You are conditioned to believe that killing more people is a better solution than negotiating a compromise. This is despite the fact that it is self-evidently a psychopathic notion. Let me give you a homespun analogy.
I have this week been dealing with an incident where somebody feels their share of a limited income should be increased, due to the amount of work they have put in. Others felt the person was underestimating the amount of work they had also put in. It became quite a difficult discussion. Happily in the end a compromise has been reached that everyone can live with. At no stage did anybody turn to me and say “we should kill them, that will solve it”. (And to anticipate the trolls, no I do not get any income myself from it).
There may be differences of opinion within a village on whether a wind turbine should be built next to it. The matter will be resolved, one way or another. Nobody suggests the answer is to smash anybody into bloody pulp on the ground with bombs and automatic weapons fire.
Yet when the question is whether that village ought to be in Ukraine or in Russia, inflicting horrible, painful death on those who disagree is seen not only as legitimate, but as heroic and noble. Boasts are continually being made by both sides about how many of the “enemy” have been killed, as though they were orcs rather than human beings with their own hopes and dreams, no different to those they are fighting.
I do not wish to understimate the differences between being in Ukraine and being in Russia. But they pale compared to the difference between hundreds of thousands of people being alive, or hundreds of thousands of people being dead. The problem is much more comprehensible when you accept that there are a significant minority of people within Ukraine’s official borders who really do want their district to be in Russia, and in some limited number of eastern localities they are a majority. That is not a Russian invention.
Diplomatic solutions to territorial solutions always end with a certain amount of population movement to areas where people can be with “their” side in perceived greater safety and comfort. The second world war shifted territorial boundaries and moved populations to an incredible degree. Western Ukraine was historically Polish. Western and much of northern Poland was historically German.
The simplistic narrative that the Donbass is Russian is just untrue. Pre 2014 the urban populations in the Donbass were very largely Russian. Urban populations are more visible and easier mobilised. But a substantial minority were Ukrainian, almost all rural. While only a small percentaage of those Donbass Russians come from families settled there pre 1946.
The Crimea is even more difficult. The population was historically majority Tartar – Crimea was within living memory a Muslim land – and the Krim Tatars were deported brutally by Stalin. This is not ancient history. Much of the deportation did not happen until the 1950’s. I cannot understand those who join me in wanting the Chagos Islanders to get their country back, but do not take the same view of the rights of the Krim Tatars.
(The same people tend to dismiss the human rights abuses against the Uighurs. Muslim Central Asia is a serious blind spot for many on the left).
Thankfully, diplomatic channels to Russia through Turkey remain open in the Ukraine war, as witness the recent prisoner exchanges. I am happy to see the British mercenaries back home safe in the UK, not least because now we won’t need to hear any more lies about how they were not mercenaries but new Ukrainians who had permanently settled in Ukraine.
Western powers should have used the limited but real advances made by the Ukrainian military in the last fortnight to reach out to Putin at a point where he might have been persuaded to accept a deal based on the ceasefire lines as they existed in 2021. Instead, they have ramped up the Russophobia another notch and persuaded themselves that the total destruction of the Russian army can be achieved and Putin brought down by a colour revolution.
The grim response from Russia, with mass mobilisation, is all too predictable. I am afraid that the notion that opposition to the draft will see Putin ousted is totally unrealistic. It underestimates the power of nationalist propaganda within Russia, and misreads the national psychology.
It really doesn’t help when the Ukrainians paint swastikas on tanks.
Do you believe that the Russians are propagandised into supporting this war but westerners are not? Here is an interesting experiment you can repeat. Go to google and do a google image search on “Swastikas on Ukrainian tanks”. I get this, and I suspect you will get something very similar:
Google Image Search “Swastikas on Ukrainian Tanks”
The large majority of those images link to articles claiming that the “Z” symbol used by the Russian forces is a (previously unnoticed) Nazi symbol.
The one thing google does not give you is any swastikas on Ukrainian tanks, which is what you asked for.
Now go to yandex.ru and enter an identical image search for “Swastikas on Ukrainian tanks”. This is what I get:
Yandex Image Search “Swastikas on Ukrainian Tanks”
That is a rather strikingly different set of images, is it not?
Now which one looks more like what I asked for?
Crucially, the first two images top left on the yandex search link to the German NTV station report that captured the swastika on the Ukrainian tank which Max Blumenthal had tweeted about. That is what I was searching for, to check on Max’s facts. Google hides this; I have no doubt whatsoever that this is deliberate.
It is also worth noting that while the Google results totally exclude any material about Nazi symbols used by Ukrainian troops in the current conflict, the yandex.ru search does include images from pro-Ukrainian sites that claim to debunk these images, rightly or wrongly.
In other words, while the google search results are highly censored to exclude the Russian viewpoint, the yandex results include pro-Ukrainian viewpoints and appear to be much more what you would expect on a random, uncensored internet search on the subject.
As I said at the start, if you are in the west you are being conditioned to support the war, to at least as great an extent as people are being conditioned to support it in Russia. That little experiment with google is the tip of an iceberg of suppression: on twitter, on facebook, by paypal defunding, and by all of western TV, radio and newspapers.
On any matter relating to any aspect of the Ukraine war, you are seeing one side of a story. Russians are seeing only another side. The space for truth is very limited, as the world crashes into full dystopia.
I might add that the chilling effect is so great that I personally have serious qualms about publishing this article, in case its querying of aspects of the western narrative lead to cancellation of social media and paypal accounts.
Many of my regular readers are annoyed when I point out that Russia is far too weak a country to be a military superpower that can challenge NATO. It has an economy the size of that of Spain or Italy, and a military crippled by corruption. It has an economy that is not only small but woefully undeveloped and reliant on raw commodity export, be it energy, cereal or mineral.
To historians, the most significant thing about Putin may be his failure to develop manufacturing industry at a time when China raced into world manufacturing domination.
What limited military power Russia does command was used very effectively in Syria, where I credit Putin for ending the momentum of Wahabbist jihadi violence, promoted by the USA and Saudi Arabia, that had so traumatised the world for the first two decades of the twenty first century. But those who extrapolated that into a general ability for Russia to counterbalance the USA were very wrong.
For my entire lifetime, the western military industrial complex and its national and NATO functionaries have exaggerated systematically the “Russian threat” in order to justify their own bloated budgets. I have explained this throughout the Ukraine crisis and again and again I have said that Russia does not have the ability to conquer Ukraine – it is therefore utterly ludicrous for NATO propagandists to claim we have to squander fortunes to defend against Russia sweeping through all of western Europe.
What I have always found bitterly amusing is western left-wingers who do the NATO propagandists’ work for them by exaggerating Russian power.
The logical fallacy of western politicians cheering Ukrainian advances around Kharkiv, and in the same time saying that still trillions more need to be spent on defence against Russian invasion by the USA, Germany, France, UK and others, would be obvious to a five year old. Yet peculiarly I don’t believe I have ever seen or heard the fallacy queried in the media.
Putin’s reaction appears to be escalation. The conscription is a huge statement internally which probably does make major military reverse not politically survivable, even for Putin. The proposed referenda in occupied districts also make any backtracking very problematic.
No reasonable person can believe that a time of war and military administration can be adequate conditions for a referendum vote. The situation now is even more extreme than when the Crimea “referendum” was held in 2014. No doubt we would see similarly risible 97% referenda results now. In real life, in a genuinely free vote you would not get 97% on a referendum for free ice cream. Yulia Timoshenko won about 18% of the vote in Crimea in the Ukrainian presidential election of 2010, on a stridently Ukrainian nationalist and pro-western platform.
While I knew the Russian military to be far weaker than we were being told, what is more surprising is the spectacular failures of Russian intelligence services, which were traditionally very good.
The spectacular failure to predict the Ukrainian counterattack around Kharkiv is worth considering. Given the scope and range of modern surveillance techniques available, from satellite, drone and aircraft imagery through computer hacking and communications intercept, that Russia did not pick up the build-up of Ukrainian forces for the north-eastern attack is, in this day and age, very strange.
It follows the massive Russian intelligence failure at the outset of this invasion, where both the strength and morale of Ukrainian forces around Kiev were massively underestimated, as was the attitude to invasion of the Ukrainian people. Vast sums given to the FSB to bribe key Ukrainian politicians and officials proved to be wasted (and the Kremlin believes to a sgnificant extent the funds were purloined by corrupt FSB personnel).
So what is the solution? Borders are not immutable. The borders of sovereign Ukraine only lasted 21 years before Russia annexed Crimea. A Ukrainian victory that retakes Crimea from Russia would involve a long war and a death toll rising into the millions.
There really are – and remember I worked over twenty years in British Foreign Office, six of them in the senior management structure – people in NATO, and in all western governments, who have no problem with the notion of hundreds of thousands of dead people, particularly as they are nearly all Eastern Europeans or Central Asians. They are not even particularly perturbed by the risk the conflict could turn nuclear. They are delighted that the Russian armed forces are being degraded and vast sums pumped into western military budgets. That is worth any number of dead Ukrainians to them.
I do not believe the USA, UK nor NATO has any political will for peace. This is a disaster. The question is whether the economic pain their populations will feel this winter will force the western politicians to consider the negotiating table. This war can only end with at least de facto international recognition of Russian control of Crimea, and with some kind of special status for the Donbass. The alternative is a war so destructive as to bring disaster across the entire world economy, with the possibility of nuclear escalation.
