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Samizdata quote of the day – MAGA movement is wrong on Ukraine Wittingly or otherwise, the MAGA online right started to absorb Russia’s narrative on Ukraine: that it isn’t a real country, that the Ukrainians aren’t a real people, that if they are a real people then they are uniquely corrupt. On and on it went: that Ukrainian soldiers are ‘literal’ Nazis, that Zelensky is constantly buying villas and yachts in the south of France, that the whole war is one big money-laundering operation, that Ukraine’s war to push the Russians back is unwinnable because of the great might of the Russian army – and that the whole thing is a giant waste of US taxpayers’ money.
– Douglas Murray (£)
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He’s not wrong. But, as with so many things, there are elements of right-ness in what some parts of the US right are saying and thinking.
The war probably is unwinnable for the Ukraine, at least in the present situation. If for no other reason than, as Mark Steyn so trenchantly observes, they may not run out of guns or tanks or shells or mortars or helicopters, but what they are rapidly running out of is Ukrainians.
Ukraine is not “uniquely corrupt”, but only a naif would deny that the last couple of decades have been marked by corruption on a grand scale. The specific burr under the saddle of the US right is the obvious, open involvement of the Biden family in what can only be described as some very dodgy dealings, which of course forms and feeds the suspicion that the US involvement in Ukraine was motivated in part at least by their corrupt motivations.
Ukrainians en-masse are not ‘literal’ Nazis, but there’s no denying their legacy of anti-semitism. Dying away, perhaps, but not yet gone.
The US right is not (yet) broadly saying that the support for Ukraine is “a giant waste of US taxpayers’ money”, but they are asking some very hard and unwelcome questions about where a lot of that money went. I think most Americans, including those on the right, generally favour Ukraine and support the Ukrainians in their struggle, but they also question why the US is providing so much support for what is basically a European issue, when so many European nations that are so-much-more directly affected are providing so little.
What Douglas Murray does not touch on is a strong perception in the US – not just on the right – that many European nations are soft-pedalling on Russia because they continue to be more-or-less dependent on Russian energy. They also do not care at all to hear loud and aggressive expressions of support for Ukraine uttered by leaders of nations whose navies have more admirals than warships and more horses than tanks, promising unbounded military support which they do not possess but which they expect the US to provide.
Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m surprised at Douglas Murray for making such sweeping generalizations. Maybe he was taken out of context or the quote is incomplete. He’s not one for the short, pithy answer, his comments are usually more extensive.
llater,
llamas
Yes we are. And thank god for that.
What Douglas Murray calls the Russian narrative are mostly just facts that he in some cases exaggerates a bit in order to strawman.
The only thing preventing wholesale cutting off of Ukraine from all American support is 1. the Democrats (no explanation is needed here) and 2. the tentacles of the Deep State and Military Industrial Complex Lobbyists are still embedded in many Republican politicians who therefore refuse to listen to the overwhelming will of their voters. Fortunately and hopefully, thanks to Trump, the populists are gradually winning the day.
I hear the EU still spends more on Russian Oil & Gas than they have spent on all the aid given to Ukraine. Not sure how true that is.
It saves me a lot of time gone able to simply type “what llamas said.”
You do know Zelensky is Jewish, yeah? And you do know many places have a “legacy of anti-semitism”, including USA, right?
@David Levi – yes, I know Zelensky is from a Jewish family. What’s your point?
Yes, I know that many places have a legacy of anti-semitism, not just Ukraine. Again – what’s your point?
@ bobby b – too kind, too kind.
