Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
OK.
As it says it concerns all areas except the "occupied territories of Donbas (and Crimea)", it would seem an odd interpretation that it also excludes unoccupied territory.
Some others (though less recent);
Most people in separatist-held areas of Donbas prefer reintegration with Ukraine – new survey
What do the people of the Donbas want for their future?
theconversation.com
The Wagner Group is, as far as I can see, for the most part a tool for Russian intervention in foreign countries with plausible deniability.
Not, I suspect, that that makes it wildly different from Western mercenary outfits.
That's precisely what they are; they train in Russian military barracks, and are owned and operated by a close friend of Vladimir Putin himself, but the Russian government has denied its very existence in the past. Its currently involved in at least three conflicts (Ukraine, Mali, and Central African Republic), acting on behalf of Russian-aligned security forces.
There's the fact it incorporates several explicitly neo-Nazi groups, like Rusich. As does the Ukrainian Azov battalion, though the Wagner Group is between 5 and 8 times the size.
They also have a track record of war crime, and revelling/boasting about it. There are the massacres of civilians and children as mentioned above, but also mutilation of the dead and releasing proud videos of it.
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IF Putin uses tactical nukes, the US said it using tactical nukes is an action it could take against Russia, but I think what's more likely is the US airforce along with willing NATO air forces would get involved, and it would be like the gulf war given how poorly the Russians perform against just Ukraine.
Checkmate Putin.
Checkmate Putin.
Tricky.
There potentially is a point where if Putin presses too hard, NATO may feel obliged to step in more directly. But I think Putin knows that too. I suspect his pronouncements are not really about swaying Western leaders, it's about swaying populaces: his own by sounding tough, and Western populaces by trying to scare them into supporting non-interference.
I fundamentally don't think Putin is going to use nukes no matter what he says. And if he were to try, I am pretty sure there are hard limits to the loyalty of Kremlin staff, who have no intention of giving up their lives, families and country to nuclear armageddon over a couple of Ukrainian oblasts.
I have no love for Putin at all but I don't see him as either completely sociopathic or insane. He has to know that a nuclear first strike may in fact cause NATO to take the gloves off and reduce Moscow, St Peterburg and a lot of other places to cinders. And as you said, there's probably a limit to what Putin's staff would be willing to tolerate if it looked like he were trying to order a Nuclear First strike without a very, very good reason.
Yes...
The United States has been supporting Ukrainian "nationalist" groups in Ukraine since the 1950s-- including groups that had previously collaborated with Hitler. The Yanukovych government was ultimately brought down by threats from the various Nazi groups in Ukraine, many of which are now incorporated officially into the Ukrainian state. Not just the Azov regiment, either; other parts of the armed forces and police. So there is at least one tool of control. What, do you think the forces that brought down Yanukovych stopped wielding influence over the government? The incorporation of the Ukrainian capitalist class into the western ruling class as very junior partners is another element. Rather obviously. And then of course there's the IMF.
You're kidding, right? Ukraine is capitalist. The state pays off international debts by instituting austerity programs at the behest of the IMF. Its oligarchs hide their money overseas. As does Zelensky, who isn't so much an oligarch himself as a servant of one.
And perhaps more importantly, Ukraine has been an economic basketcase for awhile now and yet for some strange reason we're talking about the possibility of worldwide famine due to the war's disruption of agriculture there. That illustrates that Ukraine is rich in, at the very least, agricultural resources. And if Ukraine is rich in agricultural resources, and the world food supply is to some degree reliant on Ukrainian agriculture, then its economy being shit (which it has been) despite that illustrates an exploitative relationship. Resources flow out despite trade balances measured in currency that are negative. Disentangling all that is complicated, but it's pretty safe to say that there is exploitation going on.
Support for Euromaidan never reached 50% of the population. But it did polarize the country based on political lines that had been drawn with the help of the United States since the 1950s (the aforementioned support of neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists and the popularization of their ideology).
So... the same way they do in a bunch of other places: with a lot of investment over a lot of time suited to local conditions. There is also a lot of laundering of money through various NGOs. NED, IRF, and so on. And of course there are the alliances with Ukrainian oligarchs like Kolomoisky and his funding of neo-Nazi groups (and Zelensky too, in a superficially odd juxtaposition.)
The local creation of pro-Maidan propaganda often had foreign funding. Of course, Euromaidan also had some very worthwhile goals that had little to nothing to do with embracing the west (that went mostly ignored in the aftermath and remain unfulfilled) because the Ukrainian state and its institutions were at the time (and today remain) corrupt as fuck. And there was a preexisting audience for anti-Russian nationalism that had been cultivated over decades.
