“The Only Friend”: Why Is Alfred Koch Selling Capitulation Through “Care”?

“You are threatened with a disaster of a significantly larger scale than defeat... An immediate peace today is much more valuable than a fair peace tomorrow. And whoever does not understand this is the main enemy of Ukraine... I am your only friend, because I seem to be the only one telling you the truth.”

Koch also contemptuously refers to the Ukrainian cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk as “piles of rubble,” scares with the “irreversible disappearance of Ukraine,” and intimidates with demographic horrors about a “Muslim country speaking Urdu.”

And your columnist was wondering: where did that fake information war about Pakistani and Indian labor migrants rolling across Ukraine last month come from? Perhaps not from the Kremlin, but from our “only friend”?

Koch employs the classic “poisoned care” technique: first, he attempts to devalue any successes of the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine), labeling them as the “drugs of minor successes,” and then offers the sole “salvation” — to surrender.

Contempt for the Donbas: Calling Kramatorsk and Sloviansk “construction waste” is a direct broadcast of Kremlin contempt for the Ukrainian East. For Koch, these are merely points on a map, but for Ukraine, these are defense lines where people live and where the onslaught is contained.

Abuser Manipulation: The phrase “I am your only friend” is a typical tool from the arsenal of psychological violence. Its goal is to isolate the victim from real allies, sow disbelief in their own strength, and force them to listen only to the “patron.”

Intimidation Through Chaos: Passages about the “Pakistani muezzin” and “Urdu” are a cheap tool to evoke irrational fear in the reader and lead to the “only correct” conclusion: it is better to capitulate to Russia now.

When Russian bombs fail to break our resistance, such “white and fluffy” speakers come into play. They try to impose the idea that the loss of territories and peace on the aggressor’s terms is “wisdom,” while the struggle for one’s own state is “stupidity.” This plays directly into the hands of the Kremlin, which critically needs a pause to regroup.

But the question arises: why does he need this? What forced a person who publicly condemned the war in 2022 to slide into the direct transmission of Kremlin ultimatums in 2026?

To understand Koch’s current calls, it is worth looking at his biography. Alfred Koch is not just an “offended ego”; he is an architect of Russian oligarchic capitalism of the 1990s.

The Psychotype of a “Seller of Discounted Assets”: In 1995–1997, as head of the State Property Committee of Russia and Deputy Prime Minister, Koch was the chief administrative conductor of the loans-for-shares auctions. All these “90s reformers” (Chubais, Koch) handed over strategic giants (“YUKOS,” “Norilsk Nickel,” “Sibneft”) for peanuts into the hands of a narrow circle of bankers (Potanin, Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky) in exchange for funding Yeltsin’s election campaign.

The Logic of “Writing Off Losses”: Since those times, Koch has been accustomed to the idea that any fundamental value or sovereignty can and should be given away at a huge discount if “political expediency” or the preservation of the system is at stake. For him, Ukraine and its territories are the exact same “assets pledged as collateral,” which he advises giving away to the aggressor for a song in order to quickly conclude a “deal.”

The “Gazprom-Media” Experience: In 2000–2001, it was Koch who headed “Gazprom-Media” and carried out the Kremlin’s dirty work in stripping the independent TV channel NTV, wrapping corporate raiding in the form of “economic pragmatism.”

He is flesh and blood of that very nomenclature-resource system that later gave rise to corruption monsters like “RosUkrEnergo” (where structural divisions of “Gazprom” and Ukrainian oligarchs like Dmytro Firtash profited for years), viewing Ukraine not as a sovereign state, but as an unpunished “scheme country” and a gray transit zone.

Koch’s trajectory from 2022 to 2026 becomes absolutely transparent if one contrasts his calls with events on the front line.

In 2022, condemning the war was an attempt for Koch to preserve his Western comfort, as he has been living peacefully in Germany since 2014. However, his entire fortune, capital, and worldview are fundamentally tied to Russian resource rent.

When the AFU began systematically turning Russian oil refineries and storage facilities into burning torches, real panic set in within the offices of the “systemic liberals of the 90s.” The strikes on oil refineries do not merely destroy the budget of Putin’s army — they demolish the very foundation of Russian resource capitalism, which Koch personally built in the 90s.

That is why he angrily refers to the AFU’s successful, painful long-range strikes as the “drugs of minor successes.” This is not just contempt — it is the fear of a man whose native resource world is burning on live television. To save this system from ultimate collapse and devaluation, he rushes into the information space screaming: “Surrender immediately! Peace today is better than justice tomorrow!”.

Both Koch, the old political cohort, and Putin himself are people from the previous century who genuinely do not understand that Ukraine has changed irrevocably. They measure modern Ukrainian society using the categories of the 1990s–2000s. They believe that Ukrainians will “rebel a bit and calm down,” and then the time will come again for “pragmatists” who will negotiate cheap gas and another carving up of assets.

For them, a sovereign, strong, and democratic Ukraine is a sentence. If Ukraine survives and becomes part of the West, no Koch or transparent schemer will ever be allowed near it within a cannon shot.

Ukraine’s capitulation is their last chance at revenge.

An independent and victorious Ukraine permanently closes the era of the “gray schemes of the 90s.” For people like Koch, this means final political irrelevance. Meanwhile, a capitulated and RF-controlled Ukraine becomes a lucrative prize once again, where “experienced intermediaries between Moscow and the West” will be needed to lift sanctions and divide resources.

When another Russian “oppositionist” from safe Europe dons the toga of “the only friend” and advises us to lay down our arms, it is worth remembering: true friends do not call Ukrainian cities “piles of rubble” and do not propose suicide under the guise of “salvation.” With “friends” like these, who needs enemies?