“Mr. Putin finds himself in a struggle now because of the bravery of 41 million Ukrainians, not the strength of Europe or the United States.”
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Agreed. But the NLAWs and Javelins certainly do help, and we need to keep sending them in ever greater quantities.
Ratcheting up the sanctions may see him overthrown yet.
Doing a grand job against Globohomo Schultz and his myrmidons is Vlad the cabal impaler. Ukrainians are welcoming him.
Samizdat, by the way, was the dissident grapevine, the resistance. This post is just cuckery. WSJ? Sheesh. Shillin’ for the Man, like that WEFer with Boris. Boris has much to answer for but that woman?
James Higham.
Please rewrite in English.
Perry would have us believe that the west is sending weapons to Ukraine in response to Russian ‘aggression’. Unfortunately ( disappointingly ) he is putting forward an untruth as my post of the other day illustrated.
From the January 2020 impeachment of President Trump – more than two years ago. Adam Schiff, where he gives [ in addition to a never ending litany of lies] an overview of the hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid sent to the Ukraine two years before the recent Russian invasion.
Military aid worth, hundreds of millions of dollars!
God knows how much ‘aid’ was sent in prior years. Since Trump had taken office.
It also illustrates that the Bidens, and their rank corruption, are central to the issue. Not as NickM claimed, a side show. So much so, that Schiff embedded it in his impeachment narrative.
The whole Ukraine is an innocent bystander being mugged by Putin, narrative is, just so much hogwash. Kira Rudik Ukranian MP, bless her, tells us straight.
What are the chances those words might fall from her lips, in that order, by accident?
James Higham.
Please rewrite in Russian. It would be far more informative. 🙂
Putin finds himself in a struggle because… the mainstream media tells us so. Don’t mind me if I entertain the possibility they are lying.
And it is clear the faux outrage is not about what is being done, but who is doing it. Where the outrage when the Peking Govt found itself in a struggle with the Hong Kong Chinese, or when Führer Trudeau found himself in a struggle with the truckers, or for that matter when all the Western ‘free’ Govts found themselves in a struggle with their own citizens?
Putin Derangement Syndrome has displaced CoVid Derangement Syndrome which took over from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The ‘free’ West is a cesspit of hypocrisy and intellectual & moral bankruptcy.
It really is time to stop fighting the Cold War. As for Ukraine & Russia, they deserve each other, let them get on with it and turn our attention to more pertinent and important matters like the ongoing Government sponsored child abuse at home.
Again and again, i find myself confronted with delusional insanity. WRT the current crisis, mercifully, the insanity on Samizdata is all from commenters, none from Samizdata authors.
Take the proposition that Schulz is a “globo-homo”. Schulz is doing nothing more than what Trump urged Merkel to do. Is Trump also a globo-homo?
Why not resist both evils?
I recently wrote a post on “Government sponsored child abuse”. More recently still, I wrote a post on Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine. The same concern for the truth that motivated me to write one motivated me to write the other.
If I’d been held back by cowardice (or motivated by mere prejudice), I’d never have written the first post (or it would read differently). But I scraped up enough courage to write it, although, in Scotland these days, it is not quite perfectly “safe for a simple citizen to decently express an opinion on a matter of public interest, though against a fashionable and predominant opinion” (Burke).
The Ukrainians must find vastly more courage to fight (literally) the evil being foisted on them – and I can (and should) spare a moment from issues in my own country to say so. As the OP says, it’s not exactly a vast amount of help we are giving them.
At the moment, while they are fighting, it is a subtly different kind of courage the Ukrainians must find – they need physical courage in spades, but maybe just a little less civil courage while their neighbours praise them and the west (from a safe distance) praises them too. If Putin conquers – if they find themselves living “The Lives of Others” – they will have fewer opportunities to show physical courage (though still horribly many), but every day will demand a bit of civil courage simply to know who they are.
Yeah, the Putinist turds have broken cover.
Perry actually noticed Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, so you really are clueless. So yes, the weapons really are going to Ukraine in response to Russian aggression. Pro-tip: that aggression did not start a few days ago.
Damn, is that is your idea of an argument? Because anyone with a 100+ IQ saw this invasion coming, and so building up Ukraine’s capabilities before the actual full-on invasion intending to utterly destroy Ukraine as a nation & an identity is pretty rational, based on Russian actions in Donbas, Luhansk & Crimea. Take the tinfoil hat off.
Insofar as the commentators against Perry are real (some are), one wonders who they plan to support in the mid-terms or in 2024. Trump has said Putin would not have dared invade if he were in the white house (and indeed, Putin didn’t invade when Trump was). Shortly before the invasion, Trump told Putin not to invade the Ukraine because he would “never again have a normal relationship with a US president” and warned him forcefully that “Biden won’t be president after 2024”. Trump sent weapons to Ukraine when president; Obama and Biden repeatedly refused. One of the ‘wild statements’ alleged against Trump is that he told Putin “If you invade Ukraine, we’ll hit Moscow” (apparently even Trump decided to say it privately, not publicly). Trump can match Putin in the game of “I’m wild and unpredictable – best be wary around me”.
I do appreciate it can be hard to decide who is the lesser evil, but whom will they be backing in the mid-terms and ’24? The Dems are habituated to milking the money they vote for Ukraine (as elsewhere), taking bribes from Putin, etc. If they think the west should give the Ukraine less effective help, not more, doesn’t that make supporting a hard-left liberal Trump-hater their ‘lesser evil’? (It was certainly the right approach in Afghanistan.)
The only lawmakers who voted against the resolution on Wednesday declaring support for Ukraine’s sovereignty were all from one party. And it was not the Democrats.
Trump is of course dressing up virtue as strength, attractive to his base. Who by and large, are tired of never-ending globalist wars and their brothers, sisters, friends and children coming home from the elite’s foreign adventures, maimed or dead.
For comparison: Hunter Biden, is a whoring drug addled incompetent. Managed to become a multimillionaire, that’s good work if you can get it. But apparently not corruption. Yea!
Putin would not have needed to invade the Ukraine because the reasonable security concerns of Russia could easily have been accommodated.
Perry would have us believe that the ‘Maiden revolution’ was a spontaneous grass roots revolution. The CIA or George Soros had nothing to do with it. Yea, Pull the other one.
The USA government, has been meddling in the affairs of the Ukraine for a lot longer than the last eight years.
Is it even conceivable that they have not?
Look, a tremendous tragedy is unfolding. I don’t know how it ends. But, it seems, before it ends there will be no Ukraine, and no Ukrainians. Roads, dams, power stations, oil and gas infrastructure all knocked out. Ukraine flattened and ruined. Who will feed the remaining 40 million Ukrainians? 1 million already fled, several more will ( they hope) be able to flee too and save themselves – as refugees in compassionate Western countries.
Putin, Shmutin… what does this debate matter? and how does it prevent the unfolding tragedy?
Sounds to me as some kind of Greek tragedy. All see the tragedy unfolding before their eyes, nobody can do anything about it.
For the record, I’m not ‘against Perry’, I oppose his position on Ukraine. In which he has either been gulled, or, and I remember his opposition to Trump in 2016, complicit.
And the bumbling, clueless, idiotic and clumsy USA, why did they ever bother to busy themselves with Ukraine? Could they not have kept out of this huge trouble? “Russia and Ukraine deserved each other”… correct, regardless of the “deserve” clause.
Same thing in Syria. A tremendous tragedy, somewhere between half a million and more dead, 11 million (half the population) uprooted and living in UN fed refugee camps. The country flattened and destroyed.
No, the US did not cause the Syrian tragedy, there were enough local idiots, including neighboring countries, there is no lack of idiots all around. But the US stoked the fires by clueless and idiotic “Arab spring” rhetoric, and arming of “good” jihadists.
There is nobody, now, who doesn’t wish the Syrian tragedy hadn’t happened…
Same in Ukraine… so much supporters, and sympathizers and in a short time there will be no Ukraine left…
I have the advantage of actually knowing people who were deeply involved with the Maidan revolt. You are propagandised, no other word for it.
There are a lot of people who say the same about Israel & its neighbours. They are wrong and so are you. You support Putin’s war, your phony concern for Ukraine is exactly that, phony.
I bet.
Does it occur to anyone else that Biden’s actions, both in response to the situation in Ukraine and also earlier in Afghanistan, where he has talked a good show but managed to be utterly ineffectual (and against his own political interests) are exactly the actions you might expect of a President who has been compromised?
And if you follow that speculation, how might he be compromised? His steps have been dogged by Secret Service for years. But his son famously dismissed Secret Service protectors, and is a well-known procurer of prostitutes and drug user. And he spent a lot of time in Ukraine. It’s not an unreasonable speculation that he might have visited a few brothels there. Could Hunter have done something indiscreet during his time in Ukraine, perhaps something illegal, which was videotaped, and is currently being used as leverage against the President? Is there a tape, similar to the famous J. Edgar Hoover photo taken by the mob? It would explain a lot.
I know, conspiracy theories. But the other explanation is that not only Biden, but also ALL of his advisors, are disastrously stupid – and continually working against their own political interests. I am not sure which one seems more credible.
“your phony concern for Ukraine is exactly that, phony.”
I have no concern for Ukraine at all (phony or otherwise).
I still don’t like Trump, I just dislike the alternatives even more. Just because I have sometimes defended him on various platforms against various absurd claims, that does not mean I actually came to like the guy. Well, ok, I admit I did rather enjoy his ability to drive people insane.
Then spare us the remarks you gave us about how sad it is Ukraine is being blown to hell for daring to actually fight back against Russia.
They were. Under Biden, the US has divested itself of a huge amount of equipment, power and prestige in Afghanistan, and ended the energy independence it had had under Trump. The EU (with Biden’s blessing) made itself energy-dependent on Russia. Etc., Etc.. The west has spent the last year increasing Putin’s power relative to itself. If ‘reasonable security concerns’ had anything to do with this, Putin would have invaded under Trump, not under Obama and then under Biden.
As for “letting them get on with it”, the point of the OP is that the west is largely doing that. “Hit him, and I’ll hold your coat”.
Good post.
The West has not been strong (let alone too strong – as Mr Putin’s apologists claim) it has been horribly weak.
The lack of energy independence (the policy of de facto dependence on Russian energy) let Mr Putin to believe that he could invade Ukraine without serious consequences – that has proved to be a miscalculation on his part.
Also the endless offers of “talks” led Mr Putin to believe that the West was horribly weak and would, in the end, always give in.
As others have said – Mr Putin occupied parts of the Ukraine under President Obama and has launched a full scale invasion of the Ukraine under Mr Biden. But Mr Putin did not advance against the Ukraine under PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP.
The policy of Energy Independence under President Trump was the correct policy, and his practice of hard (and unpredictable) talk and conduct, deterred Mr Putin.
Still waiting for the subject of Ukraine’s alleged constant-for-years shelling of the Donbass region to be even acknowledged.
https://popularresistance.org/ukraine-intensifies-shelling-of-donbass-as-western-media-are-silent/
Fake? True?
It’s been quite an eye-opener to see the apologists on here for Mr Putin’s adventures.
Unimpressive.
Niall, please. Biden is a demented old fool, do you honestly think he is in control of the US?
Let’s keep focus on Ukraine. Russia’s ‘Reasonable security concerns’. Let’s review the course of events.
prior to 2014 CIA meddling in Ukranian internal affairs. Preparing the ground for:-
2014 – Perry knows people deeply involved with the ‘Maidan revolt’. Everyone, but the gormless know Maidan was an CIA inspired coup. But, what the hell.
2014 – Russia annexes Crimea.
Crimea also happens to host Russia’s sole warm water Naval port. BZZZZT – security concern 1.
Indecently, the British of all people were fighting not Ukraine, but Russia in the Crimea in the 1850s. Surely, everyone knows Tennyson’s poem?
So the accusation that Russia ‘annexed’ Crimea, the annexation of Crimea was really reversing an act by Kruschev in 1954.
2014 – 2022 CIA/Sorros meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine. Killing Ukrainians in the Donbas and Lugansk regions.
2022 – With the return of the Biden faction, the Soros deep state and Clinton influence is back. Russia has little option but invade.
Ferox (March 3, 2022 at 12:23 pm), both the Ukrainians and we in the west already have plenty on Biden in the public domain. “And guess what – the guy got fired.” WHAT MORE WOULD YOU NEED?
The Dems and the slavering media tried to impeach Trump for trying to investigate Biden corruption in Ukraine. They know – insofar as they can look in a mirror with their eyes open – that they have tons to deny in relation to their past actions over grants to the Ukraine; and note I say deny (often in silence), not prevent-from-being-found-out, because plenty has been in the public domain for years. Similarly they have tons to deny elsewhere.
Obviously, you should assume any coincidence between the MSM narrative and fact is just that, coincidence. Similarly, as regards bobby b’s link above, bobby asks, Fake? True?. It’s a Russia Today reporter, so assume any true statements are there by coincidence.
