Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Magpietothemax]

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

Quote: "Putin knew all along that Ukraine was never going to be accepted into NATO and that invading Ukraine would only strengthen NATO’s position in Eastern Europe "
This is surely not a serious comment. Very soon NATO is meeting in Vilnius to discuss Ukraine's potential entry into NATO in order to provide a pretext for NATO ground forces to enter Ukraine and engage Russian forces. Even if the immediate membership of Ukraine in NATO is not agreed to, there are discussions afoot re the US supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine.
Putin invaded Ukraine precisely because, ever since the liquidation of the USSR, NATO has been steadily approaching the borders of the Russia. The Zelensky government, instructed by Biden, refused to offer Russia any guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO. Ever since the Maidan coup in 2014, spearheaded by the CIA and Victoria Nuland, which installed a vehemently anti-Russian, extreme right wing Ukrainian nationalist government, it was clear to anyone who wanted to open their eyes to the truth, that the agenda was to create a NATO state on the borders of Russia. The Minsk agreement, as admitted by major German political figures, was merely to buy time for Ukraine to rearm under the guidance of German and US military agencies.
quote: "It’s also a fallacy to overplay America’s position in Ukraine. Yes, they are funding the war on Ukraine’s side"
What?? Do you realise how many billions of dollars the US has supplied to Ukraine in offensive weaponry?? In the last fiscal year, $113 billion. A fallacy to "overplay'" US funding? Such massive expenditure has already been paid for by huge cuts to social expenditure in the US by the Biden Administration, which as to be expected, caved into the demands of fascistic Republicans who threatened to make the US government default on debt unless it did.

Quote: "Furthermore, the notion that the US are using Zelenskyy to bring about civil war in Russia is absurd; everyone in the Russian government knows full well that Ukraine never posed any territorial threat to the country, recent revenge incursions notwithstanding."'
It was NATO, spearheaded by the US government, that posed a territorial threat to Russia. The Zelensky government was a willing auxillary in this process. the US government is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to exhaust Russia and undermine the political stability of the Putin government. The problem for the US is that the Zelensky government is running out of Ukrainian cannon fodder, and so now the US government has to turn to alternatives, such as the introdcution of NATO forces on the ground, or imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, or arming Ukraine
with tactical nuclear weapons. All these options threaten world war 3.
Quote: "'...but I will absolutely support his country’s right to defend itself from imperialist invasion'
The claim that Russia is an imperialist state, in the scientific sense of the term, is one of the most pernicious lies of the fake left. If Russia were an imperialist state, it would be able to impose economic sanctions, freeze the assets of enemy states and confiscate them. Needless to say, it is not Russia which carries out such acts, but instead is the US government and European capitalist states (UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, etc). Imperialist states, understood in a scientific sense, emerged in 1914 as dominant in all spheres of finance capital. The history of the Soviet Union, and then Russia, is utterly different from that of the dominant imperialist nations. The purpose of describing Russia (and China) as imperialist is to justify the war drive of US imperialism and its allies.

I hope that you have noticed by now that there is absolutely nothing in my comments that support the Putin regime. I condemn the Putin regime as a corrupt and ruthless representative of capitalist oligarchs in Russia. The point is though that I also condemn the Ukrainian regime as a puppet of US imperialism, which has agreed - in exchange for billions of dollars in pay off - to open up Ukraine as the battle field for US imperialism to engineer regime change in Russia and its subjugation.

[Magpietothemax]

Finally,

I hope that you have noticed by now that there is absolutely nothing in my comments that support the Putin regime. I condemn the Putin regime as a corrupt and ruthless representative of capitalist oligarchs in Russia. The point is though that I also condemn the Ukrainian regime as a puppet of US imperialism, which has agreed - in exchange for billions of dollars in pay off - to open up Ukraine as the battle field for US imperialism to engineer regime change in Russia and its subjugation.

[David]

MTTM, we can disagree on our analyses of the dynamics and motivations here, but I hope the following points can be mutually accepted as uncontroversial:

a) The invasion of Ukraine is a tragedy and a humanitarian disaster.
b) The invasion was not justified, and any NATO involvement in Ukrainian domestic politics – up to and including Ukraine joining the pact and hosting NATO forces and weaponry – would not change that fact.
c) Russia’s war (conducted on the grounds that Ukraine might one day become a NATO member and host NATO weapons) is not in any way defensive, any more than America’s pre-emptive strike against Iraq (conducted on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had WMDs) was defensive. These were and are wars of aggression.
d) Casting the war as a proxy conflict between Russia and America, to whatever extent that may be the case, elides Ukraine’s national interests. No matter which angle we’re addressing this from, that needs to be part of the conversation. At worst, Ukraine is between a rock and a hard place of a belligerent Russia and a US/EU that may seek to exploit it for their own economic and geopolitical goals. Regardless, that is surely a decision for the Ukrainian people to make, not for Russia to impose.

