Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has told British broadcaster Piers Morgan that inflation and coronavirus are “nothing” compared to Ukraine’s struggle, and Americans should support aid for Kiev “until we win.”

As the US grapples with a 40-year-high inflation rate and record gas prices, multiple polls name these economic concerns as more pressing among Americans than the conflict in Ukraine. Furthermore, nearly five times as many people in the US blame President Joe Biden’s policies for their misfortune as Russian President Vladimir Putin, regardless of the Biden administration’s efforts to brand the soaring cost of living as “Putin’s price hike.”

Speaking to Morgan in a recently-taped TV interview, Zelensky reminded Americans fed up with the flow of aid to Ukraine – more than $56 billion since February – that both countries are “fighting for absolutely communal values.”

“The war in Ukraine is still the war against those values that are professed in the United States and in Europe,” he told Morgan, according to a writeup in the New York Post. “We are giving our lives for your values and the joint security of the world.”

Therefore, inflation is nothing, Covid is nothing,” he continued. “These things are secondary. The most important thing is to survive and preserve your life, your family, and your country. Therefore, at the moment we are doing this job, but the West has to help us.”

Kiev has said that it needs up to $65 billion in foreign aid this year just to stay afloat, while Zelensky’s advisers have requested increasingly massive arms donations from the West. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov said that Ukraine’s military needs at least 100 US-made HIMARS rocket artillery systems – around a third of the US’ entire stockpile – to conduct an “effective counteroffensive” against Russian forces.

 

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VOLODYMYR, YOUR GOOSE IS COOKED AND IT'S STARTING TO BURN. MAKE A DEAL PLEASE. 

 

The only proper outcome: 

THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE UKRAINE PROBLEM IS TO DIVIDE IT IN TWO COUNTRIES — AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE: THE GALICIANS IN THE WEST, THE RUSSIANS IN THE EAST. END OF STORY.

See Ireland and England. See Serbia and Croatia.... et cetera......

 

The deal will be that the Donbass region and Novorussyia (Odessa) will be independent countries. The definition of the borders will be a compromise due to the mood/ethnicity of the people in each region. It took 70 years for the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 to implement the cornerstone of stability in Northern Ireland. It is, however, vulnerable to changes in British-Irish relations. Ukraine and the Donbass/Novorussyia can do much better than this — as long a the US Empire stays out of the process AND signs a pact of non-aggression with Russia. Meanwhile little dictator Zelensky will have to swallow his pride and become a real statesman rather than a Napoleonic caricature.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE..................

 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected a New York Times report on the scale of Russia’s losses in Ukraine, accusing the paper of unquestionably repeating government talking points.

“This is not a statement by the US administration, this is a newspaper report,” he said. “These days, even the most reputable newspapers do not shun spreading various fakes. Unfortunately, such practices have become increasingly common. This is the way we should treat it.”

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that the Biden administration believes that Russia had lost as many as 75,000 soldiers killed or wounded in action during the Ukraine conflict. As a source, the outlet cited an anonymous legislator that had allegedly seen a classified briefing from the State Department, Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Meanwhile, The Times cautioned that casualty estimates for militaries on both sides are highly speculative, noting that figures may differ by tens of thousands.

The last time Russia officially updated its losses was on March 25, when the Defense Ministry reported that 1,351 military personnel had been killed and 3,825 wounded in combat since the beginning of the offensive in Ukraine. In June, the head of the Russian Duma’s Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, claimed that, due to changes in military strategy, the Russian Army has “practically ceased to lose people.”

 

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has conceded that his nation’s armed forces are sustaining heavy losses. Last week, he said that Kiev loses around 30 personnel in combat a day, which is significantly less than in May and June, when the death toll amounted to 100-200 troops a day.

On July 4, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that over the previous two weeks alone, Ukraine had lost almost 5,500 troops, including more than 2,000 killed.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/559770-peskov-russia-losses-ukraine/

 

 

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The only proper outcome: 

THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE UKRAINE PROBLEM IS TO DIVIDE IT IN TWO COUNTRIES — AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE: THE GALICIANS IN THE WEST, THE RUSSIANS IN THE EAST. END OF STORY.

See Ireland and England. See Serbia and Croatia.... et cetera......

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...........

William Astore, Pantophobia USA POSTED ON JULY 28, 2022

 

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve been held for ransom by one man — or that’s the way it so often seemed in the media at least. I suspect you know just who I mean. If you can’t guess right off the bat, let me give you a hint or two.  He’s a multimillionaire coal baron who gets massive political donations from the oil and gas industry. And he’s officially a Democrat, one of 50 of them in the Senate. Without him, the Democrats essentially can’t pass a damn thing (other than the Pentagon budget, of course).

Yep, you got it. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He’s been the devil himself. He’s stood between the Democrats and glory, or at least the possibility of building back this increasingly woeful country a little bit better.  In the midst of a near-global heat wave, with more than 100 million Americans under a heat alert, record temperatures being reached again and again, the Southwest and West in an unprecedented megadrought, and parts of the country from New Mexico to Alaska blazing in a startling fashion, Joe Manchin, it seemed, had been bringing us his own version of hell on Earth… until he finally turned on a dime and compromised with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on a potential new build back (somewhat) better bill.

Wait a minute!  Something just occurred to me! Why has Manchin been getting so much attention when there are 50 other senators who have been doing even worse things than him?  And yes, I’m thinking about the Senate Republicans. They all turn out to be worse than Joe Manchin, especially when it comes to not doing one damn thing about climate change. It’s true that, in the face of an increasingly burning reality, few of those Republicans claim to deny the very reality of global warming any longer. Like Manchin, all they are denying is that we should do anything about it. (In response, President Biden has so far proved unwilling even to declare a presidential climate emergency and give himself the power to do much of significance either.)

