Oekraïne, geopolitiek en het moorddadige Westen

[Olive Yao]

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onderwerpen: voorgeschiedenis; maidan 2013-2014; situatie in oost Oekraïne, oekraïns en russisch optreden; russische narratief; russische vs EU / NAVO oriëntatie Oekraïne





A Ukrainian socialist explains why the Russian invasion shouldn’t have been a surprise

Jana Tsoneva – An interview with Volodymyr Artiukh | Jacobin 9 maart 2022


Vladimir Putin uses the language of “demilitarization” to pursue an aggressive imperial policy against Ukraine. In an interview for Jacobin, a Ukrainian socialist explains the falseness of the Kremlin’s pretexts — and why the war could drag on for years.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a crime and a human tragedy. There are already some 2 million refugees, as bombs and missiles rain down on cities around Ukraine. Early setbacks for the invading forces have often fed the idea that Vladimir Putin’s actions have backfired. Yet Ukrainians face the prospect of a long and drawn-out war, with no end in sight even despite their stiff military resistance.

Volodymyr Artiukh is a Ukrainian anthropologist specializing in labor and migration in the post-Soviet space. Jana Tsoneva asked him about Putin’s imperial agenda, the last eight years of war, and what hopes exist of a viable peace process.

JT How is the war related to the post-2014 outbreak of civil war?

VA: Briefly, the Maidan protests of 2013–14, Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea, and support of the uprising in Donbas led to a change in the geo-economic and geopolitical orientation of Ukraine. Ukraine signed an association agreement with the European Union, changed its cultural and political orientation in favor of Euro-Atlantic structures, and abandoned the idea of integration with the Russian project of an economic and political union. Russia reacted to this by consolidating an anti-Western narrative.

The Crimea annexation, which was largely bloodless, led to a boost in Putin’s domestic popularity. Then, he hoped to capitalize on the uprising in Donbas, which was an uprising against the change of government in Kiev. This uprising was construed as self-defense of the “Russian world” against Western-supported Ukrainian nationalists. Ukraine was increasingly represented as a failed state with an illegitimate Western-controlled government that terrorizes Russian speakers. All these ideological elements are present now as Putin’s justification of the invasion: denazification, demilitarization, decommunization.

JT Did the new government in Kiev do something to them to trigger this uprising in the East?

VA: This was a revolt that started essentially in a similar way to the Maidan — as a grassroots mobilization, with barricades and takeover of local governments in several eastern cities. Initially it was a purely negative phenomenon — against something rather than for something. But soon, guys with a particular mix of the Russian-imperialist ideology and Soviet nostalgia — hoping for a union with Russia and inspired by the annexation of Crimea — took over this local uprising.

Their idea was to spread the uprising to the rest of south-eastern Ukraine, which they called Novorossiya, referring to the time of the Russian Empire. Russia eventually integrated these semi-independent warlords into the Russian security apparatus. This led to an attempt of the Kiev government to take back Donbas in summer 2014 with the so-called anti-terrorist operation.

It was a war waged against the rebels, who were already quite pro-Russian and fought for an independence from Ukraine and for integration with Russia. Eventually Russian troops entered there on several occasions in 2014 and 2015. These incursions led to very significant defeats of the Ukrainian army with significant loss of life and equipment, which forced the Ukrainian government to sign the Minsk agreements.

Eventually, the spread of the uprising to Ukraine more widely faltered — but it was still mobilized by Russia to redirect the Ukrainian government as a whole, to use the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” as a leverage against Kiev’s pro-Western orientation. The Minsk agreements were essentially a diplomatic expression of the Russian military superiority; Russian military victory was translated into this diplomatic document. These agreements basically complemented the fighting rather than stopping it.

JT Did the Ukrainian government honor these agreements?

VA: Neither side honored them — the divergence of interpretations emerged almost instantly. The agreements were not meant, in hindsight, to stop the war but to contain the military action, to dampen the contradictory interests of Ukrainian and Russian elites, to contain the military action so that the parties could regroup and prepare for the next round of fighting.

So, the ceasefire, which was only one part of the agreements, ebbed and flowed. At times, there was almost a full-fledged war; at times almost a real ceasefire, for example for almost half a year since summer 2020. The rhythm of the military action accompanied political negotiations. Ultimately these agreements were just a diplomatic break on the war, not its negation.

JT Volodymyr Ishchenko writes that only 20 percent of Ukrainians approved of joining NATO in 2007, doubling to 40 percent after the Crimea annexation, but still not the majority. So, what precipitated the geopolitical shift around 2013 and Maidan?

VA: It’s true that prior to the Maidan of 2013, Ukrainian society was quite polarized; there was no majority in favor of either Russian or EU integration, much less in favor of NATO. The cause of the Maidan uprising was internal rather than geopolitical; it started as a popular uprising against an extremely corrupt and authoritarian regime, but eventually these contradictions of Ukrainian society were capitalized on by the oligarchs, also for electoral ends.

So, the Maidan uprising was quickly hijacked by one of these fractions to streamline the popular discontent into this pro-EU pro-NATO straitjacket. A whole stratum of self-organized volunteers, paramilitary groups, NGOs, political adventurers, and intellectuals emerged after Maidan, who combined nationalism, neofascism, economic liberalism, and “Occidentalism” — a loose idea of the Western civilization. This was amplified by Western soft power and a network of NGOs — the familiar story.

So, the more the conflict progressed along these lines — with Russia also playing its role in amplifying this conflict with its own imperialist ideology — people’s perception was increasingly put in these very narrow confines: either the West or Russia.

Nevertheless, there was still a silent majority in whose common sense these questions were rather superficial. For them, these were not the major concerns, but they didn’t have another way of speaking of their problems publicly. This majority elected Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019. He promised to end the war, to not press the issues of identity and language. He appealed to the good sense of the majority while glossing over these divisive issues.

JT But he also constitutionalized the new geopolitical orientation of Ukraine.

VA: Yes, a year into his tenure as a president, he changed direction. Initially he was accused of being pro-Russian, accused of preparing to capitulate to Russia. But as essentially every president of Ukraine does, he tried to concentrate as much power as he could. He had to defeat his nationalist enemies, attract their constituency, and became this Napoleonic figure that balanced the Right and Left, pro-Russians and pro-Europeans, and at one of the turns he got stuck in the pro-Western nationalist corner. And at this point, everything collapsed.

JT And now the war has only radicalized this position?

