chroniclesmagazine.org

Putin, Russia, and Ukraine: Historical Roots of a Tragedy

By Sean McMeekin

15-19 minutes

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When Vladimir Putin channeled history in his Feb. 21 speech justifying Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, many Western critics dismissed his remarks as a pack of lies, the ravings of a delusional madman. But things are not always as simple as they seem. While many of the claims Putin made to justify his aggression are dubious, others are not, and it is worth unpacking those to better understand how we arrived at this terrible juncture.

To begin with, despite the long and varied history of Ukrainians as a people, Putin's assertion that "modern Ukraine" was created by "Bolshevik-Communist Russia" is basically true, as are his aspersions against Vladimir Lenin as the main "creator and architect," although Putin oddly left out Lenin's German connections. It is an awkward fact that Lenin first came to the attention of the Central Powers in 1914, when he was agitating amongst Ukrainians in Poronin, near Cracow in what is now Poland but was then Austro-Hungarian territory. He was working for Ukrainian autonomy from the Tsarist empire, which was one of the reasons Germany financed and organized his return to Russia in 1917.

After the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, Lenin appealed to the German high command for a ceasefire and signed (along with Stalin, then commissar of nationalities) a declaration on the rights of the peoples of Russia to self-determination, inviting ethnic minorities, including Ukrainians, to declare independence, as the revolutionary parliament in Kiev/Kyiv or "Rada," promptly did. The Rada then sent delegates to the peace talks at Brest-Litovsk, who negotiated with the Central Powers on behalf of Ukraine. By signing a peace treaty with the Rada on Feb. 9, 1918, Imperial Germany officially midwifed Ukraine into sovereign existence. Wittingly or unwittingly, Lenin had thus achieved both goals the Germans had in supporting him: ending Russia's war and prying apart the Russian empire by giving up Ukraine. Small wonder Lenin was denounced as a "German spy," "Judas," and "traitor" when he addressed the Soviet Council of People's Commissars later in February, or that Putin, like most Russian nationalists today, blames Lenin for tearing apart mother Russia.

Of course, there is rich irony in dismissing Ukraine's claim to nationhood, as Putin does, on grounds that the Bolsheviks were illegitimate, anti-Russian usurpers, for Putin has also famously lambasted the 1991 collapse of the Soviet state they created as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century." He cannot have it both ways. If the Bolshevik-Communist USSR was an artificial creation not representative of historic "Russia," then trying to restore its boundaries must be an illegitimate enterprise.

This may explain why Putin has lately taken to invoking Russia's Tsarist past more fervently than the Soviet period. In his article, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," posted on the Kremlin website on July 12, 2021—an article to which Western statesmen should have paid more careful attention—Russia's president asserted that Russians, Ukrainians, and White Russians or "Belorussians" are all "descendants of ancient Rus." Ukrainians would object here that Kyiv (as they call it, or Kiev, as the Russians and most of the Western world until recently called it) was the capital of this ancestral Russian state, giving the Ukrainians claim to its legacy. And yet Putin doesn't really deny this, arguing that a shared heritage is a shared heritage, and that it just "so happened that Moscow became the center of reunification, continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood" after the shattering Mongol invasions of the 13^th century.

Just as Putin and Russian nationalists insist, some version of Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, even if Ukrainians dispute Russian interpretation of "protection" treaties negotiated in the early Romanov period. After Russia's first annexation of Crimea in 1783, most of what is now central and eastern Ukraine had been absorbed into the Tsarist empire, where it remained until Imperial Russia's comeuppance in 1917-1918. And yet to claim, as Putin does, that Ukraine has never really existed as a separate nation other than in 1917-18 and after 1991 is to ignore not just the contested matters of deep Russian history but, more significantly, the turbulent history of Ukraine during the 20^th century.

However murky Ukraine's brief dawn of independence might have been during the chaos of the Russian Civil War—dependent initially on German arms in 1918 to stave off a Bolshevik takeover and then on a series of agreements with Poland in 1920 to push back the Red Army again—it was in the course of her bloody struggle for independence that modern Ukrainians first developed a strong sense of national identity. This oft-contested borderland was occupied by Germany and Austria-Hungary, invaded and re-invaded again by the Bolsheviks' Red Army, then by the "White" or Volunteer Army which opposed the Reds, by Cossacks who brought terrible anti-Semitic pogroms in their train, then invaded and re-invaded by Poland during the Soviet-Polish war in 1920, before the final Bolshevik expulsion of the "Whites" from Crimea that November. By some estimates, control of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, changed hands 16 times between 1918 and 1921. Putin might argue that this proves Ukraine was not strong enough to become independent, but the wrenching experience of being fought over by outside powers creates a national identity, all the same. The essence of the national character was forged in this terrible period by pox-on-all-your-houses partisans such as Nester Makhno, a kind of Ukrainian T. E. Lawrence, who specialized in ambushing troop trains of whatever army happened to be ravaging his country.

Ukraine suffered still greater horrors in the forced-collectivization nightmare of the early 1930s, now remembered as the "Holodomor" or Terror-Famine. Whether Stalin's grain-hoarding NKVD kulak-killers starved millions of Ukrainians to death on ethno-genocidal or on ideological grounds can hardly diminish the significance of this terrible human catastrophe for Ukrainians and their burgeoning sense of themselves as a people. 

The history of World War II in Ukraine, after the German invasion of June 1941, was more bloody and painful still. It is true that some (though hardly all) Ukrainians collaborated with the invaders. Even Ukrainians who fought honorably in the Red Army against the Germans, of which there were millions, were sometimes treated differently by the invader after being captured; many were allowed to return to their homes rather than face the terrible privations other Red Army POWs faced in German camps. This selective treatment furnishes the historical basis for Putin's explosive and hate-filled talk about Ukrainian "Nazism" today, a smear amplified by Russian nationalists online in their incessant chatter about "Ukro-Nazis." 

However real Ukrainian collaboration might have been in a few cases, such as that of the notorious Stepan Bandera and his followers, it is grotesque to slander all wartime Ukrainians as Nazis by association, and still more grotesque to apply this label to modern Ukrainian patriots. (Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish, which makes the Nazi label even more absurd and insulting.) 

The reason some Ukrainians cooperated with the invader in 1941 was that they had suffered terribly under Soviet Communist rule, both during the Civil War and the Holodomor and (lest we forget) in Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s, which claimed still more thousands of innocent lives. It did not mean that Ukrainians shared Nazi racial ideology–to the Nazis, after all, they were racially inferior "Slavs" no less than Russians were. Moreover, much of the wartime collaboration, particularly in western Ukraine, wasn't with Germans anyway but with Romanian occupying troops, who might have been antipathetic to the Russians, who had invaded their own country in 1940, but who were not Nazis by any plausible definition. 

As if the trauma of civil war, foreign intervention, pogroms from 1918 and 1921, Holodomor in the early 1930s, Terror in the late 1930s, Germano-Romanian invasion, war and genocide after 1941 were not enough, Ukraine faced another half-decade of horrors after being "liberated" by the Red Army in 1944. These new horrors came from ferocious Soviet "anti-partisan" operations directed by Nikita Khrushchev and from another terrible famine in 1946-1947, which killed hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians. Indeed, when the idea of genuine Ukrainian independence emerged in the glasnost years of the late 1980s, it was largely on the basis of shared national suffering and trauma that Ukrainians came together in the movement called Rukh,or "hand," forming a human chain in 1990 between Kiev and Lvov (also known as Lviv), much as Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians had done the previous year, linking the three Baltic capitals of Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn to mark the 50-year anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had snuffed out their countries' independence. For Putin to dismiss the force of this shared history of trauma in forming a genuine Ukrainian national identity is not just insensitive, but deeply ahistorical. 