And that, by the way, is just to start describing a world which couldn’t be madder. Skip the war in Ukraine and just consider that the greatest greenhouse gas emitting countries, China and the U.S. (now number two, but the greatest emitter in history), can hardly even imagine cooperating to deal with a planet going to hell in a (burning) handbasket. Worse yet, the Biden administration seems intent on pushing a new cold war with China, even if its top officials publicly deny doing so. To put it another way, maybe we’re all Republicans now when it comes to what matters. But enough from me. Let me turn you over to retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian, as well as TomDispatch regular, William Astore to face the true madness of this all-American moment of ours. Tom

The Nasty Voices in Our HeadsThe Paranoid Nature of American Foreign and Domestic PolicyBY WILLIAM J. ASTORE

I have a brother with chronic schizophrenia. He had his first severe catatonic episode when he was 16 years old and I was 10. Later, he suffered from auditory hallucinations and heard voices saying nasty things to him. I remember my father reassuring him that the voices weren’t real and asking him whether he could ignore them. Sadly, it’s not that simple.

That conversation between my father and brother has been on my mind, as I’ve been experiencing America’s increasingly divided, almost schizoid, version of social discourse. It’s as if this country were suffering from some set of collective auditory hallucinations whose lead feature was nastiness.

Take cover! We’re being threatened by a revived red(dish) menace from a “rogue” Russia! A “Yellow peril” from China! Iran with a nuke! And then there are the alleged threats at home. “Groomers”! MAGA kooks! And on and on.

Of course, America continues to face actual threats to its security and domestic tranquility. Here at home that would include regular mass shootings; controversial decisions by an openly partisan Supreme Court; the Capitol riot that the House January 6th select committee has repeatedly reminded us about; and growing uncertainty when it comes to what, if anything, still unifies these once United States. All this has Americans increasingly vexed and stressed.

Meanwhile, internationally, wars and rumors of war continue to be a constant plague, made worse by the exaggeration of threats to national security. History teaches us that such threats have sometimes not just been inflated but created ex nihilo. Those would, for instance, include the non-existent Gulf of Tonkin attack cited as the justification for a major military escalation of the war in Vietnam in 1965 or those non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq used to justify the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country.

All this and more is combining to create a paranoid and increasingly violent country, an America deeply fearful and perpetually thinking about warring on other peoples as well as on itself.

My brother’s doctors treated him as best they could with various drugs and electroshock therapy. Crude as that treatment regimen was then (and remains today), it did help him cope. But what if his doctors, instead of trying to reduce his symptoms, had conspired to amplify them? Indeed, what if they had told him that he should listen to those voices and so aggravate his fears? What if they had advised him that sanity meant arming himself against those very voices? Wouldn’t we, then or now, have said that they were guilty of the worst form of medical malpractice?

And isn’t that, by analogy, true of America’s leaders in these years, as they’ve driven this society to be ever less trusting and more fearful in the name of protecting and advancing their wealth, power, and security?

Fear Is the Mind-Killer

If you’re plugged into the mental matrix that’s America in 2022, you’re constantly exposed to fear. Fear, as Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, is the mind-killer. The voices around us encourage it. Fear your MAGA-hat-wearing neighbor with his steroidal truck and his sizeable collection of guns as he supposedly plots a coup against America. Alternately, fear your “libtard” neighbor with her rainbow peace flag as she allegedly plots to confiscate your guns and brainwash your kids. Small wonder that more than 37 million Americans take antidepressants, roughly one in nine of us, or that, in 2016, this country accounted for 80% of the global market for opioid prescriptions.

A climate of fear has led to 43 million new guns being purchased by Americans in 2020 and 2021 in a land singularly awash in more than 400 million firearms, including more than 20 million assault rifles. A climate of fear has led to police forces being heavily militarized and fully funded rather than “defunded” (which actually would mean a bit less money going to the police and a bit more to non-violent options like counseling and mental-health services). A climate of fear has led Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives who can agree on little else to vote almost unanimously to fork over $840 billion to the Pentagon in Fiscal Year 2023 for yet more wars and murderous weaponry. (Of course, the true budget for what is still coyly called “national defense” will soar well above a trillion dollars then, as it often has since 9/11/2001 and the announcement of a “global war on terror.”)

The idea that enemies are everywhere is, of course, useful if you’re seeking to create a heavily armed and militarized form of insanity.

It’s summer and these days it just couldn’t be hotter, so perhaps you’ll allow me to riff briefly about a scene I’ve never forgotten from The Big Red One, a war film I saw in 1980. It involved a World War II firefight between American and German troops in a Belgian insane asylum during which one of the mental patients picks up a submachine gun and starts blasting away, shouting, “I am one of you. I am sane!” In 2022, sign him up and give him a battlefield commission.

Where fear is omnipresent and violence becomes routinized and normalized, what you end up with is dystopia, not democracy.

We Must Not Be Friends but Enemies

At this point, consider us to be in a distinctly upside-down world. Reverse Abraham Lincoln’s moving plea to Southern secessionists in his first inaugural address in 1861 — “We must not be enemies but friends. We must not be enemies” — and you’ve summed up all too well our domestic and foreign policy today. No, we’re neither in a civil war nor a world war yet, but America’s national (in)security state does continue to insist that virtually every rival to our imperial being must be transformed into an enemy, whether it’s Russia, China, or much of the Middle East. Enemies are everywhere and must be feared, or so we’re repetitiously told anyway.

I remember well the time in 1991-1992 when the Soviet Union collapsed and America emerged as the sole victorious superpower of the Cold War. I was a captain then, teaching history at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Those were also the years when, even without the Soviet Union, the militarization of this society somehow never seemed to end. Not long after, in launching a conflict against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, this country officially kicked ass in the Middle East and President George H.W. Bush assured Americans that, by going to war again, we had also kicked our “Vietnam Syndrome” once and for all. Little did we guess then that two deeply destructive and wasteful quagmire wars, entirely unnecessary for our national defense, awaited us in Afghanistan and Iraq in the century to come.

Never has a country squandered victory — and a genuinely global victory at that! — so completely as ours has over the last 30 years. And yet there are few in power who consider altering the fearful course we’re still on.