VA: Yes, the war changed everything.

(...)

[Olive Yao]

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JT We discussed the Russian involvement in the run-up to the war — so what was NATO’s role?

VA: Look, there are Russia-NATO relations that stretch back to 1991 and back to the Soviet-NATO confrontation. This is one level. But I would insist on separating this from a second layer which is Ukraine-Russia-NATO. You can’t reduce the one thing to the other.

JT Ukrainian NATO membership wasn’t really on the table, right?

VA: Yes. And in the recent diplomatic talks, before the war, Joe Biden was willing to entertain the possibility for a moratorium on Ukrainian NATO membership. He stressed that NATO would not be involved in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Among other powerful Western powers, such as France and Germany, nobody seriously considered Ukraine joining.

JT Did Russia use NATO’s expansion as a fig leaf then?

VA: Definitely. Take, for example, the ultimatum which Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued back in December about rolling back NATO’s border to the pre-1997 period. The call to decide literally the next day meant that no one could see this as a good faith negotiation. I think the idea of going to war in Ukraine, one way or another, was already there and they needed the war itself as a negotiating mechanism. They wanted to use war as a way of getting information from the West, like, what is the highest level of escalation that the West can afford? How far can we — Russia — go? What can we do in our backyard, and how far can they go in response?

JT Why would they want to know that?

VA: Because that’s not the end of the matter. Because they think ahead. If you listen to Russia’s officials and read their ideological manifestos, if you read people who interpret Russian foreign policy decision makers in the Kremlin — they see these apocalyptic events coming. They see the world changing to the core. They see that we live in the new world and Russia needs to find its place otherwise it will be eaten by these predators, by China or the US. They’re reasoning along the lines of “we need to act now, it’s now or never, there is time and it will either be glorious or we perish.” They also hope that they will join China in a sort of alliance. And they already need to mark their territory. The logic is: “There’s seven bad years ahead, but then we’ll have our hundred years of empire.” This is the frame of mind, if you read closely what the Russians are saying.

JT Left-leaning media emphasize NATO’s role — but your reading makes me think that the talk about NATO was some kind of fake excuse for Russia.

JT Like when he speaks of 1991 as a “catastrophe.”

VA: Yes, and this long-term perspective had a caricatural representation in Lavrov’s ultimatum, seeking to solve the whole problem in a matter of two months. What he said was that NATO was going to Ukraine and was about to station weapons there: a hysterical spectacle, a performance of all these grievances. But this diplomatic spectacle was not meant to resolve this thirty-year-old problem.

So, the war in Ukraine is not a direct consequence of NATO expansion. It’s Russia’s proactive step to change, to break this structure of power relations in which Russia existed. It was not reactive in the sense of an immediate threat, it was a predator’s attack at the moment when, according to the Kremlin, the enemy was at its weakest. The diplomatic spectacle was a distraction.

JT Let’s talk about the liberal take on the situation that Putin wants to recreate the old “Soviet empire” in its former borderlands.

VA: Let’s just abandon this ridiculous idea that Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union. Listen to Putin himself — he spent half his speech castigating Lenin.

JT And promised the “decommunization” of Ukraine.

VA: Yes, exactly. For him, decommunization means destroying this “affirmative action empire” that was the USSR. Putin wants to destroy the economic and national units that the USSR created throughout its history. He wants to essentially rebuild the Russian empire with one imperial center. Not necessarily within the boundaries of the old, but with a similar power structure of one imperial center resting on an oppressive apparatus without any hegemonic ideology that mobilizes people from below.

Hegemonic leadership implies concession to the partners in the hegemonic power bloc, as the Soviet Union did, making some concessions to the nationalities. Putin is not interested in hegemony. He’s interested in building this “vertical power” that begins and ends with the Kremlin. This is a very different thing to the Soviet Union. You need only look at how Putin talks to his Security Council, like to schoolchildren who failed their homework assignment. Compared to that, the Communist Party was a shining example of direct democracy.

JT When the invasion happened on February 24, you wrote that you had seen it coming. How did you do so?

VA: The process that led to the war was already visible in the first war scare of April 2021, when the first Putin-Biden meeting happened after Russia piled up troops on the border with Ukraine. Back then, everyone expected a war to happen at that point.

But instead, Putin and Biden started talks on strategic stability and Putin made some claims regarding Ukraine, especially about the Minsk agreements. Nominally the troops were withdrawn from the borders after this meeting, but everyone knew that a substantial number remained. However, immediately after that Putin talked about the red lines, the asymmetric response if the lines are crossed; then he wrote his Ukraine article, which was essentially an ultimatum directed at Zelensky. This article was the draft of his war declaration speech that we saw in two parts over February 22 and February 24. It was probably recorded in one go.

So, after the Putin-Biden meeting in 2021, the military infrastructure and substantial numbers of weapons remained at the border. There was a surge in September and October with a large-scale military exercise, the Zapad (“West”) exercise, when the number of troops exceeded those that are now active in Ukraine, and these exercises were explicitly about taking over Ukraine. They did it as an exercise. Simultaneously, the breakaway regions of Donbas were all but integrated into Russia. More than half a million inhabitants gained Russian citizenship. The leaders of these republics got membership of the Russian ruling party.

Only wishful thinkers assumed that Putin would still want to go ahead with the Minsk process. By that time it was clear that even if Putin went along with Minsk, it would mean a war by other means, because the process implies that Ukraine reintegrates these territories, but they were de facto already integrated into Russia. They had their own military and so on, but being constitutionally integrated into Ukraine, they would have a free hand in the rest of the territory where they would clash with Ukrainian nationalists. In Ukraine, an internal revolt would have happened against such an implementation of the Minsk agreements, anyway. So, the Minsk process was another name for dismembering Ukraine and war in slow motion.

JT Ukraine has been treating them like foreign lands: it doesn’t pay pensions, social payments, all these financial and fiscal ties have been cut. I mean, can they ever go, or do they even want to go back? There’s also the issue of the language.

VA: I don’t think it was feasible, even before the war. Ukraine’s elites were already resigned to the fact that these were not their territories and the elite in these breakaway republics never thought that they would join Ukraine. When Putin recognized their independence, there was briefly a sigh of relief among Ukraine’s elites. They didn’t know the war was coming. Until the last moment, they didn’t believe that there would be war. But they were relieved that they had finally gotten rid of these troubled regions.

(...)

