What does Putin want (and whatabout it)
nan said:
Ukraine has always been a corrupt country, but it went down hill in 2014 when you know what happened (except on MOL). There was hope Zelensky would bring change, but that has been a disaster. These remarks from Putin are typical of the kinds of things he says. It reminds me of the way older leaders used to talk in the 1960s. Russia is a conservative place and they have a different way of viewing things. They are always talking about history and ancestors and memories and stuff like that. That's how they got the great Dostoevsky. That Crime and Punishment was a heck of a book. But I digress. . .
Ukraine has struggled with corruption. EU membership or qualifying for EU membership would put pressure on Ukraine to reform.
Russia is also very corrupt.
PVW said:
nan said:
I don't think the Bay of Pigs should have happened at all. I don't remember all the details but that It was the CIA trying to trick Kennedy into invading Cuba and starting a war. I don't see how it would have been justified in any way.
What I don't understand about this reply is why talk about the CIA at all? If it could not have been justified in any way, then it doesn't matter if it was the CIA or a group you approved of, right? So why not just say "it wasn't justified" and leave the CIA out of it?
Because you are trying to make equivalencies between the Bay of Pigs and Ukraine and then make a little chart that shows you are consistent and I am inconsistent (of course that's the outcome!) We don't even agree what the Bay of Pigs/Ukraine even is, never mind if it and Ukraine can be used to measure whatever it is you define as consistency anyway. The only thing we agree on is that we don't agree!
Name a nation that doesn't struggle with corruption. Some are simply better at defenestration than others.
nope. I'm not gonna do it.nan said:
Yes, this is how the cycle goes. I post something and you all say I'm wrong and nuts and something related to Putin until a mainstream publication says the same thing. Then you sheepishly stop saying I'm wrong or nuts or Putin about that. I can post a hundred pieces of evidence (while being accused of not providing evidence) but as soon as a lame brain corporate media sort of gets it right you nod and agree. Rinse and repeat.
Latest example are the "secret" peace talks which you all were informed about regularly for the last two years and said never happened or were not what the Russians wanted.
nan said:
nohero said:
I said "sensible narrative" that it shows a plot by the United States. The transcript shows that they're mentioning the names of existing leaders of the opposition. They mention Yatsenyuk, who was already considered as the leading choice to be prime minister - he had already been offered the post by Yanukovich (the president who was later replaced in February 2014). So unless the Putin-supported Ukrainian president Yanukovich was also somehow part of their plot, the "Biden signs off on it" theory isn't sensible.
When the new government was formed, Yatsenyuk was the overwhelming choice among all of the political parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Yatsenyuk_government#Parliamentary_voting
You have posted "explanation" before and it's quite creative but they do mention getting sign-off at the end and it's quite clear they are working on who THEY want to put in the government and how it's going to operate. This is not fantasy football. That someone is a "leading" candidate does not change anything.
The explanation isn't "creative" so much as it's based on actual facts. For example, have you ever heard of Oleksandr Turchynov? He's not mentioned in that transcript. He became President when the Putin-supporting President Yanukovich was replaced.
Both Turchynov and Yatsenyuk were political allies of long-time opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who had been imprisoned under Yanukovich. That's a more logical explanation for why they took office than some fantasy that they were picked by the United States.
nan said:
Russia's invasion of Crimea is a detail of their response to the US installing an anti-Russian government in Ukraine. They were securing continued access to a critical location under a new hostile regime.
Here's another part of your answer that doesn't make sense to me. Well, I expect my question won't make sense to you, and your response won't make sense to me, but I'll ask anyway -- I guess I'm really just talking out loud than expecting a real exchange.
Anyway, if what triggered Russia's invasion of Crimea was "access to a critical location under a new hostile regime," then it seems the important part was that the regime was hostile to Russia, not whether the U.S. was involved, right? Your interpretation of events is that this was the result of a CIA coup, but even if there were zero U.S. involvement, Russia would still have the problem of facing a hostile regime. Or if we imagine that Yanukovych wasn't ousted, but that in the next election a strongly anti-Russian government came to power, then wouldn't Russia have annexed Crimea then? It seems that it's the potential loss of guaranteed access to Sevastopol, not U.S. involvement, that triggered Russian action?
--
ETA - I suspect where I lose Nan here is that she likely cannot imagine Ukrainians ever opposing Russia on their own.
PVW said:
Here's another part of your answer that doesn't make sense to me. Well, I expect my question won't make sense to you, and your response won't make sense to me, but I'll ask anyway -- I guess I'm really just talking out loud than expecting a real exchange.