A significant culprit here is the military-industrial-congressional complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address in 1961. But there’s more to it than that. The United States has, it seems, always reveled in violence, possibly as an antidote to being consumed by fear. Yet the intensity of both violence and fear seems to be soaring. Yes, our leaders clearly exaggerated the Soviet threat during the Cold War, but at least there was indeed a threat. Vladimir Putin’s Russia isn’t close to being in the same league, yet they’ve treated his war with Ukraine as if it were an attack on California or Texas. (That and the Pentagon budget may be the only things the two parties can mostly agree on.)

Recall that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was in horrible shape, a toothless, clawless bear, suffering in its cage. Instead of trying to help, our leaders decided to mistreat it further. To shrink its cage by expanding NATO. To torment it through various forms of economic exploitation and financial appropriation. “Russia Is Finished” declared the cover article of the Atlantic Monthly in May 2001, and no one in America seemed faintly concerned. Mercy and compassion were in short supply as all seemed right with the “sole superpower” of Planet Earth.

Now the Russian Bear is back — more menacing than ever, we’re told. Marked as “finished” two decades ago, that country is supposedly on the march again, not just in its invasion of Ukraine but in President Vladimir Putin’s alleged quest for a new Russian empire. Instead of Peter the Great, we now have Putin the Great glowering at Europe — unless, that is, America stands firm and fights bravely to the last Ukrainian.

Add to that ever-fiercer warnings about a resurgent China that echo the racist “Yellow Peril” tropes of more than a century ago. Why, for example, must President Joe Biden speak of China as a competitor and threat rather than as a trade partner and potential ally? Even anti-communist zealot Richard Nixon went to China during his presidency and made nice with Chairman Mao, if only to complicate matters for the Soviet Union.

If imperial America were willing to share the world on roughly equal terms, Russia and China could be “near-peer” friends instead of, in the Pentagon phrase of the moment, “near-peer adversaries.” Perhaps they could even be allies of a kind, rather than rivals always on the cusp of what might potentially become a world-ending war. But the voices that seek access to our heads prefer to whisper sneakily of enemies rather than calmly of potential allies in creating a better planet.

And yet, guess what, whether anyone in Washington admits it or not: we’re already rather friendly with (as well as heavily dependent on) China. Here are just two recent examples from my own mundane life. I ordered a fan — it’s hot as I type these words in my decidedly unairconditioned office — from AAFES, a department store of sorts that serves members of the military, in service or retired, and their families. It came a few days later at an affordable price. As I put it together, I saw the label: “Made in China.” Thank you for the cooling breeze, Xi Jinping!

Then I decided to order a Henley shirt from Jockey, a name with a thoroughly American pedigree. You guessed it! That shirt was plainly marked “Made in China.” (Jockey, to its credit, does have a “Made in America” collection and I got two white cotton t-shirts from it.) You get my point: the American consumer would be lost without China, the present workhouse for the world.

You’d think a war, or even a new Cold War, with America’s number-one provider of stuff of every sort would be dumb, but no one is going to lose any bets by underestimating how dumb Americans can be. Otherwise, how can you explain Donald Trump? And not just his presidency either. What about his “Trump steaks,” “Trump university,” even “Trump vodka”? After all, who could be relied upon to know more about the quality of vodka than a man who refuses to drink it? 

Learning from Charlie Brown

Returning to fears and psychiatric help, one of my favorite scenes is from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” In that classic 1965 cartoon holiday special, Lucy ostensibly tries to help Charlie with his seasonal depression by labeling what ails him. The wannabe shrink goes through a short list of phobias until she lands on “pantophobia,” which she defines as “the fear of everything.” Charlie Brown shouts, “That’s it!”

Deep down, he knows perfectly well that he isn’t afraid of everything. What he doesn’t know, however, and what that cartoon is eager to show us, is how he can snap out of his mental funk. All that he needs is a little love, a little hands-on kindness from the other children.

America writ large today is, to my mind, a little like Charlie Brown — down in the dumps, bedraggled, having lost a clear sense of what life in our country should be all about. We need to come together and share a measure of compassion and love. Except our Lucys aren’t trying to lend a hand at the “psychiatric help” stand. They’re trying to persuade us that pantophobia, the fear of everything, is normal, even laudable. Their voices keep telling us to fear — and fear some more.

It’s not easy, America, to tune those voices out. My brother could tell you that. At times, he needed an asylum to escape them. What he needed most, though, was love or at least some good will and understanding from his fellow humans. What he didn’t need was more fear and neither do we. We — most of us anyway — still believe ourselves to be the “sane” ones. So why do we continue to tolerate leaders, institutions, and whole political parties intent on eroding our sanity and exploiting our fears in service of their own power and perks?

Remember that mental patient in The Big Red One, who picks up a gun and starts blasting people while crying that he’s “sane”? We’ll know we’re on the path to sanity when we finally master our fear, put down our guns, and stop eternally preparing to blast people at home and abroad.

Copyright 2022 William J. Astore 

Featured image: Paranoia by Flood G. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 / Flickr

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’ They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

 

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I have a theory about Joe Manchin of West Virginia... He has been secretly employed by the Biden Administration to prevent any deals on reducing carbon emissions. He is the front man of this devil dance, and he has the credibility to hold the ground... He will be "blamed" for the  inaction, but the whole fo the administration hopes he will hold his grounds....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.......

 

THE COMMENTS BELOW COME FROM A UKRAINIAN "SOCIALIST", POSTED ON JACOBIN, THE leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. 

WE THINK THAT TARAS BILOUS, THE UKRAINIAN "SOCIALIST" IS A SOCIALIST LIKE WE ARE GOLDFISHES ON PLANET VENUS. HIS VIEWS SEEM TO BE ORIGINATED IN THE BOWELS OF THE CIA PROPAGANDA UNIT. BASED ON TOTAL "DISUNDERSTANDING" OF THE SITUATION HE IS IN OR HE IS DELIBERATELY MISLEADING THE LARGE READERSHIP OF JACOBIN.