Neil Oliver started a recent GB news segment by saying eloquently, passionately and sensibly that he believed nothing he was being told about the Ukraine. He then had a guest on the programme who said, basically, what Perry has said, and Neil Oliver seemed to accept that. If you see through everything then you are blind, seeing only what your mind confabulates. And if your seeing through the western MSM just leaves you able to see Russia Today, then “the last state of that man is worse than the first”.
In Scotland, where Salmond was on Russia Today when Sturgeon was framing him, sensible observers knew to take nothing on trust from either. As it happens, Sturgeon was the bigger criminal at that particular moment. Just at the moment, RT is outperforming the MSM narrative in the lying stakes – but of course, take nothing on trust from either of them.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy
Well, there are two kinds of Libertarians – it’s an ideological divide.
The first one – as per the Kennedy quote above, can be called “Kennedy libertarians” (which is an oxymoron).
The other group is the opposite, Trump libertarians (another oxymoron) — stay out of trouble. Don’t get involved in outside entanglements.
Is it possible to agree with this statement and also to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
Of course.
This is hilarious here, deep in this thread, though perhaps less so for any Ukrainian browsing the web to distract them from the tedium and discomfort of waiting in their fire position. But at least they (and we) can be ready with lines if it turns into a megaphone shouting match, as the Spanish Civil War sometimes was on Orwell’s front – or the social media equivalent. (There again, perhaps we strike any browsing Ukrainian as mere beginners – maybe they are too, too used to this.)
Thus APL presents as (perhaps even imagines he is) opposing the Soros line – while echoing verbatim the Soros line. 🙂 To less shameless liars, it might be difficult to explain why Putin did not invade under Trump but did before he arrived and again once he was gone. But that’s no problem for the narrative:
“Putin didn’t feel the need to invade, because Trump was colluding with him. Only after we stole, er, after competent Biden, the adult in the room, replaced colluding idiot Trump in the safest election ever, did Putin feel he had ‘little option but invade’.” 🙂
Gormless, you say, APL? Gormless would be echoing the Soros line while imagining you oppose him. 🙂
Jacob – you are historically wrong and you are politically wrong.
President Trump did not stay out of things – he ordered the killing of a lot Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria and he was correct to do so. And when Russian forces started to ally with anti American forces in Syria (people who had killed Americans) – President Trump had them, the Russians directly involved, killed. The first time in history that American Air Power was used to kill Russians.
You are also politically wrong – as the National Fascist Mr Putin and his invasion of the Ukraine must be opposed. In the United Kingdom this is obvious – because Mr Putin has had people murdered here. But is also true in the United States.
If you do not understand that there must be a clear message (no “ifs” no “buts”) of condemnation of the National Fascist Mr Putin and his invasion of the Ukraine – then you ought to understand.
There is no way to “stay out of trouble” – there never was. Even the isolationist President Jefferson (who tried to abolish the United States Navy) ended up seeding troops as far as North Africa.
Any lack of clarity in the political message, any sense that the Republican Party is acting as apologists for Mr Putin, and you can kiss the Mid Term elections goodbye.
“What a squalid consideration” – no it is not a squalid consideration. Control of the House and Senate is very important consideration, not squalid at all.
Any weakness in relation to Mr Putin will play into the hands of the Democrats.
As for President Kennedy – he was not the person you present (hence my statement that you are historically wrong).
When the professional military people said that it was vital that regular American army forces be in Laos to prevent the fall of Indo China to the Marxists – President Kennedy overruled them. The result was that the enemy supply lines, supply lines to Cambodia and South Vietnam, were never cut. They could only be cut by having regular United States Army units in the hills of Laos – the Pentagon knew that and told President Kennedy that, and he overruled them.
And President Kennedy also over ruled the professionals on the place of Cuban Exiles landings against Castro (he personally choose the Bay of Pigs – the wrong place, as he was warned at the time), and he also over ruled the professionals on the vital need for American air support.
President Kennedy’s television address to the nation where he “took responsibility” for the defeat of the Cuban Exiles was a double bluff.
He “took responsibility” knowing that his media water carriers would “spin” it as a good man (himself) taking responsibility for something that was not his own fault.
But IT WAS HIS OWN FAULT – he choose the landing place (against the professional advice) and he denied Air Support (again against professional advice).
There is a reason, a good reason, why a lot of Cubans in Florida (and elsewhere) vote Republican to this day.
By the way Jacob – it was the strong stand of President Trump that prevented the advance of Mr Putin against the Ukraine.
Mr Putin advanced against the Ukraine under President Obama (you are under the mistaken impression, Jacob, that the present war is about areas that Mr Putin actually took in 2014) and Mr Putin has advanced against the rest of the Ukraine under Mr Biden.
Mr Putin did NOT advance into the Ukraine under President Trump – because Mr Putin was worried about what the unpredictable President Trump might do if he did.
Niall at March 3, 2022 at 2:30 pm,
On the one hand we have APL’s claim:
On the other hand we have the line you offer as comparison:
I think you are far too intelligent not to spot several important differences between these two statements.
How quickly the comments descend into verbal abuse and name calling!
That’s not why people visit this site: the posts, and comments are usually excellent, informed and well stated.
Please try and return to this: the media is full of abuse and drivel, no shortage elsewhere.
I don’t know what to believe, but I do know what NOT to believe. The mainstream narrative is exclusively “Brave little Ukraine heroically defending againt Russia that they did nothing to provoke”.
Hence let’s steal from russian citizens, arrest them, sack them, throw bricks through the windows of their businesses, etc. We protested when the Nazis did it to Jews, we protest when the Iranian Gov. does it to Brits now held hostage in Iran, so why is it all right when we do it to Russians? They are individuals, not proxy targets for our rage against their governement.
The USA can invade and bomb countries in Middle East, but no one else is allowed? The people killed by US bombing in Sirte and Baghdad…OK because ‘they are only arabs’?
Wars are horrible, but they seldom occur by just one party’s actions, though you may have to read beyond the victor’s histories. Behind the Ukraine conflict is two truths:
1. The Ukraine is utterly split into East-West factions between Ukrainian and Russian speaking folk, and the country, such as it is, should long since have done a Czechoslavakian split. We can lament Stalin’s wholesale people relocation that made this mess, but that’s long ago. The situation is beyond repair, evidence the 8 years of war since the separatist regions declared independence. Is secession not allowed, anywhere? Scotland? Catalonia? Or is it only the Ukraine that must be held together by force of arms, against the will of the people who live there?
2. The West, for whatever reason, has openly provoked Russia by extending NATO eastwards. Whatever the West may think of NATO, Russia see it as an anti-Soviet alliance, and hence an anti-Russian alliance. Right or wrong, make no difference. They saw an existential threat, drew a red line, then NATO crossed it. Surprise! This red line means something. Putin is not an Obama. Does it make Putin the good guy? Well no, but what did NATO expect to happen?
Or perhaps they did.
One wonders if the whole NATO thing is spending the Ukraine in an attempt to destroy Putin, and ensure Russian anarchy and chaos a la Yeltsin again. Loads of businesses to pick up cheap aftwerwards.
I feel very sorry for the Ukrianian citizens, who have been dropped into a war by their corrupt politicians (10% for ‘the big man’ remember?) and also for the Russian squaddies. No one asked them. They are all caught up in a tragedy, not of their making.
Oh, and which side was it threatening today to kill surrendering troops? They must be the good guys, yes? Oh.
If you need to abuse dissenting views, then you accept your argument is weak. You may be wrong, or you may need more facts, or you may need to be more eloquent. But insulting others never helps your point.
Let’s try and keep the discussion mature and factual, and accept the horror of what is going on. It isn’t a movie.
“stay out of trouble” – not possible in this world.
“avoid entanglements” – also not possible in this world.
“But Switzerland and Sweden”.
Both Switzerland and Sweden would have been taken over by Germany had Germany not been defeated – they avoided having to fight only by having someone else do the fighting which enabled their survival.
It was the same in the Cold War – Switzerland and Sweden could only “stay out of it” because they were de facto protected by the United States (had they not been – they would have been under Soviet control).
By the way – both Switzerland and Sweden have voted to condemn Mr Putin (they did not abstain in the U.N. they voted to condemn) and they are sending supplies to the Ukraine.
Yes Sweden is sending weapons to kill Russian invaders in the Ukraine.
Public opinion means there is no alternative to such a policy.
I know perfectly well that the “international community” (the Davos crowd) are using all this as an excuse for their political agenda of world “governance” – but we are where we are.
The National Fascist Mr Putin has invaded Ukraine and must be condemned and opposed.
Those who do not understand this have reached a point where they need to withdraw from these matters.
Not true. The Ukrainian nationalists I know actually speak Russian at home.
Niall,
I cannot speak for APL but I will say what I think. You are absolutely right about this:
But I suspect that when APL said “reasonable security concerns” he was referring to reasonable security concerns as connected with Ukraine (Crimea, NATO, etc). In “Vlad the Mad” thread I said:
Shlomo Maistre (March 3, 2022 at 2:17 pm), in 1939, the government of France was very corrupt, and the government of Poland was not even democratic. Two decades earlier Poland had defeated Russia’s invasion – and exploited their victory to gain territory well east of the Curzon line of Polish ethic majority where the Versailles politicians thought they should stop.
It is possible to say that and still condemn both Hitler’s attack and Stalin’s.
It is also possible to say that and see that there is a great gulf fixed between the evils of Hitler and Stalin on the one hand, and the faults of French and Polish politicians on the other. There were those at the time who thought it clever to spout a “both pretty-well as bad as the other” line. They were not the clever ones. Some of them echoed bits of Germany’s explanations that their invasions had been caused by the aggressive Poles (and/or their not resisting the temptation of a British alliance), the aggressive Norwegians and Danes (and/or the British similarly), the aggressive French, etc. – as well as condemning German aggression. Thus they thought themselves ‘balanced’ while making a simple compromise between right and wrong.
So as regards,
obviously, I’ll not be believing it because the narrative tells me so – but I can find better reasons to know there is quite a gulf fixed between Putin and the Ukrainians who fear him. So can anyone who is willing to look.
Tim the Coder,
This is so true and so, so important.
If the objective is to “stay of trouble” by never resisting (with the justification that never resisting “minimises human suffering” – which is an odd form or words as human life is itself suffering) then the security pledges to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan against the People’s Republic of China are worthless.
And if the security pledges to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan against the People’s Republic of China are worthless then it is “game over”, the People’s Republic of China will dominate the world. The population of the United States might as well commit mass suicide if that is true – as that (death) will be the only way to “minimise their suffering”.
The United States can not exist (as an independent country) in a world controlled by the PRC.
And the PRC is watching what the United States, and other countries, do in relation to Mr Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine.
@PdH: “Not true. The Ukrainian nationalists I know actually speak Russian at home.”
My poor phrasing, I should’ve been more eloquent.
I meant that in the 2014 election, the split was clear, with 80-90% majorities in the respective regions. So political affiliation, not language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%94%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%82%D1%83%D1%80_2010_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%85-en.png
from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas
I saw the map labelled “StockmanHistory-1.jpg” yesterday, but cannot find tht link.
I an reminded of the claim of Mr Peter Hitchens – that even the advance West by the Germans in 1914 did not matter to Britain as “we would still have the Royal Navy”. As if, with the entire resources of the Continent under their control, Imperial Germany would not have built a force that would have utterly crushed the Royal Navy.
The Liberal Party government in the United Kingdom in 1914 were not warlike (the Conservative Opposition were – but not the Liberals) – Imperial Germany gave them no choice other than to fight. This the German (yes the German) Ambassador admitted. And when he went home he had the portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II removed from his house – and the wife of the Ambassador forbad any visitor to the house to even mention the Kaiser.
Many Russian officials now feel the same way about Mr Putin.
Remember for months he had them out denying that he was going to invade the Ukraine – now he has one exactly what he said he would NOT do.
This is a personal humiliation for Russian officials – including MILITARY officers.
Every day “RT”, what used to be called “Russia Today”, denied that Mr Putin was going to invade Ukraine – every day, many times a day.
And now he has invaded Ukraine. Banning the station broadcasting here was a mistake – as it denies us the sight of the utterly humiliated staff of RT.
To say that your boss will not invade Ukraine, to say this many times a day – for months, and then to HAVE HIM DO IT. This is total humiliation, not just for RT, but for the Russian people.
Essentially Mr Putin has urinated and defecated upon the Russian nation – upon the Russian people. He made every official repeat (many times a day – for months) that he would not invade Ukraine – and then he invaded Ukraine.
Niall,
My comment at March 3, 2022 at 2:42 pm should have read as follows:
Niall at March 3, 2022 at 2:30 pm,
On the one hand we have APL’s claim:
On the other hand we have the line you offer as comparison:
I think you are far too intelligent not to spot several important differences between these two statements.
Niall,
I agree that there is a massive gulf between Putin and the Ukrainians who fear him. I also think that the whole “Ukraine is an innocent bystander being mugged by Putin narrative” is hogwash.