You really don't need 'brainwashing' or the like to explain the protests (nor the counter-protests). Especially as the protests alone weren't anywhere near enough to bring about the result that occurred; that required threatening Yanukovych with assassination by neo-Nazi death squads despite his reaching agreements with the opposition politicians that represented the protestors.
And US/NATO have military advisors in Ukraine. Call them "trainers" if you want.
Gosh, this comparison to Latin America sure is instructive... the CIA in Latin America inflames and exploits existing class and racial antagonisms and in Ukraine it inflames and exploits existing class and racial antagonisms; Ukraine is soOo difFEreNt. Chrystia Freeland is a Ukrainian version of a Miami Cuban expat. So so so so sooo different!
Euromaidan did indeed have foreign funding-- though on a level that's pretty unremarkable. As did anti-Maidan propaganda and resources; the government and security forces were sponsored by foreign investment on a scale that completely dwarfs that of the protesters, and they also received far more direct support, in the form of armaments and personnel.
If we're to judge the outcome of Euromaidan as purely a result of foreign investment in a certain outcome... that explanation has a major hole, in that the side with by far the most foreign investment lost.
Public support for Euromaidan was never polled at reaching 50%. But public support for Russian integration was utterly rock-bottom, yet that's the approach Yanukovych chose to take, in complete reversal from his campaign promise-- heavily compromised as he was by Russian sponsorship. The widespread discontent was fuelled by this, as well as his slide into authoritarianism and dictatorship.
The presence of neo-Fascist battalions is obviously despicable and compromising. And they're present in both powers. You have Azov working on behalf of Ukrainian nationalists, and you also have neo-fascist groups covertly acting on behalf of Russia throughout Europe, including Ukraine.
Euromaidan would have been far more solid and laudable if the neo-Fascist blackmailers had fucked off, and Yanukovych had formed that agreement with the opposition, as he seemingly intended to do. However, we'd have still seen a Russian invasion regardless, so that's by-the-by.
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Putin has said in the past that "why would we want a world without Russia?" If this starts to look like the end of Russian federation, all bets are off. New Russian empire is Putin's dream and if he won't get that, he could throw a hissy fit.
1)That premise isn't clear, at least in any terribly relevant way.
2)Local elites (in this case oligarchs like Kolomoisky) also play a major role. Is the move "oh, the oligarchs are local, guess that makes everything hunky dory?"
3)When you're talking about a movement that succeeded because of threats of assassination, obviously it's more complicated than weighing one stack of currency against another.
4)You seem to be treating "Euromaidan was a perfectly democratic popular uprising" as if it is a null hypothesis, which should strike anyone who thinks about it for more than half a second as silly bullshit.
Russia uses mercenary groups and apparently a number of them are coordinated by some guy who is a fan of Hitler or something. And apparently some of the groups themselves are also fascists according to you, which I'm perfectly willing to accept at face value without investigation because it sounds like something that is probably true and it doesn't benefit but also doesn't particularly harm my argument (this is probably not a mistake, but it is notable that moves like this are how a lot of false information gets repeated by pundits and academics). It also doesn't sound terrifically abnormal among the group of relevant countries.
The United States uses mercenary groups who also are associated with some unsavory characters; it's also not exactly above funding or otherwise supporting fascists directly.
Ukraine toppled its own government and installed a new one with violent threats made by neo-Nazi groups, incorporated many of those neo-Nazi groups into its police and military, and there is good evidence that those neo-Nazi groups directly influence national policy by threatening violence (apart from when they literally overthrew the government). For example, Poroshenko seems to have changed course away from implementing the Minsk agreement because Right Sector started acting up; Zelensky campaigned on (among other things) completing the latest iteration of the Minsk agreement and achieving peace, and for some strange reason he never followed through. Also, neo-Nazis in Ukraine seem eager to brand Zelensky a traitor for so much as talking to Russia. Ukrainian military propaganda could barely go a day in the first few weeks of the war without treating us to some kind of Nazi symbology attached to one of their heroic soldiers. (I can't say what they've been doing more recently as I haven't paid that close attention to Ukrainian military propaganda).
The United States and Ukraine both vote one way on resolutions condemning the glorification of Nazism and racism; in fact they are the only two countries to vote that way. And Russia votes the way. The United States cites "free speech" as its reason. I don't know Ukraine's justification, but if it's also "free speech", that's hilarious in a country that outright bans various political parties that aren't Nazis while leaving undisturbed ones that are, and has a record of repeatedly shutting down television stations.