China remains remarkably unassertive on the world stage as it increases its economic dominance. If there were ever a time for China to assert international leadership it is now. There are no signs of such initiative at present.
How many thousands of people is it right to kill for control of Izium? How many millions of people worldwide should plunge into dire need for the same cause?
There is a solution that leaves a free and now much more united Ukraine with the vast majority of the territory it has enjoyed in its very short current existence, and lets go some populations who determinedly do wish to be Russian. People need the courage to say so.
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Is Russia really just a backward primary industry nation? Is it in no way an economic power comparable of our tertiary economic nations – where we have been transitioned to ‘Service’ Industries and financial banking jobs? Why have our sanctions resulted in the rise in the rouble and our self inflicted pain upon our poorest through fuel price rises? Created inflation and the snake oil cure of interest rate rises – long planned and underway well before February 24th this year? Who is benefitting from these plans?
The ability to grow all your own food or trade it; extract and process commodities that can be traded with other countries through their mutual currencies or in kind overrides the process of the Financial Centres and having everything done in $$$. Plus they have space stations !
The ability to have military industry that is capable of matching anything high tech by the MIC which has never been tested against a equal power. Our crap aircraft carrier, crappier F35’s which burn holes into it, useless systems with grand names. They are ok until they meet their first real challenge.
Iranian manufactured drones are flying today apparently. How much fertiliser did they cost?
It is clear that Europeans, Western ones, have been led down a path to austerity over the last dozen or so years, in the mesmerism of having yet another go at taking Russia – it seems to be at least once a century escapade by our Great Gamers.
Nuland meant it when she said Fuck The EU, vonderlayen and the other unelected officials are running us to ruins and destroying Germany once again so it does not enter into a peaceful alliance in EurAsia – which surely is our natural common Security partnership.
The backers who financed the rise of the Nazis a hundred years ago resemble the oligarchic financial backers of the rise of the new Nazis of Ukraine and their ‘charismatic’ cocaine powered self assured leader who can barely read his daily script to a camera and has never done a press conference with actual journalists.
The winter will only grow discontent, the spring will bring the first inklings of food shortages and perhaps famine erecting millions , will we be ready to hear a call up? Because King Charley says so?
There is total denial in the West of the Ukrainians losses some 80k deaths about another 100k injured. They are losing more and faster. It is a blood bath. As soon as the referenda are done and these regions decide to join Russia – this will no longer be a civil war.
Any attacks on these areas will be an attack on Russia I suppose.
It will stop being an SMO and become a direct confrontation with just the Russian military and its allies – China, Iran and others.
We all know that this a western civilisational war to retain its unipolar exceptionalist rules based order that only they are allowed to break. It is a direct attempt to destroy the SCO which is making treaties between half the world population and a large part of its land mass without the Western handcuffs of the UN – being shown to be a mere puppet show daily.
It is ultimately an attempt to disrupt the BRI which is bringing actual development to the mass of humanity which has been traditionally slaves and their lands raped by the same forces that have us being xenophobic and racist about Russia.
Of course the Collective Waste has failed again, and probably for the final time in history as we lose our First Worlder tunnel vision. The majority of Humanity will not be stopped from rising from centuries of poverty as has been done by a China and Russia, failed in India because of its centuries of Imperialist kowtowing, but changing hopefully and the rise of Africa as the most populace and richest continent by the end of this century.
I believe the problem with Russian industry was that it was all handed over to oligarchs in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR, and closed down to get short-term massive profits for the disaster capitalists. I suspect Putin has not been able to get the oligarchs entirely out of the picture, so there’s not really the basis for an industrial revival.
Taking 300,000 to 1,000,000 men out of the economy and into uniform isn’t going to help either.
But unlikely to have the effect you hope for. A million men is your imagination. 300K is the only figure to cite.
The law signed by Putin might allow up to a million to be called up. Just saying.
NATObots always cite extreme cases as the norm, and then conveniently forget to mention that US doctrine calls for a nuclear first strike
The real problem with Russian industry is a) terrible marketing b) ingrained go it alone attitude.
Example 1. Tatra trucks (Czech) vs Kamaz (Russian) trucks. At the end of the soviet union these were comparable businesses – today Tatra is marketed and sold throughout the world, whilst Kamaz is largely unsellable outside of Russia. Few other Russian brands are internationally as well known as Kamaz. This isn’t just about one product – the Czechs and Poles have transformed their manufacturing sectors from ‘soviet’ to being innovative and outward looking. Today Poland apparently has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, because people are busy designing and making stuff.
Example 2. Sputnik vaccine vs Oxford Covid vaccines. The scientists behind these vaccines were probably equally capable. Having developed the vaccine, the Oxford team understood that they needed help from a major international pharmaceutical like Astra Zeneca to deal with drug trials, licensing, manufacture and marketing. The proud Russians tried to do everything themselves and so didn’t make any inroads internationally – and Sputnik is a truly terrible name for a vaccine you hope to export.
Is Russia beyond industrial revival? The answer is yes and no. On the “no” side is the lack of access to technology (chips) caused by the Ukraine war. Virtually everything today has chips in it (even appliances like toasters and washing machines). This trend is set to continue and without these chips it will be impossible to sell any product internationally and even Russian patriotism will tire of locally produced goods. Russia is also a small country population wise – it is too small to design and manufacture everything itself and still produce quality goods – the real question is can it even establish a handful of internationally well known brands?
On the “yes” side, Russians are often well educated and certainly capable of producing the next innovation that will sell around the world. Russians in Moscow have a good understanding of fashion and what makes a product desirable. There is also no fundamental reason why the Russian manufacturing industry given the right environment cannot transform itself in a similar way to the Polish post-soviet revival. Centralized control, corruption and lack of democracy don’t create the right environment for people with good ideas to get investment and succeed. (Even without chips, given the right environment there are probably a few areas where Russians could succeed internationally – material science, chemicals, software?). Laziness and alcoholism is another not insignificant factor.
the lack of access to technology (chips) caused by the Ukraine war … This trend is set to continue and without these chips
China’s chip-production industry is only 5% of world production but it’s growing faster than the chip industry of any other nation and it will be happy to sell to Russia.
Russia is also a small country population wise – it is too small to design and manufacture everything itself and still produce quality goods – the real question is can it even establish a handful of internationally well known brands?
The population of the Russian Federation is about 146 million. Japan has a population of about 141 million. South Korea, with a population of only about 50 million, has established companies like Samsung and Hyundai that sell worldwide.
> Sputnik is a truly terrible name for a vaccine you hope to export.
Why?
Etymologically, it means “fellow traveller”, but in usage it’s just the Russian for “satellite”.
“There is total denial in the West of the Ukrainians losses some 80k deaths about another 100k injured. They are losing more and faster.”
Seeing as neither side has published reliable casualty figures can I ask where you got this information from?
There’s been a noticeable move by the Scott Ritters/Gonzalo Liras of the this world to resort to the same tactic the American administration fell back on during the Vietnam War. With nothing else to measure they tried to convince an increasingly sceptical public that because more NVA and VC were being reported killed than Americans it meant the US were winning. Vietnam is only one of number of conflicts were the victors (ignoring the inflated US claims at the time) lost more people than the vanquished. The Soviet campaign against Nazi Germany is another case in point (combat casualties alone double the German).
“Vietnam is only one of number of conflicts were the victors (ignoring the inflated US claims at the time) lost more people than the vanquished. The Soviet campaign against Nazi Germany is another case in point (combat casualties alone double the German).”
That rather misses the point. The Russians could afford to lose more soldiers than the Germans and can afford to lose more soldiers than the Ukranians. Both Germany then and Ukraine now were always more vulnerable to large losses than Russia.
No, the point is that the US were publishing casualty figures and claimed they were winning because they were killing more of the enemy. That Russia could afford the losses is nothing more than fortunate.
That wasn’t Dungroanin’s point, which you were trying to address and missing; that was your point, which was off the mark.
“Seeing as neither side has published reliable casualty figures can I ask where you got this information from?”
Pears Morgaine.
I doubt he/she got it from the German propaganda site Statista.com
Oh dear. Another ad hominem attack on a source.
Any website that Media bias Fact Check lauds as very truthful is a source of one form of propaganda or another, and the Poynter Institute lauds Media Bias Fact Check which I’ll say no more about.
As for your Politico link at 17.29pm.
The Austrian politicians blame Russia for atrocities in Bucha, when the Mayor of Bucha claimed that Russian troops had left beforehand.
“the Mayor of Bucha claimed that Russian troops had left beforehand.”
Where did you get that from? Because it simply isn’t true.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html
How do you know it wasn’t true? Were you there, or are you simply convinced that the New York Times is incapable of telling an untruth?
Pears Morgaine.
I suppose this is, “simply isn’t true” as well.
Just as the Italian film crew, who filmed the rocket section of the missile that hit the Kramatorsk train station, that turned out to be a Tochka-U Missile from Ukraine’s arsenal.
There are videos from Bucha with corpses in white bandages – a symbol of cooperation with the Russians.
Now, in Izyum, Ukraine is counting again on the stupidity of an average European, who is not familiar with the realities, but is very sensitive to dramatic pictures. They show “mass graves in Izyum” without bothering to edit the video with wooden crosses on the graves, where inscriptions are made in Russian (what incredibly conscientious executioners!) There are already investigations into how Russian troops buried there Ukrainian soldiers, whos corpses were abandoned by the Ukrainian command.