Anyway, if what triggered Russia's invasion of Crimea was "access to a critical location under a new hostile regime," then it seems the important part was that the regime was hostile to Russia, not whether the U.S. was involved, right? Your interpretation of events is that this was the result of a CIA coup, but even if there were zero U.S. involvement, Russia would still have the problem of facing a hostile regime. Or if we imagine that Yanukovych wasn't ousted, but that in the next election a strongly anti-Russian government came to power, then wouldn't Russia have annexed Crimea then? It seems that it's the potential loss of guaranteed access to Sevastopol, not U.S. involvement, that triggered Russian action?
--
ETA - I suspect where I lose Nan here is that she likely cannot imagine Ukrainians ever opposing Russia on their own.
how are your shoulders holding up? Please up your magnesium intake because that boulder could be solid granite…
Did anybody hear the one about the timid stone that wanted to become a little boulder?
PVW said:
ETA - I suspect where I lose Nan here is that she likely cannot imagine Ukrainians ever opposing Russia on their own.
Or imagines that, if Ukraine did manage to elect a government that was hostile to Russia without being forced by a U.S. attack, Putin would withdraw.
Putin believes that Ukraine is really part of the Russian Empire. That is why, after consulting the auspices, he chose to invade Ukraine.
You may notice that he is not nearly as bothered by the Baltics being in NATO.
PVW said:
nan said:
Russia's invasion of Crimea is a detail of their response to the US installing an anti-Russian government in Ukraine. They were securing continued access to a critical location under a new hostile regime.Here's another part of your answer that doesn't make sense to me. Well, I expect my question won't make sense to you, and your response won't make sense to me, but I'll ask anyway -- I guess I'm really just talking out loud than expecting a real exchange.
Anyway, if what triggered Russia's invasion of Crimea was "access to a critical location under a new hostile regime," then it seems the important part was that the regime was hostile to Russia, not whether the U.S. was involved, right? Your interpretation of events is that this was the result of a CIA coup, but even if there were zero U.S. involvement, Russia would still have the problem of facing a hostile regime. Or if we imagine that Yanukovych wasn't ousted, but that in the next election a strongly anti-Russian government came to power, then wouldn't Russia have annexed Crimea then? It seems that it's the potential loss of guaranteed access to Sevastopol, not U.S. involvement, that triggered Russian action?
--
ETA - I suspect where I lose Nan here is that she likely cannot imagine Ukrainians ever opposing Russia on their own.
This is a war between the West and Russia. Ukraine is just a proxy. Russia recognizes this and occasionally Ukraine as well. The newly installed government was strongly anti-Russian.
As for when and where Ukrainians oppose Russia, I think you are considering Ukrainians to be a unified pro-west block. You are forgetting the big divisions and viewpoints in the country.
This interview with Richard Sacwa (retired professor - Univ. of Kent, UK) from right before the 2020 invasion lays out the relationship in detail.
He uses facts and details about the different groups living in Ukraine at that time. The interest in joining NATO was split between two groups --so it was not a majority. Also, there was a high interest in having strong ties with Russia--even without Crimea/Donbas included. He also says we are in a "slow moving Cuban Missile Crisis" Also argues about how Ukraine was fine with being neutral until 2014. And that it is the far right holding policy hostage while supported by the West. He says that Ukrainians and Russians are peace loving people. The Russians are responding to 30 years of NATO expansion - they did not feel anyone was listening to them. I'm just putting a small part of the interview below. I suggest you read the whole thing because Sakwa has done extensive research. He is particularly interested in cold war mentality. He talks about Putin and Navalney and other relevant topics to this thread.
https://jacobin.com/2022/01/putin-nato-us-war-donbass-minsk-2
DAVID BRODER (interviewer) In Western media, Ukraine is often near-totally defined by its antagonism with Russia; a Times headline cited a general saying “Ukrainians are ready to tear apart Russians with their bare hands.” Especially after the 2008 NATO summit, it’s also assumed that Ukrainians want to join NATO, but Russia is stopping it. What evidence is there for that?
RICHARD SAKWA This goes much further back even than NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit, which invited both Georgia and Ukraine to ultimately join. It’s the way that Ukrainian policy was defined for a long time in terms of the so-called European choice — which itself was highly contested, with poll after poll showing that the Ukrainian public is divided. It’s wobbled a bit over the years, but basically the western part, what we would call the Galician element, really wants to not just join the West, but to tear up all ties with Russia.