Putin is on firmer ground in his invocation of post-Cold War history, as in his complaint in the Feb. 21 speech that the U.S. and its allies had "expanded NATO to the east, moving military infrastructure closer to our borders," a point Putin emphasized at still greater length on Feb. 24, when he announced the start of military operations against Ukraine. In the latter speech, Putin also reminded Russians that NATO had launched "a bloody military operation against Belgrade" in Mar. 1999, "without the UN Security Council's sanction but with combat aircraft and missiles used in the heart of Europe." I was in Moscow when this Kosovo war began, and I can attest that the reaction among many Russians I knew, their sense of rejection and betrayal by an ever-more contemptuous West, was visceral. Whatever the merits of the NATO case against Serbia for cleansing Albanian Muslims from Kosovo, to Russians this looked like a war of aggression against one of their oldest allies.

It was not only Russians and Russian "apologists" who decried NATO expansion, especially after the controversial vow made by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev in Feb. 1990 that, if Moscow consented to German re-unification, NATO would "not shift one inch eastward from its present position"–a promise Putin highlighted in his Feb. 24 speech. While it is true that Gorbachev, foolishly, did not get this pledge in writing, multiple witnesses have confirmed the "one inch" phrase was uttered, and it is the kind of memorable line which, oft repeated, Russian nationalists like Putin will never forget. There may have been no binding treaty with Russia limiting NATO expansion, but this does not mean that moving ahead was wise. It was not only anti-war doves but experienced Cold Warriors, such as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and even the great architect of the "containment doctrine," George Kennan, who warned loudly in the early 1990s thatto expand NATO would result in "a new Cold War, probably ending in a hot one" (from The Kennan Diaries, page 659).

But NATO expansion proceeded nonetheless, not merely into the former Soviet-allied Warsaw Pact member countries of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (1999), followed by Romania and Bulgaria, but also into the Baltic region, where three former Soviet republics abutting Russian territory—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were admitted in 2004, one year after the U.S. had further offended Moscow by invading Iraq over stout Russian opposition. Today there are no less than 30 members of this wealthy, well-equipped military alliance, four of which border Russia overland, with two more former Soviet republics listed on NATO's own website as "aspirant countries" who have "declared their aspirations to NATO membership": Georgia and, yes, Ukraine.

One does not have to be a Russian chauvinist to recognize merit in Putin's complaint about "the eastward expansion of NATO" over Russian objections. If, as a few Western politicians have dubiously claimed, NATO is not really directed against Russia—we are constantly told, it is a "voluntary defensive alliance" that any country can join—then it is worth asking why Russia was never invited to join it. It is not without interest that Putin mentioned, in his otherwise bellicose speech on Feb. 21, that he asked President Clinton in 2000 whether the United States might see Russia joining NATO one day. Although Clinton seemed amenable at the time, the U.S. delegation reportedly became "very nervous." Needless to say, no invitation ever followed for Russia to join NATO. Perhaps this was an impossible fantasy, but if so, does it not rather prove Putin's point that NATO is fundamentally an anti-Russian alliance?

Surely NATO expansion should have stopped at some point, if not with German unification in 1990. Was it wise to push NATO all the way into the Baltic region, turning Russian-held Kaliningrad into a potential nuclear flashpoint, sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania?  Or to invite Georgia to the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, which helped poison Russia's relations with Tbilisi prior to the Russo-Georgian war later that year? As for Ukraine, experienced American statesmen, from Kissinger and Kennan to Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, had warned for years that even talking about Ukraine joining NATO might be fatal to peace.

American leaders have done far more than talk. First under President George W. Bush, in the "Orange Revolution" of 2004-5, and then even more brazenly under President Obama and then-Vice President Biden in the overtly U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" revolution, which toppled Russia-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, the U.S. and its allies threw down the gauntlet to Moscow, which responded by annexing Crimea and moving into Lugansk and the Donbass.  Putin's claims that Ukraine has, since 2014, been carrying out "genocide" against Russian-speakers may be groundless, but his case that the U.S. and its allies have turned Ukraine into a lethally armed catspaw is not. As the leading U.S. realist scholar of international relations, John Mearsheimer, presciently warned in September 2015, "the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."

In the months leading up to the Russian invasion launched on Feb. 24, it appears to be mostly Western fecklessness which has encouraged Putin's aggression: German politicians signing lucrative pipeline deals with the Kremlin, taking positions on the boards of Russian energy companies, and ratcheting up their abject dependence on Russian energy by shuttering nuclear plants; the Biden administration's humiliating botch of the withdrawal from Afghanistan; Biden's hint that a "minor incursion" into Ukraine might not occasion a decisive response; the withdrawal of U.S. diplomatic personnel from Kiev to Lvov, and so on. There has been no shortage of ineptitude in Western capitals, and this has undermined deterrence of Russia vis-à-vis Ukraine. But we also should not forget the larger story of NATO expansion and the U.S.-backed "color revolutions" in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, which have fueled Russian fear, anger, and resentment.  It may be too late to wind the clock back and reverse NATO expansion, but it is never too late to learn the lessons of history. 

Unfortunately, it is the people of Ukraine who are paying the price of Western hubris, just as Mearsheimer warned in 2015. By dangling NATO membership and the mirage of an American security umbrella before them, the U.S. and its allies have unleashed the furies of Russian ressentiment, resulting in a devastating and bloody invasion of Ukraine, even while doing almost nothing to assure the country's defense. They deserved better from us.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/putin--russia--and-ukraine--historical-roots-of-a-tragedy/?fbclid=IwAR0GYYhjnauwvlW3yeAR18SoWufOpA43ESvPsvGXsrcc8ZIvghuneb3vof0

nationalinterest.org

The Kosovo Precedent Is Still Haunting NATO

by Ted Galen Carpenter

7-8 minutes

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In his February 22, 2022, television address to the nation on the growing crisis in Ukraine, President Joe Biden expressed outrage at Russia's actions. The previous day, Vladimir Putin's government had recognized two secessionist regions in Ukraine—Donetsk and Luhansk—as independent states. He also announced the deployment of Russian peacekeeping troops to those territories. "Who in the Lord's name does Putin think gives them the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belong to his neighbors?" Biden railed. "This is a flagrant violation of international law."

It was a valid complaint. However, one must ask: How is Russia's action different from what the United States and its NATO allies did to Serbia in 1999? In that case, an alliance that was supposedly created for purely defensive purposes launched an offensive, seventy-eight-day air war against a country that had not even arguably committed an aggressive act against any NATO member. At the end of that assault, which killed hundreds of Serb civilians and devastated the country's infrastructure, NATO leaders forced Slobodan Milosevic's government to relinquish control of Serbia's Kosovo province to international control. That transfer was made under a fig-leaf resolution the UN Security Council passed despite Moscow's misgivings and reluctance. UN (predominantly NATO) "peacekeepers" moved in to enforce the alliance's diktat—much as Russian "peacekeepers" have now deployed to Donetsk and Luhansk to enforce the Kremlin's orders.

The parallels between the two events should make current Western leaders more than a little squeamish. NATO's violations of international law did not end with an aggressive war, the administrative amputation of Kosovo from Serbia, and the deployment of occupation forces. Nine years later, Western powers engaged in a brazenly cynical maneuver to grant Kosovo full independence. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council (UNSC). Washington and an ad hoc coalition of most European Union countries brazenly bypassed the UNSC and approved Pristina's independence declaration.

Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing precedent in international affairs. Washington dismissed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that argument explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Because the situation was unique, he insisted, the West's Kosovo policy set no precedent regarding other ethnic secessionist situations. Both the hubris and illogic of the U.S. position were breathtaking.

The Western powers soon discovered that merely saying their actions in Kosovo established no precedent did not make it so. Russia demonstrated that point just a few months later. The Kremlin exploited a military clash with Georgia to reinforce the secession of two Georgian regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and ratify Russia's de facto control over both entities. George W. Bush's administration condemned the Kremlin's actions, as did Washington's NATO allies. But just as Russia was not in a position to do much about NATO's conduct in Kosovo, the Western powers (short of initiating a war against Russia) could do little about Moscow's meddling in Georgia.

The Kosovo precedent haunted the United States again in 2014 when the Kremlin boosted its military presence on the Crimea Peninsula and used it to "supervise" a referendum in which Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine. That step was a prelude to Russia's annexation of the peninsula. Washington reacted with even greater anger than it had following Moscow's amputation of Georgia's territories. At a press conference, President Barack Obama fumed that Russia could not be allowed to redraw "the borders of Europe at the barrel of a gun." He did not bother to explain how the United States and NATO had not done that with Kosovo, nor did the usual sycophantic members of the news media bother to ask.

Now, with the Kremlin's moves regarding Donetsk and Luhansk, the Kosovo precedent has come back to haunt Washington and its NATO allies a third time. Even the argument that Kosovo's majority Albanian population wanted to separate from Serbia and that Belgrade's heavy-handed treatment of the province justified NATO's intervention puts proponents on a slippery slope. Russian officials could use similar rationales to justify their actions in eastern Ukraine.

There is little doubt that many (probably most) inhabitants of Donetsk and Luhansk resent the pro-Western regime in Kyiv and do not want to live under its control. The rebellion that began nearly eight years ago might not have survived without Russian military support, but sentiment for the rebellion was real and extensive. Ukraine's eastern region differs from the western portion of the country in terms of language, religion, and economics. The primary language of the inhabitants in the east is Russian instead of Ukrainian, their religion is Eastern Orthodox instead of Roman Catholic, and their economy emphasizes heavy industry with extensive trade ties to Russia instead of light industry with primary trade ties to Central and Western Europe.

Those differences were creating serious tensions for years. It is no coincidence that the two regions were the bastion of political support for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russia president elected in 2010. Eastern Ukrainians deeply resented the pro-Western demonstrators in Kyiv who illegally overthrew his government—with more than a little support from the United States and several European Union governments. The ongoing rebellion in Donetsk and Luhansk soon followed.

One can make a plausible case that secession (and even a subsequent merger with Russia, a la Crimea) is reasonable for those two regions. However, the Kremlin's current moves do further undermine international law and destabilize the global system.

The international community needs to adopt a consistent set of rules for such situations. Washington and other NATO capitals cannot insist on rigorous respect for the territorial integrity of countries and the sanctity of borders when it suits Western policy but embrace the opposite standard whenever that position suits Western policy. In their handling of the Kosovo question, the NATO powers did exactly that, and the brazen hypocrisy keeps coming back to haunt them.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author of twelve books and more than 950 articles on international affairs.

Image: Wikipedia.

 

consortiumnews.com

DIANA JOHNSTONE: US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport

11-14 minutes

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Bear baiting was long ago banned as inhumane. Yet today, a version is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale. 

 NATO officials visit Ukraine, April 7, 2021. (NATO)

By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News

In the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, British royal circles enjoyed watching fierce dogs torment a captive bear for the fun of it.  The bear had done no harm to anyone, but the dogs were trained to provoke the imprisoned beast and goad it into fighting back.  Blood flowing from the excited animals delighted the spectators.

This cruel practice has long since been banned as inhumane.

And yet today, a version of bear baiting is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale.  It is called United States foreign policy. It has become the regular practice of the absurd international sports club called NATO.

United States leaders, secure in their arrogance as "the indispensable nation," have no more respect for other countries than the Elizabethans had for the animals they tormented. The list is long of targets of U.S. bear baiting, but Russia stands out as prime example of constant harassment.  And this is no accident.  The baiting is deliberately and elaborately planned.

As evidence, I call attention to a 2019 report by the RAND corporation to the U.S. Army chief of staff entitled "Extending Russia." Actually, the RAND study itself is fairly cautious in its recommendations and warns that many perfidious tricks might not work.  However, I consider the very existence of this report scandalous, not so much for its content as for the fact that this is what the Pentagon pays its top intellectuals to do: figure out ways to lure other nations into troubles U.S. leaders hope to exploit.

The official U.S. line is that the Kremlin threatens Europe by its aggressive expansionism, but when the strategists talk among themselves the story is very different.  Their goal is to use sanctions, propaganda and other measures to provokeRussia into taking the very sort of negative measures ("over-extension") that the U.S. can exploit to Russia's detriment.

The RAND study explains its goals:

"We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia's actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia's military and economy and the regime's political standing at home and abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence."

Clearly, in U.S. ruling circles, this is considered "normal" behavior, just as teasing is normal behavior for the schoolyard bully, and sting operations are normal for corrupt FBI agents.

This description perfectly fits U.S. operations in Ukraine, intended to "exploit Russia's vulnerabilities and anxieties" by advancing a hostile military alliance onto its doorstep, while describing Russia's totally predictable reactions as gratuitous aggression.  Diplomacy involves understanding the position of the other party.  But verbal bear baiting requires total refusal to understand the other, and constant deliberate misinterpretation of whatever the other party says or does.

What is truly diabolical is that, while constantly accusing the Russian bear of plotting to expand, the whole policy is directed at goading it into expanding!  Because then we can issue punishing sanctions, raise the Pentagon budget a few notches higher and tighten the NATO Protection Racket noose tighter around our precious European "allies."

For a generation, Russian leaders have made extraordinary efforts to build a peaceful partnership with "the West," institutionalized as the European Union and above all, NATO. They truly believed that the end of the artificial Cold War could produce a peace-loving European neighborhood. But arrogant United States leaders, despite contrary advice from their best experts, rejected treating Russia as the great nation it is, and preferred to treat it as the harassed bear in a circus.

The expansion of NATO was a form of bear-baiting, the clear way to transform a potential friend into an enemy. That was the way chosen by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and following administrations.  Moscow had accepted the independence of former members of the Soviet Union.  Bear-baiting involved constantly accusing Moscow of plotting to take them back by force.

Russia's Borderland

Ukraine is a word meaning borderlands, essentially the borderlands between Russia and the territories to the West that were sometimes part of Poland, or Lithuania, or Habsburg lands.  As a part of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine was expanded to include large swaths of both.  History had created very contrasting identities on the two extremities, with the result that the independent nation of Ukraine, which came into existence only in 1991, was deeply divided from the start.  And from the start, Washington strategies, in cahoots with a large, hyperactive anti-communist anti-Russian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, contrived to use the bitterness of Ukraine's divisions to weaken first the U.S.S.R. and then Russia.  Billions of dollars were invested in order to "strengthen democracy" – meaning the pro-Western west of Ukraine against its semi-Russian east.

The 2014 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew President Viktor Yukanovych, solidly supported by the east of the country, brought to power pro-West forces determined to bring Ukraine into NATO, whose designation of Russia as prime enemy had become ever more blatant. This caused the prospect of an eventual NATO capture of Russia's major naval base at Sebastopol, on the Crimean peninsula. 