[Olive Yao]

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JT The West reacted to the war with sanctions which the media called unprecedented. Do you think the sanctions are going to stop Putin or will there be a world war?

VA: The sanctions will not stop the war. Only tanks and guns can stop tanks and guns.

JT Well, these tanks and guns need fuel and ammo and only money can buy them. How are they going to finance the war if it drags on?

VA: I’m talking about a long-term perspective. If the sanctions remain for years, probably we will see this effect. And even that is not given because we don’t know how China will react, but in the short term, there is no way the sanctions will impact the course of the war.

JT How about the antiwar movement in Russia? Is there any hope that Russians themselves will take down the regime and put an end to the war?

VA: No. The majority of the population in one way or another support the war. That’s clear now.

JT Really? The Levada Center registered only 40 percent support for the war.

VA: The latest polls show a much higher percentage.

JT Aren’t they government-controlled?

VA: Yes, there are issues with polls in Russia because the rate of nonresponses is very high. So, we probably aren’t accounting for a huge share of the population who for one reason or another refuse to respond. But let’s say that there is an indication that opponents of the war are a minority. Moreover, there is no political structure behind them, because the structure was destroyed in recent years. Add to that the immense increase in the repressive apparatus in Russia and the institutionalization of censorship. The antiwar movement is necessary, of course, it is a good thing, we need to support and increase cooperation with those Russian scholars and activists and we need to fight xenophobia against them. But this is for the future.

JT What needs to be done in the short term, now that people are under fire and running away?

VA: Try to help the refugees and relieve the evolving humanitarian disaster in Ukraine. Western governments should not only think about supplying weapons and so on, but of canceling Ukraine’s foreign debt, providing economic assistance, and how to help to achieve ceasefires to get people out from under the bombs. They need to think about what’s going to happen with Ukraine’s economy very soon and how it’s going to impact the world food market.

These are the things that we can do and Western governments can do. They can, of course, influence the military action there. They are doing this, but now it ultimately depends on Ukrainians’ willingness to fight, which is now quite considerable. Even the Russian-speaking Ukrainians are rallying around the flag.

JT Do you see the West sending armies at some point?

VA: This will not happen. They are sending guns and anti-tank weapons, and there is talk of sending warplanes — I don’t know whether that will materialize or not. This won’t change the strategic picture. It helps to drag on and postpone Russia’s victory. It’s better to fight with an anti-tank missile than with your bare hands.

JT But if it drags on, what are the Ukrainians to do?

VA: There will be a slow takeover of Ukraine by Russia, city by city, with immense destruction and with immense suffering.

JT Like Chechnya.

VA: Yes, but it can’t be ruled out that, at some point, Russia will sink all its resources in Ukraine. Actually, Russia already seems to be running out of resources and will need to mobilize its economy and then more recruits, reservists and so on, and that will likely significantly change the picture inside Russia. Probably it will have a negative impact, much more negative than the sanctions, but it remains to be seen. I remain pessimistic in regards to the outcome of this war. I still don’t think that Ukraine’s army can prevail. As to whether Putin can achieve his goals of regime change: definitely not. There is no way he can sustain a stable pro-Russian regime.

JT Because there would be another Maidan followed by another invasion?

VA: Yes, and you see this already — in Russian-speaking cities, mind you — with peaceful protests in the cities captured by the Russians. There is an army. There are attacks on the streets, yet people take to the protests unarmed. If this is happening now, it’s definitely going to happen to any regime Putin may install.

JT Is there a way out for Putin?

VA: I don’t think he knows himself. It’s this situation when you jump into the fight and then you see — that’s what they did. They miscalculated gravely. They thought that the Ukrainian army would fold and that the people would come with flowers to cheer, but this didn’t happen.

The West also risks losing face. I didn’t see any appetite for war in the West last year, neither from the US — which explicitly said we don’t need trouble in Europe, we need to focus on China — nor from the EU. That’s also part of the reason why Putin did it because he saw that the West was not ready to deal with a war. You remember Emmanuel Macron making a fool of himself proclaiming that, oh, I brought peace and the week after Putin invaded. So, the West can’t do anything, to be honest. The war, unfortunately, has to be fought out between the Ukrainian and Russian army. The balance of power on the battlefield will decide pretty much everything else. And there is no good news. It’s just death and death and death.

JT One final question concerning knowledge production in war. You have criticized US-centric paradigms trying to explain the conflict. I agree with you that when they talk about the war, Americans have a tendency to talk mostly about themselves. What kind of frameworks do we need to begin to understand this war?

VA: I think we need to take a break analyzing the US hegemony, because we know pretty much everything about it already, and very little about how Russia came to be like this beyond this cliché caricature that American scholars paint of Putin and Russia.

Some parts of the Left also needs to abandon the idea that Russia is somehow a continuation of the Soviet Union, or that it is the underdog in the imperialist fight that needs to be supported. We need to pay closer attention to what Russian scholars have done. We need to think more deeply about how the Kremlin guys picture themselves, what they imagine is happening around them and what may motivate them beyond what the West imagines is rational. Clearly their goals and the way they work is different than we imagine. We need to pay attention to the internal dynamics in the Ukraine-Russia relations. This is not something we know a lot about beyond the simplistic Western portrayal of the good democratic Ukraine versus the terrible authoritarian Russia or the evil Nazi Ukraine versus the eternally mistreated Russia.

We need much closer cooperation with the Left in Ukraine, Russia, and the West, which has not been happening beyond occasional meetings. Because the Left is a bearer of some knowledge, limited knowledge, but some unusual and probably insightful knowledge about the situation. A lot of people on the Left in Russia and Ukraine will need concrete material help, and they need understanding, because the fog of war destroys rational and critical thinking, and you need to be patient with people who make mistakes and will make mistakes. It’s impossible not to make a mistake when bombs are falling and your friends are dying.

[Olive Yao]

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Redevoering van president Vladimir Putin op Dag van de Overwinning, 9 mei 2022

transcriptie, vertaling | bron


Fellow Russian citizens,

Dear veterans,

Comrade soldiers and seamen, sergeants and sergeant majors, midshipmen and warrant officers,

Comrade officers, generals and admirals,

I congratulate you on the Day of Great Victory!

The defence of our Motherland when its destiny was at stake has always been sacred. It was the feeling of true patriotism that Minin and Pozharsky’s militia stood up for the Fatherland, soldiers went on the offensive at the Borodino Field and fought the enemy outside Moscow and Leningrad, Kiev and Minsk, Stalingrad and Kursk, Sevastopol and Kharkov.

