"The idea of ​​a 'special relationship' between Germany and Russia has been circulating for more than a century"

In the Ukrainian crisis, the desire to maintain dialogue with Russia, shared by all NATO countries, rests across the Rhine "on deep and complex historical foundations", explains the great German historian Heinrich August Winkler.

Interview by Thomas Wieder (Berlin, correspondent)

Posted on February 15, 2022

Heinrich August Winkler, 83, is one of the greatest historians of contemporary Germany. Emeritus professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, he is the author of some fifteen books, including a History of Germany (19th-20th century). The long way to the West (Fayard, 2005), where he questions in particular the reasons why Germany became a national state later than countries like England and France. He also wonders why it only became a democracy after the First World War. Entitled Deutungskämpfe (“battles of interpretation”, C.H. Beck, 2021, untranslated), his latest book brings together around thirty contributions (articles, conferences, etc.) on various historiographical and memorial debates over the past forty years.

In recent weeks, Germany's stance on the Ukraine crisis has come under heavy criticism. Its refusal to deliver weapons to Ukraine has led some to say that it prioritizes its relations with Russia above all else and that it is excessively weak with Vladimir Putin. Did these reviews surprise you?

Heinrich August Winkler: Absolutely not. Since reunification, Germany has made it a principle not to deliver arms to “conflict zones”. The problem is that this doctrine is applied in a very elastic way, and that it did not prevent Germany from selling considerable quantities of armaments to countries like Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or the Turkey.

In the case of Ukraine, this is particularly problematic. When US President George W. Bush, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, pushed for Ukraine and Georgia to eventually join the Atlantic Alliance, Germany – like France, moreover – did not hide that she [Russia] was against it and has done everything since then to ensure that it does not happen. I regard this position as absolutely responsible and reasonable. But, precisely because of this, it is absurd not to give them the means to defend themselves in the event of a Russian attack, by referring to a doctrine on arms deliveries that we do not otherwise respect.

Germany's desire to do everything to maintain dialogue with Russia can be explained by the "special relationship" ("Sonderbeziehung") linking these two countries. Where does this expression regularly used in public debate in Germany come from, and what does it mean?

No NATO member country disputes the idea that we have to talk to the Russians. But it is true that this position, in Germany, rests on deep and complex historical foundations. The idea that there is a “special relationship” between Germany and Russia has been circulating for more than a year.

READ MORE:

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2022/02/15/l-idee-d-une-relation-particuliere-entre-l-allemagne-et-la-russie-circule-depuis-plus-d-un-siecle_6113817_3232.html

Mr President, Mr President of the German Bundestag, Madam Chancellor, Mr President of the Bundesrat, Mr President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Members of the German Bundestag, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

In the whole of German history, there is no greater watershed than the date whose 70th anniversary we are commemorating today: 8 May 1945. It marks the end of the Second World War in Europe, the collapse of the Nazi regime which had unleashed that war, and the end of the German Reich founded by Bismarck three quarters of a century earlier. For twelve years, the Nazis had fervently evoked German national unity. As their regime met its end in an unparalleled inferno, it was unclear whether the Germans would ever live together in a unified country again.

In his historic speech marking the 40th anniversary of the German Reich's unconditional surrender, the Federal President of the day, Richard von Weizsäcker, warned the German people not to separate 8 May 1945 from 30 January 1933 – the date when Reich President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor. He argued that 8 May 1945 should, however, be recognised

"as the end of a wrong path in German history, an end that contained the seeds of hope for a better future".

The "wrong path" to which Weizsäcker referred did not begin in 1933. Much of the German elite, and indeed of society as a whole, regarded the first German democracy, the Weimar Republic, as a product of Germany's defeat in the First World War, as the type of state embodied by the victorious Western powers, as an un-German system.

During the First World War, well-known academics and writers contrasted the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789 – liberty, equality and fraternity – with the German "ideas of 1914": glorification of a strong state with the military as its linchpin, the "Volksgemeinschaft" or "people's community", and an allegedly "German socialism".

When the Weimar Republic's parliamentary democracy failed in the spring of 1930 and Germany shifted to a semi-authoritarian presidential regime soon afterwards, Hitler was able to appeal successfully to the widespread hostility towards Western democracy, while at the same time exploiting one of the democratic achievements of Bismarck's Reich, now largely robbed of its political effect: general and equal suffrage in Reichstag elections, which had been extended to women as well as men since the revolution of 1918-1919.

