Up until the beginning of the referendum campaign to determine whether Ukraine would be absorbed by Russia, nobody outside of the University of Zaporizhzhia knew who Dr Fyodor Milichenko was. The people that knew him best, his colleagues at the university, knew him to be an opinionated man whose opinions tended to represent the fringes of public opinion. During faculty meetings he railed against the Euro Zone as an imperialist plot and decried NATO as American intrusion into Europe. His strongest opinions were reserved for Russian expansion into Eastern Europe. His belief was that, in the face of Russian expansionism, Ukraine faced two choices: submit to Russia or fight a war in which it would have no allies and was doomed to lose. 'Ukrainian sovereignty is not worth the lives of millions of innocent Ukrainians,' was his argument to those who would listen to him. Members of the geopolitical intelligentsia derided and dismissed Fyodor as a pro-Russia, anti-globalist crackpot, but there were many more outside of the esoteric sphere of the pundit class who, when they listened Fyodor, believed that he was talking perfect sense. Television and radio shows that featured the host engaging with the public through social media messages and telephone calls saw a marked increase in the number of members of the public who were citing Dr Milichenko as their reason for adopting the position that they held. Soon Dr Milichenko found requests for him to appear as a panelist on various TV news programs increasing, and with his higher profile came more fans. To connect with them he created various social media accounts and started posting videos on YouTube. The response he got was incredible. He posted his first video on YouTube on the ways in which central banks manipulate markets to benefit politicians and private capital groups and within twenty four hours the video had gotten 500 000 views and there were over a thousand comments that had been posted, most in agreement with his views but some who, again, criticized him as a crackpot, though they were pounced upon by the others as unthinking liberals whose minds Dr Milichenko's ideas were beyond. Wanting to get to know his fans on a more personal level, Fyodor went on tour, giving speeches to sold out theatres and lecture halls, speeches that were followed by Q&A sessions where individuals who asked questions that revealed their opposition to Dr Milichenko and his views found themselves targeted by the rest of the crowd and shouted down. When Dr Milichenko's supporters were asked why they were so fervent in their support for him, they pointed to his PhD in Economics that he'd earned from the London School of Economics and the three years that he'd spent at the World Bank as being evidence of his superior intellect, but more than anything else it was his fearlessness in taking on people who blindly and mindlessly advocated for whatever the prevailing politically correct view was on any given issue. During his numerous appearances on TV and radio shows he routinely got into heated confrontations with liberal intellectuals who, according to his fans, he either SLAYED or DESTROYED. The issues that he discussed covered everything ranging from the ineffectuality of foreign aid (All we're doing is creating dependants, which isn't good for anybody) to immigration (Of course people who don't respect your borders also don't respect your way of life) to gender identity (Gender is a biological fact of life!) to freedom of speech (Our ability to communicate with each other is under siege from the radical politically correct left) to religion (We wouldn't have western society without Christian values). Because of the wide range of issues he addressed his fan base grew larger and larger, prompting Penbrook Publishers to offer him a $3 million book deal. Fyodor's book, 10 Steps Up The Mountain: A Guide To Personal Prosperity, was published to scathing reviews, with critics labeling it nothing more than an exercise in stretching a series of shopworn platitudes to their absolute limit for the purpose of generating 300 pages worth of publishable content. Fyodor's ten steps were as follows:

Look people in the eye. Looking in first will allow you to see more when you look out. If you can't articulate your reasons for doing what you are doing, do something else. Order is the foundation of all that is meaningful. Rules are the foundation of order. Treat that which is a cancer as a cancer and excise it. To deviate from your goals is to betray your future self. Recognize what works and what doesn't work. Embrace the former, reject the latter. Lift with your legs, not your back. Don't throw away the fat and the bones.

In addition to criticizing the book for its thinness of substance, reviewers were universally baffled by Fyodor's decision to write a self-help book given that he was an economist, not a psychologist. But Fyodor knew who he was writing for, and he was vindicated when 10 steps instantly became an international bestseller.