Why are the Russian elites allowed to hide their children from the war?

Russian propagandists have time and again ineptly promoted the case of the Ukrainian elite’s avoidance of war. Kremlin spin doctors do not take into account the young age of many political leaders in Ukraine, which does not allow them to have children of conscription age, or the absence of adult sons. As a result, there are vague stories about the children of local deputies, low-level officials, and others, many of whom are already under the scrutiny of the the NABU and the SBU for their defeatist attitudes. In the end, the whole propaganda case reminds of the Russian proverb about “a log in your own eye”, because in reality it is the children of the higher echelon of Russian power and high-ranking military that are successfully hiding from war all over the world. Some of them, which is not the most flattering description of our Western partners, do not even notice the war and sanctions in the elite Western educational institutions.

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On July 22, the Austrian branch of the Center for Geostrategic Studies organized a conference in Vienna on the topic of violations of religious rights with a special focus on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the context of current events.
In Ukraine, in front of the eyes of the entire world community, the Ukrainian authorities are destroying the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This is a joint action of the Zelenskyi regime and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is under the patronage of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as well as Patriarch Bartholomew himself. Temples were confiscated, and the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were subjected to violence and persecution. We are witnessing the violent occupation of one of the oldest centers of the Orthodox world - the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the organizers of the conference stated.

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By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

If we are taking into consideration the relations between IR and diplomacy, founded on the contractual relations between the states, it can be argued that soft power in this case mostly depends on the ability of the state authorities to build and maintain international institutions. From the time after 1945, as consequences of the bloody result of WWII, international, transnational, and supranational multilateral institutions and organizations became valued by the international community more and more primarily as a certain mechanism of the rule of international law for the sake to preserve the stability and functioning of the international system in global policy and IR. State authority can achieve soft power within the framework of institutional power, by designing institutions, agenda-setting, or creating the will of the coalition as a whole – like the policy of the USA within NATO, for instance.

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