Also, Ukrainians are not a monolith. Zelensky is not equivalent to an ordinary Ukrainian man (let alone ordinary Ukrainian child).
Actually, they often largely do. WWII is the classic example. Even Stalin cannot be accused of causing Hitler’s attack on him – on the contrary, he tried very hard to avoid it, to Russia’s harm and Germany’s benefit, as did various smaller neutrals earlier, and Britain and France in Munich earlier still.
There is often a state that wants war more, and another state that wants war less. The difference can be very marked: eager anticipation of swift victory on the one hand; fear-filled refusal to go down without a fight on the other.
Hell’s teeth… This has nothing to do with the clearly deranged and senile Comander-in-Chief praising the heroism of the Iranian people in a State of the Union Address whilst Kamala Harris looked like she’d rather be in Kyiv on the end trajectory of a thermobaric.
It is not about that. It is about a loon in The Kremlin with dreams of a new Russian Empire and fuck everyone else. Well, it would appear that “everyone else” has had a full gut of being shafted by Russia. As I type this my wife is upstairs translating pro-bono Russian documents about this Kremlin shit-show. She is a graduate in Russian and has lived in Moscow and St Petersburgh. Partly I take my opinions from her. In the same way she takes my opinions on computrs. We all have areas of skill and chasms of ignorance. The smartest are not necessarily the polymaths but those who know who to ask when they simply don’t know.
But, I also know good and evil (and that is without spousal advice – useful though it is in the circs). Putin is evil. It is that simple. And he, and his forces, need to be taken down with alacrity because the last thing I want is this to be protracted.
My Sister in law lives between Silesia and Mainz. She and her husband recently crossed the Poland/Germany border and at the service station where they had to fill-up the car half the vehicles had Ukrainian plates and were packed. This is not a sophistry. This is real and something needs to be done and it needs to be done hard and fast. It really is that simple. Syria – well there wasn’t any white-hats – just a bunch of cunts fighting over a desert hell-hole but this is different. This is why I bought a T-shirt with the Ukranian Trident on it.
This has to end now. If that means direct confrontation between NATO and Russia then so be it. If it means A-10s (with F-15, F-16, F-22, Typhoon, whatever top-cover) wrecking the Russian convoys with 30mm Avenger cannons then they brought it on themselves. So fuck ’em.
I am not normally a warmonger but if someone “starts” then it is time to unleash Hell. And it will have the added bonus of making Xi shit his silk panties.
The peace and stability we enjoy was not bought by flowers and hippy lyrics. It was bought by blood and iron. We must never forget that.
I’m not an armchair general (well I am when I play Sid Meier games but then only electrons die). I am the local IT guy and the Warden of a Quaker Meeting House.
Paul Marks,
You’re right about that.
When I said: “When the governments of the USA and UK are not simply condemning the invasion but explicitly and publicly seeking to continue and to exacerbate ongoing violent conflict inside of a foreign country, condemning the entire people of Ukraine to years (if not decades) of gunfire, bombings, misery, destruction, chaos, and death – that is wrong.” Perry responded correctly that: “All Russia has to do to end the violent conflict is go the fuck home.”
And that’s my point. The decision to end the violent conflict is not the people of Ukraine’s to make. And by publicly and explicitly seeking to continue and to exacerbate ongoing violent conflict inside of Ukraine, the West is condemning the people of Ukraine to years if not decades of gunfire, bombings, misery, destruction, chaos, and death.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/russia-ukraine-news-kyiv-war-putin-invasion-talks-today/
I ask you Paul – do you support the West implementing this plan by supplying funding, supplies, and weapons to the Ukrainian military/resistance? Yes or no.
If yes, then do you think it is in the interests of the people of Ukraine for the West to implement such a plan? Yes or no.
There is a difference between supporting this plan because one thinks it is in the interests of the West for the West to implement it (likely true in my opinion) versus supporting this plan because one thinks it is in the interests of the people of Ukraine for the West to implement it (very likely false in my opinion).
Shlomo:
The only truly important difference is that Niall’s statement lays bare the insanity which is only implicit in APL’s statement.
Insanity as in: having an extreme level of tolerance for cognitive dissonance.
Being unable to utter two statements without contradicting yourself.
Tim the Coder’s entire comment at March 3, 2022 at 2:42 pm is superb. I record my enthusiastic co-signature on the entire comment, especially this bit:
This is so perfectly on the money.
The gall of the Fake Western Media to be surprised that Putin’s red line actually means something is really a treasure to behold. Apparently not every national leader has a spine of sand.
Sean – Ratcheting up the sanctions may see him overthrown yet.
Which merely proves the point that Russia felt threatened by the West. NATO claims it is a defensive organization, but it shields the aggressiveness of the globalist trying to gobble up all the old Soviet client states and absorb them into EU/WEF/IMF servitude. Obama’s US ambassador to Russia Paul McFaul even spoke about fomenting a color revolution against Moscow. You can’t get much more aggressive than that diplomatically.
When are you tin-plated idealogues going to get it? Not every people want to become a liberal democracy? Forcing everyone to be like the US is an illiberal thing to do. Russia is quite content being a soft authoritarian state (not unlike the Ukraine is, BTW). Quit trying to shove it down their throats.
Snorri Godhi,
Would you be willing to do me the courtesy of spelling out in plain english what you think the cognitive dissonance embedded in APL’s statement is? I cannot spot it.
NickM – But, I also know good and evil (and that is without spousal advice – useful though it is in the circs). Putin is evil. It is that simple.
Incredibly naive view to international power politics. It should occur to you that the years since the Ukrainian coup in 2016 were filled with Western interference and intentional aggravation of the Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
This isn’t a good vs. evil passion play, though that is how our governments and media are trying to spin it. You’re being played. You’ve been sucked into the hypothalamus emotion trap, baited with a hefty dose of nationalism that prevents you from seeing how much we contributed to this situation. Some Quaker.
“The current CIA-approved narrative wants you to believe that Vlad Putin seeks to reassemble the old Soviet Union and will move next to capture the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. I doubt this since all those countries have their own cultures rather emphatically hostile to Russia and required onerous operating subsidies from Moscow back in the Soviet day. Ukraine will surely be enough of a burden for Russia going forward.
An alternate narrative to the CIA’s scare story would follow the Occam’s Razor rule that the simplest explanation is probably the truth — namely, that there was no other way to stop Ukraine’s shelling and mortar attacks against the ethnic Russian population in the Donbas which, by the way, was carried out with US-gifted armaments. And there was no other way to disabuse the USA from the idea that Ukraine should join NATO and thereby become a missile launching base on Russia’s border.”
Good one, Nick 🙂 One pictures a flying saucer landing, an alien demanding “Take me to your leader!”, and then, “This is your leader??”
Like Putin, Kamala is so protected by her media and yet is still afraid she is not respected. Unlike not-mad Putin, Biden has aged out of that worry.
That is the interesting and unexpected (not just by Putin) side-effect. Although the narrative is working hard, Niall optimist Kilmartin has hopes this could get well away from them. When even the BBC adds an “as urged by Trump” to their report of Germany’s NATO-spending reversal, you can see the challenges this is raising.
Paul Marks: “Any weakness in relation to Mr Putin will play into the hands of the Democrats.”
So, you consider loud shouting at the top of your voice, and throwing around ferocious slogans — “strength” —
As for President Kennedy – he was not the person you present (hence my statement that you are historically wrong).
I know perfectly well who Kennedy was ( a fascist, lightweight idiot), but he had a talent for rhetoric….
“By the way Jacob – it was the strong stand of President Trump that prevented the advance of Mr Putin against the Ukraine.”
This is an absurd article of faith. Plus Trumpian cheap self promotion… but it does not really matter.
Yes, I get it, Shlomo, you think the only sensible thing is for Ukraine to surrender to Russia. A lot of Ukrainians do not agree. And I am happy to have my tax money spent giving them appropriate weapons for as long as they are willing to do so, now and post-occupation if that time comes.
Most of the Ukrainian nationalists I know are Russian-speaking Ukrainians, so…
On the same topic, see Steve’s comment:
“It’s nice that people suddenly care about civilians being shelled in Ukraine, after 8 years of civilians in Ukraine being shelled (by Ukraine), I s’pose.”
at:
https://www.timworstall.com/2022/03/well-yes-laddie/#comment-1214471“
What “… strength of Europe or the United States” would that be? We’ve become useless, running around talking a big game with fuck all to back it up. Nobody is even competent at their own fucking job any longer and our young men are a bunch of metrosexual pantywaists. We’ve squandered it all and we deserve what’s coming. Call a cunt a cunt? Sure. We’re the cunts.
What percentage of Ukrainians inside of Ukraine right now do you think genuinely prefer A over B?
A) an ongoing armed resistance against Russia funded, supplied and armed by USA and UK until Russian troops leave Ukraine as an independent and sovereign nation
B) surrendering to Russia now and living under Putin’s ruthless authoritarian mafia rule peaceably
I’d say maybe 40% now and in a few weeks that number will be far lower. But the Western governments do not care what the vast majority of Ukrainians want and it’s pretty straightforward for the Fake Media to misrepresent their predominant views.
I was, of course, wrong in presenting Trump as a “no foreign wars” libertarian. That was actually a lame joke. More characteristic of the “anti war” libertarian wing would be Ron Paul and Rand Paul.
The Ukraine 2010 voting map featured in an interesting piece here:
https://www.unz.com/article/the-land-where-history-died-part-1/
Some of this unz site has a rather anti-semitic tone, so be warned. However, the tone of some articles does not invalidate 100% of the other content. You read and decide. All of it allows a window onto other viewpoints.
You know a lot of people in Ukraine? Have any contacts there? Ear to the ground? Frequent daily contact with locals? Presumably the 40% figure was not just plucked out of nowhere, right?
But you do, and you know what the vast majority of Ukrainians want. I don’t know why I am wasting my time even typing this.
“Most of the Ukrainian nationalists I know are Russian-speaking Ukrainians, so…”
That is an interesting question…
Are Ukraininas a nation apart or just Russians light? How do you tell them apart?
Are Catalans a nation apart or, traditionally – part of Spain? (No great privilege that).
Are Scots a nation apart or some associate clan of the GB ?
At the time of the fall of the USSR Jews started migrating en masse to Israel (and other countries too).. People started asking “how many Jews are there in the USSR?” The answer: as many as you wish. Anyone will invoke Jewish ancestry if it gives him an escape route from Russian hell.
I think that this is what makes most Ukraininans – Ukrainian nationalists…
Paul:
May I be a historical pedant on the subject of President Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs?
President Kennedy inherited this CIA plan from the Eisenhower administration. He reluctantly allowed it to proceed on one condition: no overt US involvement. That was his red line, made clear to the CIA.
The CIA did in fact arrange for air support for the guerillas, it was a force of A26 bombers based in Central America. Used properly they could have taken out the then small Cuban air force on the ground, but this did not happen, which was nothing to do with JFK.
I have come to the conclusion that the CIA knew the Bay of Pigs mission could not work. It was in fact a trap to force President Kennedy to commit US forces to liberate Cuba. A noble aim, perhaps, but he had told them beforehand he would not do it, and he meant it. They thought they could force his hand, but they could not.
After the fiasco, he sacked the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles. After his assassination, Dulles was placed on the Warren Committee to investigate the president’s death. I find that just one of many indications that the motive for President Kennedy’s assassination was linked to the CIA and Cuba.
The west did nothing while the Russians occupied half of Europe for 45 years.
Because it has nuclear weapons.
That’s why we are doing nothing now. Nothing has changed so I don’t see why people are surprised.
Another question for which I have no answer, maybe Perry could help.
The Maidan upraising or revolution upset and overturned a democratically elected Government in Ukraine? Correct?
Why could the Maidaners not wait for the next election?
The NY Times run a piece a couple of days ago in which they interviewed an Ukrainian nationalist (from a known nationalist group there, complete with name and photo) in which the nationalist said that if Zelensky tried to compromise with the Russians over Donbas, he would be declared traitor and treated accordingly. (killed).
Nice democracy there in Ukraine…
(Maybe it was fake news, it sounded true to me).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/ukraine-nationalism-russia-invasion.html?searchResultPosition=2
I mean – presenting the Ukrainians as freedom-fighters is iffy… No that they deserve to be annihilated by Putin…
Still , there is so much sloganeering and idealization and emotional narrative…
Tim the Coder (March 3, 2022 at 5:43 pm), while I welcome other viewpoints, and I appreciate your warning us that the source of this particular other viewpoint you recommend to us also has articles with an anti-semitic tone, you should recognise how this clashes with your very first remark in this thread:
I think we remain pretty good compared with many sites, and hope that continues, but anyway if you invite us to cast our net this widely, you must appreciate that some commenters might be tempted to pass remarks on that.
As regards the electoral map, I think the 2019 election a better guide than any map of the 2010 election (I especially think this because in 2019 the government lost the election, which makes a lot of what the article says about 2014 out-of-date even were it true). But we will soon have better information still. Wherever we see Ukrainians willing to fight and die, that will tell us more even than that region’s vote for Zelensky.