What speaks to Americans when it comes to Ukraine corruption are stories like the report today that President Biden’s son Hunter is crying the blues to a Federal judge that he is indigent and has massive debts – a mere two months after his father left office. The ‘smartest man (Joe Biden) knows’, the man who was worth every penny of the $1 million a year that a Ukrainian energy company paid him, the world-class artist getting $500K apiece for his paintings – all of a sudden, his senile dotard of a father is out of office and, mercy me, he’s broke. There could hardly be a clearer indication that he was nothing more than his father’s crackhead bagman, and yet he was up to his nostrils in Ukrainian business deals? It would require a Gell-Mann level of amnesiac dissidence not to see the possibilities of epic corruption.
llater
llamas
On the subject of the Nazis in Ukraine, this is really not controversial at all. Even the mainstream media used to actually report on this honestly until the invasion started and the firmware update Ukraine = good, Russia = bad was programmed:
https://www.reuters.com/article/opinion/commentary-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem-idUSKBN1GV2TC/
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
And there are MANY other articles if anyone cares to take a quick look
I do support Trump’s approach to this – but please, not the Jews and the Nazis again. There were plenty of Nazi sympathizers and collaborators throughout Europe – my guess is the larger was the Jewish population of a country, the more of those. Plenty of antisemites in Russia as well. What does any of it have anything to do with the current mess?
As to Murray, he could well have been taken out of context, or he could be wrong about this particular issue. Or I could be wrong. Nobody is perfect etc.
He can answer for himself but I imagine his point is you bring that up is utterly irrelevant.
David, exactly. Given Zelensky’s own family history the smears are crazy. But there you are.
I’m impressed that Murray wrote this. Quite a few conservative commentators have criticised the Trump administration on this issue.
Much relief on my part that Douglas Murray chimed in here.
I’ve been dumping a number of “conservative” blogs* that can’t quite accept that the US president seems to have suddenly lost his marbles (“Gulf of America”? Greenland? Canada the 51st state? Really?) and I was waiting to see where Murray might position himself.
It now looks like the American political pendulum knows no moderation: it’s either woke Democrat “progressive” moonbats or MAGA Republican wingnuts. The only thing they have appear to have in common is an attraction to senile and debilitated Oval Office occupants!
So many Kremlin-bots on Samizdata these days!
* Mark Steyn’s joking about the number of ys at the end of the Ukrainian president’s name was particularly childish and so, after following him for over 20 years, he’s toast.
“You do know Zelensky is Jewish, yeah?”
David, you’re wasting your time. But then, you probably already knew that.
Anyone still talking about Ukrainian Nazis is a Kremlin-bot. Or might as well be one.
@JJM 6.21pm
I have been reading Instapundit almost daily for 10 years or so.
Obama’s dismissal of Mitt Romney’s concerns about Russia was repeatedly held against him.
The link, from 2023, is typical of how Instapundit was covering the Ukraine war until the last couple of months.
https://instapundit.com/565619/
But in the last few weeks it has gone full Zelensky delenda est.
It is fair to dispute the scale of the Nazi problem in Ukraine or to say that MAGA people are exaggerating how widespread the ideology is in Ukraine. Fair. I don’t know and it is very difficult to for me to assess with a high degree of confidence just how widespread it is.
But to claim that there is no such problem in Ukraine (pure gaslighting) or that there can be no such problem in Ukraine because Zelensky is Jewish (as if there have never been Jews who collaborated with the Nazis?) or that anyone says that there is such a problem in Ukraine is a Kremlin-bot. These are not valid arguments or serious things to say. The matter is all over wikipedia for christ’s sake with loads of evidence and documentation. Look up Azov Brigade as just one of many examples. This is not some bizarre conspiracy theory, it is way out in the open, with articles in outlets like Reuters and Associated Press. Are Reuters and AP also bots of the Kremlin?
The comparison to anti-semitism in USA or other countries is totally ridiculous. If the American 101st Airborne publicly celebrated its links to Golden Dawn and the National Democratic Party of Germany then the 101st Airborne would be disbanded. Azov was never disbanded at all.
Anyway, the extent of Nazism in Ukraine is not really a major reason why I think USA should not support Ukraine, it’s almost irrelevant for me quite frankly. Some of the other items cited by Douglas Murray in his quote in the original post are more important reasons for me.
