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The Reasons For And Dangers Behind The War In Ukraine
The war in the Ukraine continues but the propaganda hysteria around it seems to have calmed down a bit as reality is setting in.
This gives room from more sane voices to be heard by the public. I will start with the Russian ones.
The Russian ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was interviewed by Newsweek. He explained Russia's political and judicial reasoning behind the war:
"The special operation in Ukraine is the result of the unwillingness of the Kiev regime to stop the genocide of Russians by fulfilling its obligations under the international commitments," Antonov told Newsweek. "The desire of the NATO member states to use the territory of a neighboring state to establish a foothold in the struggle against Russia is also obvious."
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To Russia, Antonov said that the [Maidan] revolution was a "bloody coup d'état instigated by the West" in which "ultranationalist ideas came to power in Kiev." He said that policies viewed by Moscow as hostile such as the removal of Russian as a national language and the rehabilitation of nationalist Ukrainian figures such as Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II, had "taken root in Ukraine under external administration."
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Antonov argued that it was the "nationalist frenzy and revanchist sentiments of the Kiev regime" that resulted in the effective death of the Minsk deals as Ukraine chose "the path of rapid militarization" with help from abroad.
"The NATO member countries have commenced a military exploration of Ukraine," Antonov said. "It was flooded with Western weaponry while President Vladimir Zelensky announced Kiev's plans to acquire nuclear weapons which would threaten not only neighboring countries, but also the entire world."
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"In this context, Russia had no other choice but to recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics," Antonov said. "Then, in accordance with Chapter VII, Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, with the authorization of the Federation Council of Russia and in execution of the Treaties of Friendship and Mutual Assistance with the Donetsk People's Republic and the Lugansk People's Republic, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin made a decision to begin a special military operation."
"Its aim is to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine in order to reduce military threats posed by the Western states that are trying to use the fraternal Ukrainian people in the struggle against the Russians," he added.
Sergey Karaganov is a high level Russian political scientist and commentator who is also a presidential advisor in Moscow. He was interviewed (in English) by the Italian Corriere Della Sera
Sergey Karaganov: «We are at war with the West. The European security order is illegitimate»
An excerpt:
How can an attack be justified on such grounds?
«For 25 years people like myself have said that NATO expansion would lead to war. Putin said several times that if it came to Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, there would be no Ukraine anymore. In Bucharest in 2008 there was a plan of quick accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. It was blocked by the efforts of Germany and France, but since that time Ukraine has been integrated into NATO. It was pumped up by weaponry and its troops were trained by NATO, their army getting stronger and stronger day by day. In addition we saw a very rapid increase of neo-Nazi sentiment especially among the military, the society and the ruling elite. It was clear that Ukraine had become something like Germany around 1936-1937. The war was inevitable, they were a spearhead of NATO. We made the very hard decision to strike first, before the threat becomes deadlier».
I recommend to read the whole Karaganov interview to better understand the Russian thinking.
"It was clear that Ukraine had become something like Germany around 1936-1937," said Karaganov. The 'western' public has difficulties to understand that. But it is the prevailing Russian view and when analyzing the developments in the Ukraine over the last years with Russian history in mind one can easily come to the same conclusion.
It is also what the Canadian Russia expert Patrick Armstrong had mentioned as the most important item after he had read Putin's speeches at the start of the war:
Had I been at home I would have read Putin’s speech earlier and understood sooner. What he is talking about is what the Soviet Union tried to do from 1933 onwards: namely to stop Hitler before he got started. This time Russia is able to do it by itself. In other words, Putin feels that he is making a pre-emptive attack to stop June 1941. This is very serious indeed and indicates that the Russians are going to keep going until they feel that they can safely stop.
The Russian view is not really that far fetched.
Here is a recent news agency video of officials of the Ukrainian Security Service SBU in front of a destroyed house seemingly praying with a priest for the deceased.
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Note the fascist Right Sector patch the official carries on his arm and back. The SBU has become a kind of Gestapo tasked with eliminating opposition elements in Ukraine. The UN's OHCHR, the OSCE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International have all reported about the SBU's many crimes.