I thought this piece was pretty good.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/03/03/a-response-to-toby-youngs-babyish-piece-about-ukraine/
If i may go slightly off topic: however tragic this current event, it has actually improved my opinion of the Russian people.
Because of the protests in Russia, in spite of the certainty that Putin would go full Trudeau on them.
Because of Andrey Rublev’s quiet protest.
Not last and not least, because of this (via Instapundit).
Three times I have inquired about the alleged long-term practice of artillery shelling of civilian areas of the Donbass region by Ukrainians. Twice I was lumped in, I think, with “Putinist thugs and lackeys”, with no actual response. The third time, I got this:
“Similarly, as regards bobby b’s link above, bobby asks, Fake? True?. It’s a Russia Today reporter, so assume any true statements are there by coincidence.”
I didn’t expect such a lack of responses here.
As Nigel Farage has pointed out all this is down to the westward expansion of the EU and NATO.
It was Bill Clintons plans for Nato expansion that started us down this road, Nato promised Russia they would stay out of eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and they broke that promise.
the suffering that will now engulf Ukraine is entirely the fault the Democrats, the EU and NATO.
Ferox
How would you leverage that against the POTUS? I seem to recall Mr H Biden’s laptop being found and interrogated and a lot came out, and it is on the public record that Mr H Biden has had a troubled past, being kicked out of the US Navy because of pharmaceutical issues, having ‘women’ problems and much else, and the bulk of the US media simply sympathise or brush over these issues.
I am trying to imagine what Mr H Biden would have to do to actually embarrass his father. I suffer from a failure of imagination.
So applying Ockham’s Razor, the simple explanation is that this is BHO’s ‘third term’ and it is a continuation of the same loathing of the best interests of the West that we say in the first two terms.
By way of comparison, how would one embarrass Bill Clinton? I have absolutely no idea if such a thing is possible.
NickM:
But, I also know good and evil (and that is without spousal advice – useful though it is in the circs). Putin is evil. It is that simple.
ruralcounsel:
Incredibly naive view to international power politics.
Yes, it is. I have also already railed against the sophistry, double-talk and double-think of Vlad’s supporters. Sometimes the cause is complex but not here. Here we have the big-lad in the playground throwing his weight about because he can.
ruralcounsel (again):
This isn’t a good vs. evil passion play, though that is how our governments and media are trying to spin it. You’re being played. You’ve been sucked into the hypothalamus emotion trap, baited with a hefty dose of nationalism that prevents you from seeing how much we contributed to this situation. Some Quaker.
If this isn’t good versus evil (and I’m far from naive enough to think of those as absolute tags but also practical enough to know they are useful ones and apply here) then I’m stuffed if I know what is good and evil. How precisely “we” contributed to this is beyond me. I guess we saw Russia as a bust flush and not the super power it likes to think itself and they’re narked about it. Diddums – my country once ran an Empire upon which the Sun never set – you don’t me see me kicking over the neighbours fence in inchoate rage over that do you? Well, after a few too many vodkas than are strictly speaking good for oneself Russia tries it on largely due to the deranged dreams of an old man who wants his legacy to be rebuilding the Russian Empire of yore.
I am not getting this from the media. I haven’t drunk some Kool-Aid. Putin has repeatedly stated this. He has written and published a paper on this. He has publically made it utterly clear what his imperial desires are. He has publically stated the split of the Soviet Union was “The Greatest Tragedy of the 20th Century”*. Give Putin his due – he has practised what he preaches.
Also. I said I was a Quaker warden. I have never stated I’m a Quaker. I think online, if it came up, I have classed myself as a principled agnostic. I mop floors, put out chairs and take bookings and in exchange I get to live in a spacious C17th cottage in Cheshire for a quid a week. And I didn’t need to unleash the Fourth Guards Tank Division to get it either…
Now, God help us, we come to Jacob:
“Most of the Ukrainian nationalists I know are Russian-speaking Ukrainians, so…”
That is an interesting question…
Are Ukraininas a nation apart or just Russians light? How do you tell them apart?
Are Catalans a nation apart or, traditionally – part of Spain? (No great privilege that).
Are Scots a nation apart or some associate clan of the GB ?
I dunno where to start on that so I won’t. But I challenge Jacob to make these profound insights public in public squares in Moscow, Kyiv, Barcelona, Madrid, Glasgow and London. We shall score him by the number of teeth he still has in his gob.
If Jacob was a fruit he’d be a cunteloupe. A bit like a melon just nowhere near as sweet or refreshing.
*I know. Am I alone in thinking the set-up of the Soviet Union was the biggest tragedy of the C20th. Not least because of those, Mao for example, who also drew inspiration from it.
It should of course be “cuntaloupe”.
My apologies to Jacob.
What is driving all this horror?
It’s Mr Putin’s motto, thinking about whether Russia can try it on in the face of the West:
‘Yes, we can‘.
Paul Marks,
Who are these Putin Apologists that you are referring to?
Myself, Martin, Jacob, Phil B, ruralcounsel, APL, ragingnick, Tim the Coder?
There is a difference between between “too strong” and “too aggressive”.
Speaking for myself, it’s obviously clear that America has been too aggressive against Russia for many years, including but certainly not limited to NATO expansion. But too strong? Absolutely not.
Who are you referring to as believing that USA has been “too strong” against Russia?
I agree and I don’t think that any commenter at Samizdata disagrees, at least that I’ve noticed.
As you keep expressing views on Ukraine, I am fairly surprised you don’t know the answer to that. Putin’s tame President Yanukovych’s riot cops killed over a hundred protestors, poisoned an opposition leader, imprisoned others, and were literally ‘disappearing’ people the government didn’t like. So fair to say the wheel had come off the body politic. This is why I get so pissed off when people just repeat the “Russia Today” narrative about how the CIA orchestrated a coup when clearly the Maiden Revolt was in response to Yanukovych’s *extremely* heavy handed tactics when it came to political opposition.
He might have killed a prostitue.
My claim:
What percentage of Ukrainians inside of Ukraine right now do you think genuinely prefer A over B?
A) an ongoing armed resistance against Russia funded, supplied and armed by USA and UK until Russian troops leave Ukraine as an independent and sovereign nation
B) surrendering to Russia now and living under Putin’s ruthless authoritarian mafia rule peaceably
I’d say maybe 40% now and in a few weeks that number will be far lower.
If anyone would like to offer their own number that would be interesting. Particularly anyone from the camp that supports the USA and UK supplying arms, funding, and weapons over the long run to the Ukrainian military/resistance in order to achieve the following plan:
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/russia-ukraine-news-kyiv-war-putin-invasion-talks-today/
No, I like Nigel but he is clueless when it comes to this kind of thing. Your analysis is like trying to understand Hitler without having read Mine Kampf and then blaming the Czechs for the German occupation of the Sudetenland.
Does Putin want Ukraine in NATO? Of course not, but not because it ‘threatens’ Russia but rather it threatens Russia’s expansion back to its previous Imperial borders.
This war was coming even if Ukraine had no interest in joining NATO, merely deposing Yanukovych, who was like Putin’s sock puppet, was enough to demonstrate that Ukraine was starting to act like an independent nation. And that is intolerable to Putin. How do we know? Because Putin has made no secret of what he thinks: Ukraine is a ‘historical mistake’ and Ukrainians are just Russians, not a separate people. Work your way through the stuff churned out by people in the Russian ‘political science’ world want to understand what they actually think, it is remarkably like Volkisch nationalism in the 1930s.
So, I guess you do have contacts in Ukraine as you keep repeating that number as if it means something.
Personally I would like to see Russia stopped in its tracks. But failing that, openly backing a 10 year insurgency that works an infected wound in Russia’s guts sounds like an acceptable plan. As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, I am happy for my taxes to pay for a constant supply of high tech weapons for them. I see it as enlightened self-interest, not to mention a bit of payback with interest for Moscow’s backing for Irish terrorists in the UK back in the day, plus intermittent assassinations by Russian agents in Britain more recently.
A bit busy right now. Donbas was an active war zone with artillery going both ways, so certainly possible civilians sometimes get shelled. Intentional? Probably not but I don’t know that for a fact.
What percentage of Ukrainians inside of Ukraine right now do you think genuinely prefer A over B?
A) an ongoing armed resistance against Russia funded, supplied and armed by USA and UK until Russian troops leave Ukraine as an independent and sovereign nation
B) surrendering to Russia now and living under Putin’s ruthless authoritarian mafia rule peaceably
Shlomo.You really are a total fucking surrender monkey aren’t you? You are seriously, seriously proposing the people of a sovereign nation live on their knees rather than fight with their boots on. Well you can fuck off. I favour a swift and decisive military intervention. We can do this primarily with air power to just shred the Russian convoys. It can be done swiftly and with style.
NickM,
What percentage of Ukrainians inside of Ukraine right now do you think genuinely prefer A over B?
A) an ongoing armed resistance against Russia funded, supplied and armed by USA and UK until Russian troops leave Ukraine as an independent and sovereign nation
B) surrendering to Russia now and living under Putin’s ruthless authoritarian mafia rule peaceably
Perry de Havilland (London)
“Most of the Ukrainian nationalists I know are Russian-speaking Ukrainians, so…”
Which is a logically useless and meaningless statement. So nothing. Besides being basically based on one person’s observation, so statistically useless. And a reckless way of dismissing the pro-Russian Ukrainians desires.
The Ukrainians have been trying to claw back the Donbas and other parts of the Ukraine that did NOT want to overthrow their government in 2016. The Russians held their bases in Sevastopol. So in essence, Ukraine has been doing to their renegade regions what Russia is doing to them. Reports of 14,000 deaths so far, before this recent fighting broke out. That was the beginning of the real violence, and Ukraine started it.
Looking at the voter maps of Ukraine, it is obvious that the country is deeply divided between east and west. I’m not sure what the proportion of the population is pro-Russian and I’m guessing it is a minority. But a true liberal democracy would have let them alone.
I for one am very much looking forward to the Fake News Media condemning Putin’s implementation of martial law on Russia after the same Fake News Media cheered the martial law that was implemented in most Western countries because there was a new virus going around with a 99.8% survival rate.
Anyway, it appears that the US State Department has decided that Putin should be removed from power. I’m sure that will go swimmingly. What could possibly go wrong? America and the West have a wonderful track record of removing authoritarian thugs from power and installing liberal, tolerant, secular democratic systems of government in their place.
I’m sure Moscow will have transgender bathrooms before America actually enforces the rule of law on her southern border. YAY!
APL you wrote:
“PdH: “I have the advantage of actually knowing people who were deeply involved with the Maidan revolt.”
I bet.”
You have called our host a liar, and I for one demand that you retract the liable at once.
If you want me to cast a verbal gauntlet in your face, it would be my pleasure to do so.
“Mr. Putin finds himself in a struggle now because of the bravery of 41 million Ukrainians, not the strength of Europe or the United States.”
Or does Mr. Putin find himself in a struggle because his country is weak, his commanders are incompetent, and he has surrounded himself with yes men who can distinguish illusion from reality?
These are not mutually exclusive propositions.
Yeah whatever, like your blather is more than one person’s observations of whatever data you cherry pick to suit your pro-Putin views.
Where the hell do these pop up trolls come from? Oh! I know.
I rather think your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired.
And your spelling is pretty crap too.
Normally, I wouldn’t call anyone out on spelling, pot and kettle, an’ all that, but Stephen Willam Houghton, you are a ‘special needs’ case.
Frankly old chap, I don’t give a wet fart what you do.
And there is the root of it. So many of Putin’s useful idiots (technical term) in the west like him because he is not woke. And because the whole woke shit is indeed a massive corrosive force in the west (no argument from me there), ergo Putin is their man-crush. I even occasionally see “And Putin is a defender of Christianity!” (not from you, obviously) as similar proof why Putin is our saviour from the godless wokesters/WEF cabals/George Soros/gender-benders or whatever. Say what you like about the Russian state (and I rarely have anything good to say about it) but damn they know how to play a certain kind of people like a well tuned fiddle.
Agreed. All of the above.
Like Perry, I’ve been a bit busy with responding to others, and I have a day job, and I would have preferred to research more before responding. It is now nearly midnight here but as you ask and I greatly value all the information you have provided to me I will write something.
As Perry says (and as the dates in the article you link to confirm), the take-over of Crimea was coincident with a separatist movement in the Donbass (routinely reported to be strongly Putin-backed and it seems absurd to doubt this). This has involved exchange of fire from time to time. In past years, the BBC have reported these artillery exchanges – they are not unknown to westerners who follow the news of yesteryear.
