The Chivalrous Terrorists of Ukraine

Admittedly, it is not easy to explain why a Czech ex-pat after a Russian invasion in 1968 living in Canada would side with Putin on Ukraine. It is not easy to explain for a number of reasons. First, people – even the bright lights - are badly misinformed and lacking factual grounds to make valid calls about what is going on in Eastern Europe right now.  They fall prey to crude propaganda and make patently false assumptions about the hostilities. Second, and further, it has become a feature of the decline of democracy in the West generally, to take a dissenting political opinion not simply as a different approach to problems to be analyzed and critiqued, but as an exhibit of some combination of obtuse incompetence, moral depravity and lunacy.  The political polarization has become so pervasive that it makes a political dialogue impossible, and in fact redundant. Grandstanding and personal attacks have replaced a reasoned debate. In the electoral manipulations, it is not words and meanings that convince the masses. Winning is everything and the winner will be the one who can discredit the opponent(s) better. The style perhaps best exemplified by Ann Coulter and her struggle against the lying Liberals who are traitors to the Republic and who attack her ad-hominem.  Of course, in the logic of this culture of brainless recriminations, a Czech ex-pat of a 1968 Russian invasion who sides with Putin on Ukraine must be an idiot, or a paid agent or a pathological liar. 

It is interesting to observe how the MSM has fixed the naming of the actors and acts on the Ukrainian steppes.  The Kyiv government are the good guys, the underfunded, underequipped underdog fighting Russian invaders.  Kyiv’s paramilitary force is called National Guard. ( A word of explanation is called for here. The Russian and Ukrainian languages distinguish between narodnyi, in the sense of ethnic nation or a people, and natsionalnyi, as in state-national. The Ukrainian National Guard is Natsionalna hvardiya Ukrayiny.)  The Russian speaking Ukrainian nationals in revolt against the current regime that seeks to suppress their Russian ethnicity, are called separatists and terrorists.  Russia’s support for the rebellious regions is called mischief, and assault on Ukrainian sovereignity, and most recently an 'invasion',  an attempt to bend the Kyiv government to its will.   More than a quarter million Russian-speaking Ukrainian nationals in Russia are now called refugees, but until their numbers swelled in June they were called Moscow’s invention Got that ?  Good.  So let us see how all that works.  

Is the Kyiv government the good guys? Well, it is relative. Are they good guys relative to whom? Putin accuses the Kyiv government of waging war on its own people, which of course has more than a grain of truth in it.  Are they as bad as the Nazis?  That sort of comparison seems to be Putin’s narrative for domestic consumption, and really is counter-productive if he is serious about a political settlement of the conflict. The last thing needed here is more trash talk.  It would be enough to say that the large scale attacks on urban areas by Kyiv forces are unnecessary and shameful, and certainly merit condemnation in the West which roundly criticized Israeli large scale – even if precision – bombing of civilian areas in Gaza.  The added problem with justifying the Donetsk rubble is that there are no missiles flying from there in the direction of Kyiv, Lviv  and Rivne.

The apparently insoluble political conundrum in the Ukraine today arises from a fanatic definition of Ukrainian nationality. The exclusionary, oppressive view of national identity espoused in Kyiv not only flies in the face of an ostensibly multicultural Europe but the very notion of civility in our world. Yulia Tymoshenko’s now infamous histrionic threat of nuking the eight million Russian speakers in Ukraine is descriptive of this ugly phenom even though hers was more an angry blowing of steam than a statement of intent.  But still, the post-Maidan Ukrainian politics seem awash in such outbursts of irrationality and ill-will toward Ukrainian Russian speakers. President Poroshenko flew into a rage in the beginning of the month when the Verkhovna Rada (the parliament) refused to pass his bill naming the Luhansk and Donetsk republics “terrorist oranizations”. He called the deputies “fifth column” and dissolved the legislature.  This was posturing also but there are of course the real McCoy Nazis in Ukraine who do have influence and do shape public policy whose favours are being curried. One of the most vocal Russophobes is a Svoboda deputy Iryna Farion, who gained notoriety back in 2010 by berating five-year olds in a kindergarten for having Russian first names. Here is how she defended her action in a TV debate.  You don’t need to speak Ukrainian to understand one very important thing about what is going on there – the divisions are deep and hopes for a civilized dialogue slim. One faction's national hero is another faction's most despicable terrorist. 