There is also an 'SS Galizien' patch on the officers back which refers to the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) which fought with Nazi-Germany against the Soviet Union. Like many other SS division the 1st Galician was involved in serious war-crimes but later mostly whitewashed. After the war many of its surviving officers fled to Canada and to the United States.
The offspring of those officers and other immigrants from the Ukraine played a noticeable role in lobbying for the war.
That has been successful as the U.S. had chosen to support extreme elements in Ukraine in opposition to peace. This has, as Aaron Maté writes, moved president Zelensky from an election campaign position of finding peace with Russia to becoming a war maniac:
On a warm October day in 2019, the eminent Russia studies professor Stephen F. Cohen and I sat down in Manhattan for what would be our last in-person interview (Cohen passed away in September 2020 at the age of 81).
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"Zelensky ran as a peace candidate," Cohen explained. "He won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin." But there was a major obstacle. Ukrainian fascists, Cohen warned, "have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin… His life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine."
Peace could only come, Cohen stressed, on one condition. "[Zelensky] can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back," he said. "Maybe that won’t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war. So the stakes are enormously high."
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Although Trump's impeachment failed to remove him from office, it succeeded in cementing the proxy war aims of its chief proponents: rather than support Zelensky's peace mandate, Ukraine would instead be used to "fight Russia over there."
I had earlier quoted an interview with Dmytro Yarosh, then the leader of the fascist Right Sector, who just a week after Zelenski had become president threatened him with death should he try to make peace with the eastern Ukrainian rebels. Yarosh later became an advisor to the chief general staff of the Ukrainian military. He is the main person behind the ongoing nazification of the Ukrainian military.
As ambassador Antonov has said the war in Ukraine is not only about the Ukraine.
Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, is correctly pointing out the two levels of the war we see:
It is not that the empathy for Ukraine or support for Zelensky’s national resistance is misplaced, but that it has the appearance of being geopolitically orchestrated and manipulated in ways that other desperate national situations were not, and thus gives rise to suspicions about other, darker motives.
This is worrisome because these magnified concerns have acted as a principal way that the NATO West has gone out of its way to make the Ukrainian War about more than Ukraine. The wider war is best understood as occurring on two levels: a traditional war between the invading forces of Russia and the resisting forces of Ukraine as intertwined with an encompassing geopolitical war between the US and Russia. It is the prosecution of this latter war that presents the more profound danger to world peace, a danger that has been largely obscured or assessed as a mere extension of the Russia/Ukraine confrontation.
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If this two-level perception is correctly analyzed in its appreciation of the different actors with contradictory priorities, then it becomes crucial to understand that in the geopolitical war the US is the aggressor as much as in the traditional war on the ground Russia is the aggressor.
Falk concurs with professor John Mearsheimer who fears that the larger U.S. Russia conflict hidden behind the war in Ukraine may lead to widening of the conflict into a potential nuclear war.
Summarizing Mearsheimer's recent talk with Katrina vanden Heuvel and ambassador James Matlock, the former CIA analyst Ray McGovern writes:
Speaking at an April 7 webinar, Mearsheimer was, true to form, "offensively realistic". He explained: (1) the root cause lies in the April 2008 NATO summit Declaration that Ukraine (and Georgia) "will become members of NATO"; and (2) that Russia sees this as an "existential threat" and therefore "must win" this one.
For President Joe Biden and the Democrats, even though Ukraine poses zero strategic threat to the U.S., a Russian "win" would be, politically, a "devastating defeat", says Mearsheimer. In that sense, the conflict is a "must-win" for the US as well. Underscoring the obvious, he noted it is impossible for both sides to "win" – at least not in current circumstances.
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Noting that US academics and policy makers don’t believe NATO’s designs on Ukraine represent an existential threat to Russia, Mearsheimer is as blunt as his courteous mien permits. "What people in Washington believe is irrelevant. What matters is what Russia believes." He rejects the "mainstream" view that Putin’s Russia is motivated by expansionist aims, and asks the savants in Washington to put concrete evidence behind their claims. Moreover, "There is no evidence in what Putin has said that he wants to make Ukraine part of Russia," Mearsheimer adds.