One thing I have noticed is that most (though not all) supporters of Ukraine are not very interested in a genuine or open discussion of the evidence on a range of issues. Instead, the ad hominems and strawmen figure quite prominently, which stifles some would-be attempts at constructive dialogue.
The “MAGA right” is split, with the pro-Ukraine folk mostly keeping their heads down, while the Ukraine-bashers make a lot of noise.
The Ukraine-bashers see their enemies on the Left supporting Ukraine, which is a reason to suspect that support for Ukraine is a bad idea, they saw the Biden Administration botch that support, they don’t like the bad news of a need for some big increases in military spending to replace old equipment and supplies, even if the old stuff isn’t sent to Ukraine, and frankly they’ve often been taken in by Russian propaganda.
(Me? “Don’t trust Putin. Putin is asshole.” And yes, Ukraine is corrupt – but they’ve been pushing to become less corrupt in a way Russia hasn’t been.)
Eric S. Raymond had a longer, slightly different analysis back in December 2024
https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1866258943342785008
DL, j think that’s a good analysis. Very perceptive.
A big reason I think why some on the Trump sufe are suspicious of Ukraine is hatred of any “conventional” wisdom. Support for Ukraine is seen as “establishment “, so it arouses MAGA doubts.
We see this with people like Tucker Carlson.
This approach may even explain the rationalisation of tariffs: free trade is conventional wisdom, so it must be
There’s a reflex here: It comes from years of being lied to. and there have been so many lies. Look at how the MSM covered for a senile president for four years and sought to spin for his odious son.
Trust has eroded badly. In politics, nature abhors a vacuum.
VDH:
Donald Trump is not wildly slapping tariffs on Europeans…. He is simply saying that 1945 is now 80 years past and that the asymmetrical tariffs that Europe imposes on U.S. imports should be corrected. The massive trade surpluses Europe accumulates each year should give way to fairer, more balanced trade…. If Europe does not want tariffs, then simply calibrate its own tariffs on what America places on European imported goods, and work down jointly to zero tariffs on both sides.
https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/06/five-ukrainian-fables/
VDH:
Europe rushed to congratulate and celebrate with Zelensky after his preplanned White House blow-up. They are loudly announcing that a supposedly isolationist and appeasing U.S.—which has sent more aid to Ukraine than all nearby European nations combined—will now be supplanted by a “new” muscular and rearmed Europe….But on every recent international moral question—ganging up on a lone Israel to appease terrorist forces in the Middle East, standing up to China’s mercantilism, neo-imperialism, and domestic oppression of minorities, or Russia’s prior 2008 and 2014 invasions—European outrage has been muted, real consequences nonexistent….We are now witnessing European heads of state sending the same old, same old virtue signaling support for the brave Zelenskyy, who supposedly spoke truth to power to the mean U.S. Orange Man….
The war is unwinnable by the Ukrainians.
Full stop.
They cannot defeat or stop the Russians, no matter how many drones, tanks or missiles the west gives them.
Their fertility rate in 2024 was .90 (yes, less than 1.) Ukraine is a broken country, never to recover to what it was pre-2014.
Any prolonging of this war, for any reason, will only result in more Russian and Ukrainian deaths, for no reason.
Philip:
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to provide a link that i wanted to put in another thread, but did not have the time.
Basically, the claim is correct; but i note that it is a blueberries-to-coconuts comparison.
— On the it’s-not-as-bad-as-it-looks side: EUrope spends more on Russian fossil fuels than on Ukraine aid, but Ukraine does not incur costs, while Russia incurs costs in extracting and shipping fossil fuels. A better comparison would be between Russian profits and aid to Ukraine.
Also, i am not sure that the cost to EUrope of hosting Ukrainian refugees is factored in.
