5 March 2052

“The winter has been tough. Again. Dark, dark, and dark. Not quite as freezing cold as in my childhood but much more wind and snow – melting and freezing, over and over again. No relief to darkness on these latitudes.

One year to go to the centennial anniversary of the death of our greatest Leader of all times, The Man of Steel. A super occasion to elevate our national sentiment that we cannot miss. And start bringing back the holy imperium!

My popularity needs a booster, and our neighbors keep sliding towards the west and east. Many of them not really neighbors though, but parts of the imperium. 

Time to act.”

8 March 2052

“A special pain in the neck over the past three decades has been our historical province in the southwest. Keeps pretending to be a nation. Three decades ago, we failed to gain the full control over it. 

Those days, I was a junior officer at our secret service.

This time we will not do it again, no failures. Our official story of the events three decades back is a great victory and therefore absolutely no using the word revenge allowed now.”

31 March 2052

“Our last night talks at the cabinet of the Akademiya Nauk were enlightening. Sasha pointed out that our scientific and technological achievements need a major showcase. Not just internationally, but more importantly, domestically. The latter works better and will be more credible given our elevated media control. 

Cautious with Sasha. He, the Science Academy President, may have something going on with high-tech businesses and startups that are anyway not really on my side, but rather the other way round. Guess they would rather see Dr. Razrabotka replace my gang and lead the country.

This underlines that I need a tech booster to my reputation to survive in this position. More than ever.

After some vodka, our first female minister in history, Xenia, went on by revealing that her Khimikomplex corporation has hacked one of the two spearheading Chinese climate engineering corporations, RainStar. Now Xenia calls her novel ‘innovation’ as DozhdyaPlyus technology, and it would allow causing massive changes in rainfall patterns over the spatial scale of 500 km and over some weeks. The cloud seeding approach, also factually from RainStar, but officially developed by our most brilliant young scientists at the Akademiya, is based on using passenger planes and is virtually unobservable.  

Xenia went on by saying that for our SW neighbor, summer droughts could be made worse – depending of course on the actual weather conditions – most likely enough to destroy much of the wheat yield of the eastern and central parts of the country. Forests and steppes would also become dry enough to cause an elevated fire hazard risk. 

Forest and steppe fires have become much more severe in recent times, indeed, and this gives us a chance to develop new ways for mass destruction.

Sasha was suspicious. He dared to say it. He said that our most important farming areas would flood then. And climate forecasts are too much about the mean; extremes are the ones that count on hazards such as fires.

We let him speak. Nobody reacted though. Maybe he wants to rival now, don’t know. Careful with him.

I came to the brilliant idea that as our dams can control the inflows of the Dnieper River that flows through their so-called capital, we’ll be equipped to flood that city. No-one responded, perhaps that means yes. Obviously so.

Good ideas, but this is not enough. 

What is to be done?”

3 May 2052

“The military and the Telekommunikatsii department are on my side. This became evident at the parades and other festivities for the 1 Maja. 

One thing is clear; we should not repeat what was done 30 years back. Now the extreme drought should dry up the landscape and deter the harvest. With our flamethrower and fuel spray drone attacks, we could then turn the landscape into a massive fireplace. Thermoballistic weapon technology extended to large-scale aerial dimensions. Fantastic!

Telecommunications could be hacked, and the military would have an easy job in taking the stage after the fires. The capital and downstream river shores would be heavily flooded, cutting escape routes.

Let’s go with that. 

But before, Xenia needs to be eliminated. Piotr from the 28 Northern Army Brigade already has pinched and renamed the DozhdyaPlyus technology to Laika and Xenia can go. Sasha is now more on the cloud service side as he did not survive from the car accident last week.”

5 May 2053

“This is the day. 100 years have gone since the demise of the Leader, Vozhd. I declared this morning our SW neighbor as an inseparable part of the Federation. From this day on, I am to be called Pozharin, the Man of Fire. 

Khorosho. The roadmap and the schedule for the next four months are set. Only three people share them. Piotr from the Army and Vova from Telekommunikatsii. Must count on them. To kindly foster their loyalty, they have been well enough informed on what happened to Xenia, Sasha, and others. Rest in peace.”

15 July 2053

“This is the anniversary of the death of Vladimir I The Great, the Ruler of Kievan Rus’ over a thousand years ago. Saint Vladimir to me and to many other patriots. 

Today his hometown, our holy town, will be liberated from fascists and the celebration will be seen even from the moon as a massive fire. The Pozharin will be remembered after a millennium from this. Igor Pozharin. The saint of our era, the one who returned the Imperium!”

25 July 2053

“The summer has been stormier than our Hidrometcentr told me in early June. They did not talk much about storms whatsoever! Should have looked more at some of the web services. A few storms poured down much more water than what they usually get over the whole summer. 

The fires broke up but did not destroy much. On the top, a bulk of drones was eliminated by blocking their remote controls; some even turned back to our side, attacking our bases. Some did not start at all.

Damn. The seeding was noticed by our enemies by laser-radar microsatellites, and even by several commercial operators. RainStar knew all the way about our project, and, together with volunteer hackers, reprogrammed and paralyzed our equipment. 

The RainStar corporation used this thing crudely as an externally paid marketing campaign to make their brand better known, and to boost their corporate responsibility image. Their market share got a good boost. They are obviously gaining market leadership in their stronghold, Asia-Pacific, and may get new customers in North America and Europe, if those regions still have clients that are sufficiently affluent and technically proficient for that. 

The preparations of the enemy were well in place on the ground and that’s it. Ahead of us, again! Blame on our academic community and technically deferred businesses! And our army does not know what patriotism is about!

We now have floods and a poor harvest. And some of our over-filled dams collapsed.

Our military is doing its best but that is not enough. Piotr is already in Turkey, they say. Should catch him anyway and get rid of him as he gave me faulty advice and did not give me proper feedback! 

Hacking the telecom went as planned but the mess was over in a few days. Vova is still on board. 

This is a damned lonely job. Lonely with no thanks even though I do so much good for others and the whole country.”

JULY 28 - BREAKING FEDERATION NEWS 

A few moments ago, the secret Dacha of Pozharin, was incinerated by a laser satellite attack. The attack was performed by the Domestic Air Force, which had been taken over by General Piotr Petrov, who assumed power in the Federation. 

A member of the Pozharin’s inner circle, Vova Semenov is thought dead after being seen at a private airport in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. After stepping into a local HydroMet institute vehicle, it exploded into the air — potentially from an anti-tank weapon strike. 

Igor’s War lasted two weeks, and no borders were moved.