The Karpman Triangle concept presents an intriguing model from which to analyze the West-Ukraine-Russia relationship but it’s imperfect and has some limitations. The benefits are that it can frame their ties in a way that draws attention to the psychopathy (in this sense of the word, the psychological problems) influencing Kiev’s leadership, which also represents that of those in society at large that support those ethno-fascist authorities’ interpretation of events.

Applying that Triangle to this example, Kiev does indeed consider itself to be the Victim, Russia the Persecutor, and the West the Rescuer. In a sense, though, Russia also somewhat conceives of itself as the Rescuer to an extent while the West arguably functions as the Persecutor despite not acknowledging this nor having Kiev react to it as though it was. The point is that each actor’s role can change depending upon which of their perspectives one approaches this model from, which can also change with time too.

For example, while one might be inclined to approach their relationship from Kiev’s perspective as explained in the preceding paragraph, the reality is a bit more complicated. The US is actually using Kiev as a Persecutor against Russia through its secret support of its proxy’s Weapons of Mass Destruction programs, amplification of ethno-fascist narratives throughout that former Soviet Republic’s society, and clandestine establishment of NATO bases, all of which President Putin previously warned about.

These all objectively serve the purpose of threatening Russia’s national security interests. Nevertheless, the “politically correct” narrative being spun by the US-led Western Mainstream Media is that Russia is the Persecutor of Kiev for supposedly “imperialist” reasons while the West is the Rescuer in the traditional sense. This interpretation is based on the false perception that Kiev supposedly poses no threat to Russia whatsoever, nor does the West, and in particular NATO’s collaboration with Kiev.

The commencement of Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine facilitated the US-led West’s efforts to present it as the Persecutor due to the optics involved and Moscow’s strategic communications shortcomings in inadequately conveying its national security interests to the world. This perception is being massively amplified to encourage the US’ other vassals outside of Europe such as Australia and Japan to support its so-called “Rescuer” role by at the very least sanctioning Russia.

From this thought experiment of applying the Karpman Triangle to the Ukrainian Conflict’s top three participants, observers should be able to naturally conclude that there are many psychological dimensions to all of this. That in turn might awaken them to the “politically inconvenient” fact that there’s plenty of narrative manipulation occurring in order to influence the global audience’s stance towards this conflict.

It should be acknowledged that all parties in a conflict engage in perception management and have always done so since time eternal, but the present state of affairs is such that the US-led West incontestably exerts narrative – and therefore psychological—dominance in this example. They’re the ones that are most successfully influencing global perceptions, though they’re doing so not by accurately portraying the conflict but by deliberately misportraying it in order to trigger certain reactions.

The more emotional, the better, since those leave the longest-lasting impression on their audience. Once the facts are revealed to these same individuals such as those which have been emerging about the Snake Island psy-op, the Bucha incident, and other such examples, they’re already preconditioned to doubt them. That makes it less likely that they’ll ever countenance reconceptualizing the conflict’s dynamics and the relationship between the three primary actors.

To return back to the Karpman Triangle, those who were initially subjected to extremely intense information warfare operations aimed at convincing them that Russia is the Persecutor, Kiev the Victim, and the West the Rescuer will likely continue to believe that they’ll always play those roles no matter what. The targeted audience will then reject contrarian facts since they provoke cognitive dissonance, thereby enabling the US-led West to retain its narrative-psychological dominance over them.

They preemptively thwart Russia’s truth-telling efforts by labeling everything that it says as fake news, including those non-Russians who either share the same facts or interpretations of whatever it might be. That’s a “defensive” tactic aimed at reinforcing their narrative-psychological offensive operations against their targeted audience, which ironically happens to mostly be their own Western people more so than others.

These tricks don’t work as effectively on non-Western audiences since many have learned first-hand that the US-led West lies, manipulates, and engages in acts of ultra-violent unprovoked aggression driven by the intent to impose its hegemony onto all others. They’re therefore preconditioned in their own way from personal experience not to blindly believe whatever the West says, especially not to immediately dismiss anything that Russia says as so-called fake news.

This observation can most effectively be put to use by Russia if it refocuses its strategic communications on the non-Western audience across the Global South after having its publicly financed international media like RT and Sputnik censored in most of the West. The average Westerner is practically incapable of ever recovering from the incessant narrative-psychological operations that they’re exposed to by their governments and their media allies, yet the non-West is much more open-minded and neutral.

The Global South is therefore the real cognitive battleground so to speak of the New Cold War, not the West or Russia. That’s because most of the governments representing this majority of humanity mostly practice a policy of principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict. Even those that were pressured by the US-led West into voting against Russia at the UN usually don’t end up following through by sanctioning it since doing so would be contrary to their national interests.

The US-led West and Russia are therefore competing for the hearts and minds of the non-Western audience, who will either continue supporting their governments’ principled neutrality like Moscow would prefer or potentially start plotting Color Revolutions against them on whatever pretext it may be (including the external exacerbation of preexisting socio-economic and political differences) as Washington’s form of proxy war punishment for their independent policy.

Excerpts from Korybko’s commentary were first published at PolitRus in their article titled “Американский политолог Корыбко: Россия, Украина и Запад меняются ролями в треугольнике Карпмана”.