UKRAINE IS AN AMALGAM OF VARIOUS PROVINCES WITH TWO MAIN ETHNIC ORIGINS. TO THE WEST, THE GALICIANS AND TO THE EAST THE RUSSIANS. TWO OF THE RUSSIAN PROVINCES DECLARED INDEPENDENCE FROM KIEV FOR GOOD REASONS in 2014. MANY SERIOUS ANALYSIS HAVE POINTED OUT THE PROBLEM OF THE MAIDAN REVOLUTION WHICH WAS HELPED BY THE NEO-NAZIS (NOT MENTIONED BY TARAS, BUT ALUDED(?) TO AS "RIGHT WING") SUPPORTED BY THE US.

 

Though it is a difficult process, the only proper outcome can be expressed: 

THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE UKRAINE PROBLEM IS TO DIVIDE IT IN TWO COUNTRIES — AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE: THE GALICIANS IN THE WEST, THE RUSSIANS IN THE EAST. END OF STORY.

See Ireland and England. See Serbia and Croatia.... et cetera......

 

TARAS ALSO MISINFORMS ON THE HEGEMONY OF THE US EMPIRE, WHICH IS NOT BENEVOLENT. BY THE END OF HIS (CIA INSPIRED?) TIRADE, TARAS DARES TO MENTION SYRIA(!!!)... MANY OF HIS COMMENTS ARE GLIB AND AMAZINGLY DISHONEST, DESIGNED TO GET THE UNAWARE SOCIALISTS IN BED WITH THE NEO-NAZIS:

— Vietnam’s struggle did not just benefit Vietnam; the defeat of the United States there had a significant (if temporary) deterrent effect on American imperialism.

— Why then, when it comes to Western support for Ukraine, are the murderous occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq considered serious counterarguments for aid [to Ukraine]?

— US hegemony has had terrible consequences for humanity and it’s thankfully now in decline. [Is this to the benefit of polishing our poor intellectualism?].

— Ukraine and Syria are examples of what a “multipolar world” will be like if the appetites of non-Western imperialisms are not reduced.[SMELL THE CIA DARK BUTT HERE].

 

----------------------

 

Here comes TARAS BILOUS

I’m writing from Ukraine, where I serve in the Territorial Defense Forces. A year ago, I couldn’t have expected to be in this situation. Like millions of Ukrainians my life has been upturned by the chaos of war.

For the past four months, I have had the opportunity to meet people whom I would hardly have met under other circumstances. Some of them had never thought of taking up arms before February 24, but the Russian invasion forced them to drop everything and go to protect their families.

We often criticize the actions of the Ukrainian government and the way defense is organized. But they do not question the necessity of resistance and understand well why and for what we are fighting.

At the same time, during these months, I’ve tried to follow and participate in the discussions of the international left about the Russian-Ukrainian war. And the main thing that I now feel from these discussions is fatigue and disappointment. Too much time being forced to rebut obviously false Russian propaganda, too much time explaining why Moscow had no “legitimate security concerns” to justify war, too much time asserting the basic premises of self-determination that any leftist should already agree with.

Perhaps most striking about many of these debates about the Russian-Ukrainian war is the ignoring of the opinion of Ukrainians. Ukrainians are still often presented in some left-wing discussions either as passive victims who should be sympathized with or as Nazis who should be condemned. But the far right makes up a clear minority of the Ukrainian resistance, while the absolute majority of Ukrainians support the resistance and do not want to be just passive victims.

 

Negotiations

Among even many well-intentioned people in recent months, there’s been increasingly loud but ultimately vague calls for negotiations and a diplomatic settlement of the conflict. But what exactly does this mean? Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia took place for several months following the invasion, but they did not stop the war. Before that, negotiations on Donbas had lasted for more than seven years with French and German participation; but despite signed agreements and a cease-fire, the conflict was never resolved. On the other hand, in a war between two states, even the terms of surrender are usually settled at the negotiating table.

A call for diplomacy in itself means nothing if we don’t address negotiating positions, concrete concessions, and the willingness of the parties to adhere to any signed agreement. All of this directly depends on the course of hostilities, which in turn depends on the extent of international military aid. And this can speed up the conclusion of a just peace.

The situation in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine indicates that Russian troops are trying to establish a permanent position there because they provide Russia with a land corridor to Crimea. The Kremlin uses the grain looted in these territories to support its client regimes and simultaneously threatens the whole world with famine by blocking Ukrainian ports. The agreement on unblocking the export of Ukrainian grain, signed on July 22 in Istanbul, was violated by Russia the day after it was signed by attacking the Odessa Sea Trade Port with missiles.

Meanwhile, high-ranking Russian politicians, such as the former president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, or the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, continue to write that Ukraine must be destroyed. There is no reason to believe that Russia will stop its territorial expansion, even if one day it becomes beneficial for the Kremlin to sign a temporary truce.

On the other hand, 80 percent of Ukrainians considerterritorial concessions unacceptable. For Ukrainians, giving up the occupied territories means betraying their fellow citizens and relatives, and putting up with the daily abductions and tortures perpetrated by occupiers. Under these conditions, the parliament will not ratify cession, even if the West forces the Ukrainian government to agree to territorial losses. This would only discredit President Volodymyr Zelensky and lead to the reelection of more nationalist authorities, while the far right would be rewarded with favorable conditions for recruiting new members.

Zelensky’s government, of course, is neoliberal. Ukrainian leftists and trade unionists have organized extensively against his social and economic policies. However, in terms of war and nationalism, Zelensky is the most moderate politician who could have come to power in Ukraine after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbas.

There’s been some misunderstanding about his own record, too. For example, many authors now blame Zelensky for the nationalist language policy, centered around restrictions on the Russian language in the public sphere and including restriction of secondary education in the languages of national minorities. In fact, these language laws were adopted during the previous term of parliament’s just that individual provisions of these laws came into force after Zelensky took office. His government has repeatedly tried to soften them, but each time backed down after nationalist protests.

