Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Ukraine is a joke, but people in the West take it seriously

 

When it comes to making a new post, I've been considering two choices. I can make a post about what I have, what I've seen, what I know, and what I've read. Or I can make a post about the conflict in Ukraine, which began on February 24 of this year. In addition, there's also the fact that I didn't want to make a post of my own this early. As I've pointed out in one of my earlier posts, I am not running a propaganda blog and I don't make many posts. Still, since some people have been urging me to post something about the situation in Ukraine, I think that now is not a bad time to finally provide some of my thoughts and knowledge about the conflict. Frankly, what's going on in Ukraine or in the Russian Federation doesn't really interest me much. These two states, especially Ukraine, have become embarrassments after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They don't make or do anything of worth. They are poverty-stricken. Masterpieces did get made in the Soviet Union. Masterpieces don't get made in the Russian Federation or in Ukraine. But I'm also not completely insensitive to what's going on in these states. Some people think that I hate the regime in Russia and that I don't like Vladimir Putin. This is not the case. I don't have any strong feelings about Putin. I like some of the things that he has said. I don't like other things that he has said. It's just that I don't care about the regime in Russia. I mean, what's there to care about? Obviously, under Putin's leadership, the situation in Russia has improved, after the disaster that was Boris Yeltsin's rule. But it hasn't improved much, and I won't be clapping, jumping up and down, and praising what's happening in Russia. Under the circumstances, Putin has done pretty much everything that he can do. Putin obviously can't bring back the days of the Russian Empire because Russia doesn't have an instrument of expansion anymore, like the Russian autocracy did. He also can't bring back the days of the Soviet Union because Russia has a right-wing, oligarchical regime and because Russia doesn't have an empire, like the Bolsheviks did. Putin is simply stuck leading an oligarchical regime that has appeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This oligarchical regime, like any other oligarchical regime, resists and puts down any real progress and growth because real progress goes against its interests and position. Therefore, Putin has done the only things that he can do in his position. Under the circumstances, he has done whatever he can do to boost economic growth, though this hasn't amounted to much because there can't be any serious economic growth or progress under an oligarchical regime. At least the territory of the Russian Federation is rich with natural resources, and this fact has certainly been a blessing for the regime in Russia. The regime and the oligarchy in Russia have made profits by exploiting these resources in a crude manner, mostly by exporting them to the rich and industrially-advanced Western states. And Putin has revived the army in Russia, though, for obvious reasons, this army doesn't have the effectiveness of the Red Army. This army also hasn't been put to any good use so far because Putin can't begin a war against NATO and the USA, which has taken advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union and surrounded Russia with military bases and with hostile states. Sure, Putin has demonstrated that, under his rule, Russia won't be a pushover, like it was under Yeltsin's rule. For example, he put down the rebellion in Chechnya, which lasted from 1994 to 2009. He also reacted to Georgian aggression in the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. But, so far, he hasn't engaged in any real aggression or imperialism, at least in my broad view. He has only reacted to American aggression and imperialism. Therefore, the fact that some leftists in the West, mostly controlled opposition figures, call Russia an empire amuses me. A real empire conquers and occupies territories. The Russian Federation hasn't done this. The taking of Crimea doesn't count, in my opinion, because the taking over of this small territory, where most people speak Russian, was a reaction to the coup d'etat in Kiev and to the establishment of an anti-Russian regime there.