I am well warned by the moderation team that I may be spreading Russian propaganda. Especially about Bucha. Especially printing something that was not approved by the international community.
So I understand why this comment might be rated inappropriate. Moderators, I am in no way disputing your work. Feel free to remove it.
“can I ask where you got this information from?”
Why not ask the uk MOD ?
They seem to have an inexplicable interest in a civil war thousand miles from here and seem to have plenty to say daily on their website. Shirley they have a clue?
Failing that there are plenty of Indy bloggers tweeterati including dung western military experts who collate info. The ones that are independent or Russian and not nafo or dogs of war.
???
I’m afraid that I now find this argument about who is winning and who is losing to be a waste of time.
I have come to the conclusion that this planet is being run by a cabal of wealthy and privileged people who convene in secret to make their global decisions. Anyone who tries to get in their way tends to be suicided.
We are not even pawns in this confidential war game. We are nobodies, virtually dispensable but pumped full of war-game propaganda in order to keep us occupied by discussing situations we can never have any control over whatsoever. Mushrooms, to be kept in the dark and fed endless shit.
It was just slightly inconvenient for the propaganda deluge that a monarch popped her clogs and the UK media went into 24/7 mourning mode for almost a fortnight. However, the splurge button has been turned up to 11 since the funeral; just in case the plebs had forgotten what the real global priority must be at present.
Wars make the secret cabal trillions of dollars, and so wars must be promoted. Villains must be created and lies will dominate. Everyone else will simply be collateral damage. If you believe you have any influence on global proceedings, then I feel sad for you.
So, I intend to just carry on in my own little world of wildlife and greenery – and if there is a blinding flash; and a large mushroom cloud appears on the horizon, I will microwave myself a couple of pies and munch my way to oblivion.
I agree with everything you write except the word “secret”.
There is nothing secret about the “military/industrial complex” (that’s a direct quote from President Eisenhower in 1961). Companies like Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and many others spend staggering amounts of money on supporting the re-election campaigns of US politicians. They are profit-driven businesses and they expect to get something back for that money. Their lobbyists actually write a lot of legislation and tell “their” politicians to vote for it.
Once started, the money siphon is self-sustaining: the politicians increase military expenditure, some of the profits go into funding more lobbying, which increases the military expenditure even more, … get the picture? It’s called positive feedback. Some repressive governments get in on the act, too.
The above tends to boost the careers of people like Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton, people who want the United States to control the entire planet. OK, the British Empire used to throw its weight around a bit. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and at least some British imperialists genuinely believed that Britain had a civilising mission. The American imperialists don’t believe in anything except power. They use terms like “democracy” and “freedom” in the most cynical way; a “free” country that has “democracy” is a country whose leaders ignore the interests of its citizens and do whatever Washington tells them to do. Like Liz Truss, planning to increase military expenditure while the NHS collapses.
None of this is secret.
“I have come to the conclusion that this planet is being run by a cabal of wealthy and privileged people who convene in secret to make their global decisions. Anyone who tries to get in their way tends to be suicided.”
I’m going to go with a Venn diagram of competing cabals, some of which last longer than others but all of which are driven by class interests which provide means, motive and opportunity to conspire. On topic, the present difficulties in Ukraine have been made with a view to regime change in Moscow leading to looting opportunities in Russia for Western interests.
“But a substantial minority were Ukrainian, almost all rural. While only a small percentaage of those Donbass Russians come from families settled there pre 1946.”
What makes someone “Russian” or “Ukranian”? Ukraine has only existed as a country since 1917 at the earliest. Wikipedia gives the history of the area as:
During the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus’, which emerged in the 9th century and was ultimately destroyed by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. After the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia emerged, the area was contested, divided, and ruled by a variety of external powers for the next 600 years; including the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia. The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in central Ukraine in the 17th century, but was partitioned between Russia and Poland, and ultimately absorbed by the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution, a Ukrainian national movement re-emerged, and formed the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1917.
Ultimately, all those changes were simply changes of the overlords. The people on the land would have largely remained the same, so the inhabitants of the Donbass are likely to have more in common with the Don Cossacks than the peoples in what is now Western or northern Ukraine.
The differences between people are so insignificant. For example, you speak English and it is ‘cat’ for you. I pronounce it ‘kot’ in Russian, and in Ukrainian it is ‘kit’. Is it something that makes us so much different?
Or, for example, we all may wear a cross around our necks. For me it would be called an Orthodox cross, you may have a Catholic one, and for a Ukrainian it has recently become an Orthodox Ukrainian cross.
You have two eyes, two arms and two legs. No one is surprised that Ukrainians and Russians are born with the same quantity (to tell you a secret in general, all people on the planet have).
All the differences are only in our heads, and it gets there from the information which we put there.
Nobody is different and nobody is more privileged. It’s just a war of animals for habitat.
I was with you until your final sentence. Nobody is more privileged?? You are denying the class war that is raging along with the hot war in Ukraine. The wealthy ruling elites definitely exist and they are definitely destroying society and the entire planet. And they are using the working classes of the world to wage their wars and die for the profit system. So yes, there is a difference, a huge one. Wars like the one in Ukraine are all wars between the ruling classes of the world for the delusion of ultimate power.
I think you might find this of interest from Scott Ritter:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/22/scott-ritter-reaping-the-whirlwind/
I believe this is what Stephen F. Cohen, American Scholar of Russian studies, wrote about for years prior to his death as well. American ignorant, psychopathic, blind hegemony will kill us all in my humble opinion, sadly.
Yes, that is an excellent article by Scott Ritter. I have been following all the video posts from GrayZone with Scott Ritter and he is a great source of information.
This may be the reason why Russia’s intelligence has failed:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438706001141
Given the past 8 years what grounds are there for believing the majority in the east want to remain ruled by Kiev?
They don’t. They want to be independent districts connected to Russia.
And according to RT the expected Yes vote to become part of Russia, according to polls, is about 60%. I’d have thought it would be higher.
Can we not lose sight of the fact that it was Putin who showed no interest in a diplomatic solution as reported by the Austrian chancellor back in April?
https://www.politico.eu/article/austrian-chancellor-says-trip-to-see-putin-was-not-a-friendly-visit/
True enough back then despite not getting the swift victory he (and many others) were expecting it still looked as though Russia held all the cards. Now with the Ukrainian counter attack, the unpopular draft and the war costing $900 million per day with no end in sight he might be more amenable despite the aggressive rhetoric.
Quite inexact. Erdoğan was doing a good job of mediating until US/UK instructed Zelensky to pull out (Johnson and Blinken).
Pears Morgaine
Sorry what? The Austrian chancellor did not even mention any “no interest in diplomatic solution” as you claim he did. Besides it was Ukraine, not Russia, that departed from the peace talks. Ukraine even murdered one of their own peace diplomats!
“Ukrainian peace negotiator is shot dead ‘in attempted arrest by Ukrainian security service’ amid claims he was a Russian spy”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10582805/Ukrainian-peace-negotiator-shot-dead-amid-claims-Russian-spy.html
You have it backward. The Russians have been calling for a diplomatic solution from the beginning and the U.S. and NATO have refused to even engage in a conversation about it.
That is not true. Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a solution back in the spring. This was stopped presumably by Washington in the person of Boris Johnson of all people. Read Lavrov’s speech to the UN.
Pears Morgaine:
“Putin who showed no interest in a diplomatic solution” .
Blatantly not true. Putin has been waiting (at least) since the 2015 Minsk II agreement for the ‘West’ to do what it promised (and even longer e.g. broken promise by NATO to not expand “an inch further” east following the break up of USSR) but which it has conspicuously failed to implement. Putin has urged the “west’ in dozens of speeches since, notably 23 December 2021 (*) to adhere to the 2015 Minsk II agreement, indeed it was precisely this failure by the ‘West’ that largely forced the Russian’s to start the SMO in Feb 2022 (***): –
Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the leaders of separatist-held regions Donetsk and Luhansk signed a 13-point agreement in February 2015. The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine gathered in Minsk to mark the occasion and issued a declaration of support. The deal’s 13 points were:
(*) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Putin%27s+December+2021+speech+re+Ukraine&t=ffab&ia=web
(**) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=OSCE+monitoring+Donbas+deaths+since+2014&t=ffab&ia=web
(***) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Russia+SMO+Feb+2022&t=ffab&ia=web
If you scroll down far enough on Google you get that article, but you need to scroll a bit. Likewise with Bing. I also tried Duck Duck Go via Tor and this was little better. Of course I have no idea what ‘identity’ I was using. Certainly the idea we are propagandised is nothing new. But we seem blind to the fact that we have anything blocked from us. We think we are in the ‘free world’ with access to everything and that ‘they’ are blocked from seeing the ‘truth’. The first thing our govt did was shut down RT’s access to being broadcast in this country as they ‘might’ breach their conditions – a ridiculous way to act. What people aren’t aware of is that RT’s website is still going but that it has been blocked. Other websites from Russia are not though (Pravda, Ria Novosti) but going thru Tor you can still get RT. The OPs are VERY right wing but the actual news isn’t unreasonable at all and gives a good counterbalance to what we consume here.
I can only hope that more people than your readers have realised this already and will take all future news/internet searches with a pinch of salt until they can search from outside their own country/zone too.