Since the Crimean population had never wanted to be part of Ukraine, the peril was averted by organizing a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to return to Russia, from which they had been severed by an autocratic Khrushchev ruling in 1954.  Western propagandists relentlessly denounced this act of self-determination as a "Russian invasion" foreshadowing a program of Russian military conquest of its Western neighbors – a fantasy supported by neither facts nor motivation.

Appalled by the coup overthrowing the president they had voted for, by nationalists threatening to outlaw the Russian language they spoke, the people of the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk declared their independence.

March 2015: Civilians pass by as OSCE monitors the movement of heavy weaponry in eastern Ukraine. (OSCE, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Russia did not support this move, but instead supported the Minsk agreement, signed in February 2015 and endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution. The gist of the accord was to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine by a federalization process that would return the breakaway republics in return for their local autonomy.

The Minsk agreement set out a few steps to end the internal Ukrainian crisis. First, Ukraine was supposed to immediately adopt a law granting self-government to eastern regions (in March 2015). Next, Kiev would negotiate with eastern territories over guidelines for local elections to be held that year under OSCE supervision.  Then Kiev would implement a constitutional reform guaranteeing eastern right. After the elections, Kiev would take full control of Donetsk and Lugansk, including border with Russia.  A general amnesty would cover soldiers on both sides.

However, although it signed the agreement, Kiev has never implemented any of these points and refuses to negotiate with the eastern rebels.  Under the so-called Normandy agreement, France and Germany were expected to put pressure on Kiev to accept this peaceful settlement, but nothing happened. Instead, the West has accused Russia of failing to implement the agreement, which makes no sense inasmuch as the obligations to implement fall on Kiev, not on Moscow.  Kiev officials regularly reiterate their refusal to negotiate with the rebels, while demanding more and more weaponry from NATO powers in order to deal with the problem in their own way.

Meanwhile, major parties in the Russian Duma and public opinion have long expressed concern for the Russian-speaking population of the eastern provinces, suffering from privations and military attack from the central government for eight years. This concern is naturally interpreted in the West as a remake of Hitler's drive to conquest neighboring countries.  However, as usual the inevitable Hitler analogy is baseless. For one thing, Russia is too large to need to conquer Lebensraum.

You Want an Enemy?  Now You've Got One

Germany has found the perfect formula for Western relations with Russia: Are you or are you not a "Putinversteher," a "Putin understander?" By Putin they mean Russia, since the standard Western propaganda ploy is to personify the targeted country with the name of its president, Vladimir Putin, necessarily a dictatorial autocrat.   If you "understand" Putin, or Russia, then you are under deep suspicion of disloyalty to the West.  So, all together now, let us make sure that we DO NOT UNDERSTAND Russia!

Russian leaders claim to feel threatened by members of a huge hostile alliance, holding regular military manoeuvers on their doorstep?  They feel uneasy about nuclear missiles aimed at their territory from nearby NATO member states?  Why, that's just paranoia, or a sign of sly, aggressive intentions.  There is nothing to understand.

So, the West has treated Russia like a baited bear.  And what it's getting is a nuclear-armed, militarily powerful adversary nation led by people vastly more thoughtful and intelligent than the mediocre politicians in office in Washington, London and a few other places.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his Deep State never wanted a peaceful solution in Ukraine, because troubled Ukraine acts as a permanent barrier between Russia and Western Europe, ensuring U.S. control over the latter.  They have spent years treating Russia as an adversary, and Russia is now drawing the inevitable conclusion that the West will accept it only as an adversary.  The patience is at an end. And this is a game changer.

First reaction: the West will punish the bear with sanctions!  Germany is stopping certification of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline.  Germany thus refuses to buy the Russian gas it needs in order to make sure Russia won't be able to cut off the gas it needs sometime in the future.  Now that's a clever trick, isn't it!  And meanwhile, with a growing gas shortage and rising prices, Russia will have no trouble selling its gas somewhere else in Asia.

When "our values" include refusal to understand, there is no limit to how much we can fail to understand.

To be continued.

Diana Johnstone was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996. In her latest book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020), she recounts key episodes in the transformation of the German Green Party from a peace to a war party. Her other books include Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto/Monthly Review) and in co-authorship with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Clarity Press). She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

 

b92.net

Putin sharply warned: "Do not try to interfere"

4-5 minutes

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In a special address early this morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned all those who could possibly interfere in the situation in Ukraine.

Source: Sputnik Thursday, February 24, 2022 | 08:38

Tanjug/Russian Presidential Press Service via AP

"Now a few very important words for those who might be tempted to interfere in the events that are happening: whoever tries to hinder us, moreover, to address threats to our country and people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate and that it will lead you to such consequences that you have never faced in your history", he warned.

Putin said that all the necessary decisions had been made and that he hoped that someone would hear his message.

It should be reminded that Russian President made a decision on a special military operation in Donbas last night. The head of state pointed out that Russia's plans do not include the occupation of Ukraine.

The escalation of the situation in Donbas began on February 17. The Ukrainian army began to shell the positions of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics intensively.

 

Yet Another Attempt Of ‘Assassination Of Serbia?’

eurasiareview.com

Yet Another Attempt Of 'Assassination Of Serbia?' – OpEd

IFIMES

11-13 minutes

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In the Republic of Serbia, regular presidential elections, extraordinary parliamentary elections and regular local elections for the capital of Belgrade and 12 towns and municipalities are scheduled to take place on 3 April 2022. 

At the parliamentary elections, according to the proportionate system, 250 representatives of the people will be elected for the Republic of Serbia National Assembly.  Around 6.6 million registered voters are entitled to vote. On Kosovo, which Serbia still considers its autonomous province, pursuant to its current Constitution, the parliamentary elections will be held with the assistance of the international community and in the areas where the Serbs live. It should not be forgotten that the Serbs have entered Kosovo institutions under the condition that they be allowed to vote on Kosovo at all elections organized in Serbia. If the Kosovo Serbs are not allowed to vote at elections organized in Serbia, Serb political representatives could withdraw from Kosovo institutions or Serbs could decide not to participate at the next elections on Kosovo. 

According to the current Election Law, the Republic of Serbia constitutes one electoral unit. The parliamentary mandates are distributed proportionately to the number of votes won. For political parties of ethnic minority do not pass the election threshold of 3%, the so-called "natural threshold" will be applied. The "natural threshold" is calculated by dividing the number of valid votes with the number of representatives, that is 250, for each position in the parliament, which depending on the turnout at the election varies between 12,000 and 16,000 votes. 

Serb opposition did not learn from the mistakes of the Bulgarian opposition

Majority of opposition in Serbia had not participated at the last parliamentary elections and therefore could not have participated in the parliamentary life, including the decision-making process or monitoring of the work of the government and acting as a corrective to the government. Therefore, the work of the opposition reminded more of the work of nongovernmental organizations than of engagement of political parties. The conduct of opposition parties created deep disappointment among citizens, who expect from their respective political parties to actively participate in the political life and represent their interests. 

The heterogeneous political opposition in Serbia did not create the synergy effect, which would have been generated had the opposition parties managed to interconnect and unite. Namely, these parties are ideology-wise diametrically opposite political parties headed mainly by leaders who already have a political history and many of they still have "political mortgage" from their previous political engagements. 

Analysts believe that the Serb opposition should have learned from the mistakes of the Bulgarian opposition, which was aware that the ideological differences among them were too big, so they participated at the elections in "a number of columns" and with new faces with no previous "political mortgages". As a result, they were successful in their third attempt and at the third extraordinary elections toppled Bojko Borisov's (GERB) regime.