The United States and Russia both support right-wing and fascist movements in various places that they want to make trouble for while at the same time Nazism is toxic in the public discourse of both countries; both celebrate and sacralize their participation in World War 2 and the defeat of Hitler. Mainstream Ukrainian press and government, on the other hand, does not seem to share that attitude toward Nazis and their holocaust collaborators. Instead, they like to promote the anti-semitic double genocide theory; to be fair to Ukraine, that particular thing happens a bit in the United States and UK as well. The self-declared Nazis don't have that many seats in Ukraine's parliament; that doesn't mean they don't have power nor does it say anything about their influence over the major parties. The fact that Kolomoisky funded Azov and other neo-Nazi groups and Poroshenko and then switched from Poroshenko to Zelensky suggests at the very least that Nazis and more mainstream parties have a common benefactor in at least one Ukrainian oligarch.
I'm not surprised you haven't: the Kremlin and RT are very bad at passing on anyone else's point of view.
Once again, "local elites" were present and prominent in both pro-Maidan and anti-Maidan camps. You've got a tendency to magnify unsavoury elements on the side you dislike and to write out their presence for the side you do, in order to create a narrative of complete illegitimacy.
You're the one who chose to focus attention on the presence of foreign investment. It's stinks a little bit to accuse me of overly focusing on it, once I've pointed out how weak that explanation is.
I didn't actually do that, though. I didn't describe it in such uncritical terms, and nor would I.
What I have done is cast doubt on the characterisation you keep trying to give it: purely a result of foreign meddling and Nazis, with no connection to widespread dissatisfaction at all. And that's just as much simplistic bullshit, too; given that foreign meddling and Nazis were active on both sides (and foreign meddling much more so in the anti-Maidan camp), and that the population certainly were widely dissatisfied with Yanukovych's slide into dictatorship and compromised status as an agent of Russia.
Right. But you've been using the presence of Ukrainian neo-fascists to delegitimise both Maidan and the current Ukrainian government. This was kind of the point of my bringing it up in the first place: when it's convenient for the argument, the presence of the far-right is beyond-the-pale, shows how the government is ultra-nationalist and indefensible. And when it's not convenient for the argument, the presence of the far-right is just normal for these countries, 'nothing to see here'.
Ukraine toppled a government which was sliding into dictatorship, jailing its main opponents, and acting as a paid proxy for a hostile state. Poroshenko reneged on election promises under pressure from the far-right; Yanukovych reneged on election promises under financial inducement from Russia. Now, Poroshenko's broken promise, to implement Minsk, is somewhat more complicated by the fact that the other signatory to Minsk-- Russia-- was constantly breaking it, through the sponsorship of insurgency and the covert use of Russian military personnel in Ukraine.
Is it equally hilarious for Russia to vote the way it does, given that it itself sponsors racist and neo-fascist movements?
This is frankly bollocks. Ukrainian press and mainstream politicians condemn Nazism constantly. Zelensky gave a long speech just today about the horrors of Nazism in the second world war, and Ukrainian press does the same quite often. The Ukrainian press and government show far, far more tolerance and acceptance towards minority groups than that Russian government.
Russia, on the other hand... 1) targets holocaust memorials for bombing raids; 2) claims Hitler had "Jewish blood"; 3) states that "denazification" and "de-Ukrainianisation" are the same thing; 4) promotes Molotov's grandson to a prominent diplomatic role in the current conflict.
Yeah, they condemn "Nazism" in public. Purely so that hostility can be manipulated and directed towards other countries and other people. As Kadyrov herds gay people into camps for extermination, with Putin's support and blessing, as the Nazis did.
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Even if we take that statement at face value, the United States also supported Saddam Hussein's wing of the Ba'ath party and the Islamist militants who became the Taliban.
"Support" does not translate into material control without the ability to leverage it. Where is that ability, in this case?
The Yanukovych government was brought down by a parliamentary vote removing it from power, coupled with the occupation of important government buildings by protestors.
The idea that a government which deployed armed forces on the streets of its capital to quell domestic dissent and overruled parliament in order to grant police extensive emergencies powers was forced to flee the country because of fears of Nazi infiltration of the police and military is a sick joke. Let's not forget the Russian-trained security services using live ammunition on protestors..
How is that control exercised? Where is the ability to leverage it?
Russia is also capitalist.
The idea that pre-2014 Ukraine, economically aligned with Russia, was somehow less capitalist or less integrated into the global financial system doesn't even qualify as a sick joke, because it's too dumb to be funny. 60% of Russia's pre-invasion GDP stemmed from natural resource extraction. Who do you imagine is paying for those resources?
You know this, it's why you're so concerned about the morality of sanctions, because you know as well as I do that the Russian economy is entirely dependent on foreign capital, industry and markets and that depriving it of those things will cripple its economy and harm its population. National capitalism is not a meaningful alternative to global capitalism, and even if it was Russia is the worst possible example of a country attempting to build such an alternative. Again, the Russian economy is a kleptocratic neoliberal nightmare whose leaders have opened it up to the worst forms of capitalist exploitation in exchange for the opportunity to enrich themselves, legally or otherwise.
