I recently made the argument with Trump leery friends that, with his election, we have pulled back from the brink of nuclear war unless the Biden administration does something insane before January 20. And here we are. I still suspect Biden is a mere puppet and see the evil hand of Obama behind this lunacy.
Remember when Obama told Putin he’ll have more flexibility after the election and when Hillary displayed a reset button to improve relations with Putin’s dictatorship? The left loved Putin just as they once loved Hitler. So what happened?
All I know is this seems too scripted. I smell a rat.
I think we’re about to discover why so much effort was expended to acquire 81 million “votes” for the kid sniffer but not for the cackler by watching who benefits before 20 January.
Imagine the money you could make by shorting the dollar if you knew in advance a US carrier would be sunk by a hypersonic missile or some other Black Swan event?
So essentially it's now down to Zelenskyy not to use the long range missiles that the US supplies. That should make absolute sense to him, if he wants Trump to help negotiate a peace. The outgoing Democrats' move is a total mistake, but Blinken is not the only one who can stop the escalation. If Zelenskyy wants even the chance to survive and spend the billions he'd filched, he'd better step back from the stupidity.
True, the Ukrainians still have the option of stepping back from the brink and being sensible. I’d put them despite their faults as slightly more likely to do that then globalist western leaders are.
In providing a response I will endeavour to show that Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, otherwise known as a Special Military Operation (SMO), was in violation of international law and moraly unacceptable.
Prior to doing so however I agree that Biden's decision to send more weapons to Ukraine at this time is ill-advised and will unnecessarily escalate the situation and make it more difficult for Trump's team to help bring an end to the conflict which is its stated intention. The Biden administration is essentially in 'care taker' mode and shouldn't be doing anything to jeopardise the incoming administration.
UKRAINIAN SOVEREIGNTY
Ukraine was a former republic of the Soviet Union known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic although the Ukrainian people voted overwhelmingly by 92% of the voting public to become a sovereign independent state when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
However Putin has never recognised Ukraine's sovereignty. In July 2021 he released his own 5,000 word essay titled "On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians" in which he argued that Ukraine doesnt exist as a country and has no right to sovereignty at any time in the future. But stated that aong with Belarus and Russia Ukraine forms one Eastern European Slavic Race that should be united. In his rather rambling interview with Tucker Carlson he stated that Ukraine was an "artificial state". So the notion that Ukraine is a separate entity to Russia and may want to seek alliances with Westen Europe, through membership of the EU for example, is anathema to Putin. So we have this war to keep Ukraine within Russia's orbit of influence or control like Belarus very much is.
In the wake of the Israeli - Hamas War Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov have been talking up the need for countries to respect the principle of "sovereignty" when hypocritically they have broken it with their invasions of Georgia in 2008, another sovereign independent state, and now Ukraine.
RUSSIA'S FAILURE UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Russia is a member of the United Nations with a permanent seat on the Security Council and is therefore bound by its protocols one of which is to not act aggressively towards other countries but to engage in dialogue to resolve disputes. By invading Georgia and Ukraine Russia has acted contrary to these provisions and has therefore violated international law.
NATO EXPANSION
A reason for the SMO is Putin's concern about NATO expanding towards Russia's western borders but why is Ukraine paying for it by being invaded and its people and cities being bombed? At the time of the launch of the SMO Ukraine was not a member of NATO nor had it formally applied for membership. It didn't have nuclear weapons and had virtually no airforce or navy to speak of so what existential threat did it pose to Russia? The irony is that Putin is acting violently against people he refers to as his Fellow Slavic Brothers for where NATO might or might not expand to. Cynically, why doesn't he take out NATO's headquarters in Brussels instead of killing his own people across the border.
NAZIS IN UKRAINE
In his address to the Russian people to announce his SMO Putin stated, among other things, that Ukraine needed to be de-Nazified because the country was being governed by Nazis. This is an astonishing claim for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's president Zelensky is Jewish who lost family in the Holocaust and there other members of his cabinet who are also Jewish. Zelensky had a grandfather who fought alongside his Soviet Brothers against the Germans on the Eastern Front in WW2. Secondly, in Ukraine's 2019 elections Zelensky's Servant of the People Party received 73% of the vote while the nationalist parties who claim to represent the so-called Azov Nazis received less than 3% of the vote and occupy no seats in the country's parliament. So Putin's claim that Ukraine is governed by Nazis to the extent that it needed to be brutally invaded and cleansed of Nazis is a hideous lie.
It's worth mentioning that the real Nazis in history were the National Socialist German Workers Party during the 3rd Reich - 1933 to 1945 whose ideology of exterminating people on purely racial grounds seems unmatched in the 20th or 21st centuries.