Only a mass domestic movement for change in Russia can open the possibility for the restoration of stable relations between Ukraine and Russia in the future.

This was evident after the beginning of the invasion in his frequent appeals to the Russians, his invitation to the Kremlin to negotiate, and his statements that the Ukrainian army would not try to retake the territories that were under Russian control before February 24 but would seek their return through diplomatic means in the future. If Zelensky were replaced by someone more nationalistic, the situation would become much worse.

I hardly need to spell out the consequences of that outcome. There would be even more authoritarianism in our domestic politics, revanchist sentiments will prevail, and the war would not stop. Any new government would be much less restrained from shelling Russian territory. With a reinvigorated far right, our country would be dragged ever deeper into a maelstrom of nationalism and reaction.

As someone who has seen the horrors of this war, I understand the desire for it to be over as soon as possible. Indeed, no one is more eager for the war to end than we who live in Ukraine, but it is also important to Ukrainians how exactly the war will end. At the beginning of the war, I too hoped that the Russian antiwar movement would force the Kremlin to end its invasion. But unfortunately this didn’t happen. Today, the Russian antiwar movement can only influence the situation by carrying out the small-scale sabotage of railways, military factories, and so on. Something bigger will be possible only after the military defeat of Russia.

Of course, under certain circumstances, it might be appropriate to agree to a cease-fire. But such a cease-fire would only be temporary. Any Russian success would strengthen Vladimir Putin’s regime and its reactionary tendencies. It would not mean peace, but decades of instability, guerrilla resistance in the occupied territories, and recurrent clashes on the demarcation line. It would be a disaster not only for Ukraine but also for Russia, where a reactionary political drift would intensify and the economy would suffer from sanctions, with severe consequences for ordinary civilians.

A military defeat of the Russian invasion is therefore also in the interests of the Russians. Only a mass domestic movement for change can open the possibility for the restoration of stable relations between Ukraine and Russia in the future. But if Putin’s regime is victorious, that revolution will be impossible for a long time. Its defeat is necessary for the possibility of progressive changes in Ukraine, Russia, and the entire post-Soviet world.

 

What Socialists Should Do

It’s worth acknowledging that my focus has been largely on the domestic dimensions — for both Ukrainians and Russians — of the current conflict. For many leftists abroad, discussions tend to focus on its wider geopolitical implications. But in my opinion, in assessing the conflict, socialists should first of all pay attention to the people directly involved in it. And secondly, many leftists underestimate the threats posed by the possible success of Russia.

The decision to oppose the Russian occupation was not made by Joe Biden, nor by Zelensky, but by the Ukrainian people, who rose en masse in the first days of the invasion and lined up for weapons. Had Zelensky capitulated then, he would only have been discredited in the eyes of most of society, but the resistance would have continued in a different form, led by hard-line nationalist forces.

Besides, as Volodymyr Artiukh has noted in Jacobin, the West did not want this war. The United States did not want problems in Europe because it wanted to focus on the confrontation with China. Even less did Germany and France want this war. Although Washington has done a lot to undermine international law (we, like socialists anywhere in the world, will never forget the criminal invasion of Iraq, for instance), by supporting Ukrainian resistance to the invasion they are doing the right thing.

To put it in historical terms, the war in Ukraine is no more a proxy war than the Vietnam War was a proxy war between the United States on one side and the Soviet Union and China on the other. And yet, at the same time, it was also a national liberation war of the Vietnamese people against the United States as well as a civil war between supporters of North and South Vietnam. Almost every war is multilayered; its nature can change during its course. But what does this give us in practical terms?

During the Cold War, internationalists did not need to laud the USSR to support the Vietnamese struggle against the United States. And it is unlikely that any socialists would have advised left-wing dissidents in the Soviet Union to oppose support for the Vietcong. Should Soviet military support for Vietnam have been resisted because the USSR criminally suppressed the Prague Spring of 1968? Why then, when it comes to Western support for Ukraine, are the murderous occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq considered serious counterarguments for aid?

Socialist internationalists must evaluate every conflict based on the interests of working people and their struggle for freedom and equality.

Instead of seeing the world as being composed solely of geopolitical camps, socialist internationalists must evaluate every conflict based on the interests of working people and their struggle for freedom and equality. The revolutionary Leon Trotsky once wrote that, hypothetically, if fascist Italy pursuing their interests had supported the anti-colonial uprising in Algeria against democratic France, the internationalists should have supported the Italian arming of the rebels. It sounds quite right, and this did not stop him from being an anti-fascist.

Vietnam’s struggle did not just benefit Vietnam; the defeat of the United States there had a significant (if temporary) deterrent effect on American imperialism. The same is true with Ukraine. What will Russia do if Ukraine is defeated? What would prevent Putin from conquering Moldova or other post-Soviet states?

US hegemony has had terrible consequences for humanity and it’s thankfully now in decline. However, an end of US supremacy can mean either a transition to a more democratic and just international order or a war of all against all. It can also mean a return to the policy of imperialist spheres of influence and the military redrawing borders, as in previous centuries.

The world will become even more unjust and dangerous if non-Western imperialist predators take advantage of American decline to normalize their aggressive policies. Ukraine and Syria are examples of what a “multipolar world” will be like if the appetites of non-Western imperialisms are not reduced.

The longer this horrible conflict in Ukraine goes on, the more popular discontent in Western countries could grow as a result of the economic difficulties of the war and sanctions. Capital, which does not like the loss of profits and wants to return to “business as usual,” may try to exploit this situation. It can also be used by right-wing populists who do not mind sharing spheres of influence with Putin.

But for socialists to use this discontent to demand less aid to Ukraine and less pressure on Russia would be a rejection of solidarity with the oppressed.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://jacobin.com/2022/07/ukraine-russia-war-putin-socialism-resistance

 

 

WE REPEAT:

 

THE COMMENTS ABOVE CAME FROM A UKRAINIAN "SOCIALIST", POSTED ON JACOBIN, THE leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. 