In assessing the RT reporter’s (March 3rd) statement that firing has much increased in recent weeks, ask yourself how you think the Ukrainians expected this invasion to go before it started – and how Putin expected it to go. Observers radiated a widespread consensus Putin’s much stronger and better-armed forces would race through, as he did in Crimea. If you think the parties hoped (Putin) and feared (Ukraine) that that was indeed a likely outcome, then reflect which one of them would initiate the increased firing of recent weeks; the one who feared the start of the war would be swiftly followed by their defeat or the one who thought the start of the war would be the prelude to a victory parade.
You will of course appreciate why firing might have more recently still have much increased yet further after Putin’s invasion started.
I was not there. This is not witnessed fact – merely an argument (over and above the obvious one) for treating that Russia Today report with great caution. As, if and when I have fact, I will share it.
PdH: “A bit busy right now.”
Thanks. Wasn’t aimed at you per se, just my frustration with how the conversation seemed to be developing.
(And, thanks, too, NK. Hadn’t seen that it was mutual shelling.)
Perry,
So you agree or disagree with my prediction that Moscow will have transgender bathrooms before America enforces the rule of law on her southern border?
{Face palm}
Why all the whinging about the events in Ukraine in 2014? How much relevance does it have on the current situation?
If anything, it tells us the Ukrainians don’t seem to have much pro-Russian sentiment, unless you mean to say the anti-Russian elements have disproportionate influence and control over their elections similar to the US, which is not out of the realm of possibility.
Now, was NATO justified in expanding to the extent it has? Obviously Russia has been spooked, and deems it, rightly or wrongly, to be a threat to its sovereignty. Add to that Russia’s dreams of regaining its imperial ambitions, and here we are.
There’s also a difference between being a formal member of NATO and being in a tacit alliance, like Sweden and Finland. Ukraine would have better served if they had emulated Finland, and made that desire explicit, or at least in a form that might, might, have placated Russia. Was there any such explicit diplomatic efforts in this regard? Or was it just NATO, NATO, NATO for Ukraine?
It’s all moot now though. Russia has gone all in and only an internal regime change will make it back off. Until then, Putin will just bluster and puff troops into Ukraine.
I’m still surprised at the relatively low sortie rate of the Russian Air Force, which indicates serious logistical and training limitations. Unless they’re really a soft approach.
Putin wouldn’t have invaded should Trump be in the white House, because Trump fired Victoria Nuland who was the point man so to speak of the deliberate poking if the bear.
Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 because following the Nuland/Soros color revolution, the new regime was threatening withdrawing access for the Russians to the Sevastopol, even though the Russkies had a lease.
There is this thing called nuance which seems to have escaped a few people here.
Well said.
Syria happened because Israel / PNAC have a regime change boner for Assad, and they created, supplied and funded ISIS as the US populace was battle weary and wasn’t up for yet another war.
If you have any doubts on this just Google John McCain- there are plenty of photos of him out there with the senior keadership figures of ISIS.
True. Its also been the playground for those psycho Azov Nazis
Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble
By tying itself to a reckless and dangerous America, the Ukrainians made a blunder that client states will study for years to come
By Lee Smith
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gamble
Might shed some light….
Audio of US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt definitely not interfering in Ukraine’s democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2XNN0Yt6D8
And Victoria Nuland’s husband just happens to be the founder of PNAC, they of the invade 7 countries in 7 years masterplan…
Of course invading countries is OK if the Yanks are doing it
Here is an interesting idea from the Wall Street Journal ($):
Flubber: Of course invading countries is OK if the Yanks are doing it
Depends on what the justification is – if it is take down a clearly dangerous regime that has attacked its neighbours and caused mayhem (Iraq in 2003 was arguably in that category) then an invasion might be justified. Context is key. The Allies “invaded” Normandy in 1944, and so forth. I don’t see Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as having any serious grounds for justification; his arguments appear to be little more than rationalisations for wanting to grab a country the independence of which he refuses to accept.
It annoys me when people engage in this sort of “whataboutery” and state “the yanks did it too” sort of line. It is lazy. I expect better on this blog’s comment threads. Stay behind class for added homework.
Thanks for that, Flubber. 🙂 If you hadn’t taken a break from Putin-spin to assure me that ISIS was a front for those wicked Jews, I might have been in danger of taking a minute of my valuable time to critique your arguments.
The situation in the middle east, like that in the former Soviet Union, can sometimes be involved, but I feel a lack of confidence in Flubber’s ability to untangle the knot that exceeds even my lack of confidence in an undiluted BBC diet.
The precise opposite of the facts. Obviously, Putin was sufficiently spooked by Trump to hold back. Now Biden has led the charge to demonstrate how woke-weak the west is, Putin has been completely un-spooked, and so has resumed acting out his imperial vision. Putin did not invade Ukraine because he was scared, but because he wasn’t.
Both Biden’s handlers and Putin’s propagandists want to explain away not invading under Trump. It is absurd to take the (often overlapping) excuses of either seriously.
The Nuland tape would seem to question whether the protest/revolution resulting in the 2014 regime change arose without US influence even if not actual interference.
It didn’t do her career any harm though as she was unanimously confirmed as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs last April. Geoffrey Pyatt, the other half of that conversation while US Ambassador to Ukraine, has also done OK and is currently US Ambassador to Greece.
Not quite. You can be scared and cornered enough to lash out.
Trump was obviously strong enough to hold Putin down, and I think he just knew how to talk to strongmen to get them to back off and back down (being a property developer in NY is no joke).
Biden and his backers obviously don’t. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal gave Putin just enough hope to think that he had a good chance of lashing out to gain some breathing space or fulfil Russia’s imperial dreams.
The most frustrating thing is that so many people still buy those arguments. All that leftist indoctrination and brainwashing has turned their brains to mush.
Tim the Coder regretted that this thread was getting less courteous than ours usually are. I thought we were still pretty good as far as that went. What I regret is the disappearance of genuine debate in favour of the sort of swift move into absurdity that the woke practice, and the above imitates. Perry made a very honest attempt (March 4, 2022 at 12:10 am) to engage with the issues in Shlomo’s first mention of this, and all he gets for his pains is the rubbish above. Instapundit explained how this technique often traps the endlessly-harrassed unwoke victim into making a sarcastic reply – which the woke then pretend to take with a mad seriousness (or maybe sometimes madly take seriously). Perry’s facepalm avoids that.
However it can sometimes be interesting – even effective – simply to answer the question. I once saw a scientist badgered by green crazies demanding, “How many atomic explosions must happen in reactors before you will abandon nuclear power?” He kept trying to explain that nuclear power and nuclear bombs are different, and they (like Shlomo above) kept demanding, “Answer the question!!!”
Often, if you think, the question can be answered. Saying, “Well, just one would have me rethinking not just my support for nuclear power but everything science ever thought it knew about atomic physics.”, might have served him better than his fruitless attempts to explain to the green nutjobs that their question made no sense.
Similarly, Shlomo’s question can be answered. Either Trump (or someone like him) will manage to reverse the tide of vote-fraud-powered wokeness – or that will not happen.
– If it does, the U.S. southern border will be secured, and fight-back against the trans mafia will be more possible. Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin will find it necessary to drop the thought of further invasions – but will likely stay in power until/unless his own people get rid of him, after which whatever happens in Moscow bathrooms will be decided in Moscow, as before.
– If it does not, then western weakness will increase and Putin will be even more unconstrained by it than he was when he felt he could invade the Ukraine in perfect safety. America’s borders will become even less controlled, and whatever happens in Moscow bathrooms will be decided in Moscow, as before, because the weaker-than-ever US will have no power to intimidate whoever rules there. Women who enter US bathrooms may feel unsafe. Women who criticise Moscow’s rulers may feel none too safe anywhere in Moscow.
I’d be ashamed to be seen wasting my time on such pettiness in a post, but down at the far end of a long, long thread, my shame is seen mostly by those who can understand and those who are still here because they have decided never to understand.
The Maidan revolt happened because Putin’s pet in Kyiv killed over a hundred protestors, poisoned an opposition politician and jailed others. The internal pressure in Ukraine reached boiling point and that, not CIA machinations, put vast numbers of Ukrainians on the streets. Anyone who thinks the CIA did that (or was even capable of doing that) is either delusional or listens to Russia Today or both. If the CIA was involved, it was at best a bit part player looking to justify its budget.
Well this is exciting. I’m just off to buy a flak jacket and a tin hat.
Niall,
Lets review what was actually said.
Shlomo said at March 3, 2022 at 10:39 pm:
Perry said at March 4, 2022 at 12:10 am
Shlomo said at March 4, 2022 at 12:57 am
And Niall’s response:
I agree that it would have been more productive for Perry to engage in genuine debate rather than swiftly move into absurdity that the woke practice.
Oh? And where did he do that? By ignoring the substance of what I said, calling me a useful idiot, psychoanalyzing me, saying I have a man-crush on Putin, saying that I believe Putin is “our saviour from the godless wokesters/WEF cabals/George Soros/gender-benders or whatever”, and literally claiming that I’m being played like a well tuned fiddle by the Russian State?
Where exactly in Perry’s comment is the “honest attempt to engage with the issues”? Niall, please feel free to quote the part of Perry’s comment that you think fall into this category of an “honest attempt to engage with the issues”.
Huh? How did I harass him? Perry is a harassed unwoke victim – why exactly?
My comment at March 3, 2022 at 10:39 pm was not addressed to Perry. He decided to respond to it – great. But he did so not by engaging the content of what I said but rather by saying that I see Putin as a savior from the woke cabal, psychoanalyzing my motivations for seeing Putin in this way, and then by claiming I’m being played like a fiddle by the Russian State.
And I’m the one harassing him? How is that?
What makes you think that I was pretending to take Perry’s response with a mad seriousness?
My comment at March 4, 2022 at 12:57 am was plainly an attempt to circle back to the actual issue at hand – which was my prediction, which you and Perry may not believe is an important issue but I do. I also am not particularly interested in engaging Perry’s comment that I’m being played like a fiddle by the Russian state. If that makes him an “endlessly-harrassed unwoke victim”… how? what??
Well, I had wanted to avoid quoting some of the insults, since that points at specific commenters, which is rather unfair.
But on the basis this is just a couple taken at random from the thread above, and not intended to focus on anyone:
“Putinist turds”
“Please rewrite in…”
Though I admit, reading the whole thread afresh, it’s not as bad as I thought it had become, so my apologies. Well done all, trebles all round :).
It is always a good idea to try an understand your opponent’s viewpoint, to understand their reasons, motivations and objectives. It’s not about agreeing with them, it’s about understanding their hopes, fears and drivers. That may identify areas of common ground, upon which an agreement might be achievable, or it may help identify areas of weakness, where pressure may be applied with advantage.
Attempting to understand the opponent does not make one an apologist for them, or their causes.
The alternative is to call the opponent ‘mad’, a lazy approach (or if motivated by fear of being called an apologist, a coward’s approach), that by defying rationality means that no path is possible for either ending the disagreement peacefully, or of strengthening one’s position.
Yet calling Putin mad seems very topical among the media and political talking heads, despite it achieving little but stiriing anti-Russian hatred and ‘Kristalnachts’. I see no reason to support such ‘mad’ claims: he has entirely rational motives for ends we may not agree with, and is pursuing them with entirely logical methods.
But unlike many journaloids, I am not privy to the Kremlin’s secret plans, so do not know what those plans, ends, and methods entail, nor how delivery is on schedule or not.
The “election of 2014” is relevant, because it shows the divide in the country, which has driven the seperatists, the 8 year civil war, and the current recognition and military support by Russia.
“What the US has invaded” is relevant because, to the Russian viewpoint, invading Iraq to defend Kuwait is exactly analagous to invading Ukraine to defend the Donbass republics. We may disagree, but so what. That is how they see it, and hence how they act. Do we understand that driver, or dismiss it as ‘madness’?
It’s far from clear if Putin really wants to occupy the Ukraine, or rebuild an empire. Maybe he does. Or maybe, like Bush the Elder in Iraq 1, he will remove the military threat he perceives, then go home. There certainly seems to be a strong effort to minimise the urban fighting: Berlin 1945 this is not.
However much we abhor what is going on, we cannot escape the fact that:
– Putin’s motives are entirely rational towards some objective that we may not yet see.
– Putin’s actions are, in his eyes, exactly similar to those previously taken by the USA and its satraps.
– The situation has been builing for over a decade, and the West/NATO has openly added to the provocations, so our hands are not clean.
– The Ukainian governement is corrupt, and is provably mixed up with US senior politicans. There may yet be more to discover here, as we learn how much the USA leadership is ‘owned’, and by whom.
– Russia has spent several decades building a European energy dependency, to restrict our choices, via Green front organisations, like CND before them.
– Wars, once started, are a b*gger to stop. Afghanistan 1 (the Soviets) took 10 years. Afghanistan 2 (The US+rounding errors) took 20 years. Both lost.
So we need to be careful to avoid fanning the flames, or holding individual citizens guilty of the Governments actions. Understand the motives of the players, and try an mediate common ground. But big wars fill column inches, so don’t expect the media to help.