I also note in passing that at least EUrope gets something for the money it sends to Russia; namely, fossil fuels. The “Biden” admin, by contrast, effectively sent a lot of money to Russia (by raising energy prices, allowing the Nordstream 2 pipeline, vetoing the Keystone and Eastmed pipelines, and blocking LNG exports) and the US did not get anything in exchange; rather, it incurred serious costs.
— On the it’s-worse-than-it-looks side: EUrope has been buying fossil fuels from Russia for a long time. Trump warned against it, and he was sneered at; and when Scholz finally did, or tried to do, what Trump told the Germans to do, Scholz did not have the decency of admitting that he was wrong and Trump was right.
The sacrifice in lives, that the Ukrainian people are making, to avoid a possible second holodomor, is in stark contrast to the monetary concerns of people of other nations.
Shlomo is not technically a “kremlin-bot” but he might as well be. Are Ukrainian ultra-nationalists “Nazi” due to their unfortunate iconography of choice? I dunno, I’d have to ask one of Azov’s many Jewish members who don’t seem to care. But what’s more to the point, and why I regard Shlomo as a de facto even if not de jure Putin partisan rather than a reasoned analyst is *weeks* after the Russian invasion in 2022, Shlomo was casting doubt as to whether or not the Russians really were invading Ukraine 😀 So yes, he has some fixation with Russia not being the unambiguous bad guy in this nasty drama.
For any reason? As the dismal Musk often says: interesting.
If a critical mass of Ukrainians are no longer willing to fight, then I would agree the Ukrainian government needs to surrender (& surrender is what you are calling for) & that is indeed what will happen. If that is not the case, and it isn’t, then I am entirely happy to see my taxes expedite as many Russian deaths in Ukraine as possible. I would rather see Russia bled white as far eastward as possible now rather than when they push into Central Europe and again border with Romania.
Murray really did nail the wingnut right’s current psychological state perfectly in that excellent article.
Sigh. I don’t remember “casting doubt as to whether or not the Russians really were invading Ukraine” but feel free to provide a link so I can see what you are referring to. Maybe I will retract what I said or admit that I was wrong.
As for the “iconography of choice” – this is the least of the evidence.
Have you ever read what the Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago John Mearsheimer says about this war and what led up to it?
Or have you listened to some of the many excellent speeches delivered by the Professor at Columbia University Jeffrey Sachs on the subject of what caused the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
I think dialogue with people who disagree with you is a better path than smearing, but if Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer are Kremlin Bots then I am as well – and it is a badge I will wear proudly.
Shlomo:
Don’t know whether Sachs and/or Mearsheimer are Kremlin bots, but it made me giggle seeing them mentioned as authorities in foreign policy.
“There’s a reflex here: It comes from years of being lied to. and there have been so many lies. ”
Yup, I would believe the political class or the MSM if they said the sky was blue and bears sh*t in the woods. Proven liars can get no credit for ‘but we’re right this time!’ (if indeed they are right). If Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Keir Starmer, Boris Johnson, that Von der whatsit woman, multiple German chancellors and Macroleon all agree on something, chances are its something thats designed to f*ck me and the rest of the public of the West over royally. As thats what everything else they say is designed to do.
Then wear that “badge of honour” old chap, for those two clowns are to geopolitics what Erich von Däniken is to archology.
Well Jim, if Joe Biden denied the moon was made of cheese, I would not assume it was not matter how much I dislike & distrust Joe Biden.
This is yet another reason I loath the MSM: decades of lies have not just misled billions of people, they have driven many who know they have been lied to non-figuratively insane in the other direction.
Well, I was gone all day, and I came back and read this thread, and all I can say is –
Beam me up, Scotty – there’s no intelligent life down here.
llater,
llamas
I’m left with one question here.
I keep seeing reference to “MAGA Republicans.” I’m not sure who this means.
Does it exclude only the rabid never-Trumpers – the David Frums and Jonah Goldbergs – or are there Trump-supporters who merit exclusion? Am I now a “Magat”? (And, of course, a Putin-bot?)