WE THINK THAT TARAS BILOUS, THE UKRAINIAN "SOCIALIST" IS A SOCIALIST LIKE WE ARE MUSICIANS ON PLANET MARS. HIS VIEWS SEEM TO BE ORIGINATED IN THE BOWELS OF THE CIA PROPAGANDA UNIT. BASED ON TOTAL "DISUNDERSTANDING" OF THE SITUATION HE IS IN OR HE IS DELIBERATELY MISLEADING THE LARGE READERSHIP OF JACOBIN.

UKRAINE IS AN AMALGAM OF VARIOUS PROVINCES WITH TWO MAIN ETHNIC ORIGINS. TO THE WEST, THE GALICIANS AND TO THE EAST THE RUSSIANS. TWO OF THE RUSSIAN PROVINCES DECLARED INDEPENDENCE FROM KIEV FOR GOOD REASONS in 2014. MANY SERIOUS ANALYSIS HAVE POINTED OUT THE PROBLEM OF THE MAIDAN REVOLUTION WHICH WAS HELPED BY THE NEO-NAZIS (NOT MENTIONED BY TARAS, BUT ALUDED(?) TO AS "RIGHT WING").

 

Though it is a difficult process, the only proper outcome can be expressed: 

THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE UKRAINE PROBLEM IS TO DIVIDE IT IN TWO COUNTRIES — AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE: THE GALICIANS IN THE WEST, THE RUSSIANS IN THE EAST. END OF STORY.

See Ireland and England. See Serbia and Croatia.... et cetera......

 

TARAS ALSO MISINFORMS ON THE HEGEMONY OF THE US EMPIRE, WHICH IS NOT BENEVOLENT. BY THE END OF HIS (CIA INSPIRED?) TIRADE, TARAS DARES TO MENTION SYRIA(!!!)... MANY OF HIS COMMENTS ARE GLIB AND AMAZINGLY DISHONEST, DESIGNED TO GET THE UNAWARE SOCIALISTS IN BED WITH THE NEO-NAZIS:

— Vietnam’s struggle did not just benefit Vietnam; the defeat of the United States there had a significant (if temporary) deterrent effect on American imperialism.

— Why then, when it comes to Western support for Ukraine, are the murderous occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq considered serious counterarguments for aid [to Ukraine]?

— US hegemony has had terrible consequences for humanity and it’s thankfully now in decline. [Is this to the benefit of polishing our poor intellectualism?].

— Ukraine and Syria are examples of what a “multipolar world” will be like if the appetites of non-Western imperialisms are not reduced.[SMELL THE CIA DARK BUTT HERE].

 

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Who killed the POWs at Yelenovka? All signs on the ground point to a Ukrainian attackThere is every reason to believe that the July 29 bombing of a detention center holding Ukrainian POWs was carried out on Kiev’s orders BY EVA BARTLETT  

It was extremely difficult to witness the charred and twisted remains of Ukrainian POWs in the Yelenovka detention center at first hand. The stench of death was overwhelming. Bodies remained in the ruins and melted into the metal bunk beds they were on at the time of the bombing.

Other corpses, presumably killed by shrapnel instead of burning to death, lay outside. A soldier was inspecting them, presumably in order to determine the exact cause, and the victims’ identities. Even if the Ukrainian side killed its own soldiers, it was the Russians who took care to identify the remains.

I shared some of the gruesome photos and my thoughts on Twitter immediately after getting back from Yelenovka.

The next morning, I went around Donetsk to document the extremely dangerous “petal” mines Ukraine has dropped on the city. According to DPR Emergency Services, eight civilians had been killed by these mines just the day before. If you step on one of these tiny-but powerful-explosives, chances it will merely tear off a leg instead of outright killing you. And they are insidiously toy-like in appearance, likely to attract children’s attention.

 

Who benefits from the war crime at Yelenovka? 

Ukraine and Western media, as would be expected, blame Russia for the bombing of Yelenovka detention center, which killed 53 people. Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), in turn, point the finger at Kiev.

In addition to those killed, the 2am bombing, which DPR officials say was carried out using American-supplied HIMARS, injured at least eight employees and over 70 POWs held there. The prisoners were captured Ukrainian combatants, mainly members of the Azov neo-Nazi militia who’d surrendered in Mariupol in May.

If HIMARS, or High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, were indeed the source of the destruction and death, then it is almost certain it was Ukraine who bombed the prison, given that Kiev had the coordinates and is the only side in the conflict that possesses such weapons. Even the Pentagon admits it is possible, albeit characterizing the strike as “unintentional.”

From a logical perspective, Russia had no motivation to bomb the prison. For Ukraine, on the other hand, these POWs represented a liability, in that they could testify to the alleged war crimes they committed against Donbass civilians.

Ukraine has made a litany of claims meant to incriminate Russia throughout the current conflict –the Bucha massacre, the strike on the Mariupol maternity hospital, the Ghost of Kiev hoax, the supposed mass graves of civilians, the outlandish false allegations of Russian soldiers committing sexual crimes, which even saw the former Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights fired by Kiev’s own parliament.

Russia has invited the UN and the International Red Cross to investigate the Yelenovka prison bombing. Meanwhile, observers online have used the publicly available data to put together a picture of what occurred. Here’s an insightful analysis from the Rybar Telegram channel (with more than 627,000 followers), specializing in military analytics:

“The eastern part of the building suffered the most damage, where a powerful fire and explosion occurred, which blew out the windows.” Judging by the angle of impact, the analyst concludes that “the shooting was carried out from the trajectory of Marinka-Kurakhovo –the Sergeevka triangle– Pokrovsk-Udachnoe.” This is Ukrainian-controlled territory. The analysis could not conclude whether HIMARS was used, from the information at hand. 