I can see why China don’t want to be drawn on this or get involved. Already the US is doing its very best to include China in the New Cold War. They’d been trying to start this with Russia and have now succeeded. I feel that Ukraine reneging on the Minsk Agreements was no coincidence after the coup. The US is benefitting from this greatly by selling its previously unprofitable (and heavily subsidised) shale gas into the European market for massive profits. They seem better equipped to cope with oil/gas shortages and luckily had built up good oil reserves prior to the conflict.
NB I don’t see this as luck at all. Don’t forget that Biden himself was in Maidan Sq with the Nazis of Right Sector just before the coup. All of the demands were acceded to and STILL the coup went ahead instead of waiting until a new election could have been arranged. Now we see that the EU has drawn the Iron Curtain by refusing visas for Russian nationals. The Iron Curtain was always perceived as a refusal of the USSR to allow their people to travel lest they refuse to come back – this time it’s the other way round and can’t be denied.
All of this is deliberate manoeuvring by the US and despite Putin being seen as the consummate politician, he has been played by Biden.
Hopefully this stays as conventional warfare. It’s bad enough and as Craig says it will potentially see the deaths of millions. But whilst Ukraine has called up all of its fighting-age male population along with volunteers, Russia is only now beginning to call some reservists forward. In a war of attrition Russia has more men to throw at this. The US and NATO are quite willing to see the Ukrainian male population decimated in the pursuit of the ruination of Russia as a power.
That aside, they are quite willing, even as not being party to this war, to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. I don’t think it’s the case that they don’t care, no not at all. I think they want this to become as wasteful of life as it possibly can be. Not only will it ruin Russia but it will cement the US in position as the dominant force in the world again, just as happened after WW2 and for the same reasons – a destroyed Europe.
We are indeed lead by psychopaths..
“They seem better equipped to cope with oil/gas shortages and luckily had built up good oil reserves prior to the conflict.”
A coincidence theory then.
Sorry but it appears to me that the main source of support for this protracted failure to meet with a resolution for peace, is the oil companies. They don’t want us to be allowed to purchase Russian oil until it is supplied to us by the US oil companies. Events which occurred in Kazakhstan shortly before this all began gave us a foretaste. Namely that US companies which have concessions to drill for Kazakh oil and gas decided to float Kazakh fuel on the global market. People took to the streets to protest and a horrific event occurred in which government buildings were attacked, police officers decapitated, and hundreds of arrests showed that many of the ‘protesters’ came from outside the country.
The people were stunned. The government advised the oil companies that they had a license to extract Kazakh gas and instructed them to put the prices back to what they were. The Astana Times is an excellent English language newspaper.
The US oil companies were allowed into Kazakhstan under the new government. But they do not have control of Russian oil and gas yet. Indeed the Nordstream pipeline may have been a catalyst for ramping up sanctions before the US determined their intention to site cruise missiles in Ukraine by July this year.
Interesting it was Saudi Arabia that brokered the prisoner exchange. No doubt there is more to this that relates to brokering oil trading too. We aren’t allowed to buy direct from Russia.
The US is following the strategy outlined by RAND in their report
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
This requires the Ukraine war to drag on as long as possible so as to help destabalise Russia.
I would not be surprised if Google had been asked to quietly modify its search results in various ways – either explicitly by Western powers, or implicitly via the recent “fake news” filtering phenomena.
However, just to play devil’s advocate for a moment – could the filtering presented in the article come about because Google is attempting to stifle the spread of fascist websites? I suspect that the difference in results is why Google would be wrong to do so (and perhaps why attempts from liberals in power worldwide would be wrong to send such requests to big tech companies). There is a very interesting slippery slope argument to be asked here (if you are using censorship to try to stop fascism, where do you stop?).
And, perhaps, this shows the limits of automation – if this is the impact of misguided anti-fascist censorship rather than specifically pro-NATO talking-points censorship, tech companies need to be more cognisant of the knock-on effects of agreeing to quietly filter search results.
Tech company algorithms are pretty dumb (even though they call it ‘smart’ technology). It is predominantly a word search with some heuristics and advertising logic. Nobody is looking at searches and trying to figure out what results make the most sense in some kind of human sense. (Yes, Google/Bing have probably added some ability to suppress inappropriate results for searches when they get specific complaints, but I suspect that is the limit of human intervention). Dumb is dumb – more is conspiracy. [Even bellingcat was complaining recently about how just unsmart Google really is : https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1571866993527066624 ]
Yes, quoting John Betjeman’s “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough” is enough to get your comment deleted on Facebook and I don’t suppose the inhabitants of Scunthorpe can say where they live yet, either.
Dark times; indeed dystopia – I reiterate the UK MOD Chief’s of staff at Northwood hold the view that the Western Bloc can win a nuclear war against Russia. As such I believe the B52’s at RAF Fairford are nuclear capable, the Glonass GPS has been proved vulnerable such that Russia may rely on the licensed Beidou, the Chinese GPS, and Israel will provide OFEK-16 spy satellite launch information and more.
The plan I believe seems to commit to the use of a tactical nuke, Russian or otherwise as the curtain-raiser to a strike on Russia’s communication satellites, a war in space scenario to force Putin’s hand, and also the world will be lured by MSM that this is a humanitarian act that does not break the Outer Space Treaty and is a Western construct that initially saves a million human lives
https://www.justsecurity.org/68906/war-in-space-how-international-humanitarian-law-might-apply/
– War in Outer Space.
If the MOD Chiefs of Staff believe that NATO can win a nuclear war against Russia, they are mad, Mark. In reality, there’ll be no winners – apart from China, of course. The nuclear capability of the B-52’s was removed about a decade ago – only the B-2 stealth bombers have that now. RAF Fairford is still most likely on the Ruskies’ UK target list though. Strategic targets in the US are targeted either by ICBMs or submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which use inertial guidance, not GPS, so destroying Russian satellites would be pointless.
The great fallacy here is that the west has any ability to force a diplomatic solution. Wars like WW1 / WW2 / Vietnam etc didn’t end by diplomacy – and even when wars do it is not usually before years of fighting and all parties are exhausted. Just look at Syria. Russia has never given any indication that it would accept a treaty requiring it withdraw to pre Feb 2022 lines and indeed quite the opposite – the hardline nationalists would consider that a total defeat. Similarly, Ukraine is not interested in diplomacy – certainly not a solution requiring them to give up more land. Also understand the English narrative from couch potatoes has little relevance to anything so we should be careful not to overestimate our ability to influence.
Given this context, the only US/Nato decision is whether to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons. In my opinion, the only reasonable thing to do is to continue because anything less would not stop the fighting (compare Syria/Chechnya) – Russia would not stop its invasion and the atrocities we have seen would be repeated across Ukraine. A failure to continue arming Ukraine would be nothing short of betrayal. Ask yourself if you would fight for your own country if it was attacked from outside. Biden has been remarkably cool headed (compare Truss / Thatcher / G. Bush II). He is not called sleepy Joe for nothing.
That is not to say that dark times are not here. I am just saying that as human beings we are not morally justified in abandoning 40 million Ukrainians so that we can have peace. There comes a time when Putin will realize that he cannot win without the use of nukes. When that happens there will be calls amongst some Europeans and certain Scotts to say this is not our war and we should just watch from the sidelines and mutter on helplessly about the need for diplomacy. That is not what is going to happen – because really allowing one nation to use nukes will open a Pandora’s box where NK/Syria will feel justified in using them. If we are to have non-proliferation then it has to be understood that the US will have zero choice but to respond forcibly. This doesn’t meaning nuking Russia back – the most plausible response would be sinking the Black Sea fleet / bombing Russia’s naval bases. I don’t even wish to speculate where that leads. Is it morally acceptable to sacrifice Ukraine to avoid Armageddon? – I don’t think so. (I am not religious, but I feel if we are all destined to die, then so be it – at least it will put an end to global warming and will probably be good for other species)
“the atrocities we have seen would be repeated across Ukraine.”
Which atrocities are those?
“A failure to continue arming Ukraine would be nothing short of betrayal.”
To which treaty that we would be betraying do you refer?
> Which atrocities are those?
Oh, really. Does flattening cities count as an atrocity?
Well does it? It seems to be a normal part of warfare and has been for more than a century. Anyway, no cities have been flattened yet in this particular war.
‘Is it morally acceptable to sacrifice Ukraine to avoid Armageddon?’
Yes.
(Disclaimer: I’ve never been in the Let’s-have-a-nuclear-war-to-deal-with-the-‘climate emergency’ camp.)
Andrew H worries about “allowing one nation to use nukes…” – eh? What about the fact that Pandora’s box is already WIDE open by “allowing” the USA 77 years ago on August 6, 1945 to drop the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima? Approximately 80,000 people were killed as a direct result of that blast. Three days later, a second atom bomb was dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, killing around 120,000 people.
‘I do not believe the USA, UK nor NATO has any political will for peace. This is a disaster…’
I agree. But I believe they never did. Furthermore, although sotto-voce, their true and ultimate intentions could be discerned here and there if you were looking. Here is Canada’s foreign minister, on CTV News, Feb, 27, 2022.
‘Our goal, and I’ll be very blunt, is to suffocate the Russian regime.’ Clear enough for you?
I see John Helmer’s new column ‘And Then There Were None’ tells it quite plain and straight.