And in response to the comment above about WW2 being the easy example of a war with only one side starting it…
A primary cause of the European war can be traced to the nasty, spiteful and vindictive Versailles ‘Peace Treaty’. Clemenceau commented at the time, “that was no peace treaty, but a ceasefire of 20 years”. He was spot on.
Without all the bitterness and grudges so created, that corporal and his mates would have remained a minimal vote party of swivel-eyed loonies.
Add in the complete rejection of President’s Wilson ‘self determination’ and the creation of countries consisting of regions that hated each other, and the movement of parts of Hungary into neighbours (or vice versa, I forget) and you realise the intent must have been to create so many brewing civil wars that external conflict would be off the table. How nice of us to do that.
And Italy joined in WW! on the basis of promises, which were promply welched upon once the shooting stopped. Yet more grudges and nursed resentments. Everyone else has ‘a place in the sun’, why not us?
Now add in a military dictatorship in Poland, that was happy to pal-up with Germany when parts of Czeckoslovakia were being handed out, were so arrogant they thought the Soviets would have learned nothing from the 1920 war, and then completely fanciful guarantees from GB and France that were impossible of realisation, and should never have been made or believed…well not just the Austrian painter then.
Similar arguments can be made for the Pacific war: indeed, it would appear the Soviets may have used agents in the State Dept to deliberately exaggerate the US demands with the intent of provoking the inevitable US-Japan war, hence securing their eastern front. Add in a number of nationalist independence movements dedicated to repelling GB, Dutch and French empires who gullibly were assisted by their Japanese ‘allies’….
Certainly there were many innocent parties. And there’s always someone who provides the spark. But if the spark is to cause a blaze, the fire must have been laid beforehand.
Niall,
I have “decided to never understand” what exactly? Just to recap, Perry’s comment at March 4, 2022 at 12:10 am:
Is this what I “can understand” but “have decided never to understand”? Or are you referring to something else, Niall?
Tim the Coder (March 4, 2022 at 11:13 am), you may be a very good coder, but in history, your comment brands you an intellectual without intellect.
That said, I should not complain about your grafting of the claim that much blame can be scraped off Putin and spread over the west onto the older idea that much blame can be scraped off Hitler and spread over the west. Putin was just the guy who provided the spark – like Hitler in WWII, is a summing up of the pro-Putin view that I, as a critic of it, see no need to expand on before leaving such thread readers as have survived till now to their own conclusions. (It is more than time to stop, anyway.)
BTW it was Foch, not Clemenceau, who said the treaty was just an “armistice for 20 years”. That hardly matters (Clemenceau thought similarly). What matters is they both meant the Versailles Treaty was not nearly “nasty, spiteful and vindictive” enough. The whole of your comment’s history is pretty-well down at that level.
While Foch was saying this, the Germans, with much help from western intellectuals, invented a completely inverse (and mythic) version of how horribly the peace treaty hurt them. This myth helped ensure that, two decades later, leaders who’d fallen for it were taken aback to discover that a weaker France faced a stronger Germany, both the treaty, and its near total abrogation in deference to the myth, having in many ways harmed and neglected France’s genuine ‘security interests’.
The myth that everybody and nobody is responsible for a war is very popular with those who start them and then lose them, but it can be dangerous for the rest of us.
Of course you are. We all are. Just listen to Putin’s speeches rather than the Russia Today stuff designed for credulous foreigners. It is no more a secret than why Islamists do what they do.
Now look at the 2019 election.
Yes Perry – the 2019 election where I would have voted for the LOSING candidate (both candidates had faults), but I ACCEPT the result of what was a fair and free election.
As for people defending Mr Putin by defending Mr Hitler (“he was just the spark – it was the Treaty of Versailles….”) – well I do not know whether to laugh or cry.
On Mr Putin – Glenn Beck (“not Glenn Beck, not that old-fat….” and what is wrong with being old and fat?) points out that Mr Putin’s speeches, over time, sound more and more as if they had been written by Alexander Dugin (not literally written by Dugin – but with the influence of the IDEAS of Dugin running through them).
If people do not know who Alexander Dugin is – then look him up. Dugin is bad news – very bad news.
Russia is a vast Cosmopolitan Empire – it has been for CENTURIES.
So how do you get from a vast Cosmopolitan Empire to the sort of tribal society that Dugin wants? Well one way is via Armageddon.
Let us hope that Mr Putin is, at bottom, still the Mafia style thug he used to be – and has not drunk the Alexander Dugin Kool Aid.
By the way – for fools who think that Mr Putin stood up against the “Globalist” Covid people.
There was a lockdown in Russia and there are vaccine mandates (although very incompetently enforced – which is actually a blessing).
And Dugin?
Alexander Dugin wanted them to be MORE severe – and he wanted to keep the mask mandates and lockdowns ever AFTER the “vaccine” injections.
The National Fascism of Mr Putin and Alexander Dugin is not really an “alternative” to the International Fascism of Dr Klaus Schwab, “Joe” Biden and so on,
Fascism (the Corporate State) is still Fascism – whether it is National Fascism or International (“Globalist”) Fascism.
There is clearly a mainstream narrative that is accepted by most people here. This seems more or less the same narrative that is being disseminated by the western news media and western governments. Forgive me for my skepticism.
There are people who dissent in various ways – myself, Martin, Jacob, Phil B, ruralcounsel, APL, ragingnick, Tim the Coder, and Flubber. I don’t agree with every single thing that every dissenter has said, but I agree with most of it.
Also, I don’t typically feel the need in a Samizdata thread to point out the number of people who dissent but I do in this thread for a few reasons.
I have seen few genuine attempts by mainstreamers to really try to even understand the points brought up by the dissenters – there have been some but not many. I have also seen very little detailed “in the weeds” discussions by the mainstreamers of our underlying arguments – again, some but not a lot. I have seen very little attempt by the mainstreamers to acknowledge (let alone address) the evidence we have brought up.
I have seen from the mainstreamers a lot of flippant dismissals, casual deflections, conflating separate issues, strawmen arguments, and even ad hominems, though.
I understand that injecting nuance at a time of war can be a difficult thing to discuss – because emotions are running high and a horrific atrocity is unfolding. And this is still in my opinion one of the best blogs on the interwebz. But I must register my dissatisfaction with the quality and manner of the discussion offered by most of the mainstreamers in this and other recent threads regarding the Ukraine conflict.
Russia will probably lose this war and history is written by the victors.
Yours is equally mainstream. It is just the Russian mainstream.
History is not always written by the victors – for example for many years after the American Civil War much of the history was written by people sympathetic to the Confederacy.
The myth was pushed that the war was about “free trade” when in 1861 all the Confederate leaders were clear that the war about protecting SLAVERY. And all the violations of the Rule of Law by Lincoln were recorded in great detail – but the far greater violations of the Rule of Law by Jefferson Davis were almost totally ignored.
And “little” things such as the total violation of Freedom of Speech in the Slave States BEFORE the Civil War were ignored as well. According to such States as Virginia the Bill of Rights only applied to the FEDERAL Government – so they could censor people, close down newspapers, ban public meetings and on and on – all BEFORE the war (as a normal part of a Slave Society).
This was the real reason the 14th Amendment was passed – to make it clear that the Bill of Rights DID (not did not) limit the State Governments, not just the Federal Government.
As for the form of the Federal Government – the elected President, the House of Representatives elected on the basis of population, and the location of the capital (Washington D.C. – formally part of Virginia, rather than a northern city such as New York of Philadelphia) all these things were demands of Virginia. They created the form of government (against the wishes of New Englanders such as Roger Sherman) and then, later, complained about it.
The history of the First World War is also largely written by people who are sympathetic to Imperial Germany.
For example, the Russian Foreign Minister is systematically libelled in most of these history works – but “you can not libel the dead” so he gets called a Slavophile (which he was not) and everything else.
Even such basic things as the German Declaration of War upon France, the actual document, do not appear in most “histories” of the First World War – why not?
It does not appear – because the Declaration of War of Germany upon France in 1914 was an obvious PACK OF LIES – so to include the document in a history book in the First World War would undermine the “it was not really the fault of Imperial Germany” agenda of most of these books.
Sholmo – what you are saying is not “nuance”.
And Perry, in his last short comment, is also mistaken.
This is nothing to do with “Russia” as such – most Russian soldiers are baffled to find themselves in Ukraine and do not know why they are there, other than Mr Putin has ordered it and they will be shot if they do not fight Mr Putin’s war.
This is Mr Putin’s war – there is no “nuance”. Mr Putin made a choice to go to war – no one made him do it.
The responsibility for the war is on the head of Mr Putin. HE MUST GO – he has invaded Ukraine, without just cause, and he must go.
I understand that intellectuals like things to be complicated – but sometimes things are NOT complicated.
That is the end of the matter.
“History is more complicated than bad people doing bad things because they are bad people” – NO, often history IS bad people doing bad things because they are bad.
It would be nice if one could use moral reason with everyone – but sometimes that just is not possible. Some rulers just are bad – and they have to be killed.
Shlomo,
There is no “nuance” here. Here there is a major regional power trying to impose it’s will on a weeker neighbour in order to climb the power-ladder. That is it. It is that simple.
There is no also no nuance in the thousands of dead. Nor in the massive destruction of infrastucture or the hundreds of thousands of refugees. Did I mention my sister in law who lives betweeen Polish Silesia and Mainz in Germany? Every second car on the road has Ukraine plates.
You, sir, are trying to excuse the actions of a despotic cunt Hell-bent on destroying a nation’s soverign freedom on a whim. On a deranged dream of Russian national glory. You are doing this because you think “nuance” is the same as “smart”. In this case you are very wrong.
I hope the poor dead souls of every conscript’s body on the trains back to Moscow haunt Putin until his dying second. And I don’t even believe in God or any of that.
NickM: 100%. Sometimes things are simple because they are.
So: the Ukraine is entitled to be free & independent of its neighbour and can fight for its freedom.
The Donbass republics are NOT entitled to freedom & independence and may NOT fight for it.
Got it.
I do not support the Putin position, and I am not ‘taken in’ by Russian propaganda. Nor by the BBC.
I do support the right of the Donbass republics to leave the country that’s been shelling them for 8 years, just as I support Scottish & Catalonian independence (if they want it, irrespective of the views of their English and Spanish overlords).
But we will solve nothing by mindless hatred, threats to assassinate the leader of a nuclear power (now then, how could that possibly go wrong?) or incitement to victimise citizens of Russia for the crime of being a bit forrin. Remember the Singaporean chappie getting his head kicked in on Oxford street, ‘cos of the Chinese flu?
We MIGHT start solving something if we understand the motivations of those involved. ‘Understand’, not ‘agree with’. It’s quite a simple concept.
If that makes me ‘an extremist’, well then, proud to be so. Better that than a BBC replaydroid.
Or of course, we call him mad, so no solution is possible except total destruction.
And those advocating a replacement of Putin (the man), via e.g. an internal coup, I would ask: with whom?
Why do you expect the replacement to be any more favourable to the West? Having just seen his predecessor deposed/killed by Western action (as it will be spun) he will make absolutely sure he is totally ready NEXT time.
Be careful what you wish for.
Because the presence of Russian troops from very early on totally reflects the popular will of the people of Donbas, right? 😀
If I thought a free and fair referendum was possible, no problem. After all, I would not oppose Scotland leaving UK if they actually voted for it, and I am British. However, if Russian troops popped up in Arbroath and Dundee, I might be a bit dubious about the quality of local polling.
@PdH:
But unlike many journaloids, I am not privy to the Kremlin’s secret plans
Of course you are. We all are. Just listen to Putin’s speeches…
So everything Putin says is true and can be believed without question?
Um, not sure there.
Example. Supposedly, he said today he intended to invade all of the Ukraine.
Well it might be true I suppose.
Or of course, he might have said it so as the Ukrainians must keep forces deployed in Western Ukraine just in case he does, thereby preventing those forces being moved into Eastern Ukraine.
Or for some other reason, not so obvious.
Who knows? Well I assume he does.
I am sure he says everything he does for a good reason. That’s ‘good’ as in ‘worthwhile to me’ not ‘good’ as in ‘good vs evil’. I see we have some lawyers in, so words get twisted, and strawmen get constructed and destroyed. I confess to biting at some bait above: lessons learned, the red-herring response then ignores the point. Seen it done in court, so should have known better. Oh well, all’s well in love and…mmmm perhaps not.
I certainly don’t believe everything Putin says at face value: everything is targetted towards a purpose. They invented maskirovka, not just the word! 🙂
The number of comments has made for an excellent discussion, although civility remains a challenge, myself included. But always good to hear different views, well expressed.
Not at all, but if you want to understand his thinking (and he has often said Ukraine is not a real country, it is a historical mistake and Ukrainians are not a separate people from Russians), it then requires pretzel logic to think he is not primarily motivated by incorporating Ukraine into Russia, rather than all the other excuses on offer.
Is there such a thing as an accurate and believable Russian poll?
It would be interesting to see Putin’s standing amongst Russians right now.
