of millions of people's personal histories.

These people may be able to forgive. But they won't be able to forget. And their children will inherit these stories as part of family memory. Fifty years from now, when direct witnesses are gone, these memories will transform into cultural myth that will be even stronger than personal impressions.

The Kremlin has resolved the question "Why do you hate us?" in the most radical way possible. It has provided an exhaustive answer, recorded in the bodily memory of an entire generation. An answer that cannot be erased by any propaganda, any diplomacy, any economic integration.

This is not a miscalculation. This is a systemic catastrophe of strategic thinking that will transform short-term military advantage into long-term geopolitical curse. And the worst part is that this curse has already begun to work.