If this is merely the new tag for people who support Trump, it’s pretty meaningless, as it would seem to include the bulk of America.
(Which would fit as of a piece with the current genius marketing efforts aimed at Trump, I suppose.)
You are more than welcome to send your money and ass to Ukraine to continue the fight and kill more Russians and Ukrainians. You do not have the right to take tax money from me at the point of a gun for it.
Biden was frequently contradictory on Ukraine and spoke from both sides of his mouth.
Provided military aid through Presidential drawdowns but slow-walked it at critical points where it could have been leveraged to the most impact. Biden would state Ukraine was important while providing no explanation or reason as to why, while his previous behavior providing a more compelling counterfactual. Not just the slow-walking of aid but his behavior prior to Russia’s invasion as well. Republican politicians didn’t help as they also did not provide a compelling message in favor of Ukraine, in fact their behavior (however justified due to the comingling of Ukraine aid with border & illegal alien normalization) only reinforced a narrative of Ukraine not being important but little more than a partisan political football to be tossed around.
Add an aura of corruption and graft that it spread to everything he touched by association and you have a recipe for Trump’s core base to distrust anything and everything to do with Ukraine. I don’t think they persuaded against Ukraine by Russian propaganda, that had already happened. What it did provide was convenient rationalizations to hang the uncomfortable feeling they already had on.
Anyone who’s spent time in Ukraine over the years knows Ukraine has a terrible history problem, not a large scale “Nazi” problem. There’s a close to 100% corelation between a disingenuous sniffer of Putin propaganda & people overly fixated on the importance of Azov 😀
The unpleasant reality is that to the USA, the Ukraine is in a regional war involving an aggressive but fading power, Russia, attacking a hapless minor power which despite enormous support has not been able to repel the invader. The problem could easily be cast as a matter for the bloated welfare states of Europe to worry about, and it will distract them from their sneering at the USA for a while. It is difficult to take Europe seriously when they spend derisory sums on their defence budgets, and have done for over a decade since 2014, the first Russian invasion of the Ukraine, and mostly don’t protect their own borders from civil invasion.
The USA has to think about Red China and Taiwan, Israel and Iran, the Middle East generally, its northern and southern borders and its chronic illegal immigration and drug problems, as well as what is going on in Central and Southern America, where only El Salvador, Uruguay and Argentina look as if they are beacons of light.
So how can MAGA people be ‘wrong’ if their view is something along the lines of ‘I don’t really care, Margaret‘?
Bobby:
For me, it means people who THINK that they approve of Trump’s strategy. That includes me; except that i am not sure that what i think, corresponds to the actual strategy. I only know that what i think is not what some other MAGAs think. I do not think that Trump intends to wash his hands of the whole Ukraine affair: he wants (reasonably) “Europe” to take up most of the burden, which is not the same thing.
I also suspect that Trump is planning a bait+switch strategy with Putin. Hopefully, Putin won’t read this comment.
I think most people understand that Ukraine is a country and Ukrainians are a nation.
Before the First World War independence for Ukraine was probably a minority position among Ukrainians (and if one asked someone on the street in, say, Odessa “what country is this?” – they would have answered “Russia” – after all such cities as Odessa did not exist before Russian rule, they did not exist when the Ottoman Turks ruled the area) – and internationally support for Ukrainian independence was largely a matter of Imperial German and Hapsburg intelligence operations, HOWEVER decades of slaughter under the Soviet Marxists changed that position. It is true that other groups of people were also slaughtered by the Soviet Marxists (they were equal opportunity slaughterers – by the tens of millions), but rule from Moscow became totally unacceptable to most Ukrainians due to the Soviet experience.