The Nazis' electoral successes towards the end of the Weimar Republic cannot be explained without taking into account the long history of German reservations regarding Western democracy which preceded them. The same is true of the rapid surge in popularity that Hitler enjoyed after his so-called "seizure of power". His popularity reached such heights that, in the words of the British historian Ian Kershaw, Hitler himself became a "believer in his own cult" by 1936 at the latest. In the course of the Second World War, the "Führer myth" was diminished by the setbacks in the war against the Soviet Union from the winter of 1941-1942 onwards, and then in particular by the defeat at Stalingrad at the end of January 1943, but it did not die. In fact, it even experienced a brief renaissance of sorts after the failed assassination attempt on 20 July 1944. Many now believed that Hitler really might be allied with "providence" and only he could save Germany.

In The Myth of the State, his final work before his death in exile in the United States in April 1945, just a few weeks before the end of the war in Europe, the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer interpreted Hitler's political career as a triumph of myth over reason, and this triumph as the result of a profound crisis.

"In politics we are always living on volcanic soil. We must be prepared for abrupt convulsions and eruptions. In all critical moments of man's social life, the rational forces that resist the rise of the old mythical conceptions are no longer sure of themselves. In these moments, the time for myth has come again. For myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity. This hour comes as soon as the other binding forces of man's social life, for one reason or another, lose their strength and are no longer able to combat the demonic mythical powers."

In view of the eruptions of xenophobia we have experienced in Germany in recent months, and the anti-Semitic incitement and violence here and in other European countries, Cassirer's words still hold a truly disturbing relevance today. They warn us to heed at all times the real lesson of German history from 1933 to 1945: the obligation to respect, in all circumstances, the inalienable dignity of every human being.

(Applause)

Germany's second defeat in the 20th century was a total defeat, and it dealt a far greater blow to German self-confidence than the defeat of 1918. It was not the case that an overwhelming majority of Germans saw the Allies' victory in May 1945 as a liberation. Unlike the peoples for whom this victory brought liberation from German rule and tyranny, for many Germans the "collapse" of the Nazi regime meant the collapse of their faith in the "Führer" and their hopes of a "final German victory". The unconditional surrender was initially perceived as a liberation only by those Germans who had already – or always – realised the criminal nature of Hitler's rule.

When the Provisional Council of the Protestant Church of Germany spoke, in its "Stuttgart confession of guilt" in October 1945, of a "solidarity of guilt" between the church and the people, this met with widespread opposition, even within the church. One sentence in particular was seen as an inappropriate confirmation of the Allies' assertion of a German "collective guilt": "Through us, endless suffering has been brought down upon many peoples and countries."

The worst of all the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis, the murder of around 6 million European Jews, was not expressly mentioned in the "Stuttgart confession of guilt". Decades would pass before Germany came to recognise, not least due to the groundbreaking research of Jewish scholars such as Joseph Wulf, Gerald Reitlinger, Raul Hilberg and Saul Friedländer, that the Holocaust is the central fact of 20th century German history. At the same time, another realisation gradually dawned: the victory which had been won over Germany at immense sacrifice by Allied soldiers, not least by those of the Red Army, had, in a sense, liberated the Germans from themselves – liberated in the sense of giving them the chance to break free from political delusions and traditions which separated Germany from the Western democracies.

In cultural terms, Germany had always been a country of the old Occident, of Latin or Western Christian Europe. Germany had participated in and played a vital role in shaping the separation of powers in the Middle Ages, beginning with steps towards the separation of spiritual and secular power, followed by royal power and that of the estates, as well as the emancipatory processes in the early modern period from humanism, to the Reformation and the Enlightenment. However, some essential political lessons of the Enlightenment – the ideals of the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, the ideals of inalienable human rights, the sovereignty of the people and representative democracy – had been rejected by influential German elites until well into the 20th century. It was only the experience of the German catastrophe of the period from 1933 to 1945, when German opposition to the West's political ideals reached its peak, which gradually eroded this hostility. The opportunity which arose after 1945 to build a second parliamentary democracy, this time one which would be functional and capable of defending itself, was only offered to part of Germany, however: the three Western occupation zones, which would later become the Federal Republic of Germany, and West Berlin. The Germans living in the other part of the country were denied political freedom for four and a half decades.

The Federal Republic's progressive opening to the political culture of the West and the emergence of a self-critical historical culture were inextricably linked. It took sometimes fierce academic, journalistic and political debates to drive these processes forward. The debate about the German Empire's key role in the developments which led to the First World War was of great significance in this context. It took time to overcome the still influential apologist interpretations of German history, and to counteract the widespread tendency to regard the German people as Hitler's first victims and for people to absolve themselves of any share of responsibility for the wrongs perpetrated in that period. Now there are markers, plaques and memorials in many German towns and cities dedicated to the Jewish and other victims of National Socialism – placed there not by the state, but by civic initiatives. Often it is school classes which devote themselves to researching the history of their local area during the so-called "Third Reich".