Postcolonialism, if that model can be used in this case, assumes a hybridity after you’ve been colonized, like at the linguistic and cultural levels, whereas the cultural separatists believe that it’s post-colonial with a hyphen, that you have to expunge all former links. But the southern and eastern parts of the country are more inclined to maintain close links with Russia. In a way, there is a basis to Vladimir Putin saying that Russians and Ukrainians are one people in terms of culture, history, intermarriage and so on. He never said that they should be one state — and that’s a fundamental difference.
I traveled through the Donbass in 2008, and you’d see painted on buildings everywhere, “No to NATO.” Whereas now we’ve seen the WikiLeaks State Department documents, published in 2010–11, showing endless messages from the US ambassador in Kiev saying ultimately people wanted NATO. This was a fanciful and artificial idea from the beginning, assuming that the choice was simple and unequivocally toward the West. Russia was then framed as holding Ukraine back geopolitically, developmentally, and above all in terms of democracy.
It’s a much more complex situation, as opinion polls even today show. Gerard Toal and his colleagues have shown that an astonishingly high proportion — 30 or 40 percent of the population, even with Crimea and Donbass not included — want close relations with Russia. Some even want to join the Eurasian Economic Union. So, this is what Zbigniew Brzezinski, and earlier and above all, Samuel Huntington, described as a cleft country, a divided country. So, it’s wrong to assume that they have opted unequivocally for NATO. But this choice has been imposed since the emergence of the neonationalist government in February 2014 after the Maidan events.
DAVID BRODER From Volodymyr Ishchenko’s analysis of this polling divide, we get the impression that, while in the 1990s, support for joining NATO was very low, this has risen, and it’s easy to imagine that the 2014 war would harden antagonisms. Yet Volodymyr Zelensky’s election in 2019 was widely seen as expressing a popular will to cool tensions: in that election, pro-Maidan forces lost support, while he spoke of upholding Minsk II. Why hasn’t that played out in practice.
RICHARD SAKWA Yes, Zelensky was elected as the peace candidate. But I’d go further and say when Petro Poroshenko was elected in May 2014, he was also putting himself forward as the peace candidate — people also elected him seeing him as an oligarch with close ties with Russia and so on. Yet neither of them could go forward with cooling tensions.
In December 2019, the Normandy Format met with Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and France, and Zelensky’s chief of staff tried to go forward with that process. Yet even while they were meeting, people were mobilizing in the Maidan saying that they wouldn’t accept any negotiation or any implementation of the Minsk II agreement if it involved giving any autonomy to the Donbass.
So, the first factor is that there’s a very highly mobilized, radicalized minority within Ukraine, which holds policy hostage. Second, this minority — though there’s a silence about some of its more odious extremes — is supported geopolitically by the Western powers, by what I call the Atlantic power system. It’s not just NATO, but, scandalously in my view, the European Union, which really hasn’t upheld its own principles.
Zelensky has been even worse than Poroshenko in undermining Russian-language cultural and media institutions in Ukraine and for pushing a distorted view of history. So, in a sense, external and internal factors have coalesced. But despite all that, opinion polls show Ukrainians are still divided, although there has been a coalescence in favor of defending Ukrainian state sovereignty.
In fact, Ukrainians in general are a very peace-loving people. That’s why it’s so catastrophic that now we’re talking about war and conflict. But all this is part of a bigger picture, a second cold war. If it is indeed a genuine cold war, then we need to learn how to manage conflict. I’m arguing that today we’re in a slow-motion Cuban missile crisis. In October 1962, it was resolved peacefully. Jupiter missiles were taken out of Turkey, and the Soviet Union removed its missiles, and the United States promised not to invade Cuba.
That is ultimately what Putin wants, and Boris Yeltsin before him, and before that, Mikhail Gorbachev always argued the expansion of the Atlantic military security system to Russia’s borders was unacceptable. So, this question has been dragging on for thirty years now. Putin said in his 2018 State of the Nation speech, “You didn’t listen to us then, so listen to us now” — when he announced hypersonic missiles and so on. That’s the background to where we are today.
But ultimately, society is internally divided within Ukraine. There’s a huge peace contingent, yet the worst elements of the Ukrainian polity are exacerbated by Western support for short-term geopolitical advantage. Even not long ago, Ukraine was committed to neutrality. If Ireland can be neutral, if Austria can be neutral, if Finland can be neutral, then why can’t Ukraine, especially since there’s a large constituency for it within Ukraine itself? This was, after all, official Ukrainian policy until the neonationalist seizure of power in 2014.