Accepting these points can be compatible with a range of positions, including one that casts blame on both sides and comes to a "plague on both your houses" conclusion (even if I think those positions lack moral clarity). But it also requires us to dismiss the trope of Russia having been provoked into action. Because nobody – not Biden, not Zelenskyy, not all the forces of the West combined – made Putin do this; it was a calculated decision. And if we are to take their stated reasons seriously on their own terms, then the war could only be seen as a catastrophic failure.

Anyone can see that this invasion has been a huge boost for NATO in relevance, funding and membership alike, and also that that was an entirely predictable outcome. We would thus have to conclude that Putin and his inner circle are idiots for provoking the exact encroachment that they were supposedly attempting to ward off.

Does that seem plausible at all? Because it doesn’t to me. I don’t think they’re idiots at all. But they might, as today’s events suggest, have bitten off more than they could chew.

[Magpietothemax]

[Jezza]

What are we going to wake up to tomorrow? It's actually mental how quickly this situation is escalating.

Putin has apparently fled Moscow.

[David]

For anyone trying to follow events live, Al Jazeera news is a good information source and relatively unbiased as these things go:

https://www.aljazeera.com/live

BBC live news here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-66006142

[David]

Belarusian president Lukashenko states that Prigozhin has agreed to de-escalate and negotiate.

[pietillidie]

[David]

Reports coming out that charges against Prigozhin have been dropped in return for him withdrawing his forces from Russia (i.e. returning to bases in occupied Ukraine), and that he personally will be granted asylum in Belarus. Not sure where that leaves the Wagner Group he controls – whether they pull out of the Ukrainian conflict altogether, or else disband and fall under the control of the regular Russian military, which I think was the original directive that Putin made that incensed Prigozhin so much.

If so, it’ll be a deflating outcome for Ukrainians and for anyone in Russia who had hope for Putin’s regime collapsing, but also avoids an unpredictable and potentially catastrophic civil war. And Prigozhin will probably want to make his own tea and cakes from now on.

[What'sinaname]

Disappointing. I got the popcorn all ready.

[Jezza]

[Magpietothemax]

Hi Pietillidie,

I can see from the tone of your response that your views about the conflict in Ukraine are extremely passionate, and hope that you do not take offense at my reply.

There are numerous assertions in your response that I could respond to, but I will confine my answer to the main points:

Quote: ''The sins of the past just don't factor into either the moral, economic or geopolitical equation here."'

In actual fact, the present is a product of the historical processes that led up to it. It is absurd to believe that the "sins of the past" have nothing to do with the geopolitical conflicts of today. Ever since the USSR was dissolved in 1992, the US has gone on a military rampage: Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Somalia, parts of Pakistan. Since 2001, at least 4.5 million people have died in the countries that the US has targeted, according to a recent academic report from Brown University. To view the massive US intervention into this conflict ($113 billion last fiscal year alone in military supplies) as disconnected from all the other conflicts is the most unrealistic conception of all. If you want to find out the US plan, don't trust me, just refer to the writings of Henry Kissinger, who has spelled out the US strategy himself: whoever dominates Eurasia, dominates the world. The US strategy since 1992 has been to encircle Russia and China. The conflict in Ukraine is the next stage in this process for US imperialism. If the US dominates Russia and controls its wealth, it will be best prepared for its ultimate target, which is China. If you don't believe me, listen to US military figures who have announced publicly that war against China will occur in the next 2 to 3 years.

Moreover, the sins of the past are very much bound up in the Ukraine conflict. The Zelensky government rests militarily and politically on fascist forces who glorify Stepan Bandera and the OUN, which collaborated with the Nazis in carrying out the Holocaust and the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. The US government is happy to arm and train these fascists.