The process of addressing the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, and in particular the Shoah, in the German courts was very slow to get off the ground; it began with the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial in 1958.  As late as 1986, a public debate took place which has gone down in the annals of West German history as the Historikerstreit: a dispute among historians about the place in history of the Nazis' murder of the Jews – a genocide which led Britain's war-time prime minister, Winston Churchill, to observe in a letter to his foreign minister, Anthony Eden, on 11 June 1944 that:

"There is no doubt this is the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe."

Many Germans had to travel a long and painful road before they could, looking back, agree with this judgement from a former enemy. But if they hadn't been willing to face up to the unparalleled monstrosity of the Holocaust, to the murder of the Sinti and Roma, of tens of thousands of people with intellectual disabilities and countless homosexuals, if they hadn't been willing to accept responsibility for the terrible war crimes committed in the European countries occupied and ravaged by Germany, how could the Federal Republic of Germany ever have become a respected member of the international community again?

It was particularly hard for the millions of German refugees and expellees to recognise that their suffering was a consequence of Germany's use of military force and to come to terms with the loss of their homeland. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 – the symbolic event of the peaceful revolutions in East-Central Europe, and the culmination of a series of events stretching back to the founding of the independent trade union "Solidarność" in Poland in August 1980 – when the German question unexpectedly returned to the international political agenda, it was clear to the overwhelming majority of Germans, and of expellees, that there could only be a reunified Germany within its 1945 borders. In other words, the German question could only be resolved if another major problem, the Polish question, was resolved at the same time. That is exactly what happened with the Two Plus Four Treaty and the German-Polish Border Treaty of 14 November 1990: two treaties which recognised once and for all, in a form binding under international law, the existing German-Polish border along the river Oder and the Lusatian Neisse river.

The historic significance of 3 October 1990, the date when the German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany under Article 23 of the Basic Law, was summarised by Richard von Weizsäcker at a ceremony in Berlin's Philharmonic Hall as follows:

"The day has come on which, for the first time in history, the whole of Germany takes its lasting place in the circle of Western democracies."

Unlike the German Reich which met its end on 8 May 1945, reunified Germany was, from the very start, integrated into supranational organisations such as the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance. It is a post-classical nation-state which, within the association of states that is the European Union, exercises some of its sovereign rights jointly with other Member States or has transferred them to supranational institutions. Germany's reunification in 1990 was only possible because it had credibly broken with those parts of its political tradition which had stood in the way of the development of a Western-style liberal democracy. That was the basis for Germany's "second chance", as it was put in July 1990 by Fritz Stern, the German-American historian from Breslau (now Wrocław) who was forced to emigrate by Hitler.

Germany has not finished the process of confronting its own past, nor will it ever do so. Every generation will search for its own way of understanding a history as contradictory as Germany's. There are many achievements in this history, not least since 1945, about which the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany can be glad and of which they can be proud. However, accepting ownership of this history must also include a willingness to face up to the dark sides of the past. No one expects later generations to feel guilt for crimes which were committed by Germans in Germany's name long before they were born. That said, an essential part of assuming responsibility for one's own country is the determination to be conscious of the country's entire history.

(Applause)

This applies to all Germans, regardless of whether their forebears lived in Germany before 1945 or did not emigrate here until later, and it applies to those who have chosen to become Germans, or who make that choice in the future.

(Applause)

Even if the Germans were to give in to the temptation of no longer wanting to remember the guilt Germans incurred after 1933, and especially during the Second World War, they would still be constantly confronted with the fact that the victims' descendants cannot forget this history so easily. The SS and the Wehrmacht committed crimes in many places, crimes which will never be erased from the collective memory of the peoples affected. These include the siege and deliberate starvation of Leningrad, which lasted almost 900 days and cost at least 800,000 people their lives; acceptance of the deaths of more than half of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war, as the Federal President reminded us yesterday; the destruction of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw following the uprising in the spring of 1943; and the systematic destruction of the Polish capital after the second Warsaw Uprising in October 1944.

The names of places such as Oradour and Lidice are better known in Germany than Kragujevac in Serbia, Distomo in Greece and Marzabotto in Italy. Yet these names too, and there are many more, stand for massacres which still cast a shadow today. There is no moral justification for not keeping the memory of such atrocities alive in Germany

(Applause)

or for forgetting the moral obligations arising from them. The same is true of the inhuman treatment of millions of forced labourers, particularly the so-called Ostarbeiter or "eastern workers", and especially the Jews, for whom forced labour was almost invariably followed by their murder. It is impossible to draw a line under a history of this kind.

(Applause)

In addition to the danger of forgetting, there is, in fact, another risk regarding how we address the darkest chapter in German history: the danger of it being deliberately raised in the present for political purposes. When Germany participates in attempts by the international community to prevent an imminent genocide or another crime against humanity, there is no need to invoke Auschwitz. On the other hand, neither the Holocaust, nor other Nazi crimes, nor the Second World War in general have given Germany the right to look away. The Nazis' crimes against humanity are not an argument which justifies Germany remaining on the sidelines in cases where there are compelling reasons to take joint action with other countries under the international community's responsibility to protect.