DaveSchmidt said:
Did anybody hear the one about the timid stone that wanted to become a little boulder?
PVW said:
ETA - I suspect where I lose Nan here is that she likely cannot imagine Ukrainians ever opposing Russia on their own.
Or imagines that, if Ukraine did manage to elect a government that was hostile to Russia without being forced by a U.S. attack, Putin would withdraw.
I responded to PVW's suspicions. Her view of "Ukraine" is too generalized. If you can stop insulting me for a minute, maybe you can read and get some reality for what you imagine.
tjohn said:
Putin believes that Ukraine is really part of the Russian Empire. That is why, after consulting the auspices, he chose to invade Ukraine.
You may notice that he is not nearly as bothered by the Baltics being in NATO.
Yeah, no. Read the Richard Sacwa interview above for a different perspective. The guy wrote at least one book on Putin.
nan said:
https://jacobin.com/2022/01/putin-nato-us-war-donbass-minsk-2
Sure, most countries are. We still talk about a country doing X or Y though -- eg it's entirely accurate to say that Americans elected Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, even though we know first hand that such a statement glosses over very deep divisions.
That's a big part of the whole democratic idea, isn't it? Divisions within countries are almost inevitable, and democracy gives societies a way to work through those divisions instead of the alternatives of authoritarianism or civil war.
Of course, being invaded and occupied by a foreign country tends to really badly exacerbate divisions. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and it's escalation in 2022, obviously made divisions worse rather than better.
Your argument has been that Russia was forced to invade because the dramatic change in government in 2014 was a result of U.S. intervention. If I take this article seriously though -- that what Russia is responding to is decades of hostility from Europe and the U.S. -- then I'm still left with the impression that it really doesn't matter if U.S. was involved or not. Ukraine's government choosing to go in a pro-European, anti-Russian direction would be seen as a grave threat, regardless of whether that change happened because of a U.S. coup, a completely organic revolution by the Ukrainians themselves, or after an election. So I'm still left wondering why you would spend so much time arguing that the U.S. was behind all this if, from the Russian perspective, it doesn't seem like that even matters.
nan said:
DaveSchmidt said:
Did anybody hear the one about the timid stone that wanted to become a little boulder?
PVW said:
ETA - I suspect where I lose Nan here is that she likely cannot imagine Ukrainians ever opposing Russia on their own.
Or imagines that, if Ukraine did manage to elect a government that was hostile to Russia without being forced by a U.S. attack, Putin would withdraw.
I responded to PVW's suspicions. Her view of "Ukraine" is too generalized. If you can stop insulting me for a minute, maybe you can read and get some reality for what you imagine.
BTW -- it's not relevant to this discussion, and doesn't matter much to me, but if you wanted to be accurate, my pronouns are he/him.
nan said:
If you can stop insulting me for a minute, maybe you can read and get some reality for what you imagine.
There was no insult. It was a reasonable inference from your arguments. Before that, I hadn’t posted anything in this thread for 3,908 minutes.
PVW said:
DAVID BRODER (interviewer) In Western media, Ukraine is often near-totally defined by its antagonism with Russia; a Times headline cited a general saying “Ukrainians are ready to tear apart Russians with their bare hands.” Especially after the 2008 NATO summit, it’s also assumed that Ukrainians want to join NATO, but Russia is stopping it. What evidence is there for that?
RICHARD SAKWA This goes much further back even than NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit, which invited both Georgia and Ukraine to ultimately join. It’s the way that Ukrainian policy was defined for a long time in terms of the so-called European choice — which itself was highly contested, with poll after poll showing that the Ukrainian public is divided. It’s wobbled a bit over the years, but basically the western part, what we would call the Galician element, really wants to not just join the West, but to tear up all ties with Russia.
Postcolonialism, if that model can be used in this case, assumes a hybridity after you’ve been colonized, like at the linguistic and cultural levels, whereas the cultural separatists believe that it’s post-colonial with a hyphen, that you have to expunge all former links. But the southern and eastern parts of the country are more inclined to maintain close links with Russia. In a way, there is a basis to Vladimir Putin saying that Russians and Ukrainians are one people in terms of culture, history, intermarriage and so on. He never said that they should be one state — and that’s a fundamental difference.