US PROXY WAR AGAINST RUSSIA
The oft repeated claim that the conflict is really a US proxy war against Russia doesn't make sense for a number of reasons. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against Putin's agression through any means it seems fit and about 53 nations are providing assistance although not all military assistance. If it's acceptable for Putin to source military drones from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea then surely it's acceptable for Ukraine to seek similar assistance. And because Iran and North Korea are supplying weapons to Russia to help it fight Ukraine does this mean that they are in a proxy war against Ukraine? The reality is that Putin attacked Ukraine first not that Ukraine attacked Russia first so the US could then join the fight to defeat Russia.
SO-CALLED COUP IN UKRAINE IN 2014
In short president Viktor Yanukovych was removed from the presidency by 328 to 0 (about 73% of the parliament's 450 members) for abandoning his position and fleeing the country for Moscow and leaving the country without an elected leader.
The genesis of Yanukovych's demise occurred when after years of negotiation he suddenly, under pressure from Putin, reneged on signing an Association Agreement with the EU and instead signed a trade deal with Russia. This resulted in mass protests against him and his government which commenced in November 2013 and culminated in the "Euromaidan" which occurred in Kiev in Februrary 2014. To quell the protests Janukovych ordered his police onto the streets which resulted in over 100 people being shot. In the mayhem Yanukovych became a fugitive and fled the country on 21 February for exile in Moscow. It was on 22 February that the Ukrainian Parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) met to remove him from the presidency and call for new presidential elections which occurred in May 2014 with the election of Petro Poroschenko with approximately 55% of the vote.
The fact is Yanukovych was removed from the presidency by the people of Ukraine through its parliament not through a coup US backed or otherwise.
What happened in Kiev in February 2014 which lead to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych is referred to as the Revolution of Dignity or the Ukrainian Revolution.
14,000 PEOPLE KILLED IN THE DONBAS
It is correct to say that 14,000 people died in the fighting known as the Donbas War between 2014 and approximately 2020. Some commentators and bloggers state that the 14,000 is the number of Russisns or ethnic Russians killed by Ukrainian forces but this is not correct. This figure is the total number of deaths on both sides of the conflict - Russians and Ukrainians - combatants and non-combatants. It is made up as follows:
6,500. Russisns, including militia groups from the DPR and LPR.
4,400 Ukrainian forces.
3,400 civilians on both sides.
Source: United Nations
ZELENSKY PUTIN COMPARISONS
I'm not sure the purpose of making comparisons between Zelensky and Putin and coming to the conclusion that Zelensky is a greater dictator than Putin. What has this got to do with the causation of the conflict? But if I was to make such comparisons I would say that unlike Putin Zelensky hasn't invaded a territory inside his own country like Putin has by starting the 2nd Chechen War a semi-autonimous republic in the Russian Federation in which tens of thousands were killed and its capital Grozny virtually destroyed or unlike Putin Zelensky hasn't invaded two sovereign independent states in violation of international law or unlike Putin Zelensky hasn't had a history of opposition leaders and journalists die in unusual circumstances when the common denominator has been that they have been opposed to Putin's regime.
Interesting that in the early days of the conflict independent media sites in Russia that published pieces against the SMO were forced to shut down and citizens who protested against the war in large cities such as St Petersburg and Moscow were dragged off the streets and charged. The only acceptable reporting on the war is the one aired by the Kremlin controlled media.
CONCLUSION
It's unconsciousable that in the 21st century a nuclear power would attack a neighbour especially when Putin says that the Ukrainians have the same ethnicity as the Russians.
Both Zelensky and Putin have Russian as their mother tongue and the tragedy is that they could have just sat down as men and resolved their differences and determined a path ahead to ensure a secure and peaceful Eastern Europe. It didn't happen.
If he didn't want to talk to Zelensky Putin could have addressed his concerns through the United Nations or the Security Council but instead chose the way of violence.
Violence is never never a good option to resolve problems in the 21st century especially when the world is awash with nuclear weapons.
The concept of the 'just war' is part of the national mythos and identity of Britain. Our schools teach early about the heroes who left our shores to do battle and die on the European continent, to rescue the victimised from their oppressors and prevent ourselves from enduring the same fate.
While the ideas of conscription or a draft is contentious in modern times - the concept sullied by various modern unjust wars and conflicts we have entered - it remains ingrained in us that if our nation calls us to defend of these isles, it is good and proper to accept it and to fight. Those who don't meet the call in such times would likely be scorned as cowards.
Even in this context, I say without reservation that if my nation calls upon me to fight Russia, I will not do it. I will not fight for a political class that does not respect me or my people. I do not consider it 'just' to kill and die for an unjust cause. By which I mean, I have no desire to participate in, and by doing so escalate a conflict on the side of those who provoked it.
Excellent summary , an essential read for many
Thanks John. 😀
I recently made the argument with Trump leery friends that, with his election, we have pulled back from the brink of nuclear war unless the Biden administration does something insane before January 20. And here we are. I still suspect Biden is a mere puppet and see the evil hand of Obama behind this lunacy.