I’m told – anecdotally, not verifiably – that a majority of the people were behind him in theory, but that he’s losing support – not due to disagreement with his objectives, but with a “holy crap, this isn’t going well!” sort of buyer’s remorse.
I was trying to be polite with the word “nuance” but Paul Marks is right that a lot of what I’m referring to is not nuance at all but rather just the most basic, elementary analysis.
For example, many times in this and other threads dissenters have:
A) condemned the invasion of Ukraine and said it should have occurred
and also
B) sought to present ideas, evidence or arguments that may help explain why it is that Putin/Russia decided to invade Ukraine
The mainstreamers have typically responded in ways that either conflate the difference between or even pretend like there is never any difference at all between:
1. Seeking to understand and openly discuss why it is that Russia/Putin may have decided to invade Ukraine
2. Defending the decision by Putin/Russia to have invaded Ukraine as the right thing to do or a justifiable course of action
By conflating these ideas, the mainstreamers are able to justify refusing to entertain any evidence or argument that goes against The Narrative, and this also has the effect of demonizing the mere act of seeking to understand the motivations of Putin/Russia.
Mainstreamers and dissenters here all overwhelmingly condemn the invasion.
What differentiates the mainstreamers from the dissenters is that the dissenters are interested in understanding all the reasons why the decision to invade Ukraine was made by Putin/Russia, while the mainstreamers are not only not interested to such discussion but not open to such discussion and routinely equate any attempt to do so with a Bad Thing (“you are disseminating Russian Propaganda” or “why do you deny that Putin = Satan?” or “are you unaware that Ukraine is a sovereign nation?” or “Putin must be removed from power asap because he has gone mad” etc)
I’m sure many of you will deny this, but the fact is that achieving the goals of 1. preventing a wider hot war in the region 2. bringing a peaceful resolution to the conflict as quickly as possible for all parties involved and 3. lowering the chances of this happening again are helped by seeking to understand the motivations of Russia/Putin for the invasion.
As for my own preliminary policy preferences: if America and the West had a competent political and bureaucratic class (NOPE) then one of the following two courses should have been followed months if not years ago:
1. POTUS, NATO, Ukraine President, UK PM all announce together that: “Ukraine will not join NATO, Ukraine will not join EU, Donbas and Crimea belong to Russia”
or
2. POTUS, NATO, Ukraine President, UK PM all announce together that: “Ukraine is in NATO, Ukraine is in the EU, and NATO and the USA are in the process of building military bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia and stationing American and British troops, armaments, and military assets throughout Ukraine”
Okay maybe neither action should be QUITE so bold and explicit, but certainly one of the two general directions SHOULD HAVE BEEN CHOSEN AND IMPLEMENTED IN A TIMELY MANNER.
Instead the West conducted pussy footing middle path, which yes in my opinion did contribute to the set of circumstances that contributed to Putin/Russia making the decision to invade Ukraine. As usual, ambiguity and weakness breed distrust and conflict. Particularly when across the border is Vladimir Putin. Pussy footing middle path was always the worst option.
As for my opinion of what should be done at this moment, I am reluctantly in favor of USA, UK, Germany etc bringing as many weapons (NLAWS, Javelins, etc), supplies, and military assets into Ukraine as quickly as possible. Why?
1. Deterrence for the sake of Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Romania, and Moldova
2. Deterrence for the sake of South Korea and Taiwan
3. It is probably (on balance) good for the people of Ukraine for this to be done for the next 2 or 3 months.
How long is such a policy in the interests of the people of Ukraine? I’m not sure. My current guess is probably about 2 or 3 months, but that could change.
How long should such a policy be implemented by the West? I’m not sure. My current guess is probably about 18 months, but that could change – perhaps even dramatically in either direction. The main reasons to continue long-term are #1 and #2 above. There are also, however, significant costs and risks of doing so over the long-term.
And for the record, anyone who checks carefully will find absolutely no contradiction between any two comments (including this one) that I have made on the topic of Ukraine in any Samizdata thread.
I will also note for the record that as much as the discussion on these Samizdata threads has been less than satisying for me, the tone and content of the Fake News Media, censorship of Big Tech are all obviously much worse. It is borderline hysteria, exceptionally irresponsible rhetoric and a dangerous situation made worse by western elites and media.
There has been a frustrating level of “if you knew what I know! . . .” discourse here, and I don’t mean on any one person’s part. Problem is, most DON’T know what those others know.
It may simply be too soon, and too personal, to expect more. Not sure I could calmly explain history while I watched the State of Georgia murderously invade the State of Florida, especially when Florida is one of my chosen home bases.
PdH: “I have the advantage of actually knowing people who were deeply involved with the Maidan revolt.”
Yehven Karas another one who claims to have been deeply involved with the Maidan revolt.
Personally, I’d consider distancing myself from such a fellow, and his followers.
Tim the Coder,
I never even mentioned the Donbas republics… Also I fail to see an example of the SNP or the Catalan’s big mate laying siege to London or Madrid with heavy weapons. If Scotland or Catalonia achieve independence it won’t be via an additional party laying waste to their “overlords” with thermobarics, tanks and gunships. Your conflation of these causes there is just deranged.
“Not sure I could calmly explain history while I watched the State of Georgia murderously invade the State of Florida, especially when Florida is one of my chosen home bases.”
Yes. Lots of sentimental sloganeering here.
Two guys are engaged in brawling. One is obviously an aggressor and a villain. Does this alone prove that the other is an angel? And never contributed nothing to the brawl? Free from any blemish? A Mother Theresa?
I know both Georgia and Florida rather well. Georgia would get it’s arse handed to it on a plate.
Anyway… If I might get a bit “meta” here… Why are people shilling for Putin? He can’t be paying all of them. Are they simply contrarians because I can’t think of a major war in my lifetime started with less genuine cause*? Or do they admire Putin for his “strong man” antic? Or are they of the opinion “The West” (please define that) is a lost cause because of gender-neutral toilets or what? I am genuinely confused. As I see it a very bad man at the end of his tether has started a war over his own reasons that he has openly spoke and written about, copiously and that is that. Or is it simply that we have the usual suspects here attempting the infamous joke, “The Aristocrats“? And doing it badly. And in very poor taste (yeah, I know but there is “bad taste” and “bad taste) because quite frankly I don’t find rocket attacks on a European city the size of Manchester amusing.
*In ’82 the Argentinians did have a claim – a very tenous one – on the Falklands – and that (for what it was worth) was utterly nixxed by the clearly stated desires of the Falklanders themselves. In ’90 Iraq did have issues with Kuwait – OPEC quota violations, slant drilling, Kuwaiti arrogance**… but here there seems nothing but Putin’s ego. If those two invasions had extremely limited justification then how can anyone support Russia on this. Argentina and Iraq had at least some beef – slim as New York pastrami – certainly not enough to justify war – about enough for a strongly worded letter to the parish council but Putin hasn’t even that. He doesn’t have the level of justification to rant at nobody from a bar-stool let alone start a war that has already killed thousands.
**The Kuwaitis are known for that throughout the Arab World.
Jacob,
Mother Tereasa was no angel. She basically believed pain and suffering were Christ-like. Which is an easy theological position to adopt when you’re not the starving and in agony in a slum in Kolkata.
I have never claimed Ukraine was an ideal state. Nor has anyone else here. Hell’s teeth – show me an ideal state and I’d have my bags packed and a flight booked within the hour! Ukraine didn’t start this fight. They are the victims of a truly evil, vainglorious malignant narcissist who did this for his own twisted romantic dreams of a Greater Russian destiny. It is that simple. He is sacrificing his conscripts on the altar of mysticism and tyranny. You, Jacob, by saying Ukraine isn’t perfect are sacrificing the good on the altar of unachievable perfection. Jacob, that is a desperate and untenable position to take. It’s like saying someone is as bad as Fred West because they were caught doing 35 in a 30 zone. If that is what you are reduced to then you’ve lost this argument.
And another thing. “Brawling”. I don’t see it that way. President Zelensky doesn’t either. This is an existential battle for sovereignty and freedom.
Mr Putin has attacked the people of Ukraine – and threatened other lands. He is a dictator and is trying to snuff out non dictatorships.
Many things are complicated – but this situation is NOT one of them.
If people want to give the establishment exactly what the establishment wants (“look the right are apologists for Putin”) then I give up.
There is a clear cut situation – stop with the “buts” and “howevers”.
Nov. 10 [2021], when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Was that strictly necessary?
What did the US need a “strategic partnership” with Ukraine – for?
Wasn’t that an outright calculated provocation? (of no substance at all)? Is it considered normal practice to wave a red rag in front of a bull and then attack and stab the bull for being the aggressor?
Given that Russia has been salami slicing away Ukrainian territory for many years now, that would be a yes.
That is like saying “She was wearing a short skirt and had it coming”. Russia has been building up to this since 2004, with moves against Ukraine going into high gear in 2014 when the Ukrainians had the temerity to depose Putin’s pet oligarch (after he started poisoning & imprisoning opposition politicians and then killed more that 100 protestors)… yet somehow this was a provocation against… RUSSIA? Unbelievable.
It really is like criticising someone for resisting a rapist who had a long history of abuse.
Paul:
“Mr Putin has attacked the people of Ukraine – and threatened other lands. He is a dictator and is trying to snuff out non dictatorships.” Yes, he is a thug and a murderer too. We know. You (and others) keep saying this ad nauseum. As if somebody disputed that. As if this is the only point you see and discuss.
You never give a thought to the tremendous tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, egged on by extremist and intransigent Ukrainian Nationalists – and primitive and brutal Russian Nationalists too…
Really? And you did give it a thought? Well it seems so, as you clearly think that to avoid this tragedy, Ukrainians should have just accepted rule from Moscow and the end of Ukraine and the Ukrainian identity. Some people did make similar arguments before WWII, so I certainly get where you are coming from even though I disagree completely.
“Was that strictly necessary?”
I meant – from the part of the US. Why did it need a strategic partnership with Ukraine, forwarding a promise (of defense) it knew (the US knew) it could not keep. Isn’t that outright fraud? And the Ukrainians get it hard in the nose for believing the US idiots? (Of course, they are idiots too for relying on US promises).
“She was wearing a short skirt and had it coming”.
Well, if you live in a violent and un-policed neighborhood would it not be prudent to skip the short skirt?
You are waving with lofty principles and are blind to tragic and avoidable consequences.
1. Putin must be told in no uncertain terms that any incursion whatsoever into NATO space is a violation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and that all Hell and Damnation will follow.
2. If Sweden, Finland or Ukraine or whoever want to join NATO that is their business and ours and nothing to do with the bloated Dobby The House Elf of the Kremlin. Apart from anything else do peace-loving, law-abiding civilized states need buffer zones? No, they do not. That is what makes them agreeable neighbours. If Putin feels that need it is because he’s a rabid, paranoid bastard.
3. We should supply Ukraine with all means to defend itself. For the time being that is supplying NLAW, Javelin, Stinger etc. But Putin should be under no misapprehension we could escalate. This applies especially if he continues assaults on refugees.
4. Ultimately, Russia must decide if it wants to follow Putin’s insane fantasy or be welcomed into the fold of civilized nations. If it decides the former rather than the latter it will not go well for them. This must be made very clear. This is not just about Ukraine. This is about the currently fashionable idea (in certain quarters) that “The West” has lost it’s mojo to “wokeness” and that free societies are weak societies. Let’s bury that one under six feet of mud on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Yes, it is difficult but it needs doing.
I think that with a more rational attitude, a more realistic approach, some compromise might have been reached, with the Ukrainian Nationalists getting to live an acceptable life (like the Finns) and fight for more another day.
1. Putin must be told in no uncertain terms that any incursion whatsoever into NATO space is a violation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and that all Hell and Damnation will follow.
And he will promptly shit in his pants. What exactly will the GREAT NATO do? Nato is a well intended fiction. It does not exist.
See Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in a couple of weeks or months there won’t be any Ukraine left.
“getting to live an acceptable life (like the Finns)”
Of course, what I judge to be an “acceptable life” is different from what an Ukrainian thinks. I don’t have to accept the mad ravings of extreme Ukrainian Nationalists as gospel.
“She was wearing a short skirt and had it coming”.
Well, if you live in a violent and un-policed neighborhood would it not be prudent to skip the short skirt?
You are waving with lofty principles and are blind to tragic and unavoidable consequences.
And you, Jacob, are pissing from a great height on basic morality. I’ve been to Fantasy Fest on Key West. There were very foxy women wearing nothing but body paint. I didn’t rape anyone. That you don’t believe humans can control their most base urges doesn’t make you a moralist or even a pragmatist. At best it makes you a complete cynic or Ayatollah. At best. Anyway, it was a lot of fun – of course it was – dancing ’till dawn in a sub-tropical paradise wearing a Hawaiian shirt and with a Mojito in hand. I have some selfies with the ladies. Some of the body art was really cool. Key West is cool. It’s cooler than Miami South Beach and that is pretty cool. I also went reef diving, visited Hemmingway’s House and Harry Truman’s “Little White House”. Seriously recommended – although maybe not to prissy buggers like you 😉 You sound like you’d get wood at a glimpse of Norah Batty’s wrinkled stocking.