A lost century and yet another attempt of "assassination of Serbia"?

Serbia recently marked the 218th anniversary of the beginning of First Serbian Uprising in 1804, which was a turning point in the creation of a modern Serbian state and the adoption of the so-called Sretenje Constitution (1835), which was very liberal and progressive for its time. 

However, the XX century was tragic for the Serbs and Serbia. The tremendous sufferings in World War I and World War II and the tragic dissolution of former Yugoslavia left traumatic consequences. 

The first democratically elected and assassinated Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić said in this context, inter alia, the following: "the issue of a better tomorrow is always raised. I would like the people to start believing that tomorrow can be better than today. My philosophy of the Serbian history is that we wasted the entire XX century, and I am sure that the XXI century can be the century of our achievements."[2]

In 2000, with the arrival of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić to power Serbia initiated strong democratization and numerous reforms, which resulted in progress in all areas. Serbia became the epicenter of developments in the region and the leader in reforms. This historic progress was interrupted with the assassination of Prime Minister Đinđić on 12 March 2003. 

After the arrival of Aleksandar Vučić and his Serb Progressive Party (SNS) to power, Serbia has once again become the epicenter of developments in the region and the engine of European integration. Significant economic results and accelerated progress on the path to EU membership have been recorded. Serbian President Vučić, together with Macedonian and Albanian prime ministers launched the most important regional initiative "Open Balkan", which promotes regional cooperation and offers opportunities for economic prosperity of the region. Serbia has managed to maintain at the annual level a high level of foreign investments. Specifically, foreign investments in Serbia are at the level of around four billion Euros per year, which is more than in all other countries in the region together. It transpired that for Serbia the XXI century has become the century of opportunities and achievements. Throughout the history, whenever Serbia begun to move forward speedily, there were always attempts to slow down or halt its progress. A testimony of this from the recent history is the assassination of Zoran Đinđić, which was also a kind of "assassination of Serbia."

According to analysts, Serbia has successfully repositioned and rebranded itself in regional and international relations, primarily thanks to the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who has managed to turn Serbia from an object into a subject in international relations. This is most evident through the dialogue between official Belgrade and Pristina in which Vučić managed to impose the "they cannot get everything, while we get nothing" paradigm. Subsequently, the US took the stance that the Brussels and Washington agreements have to be fully implemented – with an emphasis on the establishment of the "Community of Serb Municipalities" (ZSO). The letter that US congressmen had recently sent to US President Joseph Biden is a major recognition and support to Serbia, as well as the confirmation of the rightfulness of the policy Aleksandar Vučić has pursued so far. The letter refers to Serbian achievements in the area of economy, as well as the initiative the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić had launched with several other regional leaders related to creation of "Open Balkan", as a zone of free trade and free movement of people, goods, capital and services, which was described as a new paradigm of the Serbian policy. 

The death threats recently made to President Vučić should be taken extremely seriously because of the experiences from the recent past and the assassination of Prime Minister Đinđić. Furthermore, such an "assassination of Serbia" must be stopped once and for all. In this context, the role of the Serb opposition is important. However, the opposition has still not made a clear and quality contribution to development of democracy, as the opposition in Bulgaria recently had. 

Vučić's position is most difficult

In the current constellation of political relations, the current President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić is by far in the most difficult position. Although Serbia, the region and the world are in a period of the corona crisis and security tensions and threats, Serbia and its President have proven themselves as a factor of peace and stability. It is important to finalize the dialogue between official Belgrade and Pristina with the signing of a comprehensive and legally binding agreement so that Serbia would have a prosperous and predictable future. In this respect, the most important task include economic recovery, development of the state and affirmation of Serbia in regional and international relations, as well as stopping the trend of emigration of population from Serbia and increasing the birthrate. In practice, there are constant attempts to undermine President Vučić and his government through joint actions that even include individuals from the Serb Progressive Party (SNS), who act in conjunction with a part of the foreign factor. 

Analysts believe that because of the decision on declaration of military neutrality, Serbia and its President Vučić are under intensive international pressure to recognize independence of Kosovo, align the Serbian foreign policy with the EU, and particularly to introduce sanctions to Russia. The concept of Serbian foreign policy is founded on the EU – US – China – Russia + Nonalignment Movement rectangle. It is incomprehensible that the EU requests from Serbia to subject its foreign policy to the EU, while there are no guarantees that it will ever become an EU member. 

Elections on future of Serbia

After arduous negotiations, the government and the opposition have managed to agree on the conditions and create an ambience for holding of free and fair elections. The opposition predominantly insisted on media representation and control of the election process. Political practice has shown that presence in the media is not of key importance for winning the elections. The most important element is to offer quality political programs, as well as credible and competent candidates who have the trust of citizens. At the last elections, the opposition made a mistake by boycotting the elections and/or focusing in its political "fights" on Aleksandar Vučić personally, while not offering any quality political programs and candidates who can convince the citizens to trust them and vote for them. 

According to the public opinion polls the list of the Serb Progressive Party "Aleksandar Vučić – Together we can do everything" stands by far the biggest chances at the parliamentary elections. Due to the lowering of the election threshold to 3%, smaller political parties and parties of ethnic minorities also stand a chance to win mandates in the Republic of Serbia National Assembly. As for the presidential elections, the favorite is the current President Aleksandar Vučić, while the competition at the local elections and elections in the city of Belgrade will be most uncertain. It is expected that the turnout at the elections will be above 50%. For the future of parliamentary democracy in Serbia, it is important that in the coming period there is a strong and proactive opposition as a corrective of the government, which has not been the case so far- particularly because of the boycott by a part of the opposition. Furthermore, it is also important that the government and the opposition take a common and single stance on issues of national interest. 

---

[1] IFIMES – The International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, has a special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)/UN since 2018.

[2] Source: Zoran Đinđić https://www.zorandjindjic.org/eng/quotes/ 

 

Russia Proposes "Moral World Order” To Replace U.S. Hegemony

Casa Grande, AZ February 2, 2022 By Rich Scheck                  Russia Proposes "Moral World Order"  To Replace U.S. Hegemony                                                                         Exhausted by decades of hypocrisy and unkept promises, Russia's dynamic duo of Putin and Lavrov have put forth an alternative to the transhumanist dystopia of the Deep State/Deep Church/Davos while Demons plan for world domination. Rejecting the historically inane pronouncements of the current Biden Administration prevaricators who echo Hillary Clinton's denial of the legitimacy of spheres of influence, the notion of a moral world order based on the rule of law and respect for human rights has emerged as a counter to the bipartisan Neocon/Neoliberal Washington Consensus that reflects the NWO mentality of the WEF. The hypocrisy is blatant:  have these folks never heard of the Monroe Doctrine? https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/31/the-united-states-of-hypocrisy-revisiting-the-monroe-doctrine/ Are they completely oblivious to the decade long violation of Syria's sovereignty by US forces despite constant calls by that country's government to leave? Rather than wasting trillions on armaments and endless wars, enlightened leaders from all nations should consider the potential for world peace and economic abundance that can flow naturally from less militaristic global arrangements that might even include a reformed world government with democratic features to replace the ineffective United Nations. Mindless nationalism has led to imperial overreach by various countries for millenia with the current embodiment being Pax Americana that is rapidly failing in a similar fashion to those who got to watch Rome burn 2,000 years ago. Whatever eventually emerges in the coming days as the world rushes perilously closer to the abyss of total war, the ideas advanced by the Russian leaders are far superior to the demands and needless provocations of those in DC demanding they succumb to the hegemonic dictates of the now enfeebled West. Manueving on the Grand Chessboard to achieve Global Manifest Destiny is no longer in the cards for those aspiringfor full spectrum dominance.  The sooner saner heads prevail to ease tensions and consider the reasonable demands of other powers, the sooner the potential for peace can emerge. We can and must do better to protect humanity and insure a better future for those to come. References: https://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index3817.htm https://stateofthenation.co/?p=61317 https://stateofthenation.co/?p=59726 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/31/the-united-states-of-hypocrisy-revisiting-the-monroe-doctrine/

 

Srdja Trifkovic: The Madness of Russophobia

The American Interest

February 2022

The Madness of Russophobia

By Srdja Trifkovic

 

"Rule One, on page one of the book of war, is: 'Do not march on Moscow,'" Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery told the House of Lords in 1962. "Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good."