And Mr Putin has not rejected the Soviet experience – true he is not a Marxist, but he has not really fully condemned “Lenin”, “Stalin” and the rest of the butchers – the statements of Mr Putin are all “on the one hand they did bad things – but on the other hand they did good things….” which really is like a German politician saying “that National Socialist Adolf Hitler – he did some bad things, but one must remember he had his good side….” it is utterly unacceptable.
As for the borders of Ukraine – Mr Putin himself used to accept that even Crimea (overwhelmingly Russian speaking) should be part of Ukraine as it had been since the 1950s – it was only in 2014 that he changed his position after a pro Russian government was removed in Kiev.
The practical difficulty of Mr Putin taking Crimea in 2014 is that it commits him to having land access to Crimea – which means conflict in the eastern provinces of Ukraine, Mr Putin did not think that would be a problem as they are largely Russian speaking as well – but it turned out to be a very big problem.
Whether Mr Putin could have taken Kiev in 2014 is a moot point now – as he did not think he had to and so did not try, when he did try in 2022 (and this operation has gone down the Memory Hole – Kremlin propaganda denies the operation even happened – BUT IT DID) Mr Putin utterly failed – as the Ukrainian military of 2022 was very much stronger than it had been in 2014 (largely due to Donald J. Trump – a lot of people seem to forget the military help he gave to Ukraine for years).
We will have to see what negotiations in Saudi Arabia produce (in terms of borders and so on) – but clearly the independence of Ukraine is a “Red Line” – going back to the pre 1991 position of the Ukraine being ruled from Moscow is not acceptable.
Ukraine must be an independent country – not under the control of Moscow, Brussels or any other foreign power.
Should the United States offer a military guarantee to an agreement between Moscow and Kiev? I would say YES – the United States should do that.
Otherwise Mr Putin may, at a later date, break an agreement he has made.
One thing I have noticed is that most (though not all) supporters of Ukraine are not very interested in a genuine or open discussion of the evidence on a range of issues.
Definitely.
They are especially deluded about the (non-existent) possibility of Ukraine recapturing it’s lost territories (especially the Crimea).
Or the importance for the US of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The importance is the containment of Imperial Russia as far east as possible, the territorial integrity of Ukraine is only a consequence of that geopolitical interest.
The situation between Russia and Ukraine is sometimes compared to the situation between England and Wales or Scotland.
There are two problems with such an analysis – first the majority of people in Wales do not support independence for Wales, and the majority of Scots in the referendum also did NOT support independence for Scotland. By 1991 (whatever may have been true back in say 1914) the majority of Ukrainians did support independence from Moscow – partly due to the savage experience of Soviet Marxist rule over many decades (it is sometimes forgotten that there was armed resistance in the Ukraine not just after 1917 – but into the 1950s, right up to the 1960s).
The other problem with the analysis is that the government in London after 1917 did not slaughter vast numbers of Welsh and Scottish civilians – the Soviet Marxist government did slaughter vast numbers of Ukrainian civilians and (see my previous comment) the fact that it also slaughtered vast numbers of Russian and other civilians, does not undermine this point.
“Yes I murdered your family – but I also murdered these other families” is not an argument.
Remember this Marxist regime is what Mr Putin served for many years – and he (again see above) has never fully repudiated it.
I believe that Russian-Ukrainian relations will only really improve when the generation that served the Marxist Soviet Union (not just Mr Putin – that whole generation) have passed away.
Actually, there is at least one more problem.
Scotland and Wales do not have land borders with other independent countries, while Ukraine does.
Good for the Ukrainians, but a problem, real or perceived, for people on either side of the Ukraine.
Lastly on the argument that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is like the American Civil War – with General Sherman (and others), burning southern towns and cities, and hundreds of thousands of people being killed (on both sides – the American Civil War killed more people than all other American wars put together – and out of a population that was a tiny fraction of what the American population is today) in order to save-the-Union.
This analysis leaves out the massive matter of SLAVERY.
