Russia and Ukraine: Trying to Understand Both Sides Does Not Minimize Truth and Freedom
There is a simple answer for every difficult question, and it is usually wrong. After deciphering the bloody mess in Ukraine, I’m even more convinced that is true.
Most people think contentious, controversial, and complex issues can be decided by identifying the good and the bad; however, the worse conflicts happen when both sides are equally right and wrong or, in this case, some right and much wrong on both sides. The war in Ukraine is not a choice between good and evil but between evil and more evil.
Whatever the level of blame in the mess, the horrific bombing of innocent people is enough to make a stone cry.
It must be remembered that NATO was formed in 1949 after WW II to protect Europe from the aggressive Soviet Union consisting of Russia and 15 “republics.” Ukraine was one of the republics. Russia has been a source of trouble, even evil, since 1917. So, a rule of thumb is if Russia is part of an equation, it includes duplicity, danger, and destruction.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine quickly became an independent state, with over 92% of its citizens voting for independence. The international community recognized their independence. Since breaking from the Soviet Union, Ukraine has wavered between Moscow and the West, surviving compromises, conflicts, and corruption yet maintaining its “democracy” intact. Ukraine has long been known as the most corrupt nation in Europe and remains the third-most-corrupt country in Europe, after Russia and Azerbaijan.
After you think of the oligarchs, think Joe and Hunter Biden, the Ukrainian gas company, and the laptop caper.
Ukrainians moved closer to the West and away from Russia as violence continued in two eastern Russian-speaking provinces (Donetsk and Luhansk) on Russia’s border and when Russia took Crimea. Spouting independence, the two provinces (known as the Donbas) remain internationally recognized as part of Ukraine while President Putin now recognizes them as “Russian.” Crimea has already been swallowed by the Russian Bear.
In April 2014, Russian-supported separatist forces attacked government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk (consisting of almost 4 million people) whose major industries are coal mining and steel production. Those are two significant products vital to Russia. On February 21, 2022, Putin recognized the two provinces as independent states, and leaders of the two regions asked the world leaders to accept their independent status. That recognition was probably to lay a foundation for moving Russian troops into Ukraine to “keep order.”
The deadly bombing today by Russians is them trying to “keep order!” No, it is Russian control.
The eight-year Donbas war against the people in the two Ukrainian provinces is hardly mentioned in the media! It seems the killing of Ukrainians by other Ukrainians is not newsworthy. It doesn’t fit the narrative that all Ukrainians are good guys wearing white hats while Russians are bad guys wearing brown shirts with attached swastikas—neo-Nazis.
It appears that most of Putin’s reasons for his invasion of Ukraine revolve around his insistence that the Donbas belongs to Russia since most of the citizens have Russian roots. Russian-backed separatists took control of the region in 2014, and the violence in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 14,000 people in the eight years since.
It seems the mainstream media has little knowledge of those deaths.
The democratically-elected (in 2010) Ukrainian President Yanukovych began to pursue closer ties with Russia in November 2013, causing major street protests in Kyiv. The Ukrainians know their history of the 1932-1933 Stalin-organized famine where at least 4 million Ukrainians starved to death. As Ukrainians were dying, 1 million tons of grain were exported to the West by Stalin, a reason for deep hatred and fear of Russia. It was a staged famine or genocide.
Possibly because Yanukovych nuzzled his head into the fur of the Russian Bear, his government was overthrown by the Obama administration in February 2014 with the direct assistance of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State under Obama. She was the State Department’s lead person for Ukrainian affairs pushing European nations to take a harder line against Putin’s expansion into Europe.
To be very clear, a new Ukrainian government was installed in a coup d’état orchestrated by U.S. agents under the corrupt Obama administration, with Victoria Nuland (currently the under Secretary of State in the Biden administration) as the mastermind. Keep in mind the U.S. Government wanted and got a Ukrainian government rabidly anti-Russian.
But then, our CIA has been removing and installing national “leaders” for decades, all financed by you and me. Yet, U.S. hypocritical leaders talk about honesty, integrity, legitimacy, fairness, and good government. Enough to gag a maggot.
Of course, an independent nation has a right to call the shots about what is a danger to their existence, but one must ask how independent Ukraine is after the U.S. installed its leaders. Furthermore, do U.S. officials want to control Ukraine to contain and conceal their own massive corruption?
Think, well, you know.
A January 28, 2014, recorded phone call was leaked on YouTube on February 4, 2014, between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The call reveals that after reviewing the three opposition candidates for the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine, the U.S. State Department had selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk!
About this time, sane people ask why U.S. Government officials make decisions about who serves in a European government. You need to understand that this was not a legitimate revolution by dissatisfied citizens wanting to change their government. It was a bloody coup d’état. Revolutions are legal, and coups are illegal, immoral, and often impossible to be differentiated from a revolution. That coup literally makes Obama and his henchmen (and women) international criminals.
The record must be clear when and if a nuclear war breaks out: those responsible must be held accountable for the dislocation, destruction, deprivation, and deaths.
Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014 ahead of an impeachment vote, eventually arriving in Russia. He was followed in office by Oleksandr Turchynov, a Baptist minister, who served as acting president for 115 days. Maybe he didn’t last long because he said people who use drugs or promote sodomy were practicing perversions. I’m still trying to understand what is wrong with his statement. Don’t all sane, honest, moral, informed, and awake people believe that?
