When I taught in Eastern Europe, one of my co-faculty members was a law professor from Mexico. He was fond of saying, “Ahh…Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States.” As a patriot, he often bristled at the amount of influence that the United States had over his country. He was a recovering communist revolutionary, having only changed his politics after returning to the Catholic Church. The level of corruption in Mexico still rankled him, but he had resigned himself to the reality of the situation.
Unless the US falls apart, Mexico will never be free to chart its own course. The same is true for all smaller, weaker countries in close proximity to a major power. It is simply a reality. The major power’s economic and security needs have to be taken into account by their neighbors, or bad things happen. That applies to Mexico, to Ukraine, to Estonia, to Vietnam, and to many other nations as well.
In 2014, the United States sponsored a coup in Ukraine that brought to power a junta of ultranationalist fascists. Imagine if China managed such a feat in Mexico City? How would the US react to a hostile state on our Southern border? Especially if communities of American citizens were being abused or even killed? The last time we faced a hostile Mexican government, we went to war and took 1/2 of Mexican territory. It was a very profitable border dispute for us.
Can you imagine if the 24 hour cable and online news cycle had existed in 1846, when the US Army and Marines were slaughtering Mexican soldiers and seizing Mexican cities, including the capital? This was immortalized in the hymn of the United States Marine Corps:
“From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli…“
This is no defense, by the way, of war. As Metropolitan Onuphry said, “War is a grave sin before God!” Especially if that war is for territorial aggrandizement. This is merely a recognition of how great military and economic powers operate in our fallen world. Pretending the world is other than it is, does nothing but get innocent people killed.
The US would never tolerate a hostile regime in Mexico. Any thinking person knows that. An anti-American government would never be allowed to survive on our border. We usually don’t tolerate anti-American regimes anywhere in Latin America, no matter how far away. Remember Cuba with decades of sanctions and an actual invasion at the Bay of Pigs? Remember the attempted coup in Venezuela? Or the war against Nicaragua in the 80’s with the US-funded Contras? How about the coup in Chile in 1973? Chile is over 4,000 miles from Washington, D.C. Yet, the US installed a blood-soaked military junta to rule the place, being unwilling to accept a democratically elected socialist government.
Russian and Ukraine actually share a really long, very porous common border.
Clearly, Washington believes there is one set of rules for the US and a different set for everyone else. Unfortunately for the American government, other major powers (and rising powers) don’t agree with that premise. Sadly for the Ukrainians, they have turned into a test case to prove which side is correct.
Hint: The Russians are, as will be evident soon enough.
Besides mucking up the political situation in Ukraine, the US used its influence over the Patriarch of Constantinople to attack the canonical Orthodox Church headed by Metropolitan Onuphry. Canonically, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is self-governing, but her bishops are also part of the Moscow Synod. Western governments / media and supporters of Constantinople like to portray the current ecclesiastical conflict as Ukraine versus Russia. Or Patriarch Bartholomew versus Patriarch Kirill. Or West versus East.
This was all a lie to draw attention away from the truth. Metropolitan Onuphry is Ukrainian, not Russian. Ukraine is his country. The ecclesiastical conflict is Ukrainian versus Ukrainian. This is a foreign-spawned ecclesiastical war on Metropolitan Onuphry and the canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine. An ecclesiastical war that has now spilled over into actual war.
Metropolitan Onuphry understood the need for Ukraine to maintain good relations with Russia. The geographic and historical ties are simply too deep for Ukraine to become permanently anti-Russian. His Eminence correctly said:
“The Ukrainian and Russian peoples came out of the Dnieper Baptismal font, and the war between these peoples is a repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother out of envy. Such a war has no justification either from God or from people.”
Brothers should live in peace, but now Orthodox brother is killing Orthodox brother. The meddling of the US and her allies has brought us to this point. The failure to respect the strategic priorities of a great power has brought us to this point. The belief that America can run the world has brought us to this point. The incessant need for a “threat” to justify our Military-Industrial-Complex has brought us to this point.
Good faith negotiations, which the US prevented, would have ended this crisis peacefully. In truth, if the US had minded its own business, there never would have been a crisis to begin with.
In the next few days, we will hear much about Munich, appeasement, Chamberlain and Hitler. All those historical allusions will miss the most important fact of the years 1938-39. WWII began because Poland relied on war guarantees from Britain and France. War guarantees that were completely hollow. Even if the Allies had had the troops to combat the Third Reich, they could never have deployed them in Poland. Geographical realties cannot be overcome by wishful thinking.
Believing the impossible, that the Allies could provide meaningful military assistance, the Polish government blundered its way into a war with Germany over Danzig. The Soviets piled on for good measure, and part of my Polish family eventually died in concentration camps. I carry the name of one of the victims.
A war that began to preserve Polish territorial integrity ended with Poland surrendered to the Soviets, bringing over 40 years of brutal communist rule. Britain and France never had any realistic capability to help Poland. The Poles were suicidally foolish to believe they did. Many smaller, Eastern European nations need to learn from Poland’s tragic example.
NATO cannot help Ukraine in this hopeless, fratricidal war. The future for Ukraine must be peaceful co-existence with Russia. The unity of the Orthodox Church in both countries assists in that, which is why the West was so keen to sever it.