Are the Russian militants in the East separatists ?  It is safe to say today that the great majority of the Russian speakers in South-East Ukraine and in refugee camps in Russia do not want anything to do with the new political model of Ukraine which is ostensibly pro-Europe but relies heavily on political support of the fanatically anti-Russian portion of the electorate.  Such union simply is a non-starter. And as the conflict lingers on, chances for even a loose federation with Kyiv vaporize fast even though the rebels called themselves Ukrainian federalists before hostilities started.  The mutual loathing grows rather than diminishes.

As for terrorism, this is a really curious epithet given that not a single act of terror against Ukrainian population inside or outside the defended regions have been reported as perpetrated by the militias. (This contrasts with the mass shootings in the Maidan square in February, and the revolting brutality against unarmed government opposition in Odessa). I looked hard but I failed to find even a single instance of some outrage against a civilian and political target that could be pinned reliably on the Russian-speaking fighters. That is truly odd – for supposedly terrorist organizations.  Imagine ISIS opening a humanitarian corridor for Assad fighters fleeing Taqba air base.  Kinda’ hard to picture that, isn’t it ?  So this Putin kind of terrorism must be some some sinister new brand. It does not use women and kids as hostages (even where going is rough); it flies the stripes of a Christian saint and recognizes chivalry as virtue.   

Oh yeah, the plane, the plane…almost forgot ! The militias shot down a passenger plane or so they are still accused though the findings of the investigators of the destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 are now an officially guarded secret. Why would that be ?  Does this make sense in the narrative of the US State Department and the Kyiv government which maintains that the plane was shot down by the rebels ? The Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution condemning the act as terrorism before any forensic evidence was available from the site. Why would Kyiv want to suppress the findings if they confirm the accusation of wholesale murder by the separatist, terrorist, Moskali scum ?  My oh my !  What a strange world we live in !

Beware of the Bear !

It is a sure sign of the times that amid the hopeless and unmanageable mess that the US is fast becoming domestically and the mindless super-shitdisturber is has become in the world, the Dow Jones Industrial Average keeps rising and setting new records.  Amazing, isn't it. The mood is almost as jubilant as Hitler was in his bunker under the Chancellery on learning that FDR was dead. Fuehrer's optimisim was short lived. In less than two weeks Zhukov's shells were exploding overhead and his increasingly insane plans to turn the tide around morphed into a solemn resolve to kill Eva, Blondie and the genius who lay the foundation of the Ten Thousand Year Reich.

     So beware investors ! The Bear is surely coming and the second superpower Granfalloon is following its one-time nemesis to the fast exit from history. It will not be pretty. The US economy lives without a manufacturing base; it has not much to sell as better or cheaper copies of everything are readily available in a free-trade world; it imports energy by hundreds of billions; its Treasury is seventeen trillion dollar in the red and the debt and trade imbalance grow by the day.  So pardon me if I perceive the plan to the re-enact a cold-war victory over Russia to slow things down as a sign of terminal insanity comparable to Hitler's attempting to blitz the Red army away from Berlin.

     Pardon me also for saying that kissing the Saudi ass as a Middle-East policy that trumps a principled political support for Israel as the only democracy in the region, is a sure sign of dementia - not simply incompetence. The US missed two glorious opportunities to deal with the most poisonous oil spill in the world, the creeping medieval scourge of Islamism: first proactively by removing Faisal in 1973 to pre-empt the monstrously skewed "resource-based" world economy, and then reactively, by re-asserting its control over the Saudi oil riches permanently after 9/11, ie by an occupation a la Japan 1945, with an accelerated internal reform toward a Western-style democracy.  This of course would have been the sane and intelligent response to an unprovoked attack on the US that would  have sent chills down the spines of the caliphate-mongers, not to speak of instantly emptying their pockets. Surely, this would have been not just the better course of action, but one that would have been way, way, way more cost effective than going to Iraq and Afghanistan!   But naturally if you are demented why would you wage a short winning war for principle and profit from it, when you have an opportunity to wage two longer ones that are a losing proposition in all respects. 