I traveled through the Donbass in 2008, and you’d see painted on buildings everywhere, “No to NATO.” Whereas now we’ve seen the WikiLeaks State Department documents, published in 2010–11, showing endless messages from the US ambassador in Kiev saying ultimately people wanted NATO. This was a fanciful and artificial idea from the beginning, assuming that the choice was simple and unequivocally toward the West. Russia was then framed as holding Ukraine back geopolitically, developmentally, and above all in terms of democracy.
It’s a much more complex situation, as opinion polls even today show. Gerard Toal and his colleagues have shown that an astonishingly high proportion — 30 or 40 percent of the population, even with Crimea and Donbass not included — want close relations with Russia. Some even want to join the Eurasian Economic Union. So, this is what Zbigniew Brzezinski, and earlier and above all, Samuel Huntington, described as a cleft country, a divided country. So, it’s wrong to assume that they have opted unequivocally for NATO. But this choice has been imposed since the emergence of the neonationalist government in February 2014 after the Maidan events.
DAVID BRODER From Volodymyr Ishchenko’s analysis of this polling divide, we get the impression that, while in the 1990s, support for joining NATO was very low, this has risen, and it’s easy to imagine that the 2014 war would harden antagonisms. Yet Volodymyr Zelensky’s election in 2019 was widely seen as expressing a popular will to cool tensions: in that election, pro-Maidan forces lost support, while he spoke of upholding Minsk II. Why hasn’t that played out in practice.
RICHARD SAKWA Yes, Zelensky was elected as the peace candidate. But I’d go further and say when Petro Poroshenko was elected in May 2014, he was also putting himself forward as the peace candidate — people also elected him seeing him as an oligarch with close ties with Russia and so on. Yet neither of them could go forward with cooling tensions.
In December 2019, the Normandy Format met with Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and France, and Zelensky’s chief of staff tried to go forward with that process. Yet even while they were meeting, people were mobilizing in the Maidan saying that they wouldn’t accept any negotiation or any implementation of the Minsk II agreement if it involved giving any autonomy to the Donbass.
So, the first factor is that there’s a very highly mobilized, radicalized minority within Ukraine, which holds policy hostage. Second, this minority — though there’s a silence about some of its more odious extremes — is supported geopolitically by the Western powers, by what I call the Atlantic power system. It’s not just NATO, but, scandalously in my view, the European Union, which really hasn’t upheld its own principles.
Zelensky has been even worse than Poroshenko in undermining Russian-language cultural and media institutions in Ukraine and for pushing a distorted view of history. So, in a sense, external and internal factors have coalesced. But despite all that, opinion polls show Ukrainians are still divided, although there has been a coalescence in favor of defending Ukrainian state sovereignty.
In fact, Ukrainians in general are a very peace-loving people. That’s why it’s so catastrophic that now we’re talking about war and conflict. But all this is part of a bigger picture, a second cold war. If it is indeed a genuine cold war, then we need to learn how to manage conflict. I’m arguing that today we’re in a slow-motion Cuban missile crisis. In October 1962, it was resolved peacefully. Jupiter missiles were taken out of Turkey, and the Soviet Union removed its missiles, and the United States promised not to invade Cuba.
That is ultimately what Putin wants, and Boris Yeltsin before him, and before that, Mikhail Gorbachev always argued the expansion of the Atlantic military security system to Russia’s borders was unacceptable. So, this question has been dragging on for thirty years now. Putin said in his 2018 State of the Nation speech, “You didn’t listen to us then, so listen to us now” — when he announced hypersonic missiles and so on. That’s the background to where we are today.
But ultimately, society is internally divided within Ukraine. There’s a huge peace contingent, yet the worst elements of the Ukrainian polity are exacerbated by Western support for short-term geopolitical advantage. Even not long ago, Ukraine was committed to neutrality. If Ireland can be neutral, if Austria can be neutral, if Finland can be neutral, then why can’t Ukraine, especially since there’s a large constituency for it within Ukraine itself? This was, after all, official Ukrainian policy until the neonationalist seizure of power in 2014.Sure, most countries are. We still talk about a country doing X or Y though -- eg it's entirely accurate to say that Americans elected Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, even though we know first hand that such a statement glosses over very deep divisions.
That's a big part of the whole democratic idea, isn't it? Divisions within countries are almost inevitable, and democracy gives societies a way to work through those divisions instead of the alternatives of authoritarianism or civil war.
Of course, being invaded and occupied by a foreign country tends to really badly exacerbate divisions. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and it's escalation in 2022, obviously made divisions worse rather than better.
