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.