 

The victor of El Alamein made an understatement. Napoleon's invasion in June 1812 took him to Moscow but ended in a total rout of his Grande Armée. By the end of the year, 95 percent of its 600,000 men were dead or taken prisoner. Hitler's repeat attempt in 1941 cost him the war, with over 80 percent of German military losses—close to 6 million men—occuring on the Eastern Front. "No good" indeed.

 

A student of history may add that the Polish-Lithuanian invasion during Russia's "times of troubles" went well at first, with Moscow falling to King Sigismund's forces in the fall of 1610. The venture ended in disaster two years later, however, with the besieged Polish garrison in the Kremlin resorting to cannibalism before surrendering to the Cossacks.

 

A century later, in 1708, Charles XII of Sweden invaded Russia, aiming to seize Moscow and install a puppet on the throne. He was decisively beaten by Tsar Peter I the following year, resulting in Sweden's permanent collapse as a major power.

 

No natural barriers divide Russia from the rest of Europe. Its defence against all four invasions from the West over four centuries was, therefore, vitally dependent on its ability to trade space for time and to exploit enormous distances—as well as brutal climate—to wear down attackers. Having a solid buffer zone along the country's western frontiers is still perceived by Russian leaders as strategically imperative.

 

This is the context in which the latest crisis over Ukraine must be seen. It is noteworthy that today's Ukraine was the main battlefield in Peter's war against the Swedes, including the final battle at Poltava, a thousand miles from Stockholm and five hundred from Moscow as the crow flies. It was also in Ukraine that Hitler arguably lost his only chance to reach Moscow before winter by deciding in August 1941 to weaken the thrust of Army Group Center by diverting two of its panzer groups south to capture Kiev.

 

Following the collapse of the USSR, Russia's western borders were fixed well to the east from where they stood at the end of Peter's reign, 300 years ago. In Moscow this was not seen as hugely problematic as long as the former Soviet republics remained neutral, and specifically for as long as they stayed outside the U.S.-led military and political structure embodied in NATO.

 

Everything changed with the decision of successive administrations in Washington—starting with Bill Clinton's in the 1990's—to expand NATO eastward and to turn it into a tool of its global strategy of full-spectrum dominance, as exemplified by the attack on Serbia in March 1999. That event was the turning point in Moscow's assessment of American strategic intentions and a formative experience for Russia's soon-to-be president, Vladimir Putin. Years later, when asked if the decline of Russo-American relations was due to Crimea or Syria, Putin replied, "You are mistaken. Think about Yugoslavia. This is when it started."

 

NATO's seemingly insatiable urge to expand eastward is the context of the latest crisis over Ukraine. In 2014, after a Western-instigated coup brought to power hard-line nationalists in Kiev, Putin was not ready for an all-out confrontation. Annexing Crimea was a forced, essentially defensive move, and the low-intensity conflict in the Donbas has been effectively frozen for years.

 

In recent months, however, the renewed prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and having Western missiles deployed along Russia's southwestern border has created a new dynamic. Moscow has decided that a second Ukraine crisis in one year is one too many. Last December Putin frankly told a gathering of military officials that Russia had "no room to retreat." He also deployed troops near the border while denying any plans to invade. It is still an even bet that Putin's objective was not to attack and occupy Ukraine—a risky venture—but to draw the attention of the Biden administration to his demand for a binding set of security guarantees from the West.

 

Putin wants a pledge that there would be no further eastward expansion of NATO and that offensive missile systems would be removed from Russia's borders. Their deployment would reduce the warning time on incoming missiles to Moscow to a mere 5 to 7 minutes. Russia would be certain to respond by stationing its new hypersonic missiles on ships just outside the U.S. territorial waters, thereby reducing to the same 5 to 7 minutes the time to Washington, D.C.

 

This is a mirror image of the Cuban missile crisis, almost six decades ago. Back then, however, it was the Soviet leader, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, who instigated the crisis. Today it is the Biden administration that is making equally destabilizing and geopolitically senseless moves.

 

The Russian plans for a neutral Ukraine suggest a plus-sum game: nobody should threaten anybody, and if one party feels threatened, a serious effort should be made in good faith to find a solution. If this is rejected, of course Russia will likely introduce countermeasures, thus making everyone less secure.

 

In the weeks to come, the situation will likely develop in one of two ways. The less likely scenario is that Washington does not take the Russian concerns seriously yet seeks to snag Putin in a new round of extended but pointless talks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is said to hope that fresh talks may eventually lead to de-escalation, but without any meaningful concessions being made to Moscow. This would be fatal to Putin's credibility at home and abroad. There are some Russian officials, especially in the diplomatic service and in financial institutions, who might be willing to throw in the towel and hope for business as usual, but they are weaker now than at any time since Boris Yeltsin's flawed attempt to forge a partnership with the West, 30 years ago.

 

A consensus now exists in Moscow that if Putin does not get solid commitments about a NATO rollback but retreats, he will have only made Russia's situation worse. This would invite more encroachment, almost ensuring that sooner or later either Russia runs up the white flag or, when the clash comes, it turns out to be far worse than what probably may happen now.

 

More likely, the U.S. and NATO will try to engage the Russians in a new round of talks without addressing their key concerns, and hope that they are bluffing, but that does not wash—this time the Russians may take real action. In stark contrast to the indecisive response to the Maidan crisis in 2013-2014, this time Putin has precisely weighed his options before spelling out his terms. Russia's response could even include deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, putting most European NATO countries within easy range.

 

A diplomatic game-changer would be the signing of a defensive alliance with China, possibly accompanied by a joint naval demonstration in the Caribbean. The termination of oil and gas contracts with all countries which join current or proposed future sanctions against Moscow would be a parallel demonstration of economic power. Last but not least, the Russians may be the ones to indefinitely suspend the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project rather than allow Germany's aggressive new foreign minister to use it as a political trump card.

 

Russian countermeasures might allow some adults in Washington to reassert themselves. One of them is CIA Director William Burns, who served in Moscow as an ambassador and is reputedly skeptical of the administration's current hard line. At the moment, however, the Beltway is dominated by hawkish ignoramuses. Worse still, there is the lunatic fringe, embodied by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas, who wrote on Jan. 11 that the United States must ready itself for a war with Russia over Ukraine. There are also the GOP hawks, notably Sen. Ted Cruz, whose histrionics about "stopping Putin's aggression" are primarily meant to score a few political points by accusing the administration of being insufficiently firm in its dealings with Moscow.

 

It is therefore fortunate that America's NATO allies in Europe are proving notably reluctant to condone further escalation. On Jan. 22, Germany ruled out arms deliveries to Ukraine "for the time being." More significantly, French President Emmanuel Macron called on the European Union to draw up a new security plan to help ease tensions with Russia, adding that there was "a vital need for Europe to affirm its sovereignty." Such manifestations of European caution may at last prompt key U.S. policy makers to step back from the brink.