Towards the end of a talk with Gonzalo Lira former Marine officer and UN Inspector Scott Ritter disputes the potential for escalation. The Pentagon, he says, knows the real situation on the ground and that the Ukrainian army will lose the war. Neither NATO, nor the U.S. nor single countries like Poland have their forces configured in a way that would allow them to successfully wage war against Russia. They would need more time to get ready than Russia will need to win the war in Ukraine.
Ritter predicts that the Pentagon will overrule any escalation the Ukraine warmongers in the State Department and National Security Council may plan and that those responsible for the current mess, Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, will get silenced or removed after the midterms.
I hope he is right.
Some comments on Absolutely great comments to go with b’s great analysis , I read through all comments and and going to try this formulation of a collective answer – sorry if it’s too long.
Usual top shout out to Karlof1 and the other barflies we don’t have to agree on everything but we must carry on trying to challenge our own core beliefs for veracity.
‘Anatoliy Shariy, Ukrainian journalist and opposition politician living in Spain, has posted information on the persecution of Ukrainians who deviate from the dominant Nationalist ideology:
Posted by: S | Apr 11 2022 18:39 utc | 44’
NOT A SQUEAK FROM THE MEDIA!
First they came for …
‘Therefore, even if NSDAP-alligned Germans repatriated, it does not follow that Nazism, in the sense of Germany circa 1938, followed them.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 11 2022 17:29 utc | 16’
I think more information and clarity is needed about this postwar evacuation of Nazis:
How many soldiers ?
Home many family members?
Where exactly?
How they kept their cultural beliefs and prejudices?
How they were nurtured?
What positions they have achieved in which places?
What they have been doing collectively to bring about our current state of affairs in the world?
‘The goal for Russia is not to seize total control of Ukraine, it is to thwart the Empire’s plans to gain total power by destroying Russia.
Posted by: Circe | Apr 11 2022 20:48 utc | 83’
THAT MISSION IS ACCOMPLISHED. Now there is only time wailing, gnashing and self flagellation for us in the West with a poison seed for future generations to grow once again that it is all Russia’s fault and it and all things Russian must be hated and destroyed.
‘extremely important (Time magazine 2019)
Posted by: deltasquared | Apr 11 2022 17:44 utc | 21’
It’s actually July 2021 that article and as such part of the plan – it somewhat makes me think that Prince has been set up to be the sacrificial goat should all of it go very wrong – as it seems to be all but certain now. The panic that the French, German and Austrian leaders being sent into personally see Putin to allow their soldiers and commanders to be repatriated without publicity from their Fortresses turned Cauldrons is high.
‘The implications of which Lavrov speaks are of Eurasia shouldering a Herculean burden: putting the USA back in its box. And then, the really hard part, building an international system which benefits and will extend the life of, the human species. None of this can be done while the great wealth of Russia is left in the hands of greedy oligarchs who, in reality, are compradors of the enemy.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 11 2022 19:12 utc | 60’
Bevin , I urge you to keep walking away from the formulations of Marxism – it really was just the another facet of Narrative Control invented long ago as most Religions were. In this instance instance it’s the corollary of Capitalism as Anti-Capitalism – both invented to protect the actual Priests of Money who as you know pull all the strings and control most of the western oligarchy CEO’s, coo’s of their slaves and lands and are allowed ‘billionaire’ status – to control the ‘millionaire’ ground troops such as presstitutes, academics and entertainment propaganda priesthood.
Xi has controlled his oligarchs and Putin his – actual real industry and innovation and Wealth Creation does require certain type of leadership and it’s not wrong they earn greater rewards as long as they don’t get the idea they are actual gods and geniuses who know best for their fellow humans. Any call to reform the Russia there is currently is a call to open it up to the voracious Masters who have lusted after it for centuries.
