“These are my thoughts on what is happening.”
Like it or not, war has its own redeeming purpose. Some say it signaled the revival of the Cold War. But if one would analyze the events in Ukraine from a dialectical point of view, the war that began on February 24 was a sort of rectification in a globe that is drifting fast into the abyss.
It was war agitated not by the parties concerned. Both Russia and Ukraine did not like the cyclical bloodletting. It was war carried out by the neo-liberals to prevent the domination of one ideology from rising. The US could no longer understand the security concern of Russia.
The implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989 marked the spread of a neoliberal ideology. When Russia suddenly put a red line to NATO’s eastward advancement, the neoliberals that was lorded by the White House thought that Russia has long forgotten their security concern.
Russia seemingly accepted the Bush and the Reagan administrations modus vivendi for peace, and entertained the notion that NATO’s unimpeded eastward expansion would remain unchallenged. It was a nibbling approach to encircle Russia, beginning with the strategy of dismantling some European states using the pattern adopted by Russia when it dissolved the Soviet Union and granted the 14 republics their independence.
From there on, the small European states were cut into pieces as when Czechoslovakia was divided between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and later followed by a bloody civil war in Yugoslavia. The former federation of Yugoslavia was divided by religion as either Orthodox, Catholics, Muslims, to languages and ethnicity, and to a certain extent to ideological loyalty. Yugoslavia was bombed for 74 days.
The US was right to believe the world need not revive the Cold War because it wanted a unipolar system dominated by it alone. By April, 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina had seceded, leaving only Serbia and Montenegro within the federation. NATO added to the problem by recognizing Kosovo, which in fact triggered the bombing of Serbia to reduce to rubbles its cities and industries. The bombing was unprecedented because it was carried out without the approval of the UN security council. They even bombed the Chinese legation, killing some of its embassy personnel.
The bombing of Serbia was the first NATO involvement in a conflict. This happened because both Russia and China failed to exercise their veto power to stop NATO. This was followed by the bombing of Libya that led to the murder of Libyan President Muammar Ghaddafi, and later in Afghanistan and by the numerous bombings, assassinations, and murder of civilians in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Tunisia, Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Tanzania, and Niger.
The ending of the Cold War was the main reason why the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact. Instead, of putting that security guarantee into writing that NATO would not move eastward, the alliance enlisted the former members of the Warsaw Pact like Poland, Rumania, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czech Republic, and the former states of the Soviet Union namely Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to join.
When NATO began to enlist Georgia and Ukraine, it was when Russia began to question the motive of the Western Alliance. In fact, it was in the early month October 2021 that Russia announced it was putting a red line to NATO’s eastward advances.
Surprisingly, the US and NATO did not take Russia’s red line warning seriously. NATO instead intensified the drumbeating for war, particularly cajoling countries bordering Russia for possible confrontation, and even soliciting arms from allies destined for Ukraine. NATO supplied Ukraine with anti-tank missiles and several assorted automatic rifles to show that the alliance was firmly entangled in NATO’s involvement in Ukraine.
The US, through its national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, responded saying that the demand by Russia was a non-starter which literally means it is more of a bluff and should not be taken seriously. Ukraine was given a false assurance of becoming a member, only later on to impose harsh economic sanctions against Russia.
Ukraine remained emboldened. The neo-Nazi leadership persisted in their adventurism. That glided-tongue NATO general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, instead heightened Ukraine’s belief that Russia would not make good its threat of invading Ukraine; that it could withstand an invasion without NATO sending a single soldier. When the threat became imminent, NATO had to drop its call for Ukraine to join the alliance.
Russia could sense that NATO is not willing to take the risk of going to war but kept on goading Ukraine go to war with Russia. President Putin waited for more than two weeks hoping NATO’s war cry would simmer down.
On the contrary, Russian intelligence discovered that Ukraine was about to launch a full-scale invasion to recover the two breakaway provinces of Donbass and Lugansk, and possibly Crimea. Putin had to calls his national security council to discuss the emergency confronting the Russian federation. Thus, when Russia finally invaded Ukraine, the limitation in securing the breakaway provinces became a nationwide operation for the whole of Ukraine.
That decision was possibly arrived at after Ukrainian troops put up a stiff resistance even causing casualties to Russian troops. Russian air force is now using their hypersonic Kinzal and thermobaric TOS multiple launcher system against the stiff resistance of the Ukrainian forces. It is the hardcore followers of Stepan Banderas that have been using the civilian population as human shields, refusing to grant exit corridors for people to escape the fighting, or accept humanitarian assistance given by Russian soldiers.
Now Ukrainian President Vilodomir Zelensky is demanding the complete withdrawal of Russian troops. This means, Russian must withdraw from all of Ukraine’s territories of Donbass and Lugansk, and Crimea. Zelensky said, whatever agreement or compromise is reached must be submitted to a referendum. These three areas have long been considered problematic. The Crimean Peninsula was once part of the Old Russian empire, and its position was restored and strengthened after the Soviet army liberated the entire Balkan peninsula from the Nazi occupiers.
Third, that the Crimea peninsula is now overwhelmingly inhabited by Russians. The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine proved to be a destabilizing factor that gave rise to racial discrimination and a demand for the withdrawal of the big Russian naval base at Sevastopol, considered as strategic, it being the only outlet to Russia, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
This is the same problem that was raised by President Putin when interviewed by award-winning film director Oliver Stone in his book, “Putin Interviews.” He noted that a large number of Russians living in the former Soviet Republics and now given their independence cannot just be dislocated because of political decisions. Many of them have been living in those areas long before the Soviet Union was dissolved.
These Russians living in those countries have established their roots there, and they cannot just be uprooted and resettled in another country because of political convenience. Putin already had an eye on the problem in Ukraine long before it exploded.
Rather, employing the same formula used by the Nazi Germans that to maintain the purity of the race and culture of people, Ukraine had to apply the fast approach of mass deportation and extermination. This is what the dreaded neo-Nazi Azov Battalion did to assassinate, kidnap, and torture Russian natives living in Donbass and Lugansk.
Submitting the issue for ratification is one of Zelensky’s trick to get away with the inevitable partition of Ukraine. He knows any diminution to the country’s territorial integrity would not pass in a referendum he proposed, and neither would Russia be willing to give up those areas it spent too much blood and money just to restore order in Ukraine.