(Applause)

Any instrumentalisation of the murder of the European Jews motivated by day-to-day politics amounts to the trivialisation of this crime. A responsible approach to history seeks to facilitate responsible action in the present. This means, firstly, that the Germans must not allow themselves to be paralysed by contemplation of their history. Secondly, political decisions must not be built up to be the only true lesson of Germany's past. Any attempt to justify a special German morality by citing National Socialism leads us down the wrong path.

(Applause)

Nonetheless, Germany does still have obligations arising directly or indirectly from German policy in the period from 1933 to 1945. Among the foremost obligations that should be mentioned in this context are the special relations with Israel which have developed over the past five decades. Yet within Europe as well, the Nazi era still casts a shadow, a past that will not pass. Not only did the German Reich, under Hitler's leadership, trample on the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of many European countries. By entering into the Hitler-Stalin Pact, invading Poland and attacking the Soviet Union, it also paved the way for Europe's division into two blocs, one with freedom, one without, a division which lasted four and a half decades. As a result, Germany has a special obligation of solidarity with countries which only won back their right to internal and external self-determination in the course of the peaceful revolutions of 1989-1990.

(Applause)

On 21 November 1990, seven weeks after German reunification, the Charter of Paris was signed in the French capital. All 34 participating states of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe undertook "to build, consolidate and strengthen democracy as the only system of government of our nations". At the very moment when Europe stood on the verge of a new era, the signatories, including the Soviet Union, made a commitment to settle disputes by peaceful means. They reaffirmed the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, signed 15 years earlier, which included respect for territorial integrity and political independence, and a pledge to refrain from the threat or use of force. If there is any date which symbolises the definitive end of the post-Second World War era, it is the date of the signing of the Charter of Paris, 21 November 1990.

Some of the hopes held as the new era dawned from 1989 to 1991 were fulfilled; others were not. The old European Occident, divided as a result of the agreements reached by the "Big Three" – the US, the UK and the Soviet Union – at Yalta in February 1945, has grown together again. Unlike in 1918, no new "in-between Europe", no zone of economic, political and military instability, has emerged in East-Central and South-East Europe. In fact, most of the region's democracies are now part of the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance. However, the vision of a community of peace spanning three continents, stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok, a great alliance of liberal democracies, has not become reality. 2014 marked a major watershed: the illegal annexation of Crimea has dramatically called into question the continued validity of the principles of the Charter of Paris – and with them the peaceful European order on which the former Cold War enemies had once agreed.

(Applause)

During the still ongoing conflict over Ukraine, Germany has done everything in its power to safeguard the cohesion of the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance. At the same time, it has sought in its dialogue with Russia, in close consultation with its allies and with Ukraine, to rescue or restore as much as possible of the policy of constructive cooperation on which East and West had agreed after the end of the Cold War. There is one thing which it was and is always essential to bear in mind in this context, and it too is a lesson from German history: our neighbours in East-Central Europe were the victims of German-Soviet aggression due to the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939-1940, and are now our partners in the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance – and Poland and the Baltic republics must never again be given the impression that Berlin and Moscow are taking decisions over their heads for which they will pay the price.

(Applause)

In late May 1945, just a few weeks after the end of the Second World War in Europe, Thomas Mann, who had been an eloquent advocate of the German "ideas of 1914" during the First World War, set out his thoughts, in English, about "Germany and the Germans" at the Library of Congress in Washington. This speech, which he himself said was intended as a "piece of German self-criticism", contained a sentence which neatly encapsulated the conclusion of his reflections:

"The Germans yielded to the temptation of basing upon their innate cosmopolitanism a claim to European hegemony, even to world domination, whereby this trait became its exact opposite, namely the most presumptive and menacing nationalism and imperialism."

The hegemony of any one country is incompatible with the way an association of states like the European Union sees itself. Given the size of its population and its economic strength, reunified Germany already has a special responsibility within the EU for the cohesion and further development of this supranational community. This is reinforced by the responsibility arising from German history. It is a history rich in highs and lows, one which cannot be reduced to the period from 1933 to 1945 and which did not make the transfer of power to Hitler inevitable, but which did make this event and its consequences possible. Facing up to this history is both a European imperative and the dictate of an enlightened patriotism. As Gustav Heinemann, the third Federal President, put it in his inaugural address on 1 July 1969:

"There are difficult fatherlands. One of them is Germany. But it is our fatherland."

Thank you very much.

(Applause – Audience rises to its feet)

read more:

https://www.bundestag.de/en/documents/textarchive/speech-380278

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WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Friday that the United States has intelligence showing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made a final decision to reject diplomatic overtures and invade Ukraine, in what Mr. Biden said would be a “catastrophic and needless war of choice” in Eastern Europe.