Although I've already made at least one post about what will eventually happen in Russia (and consequently in Ukraine), I think that I can add more facts. Here's an entry about Ukraine from one of the best books in my collection, which is 'Encyclopedia of the World' (in Colour) by Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, published in 1978. "Ukraine is the third largest Soviet Republic, with an area of 230,000 square miles or 600,000 sq km (population 48.6 million). Its capital is Kiev. It is largely a lowland steppe, extending from the Pripet Marshes to the Black Sea and from the eastern Carpathians to the Don River. Rich black soils (chernozem) yield wheat, rye, sugar beet, sunflowers, maize and cotton. The Ukraine also contains the Crimea, with its fruit and wine production, and the Donbas, with its coal, iron ore, and other mineral deposits. The Ukrainians (meaning 'border people') are Slavs of Orthodox faith, with a Russian culture and traditions, but also some Polish influences, for Ukraine belonged to Poland until the 17th century, and the land west of the Dnieper until 1793. The 1938 boundaries of the Ukraine did not correspond with the distribution of Ukrainian speech, and territory was added in 1945 from some countries of Eastern Europe. The Ukraine is the most densely peopled and economically developed part of the Soviet Union."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has become an important state for American imperialism. Since the early-1990s, and even before that, the Americans have been working on creating an anti-Russian Ukraine so that it can be used as a tool against the much larger Russian state. I must say that the Americans have achieved what they wanted. But this isn't really surprising because the USA is a very powerful empire, which dominates the world. The USA can overthrow governments in states around the world, like it did in Iran in 1953 or in Indonesia in 1967. The Soviet Union, which was also considered to be a superpower, couldn't really do this. Moreover, the USA isn't simply an empire. It dominates Western Civilization, and this civilization, with its immense wealth and power, continues to dominate the world and treat almost all the other states in the world as its economic and cultural colonies. So, the USA doesn't act alone when it acts, for example, against Russia. It has the support of other NATO members in the West. Because of American influence, many people in Ukraine, even those that speak Russian as a first language, have become anti-Russian and even fanatically anti-Russian in the last three decades. With Western (primarily American) support, and with the support of the anti-communist Ukrainian government and oligarchy, Ukrainians have been taught the fiction that their history is a history of struggle against Russian domination and oppression. Anti-communist and anti-Russian fictions are widely promoted not only in Ukraine but also in other post-Soviet states, including in the Russian Federation. The widespread poverty and misery that have appeared in Ukraine and in other post-Soviet states after the collapse of the Soviet Union are blamed not on the appearance of capitalism and of right-wing, oligarchical regimes in these states but on communism and on Russian domination. So, it's not like the Americans, the Canadians, the British, the French, the Swedes, and other Westerners are the only people that dislike communism and Russia. The Americans and Western capital have quickly turned the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Georgians, the Germans, the Romanians, and other peoples into haters of Russia and of communism as well after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This rooted dislike and distrust of Russia certainly becomes useful at a time when the USA decides to stir up a conflict against Russia. As far as I know, the overwhelming majority of people in Western states believe the fictions that they've been told about the conflict in Ukraine and they believe that Russia is the villain. In 2004, the Americans succeeded in bringing to power an anti-Russian politician, Viktor Yushchenko, during the so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine. But, in 2014, the Americans succeeded in overthrowing the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and in installing a fanatically anti-Russian regime. The new anti-Russian Ukrainian regime continued to be oligarchical, but it was now openly being sustained by the extreme nationalists and neo-Nazis from Western Ukraine that were instrumental in violently overthrowing the government of Yanukovych during the so-called Euromaidan. The Americans have attempted to make their new anti-Russian Ukrainian puppet regime look democratic, but the presence of ultranationalists and of neo-Nazis was still obvious to anyone who bothered to look. Although this new Ukrainian regime has been called nationalist or fascist by some people, I think that it's not unfair to call it a Nazi regime because its supporters and functionaries display Nazi symbols and frequently commit crimes against people that oppose the regime and against people that speak Russian, especially now that this regime is in an armed conflict against the Russian Federation. This new pro-American regime in Ukraine, like pro-American regimes in other states around the world, quickly got down to the business of cracking down against leftist parties and of implementing neoliberal policies that are beneficial for the profits of Western capital. For example, the Communist Party of Ukraine got banned in 2015 and communist symbols began to be banned and erased. So, clearly, the new Ukrainian regime isn't in any way democratic. It's a brutal, oligarchical, right-wing regime that's propped up by the USA and by obvious neo-Nazis. The new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a puppet of the USA, and he's used by the Americans as a mouthpiece for supporting anti-Russian actions, somewhat similar to how the psychotic Mikheil Saakashvili had been used by the Americans as a mouthpiece for supporting anti-Russian actions. So, after 8 years of conflict in the east of Ukraine, where over 10,000 people have been killed by the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Russia has finally intervened in the conflict. To be honest, I didn't expect such a large scale intervention to be carried out by Russia. Sure, Russia had already reacted to Georgian aggression in 2008 by doing something similar, but Georgia is a much smaller state than Ukraine. However, I suppose that Russia couldn't let the conflict in the east of Ukraine to go on indefinitely. Of course, the Russians aren't as crafty or as capable as the Americans. Therefore, they've had to send armed forces to Ukraine in order to put an end to the conflict in the east of Ukraine and perhaps to overthrow the anti-Russian regime in Kiev. It seems that the Americans have specially provoked this intervention by the Russians in order to create difficulties for Putin and the Russian government. The Americans, the oligarchical backers behind Joe Biden, want the barbarian chieftain known as Putin gone because he has been creating difficulties on the borders of the American Empire for quite some time already. Therefore, they've organized a campaign to place even more sanctions on Russia soon after the so-called invasion began in February in order to cripple the economy of the Russian Federation. At the beginning of 2021, soon after Biden became president, Andrei Fursov said that he expects the Americans to make a blow in Ukraine sometime in the autumn of 2021. Well, he wasn't far off the mark because the Americans did make a blow, but they did this in the winter of 2022, by making the Ukrainian Ground Forces attack the Donetsk People's Republic. Fursov also said that the current intervention in Ukraine marks the end of the shameful era in Russian history that began with Mikhail Gorbachev's rule. The regime in Kiev, the Ukrainian Ground Forces, and the S&M neo-Nazis fighting for the regime in Kiev have carried out numerous war crimes and provocations since the conflict began in February, but, for obvious reasons, these crimes are not reported by the Western media and instead Russia is painted as the culprit. In other words, it's clear that the USA and other NATO members are waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and doing everything short of actually going to war against Russia.

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