‘There’s no mystery now about the war of Europe and North America against Russia; it is the continuation of Germany’s war of 1939-45 and the war aims of the General Staff in Warshington since 1943….’
Sounds about right to me.
I agree that the NATO axis isn’t interested in peace; they’d like to “suffocate the Russian regime”. The irony is that their method for doing that is to send as few arms to Ukraine as they can get away with, to make any victory a distant prospect; but without ending the war.
Thx again, Craig, for your cogent advocacy of a diplomatic solution to the current mess in Ukraine. I dearly hope that Russia, Ukraine, and NATO can agree on a framework for a reasonable way to “adjust” borders based on the actual preferences of local citizens, but frankly, I doubt that is possible now.
My deepest concern is that the US actions – starting with (/before) the encouragement/fabrication of the 2014 coup/revolution – are just part of a larger plan to postpone the collapse of our financial “empire”. Russia is not the primary threat, but it is China’s most important “ally”, for both its vast resource base and its technical expertise. It is also more “attackable”, partly because of its [historically rational] paranoia about invasion, but also because the collapse of the USSR allowed the US to purchase influence in most of the chaotic new countries surrounding Russia. (I don’t believe that the renewed tensions in the Caucasus & Central Asian Former SSR’s are coincidental). Also, decades of planning & acting against the USSR created significant inertia in US Military, Security, and Intel communities, so the ball just keeps rolling…
I view this as an attempt to beat the Thucydides Trap (China’s inevitable rise challenging US Hegemony) by getting way out in front of it. The real theatre of war is Financial: Wall Street (and associated financial centers) must continuously expand their web of control-via-debt, or it will all unravel. China rejects this system and is building its own alternative system, so it must be broken, or at least contained. The SCO is a huge threat to US Hegemony; we have pissed off so many [previously competing] Regional Powers that they have finally banded together. The SCO now includes a majority of the population of Earth; not coincidently, we – USA – undermined the only global institution which could mediate such conflicts (the UN) because it didn’t cooperate with our invasion of Iraq.
I suspect that the US Foreign Policy “consensus” hopes to gain control of Russia with another Color Revolution or (Maidan-style) Coup, or, failing that, at least weaken it enough to allow the PetroDollar Empire to expand through the Caucasus & Central Asia. Ukraine and its people are expendable pawns in this game.
(Bonus note: as a USAmerican, it’s hard for me to agree with the final sentence of the 3rd paragraph of the OP…)
Craig, defining “Russians” and “Ukrainians” in Ukraine based on their language is useless: it is their attitude that matters. There are plenty of Russian-speaking Nazis and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists there. In fact, most members of the infamous Azov battalion speak Russian. This is not the 1st time in history such things happen. For example, where referendums were allowed after WW1 some Polish-speaking regions voted to stay in Germany. And bringing up the question of Tatar’s claims on Crimea is as futile as claiming North Carolina on behalf of Cherokees. Most of the Tatars are OK if not quite happy with Crimea being Russian and only a small minority makes trouble. The likely reason is that they hope some day Crimea can become part of Turkey, ooops, sorry, Turkiye, and they know that the only chance for this to happen is if Crimea is under Ukrainian rule.
As for diplomacy, it has been dead for long time. Fukuyama could have done better if he called his famous piece “The End of Diplomacy” instead. The reason is as simple as 2×2: the unipolar world does not need diplomacy. In the unipolar world, things are not negotiated, they are demanded.
If the only issue were Crimea – this war could probably be stopped by diplomatic means. Firstly, Crimea is easy to defend and there really is no military solution. Zelensky has also indicated he would be open to resolving that diplomatically. A final solution that might satisfy everyone would be an independence referendum conducted by international authorities to ensure fairness. After independence, Crimea would be free to join Russia or whatever.
Fairness might be:
If Russia is confident that 90%+ of Crimeans would choose Russia over Ukraine – there should be no issue with redoing the 2014 elections in a way that Ukraine and the world would see as fair and unrigged. Critically the referendum would have to be conducted by international authorities and the results would be binding. (The US/UK/France would agree to ratify the territorial changes at the UN – which would give Russia what it wants)
However, Crimea is not the primary issue with regards to ending the war – certainly not at this stage.
Would you like to give an example from the past where this process or one like it has been followed?
Ukraine won’t be accessing the EU in five years time. Minimum 10, and Ukraine doesn’t conform to the criteria as it is. EU member states don’t think much of paying through the nose to put right a failed state, at the behest of the US. A few EU pols do think so, but they’re a minority.
Did the Ukrainian farmers get a referendum on the sale of land? Did they get one when their women were conscripted as canon fodder for Bidens wet dreams?
The majority of UN members rejected the English motion condemning Putin. Peace and a ceasefire is a necessity, unless you want to back them up and die for Ukraine after having impoverished this country.
The same people tend to dismiss the human rights abuses against the Uighurs. Muslim Central Asia is a serious blind spot for many on the left…
There’s a recognised phenomenon where a person can see that everything the MSM are telling them about a subject they themselves are knowledgable about is a lie (cf The UK mainstream media and Scottish independence). Then, when the same media start telling that person about a subject they know nothing about, as long as the information reflects their existing prejudices, it all becomes “the truth”. I wish I could remember the name of that phenomenon; if anyone knows it please tell me.
The reason I unreservedly (not “tend to”) dismiss the human rights abuses against the Uighurs is because there is not one shred of worthwhile evidence that they are happening. Indeed there doesn’t seem to be any evidence at all that doesn’t emanate either directly from the Western intelligence services, or via one of the channels they finance, orchestrate, or otherwise champion.
I’m not an expert on events in Burkhina Faso, so I try to avoid telling other people what’s going on there.
It’s an odd choice of target at this juncture in history. The left hasn’t been anywhere near power in most people’s lifetimes. Furthermore, how can we be certain what is going on in Xinjang given the identity of reporters on both sides?
What we do know for certain is that the governments and mass media who want to fix Chinese Muslims at the top of the news agenda
This we know for certain. So why would you choose to link arms with these forces in order to silence and further discredit and demonize a powerless and demoralized left? What is to be gained by it?
…’cognitive dissonance’?
I’m no expert on Burkina Faso either, but a little reading about the life, political career, and treacherous demise of Thomas Sankara should be of interest to any commenters here who are unaware.
Here is the latest interview between The Postil and Jacques Baud
https://www.thepostil.com/our-latest-interview-with-jacques-baud/
Also some may have missed the speech by the Columbian President, Gustava Petro at the UN. Very passionate speech calling for the end of another American war – the war on drugs – which has caused great suffering to his country.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/09/21/colombian-president-calls-for-an-end-to-the-war-on-drugs-in-historic-un-address/
Something else to deny:-
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/23/un-rights-experts-find-evidence-of-war-crimes-in-ukraine
Expecting usual ad hominem attacks on Euronews and the UN.
There are plenty of warcrimes being commited by Ukraine daily, which is denied by Ukraine itself and its supporters:
“Multiple deaths in Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk market
Several people were killed and others injured in the DPR capital after an artillery strike, the mayor said ”
https://swentr.site/russia/563315-donetsk-market-shelling-referendum/
Remember also who used “ad hominem” attacks on Amnesty some months back when they exposed ukrainian warcrimes:
“Amnesty further backtracks on Ukraine human rights report – Following backlash from Kiev, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky slamming Amnesty”
https://swentr.site/news/560792-amnesty-ukraine-violations-review-report/
…or who smeared the UN nuclear organization some weeks back.
“UN nuclear watchdog should be mistrusted ‘by default’ – Zelensky aide”
https://swentr.site/russia/562053-iaea-mission-podolyak-interview/
And now Ukraine bans Amnesty from the “mass graves” in Izyum
Not that surprising, actually; Amnesty International published a report that was highly critical of Amnesty, who have since been regarded as a hostile propaganda outfit.
Amnesty’s reports are something of a curate’s egg: good in parts. In my childhood, Amnesty campaigned for the rights of political prisoners. That was it. It was hard to fault them. In the last decade or so, they’ve been producing reports that are stridently political.
About 5 years ago, I was working as a software contractor for AI. I learned a fair bit about Amnesty internal politics, and it really put me off the organisation.
No doubt you consider its report designatng Israel an apartheid state the stridently political work of a hostile propaganda outfit.
I thought Amnesty was a ‘CIA construct’ anyway.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ukraine-mass-graves-izium-confirm-dark-cost-russian-aggression
“Commission member Pablo de Greiff told reporters the team had “found two instances of ill-treatment of Russian Federation soldiers by Ukrainian soldiers.”
Pears Morgaine.
Pablo de Greiff is on the board of George Soros Open Society Foundation.
You link to Euronews, whilst many European nations fund and send weapons to Ukraine and apply some of the 6,000 plus sanctions against Russia. I could link to dozens of similar stories of murder and abuse by Ukrainian troops and their international mercenaries in the likes of Tass, Ria.ru and several more that will remain nameless.
Here’s an example.
https://english.pravda.ru/news/hotspots/128271-ukrainian_troops_mass_killings/
But why would you believe my link, as I don’t believe yours, do you see my point?
> found two instances of ill-treatment of Russian Federation soldiers by Ukrainian soldiers.
Extra, extra! Soldiers are unkind to captured enemy soldiers! Read all about it!
I don’t mean to excuse bad behaviour; but really, “two instances”?