Speaking from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Mr. Biden said “we have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” adding that “we believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”

Asked whether he thinks that Mr. Putin is still wavering about whether to invade, Mr. Biden said, “I’m convinced he’s made the decision.” Later, he added that his impression of Mr. Putin’s intentions is based on “a significant intelligence capability.”

Still, Mr. Biden implored Russia to “choose diplomacy.”

“It is not too late to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table,” Mr. Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday. “If Russia takes military action before that date, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.”

In the hours before Mr. Biden’s late afternoon remarks, Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called for mass evacuations in two contested regions of the country, claiming, with little evidence, that Ukraine’s military was about to launch a large-scale attack there, an assertion that appeared intended to provoke Russian military intervention.

The ominous messaging of the rebels in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk was loudly echoed by Moscow, raising fears that Russia was setting the stage for an imminent invasion that could ignite the biggest conflict in Europe in decades.

The call by the Russian-backed separatists for evacuations came as they blamed Ukraine for an array of provocations, including shelling along the front lines between Ukraine and the separatist forces, and an explosion involving an empty car that pro-Moscow news outlets said belonged to the head of the region’s security services.

Mr. Biden, who had just concluded a video call with a dozen Western leaders, rejected the claims as lies intended by Mr. Putin to inflame the situation on the ground and provide a pretext for war — something the United States and other European leaders had been warning about for weeks.

READ MORE:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/us/politics/biden-ukraine-russia.html

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This article and the rest of it is 100 per cent bullshit. Unfortunately, it is published in the New York Times that has become the smelly garbage news of the world... The last thing that Putin wants is war. PUTIN DOES NOT WANT WAR. THE WEST WANTS PUTIN TO GO TO WAR TO PROVE ITS POINT. PUTIN DOES NOT WANT WAR. 

The West under the leadership of Biden's teleprompter run by the Pentagon (Old Joe has no clue about what he is doing — some people have to show him to the toilet apparently) has been totally beyond the pale on this issue and the West cannot stop pissing in its pants.  It's time to realise a few realities: PUTIN DOES NOT WANT WAR.

A newly discovered document from March 1991 shows US, UK, French, and German officials discussing a pledge made to Russia that NATO will not expand to Poland and beyond. Its publication by the German magazine Der Spiegel on Friday proves Moscow right and NATO wrong on the matter. 

The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4”talks on German unification in which the West made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO will not expand past the eastern borders of Germany.

“We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document quotes US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz.

“NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” Seitz added. 

A British representative also mentions the existence of a “general agreement” that membership of NATO for eastern European countries is “unacceptable.”

“We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe,” said West German diplomat Juergen Hrobog. “We could not therefore offer Poland and others membership in NATO.”

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/549921-nato-expansion-russia-document/

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Scott Morrison has warned Russia the world will be moving together to counteract any violence it inflicts on Ukraine.

Washington believes Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s border are advancing and are “poised to strike”.

“It is unacceptable because it is unwarranted, it’s unprovoked in terms of the threats of terrible violence that Russia is imposing on Ukraine,” the Prime Minister told reporters in Melbourne on Sunday.

He said while there has never been any contemplation of Australian troops being deployed to Eastern Europe, the government has been working with its allies to directly support Ukraine, whether it be in cyberspace or things of that nature.

“The world will be moving together to seek to counteract what would be a terrible act of violence,” Mr Morrison said.

“Should they follow through on their acts of violence against Ukraine, we will follow through with sanctions together and in partnership with all of our other allies and partners.”

He said Foreign Minister Marise Payne will be meeting with her Ukrainian counterpart on Monday.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton said while he is hoping for an “11th hour miracle”, it was very hard to see how that would be the case and expects there will be an incursion into the Ukraine.

“It’s regrettable, but I think that’s the action that Putin is intent on,” Mr Dutton told Sky News’ Sunday Agenda program.

He said the alliance now between China and Russia is deeply concerning.

“Russia needs to understand, as does China, there is a price to pay for those acts of aggression,” he said.

Labor frontbencher Michelle Rowland said it was a deeply concerning situation and was clearly Russian foreign policy being driven by the personality of President Putin in what he sees as a position of strength.

READ MORE:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2022/02/20/morrison-putin-unites-world/

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FUCK YOU ALL ! Vladimir Putin has no intention to invade Ukraine. Capiche? The "personality" of M Putin is 1,000 times more honest than that of Biden, Morrison and Boris put together and nailed to a Christian cross. I guess Michelle Rowland (who?) is playing the gamey game of he West to satisfy the narrative but please do it with a bit more discretion. I repeat: FUCK YOU ALL ! Vladimir Putin has no intention to invade Ukraine. He is in two minds about discreetly supporting the Russians caught in the Ukraine NATO inspired crossfire, as NATO is invading Ukraine, but we do not see it this way, because the Ukrainian NAZIS are our friends. Fucking great friend, we have indeed...

