Thanks for info. I now have better understanding why I see on other platforms requests from soldiers for equipment. I had wondered how their military tolerated so many different potential equipment standards.
I see that this blog is now lively with comments. I am not going to enter into the politics of the situation, but just to put in my two pennies: my opinion and my hope (if only...) would be in the first instance *immediately* to stop hostilities and *then* discuss matters until a peaceful solution can be found. Also, my reasoning is that past mistakes and past injustices can hardly be retroactively fixed: limiting the discussion to the present and only the present may perhaps open a way to let go of the intolerable weight of the past, and step forward into a more reasonable future. But I am speaking from a situation of peace and comfort here so it's all too easy for me to preach =(
As always, my wishes and my thanks to Anna for putting herself on the line in more ways than one.
Anna Bowles, your post features the Azov Battalion without mentioning that it has been the hard core of neo-Naziism in Ukraine's thuggish totalitarian "democracy," where all the opposition parties have been suspended, the President's term has expired, and far-right extremists control the police stations.
Ukraine has been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund (with reconquering the Donbass a condition of its earlier loan), and Zelensky has pledged to keep all of Ukraine's promises to the IMF, and the NATO countries have voting domination at the IMF, and NATO has promised to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until it bleeds to death, delivering pounds and pounds of bloody flesh to service the unpayable IMF loans.
In line with the NATO/IMF agenda, Zelensky capitulated to neo-Nazi war-mongers and reneged on his campaign promise to bring peace to the Donbass region.
A year or so ago, both Zelensky and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau applauded as the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons praised a Ukrainian who was a real-life Nazi, a member of a Nazi SS unit that committed genocide against Poles during World War II. After international condemnation, Speaker Anthony Rota quickly resigned.
When Zelensky became President, he initially moved toward fulfilling the Minsk Agreements that had "frozen" the civil war in the Donbass and outlined a pathway toward peace. But then he capitulated to the Neo-Nazis (who controlled Ukraine's Interior Ministry, in charge of the police stations) and eventually re-ignited the frozen war, precipitating the Russian invasion.
In August 2023, after U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced more aid for Ukraine, Zelensky posted a video showing him with Ukraine's most prominent Neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky:
See also (from 2019) "Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine":
"Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
"Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
When assessing the rights and wrongs of all that has unfolded between Ukraine and Russia, a critical question is the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the Maidan Revolution.
If so, was this part of an ongoing campaign to subjugate and/or dismember Russia?
The United States, by supporting regime change in Ukraine in 2014, imposed a reverse "Cuban Missile Crisis" on Russia with the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and hosting NATO missiles pointed at Russia. We backed Russia into a corner, and they lashed out at us.
In addition, the post-revolution Ukrainian rump parliament began by passing a law to ban the use of the Russian language in government, in a multi-ethnic country where Russian was the first language of about half the population. This ban was enforced by making the far-right leader Arsen Avakov the Interior Minister, in charge of the police.
With Avakov in charge of the police, bigoted far-right extremist gangs operated with impunity in Ukraine, in an environment of lawless terror.
See "Far-Right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy":
The U.S.-sponsored Maidan Revolution brought ongoing civil war to Ukraine, in which neighboring Russia intervened.
It is well-known in Africa that Kenya is subservient to the American neo-imperialists. Putin is respected in Africa for his resistance to American imperialist meddling. African countries on good terms with Russia include Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mali, Algeria and others.
Russia was provoked, over and over. Russia acted out of self-preservation, responding to a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis as step-by-step NATO encroachment threatened an extended NATO border with Russia itself. Maybe Biden and Company are operating on the game plan set out in former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's book "The Grand Chessboard":
Break Russia and subordinate it to the West, as a useful lackey in the final confrontation against China.
NATO before Yeltsin's western-supported coup d'etat against the Russian parliament: “Not one inch to the east!"
Why would you say it is absurd when Putin himself has said that the fall of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century? He has openly stated he wants to undo that, to restore the old boundaries of the USSR and, most ominously, the sphere of influence that Russia once had. He's referring to the Warsaw pact which covered Eastern Europe. That means the Baltic states and Eastern Europe will fall under Russian control again. That can only happen if Russia invades Eastern Europe as no one is lining up to join Russia, even Hungary doesn't want to become part of Russia again. Or are you saying Russia is not a revanchist state and the war in Ukraine is just a special military operation?
I answered at length in my response to Anna Bowles's reply to my original comment; you're welcome to share your assessment.
Beyond that, re-establishing Russian hegemony in eastern Europe, comparable to American hegemony in Central America and the Caribbean, is different from boots-on-the-grund invasion.
I think that a belligerently expansionist regime in Russia would target Georgia and Kazakhstan before thinking about reabsorbing the Baltic states.
At least we can agree that Russia is a belligerent expansionist state. Things can easily escalate but that is not a reason to stand by and let Russia not lose, Ukraine not win, as is the current American and European strategy. No one wanted to fight WW2 except for Hitler and even he thought he had things under control in 1938-39, dealing with an appeasing western Europe and indifferent America. Putin thinks the same way now, at our peril.