On which note this comment
‘Maté and Blumenthal – both Jewish-Tribals – are projecting their Worldviews on Zelenskyy. That Zelensky was not a willing participant, etc.
They are wrong. Zelenskyy’s Owner – Kolomoisky – happens to own Hunter&Pops via Burisma and Azov-Nazi.
Posted by: IronForge | Apr 11 2022 20:30 utc | 78’
‘From WIKIPEDIA:
“According to the interim financial report Hromadske TV was funded in 2013 by the Netherlands Embassy (793,089 Ukrainian hryvnias, -Z-), the US Embassy (399,650 2) and by George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation (247,860).[16] By June 2014 Hromadske TV had received another 558,842a from the Government of Canada, 394,1812 from the Fritt Ord Foundation, 287,898? from the Embassy of the United States, Kyiv, 207,4022 from an auction organized by ‘Dukat’ (the Auction House) and 1,875,180a from individual contributors.”?
Source: https://youtu.be/ICkcyt87Lw0
Posted by: Barofsky | Apr 11 2022 20:34 utc | 79’
Ah the Usual Suspects!
‘The goal for Russia is not to seize total control of Ukraine, it is to thwart the Empire’s plans to gain total power by destroying Russia.
Posted by: Circe | Apr 11 2022 20:48 utc | 83’
To keep thwarting is the plan – Russia had rope-a-doped for decades , taking multiple blows with all the ‘big hit’ sanctions. The Western ‘Foreman’ is spent and suddenly sees Russian bounce off the ropes and dancing and stinging and landing larger painful blows – its abject failure and fear now in our George’s eyes.
The West was not the Best and now it’ll Rest.
Ko’d.
‘Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret
The book mentioned in the article can be found on Scribd
Posted by: circumspect | Apr 11 2022 21:22 utc | 96’
Good link.
‘Swedish media reporting about the SMO is as far as I have seen 100% propaganda even in the alternative media. The Russian perspective just does not exist.
Posted by: p | Apr 11 2022 21:22 utc | ‘
That’s gaslighting the Swedes who really ought to woke up. Lol. And IKEA is crap too dumb Swedes. 😜
‘So what NATO has done is criminalize all its members and made their political leaders answerable to war crimes prosecution.
Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 11 2022 21:55 utc | 107’
K, they have criminalised all of us and will make sure that they will thus expect to avoid being tried and judged by the Geneva Conventions – which apparently aren’t supposed to matter any more!
“Article 51(3) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides that civilians shall enjoy protection against the dangers arising from military operations “unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities”
“The civilian population consists of all persons not belonging to one or other of the following categories:
(a) Members of the armed forces, or of their auxiliary or complementary organizations.
(b) Persons who do not belong to the forces referred to above, but nevertheless take part in the fighting”
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docindex/v2_rul_rule6
“Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance. It is this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. This is a criminal act. “
‘Likely they were scafing the last of turkish hash that the mercenaries from Idlib brought with them.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Apr 12 2022 0:25 utc | 167’
So that’s what happened to all the supply in U.K since 2020. It WAS diverted to the proxy nazi hAssassins in Donbass! That toxic smell is burning all that’s left so the stoned Nazis will let the nato troops leave.
😆😉
Posted by: DunGroanin | Apr 12 2022 11:14 utc | 312
Anyone who knows anything about finance knows that while the current global Western financial system does contain an outsized Jewish membership up at the top, the vast (vast!) majority of global financiers are of blue-blood UK Norman, US-WASP, and French (and increasingly German) descent.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Apr 12 2022 3:31 utc | 215
I sense a certain contradiction in your statement but let it be. As to the descent, that could be a fun adventure.
I personally have no clue what the percentages of various groups are at the 0.1% level. We have no chance to know this, and I venture to say that it is not really important. What is important is HOW MUCH capital the various groups control. Hypothetically, if there were 3 clans in a group of 100 who control lets say 50 % of combined capital, who has more influence ? What the reality actually is , again, I have no clue. But if one clan is able to bend the government of Great Britain to force it to displace the people who lived in the Middle East for centuries, well that is some Power.