 

For more than 300 hundred years preceding the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the territory of today's Ukraine had been an integral part of the Russian Empire and, after 1917, a constituent republic of the USSR. Her status did not make the slightest difference to the national security of the Unites States in its infancy or in any subsequent period, including the Cold War.

 

The tragedy of U.S.-Russian relations is that the two powers do not have incompatible interests of the kind that made war virtually inevitable between Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage, Ottomans and Greeks, or the Bourbons and the Habsburgs. From the neoconservative-neoliberal point of view, however, there is no better way to ensure lasting U.S. dominance in Europe than subverting the Russo-German rapprochement, which should be logical and can be mutually advantageous. Both the neolibs and neocons hate Russia as such, for reasons which are arguably more ideological than geopolitical. Both resentfully recognize Russia as the last major bulwark against the tide of cultural and moral selfimmolation which has gripped America and much of the West.

 

By extending her protectorate deep inside Eastern Europe, America is wantonly diminishing, rather than enhancing, her security. This calls to mind previous Western experiments with security guarantees in the region—the carve-up of Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1938, or Poland's destruction in September 1939. History teaches such guarantees that are not based on the provider's complete resolve to fight a fullblown war to fulfill them are worse than no guarantees at all.

 

Washington's urge to challenge and confront Russia is rationally inexplicable. The two can and should be natural allies in a true Northern Alliance extending from Juneau to Vladivostok. The current madness is contrary to the American people's interests, and it has the potential to destroy the remnant of the common European civilization on both shores of the Atlantic. Such an outcome would please only the enemies of the West.

Srdja Trifkovic

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles, is the author of The Sword of the Prophet and Defeating Jihad.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-madness-of-russophobia/?fbclid=IwAR0YuK12b3utJ1wWE-zsU-tZFJt-JrWIip8Q021PhLpJ7pVW7ff6STsJfpg

 

 

Justin Trudeau and his family flee Canadian capital Ottawa as up to 50,000 'Freedom Convoy' anti-vaccine mandate truckers arrive at his office

dailymail.co.uk

 

Justin Trudeau and his family flee Canadian capital Ottawa as up to 50,000 'Freedom Convoy' anti-vaccine mandate truckers arrive at his office - days after he dismissed them as a 'small fringe minority'

• Justin Trudeau and his family have left their Ottawa home amid security concerns as demonstrators marched up and down the streets in front the Prime Minister's office to rally against the vaccine mandate
• Days earlier, he had called the truckers headed for the city a 'small fringe minority' before the convoy of hundreds of vehicles grew up to 45 miles long as it made its way to the capital . 
• Protestors could be seen carrying copies of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, while others carried signs reading 'God keep our land glorious and free,' 'Make Canada great again,' and 'we are here for our freedom'
• The convoy set out from British Columbia on Sunday and was cheered by hundreds of Canadians as it made its 2,000-mile journey to protest vaccine mandates 

By Afp and Gina Martinez For Dailymail.Com

Published: 00:43 GMT, 30 January 2022 | Updated: 12:35 GMT, 30 January 2022

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family have left their home in the national's capital Ottawa for a secret location as up to 50,000 truckers gather to protest against the country's vaccine mandate and Covid lockdowns. 

Hundreds of truckers drove their giant rigs into the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday as part of a self-titled 'Freedom Convoy' which started as a protest against vaccine mandates required to cross the US border. 

Days earlier, he had called the truckers headed for the city a 'small fringe minority' before the convoy of hundreds of vehicles grew up to 45 miles long as it made its way to the capital . 

The movement received an endorsement Thursday from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who tweeted, 'Canadian truckers rule' and the movement has become a cause celebre for many on the right of politics  in the United States.

Flying the Canadian flag, waving banners demanding "Freedom" and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the truckers were joined by thousands of other protesters angered not only by Covid-19 restrictions but by broader discontent with the government.

There was an enormous clamor as hundreds of big trucks, their engines rumbling, sounded their air horns non-stop. Estimates of the number of truckers range from 10-20,000.

Closer to Parliament, families calmly marched on a bitterly cold day, while young people chanted and older people in the crowd banged pots and pans in protest under Trudeau's office windows. 

Canadian media said the prime minister and his family had been escorted out of their home and taken to a secret location in the capital, with much of the protesters' wrath directed at Trudeau.

'I want it all to stop -- these measures are unjustified,' said one demonstrator, 31-year-old businessman Philippe Castonguay, outside the Parliament building.

He had driven seven hours from northern Quebec province to make his feelings known: "The vaccination requirements are taking us toward a new society we never voted for," he said. 

Trudeau said Friday that the truckers' views -- which he described as anti-science, anti-government and anti-society -- posed a risk not only to themselves but to other Canadians as well. 

To date, 82 percent of Canadians aged five or older have been vaccinated against Covid-19. Among adults, the figure is 90 percent.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance, a major industry group, said the vast majority of the country's truck drivers are vaccinated. It has "strongly disapproved" of the gathering in Ottawa. 

The protest originated last week in western Canada, where dozens of truckers organized a convoy to drive from Vancouver to Ottawa to demonstrate against Covid-related restrictions, particularly a vaccination requirement for truck drivers.

•  

Hundreds of truckers drove their giant rigs into the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday as part of a self-titled 'Freedom Convoy' which started as a protest against vaccine mandates required to cross the US border

•  

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family have left their home in the national's capital Ottawa for a secret location as up to 50,000 truckers gather to protest against the country's vaccine mandate and Covid lockdowns

•  

Days earlier, he had called the truckers headed for the city a 'small fringe minority' before the convoy of hundreds of vehicles grew up to 45 miles long as it made its way to the capital .

•  

The movement received an endorsement Thursday from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk , who tweeted, 'Canadian truckers rule' and the movement has become a causse celbre for many on the right in the United States

•  

Flying the Canadian flag, waving banners demanding "Freedom" and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the truckers were joined by thousands of other protesters angered not only by Covid-19 restrictions but by broader discontent with the government

•  

There was an enormous clamor as hundreds of big trucks, their engines rumbling, sounded their air horns non-stop. Estimates of the number of truckers range from 10-20,000

•  

Closer to Parliament, families calmly marched on a bitterly cold day, while young people chanted and older people in the crowd banged pots and pans in protest under Trudeau's office windows

•  

Canadian media said the prime minister and his family had been escorted out of their home and taken to a secret location in the capital, with much of the protesters' wrath directed at Trudeau.

•  

Trudeau (pictured) said Friday that the truckers' views -- which he described as anti-science, anti-government and anti-society -- posed a risk not only to themselves but to other Canadians as well

 

Russia - Ukraine Tensions

Russia Observer

28^th JANUARY 2022 

THE WEST LEAVES MUMMY'S BASEMENT

 

 

BY PATRICK ARMSTRONG

 

After years of behaving like a teenager shadow boxing in the basement of his mother's house, playing out the fantasy of knocking out Ivan Drago in the 1985 movie Rocky IV, the US and NATO find themselves confronting the reality.

SCOTT RITTER

 

Being a member of NATO used to be pretty cost-free: fun even. You had a suite in the flashy new HQ, admired your flag with all the others, gloried in your excellent values. The biggest downside was that you were expected to provide a few soldiers to participate in the latest war in some dusty place. But, you could go home after destroying Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan and forget about it. Until the refugees showed up. And Washington really did insist that you buy some of its weapons and it was harder and harder to say no. And you started getting sucked into things that weren't as much fun as you expected. But, overall, for the leaders anyway, it was an attractive deal. And most of you didn't like Russia much, having edited your own communists out of the story and forgotten what the Germans did to you.

