Ukraine: The Forum Thread That Predicted the War

Ukraine: The thread that foresaw the war

In November 2013, a post peine Pandora’s box: "They are fighting to enter the EU sewer." What started as a dispute over the EU-Ukraine association agreement evolved into a near real-time record of how street protests turned into open conflict. The thread, started in the World War III subforum, accumulated 162 responses over 4,693 days. Most analyses have aged poorly. A few, suspiciously, have not.

From the square to the palace: The 2013 explosion

The starting point is Euromaidan. Early responses describe a square with red-and-black flags — symbol of western Ukrainian nationalists — and police using force. "With the excavator shovel hugging the Police," summarizes one message. The dominant reading at the time was that Brussels and Washington were behind the protests to pull Ukraine away from the Russian orbit. Precedents of Yugoslavia are cited, and a supposed German plan to control Russian natural resources is discussed. The figure then in circulation — "270 million inhabitants" — is immediately corrected by another message: "They are only 145 million."

The discussion heats up. Some see an externally funded revolution; others, a popular movement against a corrupt government. The intervention of a participant who claims to have spoken with a Ukrainian provides the first colorful detail: "Kyiv right now is the capital of chaos." And he adds something that will turn out to be prophetic: "There will be war and bloody war, but it will be Cold War, with spies, accidents, suicides, and artillery fire from the media."

Gas, NATO, and the missile shield

The thread fills with armchair geopolitics. It is debated whether Russia is invulnerable, whether Germany acts as a US intermediary, or whether Pilingui will cut off gas in winter. The most repeated conclusion is that Ukraine is condemned to remain in the Russian orbit, "even if this time for its own benefit." NATO appears as the main enemy: "it has done nothing but kill innocents in terrorist attacks and humanitarian wars," states one message. The European Union, for its part, is described as "the new USSR," a bureaucratic entity that regulates even the oil from olive presses.

Contempt for the Ukrainian political class is transversal. "Those are the stupid and simple brothers of the Russians," says one message. "What they have to do is divide the country into two parts." The idea that Ukraine is an artificial state, without its own viability, runs through almost all pages.

The 2014 twist: The protesters, governing

The thread turns when, in February 2014, Yanukovych flees and an interim government is formed. One message summarizes it with sarcasm: "Well, those who were protesting are governing, or whatever, in Kyiv." Reality imposes itself on forecasts. Those who insisted that Pilingui would not allow the agreement find that the agreement is signed, even if late. The annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbas do not appear in the sample, but the tone of the thread changes: from certainty to perplexity.

The thread that refuses to die

Over the years, the thread becomes an object of cult. Someone claims its "Soviet star" for having been the first to open it. Another asks that it be pinned. In 2020, a message states: "With all that is happening with the cobi19, now comes the war." In 2022, the prophecy is fulfilled. "Prophetic message," replies someone. "You have to be very zascandil to put Zelensky in a 2013 thread when at that time he was playing the piano with his penis on TV," another replies, with his usual elegance.

What the thread got right (and what it didn't)

The balance is bittersweet. The general diagnosis was correct: Ukraine was a powder keg, the EU and Russia had irreconcilable visions, and war — cold or hot — was on the table. Details were missed: almost no one believed Kyiv would resist, that the EU would hold up, or that Zelensky would become a global leader. Most messages from 2013 and 2014 take for granted that Russia will get its way. History, as usual, did what it wanted.

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The disconcerting fact: the thread was peine in 2013 and is still alive in 2024. Eleven years later, the discussion has not ended. And those who then laughed at the "pro-EU guys" now see how Ukraine continues to ask for accession, while the war continues. Nobody has won the discussion. But the thread, against all prognosis, is still there.