You don’t become the mate of the guy who’s been trying to kill you for days, just because he’s laid down his weapon. In many circumstances, troops will be furious that their enemy is trying to surrender, and will do their best to prevent it.
Jimmeh
Actually you do excuse bad behavior that is what war cause, psychopathy. Justifying warcrimes against the “enemy”.
And of course this particular UN team find not much of warcrimes in regions in which Ukraine have not bombed to smitherens.
“The experts from the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, mandated by Human Rights Council earlier this year, have so far focused on four regions — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.”
Note the four regions.
Not one of these regions are in Donbas – which of course is the region Ukraine have bombed daily past 7 months (or actually 7 years on and off).
> Justifying warcrimes against the “enemy”.
Not really; I’m just expressing a lack of surprise. It would be self-defeating to train your soldiers to be nice to the enemy, if you want them to kill the enemy. The principal warcrime is waging aggressive war against another country.
Jimmeh
Actually you did justify it.
“I don’t mean to excuse bad behaviour; “> “but,”
And now you justify it again because warcrimes are not ok/legal for any part in a war.
“> found two instances of ill-treatment of Russian Federation soldiers by Ukrainian soldiers.
Extra, extra! Soldiers are unkind to captured enemy soldiers! Read all about it!”
You’re taking this out of context. The “two instances” are there to provide contrast to the Russian “atrocities” – “Look at all the people the Russians tortured and murdered while we only found two instances of Ukranians being slightly nasty to Russian PoWs. Aren’t the Ukranians such nice guys?”
“Vast sums given to the FSB to bribe key Ukrainian politicians and officials proved to be wasted (and the Kremlin believes to a sgnificant extent the funds were purloined by corrupt FSB personnel).”
That’s a bit harsh. How was the FSB to know that NATO would just pay even vaster bribes?
I don’t think Russia has autonomy for the Donbas on the table anymore.
https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1573070243991547904/photo/1
Ethnic Russian and ethnic Ukrainian probably aren’t meaningful terms
This survey* taken in July in the areas not occupied by Russia, had the following interesting demographics.
* Dill, Howlett & Müller-Crepon (Sep 2022) ‘At Any Cost: How Ukrainians Think about Self-Defense Against Russia’ – pdf (5.8MB) – Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
I will not try to comment here on what the ratio of 1 to ~10 losses the Russian vs Ukrainian/NATO personnel losses, officially announced by Shoigu, say about success or failure of the Russian army in this relatively small tactical episode of the upcoming war with NATO (mainly USA, not Britain and the likes) in Ukraine.
Instead I want to share here (if only for the sole benefit of Craig’s moderators) with my comment on another blog, where I quoted this Craig Murray’s post and somebody immediately started to argue that swastika was not a Balkenkreuz (translation of the comment follows)
” I once commented on Craig’s blog about classic fascist ideology promoted by the “West” in Ukraine, using Goebbels’ own methods.. and I was immediately rebuked [..] with the explanations that fascism is about good people with good intentions, gathering in a crowd. No one commented on the open and typical fascism in Ukraine – even after I pointed out to them that the word “fascism” in many Eastern European languages implies not so much unification of some group as the methods, including applied to their own population, to realize the group’s noble intentions, for example, “Nazism”. Probably, because Eastern Europe had less to be ashamed of and therefore did not need to clean up the information field.
Thanks for the info – I didn’t know Balkenkreuz wasn’t a swastika. Craig didn’t seem to know either.
PS. Craig, by the way, is absolutely not a “friend” of Russia and especially Russians. He preaches a Scottish nationalist version of typical Anglo-Saxon worldviews, including.in part, its ingrained on a subconscious level Russophobia. And, most likely, he is still working to some extent for what he has worked for all his life – i.e. against Russia and Russians. He simply always had integrity and sense of honor which were clearly excessive for his job function, that’s why he sometimes may tell the truth.
I don’t enjoy hearing criticism of Mr. Murray, and I don’t like to criticize Mr. Murray myself. Partly because he is the owner of this site where I’m a guest, partly because I’m not a professional speaker, and of course, because I’m Russian.
However, I firmly believe that Mr. Murray is a great thinker and, when evaluating an opinion, knows how to weed out the grains of common sense from emotions.
In my opinion, when deciding what is good and what is bad, Mr. Murray tends to narrow down the group of people who benefit from this or that action. So recently, in one of his blogs, he mentioned the murder of some historical person. His assessment of the killer was like “yeah, he’s a bad bad person, but his act still brought us closer to *something good* and without such an action, our affairs would be worse.”
This made it clear why Bandera and Shukhevych could become national heroes of Ukraine. The Baltic countries certainly proceed from this approach when honoring their SS veterans. And I am 100% sure that this is the approach that exists now in the West regarding the support of the Nazis in Ukraine.
In the course of philosophy, we were taught extrapolation. So I can easily imagine Germany winning WW2 and the Germans saying “Hitler was a bad bad guy, but look how much good he did for us.”
So in my philosophical concept, such an approach is false. This takes into account the interests of only a narrow group of people. This approach in resolving conflicts may only allow a temporary truce due to fear of violence, but will not allow for a peace where each side sincerely agrees. On the contrary, it implies new and new rounds of confrontation as soon as the possibility of revenge appears.
“This approach in resolving conflicts may only allow a temporary truce due to fear of violence, but will not allow for a peace where each side sincerely agrees. On the contrary, it implies new and new rounds of confrontation as soon as the possibility of revenge appears.”
As demonstrated by WWII following WWI, “the war to end all wars”.
Typically, the swastika is the Hakenkreuz in German meaning something like “hooked cross.” The Balkenkreuz is the lined cross symbol you see on warplanes and tanks as the nationality symbol.
> the Russian vs Ukrainian/NATO personnel losses
From what I’ve read:
* The “Russian” forces are largely Ukrainians from Donbas, Chechens, and soldiers from the East that are neither Russian nor Ukrainian.
* The “Ukrainian/NATO” forces do not include NATO forces. Ukraine isn’t in NATO, and no NATO country has sent units to Ukraine. Even if they had, that wouldn’t make them NATO forces. So referring to “Ukrainian/NATO” personnel losses is – um – disingenuous.
Might there be an alternative to trying to capture territory and move borders? In Northern Ireland people can choose to be Irish or British. Nationality is not imposed but a matter of choice.
If ethnic Russians in Ukraine could live as Russians within Ukraine would that be an acceptable compromise?
I know it’s not the whole answer – and doubtless hard to inroduce given the enmity – but it’s a model with pedigree nonetheless.
That ignores the systematic discrimination and brutality against people of Russian identity in Ukraine since 2014. Similarly ignores the Protestant-supremacist essence and antidemocratic creation of Britain’s statelet in the north of Ireland. The evolved ‘tolerant’ model in the 6 counties was only arrived at because of extreme action from below. There is no doubt that model will be observed from the start in the coming 32 county republic. There is not a chance those of British identity will be treated as Roman Catholics were in Britain’s Orange statelet or as ethnic Russians have been in the Orange Revolution state.
Dr Michael Duncan
you are asking a very valid question, because the cause of this conflict was the refusal to allow Russians to be Russians in Ukraine.
Discrimination by language and religion. Denial of the right to choose local authorities. The imposition of an alien ideology with national heroes from among the Nazi criminals. Discrimination based on ethnicity. The ban on everything Russian. The ban on opposition parties. The Ukrainian language as the state language in schools, social organizations and the media. The killing of journalists and the persecution of people with pro-Russian views.
Shelling Donbass to force them to recognize the power of the Kyiv regime over them. Anti-Russian hysteria. Thugs in the streets saying “moskovites must be hanged”. Burning people in Odessa. Statements from Ukrainian parliamentaries like “if you are unhappy, then go to Russia”. Statements by the president like “Our children will go to school, and their children will sit in basements.”
This conflict could be solved via Minsk agreement, but Ukraine decided to build a mono-ethnic unitary state. To which one smart person rightly said:
If the security of your state is threatened by the names of streets, cities, monuments, heraldry, the people who live there and the language they speak, you are probably building your state on foreign territory
In addition, here is the ideas they teach their kids.
https://youtu.be/vMiJCClj_uY?t=17
filmed by Associated Press. back in 2018
Education in the camp was free of charge, all expenses were covered by the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine. Any place for ethnic Russians in a state like this?
There used to be an alternative, it was called “Minsk 2”. Autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts within Ukraine. Signed by all the parties in 2015, including Poroshenko, but he later admitted he never intended to implement it. Zelensky was elected on a platform of implementing it, and there is even a video of him ordering the Nationalists on the front line to withdraw (which was step 1), but they basically refused, started big demonstrations in Kyiv, and Zelensky pivoted to a “we will take back all our lands” position, and intensified Russophobia. Nato arming and training was achieving a position where retaking Donbass and Crimea by force was a realistic possibility, and whether we like it or not, that was a red line for Putin, and he decided to try and “demilitarise” Ukraine. There might have been a version of Minsk 2 possible in March, but not now. Annexation of Eastern and Southern Ukraine is now the minimalist position for Russia, and after many reports (correct or not, that does not matter) of Ukrainian atrocities in territory taken back from Russia (mirror image of Bucha in Western minds), this is almost certainly what the majority of Russian people want from Putin, or any replacement leader.