Biden is of course a puppet. The war whores want a NATO-US war with Russia. It’s not a terrible outcome to be avoided, for them, it’s the aim.
Remember when Obama told Putin he’ll have more flexibility after the election and when Hillary displayed a reset button to improve relations with Putin’s dictatorship? The left loved Putin just as they once loved Hitler. So what happened?
All I know is this seems too scripted. I smell a rat.
I think we’re about to discover why so much effort was expended to acquire 81 million “votes” for the kid sniffer but not for the cackler by watching who benefits before 20 January.
Imagine the money you could make by shorting the dollar if you knew in advance a US carrier would be sunk by a hypersonic missile or some other Black Swan event?
That goes in the ‘nothing is too sick for them to do it’ category. It’s possible.
Well said!
Cheers 😀
So essentially it's now down to Zelenskyy not to use the long range missiles that the US supplies. That should make absolute sense to him, if he wants Trump to help negotiate a peace. The outgoing Democrats' move is a total mistake, but Blinken is not the only one who can stop the escalation. If Zelenskyy wants even the chance to survive and spend the billions he'd filched, he'd better step back from the stupidity.
True, the Ukrainians still have the option of stepping back from the brink and being sensible. I’d put them despite their faults as slightly more likely to do that then globalist western leaders are.
In providing a response I will endeavour to show that Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, otherwise known as a Special Military Operation (SMO), was in violation of international law and moraly unacceptable.
Prior to doing so however I agree that Biden's decision to send more weapons to Ukraine at this time is ill-advised and will unnecessarily escalate the situation and make it more difficult for Trump's team to help bring an end to the conflict which is its stated intention. The Biden administration is essentially in 'care taker' mode and shouldn't be doing anything to jeopardise the incoming administration.
UKRAINIAN SOVEREIGNTY
Ukraine was a former republic of the Soviet Union known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic although the Ukrainian people voted overwhelmingly by 92% of the voting public to become a sovereign independent state when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
However Putin has never recognised Ukraine's sovereignty. In July 2021 he released his own 5,000 word essay titled "On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians" in which he argued that Ukraine doesnt exist as a country and has no right to sovereignty at any time in the future. But stated that aong with Belarus and Russia Ukraine forms one Eastern European Slavic Race that should be united. In his rather rambling interview with Tucker Carlson he stated that Ukraine was an "artificial state". So the notion that Ukraine is a separate entity to Russia and may want to seek alliances with Westen Europe, through membership of the EU for example, is anathema to Putin. So we have this war to keep Ukraine within Russia's orbit of influence or control like Belarus very much is.
In the wake of the Israeli - Hamas War Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov have been talking up the need for countries to respect the principle of "sovereignty" when hypocritically they have broken it with their invasions of Georgia in 2008, another sovereign independent state, and now Ukraine.
RUSSIA'S FAILURE UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Russia is a member of the United Nations with a permanent seat on the Security Council and is therefore bound by its protocols one of which is to not act aggressively towards other countries but to engage in dialogue to resolve disputes. By invading Georgia and Ukraine Russia has acted contrary to these provisions and has therefore violated international law.
NATO EXPANSION
A reason for the SMO is Putin's concern about NATO expanding towards Russia's western borders but why is Ukraine paying for it by being invaded and its people and cities being bombed? At the time of the launch of the SMO Ukraine was not a member of NATO nor had it formally applied for membership. It didn't have nuclear weapons and had virtually no airforce or navy to speak of so what existential threat did it pose to Russia? The irony is that Putin is acting violently against people he refers to as his Fellow Slavic Brothers for where NATO might or might not expand to. Cynically, why doesn't he take out NATO's headquarters in Brussels instead of killing his own people across the border.
NAZIS IN UKRAINE
In his address to the Russian people to announce his SMO Putin stated, among other things, that Ukraine needed to be de-Nazified because the country was being governed by Nazis. This is an astonishing claim for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's president Zelensky is Jewish who lost family in the Holocaust and there other members of his cabinet who are also Jewish. Zelensky had a grandfather who fought alongside his Soviet Brothers against the Germans on the Eastern Front in WW2. Secondly, in Ukraine's 2019 elections Zelensky's Servant of the People Party received 73% of the vote while the nationalist parties who claim to represent the so-called Azov Nazis received less than 3% of the vote and occupy no seats in the country's parliament. So Putin's claim that Ukraine is governed by Nazis to the extent that it needed to be brutally invaded and cleansed of Nazis is a hideous lie.
It's worth mentioning that the real Nazis in history were the National Socialist German Workers Party during the 3rd Reich - 1933 to 1945 whose ideology of exterminating people on purely racial grounds seems unmatched in the 20th or 21st centuries.