    Surely, John you are mistaken ! (John Robson, The Ottawa Sun, Myth of 'international community', 28, 2014)  There is an international community and it is watching.  It sees what you see but draws different conclusions than you do. In the case of Hamas , the perception is somewhat complicated since the Obama and EU bureaucrats are hugely anti-Israel. But since they have never been less popular with the electorates, the media's criticism of the IDF shelling is somewhat muted this time around. Most people in the streets around the world want Hamas gone - by and large they are simply shell-shocked by the human cost of the operation.  There is little popular support for Hamas, except among the usual suspects. The ten thousand protesters in London on the last two Saturdays testify far more to the creeping islamization of the city's outer borroughs than a popular sentiment. BBC call-in shows show clearly there is a large sentiment abroad for Israel's plight.

    There is, contrary to what you believe, no big sympathy in the international community for Putin either. In Europe, the situation in the Ukraine is of course seen differently than over here, especially with respect to the hyper-nationalist ideology which threatens to destabilize the whole of Ukraine, not just the East. No European politician would be seen shaking hands with the likes of Dmytro Yarosh (He is now wanted by the Interpol). But Europe is leery of Putin after his repatriating Crimea without blinking an eye. They are afraid of him because he knows what he wants and they don't. Merkel, who holds the EU trump cards, seems hopelessly torn between Bismarckian Realpolitik and the FickendieEUundPutinPolitik on offer by the current breed of geniuses in the State Department who bug her cell phone. She naturally holds to keys in exerting the right kind of pressure on Kiev to come to terms with the East and accede to some form of federal compromise for the country. The place cannot be brought back to normal otherwise. Putin (or for that matter any viable Russian leader) will not allow it. Moscow is the go-to regional power there and cannot abide Ukraine to become a part of a hostile military block. Putin knows better than anyone that the Maidan charade cannot last because essentially Ukraine is politically what Russia was before Putin, a noisy cackle of oligarchs and political operators fighting each other for bigger bowl of kasha and personal fiefdoms while letting the country go to pot.

       So, the problem with Putin appears to be above all that he gets things done where Obama fails miserably.  You may be contemptuous of the "supposedly emerging giant economies" of the newly formed BRICS but it is a formidable achievement (just think of it, bringing China and India together !), and one that may change a lot of things about how the world economy operates.  Most financial experts know this.   And it is not only the strength and sustained growth of the aggregate GDP but above all their combined assets-to-liabilities ratio which will be the telling factor in the competition with the US and Europe. Mythical or not, the international community registers all this.

        Likewise, with the downing of the the MH17 jet.  I am sure many in the body which you deny exists would see through the pathetic straw man of the plane with "preloaded dead bodies". Yes, there are stupid people in Russia who create noise.  But what I find interesting is that you would quickly snatch that in the face the much more plausible conspiracy theory advanced by some senior figures in the Russian military, namely that the plane was brought down not by a surface-to-air missile but a sidewinder weapon fired from a Ukrainian jet. From my vantage point this seems a much more probable "alternative" theory of the plane's demise, given the amount of time a crew of a BUK battery would have to detect and figure the trajectory of the coming plane for the wreckage to end up where it did. (The Donetsk airport control tower is closed btw. It could not have provided infor on the plane's course). You realize of course Russian intelligence listens to everything that is going on in the Ukraine. So when a mysterious Spanish traffic controller tweets that it was a jet belonging not to the military but to the Ukrainian Security, it just might be a way for the Russkis to let you know you are not fooling anyone by that pointing finger. Incidentally, you have noted I am sure that Kiev's military started a new offensive to get control of the crash site the moment the rebels came to an agreement with the Malayisan airline giving the investigators full access and control of the area. Why would they want to do that ?   I am not saying I know I am only saying some myths are evidently more mythical than others.  And the Bear is coming soon,  you can bet on that.