For me more interesting is seeing patterns of who is involved right smack in the middle of events whose consequences directly effect the flow of history. When such patterns repeat themselves, then you can’t just wave them off. Granted, they might be coincidences, but too many such coincidence I’d say are giving a none trivial signal.
As you say, there were many financiers. In the case of US, there were Rockefellers, Morgans, Carnegies, Ford, Getty ….. Big fortunes, big families, big problems with narcotics and alcohol. Are they as influential as they were in early XX century? If I was to guess I’d say no. Lots of money makes those that inherit it weaker not stronger, which leads me to believe that the top has change a lot in terms of who is driving the train. But there is no way to check.
But money alone does not confer Power and Influence, position in the power structure does. And this is where the Jews in my opinion excel. Hell, looking over the last 30-40 yrs just at the very top level influential positions in foreign policy shows that the Jews are there in disproportionate numbers as compare to their level in the population. In the last 10-20 yrs. it is literally in your face. Best comical example of this is ,
“Early life and education
Alexander Semyon Vindman (né Aleksandr Semyonovich Vindman) and his identical twin brother Yevgeny were born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union to a Jewish family.”
Need I mention others ?????
A couple fun facts.
1) Obama’s house in Chicago was across the street from a synagogue. How do I know ? Well someone posted a comment, I went and checked it with Google Maps and … it’s True. Perhaps that is where he met his mentors ? Check out Saul Alinsky who was born in 1909 in Chicago, Illinois. Then look at Penny Pritzker who was the National Finance Chair of 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign.
How true the following is, you be the judge.
https://tinyurl.com/2p8h6s4k
2) In the JFK assassination in Dallas, TX two individuals were right in the dead center of the event, Jack Ruby (check correct name) and Abraham Zapruder. Not sure what the Jewish population figures were in 1962, but for 2020 they are given as,
Dallas – Fort Worth – Arlington, TX of total 7,573,136, 75,005 were Jewish (1.0%)
I think it is a reasonable conjecture that in 1962 the percentage was even lower making the probability EXTREMELY SMALL that two such people were to be involved in the JFK event that day. I’m not say they were responsible, but I am suggesting that someone very influential gave them “tickets” to that event. Having worked with problems involving probability theory makes me think that such a coincidence is simply mind blowing. It’s right up there with the front page of a passport in the burning ruins on Sept. 11.
3) US Civil War. General Grant issues General Order no. 11 (how similar to 911) to expelled certain war profiteers from demarcation line between Yankee and Confederate forces. Were they only speculating with cotton ??? Now that’s some impressive patriotic speculation.
4) Jacob Schiff of the Russian Revolution fame. Well his name is connected with the events that led to the attempted assassination of President Mckinley. Miles Mathis (who is Jewish) provides some details,
https://tinyurl.com/mpbhbh3a
https://tinyurl.com/3sp56yky
https://tinyurl.com/344ee97u
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Posted by: njet | Apr 12 2022 12:30 utc | 325
Нет
Actually it’s fun at times,
https://tinyurl.com/3u8hznsw
This issue of using the J word reminds me of the Blacks in the US. Among themselves they use the N word, but if a Whitey says it it’s anti-blackism or a riot.
Some good books to check out:
Complicités et financements soviéto-nazis : à l’ombre de Wall Street
by Pierre F.Villemarest
A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind
by Goodson, Stephen Mitford
Currency Wars I: Currency Warfare
by Song Hongbing
Posted by: Tom_12 | Apr 12 2022 16:14 utc | 343
There is an argument that the Ukraine War is a proxy war of the USA against Russia. This idea that the Ukraine war is really a “geopolitical struggle” between the USA and Russia is an attractive idea that on closer examination is clearly wrong, or at least very misleading.
To correctly understand the Ukraine conflict you need to undertake and analysis by asking and answering the following three questions: 1) Who could have prevented this war from starting? 2) Who benefits afterward, no matter who “wins”? 3) Who will lose the most after the war, no matter who wins the military conflict?