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Imagine you are the most successful Russian leader, even better than Catherine the Great. You have managed to save Russian from "Western" (aka idiots in the US, little shits like Morrison and aggros like Dutton, not to mention BoJo-the-Clown). You have foiled the destruction of Syria, like that of Libya, with PRECISION bombing, avoiding to touch a hair of the US morons. You have protected a few countries from infiltrations of rogue terrorists — Daesh, Al Qaeda, Al Nustra, etc — working for the stupid US empire. 

ARE YOU GOING TO FUCK UP YOUR SUCCESSES BY INVADING UKRAINE? 

NO. You are cleverer than this. You might have to defend your Russian friends in Ukraine, but only when the situation for them becomes worse than dire.

The West/NATO/the Ukrainian NAZIS are going to try and take these RUSSIAN SPEAKING breakaway provinces in Ukraine contrarily to the Minsk agreement. 

YOU WILL STRIKE AT THE LAST MINUTE TO PREVENT A GENOCIDE of Russians, WHICH THE US is prepared to enact. BUT YOU WON'T INVADE UKRAINE... Europe will be taken by the US/disinformation/imbecilic fever and should it does something stupid under the US idiotic command, it will suffer a worse fate than Napoleon and Hitler — and will rush to mummy loony USA. And you may not even need your friends the Chinese.

The alternative FOR RUSSIA would be to capitulate... and get fucked... THIS AIN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. FILL YOUR WESTERN NUTCASE BRAINS WITH THIS THOUGHT... The West and its lackeys will be loosing monkeys — and this means us... The West can try to distort History by bullshitting like Alex Hawke, the minister mongrel who is ScoMo's leading toilet bowl and lays a reef to the people who lost their life in the "liberation" of Ukraine... Please! The people who died in the last colour revolution, inspired by Nuland and her fucking bosses, WERE RUSSIANS killed by UKRAINIAN NAZIS...

Catherine the Great got Crimea for Russia, and Putin got the people of Crimea to vote. They chose Russia. Why? BECAUSE 90 per cent of Crimeans are Russian and they KNOW THAT URINATING UKRAINE IS A NEST OF NAZIS. 

All the western main-stream news outlets are moronic and biased beyond propaganda. 

GL.

Angry dude.

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With the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorating each day, the West keeps on promoting its “Russian threat” rhetoric and pledges “never-before-seen” sanctions on Russia should it invade Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kiev keeps violating the Minsk accord and continues to shell Donbass, forcing thousands of people to flee to Russia.

Nick Griffin, political analyst and former Member of the European Parliament, reflects on the geopolitical, economical and historical reasons for the West trying to force Russia into war with Ukraine, why the collective West turns a blind eye on systemic violations of the Minsk agreement by Kiev, and why no one in the West cares about the humanitarian disaster in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in Donbass.

Sputnik: Why is the West not only ignoring but also encouraging Kiev’s provocations in Donbass?

Nick Griffin: The Washington and Westminster cabal are desperate to force Vladimir Putin to abandon his policy of self-restraint and negotiation. They intend to leave him no option but to use military force in defence of the Russian population of Donbass. So the NATO leaders are now engaged in the most blatant and irresponsible destabilisation and hybrid war operation since they used Islamic terrorists to destroy Libya and attempted to use them to break up Syria.

Their operation against Russia is in fact even more desperate than the campaign of lies and aggression against Syria, because the stakes are even higher. The West promoted conflict in the Middle East in the hope of gaining a geopolitical advantage. The attempt to force Russia into war in Ukraine, by contrast, is not really about promoting the geopolitical interest of the Dollar Empire – it is about its very survival.

The US is no longer the self-confident colossus that bestrode the world a few decades ago. America in 2022 is a financial, political, economic, military and social basket case, and its UK ally is in the same very leaky boat. The liberal Anglo world is further disturbed by the situation in Canada, which is now in the critical phase of a historic struggle between the Trudeau regime and a large and well-organised section of the working population.

On top of that, one shouldn’t overlook the influence of ideology and personal sexual obsessions in Western decision-making circles. There is in all this an element of a woke, liberal ‘crusade’ for ‘our liberal values’ against the ‘archaic Christian traditionalism’ which they see and detest in Russia.

More practically, the Washington policy-makers, who direct the semi-senile ‘President’, know that Nord Stream 2 is about far more than a mutually beneficial energy trading relationship between Germany and Russia. In the shorter term, it also spells further financial disaster for the already failed client state of Ukraine. Longer term, Nord Stream heralds a steadily closer relationship between Germany and Russia, which would in turn be a huge step towards the creation of a giant Eurasian free-trade block.

