From: Sergey Tymchenko (Kyiv)
This is not a mistake.
Explains Yulia “Taira”, a well-known paramedic, psychologist, and President of the Mutokukai-Ukraine Aikido Federation who was held captive by Russian troops for three months.
“This is not chaos. It is a system.
From the point of view of modern military psychology, Russia’s actions are a classic strategy of total psycho-terror. Their goal is not just to win physically. Their goal is to destroy and break us as a collective personality.
It works like this:
Systemic violence = attack on identity
Torture, shelling, and attacks on hospitals and schools are not mistakes. This is a technology of erasing subjectivity.
In psychology, this is called a dehumanizing practice: the victim is devalued, silenced, and forced to betray himself or herself in order to turn him or her into an object.
- Shelling is massive violence against the psyche
It is not just about fear. It is an attempt to install:
- learned helplessness (“nothing makes sense”),
- trauma of the future (“there is nothing to save”),
- loss of horizons (“it will never be different”).
This is a form of large-scale psychological control.
- Captivity is a laboratory of terror
I saw it personally.
They did not want to “disclose information”.
They wanted us to betray ourselves.
To shout what they say.
To feel empty, without voice, without meaning.
But even at the darkest point, you can resist – with your breath, with a word, with a look, with irony…”
———
When I read this advice from a person like Taira, I imagine a strong samurai in captivity who, with her breath, words, look, and irony, resists the psychological terror of her powerful enemy.
And then I think of Jesus, who resisted the total psychological terror of hell itself. With his human breath, his word, his look, his irony… and his love and compassion for all those suffering.
Jesus was the perfect Samurai, the perfect Sufferer, and the perfect Victor. And this is not a mistake: with him, I can withstand the enemy’s total psycho-terror.
Thank you, Taira, for your advice.
P.S. The link to Tara’s post
Voice of Ukraine 