This war is now “existential” on both sides. Existential for Ukraine but also for Russia-oriented Ukranians in the East. And existential for both the Americans and the Russians, although more so for the latter, who cannot pretend they are not directly involved. For the Americans, it is the huge investment in Ukraine that threatens the current administration if it is as unsuccessful as Afghanistan. Meanwhile the economic war is looking existential for Europe and surrender to Russia and a peace deal in that war is quite possible this winter.
The whole thing is a tragedy on all sides, which had a diplomatic solution which could have worked, but now does not, without one side or the other being defeated.
Dr Michael Duncan
I would say that if Ukraine respected minority groups this would not be a problem but like in Ukraine and Baltics, russians (that is, not only Russia itself) is viewed with disdain.
The issue is the extreme nationalism that have been accelerated in Ukraine prior to both the russian invasion but also prior to the coup of 2014 which in turn have (logically) fueled pro-russian separatism.
>If ethnic Russians in Ukraine could live as Russians within Ukraine would that be an acceptable compromise?
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? That was the state of affairs prior to 2014, the invasion of Crimea by Russia, and the declaration of the “independent” Donbas republics.
I don’t buy this division of Ukrainians into “ethnic Ukrainian” and “ethnic Russian”. As far as I’m aware, until *very* recently, most Ukrainians shared their religion (and their religious primate) with most of the rest of the Russian Federation. There’s a language division, of sorts; some Ukrainians are Russian speakers, some prefer to speak Russian. Zelyinsky is one of those whose native tongue is Russian.
I think this “ethnic” division is phony. I think the division is between irredentist Russian nationalists, and Ukrainians who don’t want to live under the Russian thumb. I have no solid evidence for this belief, other than the opinions I read here and there, but I think someone’s agenda underlies this claim that there is an ethnic component to this conflict.
Jimmeh
That’s the thing: it is an ethnic issue because of extreme Ukrainian nationalism, which has accelerated in the past decade – (go figure: Crimea voted to be part of Russia). Yes Zelensky tries to deny this ethnic aspect; that is again propaganda to justify the onslaught against his own people. Because they, civilians, were the ones getting killed when Ukrainian forces attacked Donbas over the past 7 or so years.
A couple of months back a big TV channel in Ukraine called for genocide against, not Russian soldiers, but Russians themselves.
And you think this is not an ethnic conflict?
“Ukrainian TV show host Fakhrudin Sharafmal cites Nazi ideologue Adolf Eichmann to call for extermination of all Russians, including children”
https://www.opindia.com/2022/03/ukrainian-tv-show-host-fakhruddin-sharafmal-calls-for-genocide-of-russians-including-children/
Sorry, Jack; I don’t buy that Crimea voted to be part of Russia. I also don’t know what proportion of the Crimean population was resident in Crimea before the 2014 invasion, nor what proportion of those were military personnel and their families.
With regard to “extreme Ukrainian nationalism”: there are nationalists on both sides. As far as I can see, the new “republics” were established by extreme Russian nationalists. And judging from what I’ve read of Putin’s speeches, he’s more than a nationalist – he’s an imperialist. He’s expressed the ambition for a Russian empire like that of Peter The Great, but reaching from Vladivostok to Lisbon, and all controlled from Moscow.
Even if nobody else in Russia is a Russian nationalist (ha ha!), their leader is incontrovertiby a nationalist.
Jimmeh
Crimea have been an (ethnic) Russian island for I do not know how many decades; following that fact, it is a no-brainer then that Crimea voted to become part of Russia.
And the same goes for Donbas, about the same facts.
Yes Ukrainian extreme nationalism has fueled ethnic Russian separatism – I do not deny that.
If it wasn’t for the nationalist coup in Ukraine 2014, there would be no nationalism generating the Crimea referendum.
Crimea was Russia until 1956, which means that there are still Crimeans alive today whose nationality, if you can call it that, was changed from Russian to Ukranian at the stroke of a pen. In the absence of evidence of a large-scale deportation of these native Russians and their offspring and their replacement by people born in Ukraine, it would seem to be obvious that the vast majority of Crimeans are, by birth, Russians. Why would they not vote to rejoin Russia, especially as the Ukranians in the north and west appear to view them in the same light as the British viewed the Irish when all Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom?
“That was the state of affairs prior to 2014, the invasion of Crimea by Russia, and the declaration of the “independent” Donbas republics.”
and what else happened in 2014 to update this cosy state of affairs, that you are not mentioning? A clue: it happened before the annexation of Crimea.
For diplomacy to be an option there must be a measure of trust. Trust that any reached agreement would be actually followed through.
Russia was harshly disabused of any trust in Western and Ukrainian diplomacy over the last decade. Agreements were negotiated only for immediate gains and then flagrantly violated at the first opportunity. Minsk agreements, various nuclear deals, or even the peace process in April that was broken by Ukraine after preliminary agreement was reached – there is no trust any more. Diplomacy _should_ be an option, but how can it be done when the other side forgot what the word even means? How?
Wow. And Putin, whose every other sentence is a lie, can be trusted?
Russia generally tries to stick to the deals it makes.
As far as I can see, Putin has been scrupulously frank about his views and intentions. I didn’t believe his threats, but he was telling the truth. I mean, he wasn’t frank about his military deployments last year, but hell, there was plenty of evidence that he was going to attack. You don’t broadcast your military plans even if your adversary can see what you’re up to from space. It’s not customary.
“Putin, whose every other sentence is a lie, can be trusted?”
You know him personally, do you? Or are you going by what you read in the MSM, which has never told us an untruth, ever?
It occurs to me that incorporation into Russia of the Donbass regions now subject to referendums could potentially provide a basis for a diplomatic solution to achieve a “win win” for both sides. Since Bandera’s time Ukraine nationalists attempts to enforce their version of Ukraine nationalism on the Donbass have never succeeded. The last 8 years of civil war is only one episode in the evolution of Ukraine nationalism. The residents of the Donbass are “not – Ukrainian” or at the best treated like second-class citizens to be treated in the same way as Israel treats the Palestinians or as the English the Irish in years gone by.
If the Donbass segues into Russia, Ukraine does not have that problem any more and could say “good riddance”, and the people of Donbass have got what they have wanted all along. Of course there would have to be some bargaining over the rich economic resources of the Donbass and facilities such as the Zap. nuclear plant though some kind of agreement should not in theory be insurmountable.
In reality of course this is unlikely to happen, which is why Russia, realising the implications of having weakly defended areas as in Kharkov and over a 1,000 kilometre border to defend in future is conscripting its reservists and making loud noises about what it will do if there are attempts to wrest them away.
Whichever way, the traditional Banderite tactics of using sabotage and acts of local terrorism, as they are currently doing in Donetsk with the shelling of residential areas and shopping centres and use of petal mines, are likely to continue if only out of spite and hatred.
Diplomacy is always an option, so is deceit.
The Wikipedia entry for ‘The Battle of Ilovaisk’ which occurred at the time of Minsk 1, mentions “Armed Forces of Ukraine” being involved with “pro-Ukrainian paramilitaries”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ilovaisk
Now, when you link to “pro-Ukrainian paramilitaries” you find they have been re-identified as …
“Ukrainian territorial defence battalions
This page is a redirect. The following categories are used to track and monitor this redirect:
From a page move: This is a redirect from a page that has been moved (renamed). This page was kept as a redirect to avoid breaking links, both internal and external, that may have been made to the old page name.
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“This page was last edited on 23 September 2022, at 14:53 (UTC).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Territorial_defence_battalions_(Ukraine)&redirect=no
I wonder how many Guardian hacks moonlight as subs on this Wikipedia…_
For a bit more info on Minsk 1:
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/05/minsk-conundrum-western-policy-and-russias-war-eastern-ukraine-0/minsk-1-agreement
The battle for Ilovaisk was at the end of the summer of 2014. The pro-Ukrainian paramilitaries you mention are the territorial defense battalions. There were about 30 of them at that time, about 40 now.
“Territorial defense battalions were created as part of the armed forces of Ukraine, are under the operational control of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and are formed according to the territorial principle /…/
Although the Ukrainian media call the territorial defense battalions “volunteer battalions”, this information is not entirely true. Only individual battalions (the 11th territorial defense battalion of the Kyiv region, the 20th territorial defense battalion of the Dnepropetrovsk region and the 24th territorial defense battalion “Aidar”) consist of ideologically motivated personnel. A significant part of the personnel of the remaining battalions are mobilization conscripts.”
Let us not forget the bigger picture that leads to the apparent inevitability of what has been carefully planned and played out for a very long period of time since about the 1920s and certainly on the lead up and sequelae of WWII. This article is an excellent one in setting this background.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/23/some-historical-background-for-an-economic-interpretation-of-the-war-in-ukraine/
The premise is that the US set to control the rest of the world by controlling the money system and by giving rise to the World Bank and the IMF and keeping these supposedly international bodies under US control and serving US interests only.
So it is all about economics and control of money, once you do that you control information, territory, ideas, market, and so on without physical occupation.
The biggest error that Putin did is that he never succeeded in reversing this hold of the US on Russian economics. He accepted the system of oligarchs that was a result of the shock therapy by the west in the 1990s and tried only to curb their political power but not their economic stranglehold. Ironically the oligarchs have been used by the west both to maintain big chunks of Russian money in their banks, as a fifth column within Russia and latterly also as a stick to beat the Kremlin with in sanctioning these same oligarchs they have been exploiting.
The lesson is that nothing will change as long as oligarchy of any sort is predominant. It is a delusion to think that a change will happen because of this war, which has been provoked and orchestrated since the end of WWII.
