Russia has lost the war of meaning

By imposing its narrative, Moscow believed it could shape reality. The battlefield ultimately decided otherwise. By Xavier Comtesse

An article available in AGEFI: https://agefi.com/actualites/opinions/la-russie-a-perdu-la-guerre-du-sens

A war is never merely a matter of territory. It is also a battle for the naming of reality. This is the proper object of ontology. And, in this sense, the Russia-Ukraine war is one of the richest and most paradoxical conflicts in contemporary history.

Three main periods can be distinguished.

First, the Kremlin's war of words on the non-nation of Ukraine, the second most powerful army in the world, cyberwarfare, then the soldiers without insignia (little green men of the 2014 invasion of Crimea) and finally the special military operation of February 24, 2022 which was supposed to end in three days.

Then something happened that the Kremlin's strategists hadn't foreseen: reality resisted. Ukrainian cities didn't fall easily, or at all. The ratio of soldiers killed became unbearable (currently four to one against Russia). Internal recruitment was no longer keeping pace (and even foreign recruits weren't making up the difference).

And ultimately, war begins to produce knowledge. Something radically new, intensely concrete, that the whole world now wants to acquire: the know-how of automated warfare, such as aerial, naval, or ground drones . The Ukrainians seem to have mastered this new knowledge particularly well, and even the antagonists in the other war, the Iran-Iraq War, are calling on them to learn.

Having lost the initial battle of rumors, Ukraine then won the battle of operational knowledge. In a way, reality versus fake news. From then on, a completely different kind of power emerged: the power to influence others.

What happened from 2023 onwards is unprecedented in modern military history: a country actively at war becomes the training center for other armies around the world.

Countess Xavier

What has happened since 2023 is unprecedented in modern military history: a country at active war becomes the training center for other armies around the world, including those of its formally better-equipped allies.

What Kyiv is teaching the world is not simply technical. It is an operational philosophy.

First, radical decentralization: giving non-commissioned officers and even soldiers a degree of tactical decision-making power unmatched in conventional armies. Second, rapid adaptation: an enemy that jams your frequency must be countered in hours, not months. Third, innovation comes from makers,startups , and civilian engineers integrated into short decision-making loops.

This three-pronged approach – decentralization, speed, innovation – is precisely what large, bureaucratic Western armies struggle to grasp. Ukraine, driven by existential pressure, invented it out of necessity.

The ontological inversion is total between Ukraine as the object of Russian discourse and this country which becomes a source of meaning for the military worldwide.

The ontology of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict offers several profound lessons for anyone interested in the dynamics of knowledge and power. The first is that controlling the narrative is a powerful but fragile weapon. It can delay the recognition of reality, but not indefinitely.

The second lesson concerns the existential urgency which is the most powerful of cognitive accelerations: military drones were born on the battlefields.

The third lesson emphasizes that the ontology of a conflict is never fixed. It can shift at any moment. In other words: to defeat the one who fabricates falsehoods… you must build truths that everyone wants to possess.

To conclude with this example from the Russo-Ukrainian War, we can note that ontology is a machine for revealing meaning and reading between the lines of battle. When you master this technique, the narrative intensifies, tensions arise, and reality becomes legible and powerful. Victory is near.

By Xavier Comtesse