Russia has made its war objectives in Ukraine clear:
1. Ukraine to acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory.
2. Ukraine to end the sniping and shelling of the breakaway Donbas republics of Donetsk and Luhansk that is reported to have claimed 14,000 lives over the last seven years.
3. Ukraine to commit to remaining outside the anti-Russian NATO military alliance.
That Ukraine will not accept these terms, reveals what Zelensky wants. Specifically, Zelensky wants:
A. To continue painting the 2014 Russian occupation of Crimea as illegitimate, notwithstanding that:
i. Ukraine, including Crimea, has been Russian territory for much of the last one thousand years.
ii. The Russian state was founded in Kyiv where, following the baptism, in Crimea, of Vladimir I prince of Kiev, in 988, Orthodox Christianity became the Russian state church headed by the metropolitan of Kiev.
ii. Russia has ruled Crimea continuously from the time of Catherine the Great until the 1950's, when a Ukrainian General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Nikita Khruschev, gifted Russian Crimea to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. At the time of the transfer, it made no great difference to anyone since both Russia and Ukraine were subordinate to the Soviet Communist Party. On the breakup of the Soviet Union, however, Kruschev's action resulted in the Russian-populated, former-Russian territory coming under the rule of an, at times, genocidally anti-Russian Ukrainian government.
iii. In the 1850's, Russia defended the Crimean peninsula against an assault by British, French and Turkish forces in a war estimated to have cost 650,000 lives. Leo Tolstoy served in the defense of Sevastapol, winning a medal for bravery and, for his dispatches from the front, his first recognition as a writer.
iv. In early 2014, following a referendum in which over 90% of the mainly Russian-speaking population of Crimea voted for union with Russia, the Crimean Parliament requested to join the Russian Federation, which request was accepted, resulting in an essentially peaceful transfer of sovereignty. Among Ukrainian troops stationed in Crimea, many switched loyalties, becoming members of the Russian armed forces.
v. The validity of the Crimean referendum was confirmed by the US-based Pew Trust, which conducted its own opinion survey in Crimea.
B. To destroy the breakaway Donbas republics and eliminate official use of the Russian language, including in education, throughout Ukraine, notwithstanding that the majority of citizens in Eastern Ukraine are Russian speakers.
C. To join the anti-Russian NATO alliance and thus obtain the military backing of the Western nations, while wiping out Russian culture and Russian language-use across Ukraine.
As Canada's Prime Minister, dictator-wannabe Justin Trudeau, shuttles around Europe lobbying for NATO membership of Ukraine, Canadians might reflect on the consequences of Zelenskyism were it to be applied in Canada. Specifically, they should think of the consequences of a Ukrainian-style, one-language, one-culture policy as it would affect Canadian unity: except there would be no Canadian unity. Quebec would be gone, and if restrained, Quebec would fight.
Related:
Ukraine news – live: Kyiv rejects proposed neutralityThey rob, kill and plunder... and where they make a desert, they call it "peace". Tacitus
When Vladimir Putin ordered "peace makers" into the Russian-speaking Donbas region of Eastern Ukrainane, some may have expected a limited operation: to protect the Russian-speaking residents of the breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. But as now seems clear, Russia's objective in Ukraine is no less than occupation and assimilation of the entire country.
But Ukraine don't rape easy. Russian forces have been held up for two weeks in attempting to subdue Ukraine's largest cities, Kyiv and Karkhiv, but thus far have little to show for their efforts but death and destruction, including many dead Russian fighters. Other towns and cities are also maintaining a stiff and resistance. Mariupol, it seems, is in the process of being entirely destroyed to save it from occupying Ukrainian forces.
Will Russia fight and Ukraine defend until every urban area is reduced to rubble and the urban population has been decimated or put to flight? The people of Russia apparently have Putin's back. NATO, meanwhile, is pouring javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles into Ukraine, thus ensuring continued Russian losses. Nothing, then, will likely end this war short of Ukrainian surrender or Russian victory.
Given the peace terms Russia has offered -- Ukrainian neutrality, an end to the sniping and shelling of the independent Donbas republics, and recognition of Crimea as Russian territory -- Ukraine could without dishonor end the war now. But it won't because it is driven by the globalist imperative that requires the destruction of Russia, something that this war, plus the sanctions of NATO nations will go far toward achieving.