But what is the hope and whom should progressives support? Is China the hope to change this hegemonous system? I am not so sure. China is using a hybrid system of economics but within the communist Chinese system there are also oligarchs. I have no idea what the answer is, but unless the basics of the system are recognized and tackled, all the rest is whistling in the wind.
It’s hard to imagine any diplomatic settlement while the Ukrainian government is being dictated to not just by the Washington MIC (using British PMs as their conduit) but also by literal Nazis who would string Zelensky up with relish. I do wonder though if Putin himself has now given up on a diplomatic solution. Why is he releasing dozens of Azov Nazis back into the Wild Field, knowing they are the most implacable opponents to a negotiated settlement and are just Nazis per se, berserkers who will never be reconciled?
So presumably, when a burglar enters your house and demands that you give him all your money, you will negotiate a compromise and give him half of your money. Craig, sometimes you make the impression of being really daft.
Perhaps because there are no “burglar” in this conflict to begin with. Stop seeing the conflict as black and white. That is the opposite of finding a peaceful solution.
How is your tactic working so far? Thousands dead and Ukraine have lost about 15-20 % of their land.
Instead they could have most likely made peace back in march but guys like you want to fight the “burglar” to the end just to prove some idiotic goal you cannot achive militarly. THAT posture is really daft.
So you think if they hadn’t fought they would have lost less land? That’s a laughable opinion.
> but do not take the same view of the rights of the Krim Tatars.
I understand that there are few Tatars left in Crimea, and I’m not aware of any calls for Crimea to be returned to them. This may be a contentious subject, and I find it hard to disentangle fact from POV-pushing.
I think the chances of Ukraine re-conquering Crimea are slim. The north of Crimea is mountainous and marshy, and there are few roads (and I believe one railway). A large part of Crimea is an important military base – it’s well-defended, and Russia won’t give it up lightly.
Zelyinsky says his war-aims are the re-conquest of all Crimean territory, and are not negotiable. I don’t believe him; I think his assertion is a posture, for the benefit of negotiating partners on the one hand, and Ukrainian “no-compromise” nationalists on the other. You don’t announce what you are prepared to put on the table before negotiation starts. I recokon he could be persuaded to reliquish claims on Crimea, in exchange for Russia relinquishing claims on Donbas (and withdrawing).
Zelyinsky’s argument against a ceasefire on current lines is that Russia would be back in a few years, once it’s economy and military have recovered a bit (I’m using “Zelyinsky” as a cipher for the Ukraine leadership). I share that view; Putin has staked his personal authority and reputation on taking Donbas.
I have no idea how “Nazi” Ukraine is. I’ve never been there. But nazi or not, I take it as an important matter of principle that you don’t march your armies across agreed international borders, annexe regions, stage fake referendums, kidnap and deport civilians, flatten cities and so on. If you behave like that, I will take the side of the defender, whatever thair national character.
“Ukrainians are part (and one of the largest and highest quality) of the European White Race. Race-Creator of a great civilization, the greatest human achievements. The historic mission of our Nation in this pivotal century is to head and lead the White Peoples of the world in the last crusade for their existence. Campaign against Semitic-led sub-humanity.”
Is it Nazi enough for you, Jimmeth?
Tatyana,
You put that in quotes, as if I said it. I didn’t, and I have no idea of who you are quoting or what the context is.
I put that in quotation marks because it’s a quote, Jimmeh. Quote from the leader of the very defenders – and now attention, please, I cite Your words – “I will take the side of the defender, whatever thair national character.”
And now again attention, I cite Your words again – “I have no idea how “Nazi” Ukraine is”
So, was that statement Nazi enough? Or, still tolerable?
The question is actually sincere. The fact is that while you are there in Europe making up your mind, here people are dying from weapons sponsored by you.
> The question is actually sincere.
So I’ll take your question at face value.
> Quote from the leader of the very defenders
OK, so you’re not quoting me, you’re quoting Zelyinsky. I agree that’s a despicable utterance. But in other comments, you’ve referred to Zelyinsky as a “clown”. Why should I take him seriously? As it happens, I don’t take him to be a clown; he’s an improv actor and TV comic. The point is, he’s leading his people in a national struggle. Can you give me an example of a leader in such circumstances who didn’t make extreme and hateful public remarks? Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini all make despicable public remarks.
> And now again attention, I cite Your words again – “I have no idea how “Nazi” Ukraine is”
Attention, yourself! I am not your soldier, and I object to being called to attention.
How is that statement a Nazi statement? I’ve never been to Ukraine. I’ve never been to Portugal either; I hear they had a fascist government until I was about 25 yo. But I don’t know. I don’t know any portuguese people, but from what I’ve heard they’re rather liberal.
Jimmeh,
I was not quoting Ze, the words were written by Biletsky, the leader of the defenders. Ze is a clown, a talking head. Actually, I think I should stop asking questions from you, as there’s a basic attitude preventing healthy discussion and all my calls for attention are made in vain.
Jimmeh
You are just repeating western propaganda.
Close to 20% of Ukraine is under russian and or separist control. Do you really believe Ukraine could somehow win that back? And if they do, do you really believe the people living there would support that?
https://i.imgur.com/Z2qelpV.png
Donbas do not want to be part of Ukraine, you need to do your history.
Here is a short sum:
“John Bosnitch says the people of the Donbas region have no intention to remain part of Ukraine as they have been under attack by their own government since 2014.”
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/10196
> Do you really believe Ukraine could somehow win that back?
Your “20%” claim includes Crimea. No, I don’t think Ukraine could win Crimea back, not without large force contributions from other better-armed countries. I do think Ukraine could win back the Donbas. I think they *should* win it back, because I’m always opposed to territorial gains resulting from international military aggression.
But I don’t think Ukraine can win back Crimea, without overwhelming Western military support; Crimea is a long-fortified Russian naval base.
Jimmeh
Tell us how Ukraine is going to win that back, you believe Russia will somehow leave without Russia responding with greater firepower?
What I tried to tell you is that this is not about Russia; it is about the population that lives there – they do not want to belong to Ukraine (I am speaking of Donbas). Why do you hinder them from creating their independence and or seeking to belong to Russia? What’s that got to do with you?
virtue signaling
>? Tell us how Ukraine is going to win that back
By “that”, I take it you mean Donbas; because I already said I don’t think they can win back Crimea.
> you believe Russia will somehow leave without Russia responding with greater firepower?
I don’t think Russia will “leave”; I think their soldiers will run away. I don’t think they want to fight. Very many of them are short-term conscripts, as far as I can tell. But I can’t see a situation where Russia will actually give up; so no, I don’t.
I think Putin might pop a nuke. I can’t see him surrendering, either to an international court or to anyone else. He has dreams of glory.
Thanks, Jack, for explaining history since 2014. That’s since Russia annexed Crimea, and invaded Donbas; it’s hardly the broad sweep of history – that’s almost yesterday.
Jmmeh
Not sure what your reply was about. My question was:
“Why do you hinder them (people of Donbas) from creating their independence and or seeking to belong to Russia? What’s that got to do with you?”
Part of your utterance, Jack, was the question:
> “Why do you hinder them (people of Donbas) from creating their independence […]”
Well, I don’t. If they want to have a civil war inside Ukraine, for
whatever reasons, that’s regrettable. But it’s not my business, nor is it my coutry’s business. But if the neighbouring country marches across the border with 300,00 troops and starts smashing cities up, that’s not a rebellion any more.
“You are conditioned to believe that killing more people is a better solution than negotiating a compromise”
– this predominate introduction to Craig’s post is central to the pathway that can contribute to peace within a planet hell bent on destruction, death and subjugation.
Most of us are exposed to classical conditioning in one way or another throughout our lives. It is a mental plight although certainly not crazy because conditioning in a good calculated way helps us create expectations to prepare for future events. As a simple example getting ill from a certain food helps us associate that food with sickness.consecutively, that helps prevent us from getting sick in the future. This might be thought of as positive conditioning and many examples exist that improve our lives. The Gordian knot here is we are repeatedly pored over with Russophobia that denies tact and negotiation, it is negative conditioning. Not only Russophobia, warning threats of death, ruin, ad hominem, encarceration and torture is used to ‘condition’ our minds…
Lets take a look at the Mirotvorets Website. Fed with Western intelligence including MI6. This Ukrainian nationalist website Mirotvorets lists are used to suppress free speech and repress journalists. I ask why is a terrorist website that has resulted in the deaths of many journalists allowed to exist, accepted, supported, valid?
CAUTION: disturbing, upsetting and frightening to some:
https://myrotvorets-center.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=uk&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Indeed. When I looked at it some time ago I found it horrifying and vile and along with journalists such as Eva Bartlett and Graham Phillips there are names of children who have simply told their stories of their Donbass upbringing under constant terror included. I read an article in the last few days on it (forgotten the source) that states it is actually hosted from West Virginia ie the home of the CIA. In typical Orwellian style “Myrotvorets” evidently means “Peacemaker” which is just sick-making. But no pressure from Western sources to have it taken down.
Wait until the gas shortages kick in this winter in Germany, and the realisation that geography and geology mean Putin-gas is by far the best option sinks in. The people then realise that ‘Ukraine’ as innocent victim is a sham.
And then what? End of US neo-con game-playing (with the lives and livelihoods of us Europeans)?