Vladimir Putin is one of the richest men in the world. We don't know exactly how rich he is because his assets are not publicly disclosed and are certainly not held in Russia, but a couple of billion dollars of them turned up in the Panama papers. In total, Putin is probably somewhere in the Mark Zuckerberg league of obscene wealth. Some of that money was likely expropriated from wealthy political opponents, but a lot of it almost certainly came from buying stakes in formerly state-owned industries his government had privatized.
And this is your alternative to global capitalism? Because if so, the long dark night at the end of history is looking fucking grim..
Except they clearly didn't represent the protestors. They had to publicly apologise to their supporters for signing the agreement. They were booed and heckled at their own protest. Their actions were seen as a betrayal of the objectives of the activism in which they had participated. At the same time, Yanukovych's signing of the agreement was seen as a betrayal by the police, who (justifiably) feared the government would shift the blame for the death toll among protestors onto them and who were consequentially less willing to offer the kind of violent opposition they had been engaged in up until that point.
Let's be real here. Yanukovych's life was very definitely in danger had he not fled the country. The country was certainly full of armed people (both paramilitaries and civilians who had seized arms during occupations of government buildings) who wanted to kill him and members of his government, but largely because said government had utilized the security services to shoot and kill its political opponents and protesting civilians. Many people, including me, would say that you don't get to come back from that.
Yanukovych could have walked away with his hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen wealth. He chose to cling to power and let poor people die for his decision. Don't expect any tears for him from me.
No, they don't.
The US pulled its military personnel (consisting of a few dozen national guardsmen on a training excercise) out of Ukraine due to the Russian buildup. It also pulled out most of its diplomatic staff.
So again, where is the mechanism of control?
And yet you cannot show any evidence of this, or even explain how it happens, you just find it impossible to imagine that anything in the world occurs without an American making it happen..
Very convincing.
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Why Russia Went to War Now - Antiwar.com
In April 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky received 73% of the run-off vote and was elected President of Ukraine on a platform that featured making peace with - Ted Snider for Antiwar.com
The United States et al. are able to manipulate Ukraine in a variety of ways because it is poor and because its current ruling class and the Nazis they've funded and allowed to fester are arbitrarily opposed to any rapprochement with Russia, which makes them almost by default subservient to the goals of mainly the United States because that is from whom they can beg for arms and alms. The funding of anti-Russian propaganda in Ukraine is both foreign and domestic; that domestic energy to serve the interests of US foreign policy has been created by decades of support for its nationalists doesn't make Ukraine any less a satellite.
Oh, interesting.
So there are two competing theories about who was actually shooting people. One is that the police was shooting protestors. The other is that Nazis were shooting protestors (and police). Or perhaps those are two extremes on a spectrum of possibilities. In any case...
Given that it was the Nazis who were on the side who came to power and, as you allege, that it was the police that was shooting people, why didn't investigations by the new government produce any shooters? Why was the Euromaidan demand for justice for the heavenly hundred never fulfilled by the government that existed as a result of Euromaidan?
The 'Snipers' Massacre' on the Maidan in Ukraine
The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West
papers.ssrn.com
Coverage in western media blamed the Yanukovych government. And you buy that because western media is always accurate about such things. Take the justification for regime change at face value uncritically. Why not?
For the same reason that Yanukovych had to leave. Their "supporters" included a lot of murderous thugs. Your insistence on downplaying the role of Nazis in overthrowing Ukraine's government is a bit weird.
O... K?
This doesn't really have anything to do with anything relevant. But yes, unfortunately it is.
What fever dream gave you the impression that I like the current structure of the Russian economy? That's so far out of
-- but I certainly don't think that.
Hardly arbitrary, now, is it? Russia has proven itself an absolutely dismal regional patriarch: endlessly threatening destruction on any neighbours that don't toe the line, waging covert (as well as not so covert) wars against them, installing puppet regimes, and annexing land. And then when they do take control, you have mass extrajudicial killings, reporters hunted down, gay people exterminated. And with Russia stating that the existence of the Ukrainian state is unacceptable, and that they cannot be allowed to be neutral, its clear the only form of "rapprochement" Russia would ever brook is domination.
That's funny, this reads as if you're being sarcastic, but you've been uncritically repeating justifications for regime change in Ukraine for quite a few pages now.
No, it's pretty arbitrary.
I don't particularly care whether Zelensky holds on to power (aside from a general wish for international proletarian revolution, which isn't particularly relevant here). Something should be done so that Ukraine is not a hotspot that could lead to nuclear escalation. That means engaging with reality, not some silly fantasy where Russia backs down because you want them to and they recognize that, actually, Silvanus was right about their security not really being in any danger.