Today, as in the past, you are fighting for our people in Donbass, for the security of our Motherland, for Russia.

May 9, 1945 has been enshrined in world history forever as a triumph of the united Soviet people, its cohesion and spiritual power, an unparalleled feat on the front lines and on the home front.

Victory Day is intimately dear to all of us. There is no family in Russia that was not burnt by the Great Patriotic War. Its memory never fades. On this day, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the heroes march in an endless flow of the Immortal Regiment. They carry photos of their family members, the fallen soldiers who remained young forever, and the veterans who are already gone.

We take pride in the unconquered courageous generation of the victors, we are proud of being their successors, and it is our duty to preserve the memory of those who defeated Nazism and entrusted us with being vigilant and doing everything to thwart the horror of another global war.

Therefore, despite all controversies in international relations, Russia has always advocated the establishment of an equal and indivisible security system which is critically needed for the entire international community.

Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to heed us, which means they had totally different plans. And we saw it.

Another punitive operation in Donbass, an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea, was openly in the making. Kiev declared that it could attain nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc launched an active military build-up on the territories adjacent to us.

Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat to us was steadily being created right on our borders. There was every indication that a clash with neo-Nazis and Banderites backed by the United States and their minions was unavoidable.

Let me repeat, we saw the military infrastructure being built up, hundreds of foreign advisors starting work, and regular supplies of cutting-edge weaponry being delivered from NATO countries. The threat grew every day.

Russia launched a pre-emptive strike at the aggression. It was a forced, timely and the only correct decision. A decision by a sovereign, strong and independent country.

The United States began claiming their exceptionalism, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thus denigrating not just the entire world but also their satellites, who have to pretend not to see anything, and to obediently put up with it.

But we are a different country. Russia has a different character. We will never give up our love for our Motherland, our faith and traditional values, our ancestors’ customs and respect for all peoples and cultures.

Meanwhile, the West seems to be set to cancel these millennia-old values. Such moral degradation underlies the cynical falsifications of World War II history, escalating Russophobia, praising traitors, mocking their victims’ memory and crossing out the courage of those who won the Victory through suffering.

We are aware that US veterans who wanted to come to the parade in Moscow were actually forbidden to do so. But I want them to know: We are proud of your deeds and your contribution to our common Victory.

We honour all soldiers of the allied armies – the Americans, the English, the French, Resistance fighters, brave soldiers and partisans in China – all those who defeated Nazism and militarism.

Comrades,

Donbass militia alongside with the Russian Army are fighting on their land today, where princes Svyatoslav and Vladimir Monomakh’s retainers, solders under the command of Rumyantsev and Potemkin, Suvorov and Brusilov crushed their enemies, where Great Patriotic War heroes Nikolai Vatutin, Sidor Kovpak and Lyudmila Pavlichenko stood to the end.

I am addressing our Armed Forces and Donbass militia. You are fighting for our Motherland, its future, so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II, so that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.

Today, we bow our heads to the sacred memory of all those who lost their lives in the Great Patriotic War, the memories of the sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.

We bow our heads to the memory of the Odessa martyrs who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in May 2014, to the memory of the old people, women and children of Donbass who were killed in atrocious and barbaric shelling by neo-Nazis. We bow our heads to our fighting comrades who died a brave death in the righteous battle – for Russia.

I declare a minute of silence.

(A minute of silence.)

The loss of each officer and soldier is painful for all of us and an irretrievable loss for the families and friends. The government, regional authorities, enterprises and public organisations will do everything to wrap such families in care and help them. Special support will be given to the children of the killed and wounded comrades-in-arms. The Presidential Executive Order to this effect was signed today.

I wish a speedy recovery to the wounded soldiers and officers, and I thank doctors, paramedics, nurses and staff of military hospitals for their selfless work. Our deepest gratitude goes to you for saving each life, oftentimes sparing no thought for yourselves under shelling on the frontlines.

Comrades,

Soldiers and officers from many regions of our enormous Motherland, including those who arrived straight from Donbass, from the combat area, are standing now shoulder-to-shoulder here, on Red Square.

We remember how Russia’s enemies tried to use international terrorist gangs against us, how they tried to seed inter-ethnic and religious strife so as to weaken us from within and divide us. They failed completely.

Today, our warriors of different ethnicities are fighting together, shielding each other from bullets and shrapnel like brothers.

This is where the power of Russia lies, a great invincible power of our united multi-ethnic nation.

You are defending today what your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought for. The wellbeing and security of their Motherland was their top priority in life. Loyalty to our Fatherland is the main value and a reliable foundation of Russia’s independence for us, their successors, too.

Those who crushed Nazism during the Great Patriotic War showed us an example of heroism for all ages. This is the generation of victors, and we will always look up to them.

Glory to our heroic Armed Forces!

For Russia! For Victory!

Hooray!

[Olive Yao]

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onderwerpen: Krim; escalatie naar oorlog


“Another punitive operation in Donbass, an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea, was openly in the making.” – Vladimir Putin, 9 mei 2022






“On the Strategy of de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol»

De - lange - text van het decreet van president Volodymyr Zelensky van 24 maart 2021 staat hier in het engels vertaald.
Wie oekraïns leest kan het hier lezen.










Why is the Biden Administration pushing Ukraine to attack Russia?

Ron Paul 5 april 2021

On March 24th, Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky signed what was essentially a declaration of war on Russia. In the document, titled Presidential Decree No. 117/2021, the US-backed Ukrainian leader declared that it is the official policy of Ukraine to take back Crimea from Russia.

The declaration that Ukraine would take back Crimea from Russia also followed, and was perhaps instigated by, President Biden’s inflammatory and foolish statement that “Crimea is Ukraine.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was a chief architect of the US-backed coup against Ukraine in 2014, continued egging on the Ukrainians, promising full US support for the “territorial integrity” of Ukraine. Many Americans wonder why they are not even half as concerned about the territorial integrity of the United States!

Not to be outdone, at the beginning of this month US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin – who previously served on the board of missile-maker Raytheon – called his counterpart in Ukraine and promised "unwavering US support for Ukraine's sovereignty." As the US considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory, this is clearly a clear green light for Kiev to take military action.

Washington is also sending in weapons. Some 300 tons of new weapons have arrived in the past weeks and more is on the way.