No we can NOT agree that Russia is a belligerent expansionist state. My assessment:
Two and a half years ago, Ukraine’s far-right thug regime (where the neo-Nazis controlled the police stations with their man Avakov as Interior Minister) chose to unfreeze the conflict in the Donbass by initiating its long-awaited invasion, precipitating immediate Russian retaliation. There's a complicated background story, involving American meddling -- in violation of the principles of international law -- to overthrow Ukraine's former corrupt and vulnerable Russia-friendly government in 2014.
We've been shoving Russia since the 1990s "shock therapy" genocide (that killed off all their old people) and our move on Ukraine precipitated a Russian "Cuban Missile Crisis" reaction against what they perceived as an existential threat.
1. The Russian army in Ukraine is seriously constrained by lack of manpower, compounded by significant ongoing attrition and the challenge of recruiting replacements.
2. The popular support inside Russia for its "special military operation" is based in large part on Putin's limited goal of reabsorbing the historic Russian-speaking half of Ukraine ("Novorossiya," which was stapled together to little Ukraine by the Communists). There is little or no popular support in Russia for a pan-Slavic imperialist adventure.
3. Russia wouldn't have a prayer of seizing eastern Europe without full-scale mobilization and conscription, with resulting civil unrest.
4. Were Russia to attempt to invade eastern Europe, NATO would finally have its pretext to get directly involved. NATO weaponry, far beyond what has been allowed to Ukraine, would be unleashed on Russia, including an abundance of vulnerable infrastructure targets throughout western Russia.
5. Up to now, Russia has expended a lot of effort cultivating good will among non-NATO countries around the world. This is vital to sustaining the Russian economy in the face of ongoing western sanctions. To invade, say, Poland or Lithuania would squander the global "soft power" that Russia has so painstakingly cultivated.
Thanks for info. I now have better understanding why I see on other platforms requests from soldiers for equipment. I had wondered how their military tolerated so many different potential equipment standards.
I see that this blog is now lively with comments. I am not going to enter into the politics of the situation, but just to put in my two pennies: my opinion and my hope (if only...) would be in the first instance *immediately* to stop hostilities and *then* discuss matters until a peaceful solution can be found. Also, my reasoning is that past mistakes and past injustices can hardly be retroactively fixed: limiting the discussion to the present and only the present may perhaps open a way to let go of the intolerable weight of the past, and step forward into a more reasonable future. But I am speaking from a situation of peace and comfort here so it's all too easy for me to preach =(
As always, my wishes and my thanks to Anna for putting herself on the line in more ways than one.
Anna Bowles, your post features the Azov Battalion without mentioning that it has been the hard core of neo-Naziism in Ukraine's thuggish totalitarian "democracy," where all the opposition parties have been suspended, the President's term has expired, and far-right extremists control the police stations.
Ukraine has been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund (with reconquering the Donbass a condition of its earlier loan), and Zelensky has pledged to keep all of Ukraine's promises to the IMF, and the NATO countries have voting domination at the IMF, and NATO has promised to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until it bleeds to death, delivering pounds and pounds of bloody flesh to service the unpayable IMF loans.
In line with the NATO/IMF agenda, Zelensky capitulated to neo-Nazi war-mongers and reneged on his campaign promise to bring peace to the Donbass region.
A year or so ago, both Zelensky and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau applauded as the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons praised a Ukrainian who was a real-life Nazi, a member of a Nazi SS unit that committed genocide against Poles during World War II. After international condemnation, Speaker Anthony Rota quickly resigned.
When Zelensky became President, he initially moved toward fulfilling the Minsk Agreements that had "frozen" the civil war in the Donbass and outlined a pathway toward peace. But then he capitulated to the Neo-Nazis (who controlled Ukraine's Interior Ministry, in charge of the police stations) and eventually re-ignited the frozen war, precipitating the Russian invasion.
In August 2023, after U.S. Secretary of State Blinken announced more aid for Ukraine, Zelensky posted a video showing him with Ukraine's most prominent Neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky:
https://mronline.org/2023/08/21/zelensky-holds-court-with-ukraines-most-notorious-neo-nazi/
See also "Ukraine is Brutally Repressing the Left, Criminalizing Socialist Parties, Imprisoning Activists"
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-repressing-left-criminalizing-socialist-parties/
See also "How Zelensky Made Peace with Neo-Nazis"
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/04/how-zelensky-made-peace-with-neo-nazis/
See also "How One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, And Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion"
https://greatgameindia.com/hunter-biden-zelensky-neo-nazi/
See also (from 2019) "Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine":
"Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
"Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
"These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity."
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
When assessing the rights and wrongs of all that has unfolded between Ukraine and Russia, a critical question is the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the Maidan Revolution.
See https://therealnews.com/iiopatonok0810ukraine
and
https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia
Did the United States violate the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of another state?
https://pesd.princeton.edu/node/551
If so, was this part of an ongoing campaign to subjugate and/or dismember Russia?