In May 2014, Petro Poroshenko was elected Ukrainian president and enthusiastically promoted the Ukrainian language, removed remnants of Communism such as street names, etc., and gave more authority to local leaders.
Sounds good to me.
In 2019, Poroshenko was defeated for president by comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy while the besieged nation suffered from a decaying economy and the conflict with Russia. Zelenskyy is being praised as brave, courageous, and fearless, and he may be. While he does not have the bloody history of Putin, he is not the brave warrior riding a white horse leading his troops into the fray.
One does not have to be a paragon of personal virtue to condemn the Russian invasion and constant bombing of civilians in Ukraine. Still, few wish to consider the Ukrainian government’s eight-year war on the Eastern Ukrainian provinces, which had refused to support the 2014 coup orchestrated by the U.S. State Department.
In an emotional speech on February 21, 2022, Putin made it clear that he believes all of Ukraine is a part of Russia. He also believes in Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Peter Pan. Putin praises and promotes nationalism in Russia but resists it in Ukraine, and he doesn’t seem to realize by bombing Ukraine, he has thrust the nation deeper into the arms of the West.
Of course, Putin already has Crimea and Belarus as part of his rebuilding of the disbanded, disgraced, and despised Soviet Empire. Still, he wants to add other nations such as Moldova, Romania, Poland, etc. It seems the Russian Bear has an insatiable appetite.
However, NATO or the U.N. is responsible for stopping him, not America.
After the 2014 coup, Ukrainian officials required the Ukrainian language to be used in courts, schools, politics, and most entertainment venues. Separatists in the eastern provinces threw a fit and rebelled against the government. And Russia invaded, backing the separatists, which led to a very bloody war that lasted eight years.
Alleged oppression of Russian-speaking Ukrainians was one of the key reasons cited by the Kremlin in spring 2014 to justify Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The language issue has also been central to the ongoing Kremlin-led separatist war in eastern Ukraine.
I think both Russian and Ukrainian officials are authoritarian thugs, and no decent western leader should shake their hands and smile, seemingly giving them undeserved respectability. At times, respectable national leaders must deal with thugs in striped pants but should not treat them as gentlemen. But then, many of those “respectable leaders” (Russian, Ukrainians, Americans, etc.) are little more than thugs themselves.
In May 2014, Putin jubilantly accepted the independence vote in Crimea (who voted to be annexed to Russia), but he rejected the votes in Donetsk and Luhansk, located on Russia’s border. Russian-backed separatist forces have occupied the region since the 2014 invasion.
Ukrainian neo-Nazis and other right-wing militias and Islamic fanatics were supplied with a bounty of weapons to kill ethnic Russians in the east resisting the political leadership in Kyiv.
Putin and Russian officials became apocalyptic when they discovered plans to place nuclear missiles in Ukraine, less than ten minutes flight-time from Moscow. Russia was promised by NATO in 1991 it would not expand eastward.
Maybe Putin remembers Lenin’s statement, “Treaties are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” While the pledge not to expand NATO was not a treaty, it was a pledge or promise. The secretary-general of NATO lied, saying, NATO “has never promised not to expand.”
But it is even worse because when the USSR disbanded, promises made included that Ukraine was to remain non-aligned, meaning Ukraine would not climb into bed with the West or the East. NATO was to protect Europe from Russia, so Russia considers NATO an enemy.
To be fair and consistent, one must remember that each nation must do what is best for that nation, whether or not the free world approves. But that never justifies corruption, broken treaties, and aggression.
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America got her knickers in a knot when the Soviets placed nuclear missiles 103 miles from America’s border. Fact is, we almost went to war with the USSR because of those missiles. Similarly, after America’s Ukrainian coup in 2014, Russia has reason to fear NATO nuclear missiles not just near but on Russia’s border. To the Russians, that’s like a rattlesnake nest near a daycare center.
NATO promised in April 2008 that Ukraine would one day be a member of NATO without any definite promises as to when. From Putin’s perspective, he has a reason to be concerned if Ukraine joins NATO. After all, he has as much right to be concerned with missiles on his border as the U.S. has if missiles were placed in Mexico or Canada.
Do all nations have sovereignty or not? Do the bad guys have the same national rights as the good guys?
The mainstream media have twisted the events in Ukraine like a pretzel to convince their subscribers that the new regime in Kyiv consists of genuine, reformist, freedom-fighters, and committed patriots, standing against “Russian aggression.” Some are, however, while Russian aggression is obvious, the liberal media are loath to admit many of the Ukrainian “patriots” are neo-Nazi fighters, Muslim warlords, and ultra-nationalists who demand a Ukraine without ethnic Russians.
On July 7, 2015, even The New York Times admitted the importance of the neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists in waging war against cultural Russian insurgents in the east. The Times also reported that these far-right forces had been joined by Islamic militants. Some of those jihadists have been called “brothers” of the hyper-brutal Islamic State. It seems acceptable for a mixture of various separatist groups, neo-Nazis, and Islamic terrorists to kill Russians.
With the attacks upon innocent Ukrainians in recent weeks, it is easy to detest Putin and praise Zelenskyy but it is for sure not right verses wrong. They are both wrong.
War does make strange bedfellows.
Not mentioned by the media is that this Ukrainian-Russian War has been managed by elite globalists such as Obama, Soros, Schwab, Gates, etc., who are not interested in your peace and your freedom but their power and their money.
But that’s another article. As for now, a pox on both their houses and a prayer for the innocent.
Content syndicated from TheBlueStateConservative.com with permission.
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