Your argument has been that Russia was forced to invade because the dramatic change in government in 2014 was a result of U.S. intervention. If I take this article seriously though -- that what Russia is responding to is decades of hostility from Europe and the U.S. -- then I'm still left with the impression that it really doesn't matter if U.S. was involved or not. Ukraine's government choosing to go in a pro-European, anti-Russian direction would be seen as a grave threat, regardless of whether that change happened because of a U.S. coup, a completely organic revolution by the Ukrainians themselves, or after an election. So I'm still left wondering why you would spend so much time arguing that the U.S. was behind all this if, from the Russian perspective, it doesn't seem like that even matters.
Of course countries have different groups, but you were trying to say that Ukraine was in conflict with Russia with or without US involvement. The far right-nazis - what Sacwa calls the Galecians had a big problem with Russia/Russians and they because the dominant group due to Western support. Western media portrayed them as speaking for all Ukrainians.
The Russians understood this was a proxy war and that the conflict was originating from the west. That's where they got the arms and training. If it was just Ukraine, the army would have been a joke. They would have worked it out through diplomacy--although the far right elements were always a problem. Having the west fund them gave them more power (even if they were not in government offices--remember in the Nuland phone call--they did not the far right guys in office--but frequently talking to the elected people).
In a more recent interview Sacwa discusses the 2014 coup which he considers a false flag leading to the dominance of the Galecians/anti-Russians. I think this is why Putin expresses the big interest in getting rid of Nazis. But, he demonstrates how the anti-Russian sentiment was developed and pushed. I also read eleswhere that Zelensky reduced the media down to only a few extremely anti-Russian outlets, so Russia hating views were also developed through propaganda.
https://nkibrics.ru/posts/show/6419efbd62726945faec0100
The Real Story of the Ukraine Government Since 2014
Billington: Professor Sakwa, you became very well known most recently with the publication of a book called Frontline Ukraine, published just months after the 2014 coup against the elected government in Ukraine, the Maidan color revolution. Your book played a significant role in exposing the fake news about the so called “heroic democratic people’s revolt,” which is still the myth peddled in the West about what the Ukraine government is, which was actually imposed on the country by the Obama administration, with Vice President Joe Biden and State Department official Victoria Nuland leading the way. These two are in fact still running Ukraine policy, now from within the Biden administration.
In your view, sir, what is the real story of the Ukraine government since the 2014 Maidan coup?
Prof. Sakwa: There’s two things to say. First, the actual events of from 2013 into 2014, which ended up with a change of regime in February 2014. I think a lot of evidence has come out, even more than when I first finally revised the book, 2015-2016, about the actual events on the Maidan. Excellent scholars— Ivan Katchanovski, Gordon Hahn, and others—have forensically identified the actual sequence of events, including the shooting in the days up to the 20th, 21st of February that year. They demonstrated that the shooting came from parts of the square and buildings around it which were occupied by the demonstrators, the insurgents, call them what you like. In other words, it was a type of “false flag” event, and that’s quite enormous.
We have not only the evidence of these scholars, but also the fact that the Ukrainian government has not proceeded in all these years, even before the war, with prosecutions about who was responsible amongst the Berkut [Ukrainian Special Police] allegedly. That is implicit evidence, to say that these scholars who argue that it was a false flag are correct.
This doesn’t deny the fact that the Maidan itself was a complex event. Many layers were involved, and one of them, which one has to give recognition to, was the aspiration for a cleaner and better government, one which I fully endorse. I don’t think that was a way of going about it, but it was certainly that aspiration and need, because then and, of course, before the war, Ukraine had become the poorest country in Europe. The standards of living—perhaps the figures don’t reflect the reality, but nevertheless its GDP per capita was remarkably low. That’s the first thing to say, that it was a complex event. I think that the Western vision of the “Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity” presents a distorted picture of what happened.
Second, what did happen was that the balance within Ukraine shifted dramatically. I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to look at a book by Nicolai Petro called The Tragedy of Ukraine. He puts it, building on and developing our work, [in terms of] the division within Ukraine between, on the one side, the Galician nationalist vision of Ukrainian development, compared to what he calls the Maloros [“Little Russian”] vision. That is the Russophone vision—a multicultural, inclusive, tolerant, generous vision. Yes, I will accept that the Galician version, at times, at best, does have a civic vision of Ukraine developing, but it’s always based on exclusion, partiality, division, whereas the Maloros idea, at best, is just to take pride in the character of the Ukrainian state, made up of many different parts, different peoples. I’ve always argued that this vision, a pluralistic vision of a multicultural, multi-dimensional Ukraine, including in foreign policy, would have been far better.