Contrary to the arguments of Rothbardians (followers of the late Murray Rothbard) the Civil War was not about Free Trade (yes the Confederates were Free Traders and their Republican enemies were pro Tariffs – but this was a SIDE ISSUE) – if one reads the statements of Confederate leaders in 1861 (not their self justifications years after the war was lost) it is clear that the war was about protecting SLAVERY.
If the government of Washington D.C. had said “of course you may secede, after all some Southern States, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia existed before there was any such place as the United States of America – such States as Florida and Louisiana were under foreign rule and Texas used to be an independent Republic – BUT you must first allow your slaves to leave” no Confederate leader in 1861 would have been interested in such an agreement. Indeed no State could even join the Confederacy if it was not pro SLAVERY – see the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
President Zelensky is NOT Jefferson Davis (although Ukrainian soldiers have put up a fight worthy of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson), and Mr Putin is certainly NOT President Lincoln.
Before anyone points it out – I know that Robert E. Lee never personally owned slaves (although his wife did – in trust from her father with a date set for their freedom) and that “Stonewall” Jackson risked being sent to prison (or worse) by teaching slaves to read and write (illegal where he lived) – but that does not alter the fact that secession in 1861 was about protecting SLAVERY.
The really important matter is the containment of the People’s Republic of China – a vastly stronger economy than Russia, and manufacturing strength (China now has twice the manufacturing power of the United States – half a century of terrible American policy, starting with President Nixon, have led to this disaster) can be turned into military power – as the PRC is doing.
Mr Putin’s alliance with China is quite mad, as mad as plans to break up Russia (people who push maps showing Russia broken up are asking for thermonuclear war on a world wide scale) – as the People’s Republic of China clearly has designs on taking over at least those parts of Russia that are in Asia, and the various “Stans” would not maintain their independence either – they would also fall to China.
Mr Putin fails to see (or does not care) that his “friend” the People’s Republic of China is not a friend at all.
I fear that it will take a new generation of Russian leaders to understand that it is the People’s Republic of China, not the United States of America, that is the threat to Russia.
The People’s Republic of China – and Mr Putin’s other “friend”, Islam.
As the late Mr Navalny (most likely murdered in Mr Putin’s prison camp) pointed out – Mr Putin (who made his name having Muslims ruthlessly killed – in Chechnya) has done a 180 degree turn and made an alliance with forces that have been the enemies of the Russian people for a thousand years.
This alliance is as insane as his alliance with the PRC.
These forces are no friends of the Russian people (quite the contrary) – Mr Putin is either too blind to see that, or he cares only for himself and does not give a fig about the Russian people.
I love reading Paul’s posts. You learn a whole load of stuff that has no relation whatsoever to the subject at hand, and you’re never quite sure whether they’re based on fact or flat-out conjecture.
Like, I could write a whole series of posts, one after the other, about soup, and somehow tie it back to the Russia-Ukraine situation and it would make as much sense.
“As for Stefano Minestrone (1712 – 1798) and his correspondent, Dave Gazpacho (1739 – 1812), they were looking back into the middle ages of Eastern Europe, before DEI and Cultural Marxism took dumplings away from us. This is what the West lost”
To be fair, he never said he would do that.
What I find more distressing is the bloodthirstiness. I said before, the Russian soldiers probably don’t like being at war either, but they’ve don’t have much choice. The fat bureaucrats and politicians sitting safely behind the lines are the ones who should pay.
How Putin is exerting control over these possibly mutinous troops is an interesting question. After all, there already was an attempted coup by the Wagner mercs, IIRC.
Not a mystery at all. Firstly, Kadyrov, a Chechen who switched side during the Russo-Chechen War, act somewhat like Putin’s Praetorian Guard, a very symbiotic relationship as neither can survive without the other.
Secondly, disproportionately few of the people being fed into the Ukrainian meatgrinder are from either St. Petersburg or Moscow, they tend to be Buryats, Chechens, Tartars, Avars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, etc. etc. drawn from well away from the metropole.