US PROXY WAR AGAINST RUSSIA
The oft repeated claim that the conflict is really a US proxy war against Russia doesn't make sense for a number of reasons. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against Putin's agression through any means it seems fit and about 53 nations are providing assistance although not all military assistance. If it's acceptable for Putin to source military drones from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea then surely it's acceptable for Ukraine to seek similar assistance. And because Iran and North Korea are supplying weapons to Russia to help it fight Ukraine does this mean that they are in a proxy war against Ukraine? The reality is that Putin attacked Ukraine first not that Ukraine attacked Russia first so the US could then join the fight to defeat Russia.
SO-CALLED COUP IN UKRAINE IN 2014
In short president Viktor Yanukovych was removed from the presidency by 328 to 0 (about 73% of the parliament's 450 members) for abandoning his position and fleeing the country for Moscow and leaving the country without an elected leader.
The genesis of Yanukovych's demise occurred when after years of negotiation he suddenly, under pressure from Putin, reneged on signing an Association Agreement with the EU and instead signed a trade deal with Russia. This resulted in mass protests against him and his government which commenced in November 2013 and culminated in the "Euromaidan" which occurred in Kiev in Februrary 2014. To quell the protests Janukovych ordered his police onto the streets which resulted in over 100 people being shot. In the mayhem Yanukovych became a fugitive and fled the country on 21 February for exile in Moscow. It was on 22 February that the Ukrainian Parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) met to remove him from the presidency and call for new presidential elections which occurred in May 2014 with the election of Petro Poroschenko with approximately 55% of the vote.
The fact is Yanukovych was removed from the presidency by the people of Ukraine through its parliament not through a coup US backed or otherwise.
What happened in Kiev in February 2014 which lead to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych is referred to as the Revolution of Dignity or the Ukrainian Revolution.
14,000 PEOPLE KILLED IN THE DONBAS
It is correct to say that 14,000 people died in the fighting known as the Donbas War between 2014 and approximately 2020. Some commentators and bloggers state that the 14,000 is the number of Russisns or ethnic Russians killed by Ukrainian forces but this is not correct. This figure is the total number of deaths on both sides of the conflict - Russians and Ukrainians - combatants and non-combatants. It is made up as follows:
6,500. Russisns, including militia groups from the DPR and LPR.
4,400 Ukrainian forces.
3,400 civilians on both sides.
Source: United Nations
ZELENSKY PUTIN COMPARISONS
I'm not sure the purpose of making comparisons between Zelensky and Putin and coming to the conclusion that Zelensky is a greater dictator than Putin. What has this got to do with the causation of the conflict? But if I was to make such comparisons I would say that unlike Putin Zelensky hasn't invaded a territory inside his own country like Putin has by starting the 2nd Chechen War a semi-autonimous republic in the Russian Federation in which tens of thousands were killed and its capital Grozny virtually destroyed or unlike Putin Zelensky hasn't invaded two sovereign independent states in violation of international law or unlike Putin Zelensky hasn't had a history of opposition leaders and journalists die in unusual circumstances when the common denominator has been that they have been opposed to Putin's regime.
Interesting that in the early days of the conflict independent media sites in Russia that published pieces against the SMO were forced to shut down and citizens who protested against the war in large cities such as St Petersburg and Moscow were dragged off the streets and charged. The only acceptable reporting on the war is the one aired by the Kremlin controlled media.
CONCLUSION
It's unconsciousable that in the 21st century a nuclear power would attack a neighbour especially when Putin says that the Ukrainians have the same ethnicity as the Russians.
Both Zelensky and Putin have Russian as their mother tongue and the tragedy is that they could have just sat down as men and resolved their differences and determined a path ahead to ensure a secure and peaceful Eastern Europe. It didn't happen.
If he didn't want to talk to Zelensky Putin could have addressed his concerns through the United Nations or the Security Council but instead chose the way of violence.
Violence is never never a good option to resolve problems in the 21st century especially when the world is awash with nuclear weapons.
Test
The concept of the 'just war' is part of the national mythos and identity of Britain. Our schools teach early about the heroes who left our shores to do battle and die on the European continent, to rescue the victimised from their oppressors and prevent ourselves from enduring the same fate.
While the ideas of conscription or a draft is contentious in modern times - the concept sullied by various modern unjust wars and conflicts we have entered - it remains ingrained in us that if our nation calls us to defend of these isles, it is good and proper to accept it and to fight. Those who don't meet the call in such times would likely be scorned as cowards.
Even in this context, I say without reservation that if my nation calls upon me to fight Russia, I will not do it. I will not fight for a political class that does not respect me or my people. I do not consider it 'just' to kill and die for an unjust cause. By which I mean, I have no desire to participate in, and by doing so escalate a conflict on the side of those who provoked it.