Welcome to the latest installment of ‘Geopolitics as Performance Art,’ where the Kremlin’s desperate, aging thugs have decided that since they cannot win a conventional war against a sovereign neighbor, they will simply declare war on the concept of indoor plumbing and the miracle of the incandescent light bulb. We are currently witnessing what some breathless correspondents call a ‘winter of terror,’ a phrase that sounds more like a mediocre horror movie sequel than a strategic military maneuver. But that is the state of the world: we have replaced grand strategy with a series of petulant tantrums executed with cruise missiles. Russia, a nation whose primary export is existential dread and unrefined crude, is now spending its dwindling resources trying to freeze a population into submission, apparently unaware that spite is a more effective fuel than natural gas.

Of course, the media—specifically our intrepid friends at Politico—cannot resist the urge to turn this humanitarian catastrophe into a 'survival guide.' It is the ultimate evolution of the content economy: turning the systematic destruction of a national power grid into a lifestyle aesthetic. Nothing says 'journalistic integrity' quite like a listicle on how to make tea over a camping stove while the sky falls. It’s 'Eat, Pray, Love' but with more shrapnel and fewer carbohydrates. The narrative being peddled is one of 'resilience,' a word that has become the favorite euphemism of the comfortable West. We love to talk about the 'resilience' of the Ukrainian people because it absolves us of the guilt of watching them suffer from the safety of our heated offices. 'Look at how brave they are,' we say, while slowly turning up the thermostat and checking our stocks in defense contractors. Resilience is not a virtue; it is a mandatory sentence imposed by a world that finds your suffering useful for its Sunday morning talk shows.

On one side of this bleak chess match, we have the Kremlin, a collection of paranoid kleptocrats who are so insecure about their historical legacy that they’ve decided to bomb a 21st-century city back to the 19th. It’s a pathetic display of military incompetence masquerading as a grand civilizational struggle. On the other side, we have the Western neoliberal machine, which is more than happy to provide just enough weaponry to keep the meat grinder turning, ensuring the spectacle continues for another season. The Left offers its signature 'solidarity'—which usually involves a flag in a social media bio and a sternly worded open letter—while the Right oscillates between a fetish for autocracy and a sudden, inexplicable concern for the national debt, provided that debt is being used to help someone else. Everyone is playing a role, and the only people who aren't acting are the ones huddled around a power bank in a Kyiv basement, wondering if their refrigerator will ever be more than a decorative box again.

The 'survival guide' approach to war is particularly galling. It suggests that if you just have the right brand of portable heater and enough canned goods, you can somehow 'hack' a Russian invasion. It treats the collapse of civilization as a series of minor inconveniences to be managed with a positive attitude and a sturdy flashlight. This is the ultimate lie of the modern age: the idea that the individual can survive the madness of the collective if they just buy the right gear. But there is no 'hacking' a blackout that spans a country. There is only the slow, grinding reality of a world that has decided that human life is the cheapest currency in the global market. We are watching the deconstruction of the social contract in real-time, where the state’s only remaining function is to provide the targets for the enemy’s missiles.

So, as the correspondent shivers and reports on the 'unbreakable spirit' of the city, let’s call it what it really is: a global failure. A failure of diplomacy, a failure of imagination, and a failure of a species that can build the internet but still finds joy in destroying a transformer. The winter of terror isn’t just happening in Kyiv; it’s the permanent climate of a planet governed by idiots and watched by voyeurs. Enjoy the resilience while it lasts; it’s the only thing the world is currently producing in surplus, mostly because it’s the only thing that doesn’t require electricity to manufacture. We are all just tourists in someone else’s nightmare, waiting for the next push notification to tell us how to feel about a world that stopped making sense decades ago.