Quote: "'In fact, this is America finally doing some good by defending the invaded and the global economy from a deranged nutter '"
In fact, the US is the most disruptive factor in the world economy not Russia, whose global economic weight is utterly insignificant compared with that of the US. Over the last 40 years, the US has been progressively losing its relative economic dominance in the world economy, with China now threatening to overtake it in many spheres. The US is attempting to use its military might to defend its economic position in the world economy.
It is not Russia but the US which disrupts the world economy by imposing global economic sanctions, freezing the assets of other governments, driving up global inflationary tendencies since 2008 by launching massive Quantitative Easing policies...etc.

Quote: "'Putin was not only wantonly killing Ukrainians..."' This is not true. If you are referring to the war in East Ukraine (Donbass), it was in fact Ukrainian fascist militia bombarding and killing thousands of Russian speaking people who were frightened by the prospect of living under a violently anti Russian Ukrainian nationalist government brought to power by the Maidan coup of 2014. If you remember, a Russian student on the Q&A program was abruptly ejected from the program when he dared to bring up the deaths of these thousands of Russians living in the Donbass, because this contradicted the official narrative that this war was ""all Putin's fault"

[pietillidie]

Putin *is* wantonly killing Ukrainians. Do you want to talk to my friends in Dnipro to check? This is not vague internet chatter. And you talk as if Putin is protecting his beloved citizens as an act of compassionate leadership, or as if Russians wouldn't jump at an EU passport. There's a whole catalogue of bridges out there if you're in the market.

The ugliest aspects of fascist Ukraine reflect the ugliest aspects of fascist Russia, as in fact do the ugliest aspects of the EU. Putin's panic is not about Ukrainian thuggery; it's about the absolute opposite, i.e., Ukraine moving on from old-school Russian corruption and authoritarianism, including Ukraine's own extremist elements who learned from the best.

And do you really want to entrust Russia with world grain prices as well as fossil fuel prices as people elsewhere in the world starve? That deranged sicko would cause as much global suffering as needed to get what he wants; other people's lives are dirt to the psychopath, including those of his own citizens.

The sins of America say nothing, absolutely nothing, about the right decision right now for Ukraine, Europe and the world. It's also a deflection because the US is here acting at the behest of Ukrainian, Eastern European and EU citizens. You have nothing at all to say about their loud, clear and united voice; are you sure you still don't think it's all about America?

You do remember France, Germany and much of the EU opposed Iraq vehemently, right? You get just how big an economic bloc the EU is now? You do know that Ukraine wants to join the European Union, not the United States? So why talk as if we're still living in a post-war era where the US is the only game in town? It has military inertia, but even that's changing, while overwhelming military dominance clearly doesn't mean as much as people think (see Afghanistan and Iraq, for starters).

Indeed, the equation has changed so dramatically that the EU is upping its military budget so it doesn't have to lean on the US. And why do you think lunatic Trumpists want the US out of the conflict? It's certainly not because they eschew violence.; rather, it's because they hate the EU because its very existence challenges absolute American power.

If this was about old ugly American greatness, MAGA nutcases, who only five minutes ago were the cheer squad for Vietnam and Iraq, would be all over Ukraine. Now, with the EU countering America's unfettered power, they would love nothing more than Putin wrecking the EU, even if it means damaging the global economy and their own wellbeing.

It's time to catch up with the contemporary world. Ukraine, Ukraine's neighbours, the EU and the US are in complete alignment on this, barring the odd fascist like Lukashenko. This is not Vietnam or Iraq, and its power dynamics are nothing like the past, so parroting American sins is utterly and completely irrelevant.

This might not apply to you, but in my experience Australia is very EU blind, being so far away and so psychologically aligned to Anglo-America. So let me ask you a this: are you sure you've accepted Europe being an anchor power in a multipolar global system? Because you seem to have nothing to say about the European perspective, as if it doesn't exist. Go ask the fools who voted for Brexit why they've now changed their mind. It's not because the EU is perfect, it's because even being imperfect it still has more to offer than ugly old Anglo-America.

Say what you want about Anglo-America; you surely know I'm not enamoured by them and have decades of writing to prove it. But Russia has absolutely no influence on the world at all except through violence, extortion and cybercrime, because it's the ugliest empire of the lot, existing in a second-world purgatory that drains the life out of everything it touches. And I say this as a huge admirer of Russian smarts and curse the bastard for suppressing that many lives and that wasting one of the great engines of STEM talent on the planet.

All that said, again I stress it's a highly volatile, high-risk situation, which is of course why the EU and US are treading so carefully, unlike the disgraces of Vietnam or Iraq. But if something goes wrong, blame the invading thug as you did where Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned, not the people trying to escape his clutches.