Since 2014, we’ve had a single, one dimensional… The Galicians won, and they’ve been consolidating their victory ever since. It’s been a catastrophe for Ukraine, for Europe, for Russia and the world.
nan said:
Of course countries have different groups, but you were trying to say that Ukraine was in conflict with Russia with or without US involvement. The far right-nazis - what Sacwa calls the Galecians had a big problem with Russia/Russians and they because the dominant group due to Western support. Western media portrayed them as speaking for all Ukrainians.
The Russians understood this was a proxy war and that the conflict was originating from the west. That's where they got the arms and training. If it was just Ukraine, the army would have been a joke. They would have worked it out through diplomacy--although the far right elements were always a problem. Having the west fund them gave them more power (even if they were not in government offices--remember in the Nuland phone call--they did not the far right guys in office--but frequently talking to the elected people).
In a more recent interview Sacwa discusses the 2014 coup which he considers a false flag leading to the dominance of the Galecians/anti-Russians. I think this is why Putin expresses the big interest in getting rid of Nazis. But, he demonstrates how the anti-Russian sentiment was developed and pushed. I also read eleswhere that Zelensky reduced the media down to only a few extremely anti-Russian outlets, so Russia hating views were also developed through propaganda.
Well, obviously Russia didn't invade Crimea due to arms and training that didn't happen until after 2014. Similarly, assuming you're not trying to claim Zelensky can time travel, he can't be held responsible for events in and before 2014.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about the far right -- are you claiming that only the far right in Ukraine in 2014 was anti-Russian? That everyone who was anti-Russian in 2014 was part of the far right?
I wonder, why did Ukraine ever become independent? Was it all Nazis from the beginning?
nan - again, who is the current nazi leader - the people of Russia believe it is Zelenskyy especially if you follow any Vlad media. Are you onboard with that? And again - feel to list all metrics that have been accomplished to alleviate the biggest nazi scourge since WWII. And explain why no one else but Vlad (and you) have been railing on this fact?
PVW said:
nan said:
Of course countries have different groups, but you were trying to say that Ukraine was in conflict with Russia with or without US involvement. The far right-nazis - what Sacwa calls the Galecians had a big problem with Russia/Russians and they because the dominant group due to Western support. Western media portrayed them as speaking for all Ukrainians.
The Russians understood this was a proxy war and that the conflict was originating from the west. That's where they got the arms and training. If it was just Ukraine, the army would have been a joke. They would have worked it out through diplomacy--although the far right elements were always a problem. Having the west fund them gave them more power (even if they were not in government offices--remember in the Nuland phone call--they did not the far right guys in office--but frequently talking to the elected people).
In a more recent interview Sacwa discusses the 2014 coup which he considers a false flag leading to the dominance of the Galecians/anti-Russians. I think this is why Putin expresses the big interest in getting rid of Nazis. But, he demonstrates how the anti-Russian sentiment was developed and pushed. I also read eleswhere that Zelensky reduced the media down to only a few extremely anti-Russian outlets, so Russia hating views were also developed through propaganda.
Well, obviously Russia didn't invade Crimea due to arms and training that didn't happen until after 2014. Similarly, assuming you're not trying to claim Zelensky can time travel, he can't be held responsible for events in and before 2014.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about the far right -- are you claiming that only the far right in Ukraine in 2014 was anti-Russian? That everyone who was anti-Russian in 2014 was part of the far right?
They took Crimea swiftly - - that was a critical location and the new government was immediately cracking down on Russians. I'm not blaming Zelensky for 2014. I think of him as mostly a puppet anyway--not 100% though.
The west was funding these far right people. I'm sure there were regular people who did not like Russians--there was massive propaganda. But, a large number did not hate Russians. But the far right groups considered the Russians sub-human. They were the ones sent to handle unrest in the Donbas.
Here is an article on a frequent MOL Ukraine thread topic.
The author, Gordon Hahn challenges you to: Read it all and test your faith that the war in Ukraine was unprovoked and began in February 2022.
I'm reading it now, but I did not have that faith.
-------------------------------------------
Did the West Intentionally Incite Putin to War?
https://gordonhahn.com/2024/02/27/did-the-west-intentionally-incite-putin-to-war/
February 2024
And a recent update from 4/19/24. I don't know what happened to Update 1:
UPDATE 2 TO “Did the West Intentionally Incite Putin to War?”
https://gordonhahn.com/2024/04/19/update-2-to-did-the-west-intentionally-incite-putin-to-war/
"I think of him as mostly a puppet anyway--not 100% though."