As could be expected, Moscow has responded to Zelensky’s decree and to the increasingly bellicose rhetoric in Kiev and Washington by re-positioning troops and other military assets closer to its border with Ukraine. Does anyone doubt that if the US were in the same situation - for example, if China installed a hostile and aggressive government in Mexico - the Pentagon might move troops in a similar manner?

But according to the media branch of the US military-industrial-Congressional-media complex, Russian troop movements are not a response to clear threats from a neighbor, but instead are just more “Russian aggression.”

The unhinged US “experts” behind the 2014 coup against the elected Ukrainian president are back in power and they are determined to finish the job – even if it means World War III! The explicit US backing of Ukraine’s military ambitions in the region are a blank check to Kiev.

But it is a check that Kiev would be wise to avoid cashing. Back in 1956 the US government pumped endless propaganda into Hungary promising military backing for an uprising against its Soviet occupiers. When the Hungarians, believing Washington’s lies, did rise up they found themselves all alone and facing Soviet retaliation.

Despite the cruel US propaganda, at least Eisenhower was wise enough to realize that no one would benefit from a nuclear war over Budapest.

Why is it any of our business whether Crimea is part of Ukraine or part of Russia? Why is it any of our business if the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine prefer being aligned with Russia?

Why, for that matter, are unproven allegations of Russian meddling in our elections a violation of the “rules-based international order” but an actual US-backed coup against an elected Ukrainian government is not?

We are seeing foreign policy made by Raytheon and the other US military contractors, through cut-outs in government like Austin and others. Feckless US foreign policy “experts” believe their own propaganda about Russia and are on the verge of taking us to war over it.

It seems as if Americans are sleepwalking through this dangerous minefield. Let us hope they soon wake up before we're all blown up.


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Ronald Ernest Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American author, activist, physician, and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, and for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate for the Republican Party in 2008 and 2012. A self-described constitutionalist, Paul is a critic of the federal government's fiscal policies, especially the existence of the Federal Reserve and the tax policy, as well as the military–industrial complex, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. He has also been a vocal critic of mass surveillance policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance programs. In 1976, Paul formed the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), and in 1985 was named the first chairman of the conservative PAC Citizens for a Sound Economy, both free-market groups focused on limited government. He has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement, a fiscally conservative political movement started in 2009 that is largely against most matters of interventionism.

wikipedia

[Olive Yao]

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onderwerp: Krim

There’s a Lot More to the Crimean Annexation

The facts above give more context to Russian actions following the coup, and ought to counter the caricature of a Russian Empire bent on expansion. From Russia’s point of view, a longtime adversary had successfully overthrown a neighboring government using violent far-right extremists.

The Crimean peninsula, which was part of Russia until it was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954, is home to one of two Russian naval bases with access to the Black and Mediterranean seas, one of history’s most important maritime theaters. A Crimea controlled by a US-backed Ukrainian government was a major threat to Russian naval access.

The peninsula—82% of whose households speak Russian, and only 2% mainly Ukrainian—held a plebiscite in March 2014 on whether or not they should join Russia, or remain under the new Ukrainian government. The Pro-Russia camp won with 95% of the vote. The UN General Assembly, led by the US, voted to ignore the referendum results on the grounds that it was contrary to Ukraine’s constitution. This same constitution had been set aside to oust President Yanukovych a month earlier.

All of this is dropped from Western coverage.

uit Bryce Green / FAIR, What you should really know about Ukraine, hier in post #63


Crimea's struggle for independence

Isn't the development in Crimea also related to this?

We forget that Crimea was independent, even before Ukraine became independent. In January 1991, while the Soviet Union still existed, Crimea held a referendum to be managed from Moscow and not from Kiev. It thus became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukraine did not get its own independence referendum until six months later in August 1991. At that point, Crimea did not consider itself a part of Ukraine. But Ukraine did not accept this. Between 1991 and 2014, it was a constant struggle between the two entities. Crimea had its own constitution with its own authorities. In 1995, encouraged by the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine overthrew the Crimean government with special forces and abrogated its constitution. But this is never mentioned, as it would shed a completely different light on the current development.

What did the people of Crimea want?

As a matter of fact, Crimeans considered themselves as independent. From 1995, Crimea was governed by decrees from Kiev. This was in complete contradiction with the 1991 referendum and explains why Crimea held a new referendum in 2014, after the new ultra-nationalist government came to power in Ukraine after the illegal coup. Its result was very similar to the one 30 years earlier. After the referendum, Crimea asked to join the Russian Federation. It was not Russia that conquered Crimea, it was the people who authorized their authorities to ask Russia to take them in. There was also a treaty of friendship between Russia and Ukraine in 1997, in which Ukraine guaranteed the cultural diversity of minorities in the country. When the Russian language was banned as an official language in February 2014, it was a violation of this treaty.

uit Jacques Baud / Thomas Kaiser – "The policy of the USA has always been to prevent Germany and Russia from cooperating more closely" - Historical, political and economic contexts of the war in Ukraine, hier in post #76

[Olive Yao]

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onderwerp: escalatie naar oorlog


(...)
If you look carefully at the military reports and the preparations on the ground, you can see pretty clearly: Putin had no intention of attacking Ukraine until mid-February.

Why did that change? What has happened?

You have to know a few things first, otherwise you won't understand. On 24 March 2021, Ukrainian President Zelensky issued a Presidential decree to recapture Crimea. He then began to move the Ukrainian army south and southeast, towards the Donbas. So, for a year now, we have had a permanent build-up of the army on Ukraine's southern border. This explains why there were no Ukrainian troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border at the end of February. Zelensky has always claimed that the Russians will not attack Ukraine. The Ukrainian defence minister has also repeatedly confirmed this. Similarly, the head of the Ukrainian Security Council confirmed in December and in January that there were no signs of a Russian attack on Ukraine.

Was this a trick?

No, they said that several times, and I am sure that Putin, who also said that repeatedly, by the way, did not want to attack. Obviously, there was pressure from the US.

(...)

The whole situation escalated after the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty]. Under the ABM Treaty, they could not deploy such a system in Europe. (...)
(...)
On 11-12 February, the security conference was held in Munich. Zelensky was there. He indicated that he wanted to acquire nuclear weapons. (…)
(...)
(…) at the start of the operation against Ukraine, when the French foreign minister threatened Putin by declaring that NATO was a nuclear power. Putin reacted to this by raising the alert level of his nuclear forces. Our media, of course, did not mention this. (...)