Perry:
I repeat: “Nov. 10 [2021], when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
How could that be interpreted as anything but a provocation, a red rag? A bluff, a false promise?
You are actually forced to conclude that the US wished to have Ukraine flattened and annihilated and it’s going to achieve that. It is idiotic on so many levels that I tire of typing them out.
It could have been made a private assurance (which would still be a lie) but a Public Charter???
Did the Congress authorize such a charter?? It’s outright criminal.
So, if I tell you that I do believe that the West has lost much of its mojo due to wokeness, am I somehow excusing Putin? Can there be two distinct conversations about these things? Can I simultaneously applaud a worldwide effort to rid us of this monster AND deplore the actions of my country that didn’t help to avoid what is now happening? I think I can.
Seems to me that this belief was hardly controversial here and in other libertarian places a few weeks ago.
(I also taught my daughter to not tempt fate around people who are possibly mentally ill or just bad, by not wearing very revealing clothing that serves to define “sex” as her reason for being. You’re getting too angry and dispensing with sense.)
(And, in service to pedantry: Russia cannot violate Article 5. It can only trigger it.)
Fantasy Fest on Key West… blah… blah… blah…. try that, say, in some neighborhoods of Detroit… or Paris…
“Can there be two distinct conversations about these things? “….
Good question. Maybe even three or four…
Jacob: you are delusional if you keep ranting about pieces of paper signed by the US in 2021, when Biden, literally from day one, has financed Russia’s military by raising the price of oil.
AND he increased European dependence on Russian oil and gas by removing sanctions on NordStream2 while vetoing EastMed.
And if we have to talk about pieces of paper, what about Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a piece of paper in which Russia, the US, and the UK guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity?
When that was proven worthless, why should we discuss more recent pieces of paper?
But i grant that you are not the only delusional person here.
You are acting as if “Putin is invading Ukraine because it wants to join NATO & would not be doing so if they did not want to join NATO”.
Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Putin has made it abundantly clear that he does not want Ukraine to exist as a nation or an identity. This is not a pragmatic statement of geopolitical realpolitik, it is a statement of nationalist philosophy. There is an entire school of Russocentric Ethno-Slavism built around such notions, eerily close to pre-WWII German Völkisch concepts of blood-and-soil, and Putin is very much playing to that audience. Many people in the west seem incapable of grasping that, thinking everything revolves around them.
Russia is not invading Ukraine because it wants to join NATO, Ukrainians wants to join NATO because Russia keeps invading them.
A puppet? By resisting an invader?
Seriously, to hell with you people, you really are morally bankrupt and not nearly as well informed as you think you are.
While a simplification (ignoring what i wrote about “Biden’s” energy policy, and assorted pieces of paper), this is not an over-simplification.
A similar statement could be made about former Soviet-bloc countries which joined NATO before it was too late.
But i disagree that this is primarily about moral bankruptcy. I submit that it is primarily about delusional insanity.
“Russians have very carefully avoded interrupting any power, no damage to communications, no damage to, any of the things that are essental like the water supply, -“
And that would be the shame Russians who shelled a nuclear power station. I hope Putin is paying you enough…
Fantasy Fest on Key West… blah… blah… blah…. try that, say, in some neighborhoods of Detroit… or Paris…
Oh behave! You weren’t there. I was. I’m glad an utter misery like you wasn’t. It would have put a dampened the fun – and I’d have to answer the question as to whether I’d drown your dismal ass in the Atlantic or the Carribean. Anyway, the fact there are dreadful no-go zones doesn’t take away from my central moral point. Anyone ought to be able to walk the streets with a reasonable expectation of safety and that is not down to attire. I also object to your “blah-ing”. I don’t think I laboured the point. You just don’t have a reasonable counter do you?
I don’t know Nick. I guess you are getting your information from the BBC.
Russian forces had already secured that power station. Why would they shell their own positions?
That is an original thought. If you tell me how much you think is enough, I’ll be able to give you an accurate reply.
Well, that may or may not be true.
I can honestly say, I’ve never had the inclination to fratanize with fascists, nor boast about it in a public forum.
I’m good with my position.
APL, I guess you are getting your information from the BBC.
I first saw it via the Daily Mail. I have also read it in The Guardian, Sky News and, yes the BBC and many other places. Are you saying this didn’t happen?
I have mooched around this site here for over 15 years. If Perry hangs with facists it’s news to me.
Anyway, who in the World of all that is decent equivocates over their own moral bankruptcy!? You are hoist on your own petard APL.
If the Donbas issue was really that critical and the sole reason, then Putin could have just sliced it off, called it a day, and everybody will bitch and moan but eventually accept it – which is why Trump initially called it genius.
That Putin didn’t stop there and went on an offensive towards Kyiv/Kiev/whatever meant that Donbas was just an excuse for him to try to swallow Ukraine whole.
Genius turns to stupidity rather quickly when overreach happens.
TWG,
Exactly!
TWG: your comment on overreach is a SQOTD!
“I repeat: “Nov. 10 [2021], when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
Ukraine wanted to join NATO because Russian threats? Of course, it goes without saying. This signed “Charter” is a worthless and meaningless piece of paper? Of course, everybody knows that. NATO is a powerless and feckless fiction (rather a lie)? That too is well known.
Would Putin have invaded Ukraine anyway, because he wants to annex it to the Russian Empire? Maybe. He wants, sure, but what he would have done under different circumstances is impossible to say.
So the question remains: why would the US sign this ridiculous shit of paper at this time? It is entirely insane and criminal for the US to do that.
And the bigger question is: what has the US lost in Ukraine?
No idea, don’t even care. Most of weapons arriving in Ukraine right now are militarily *significant* amounts of ATGWs from UK & (of all people) Sweden, and artillery ammunition from Poland & Slovakia.
Jacob,
Let’s not talk turkey here – not considering Erdogan anyhows. I have to disagree with the uselessness of NATO. It has largely kept the peace in Europe for decades. That is not just detering the Warsaw Pact but in uniting European nations with a long history of fighting each other. I utterly fail to see you r points on insanity and criminality. I simply don’t see a free, independent nation of it’s own free will wanting to join an alliance as essntially any different from you or me wanting to join a golf club. As to the powerlessness of NATO… NATO members are supplying Ukraine with weapons. For sure we’re avoiding a direct confrontation but try telling the “powerless” narrative to a Russian tank commander who lost his legs because his T-72 got hit with a Javelin missile.
We have to keep repeating the obvious here.
Mr Putin has attacked the people of Ukraine – not a little bit of the Ukraine, ALL of it.
Mr Putin needs to be opposed – by all practical means (including “Great Reset” financial system methods).
“Paul, does this mean that you are on the side of the Davos types now?”
No it does not – I hate them as much as ever, but we are where we are.
And, please remember, Mr Putin himself was a World Economic Forum person – although they are busy scrubbing his name from their website. Their young leaders program many years ago – and all of it.
Talk (by Jacob and others) of making a deal with Mr Putin is absurd – utterly absurd.
It is quite clear that Mr Putin has lost any grasp on reality – he must be removed from office.
@Paul Marks
“he must be removed from office”
I don’t disagree. But alas, neither of us is God Emperor of Planet Earth, so our opinions are of no more import than anyone else’s, including Mr Putin’s.
Rather less in fact, since unlike us, he has the ability to enforce his will on others.
So apart from hand wringing and muttering “Oh dear, oh dear”, how to act on such a ‘removal’ wish, without turning half the planet to radioactive glass?
Not a rational act for it to go that far, but a large number of people just call Putin mad, so why look for a rational response?
Even rational players find themselves trapped by circumstance.
And what replaces Mr Putin? Mr Nice-to-Westerners is hardly likely to do the job. Mr Even-more-nasty-thug might, and our gain is what, exactly?
It’s difficult to see what short-term response can be made, except to fight to the last Ukrainian. How nice.
Has anyone got a realistic suggestion that does not cause mass slaughter in the Ukraine or anywhere else?
The West lost this one many years ago, not least when it sold its soul for Russian gas and closed off its own energy sources to satisfy the ecoloon fraternity. Any response will be long term, and need, as a start, to become energy independent of Russia and manufacturing independent of China.
The Ukrainians I know (& I know quite a few) are pretty much up for that.
The moment this kicked off mass slaughter or surrender were the only two options on offer. Without Ukraine receiving a constant supply of ATGW & other gear from the west, that reduces to one option: surrender. I am gratified (& somewhat surprised) at the range of nations now providing meaningful quantities of high quality munitions (even Sweden ffs). Ukraine’s survival as a nation and openly expressible identity will stand or fall on the west keeping those supplies flowing, and for once I am very happy to see my tax money going up in smoke. The last time I felt this unfamiliar feeling was when I watched with binoculars as USN and RAF aircraft struck Serbian artillery positions around Sarajevo.
This will eventually end in some kind of negotiated deal that will make no one entirely happy. But Russia’s attack needs to be brought to a standstill and attritted to the point they realise that Ukrainian surrender is simply beyond their power to achieve. This will get much much worse, and the human cost will be truly appalling, before we get there.
I kind of agree on that.
Tim the Coder,
I am sorely tempted to call you a wanker but that would be giving you false credit. I can’t even see you shooting your dismal Putinesque-load of dismality if you were in a Russian monkey whore-house and had a truck-load of soft-fruit.
I think I have been offensive enough already for a Wednesday evening (try me on a Saurday). What I haven’t done is bomb a maternity hospital. I do not think the English Language has a word for that level of sheer evil.
And that is evil that needs to be resisted with force. This is both a political and a moral imperative. This is good against evil and good needs to win.
Right here, right now, day fights with night.
There are many people like Tim the Coder who believe their “nuance” makes them smart. I suspect that is what seduced them into a middle path between good and evil. They feel so much more clever. I think they get a nice warm feeling of superiority – sort of like a warm Marmite enema. They can fuck off.
Why do you think Tim tags himself as “the Coder”? He’s saying he can do IT projects so he’s smarter than us plebs. Well, NickM here has just got a big web design job. Yeah, Tim, you cunt, I’ve been programming and stuff since I had a 48K Spectrum in the ’80s.
Right now, the absolute best path involves Putin’s sudden death in circumstances that allow Russia to halt everything and bring its military back home with a “what the hell was he thinking” sort of facesavings.
(ETA: The best option would involve his death by Russian hands.)
The resultant recriminations and arguing would be epic, but those are safer things than bombs.
Tim the Codor.
I know how some people in the West manipulated Mr Putin and what their (utterly vile) agenda is – but the fact remains Mr Putin MADE A CHOICE, he did NOT have to attack the Ukrainian people, he CHOOSE to do that.
The Rubicon is crossed – there is no nuance now, and no deals to be made (at least not so far as I can see).
bobby b – the best option is for a Russian, indeed one of the inner circle, to kill Mr Putin.
“You sound like Senator Graham” – even a Neocon is correct sometimes.
“How is that to our advantage?”
It is to the advantage of the people of Ukraine – as a new ruler in Russia could blame the war on Mr Putin and pull out.
Paul, bobby b,
You are right in principle. There is of course the prospect of getting someone who is worse or as bad but more competent.
Well NickM seems to be one of those willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. Easy, if someone else is doing it. Not travelling to Poland to volunteer then?
Got any constructive ideas NickM? Or just cheering on your team, like it’s football.
And you have totally failed to understand my tag. No surprise there. Subtlety completely lost on you, so much easier to get on your mouth. Unload a stream of invective and all the troubles of the world are sorted. Not. I shan’t bother trying to explain it, but it has nothing to do with IT.
If you have to resort to name calling, you have already lost any argument. Try thinking about what exit options from this mess exist, and what the West could do to end it. Without starting WW3, by US planes shooting down Russian planes. I know, let’s steal the assets of some private citizens! We will start with Russians, but once the precedent is there, who else can we go for?
I agree with Paul Marks that Putin chose this path, and the world is a far worse place for it. Agree that a Putin replacement might allow a climbdown, but the anti-West feeling will remain and fester. And booby b is right: this has to be by Russian hands, and visibly so. Any hint of Western hands on the dagger…
And while Putin is not aligned with any sensible morality, he is far from demonstrating incompetence. Unfortunately.
Oh, and I haven’t used the word ‘nuance’ at all in my comments, so perhaps NickM has mixed me up with other commenters. Care required. But if screaming at the world in general, perhaps not.
So do try and keep it civil dear boy, it’s incivility that is behind the bother out East.
They only want foreigners with medical or some military experience, so unless NickM has some, they’d prefer he doesn’t show up on their border as they want folk they can send into combat with as little delay as possible. Oh and under 60 years old.
Worse than Putin?
I’d take that chance.
(Plus, the next guy will have had the benefit of noticing that he’s replacing a dead guy. Has to be some educational value there.)