The fundamental targets of the NATO warmongers in this crisis are not Donbass, nor even Russia, but Germany, and China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. They are trying to keep Germany down, and China out; failure to do both means that the US will become an isolated rust-belt island thousands of miles away from the core economic block of the world.

The same development also spells the forthcoming end of the dollar as the world’s financial reserve currency, while America’s time as a sole military superpower has already clearly ended. This is a classic example of the Thucydides’ Trap, the moment when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as the hegemon of the age, a transition which all too often is accompanied by a war of desperation.

NATO’s aggression towards Russia is not born of confidence but of fear. In just three decades, we’ve gone from the ‘End of History’ to the looming end of the Dollar Empire. The push for war in Ukraine is an attempt to recover from the defeat of the Anglo-Zionist Jihadi adventure in Syria, and the debacle in Afghanistan. Perhaps, when it ends just as badly, they will finally learn a bit of humility, but I guess none of us will hold our breath.

Sputnik: The OSCE is registering ceasefire violations, with Kiev repeatedly using 120mm mortars banned by the Minsk accord; why is the West ignoring these facts? Why are the US and its allies turning a blind eye towards Kiev blatantly violating the Minsk accord?

Nick Griffin: Implementation of the Minsk Accord would end the crisis. That is the very last thing the US/UK want. It is very hard for nations with a vivid folk memory of the horrors of total war in their own land (such as Russia, Germany and China) to comprehend the very different attitude that prevails in the US.

To Americans, the elite and the general population alike, wars are things that are fought in other peoples’ countries. Despite the fact that the US hasn’t won a war since the campaign against Japan in 1945, the general view in Washington, in particular, is that there is nothing to fear and plenty to gain from war.

Sputnik: President Biden in his address held the self-proclaimed Donbass republics responsible for ceasefire violations and insisted there was no sign of Ukraine preparing a full-scale attack. Why is he downplaying the threat?

Nick Griffin: The US is bankrupt, and threatened with this being drastically exposed by a new subprime debt disaster with the collapse of the shale gas debt bubble, and by the steady erosion of the reserve currency of the dollar. The very dubious legitimacy of the President is questioned by half the population and the Democrats are months away from potentially disastrous midterm elections. Key ally Boris Johnson likewise faces political and personal disaster at home.

Ukraine’s provocations are therefore ignored and indeed rewarded with political backing and massive arms shipments because both Western leaders believe they have a great deal to gain from war or the threat of war.

Given the perceived benefits to the US of war in Ukraine, why on earth would anyone expect the US and its allies to be concerned over the brutal aggression which we now see from their puppet regime in Kiev?

If Russia is forced to act, then Nord Stream 2 will be stopped, inflicting massive economic damage on Germany and forcing Berlin to get back in line completely under Anglo-domination. If, on the other hand, Russia manages to keep out of the West’s proxy war, then Biden and Johnson will crow that it was their ‘resolve’ that ‘deterred Putin and saved Ukraine and freedom’. Thus, in their dangerously deluded calculations, it doesn’t really matter if the crisis ends in war or in peace. For them, it’s a win-win either way. That is why the Yanks and the Brits are only too happy to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian.

Sputnik: Instead of ensuring that Kiev doesn’t use banned weapons, the West is stoking “Russia invasion” fears around the world. Where are the guarantors of the Minsk agreement? Are they so desperate for a new war?

Nick Griffin: They are indeed desperate for war! Geopolitics, financial crisis, bribes from arms manufacturers, political advantage and personal vanity – they’ve been key drivers for disastrous wars in the past, and human nature doesn’t change. So here we are, back in July 1914.

Sputnik: Thousands of people have fled their homes and are being evacuated to Russia due to constant shelling by Ukrainian forces. Why is this humanitarian disaster in Donbass being neglected by the West?

Nick Griffin: Political elites always have a regrettable tendency to view the sufferings of the ‘little people’ as a price well worth paying for their own advantage.

The Washington imperialists have always been among the very worst at this. Their Empire was founded on genocide and on the ruins of the Confederacy and grew through a series of false-flag initiated wars, and the deliberate and ruthless incitement of tensions in Europe to destroy a string of rivals, including Tsarist Russia and the British Empire.

Why would anyone expect the heirs of those who obliterated Wounded Creek, Dresden and Hiroshima to give a flying fig for the well-being of a few hundred thousand impoverished Slavs? If ever there was a group who deserved to go on trial for the crime of plotting aggressive war, they are right now in the corridors of power in Washington DC and Westminster.