What prompted Putin to intervene militarily now?

On 24 March 2021, Zelensky issued a Presidential decree to reconquer Crimea by force. He started preparations to do so. Whether that was his real intention or just a political manoeuvre, we don't know. What we have seen, however, is that he has massively reinforced the Ukrainian army in the Donbas region and in the south towards Crimea. Of course, the Russians have noticed this. At the same time, NATO conducted large exercises between the Baltic and the Black Sea in April.

(…)

So, did anything happen on 16 February?

On that day, there was an extreme increase in ceasefire violations by the Ukrainian army along the ceasefire line, the so-called “contact line”. There have always been violations over the past eight years, but from February 12 {16? o. y.], the increase is extreme, including explosions, especially in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. We know this because it was reported by the OSCE mission in the Donbass. These reports can be read in the OSCE’s "Daily reports".


16 februari:



bron

17 februari:



bron

18 februari:



bron

19 februari:



bron

What was the objective of the Ukrainian military?

This was certainly the initial phase of an offensive against the Donbass. When the artillery fire intensified, the authorities of both republics began to evacuate the civilian population to Russia. In an interview, Sergei Lavrov mentioned more than 100,000 refugees. In Russia, this was seen as an indication for an imminent large-scale operation.

What were the consequences?

This action of the Ukrainian army actually triggered everything. At that point, it was clear to Putin that Ukraine was going to conduct an offensive against the two republics. (…)

- - -
uit Jacques Baud, interview Thomas Kaiser – "The policy of the USA has always been to prevent Germany and Russia from cooperating more closely" – Historical, political and economic contexts of the war in Ukraine hier gepost in post #73 en verder

Voor de lezers die niet engels lezen, hier een vertaling van een andere publicatie van kolonel Jacques Baud
- - -

Het uitbreken van de oorlog

Sinds november 2021 reeds spreken de VS voortdurend over een dreigende Russische invasie in Oekraïne. Maar Oekraïners zelf denken daar op dat ogenblik blijkbaar anders over. Waarom?

We moeten daarvoor terug naar 24 maart 2021. Op die dag vaardigde Volodymyr Zelensky een decreet uit voor de herovering van de Krim en begon hij zijn troepen in te zetten in het zuiden van het land. Tegelijkertijd vonden er verschillende NAVO-oefeningen plaats in de Zwarte Zee en de Oostzee, die gepaard gingen met een aanzienlijke toename van verkenningsvluchten langs de Russische grens.
(…)
In strijd met de Minsk-akkoorden voerde Oekraïne luchtoperaties uit in de Donbass met drones, waaronder ten minste één aanval op een brandstofdepot in Donetsk in oktober 2021. De Amerikaanse pers maakt daar melding van, maar de Europese niet, en bovendien veroordeelde niemand deze schendingen van de vredesakkoorden.





In februari 2022 komt alles in een stroomversnelling. (…)

Op 11 februari eindigde in Berlijn, na negen uur werken, de bijeenkomst van de politieke adviseurs van de leiders van het “Normandiëformaat” (Frankrijk, Duitsland, Rusland en Oekraïne, die samen de Minsk-akkoorden onderhandelden), zonder enig concreet resultaat. Oekraïne weigerde nog steeds de Minsk-akkoorden toe te passen, blijkbaar onder druk van de VS.
(...)
De Oekraïense voorbereidingen in de gevechtszone aan de frontlijn in de Donbas gingen door. (…) sinds de 16e februari namen de Oekraïense artilleriebeschietingen op de bevolking van Donbas dramatisch toe, zoals blijkt uit de dagelijkse rapporten van de OVSE-waarnemers.
(...)
Tegelijkertijd waren er berichten over sabotage in de Donbas. Op 18 januari onderschepten Donbas-strijders Pools sprekende saboteurs, die waren uitgerust met westerse apparatuur. Zij probeerden chemische incidenten uit te lokken in Gorlivka.
(...)
Het Oekraïense leger bereidde zich eerder al voor om de Donbas reeds in 2021 aan te vallen, zoals sommige Russische en Europese inlichtingendiensten maar al te goed wisten.

- - -
uit Jacques Baud – The military situation in the Ukraine

vertaald als – Voormalig NAVO-expert: “Ook andere interpretaties mogelijk van de feiten tijdens de invasie” op De Wereld Morgen.

[Olive Yao]

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The history behind the Russia-Ukraine war

Scott Horton / Antiwar.com 3 maart 2022

Lang artikel (25 bladzijden op papier), het volgende lijkt me interessant om er uit te lichten (dit is niet een samenvatting).


Nieuwe Koude Oorlog

Een nieuwe 'koude oorlog' van VS tegen Rusland ontwikkelt zich onder VS presidenten Clinton, Bush jr., Obama, Trump en Biden. Geopolitieke agressie van VS tegen Rusland gaat steeds verder.

The responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia belongs to Putin, but the new Cold War it takes place within is primarily the responsibility of the U.S. government and its leaders over the last 30 years.
(...)
But then the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden ruined our great peace and victory at the end of the last Cold War. Instead, they got us into this mess. This was primarily due to the policies of NATO expansion, tearing up important nuclear treaties, the installation of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, overthrowing multiple governments friendly to Russia, including Ukraine twice in 10 years, spending the last 5 years sending sophisticated arms to Ukraine and increasing harassment by American Navy ships and Air Force planes in the Black, Baltic and Okhotsk seas. They were warned. They thought it would be fine. It wasn’t.

VS hegemonie

President Ronald Reagan had negotiated an end to the Cold War with the old Soviet Union beginning in 1988. But then, under President George H.W. Bush, the American foreign policy community, led by the neoconservatives, adopted a doctrine of global dominance. This was, as Charles Krauthammer put it in Foreign Affairs in 1990, the U.S.’s "Unipolar Moment" and opportunity to remake the world our way and keep it that way.
(...)
Dick Cheney’s Defense Department’s post-Iraq War I, "Defense Planning Guidance" from 1992, defined the doctrine for the new decade and into the new millennium: The U.S. must remain the single dominant power on the planet, and must maintain enough military power to prevent any possible strategic rivals, such as Germany, Japan, Russia or China, from even considering an attempt to challenge U.S. power.

As those same neoconservatives wrote in their 1998 Project for a New American Century study, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses," expanding the U.S. presence in the Middle East and the NATO alliance in Europe was at the core of the doctrine.