Along the ‘who benefits?’ line of thinking, a number of circumstances also point to Kiev. These have also been pointed out by Russian observers and compiled into a chronology. The captured Azov Nazis were taken to the Yelenovka detention center in late May. While prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia have included Azov fighters, there is a strong opposition to handing them back over to Kiev, meaning that there’s no guarantee that they would be exchanged in the future – potentially making them a liability to Kiev. By June 20 reports of Ukraine shelling the prison already appeared on Russian channels watching the conflict. On July 28 the confession of an Azov member emerged, claiming that neo-Nazis in Kharkov and Kiev had direct orders from Zelensky’s office to torture and murder Russian prisoners of war. Late that night/early next morning, Ukraine struck the very detention center holding the Azov member who confessed, as well as others who might have done so.

Elsewhere, other neo-Nazis in captivity have confessed to deliberately murdering civilians, a PR disaster for Ukraine, made worse were the prisoners in Yelenovka to follow suit.

Last but not least, just two days before the Yelenovka strike, the US Senate passed a resolution urging the State Department to recognize Russia as a “sponsor of terrorism.” By perpetrating an attack and blaming it on Moscow, Kiev could be aiming to push that decision through – even though the State Department is reportedly reluctant.

Given Ukraine’s multiple attempts to incriminate Russia, and eight years of bombing Donbass civilians, killing their own soldiers is not too far-fetched. In fact, surrendered Ukrainian soldiers have claimed their commanders threatened to shoot them if they attempted desertion, and indeed Ukrainian nationalists firing on them when they attempted to surrender, in one case killing or wounding dozens .

It is left to Russian and DPR doctors to preserve the lives of Ukrainian POWs – even those apparently injured by friendly fire. Outside a Donetsk hospital after the Yelenovka bombing, one of the doctors working on wounded Ukrainians said that five had already had successful surgery for their shrapnel wounds, and two more were to undergo operations.

“It doesn’t matter which side you’re on, we will help you,” he said. 

The ghastly scenes of charred flesh and shrapnel-studded bodies I saw at the prison will remain etched in my mind for a long time. Yes, war is ugly, but Ukraine is upping the ante when it comes to both war crimes and hypocrisy.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/559996-kiev-ukraine-remains-pows/

 

MEANWHILE:

 

 

Russian Propaganda Is Targeting Aid Workers

 

Disinformation campaigns that worked in Syria have failed so far in Ukraine.

 

    

By Shannon Van Sant, a reporter based in Amsterdam.  

In April, I was volunteering with World Central Kitchen along Poland’s border with Ukraine. A barbeque chef from North Carolina stood next to me in the warehouse as we unpacked bread for sandwiches. “I heard the International Red Cross is kidnapping Ukrainians and taking them into Russia,” he said confidently.

The chef said that earlier, at a nearby cafe, a man went from table to table telling diners the humanitarian organization was forcibly deporting Ukrainians to Russia. Social media users shared and posted tweets about the purported kidnappings, with mentions of the Red Cross peaking over a three-day period at the end of March. In May, a video circulated on Telegram claiming to show that the Red Cross had collected thousands of Ukrainian children’s medical records and may be involved in organ trafficking. Pro-Russian media outlets broadcast the video, and the Russian government said it would investigate. The claims, of course, were nonsense. The International Committee of the Red Cross says such rumors stem from a massive online campaign of targeted attacks using disinformation to discredit its work.

It’s a dynamic that started back in Syria, where Russian intelligence targeted the White Helmets, a rescue group, and the Red Cross. Humanitarian organizations shine a light on the human toll of war and raise global awareness and understanding of communities’ needs. In doing so, they provide an unvarnished, firsthand look at facts on the ground in conflict zones and are intrinsically threatening to the narratives of autocratic regimes.

 

'

READ MORE:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/01/russia-disinformation-ukraine-syria-humanitarian-aid-workers/

 

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BY DEFINITION OF ZELENSKYY BANNING OPPOSITION PARTIES AND BURNING RUSSIAN BOOKS, HE IS A DICTATOR AND A SMOOTH TALKER YET UNINTELLIGENT DUMB DUMMY...... AS WELL, THE BARBARIC US EMPIRE HIDES BEHIND A VEIL OF BEING SANCTIMONIOUS LIKE A JUSTICERER ON THE PLANET IS ALSO BEYOND AUTOCRATIC. THE US EMPIRE IS SHEER FASCIST.

 

DO NOT FORGET: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW............. 

 

BY EVA BARTLETT

 Here’s why Human Rights Watch deliberately only scratched the surface in exploring Ukraine’s use of banned ‘petal’ mines

 

The American NGO begrudgingly acknowledges one of Kiev’s war crimes, but not without smearing Russia along the way 

Since Ukraine dropped thousands of mines on the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in July, 104 people have fallen victim to the internationally-banned PFM-1 ‘petal’ (otherwise known as ‘butterfly’) devices. Nine of them are children. Of which three died.

Among the most recent civilians to be injured, on March 19, were two 60-year-old men. On February 26, a woman in her sixties was wounded in her neighborhood. On February 14, a teenager stepped on a petal mine near a school. These are just a few documented examples from recent weeks.

The first wave of over 40 victims came within the first few weeks after Ukrainian forces deployed the mines over Donetsk en masse in July 2022, and the number has more than doubled since. Since then I, along with other reporters on the ground, have documented their lingering presence and the civilian victims.

 NGO reports... selectively

After signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty in 1999, Kiev was obligated to destroy its stockpile of 6 million PFM-1s. It denies using them, but abundant evidence incriminates Kiev in this particular war crime. While the West has yet to turn its attention to the victims of the  petal mines in the Donbass, reports of Ukraine using them elsewhere have emerged.

 

In its January 2023 report on banned landmines, the Human Rights Watch NGO notes, “In 2021, Ukraine reported to the UN secretary-general that 3.3 million stockpiled PFM mines still need to be destroyed.” HRW then advised Ukraine to investigate itself for its use of the prohibited mines.

The report is titled “Ukraine: Banned Landmines Harm Civilians. Ukraine Should Investigate Forces’ Apparent Use; Russian Use Continues,” implying that not only is Russia also deploying the petal mines, but that Russia’s use of them is beyond question, while Kiev’s use is open to debate.