Either someone's a puppet or they're not. It's basically part of the definition. The word comes from the Greek meaning "drawn by strings, string-pulling". No pulling, no movement.
jamie said:
nan - again, who is the current nazi leader - the people of Russia believe it is Zelenskyy especially if you follow any Vlad media. Are you onboard with that? And again - feel to list all metrics that have been accomplished to alleviate the biggest nazi scourge since WWII. And explain why no one else but Vlad (and you) have been railing on this fact?
Zelensky is and has been influenced by the far right.
Edited to add: I did not mean Zelensky is a nazi--he's not. He's the leader of Ukraine so that includes the far right who has influence.
Yes, the real nazis executing Ukrainian civilians and kidnapping their children would influence me, as well. Finally we agree on something.
nan said:
jamie said:
nan - again, who is the current nazi leader - the people of Russia believe it is Zelenskyy especially if you follow any Vlad media. Are you onboard with that? And again - feel to list all metrics that have been accomplished to alleviate the biggest nazi scourge since WWII. And explain why no one else but Vlad (and you) have been railing on this fact?
Zelensky is and has been influenced by the far right.
ok, so you're onboard with Russian media and don't deny that he's is a Nazi (and i suppose is the nazi leader - because you can't identify anyone else). That is so sad. Please quote Vlad media once in awhile. I wish you could try to live in Russia and speak out against the government and see how long it takes before you're silenced. But then again - you seem to think it's pretty great there, so you may have no reason to critique anyone in power there. And Vlad will be the leader until 2036 - so it should be very stable under his rule.
Unfortunately - the ones who truly want this war more than anyone else is Vlad - this is the narrative for most of Vlad media:
The United States is not ready to give up its role as hegemon. This means that we are in for a long confrontation, from which there will be no escape: aftershocks will, to one degree or another, affect every corner of the globe. And the new world will go to the one who takes it. And it may turn out that we are witnessing the last moments of five hundred years of Western dominance.
It's the fight for a "new world order" - and Putin will not stop until he gets his way. Hitler had a similar goal. Wonder which country he'll demand to be demilitarized or denazified next? Moldova is a given. He won't stop in Ukraine until he gets the whole southern flank - I've been calling this for some time.
nan said:
They took Crimea swiftly - - that was a critical location and the new government was immediately cracking down on Russians. I'm not blaming Zelensky for 2014. I think of him as mostly a puppet anyway--not 100% though.
The west was funding these far right people. I'm sure there were regular people who did not like Russians--there was massive propaganda. But, a large number did not hate Russians. But the far right groups considered the Russians sub-human. They were the ones sent to handle unrest in the Donbas.
Sounds like, in your view of things, anyone in Ukraine who wanted closer ties with the EU rather than Russia was either a member of the far-right themselves or under the influence of the far right, then? Even "regular people" only came by their views via propaganda -- no Ukrainian would have any legitimate reason to be opposed to Russia? Everyone who demonstrated on the Maidan in 2013-14 was a Nazi or under their influence?
I wonder how far back this goes -- 2004? Ukrainian independence? Earlier?
I suppose my previous post can be reduced to a single question -- do you believe it is possible for a Ukrainian to legitimately oppose Russia, or is such opposition always a sign of someone being on the far-right or being under their influence?
nan said:
Here is an article on a frequent MOL Ukraine thread topic.
The author, Gordon Hahn challenges you to: Read it all and test your faith that the war in Ukraine was unprovoked and began in February 2022.
I'm reading it now, but I did not have that faith.
-------------------------------------------
Did the West Intentionally Incite Putin to War?
https://gordonhahn.com/2024/02/27/did-the-west-intentionally-incite-putin-to-war/
February 2024
And a recent update from 4/19/24. I don't know what happened to Update 1:
UPDATE 2 TO “Did the West Intentionally Incite Putin to War?”
https://gordonhahn.com/2024/04/19/update-2-to-did-the-west-intentionally-incite-putin-to-war/
It's the same old stuff. It ignores the fact that Ukraine wasn't in NATO, and Russia invaded instead of negotiating.
"Ukraine might join NATO to attack Russia" is the same kind of threat as "Saddam might get WMDs". Putin and Bush launched pre-emptive wars with the goal of regime change. Supporting Putin's rationale is the same as supporting Bush's excuses for invading Iraq.
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No research required to understand that you were trying to insult and discredit as you continue to do here.