So they’re fighting for what? I can’t really imagine folks from these places having much loyalty to ‘Russia’, unless Putin has promised them something.
Are there also political commissars attached to each unit to ensure they fight?
“Secondly, disproportionately few of the people being fed into the Ukrainian meatgrinder are from either St. Petersburg or Moscow, they tend to be Buryats, Chechens, Tartars, Avars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, etc. etc. drawn from well away from the metropole.”
Or even further i.e., North Korea. Another reminder how broken the Russians are.
As a two time voter from Trump who still largely support him, Douglas is right as he almost always is.
LOL It’s warpig central up in here.
LMAO
“LOL It’s warpig central up in here.”
It’s the pro-Russians who are the “warpigs”… you know, the people who want the side who invaded Ukraine to come out on to due to their Reverse Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is exactly what Douglas is describing.
Exactly correct. Kadyrov’s charmers are the best known ‘motivational’ troops providing that ‘service’ but they are by no means the only ones.
As I often find to be a useful recommendation, we can always embrace the healing power of “and”.
It’s possible to believe both that the Ukrainian government and halls-of-informal-power subculture have become problematically corrupt, that much financial exploitation of the nation’s supporters has happened and is still happening, and that their cooperation in enabling the previous administration’s corruption means they should not be unquestioningly trusted by this one — *and* that they are still the preferable moral alternative to condoning a tyrannical invasion of force, and thus entitled to at least some protection by allies with an interest in not seeing Russia strengthened by controlling it.
It’s possible to believe both that Russian propaganda says nothing which is not intended to manipulate listeners into Russia-benefiting decisions at the rest of the world’s expense, *and* that some of said propaganda’s claims may nonetheless be objectively true. Likewise, it’s possible to believe both that the Russian military and economy are not as strong as they present themselves, *and* that they are too strong for Ukraine alone to defeat without committing allies to a level of military involvement the American people have not been persuaded is necessary or desirable.
It’s possible to believe both that invasion by force is a morally unacceptable way to gain political goals, *and* that in the absence of any way to gain military victory against such an invader at an acceptable cost, a peace that reduces deaths — even if it be of questionable robustness or involves painful territorial losses — may still be desirable.
It’s possible to believe both that Putin, Xi, and the leaders of the ummah are all well aware that they must ultimately clash, *and* that they all, for the moment, see value in a temporary truce against a common greater foe; like the orcs of Mordor, that they hate and plot to kill one another does not mean they will not immediately turn on the West when they can.
The defensible part of realpolitik is the recognition that when it’s impossible to accomplish a perfect solution, there can still be value in doing what good one can. The great temptation of realpolitik is to assume that because the impossible perfect is the enemy of the practical good, one can stop bothering to look for it, which inevitably leads the “practical good” to start declining farther and farther into the “conveniently easy” or “personally profitable”.
Paul, I agree in the main with your 11:09, except the second last paragraph.
I want France, Germany, Poland, and the UK (at least) to be the official guarantors of any such agreement with the Russians.
And I think the vast majority of Republican voters in the US would agree with me.
Yes Stephen, it is possible to believe two things like that. It is also possible to be entirely wrong about some of those things.
FtF,
I think that the vast majority of conservatives would agree to the idea that official guarantors be anybody but the United States.
We’ve got a huge mess from the “Biden” regime to clean up.
Trillions of dollars of financial mismanagement, fraud, and outright theft, many millions of unvetted or unknown illegal aliens, foreign policy decided by Democratic Party hacks, a massive increase in China’s military strength; they all have to be addressed soon. Adding American boots on the ground is just a bridge too far.
“I think that the vast majority of conservatives would agree to the idea that official guarantors be anybody but the United States.”
Not for any of the reasons you gave but rather because the new stream-of-the-incumbent’s-consciousness White House is quite clearly untrustworthy.