Russia was feeble and weak, going down, and certainly no match for "the greatest alliance in history". But what happens when that teddy bear turns nasty? Blowing up countries from 20,000 feet, you had stopped paying attention. Lost wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq turn out to be poor preparation and the bear had been paying attention. But, you cry, NATO was supposed to protect me, not put me into greater danger!

And that is the dilemma that Moscow has been patiently preparing for you. On 17 December Moscow published two draft treaties. Here are the official English versions: Treaty between The United States of America and the Russian Federation on security guarantees and Agreement on measures to ensure the security of The Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They should be read but, in essence, after reminding the USA and NATO of all the international treaties that they signed up to and ignored, they are asked to commit themselves again, in writing, in public. They must accept the principle that security is mutual. In addition the USA and Russia will not station nuclear weapons outside their territories – which will require the USA to remove some. Finally – and not negotiable – the USA and NATO must solemnly commit themselves to no more expansion. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov later explained why the drafts had been made public: "because we are aware of the West's ability to obfuscate any uncomfortable issues for them… We have serious doubts that the main thing in our proposals, namely the unconditional demand not to expand NATO to the east, will not be swept under the carpet." There is little expectation from Moscow that these demands will be taken seriously by the West. I outline my assessment of the "or else" here and again here. Others have done so elsewhere: Moscow has quite a range of options.

There were two rounds of talks in Geneva and a meeting with NATO. The US written answer was delivered on 26 January and, in Lavrov's words, did not address "the main issue" of NATO expansion and deployment of strike weapons, although there were openings on "matters of secondary importance". So here we are and we await the next step. It is, of course, quite certain that Moscow has the next step worked out and the ones after that.

Other events since December have been interesting. The CIA Director visited Kiev 17 January; the UK began supplying Ukraine with light anti-armour weapons (rather elderly as it turned out); the US is sending more and others are providing light AD systems; Canada sent some troops (mostly it seemed to help evacuate Embassy personnel); a senior German naval officer resigned after committing crimespeak; some US troops on "heightened preparedness". The biggest laugh was the evacuate-or-not dance: Canada, USA and UK, the three most enthusiastic cheerleaders for war to the last Ukrainian, are running, the EU is staying.

Other developments worth noting. On 3 January the P5 declared "We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." Iran and Russia showed close cooperation. Russian and Syrian aircraft made a joint patrol of all Syria's borders; these are to be regular occurrences. Agreements with Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in a range of areas, including military collaboration. And China's Foreign Minister advised Washington to take Moscow's concerns seriously. Only a fool would think these were random coincidences.

There was lots of opinion, of course. Much of it stunningly idiotic. My favourite is An Aging Vladimir Putin Hopes War Can Make a Sagging Empire Rise Again. I must confess that when one sees "aging" and "sagging empire", Putin and Russia are not the first things that come to mind. But these are memorable as well: How Germany's greed for gas, and another grubby deal with Moscow, could plunge Europe into an abyss and Is Germany a Reliable American Ally? Nein: Berlin goes its own way, prizing cheap gas, car exports to China, and keeping Putin calm. A cry from mummy's basement: Why threat to Ukraine from Putin's Russia is exaggerated – Gwynne Dyer: THE geopolitical question of the moment is: how important is it to humour Russian leader Vladimir Putin? The answer is: not very. From another couch warrior: Russia May Underestimate Ukraine and NATO. And lots of threats: eighteen response scenarios; "sanctions like you've not seen before"; personal sanctions. The US State Department complains about "Disarming Disinformation" and burbles that it's "United with Ukraine". First he said "only winners" could make demands, then he complained he didn't have a seat.

But Moscow doesn't want to "invade Ukraine"; if it did it would have to pay for it. In any event, the way Ukraine's population is melting away, in another couple of decades, it will be uninhabited.

More rational thinkers exist. Scott Ritter, no couch warrior, knows that America couldn't defend Ukraine even if it wanted to. The troops Washington has put on alert may be from the storied 82^nd Airborne but they're only light infantry. NATO no longer has the heavy forces and their support in place. But Russia does. There is no credible military threat from NATO. Many understand reality: Biden's Opportunity for Peace in Eurasia; The Overstretched Superpower: Does America Have More Rivals Than It Can Handle?; Opinion: Ignore the hawks, Mr. President. You're right on Ukraine. People in RAND realise that the weapons being given Ukraine will be useless. Worse than useless, in fact, if they encourage Kiev to start something. This fictional account describes what a Russia-Ukraine war would really look like – over in a day and all with stand-off weapons, a few special forces and the local forces.

There have been some second thoughts. Washington and its allies have been booming the "Russian invasion" threat as hard as they can but Kiev is trying to to turn down the volume – it doesn't want to scare its principal backers away. No signs on 2 January, or 25 January. Delicate job this, as we see here: you have to say not now but maybe later. Now even Washington is trying to dial it down – after all, Russia has been "about to invade" for three months now.

But the real second thoughts are forming in Europe. By addressing its demands to Washington, Moscow has shown the Europeans where they fit on the tree. It's Europe that will – again – pay for Washington's conceits. Washington is always careful to exempt itself from the anti-Russia sanctions – no shortage of rocket engines or oil or titanium – but Europe can't. Amusingly, the EU is complaining to the WTO about the counter sanctions Moscow put on food which ended a profitable export market. The two favourite sanctions Washington is pushing for are stopping Nord Stream 2 and kicking Russia out of SWIFT. Neither of these will hurt the USA but they will be devastating for Europe. Killing Nord Stream will be a severe blow to German industry. And, absent SWIFT, how is Europe supposed to pay for Russian gas imports? No wonder Germany's Scholz wants a "qualified fresh start" with Russia as the Foreign Minister calls for diplomacy.

An Open Letter in Germany. France's Macron thinks the EU should start its own dialogue. Hungary's Orbán is going there for another reasons but will surely be talking about this. Croatia wants nothing to do with the adventure. Bulgaria wants out. One entertaining climbdown was the British Defence Minister's invitation to Shoygu to come to London; instead he will go to Moscow. Even Washington and London are starting to learn that the sanctions won't be off-stage after all. London has been warned there could be a big spike in energy costs and some big American companies have asked to be excepted. As for sending troops, Washington's not that "United with Ukraine". NATO won't; UK's Johnson admits no NATO country is capable of a large-scale deployment in Ukraine.

We are coming to the end of the story. All those people in the West who thought they could ignore Russia's interests are starting to suspect that they don't have the leverage they thought they had. Russia is pretty sanctions-proof. It is the closest thing to an economic autarky on the planet: lots of territory, lots of raw materials, lots of water, lots of energy, all the manufacturing it needs, self-sufficient in food, well-educated people, backed up government, armed to the teeth. It's pretty impregnable and it's not run by fools. And it's very closely allied to the biggest manufacturing power and population in the world. Not an easy target at all and almost impossible to hurt without hurting yourself more.

And all this to preserve the so-called right of a country no one wants in NATO to ask to be admitted. What a principle to die for!

Time for Moscow to tighten the screws. How much will Europe and the other NATOites be prepared to pay for being in a security organisation that does nothing but get its members into disastrous wars and make them insecure?

Putin and his team can allow themselves a small smile: they've been planning this for a long time. He warned us in 2007 and here we are today.

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I can think of no better demonstration of Washington's bankruptcy than Nuland's appeal yesterday: "We are calling on Beijing to use its influence with Moscow to urge diplomacy…".

 

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