Related:
Buchanan: Is There A Peace Deal Putin And Zelensky Can Accept?NATO allies rejected Ukraine’s demand for no-fly zones on Friday, saying they were increasing support but that stepping in directly would lead to a broader, even more brutal European war so far limited to Russia’s assault on its neighbour.
Meanwhile, during an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF, Germany's Chancellor, Olaf Scholtz said:
“Ukraine’s membership is not on The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s agenda.”
“... that this option [Ukraine’s membership of NATO] is not on the table and will not take place ...
While not publicly stated, one can be sure that a further consideration in the minds of NATO allies is resistance throughout the West to being made host to a growing multitude of Ukrainian war refugees, already exceeding one million in number.
The message to Ukraine is clear: call it quits -- end the bloodshed which, however valorous, must end in Ukrainian defeat.
Related:
Ukraine War: 24/7 Russian Propaganda Livestream
War is a cruel and generally catastrophic event, and he who starts a war bears a vast burden of responsibility. As war rages in Ukraine, the contention that Putin is the evilest man who ever lived with the possible exception of Ghengis Kahn and Adolf Hitler is now generally accepted in the West, at least if reports in the Guardian and as broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are to be trusted, as they surely deserve.
However, if you would like to reassure yourself on all points of Russian criminal responsibility for war in Ukraine, you might read David Stockman's essay: The Land Where History Died, Part 1 published for the benefit of a hoard of mysogenistic, anti-semitic white supremacist readers of the Unz Review.
Essentially, he makes the case that Russia had a small point in justification of its resort to war; namely, that the Russian-speaking people of Eastern Ukraine absolutely did not want to be ruled by the corrupt oligarchic friends of President Biden and son Hunter (people who, incidentally, just outlawed the use of the Russian language in education and for all official purposes).
In particular, they resented the Kyiv-ites refusal to adhere to the terms of the agreement they made in 2014 to grant autonomy to the ethnic Russian enclaves of Donesk and Lugansk under a revised Ukrainian Constitution.
What's more, they do not like the way the Ukrainian Azov battalion, noted for its Nazi regalia, have made a habit of shelling Donesk and Lugansk resulting not only in the destruction of property, but in the death of hundreds including many children.
A further point is that Vladimir Putin stands in the shadow of many great Russian leaders, who by virtue of luck, foresight, firmness of purpose and absolute ruthlessness, created and preserved the Russian state for more than a thousand years. Prince Vladimir, for example, Tenth Century ruler of the Kyevan Rus and founder of the Russian Orthodox Church; the monster, Tsar Ivan the Terrible who created the Russian Empire from a loose collection of mediaeval states; Peter the Great who defeated the King of Sweden at the history-shaping battle of Poltava in, yes, Ukraine; and Catherine the Great, whose lover Potemkin returned Kyiv to Russian control, and conquered Crimea, the home of a Tartar Khanate that had made a living by shipping tens of thousands of kidnapped Russian peasants to the slave markets of Constantinople.
So anyone who thinks Putin gives a damn what the Twitterati, Justin Trudeau, or Boris Johnson have to say about his determination to defend Russian citizens and Russian honor in Ukraine is a sad and foolish dupe of Western propaganda.
Related:
Srdja Trifkovic: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Three ScenariosI find it interesting how the West is so aghast at the Russian move while US military personnel sit at oil fields in Syria as we speak. The West has invaded how many middle eastern countries either physically or economically? Only difference is that their kangaroo court (the UN) sanctions their own actions and condemns the actions of those they oppose.
Where was the West for the last 8 years of Donbass shelling by the Ukes? Where was the west as we constantly droned funerals and weddings throughout the middle east? Where was the West when ISIS took over? Where was the West in Libya? I'll tell you where...they were the antagonist in all of it to protect the hegemony at all costs.
The crocodile tears for the Ukes are too much to take.
| 1. Healthcare: a failed system doomed to bankrupt the nation. 2. Defense: a failed system of cartels and Pentagon fiefdoms that have saddled the nation with enormously costly failed weapons systems like the F-35 and the LCS (you know, those weird ships with hulls that slope in, not out, toward the top). 3. Higher Education: a bloated, failed system that is bankrupting an entire generation while mis-educating them for productive roles in the emerging economy. (I cover this in depth in The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy and Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.) 4. Foreign policy: Iraq: a disaster. Afghanistan: a disaster. Libya: a disaster. Syria: a disaster. Need I go on? 5. Political governance: a corrupt system of self-serving elites, lobbyists, pay-to-play, corporate puppet-masters*, and sociopaths who see themselves as above the law. |