The United States, by supporting regime change in Ukraine in 2014, imposed a reverse "Cuban Missile Crisis" on Russia with the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and hosting NATO missiles pointed at Russia. We backed Russia into a corner, and they lashed out at us.
In addition, the post-revolution Ukrainian rump parliament began by passing a law to ban the use of the Russian language in government, in a multi-ethnic country where Russian was the first language of about half the population. This ban was enforced by making the far-right leader Arsen Avakov the Interior Minister, in charge of the police.
With Avakov in charge of the police, bigoted far-right extremist gangs operated with impunity in Ukraine, in an environment of lawless terror.
See "Far-Right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy":
https://freedomhouse.org/report/analytical-brief/2018/far-right-extremism-threat-ukrainian-democracy
The U.S.-sponsored Maidan Revolution brought ongoing civil war to Ukraine, in which neighboring Russia intervened.
It is well-known in Africa that Kenya is subservient to the American neo-imperialists. Putin is respected in Africa for his resistance to American imperialist meddling. African countries on good terms with Russia include Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mali, Algeria and others.
Russia was provoked, over and over. Russia acted out of self-preservation, responding to a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis as step-by-step NATO encroachment threatened an extended NATO border with Russia itself. Maybe Biden and Company are operating on the game plan set out in former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's book "The Grand Chessboard":
Break Russia and subordinate it to the West, as a useful lackey in the final confrontation against China.
NATO before Yeltsin's western-supported coup d'etat against the Russian parliament: “Not one inch to the east!"
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
I think that your claim that, if and when the Ukrainian army fails, Russia will go after eastern Europe, is absurd (which means "without reason").
Why would you say it is absurd when Putin himself has said that the fall of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century? He has openly stated he wants to undo that, to restore the old boundaries of the USSR and, most ominously, the sphere of influence that Russia once had. He's referring to the Warsaw pact which covered Eastern Europe. That means the Baltic states and Eastern Europe will fall under Russian control again. That can only happen if Russia invades Eastern Europe as no one is lining up to join Russia, even Hungary doesn't want to become part of Russia again. Or are you saying Russia is not a revanchist state and the war in Ukraine is just a special military operation?
I answered at length in my response to Anna Bowles's reply to my original comment; you're welcome to share your assessment.
Beyond that, re-establishing Russian hegemony in eastern Europe, comparable to American hegemony in Central America and the Caribbean, is different from boots-on-the-grund invasion.
I think that a belligerently expansionist regime in Russia would target Georgia and Kazakhstan before thinking about reabsorbing the Baltic states.
At least we can agree that Russia is a belligerent expansionist state. Things can easily escalate but that is not a reason to stand by and let Russia not lose, Ukraine not win, as is the current American and European strategy. No one wanted to fight WW2 except for Hitler and even he thought he had things under control in 1938-39, dealing with an appeasing western Europe and indifferent America. Putin thinks the same way now, at our peril.
No we can NOT agree that Russia is a belligerent expansionist state. My assessment:
Two and a half years ago, Ukraine’s far-right thug regime (where the neo-Nazis controlled the police stations with their man Avakov as Interior Minister) chose to unfreeze the conflict in the Donbass by initiating its long-awaited invasion, precipitating immediate Russian retaliation. There's a complicated background story, involving American meddling -- in violation of the principles of international law -- to overthrow Ukraine's former corrupt and vulnerable Russia-friendly government in 2014.
We've been shoving Russia since the 1990s "shock therapy" genocide (that killed off all their old people) and our move on Ukraine precipitated a Russian "Cuban Missile Crisis" reaction against what they perceived as an existential threat.
So sad that you actually believe this. You're so far gone I think arguing with you would just be irrational so I'm not wasting my time on you.
I shared my assessment.
I have no need to argue about it.
OK. I'm not going to debate that here, because it's such a huge topic, but I agree it's impossible to tell. Hopefully we'll never find out.
I don't think it's impossible to tell:
1. The Russian army in Ukraine is seriously constrained by lack of manpower, compounded by significant ongoing attrition and the challenge of recruiting replacements.
2. The popular support inside Russia for its "special military operation" is based in large part on Putin's limited goal of reabsorbing the historic Russian-speaking half of Ukraine ("Novorossiya," which was stapled together to little Ukraine by the Communists). There is little or no popular support in Russia for a pan-Slavic imperialist adventure.
3. Russia wouldn't have a prayer of seizing eastern Europe without full-scale mobilization and conscription, with resulting civil unrest.
4. Were Russia to attempt to invade eastern Europe, NATO would finally have its pretext to get directly involved. NATO weaponry, far beyond what has been allowed to Ukraine, would be unleashed on Russia, including an abundance of vulnerable infrastructure targets throughout western Russia.
5. Up to now, Russia has expended a lot of effort cultivating good will among non-NATO countries around the world. This is vital to sustaining the Russian economy in the face of ongoing western sanctions. To invade, say, Poland or Lithuania would squander the global "soft power" that Russia has so painstakingly cultivated.