First of all, the phrase “geopolitical struggle” is an incomplete description of the power relations at play between states. The word “geo-economic” is a more focused word that emphasizes that power relations between states are played out along a continuum extending from economic competition to kinetic violence.
Answering the first question – who could have prevented this war from starting – is straightforward. The United States could have prevented this war by not encouraging Ukraine to attempt NATO membership, but this only takes our analysis so far because it does not address the second question, which is who will benefit afterward no matter who “wins”. There are three possible answers because there are three (not two) protagonists – the USA, Russia, and the EU (mostly lead by Germany and its junior partner France). I have omitted Ukraine from the analysis of the second question because Ukraine will undoubtedly not benefit after the war. No matter who “wins”, Ukraine has already lost in many ways.
To continue with answering the second question, it is clear that the Russian economy will not benefit from the war. This much has been admitted by President Putin. No matter, Putin’s view is that Russia is not fighting for economic advantage, but for its vital national security interests.
One vital national security interest from the Russian point of view is that even if Russia is defeated in Ukraine and its military expelled into Russia, then Russia will finally discredit the Russian “Westernizers” who have been a thorn in the side of Putin and the Russian “Realists” who have warned for years that the West is an implacable and determined threat to Russian sovereignty. However, this losing outcome is at best a consolation prize, nevertheless a kind of win for Russian anti-Western “Realists”.
The third question is the most interesting and the most elusive: who, besides Ukraine, will lose the most after the war – no matter who “wins” the military conflict? Russia and the United States both can benefit to various degrees from either defeat or victory, but what about Germany and the EU?
Setting aside for the moment the question of who is victorious militarily, we should ask what will the post-war geo-economic world look like?
Russia will likely lose much of its EU energy export market, but in time will find other outlets for these exports. Germany (and the EU) will lose access to realistically priced Russian natural gas and Germany’s export-oriented energy thirsty economy is likely to go into a prolonged recession.
Some Ukrainian refugees will be able to return to their homes, but a large number will need to be resettled in Western Europe, adding to post-war strain on these economies. It goes without saying that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline running from Russia under the Baltic will not become operational for many years (if ever), and Germany’s natural gas deficit will continue to bedevil German industrial planning.
Therefore, Germany stands to lose the most after the war – no matter who wins the military conflict. Germany loses under any end-of-war scenario.
If we view this conflict from a distance we will observe that long standing US geo-economic policy is above all, to dominate the Western Hemisphere and this is stated quite frankly in the famous Monroe Doctrine which remains a core principle for American military geo-strategy. This doctrine could be unflatteringly called “hegemony”. Adversaries of the United States have called it “imperialism”, but names don’t matter. What matters is policy. The policy is domination, and this policy of domination extends to Europe as well, where it is euphemistically called “Atlanticism”.
The Atlanticist doctrine is subtle and often portrayed as a defensive alliance of Western liberal democracies against the forces of illiberal authoritarianism. On the surface, it is true that Atlanticism, its military expression NATO, and its economic expression the EU, are democracies, but that does not negate the fact that net-net, these institutions act to the advantage of the USA and the disadvantage Europe.
This should not be surprising because economically, Europe is a peer competitor of the USA. Russia with its smaller economy is not even close to being a peer competitor of the USA.
Therefore, the proper view of the Ukraine conflict is that it is an expression of the competition between Europe lead by Germany and the Anglo-American world lead by the USA.
The USA provoked Russia to attack Ukraine knowing this would cause short term and even long term damage to the German economy. From the American point of view, Russia is collateral damage. It is collateral because damaging Russia satisfies no core America interest. On the contrary, an alienated hostile Russia helps justify the continued existence of NATO and keeps the USA as a major power broker in Europe.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was a symbolic and actual threat to EU dependence on the USA and was the proximate cause of both the kinetic war being fought between Russia and Ukraine and the hybrid war waged by the USA against Germany.
Posted by: Mark Rothschild | Apr 12 2022 19:22 utc | 353
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