Het gevaar van nationalisme in Oekraïne

Opmerking: In 1929 richtten oekraïnse fascisten onder leiding van S. Bandera een beweging op. De beweging is sindsien niet meer weggeweest. Bandera wordt heden vereerd.

Al in de jaren 1950 gebruikte de CIA de beweging om Rusland te doen bloeden:

As historian Jeff Rogg recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, declassified CIA documents show that when they backed right wing Stay Behind forces in Ukraine against the Soviets in the 1950s, the stated purpose of the operation was not to liberate Ukraine, but to "bleed" Russia.

Bush sr. zei in 1991 over Oekraïne, toen de Sovjet Unie uiteen viel:

"Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."

Volgens Scott Horton betekent dat:

(...) this showed a recognition of potentially dangerous nationalist forces in Ukraine who could do themselves much more harm than good.


Clinton verdeelt Europa

President Clinton had said that they would "build and secure a New Europe, peaceful, democratic and undivided at last." But he wasn’t uniting Europe. He was redividing it. Amb. [ambassadeur] Matlock warned that if you exclude Russia from the expanded alliance it would necessarily be against them. (...)

Clintons minister van defensie William Perry erkende jaren later, in 2016:

(…) In the interview, he also blamed the U.S. for provocative missiles defense systems in Europe and the Color-Coded revolutions in Russia’s near-abroad for poisoning relations with Putin’s Russia.

Ten tijde van Clinton greep VS in Kosovo:

It also set a precedent that is being invoked by the Russians right now: Where an ethnic minority is claiming persecution, a great power can move right in and change their sovereign status with unilateral force, the so-called international law be damned.

En in Tsjetsjenië:

Clinton’s CIA, in alliance with Saudi Arabia, also supported the separatist mujahideen fighters in Chechnya against the Russians in the late 1990s at the same time they supported Russian efforts against the Chechens, as detailed by the Washington Post, the Stratfor emails at Wikileaks and the journalism of former FBI lawyer Coleen Rowley.
(...)
In his statement announcing the de-facto absorption of the Donbass this last Monday, Putin mentioned this U.S. support for the Chechen mujahideen as an example of how unfairly the west has treated Russia over these last few decades. He also referred to stories about jihadists from the dirty war in Syria linking up with neo-Nazis to fight against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine in the Obama years. That’s true too. You can read all about it at the Intercept.


Bush jr.

Bush jr. zegt een kernwapenverdrag op

Bush (...) announced American withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and plans to put defensive missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic. Attempting to avoid the obvious, the president claimed these were to protect Poland from ballistic missile attack from Iran. (…) Instead, these missiles dangerously tip the balance of Mutually Assured Destruction toward one of potential first strike capability. This is of course considered a major threat by Russia.

Bush jr. steunt staatsgrepen

Bush’s government also launched a project of what are called the Color-Coded Revolutions, primarily against Russian-leaning states in their near-abroad. These are essentially U.S. coup d’état’s disguised as fake "revolutions" backed by the CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and friendly, supposedly private NGOs like Otpor.
(…)
In the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine the U.S. helped to overthrow the elected president Victor Yanukovych from the Russian-leaning Party of Regions in favor of the Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko and his allies such as the so-called "Gas Princess" Yulia Tymoshenko.

Opmerkingen
1. NED wordt hier genoemd.
2. Vergelijk over ‘friendly, supposedly private NGOs’ J. M. Zelaya, L. Perez Leira – Meerdere ngo’s onderdeel VS-pogingen tot regime change in Latijns-Amerika (ook gepost op maroc.nl door Revisor).
Er zit een herkenbare lijn in.


Obama laat verder escaleren

The Democrats, especially, attack Russia, but perhaps they should take responsibility. President Barack Obama continued down the same destructive path as his predecessors. (…)

De staatsgreep van 2014 door VS georkestreerd

(…) in Ukraine in 2014, the democratically elected, Russian-leaning government was overthrown in a violent, U.S.-backed street putsch — the "most blatant coup in history," according to Stratfor’s George Friedman. The overthrow was led by neo-Nazis from the Right Sector and Svoboda Party. Once President Yanukovych fled, American-picked puppets were installed in his government’s place.

Sebastopol, Krim, Donbas

When the new government threatened to kick the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of the naval base at Sevastopol, Crimea, the Russians reacted by seizing the entire Peninsula in a coup de main. When ethnic Russian separatists occupied government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk, refusing to recognize the authority of the new coup regime, Kiev attacked and Moscow responded by sending special operations forces to help the locals repel the assault.

"Freedom is being threatened by Russian aggression!" the narrative went, which could not have been further from the truth.

(…)

(...) the U.S. started it, not Russia. Again, in Ukraine, Putin sent deniable special operations types into the eastern Donbass region to help defend it. Like that or not, up until the end of February 2022, for eight years they did not invade the country with any conventional force or take any territory in the east. When the Donbass region held a referendum and voted to ask to join the Russian federation in February 2015, Putin refused. He would only help them to maintain their autonomy from the hostile regime in Kiev. More than fourteen thousand people were killed in the 2014-2015 war there and in the low-level fighting which continued between then and now. But the vast majority, approximately 80%, of these were Ukrainian civilians and militia fighters killed by the Kiev government, not pro-regime Ukrainians killed by separatists or Russian invaders.

Nevermind the truth. The narrative is what counts on TV. Except in this case there’s hardly even a narrative at all. Just the endlessly repeated slogans "Russian aggression" and "Russian seizure of Crimea" without any explanation or context.

(…)

[Sebastopol is] their only year-round warm water port, and home of their Black Sea Fleet. (...)

The only reason Crimea was under Ukrainian control at all was because Soviet First Secretary and Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave it to them by decree in 1954 in order to shore up Ukrainian support for his rise to power after the death of dictator Joseph Stalin. At that point it made no difference since they were all answerable to the Kremlin first anyway.

The population in Crimea is something like 60% Russian, 15% Turkic Tatars and 25% Ukrainian. In the generation between the fall of the Soviet Union and the events of the last decade, Crimea had maintained a great deal of autonomy from the central government in Kiev. But after the 2014 coup, three former Ukrainian presidents signed a letter demanding that Russia be expelled from the naval base at Sevastopol where they had maintained a naval presence on lease after the end of the Cold War. Instead Putin ordered his men to leave their bases and take control of the Peninsula. Reportedly, six people were killed in total. It is not clear how many, if any, were actually shot by Russian marines or sailors. A referendum was quickly held, and better than a super-majority of the people of Crimea voted to join the Russian federation. Later independent polling confirmed the results.