READ MORE:

https://www.unz.com/article/ukraine-implementing-minsk-accords-ending-conflict-very-last-thing-us-uk-want-ex-mep-says/

The chess game continues in Ukraine. The United States is preparing an attack on the two oblasts of Donbass whose population is now predominantly Russian. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Federation, Vladimir Putin, will be responsible for defending them militarily. In order to avoid being held responsible for the explosion, Moscow has therefore taken its turn by withdrawing its troops a few kilometers... while recognizing the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics (i.e. the former Ukrainian oblasts). Washington can no longer invoke the Minsk agreements because, "thanks" to President Macron, Kiev has just refused to apply them. It can no longer invade the Donbass without attacking Russian citizens whose secession is now justified. And it will eventually have to recognize the independence of the two new republics. In the next moves, they could ask for their attachment to the Russian Federation

While the situation in the Donbass is becoming more and more incandescent, Biden, on the eve of his talks with Putin, has convened on February 11 what is in fact the war council of NATO and the European Union: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, flanked by European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The Nato-EU war council made it clear that "if Russia carries out a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States, together with its Allies and partners, will respond decisively and impose immediate and severe costs on Russia." This is what Biden said the next day to Putin, on behalf not only of the United States but of NATO and the European Union. Total rejection of any negotiation, in fact a declaration of war, signed by Italy at the hands of Mario Draghi under the eyes of a silent and consenting Parliament.

Every day more and more signals of imminent war are intensifying. The State Department is evacuating the Embassy in Kiev, leaving only a few diplomats and a team of Marines, and warns U.S. citizens to leave Ukraine because "it would not be able to protect them from Russian attack". So did the Foreign Ministry. The Pentagon is withdrawing 160 military instructors from Ukraine, who trained Kiev forces. However, there remain military advisers and instructors belonging to the US and NATO Special Forces, which have de facto the direction of the Army and the National Guard in Kiev.

In the forefront is the neo-Nazi battalion Azov, already distinguished for its ferocity against the Russian populations of the Donbass, promoted for its merits to a mechanized regiment of special forces, armed and trained by NATO. It has the same insignia as the Panzer SS Das Reich Division, one of Hitler’s 200 divisions that invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. They were defeated, but the price paid by the Soviet Union was very high: about 27 million dead, more than half civilians, corresponding to 15% of the population (in relation to 0.3% of the U.S. throughout the Second World War), about 5 million deported to Germany, more than 1,700 cities and large towns, 70,000 small villages, 30,000 factories destroyed.

All this is dangerously forgotten, while Russia continues to repeat, speaking to the wind, that it does not intend to attack Ukraine and denounces the increasing concentration of Kiev’s troops in front of the area of Donbass inhabited by Russian populations. Here Kiev has deployed over 150,000 soldiers. They are equipped with Grad rocket launchers, each capable of launching up to 40 km, in a salvo of 20 seconds, 40 122 mm rockets with high-explosive warheads that, deflagrating, invest a large area with thousands of sharp metal fragments or small delayed burst bombs. A large-scale attack with such weapons against the Russian inhabitants of Donetsk and Lugansk regions would cause a massacre and could not be stopped by the local forces consisting of about 35 thousand men.

The war could explode with a false flag operation. Moscow denounces the presence in Donbass of US mercenaries with chemical weapons. The fuse could be a provocation, such as an attack on a Ukrainian settlement, attributed to the Russians of the Donbass that would be attacked by the overpowering forces of Kiev. The Russian Federation has warned that, in such a situation, it would not stand by and watch, but would intervene in defense of the Russians of the Donbass, destroying the attacking forces.

In this way, a war would explode in the heart of Europe, to the advantage of the United States, which, through NATO, to which 21 of the 27 EU countries belong, and through the collaboration of the European Union itself, would bring Europe back to a situation similar, but even more dangerous, than that of the Cold War, strengthening the US influence and presence in the European region.

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https://www.voltairenet.org/article215706.html

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"The US-UK-NATO don't care about the people in the Donbass", says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

The Donbass civilians are being demonised as "Russian separatists" in order to justify the arming of Ukrainian government forces and notorious neo-Nazi battalions by the US and its NATO allies, according to the scholar.

"Either continuing, or now very possibly increasing the ongoing military assault on peaceful residents of the Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic, or, by having a few 'misdirected' shots go over the border, can lead to some kind of armed response from Russia", Ebert suggests. "In the case of the so-called National Guard, the latter would most likely in fact be fully intentional in hopes of igniting a larger conflict, and thinking, a la [Georgian President Mikhail] Saakashvili in 2008, that the US and NATO would come to the rescue".

"The West does not want peace in the Donbass", he says. "It wants continued destabilisation and war tensions because this allows US-UK-NATO to advance their military increasingly closer to the Russian borders. A peaceful settlement in the Donbass would ruin Washington's plan for the creation of a failed state in Ukraine which would be a continual headache for Moscow".

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/20220217/why-us-nato-cast-doubt-on-russias-military-drawdown--turn-blind-eye-to-donbass-debacle-1093120284.html

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