Yet, much like in 2020, when the UN accused Russia of war crimes in Syria based on “we say so” and unnamed sources, you won’t find proof of Russia’s use of petal mines in the HRW report. In fact, buried there is a HRW admission that it “has not verified claims of Russian forces using PFM mines in the armed conflict.” This is a standard media tactic: boldly state one thing in a headline and quietly clarify the opposite in the body of the article, which most people won't bother reading.

On the other hand, HRW claims it interviewed over 100 people, “including witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian de-miners,” regarding Ukraine's use of the objects in Izium (a city in the Kharkov region, north of Donetsk) while it was briefly under Moscow’s control. The HRW team entered the city after Russian forces withdrew in September. Everyone interviewed, the report noted, “said they had seen mines on the ground, knew someone who was injured by one, or had been warned about their presence during Russia’s occupation of Izium.”

The testimony records that the areas were all, “close to where Russian military forces were positioned at the time, suggesting they were the target,” and that residents in Izium said that rocket attacks, “happened frequently during the Russian occupation.”

 

The report cited 11 civilian mine-casualties, and noted that HRW had seen “physical evidence of PFM antipersonnel mine use,” including, “unexploded mines, remnants of mines, and the metal cassettes that carry the mines in rockets.”

It has to be noted that HRW has been banned in Russia since April 2022, making it impossible for the organization to gather evidence on the ground in areas controlled by Russian forces. However, lack of access to evidence has not stopped it from using its report to carry accusations against Russia, citing Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Irina Venediktova’s claim that “Russian forces used PFM mines in the Kharkivska region as early as February 26”. In contrast, the numerous credible reports of Kiev’s use of petal mines in Donetsk, available through open sources, are absent from the report.

 HRW’s history of targeted condemnations 

Human Rights Watch is one of many Western-funded NGOs with a history of whitewashing NATO and its allies' crimes while pretending to be a neutral observer. Over the years, I've pointed out the hypocrisy of Ken Roth, who was the George Soros-funded NGO’s executive director from 1993-2022. In March 2021 he pushed Washington's propaganda about Russia starving Syria. More glaringly, in 2015, Roth used footage from an eastern Gaza neighbourhood (Shuja’iyya) that had been flattened by Israel, to claim the footage depicted Syria's Aleppo. He went on to likewise push the 2013 Ghouta “chemical” narrative, which had long been widely-discredited by journalists and by the so-called “rebels” themselves.

If dubious claims from HRW or its representatives aren't indication enough of their allegiances to Western narratives, then their links to the US government should be. The vice chair of its board of directors, Susan Manilow, according to this 2014 article, describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton,” who helped manage his campaign finances. Bruce Rabb, also on the board, lists in his biography that he “served as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon” from 1969-70 – the period in which his administration secretly and illegally carpet-bombed Cambodia and Laos.

The article further notes that the advisory committee for HRW’s Americas Division has even boasted the presence of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Miguel Díaz. According to his State Department biography, Díaz served as a CIA analyst and also provided “oversight of US intelligence activities in Latin America” for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

So, when HRW recently decided to finally discuss Ukraine's deployment of the insidious petal mines (tens of thousands of which have been fired into the Donbass by Ukraine over the course of the past year), it is not because the body has suddenly become neutral and impartial, but it is rather a grasp at credibility: reporting what is widely known – that, in violation of international law, Ukraine has been deploying Petal mines – but avoid providing the whole story.

By downplaying and ignoring Kiev's widespread use of petal mines throughout the DPR, HRW is deliberately downplaying war crimes, much like the entirety of Western corporate media.

 

Kiev’s Western supporters may even have to deal with its use of the petal mines at their own expense down the line – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently announced his country would invest $2.2 million into de-mining Ukraine. Of course, no mention was made of the Ottawa Treaty-banned munitions which will have to be cleared.

 Kiev’s deadly delivery 

In one incident I witnessed first hand, an attack took place just after 9 pm on July 30, 2022. Ukraine fired rockets, each packed with over 300 mines, onto Donetsk, its suburbs, and other cities, including Yasinovataya, Makeevka and Gorlovka. The rockets exploded in the air to ensure greater distribution of devices on the ground. The attack mirrored previous ‘deliveries’ to the hard-hit Donetsk districts of Kievskiy, Kirovsky and Kuibyshevkiy.

The morning after, I walked the central Donetsk streets extremely carefully, wary of every leaf or piece of cardboard which could be obscuring or covering a Petal mine, so difficult are they to pick out from their surroundings. They cannot seriously damage military vehicles, which means that scattering them over Donetsk only has one purpose – to target and maim civilians. Some models of the petal mines have a self-destruct timer. Others, including those used by Kiev, can stay on the ground for years.

The innocent victims of Donbass

Since reporting the initial bombardment in late July, I have been following up on the methodical destruction of these mines by Russian sappers, as well as on civilians harmed by the illegal munitions. One of the more recent victims was 14 year old Nikita. His foot was blown off when in early November, 2022, he stepped on a mine in a playground while on his way to visit his grandmother.

RT journalist Roman Kosarev recently spoke with another recent teenage victim,  who stepped on a petal mine when getting into a car.

Kosarev also spoke to the Director of the Donetsk Republic’s Trauma Center, Andrey Boryak, who said: "The injury from such a mine is very severe, and immediately leads to a handicap. It's almost impossible to save the foot and the lower part of the leg.”

HRW has had over 6 months to investigate Ukraine littering the DPR with Petal/PFM-1 mines… but it has not, and will not. It's once again the case that the lives of Donbass civilians don't matter when it comes not only to Western media reporting but also to supposedly-neutral human rights bodies. Even worse still is the knowledge that in spite of the valiant efforts of sappers in the DPR, the mines will inevitably claim more innocent civilians as their victims.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/573033-ukraine-use-banned-petal-mines/

 

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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

MAKE A DEAL PLEASE:

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON AGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

 

 

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