Putin later joked in a speech by way of explanation that:

"[L]et me say … that we are not opposed to cooperation with NATO, for this is certainly not the case. For all the internal processes within the organization, NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round."

(...)

Again, when the eastern Donbass region originally tried to join Russia back in February 2015, Putin said no. The U.S. and its clients were threatening Russia’s vital interest in the warm water naval port at Sevastopol on the Black Sea. That’s the only reason he moved there.

[Olive Yao]

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NAVO

In 2007, Putin addressed the Munich Security Conference, telling them,

"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?"


Trump

Trump, binnenlands in het nauw, wil laten zien dat hij niet russische belangen steunt

Desperate to prove what a traitor he wasn’t to the foreign policy establishment, Trump betrayed the American people and his promise to end the recent era of enmity and work things out with Russia. Instead he oversaw the addition of Montenegro and Northern Macedonia to NATO; sent more American troops and equipment to Poland and the Baltics, including provocative military exercises and parades within just yards of the Russian border; almost-certainly sponsored an attempted Color-Coded Revolution in Belarus; and where Obama, the first black president to support a Nazi coup, was afraid to arm the regime forces who attacked their countrymen in the eastern Donbass region for fear of a real escalation into war with Russia, Donald Trump went ahead and sent arms to Ukraine’s Nazi-infested armed forces — sniper rifles, armed boats, RPGs and Javelin anti-tank missiles, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars worth of non-lethal equipment like Humvees, night vision goggles, radars and armor, along with training and joint military exercises. All this just incentivized more violence after the major Minsk II peace deal — negotiated by Germany and France with the Russians and Ukrainians in 2015 — has already been signed.

VS bemoeit zich met Nord Stream 2

The Trump administration also worked overtime to try to prevent the completion of the so-called Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, even going so far as to sanction the Swiss and German firms working on the project. (…) But it also seems to be an effort to just prevent the Germans from deepening their ties to Russia. (…) strengthening economic ties between Russia and Germany could lessen their supposed need for dependence on the U.S. military and NATO alliance to protect them from a country they’re getting along with just fine. Who needs the Americans then?

VS zegt een kernwapenverdrag op

Worst of all, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty and had promised to let New START expire in 2021 had he been reelected.


Biden

Joe Biden came to power seemingly determined to increase tensions with Moscow. He vastly increased provocative naval missions in the Black Sea and increased weapons transfers to Ukraine.

Proxy oorlog:

(…) But they sure seem to be thinking ahead to how an invasion could hurt Russia, with the poor Ukrainians serving as merely an instrument against them. (…)

President Putin zei op 21 februari 2021:

"Many Ukrainian airfields are located close to our borders. NATO tactical aircraft stationed here, including carriers of high-precision weapons, will be able to hit our territory to the depth of the Volgograd-Kazan-Samara-Astrakhan line. The deployment of radar reconnaissance assets on the territory of Ukraine will allow NATO to tightly control the airspace of Russia right up to the Urals. …

"After the US destroyed the INF Treaty, the Pentagon has been openly developing many land-based attack weapons, including ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 5,500 km.

"If deployed in Ukraine, such systems will be able to hit targets in Russia’s entire European part. The flying time of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Moscow will be less than 35 minutes; ballistic missiles from Kharkiv will take seven to eight minutes; and hypersonic assault weapons, four to five minutes.

"It is like a knife to the throat."

Aansluiting van Donbas heeft een strategisch nadeel voor Rusland

In a way, Putin’s absorption of the Donbass is actually a major loss for Russia. It made more sense to leave that strongly pro-Russian population inside Ukraine to at least possibly one day again serve as a balance against the western nationalists. That seemed to have been a major part of why he did not incorporate the Donbass back in early 2015, when they voted to ask to join Russia. Now that Putin has taken them away from Ukraine, he has strengthened the hand of his opponents. Now it seems that he has escalated to full-scale war in an attempt to solve that problem.

De oorlog kan lang duren

CBS News’s Margaret Brennan, who wrote on March 1, that,

"Given the durability of the Ukrainian resistance and its long history of pushing Russia back, the U.S. and Western powers do not believe that this will be a short war. The UK foreign secretary estimated it would be a 10-year war. Lawmakers at the Capitol were told Monday it is likely to last 10, 15 or 20 years — and that ultimately, Russia will lose."

Het amerikaanskapitalistische militair-industriële complex juicht oorlog toe:

The Military-Industrial Complex President Ike Eisenhower helped to build and then warned us about, has completely captured our government, in alliance with foreign states in the Middle East and Europe.

A fun anecdote about that: back in the spring of 2014, Harper’s magazine reporter Andrew Cockburn reported that he had a source who had been at a big party in Crystal City outside of Washington, D.C. — an area heavy with military contractors and lobbyists — when it was announced that the Russian sailors were leaving their bases and seizing the Crimean Peninsula. They all started laughing and cheering and celebrating. Forget patrolling Pashtun peasants in Paktika, a massive buildup against the renewed Russian Threat was exactly the conflict these men were looking and hoping for; threatening the future of our entire species so they can keep making money for nothing.


Het gevaar van een kernoorlog

Zie daarover het artikel zelf.

[Revisor]

.


Het gevaar van een kernoorlog

...
Mutually Assured Destruction

“Het ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’-concept is de basis van nucleaire afschrikking. Als je mij aanvalt, vernietig ik de wereld. De vraag luidt dan als volgt: is dat een rationele oplossing? De huidige, multipolaire wereld is daar veel te complex voor. China, India, Pakistan, Israël, Noord-Korea, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Frankrijk, de Verenigde Staten en Rusland hebben allemaal kernkoppen, en hebben ook allemaal hun eigen belangen en regionale dynamieken. Wie moet die beslissing dan maken?”

“Als je uit een land in Afrika komt, is het totaal niet logisch dat Biden of Poetin in jouw naam beslist dat de wereld zelfmoord pleegt. Zou het überhaupt ooit logisch zijn dat we de wereld beëindigen omwille van politieke en economische belangen?”

...

https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artike...n-actie-eisen/


Ook voor Aziatische, Amerikaanse en Europese burgers is het niet logisch.