The Church must remain united. The war must end. Ukraine will never join the EU or NATO. This is simply impossible. As impossible, in fact, as Mexico becoming a military ally of China.
It is time to listen to Metropolitan Onuphry. It is time to pray for, and work for, peace before one more drop of blood is shed.
Alexander is a cradle Orthodox Christian, a member of the Greek Archdiocese, and a veteran of the U.S. Army
For an eyewitness account of the US-backed coup that began this conflict, visit this post.
For an expert’s view on US-Russian relations, visit this post.
Address
His Beatitude Onuphry, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine,
to the faithful and citizens of Ukraine,
Dear brothers and sisters! Faithful to our Ukrainian Orthodox Church!
As the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, I address you and all citizens of Ukraine. A disaster has happened. Unfortunately, Russia has launched military operations against Ukraine, and at this fateful time I urge you not to panic, be courageous and to show love for your Motherland and for each other. I urge you, first of all, to intensify repentant prayer for Ukraine, for our army and our people, I ask you to forget mutual strife and misunderstandings and unite in love for God and our Motherland.
In this tragic time, we express our special love and support to our soldiers who stand guard and protect and defend our land and our people. May God bless and keep them!
Defending the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine, we appeal to the President of Russia and ask him to immediately stop the fratricidal war. The Ukrainian and Russian peoples came out of the Dnieper baptismal font, and the war between these peoples is a repetition of the sin of Cain, who out of envy killed his own brother. Such a war is not justified either by God or by people.
I call on everyone to common sense, which teaches us to solve our earthly problems in mutual dialogue and mutual understanding, and I sincerely hope that God will forgive us our sins and God’s peace will reign on our earth and throughout the world!
+ ONUPHRY,
Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine
Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Translated by pravmir.com
More appeals for peace are found here.
I think the Mexican people, not the United States, are responsible for Mexico being nothing more than a corrupt banana republic – a place where you can’t be assured you’re going to get a clean drink of water.
It is imperative to keep in mind the real enemies are always hidden, not just politically but also spiritually. Diving deep into history, Hitler was put in power by the same enemies of Man–the same globalist bankers that gave us the Federal Reserve Bank, the Russian Revolution, and the American overthrow of the Ukraine government just a few years ago.
While Putin may not be directly in bed with the globalists, he has become a pawn in the game, forcing his hand to bring us to the brink.
At the same time, the American misinformation on this subject is proof that many American systems–all media, and those controlling your cell phone, computers, any thing connect to the net–are pushing toward the Anti-Christ From every direction.
Because this is a spiritual warfare, as Orthodox our role in combating evil is creation sacred space in our homes, in our cities, in our hearts. Orthodoxy has always had all the weapons of warfare to push darkness out anywhere we wish, by just taking it to the enemy.
Good points. We have repeatedly backed Metropolitan Onuphry, the canonical Church in Ukraine, and peace, while trying to help Americans think rationally instead of swallowing so much propaganda. We can believe in those goals. God alone knows what Putin really believes or wants, as right now it is a lot of supposition. Backing the canonical church, and her saintly hierarch, are always good policies.
If you want to peer into a man’s heart, look at his eyes; the eyes do not lie no matter the rest of the body. My observation of Putin reveals he absolutely detests having to make the moves he is making; I see a man cornered to take actions, he would never otherwise do. His conscience is fully operational, which cannot be said of others.
When I look into the eyes of many other world politicians, I see no angst over any possible loss of life. These men are the epitome of evil, make not mistake; they can kill millions without any twinge of conscience.
Thank you so very much for that comment. That is what I have felt very strongly since the day Joe Biden was “elected”. It’s good to be reminded.
Just for the record, the Marine Corps Commandant, David Shoup, who commanded the invasion of Tarawa in WWII, warned Kennedy not to invade Cuba. Which probably led to the botched, CIA sponsored invasion of Cuba, in which Kennedy stabbed the Cuban exiles in the back. What that and many other historical examples prove is that you really cannot trust America’s promises because things change.
Any Marine would have told him the same thing. Beach landings suck. I did my beach assault at Little Creek Amphib Base. Out of the ship, into the AmTrac, hit the beach, try for the dunes and/or tree line. More than likely die. Rinse and repeat, in training. In real life, you stay dead. Cuba is the 8th largest island in the world with a multi-million population and some nasty terrain. Look, Hitler’s army plowed through France in a matter of weeks but couldn’t cross 50 miles of water to attack Great Britain. Amphibious ops are really, really hard. You have to own the water, the sky, and you have to have luck on your side in picking a landing spot to establish a beachhead. If you share a land border, you just build up troops and roll over. The Bay of Pigs never had a chance. Seriously, even with American air power. It was dependent on an uprising by the Cuban people, who were not sick of Castro yet so did not rise up. Kennedy was too weak in 1961 to simply scuttle the plan. So he half-assed it and got people killed and, probably, got himself killed over it a few years later. By 1962, JFK had a better handle on his job as president and did an admirable service to America by not invading Cuba when the military urged it. Instead, he back channeled negotiations with Khrushchev and kept us out of war.
But in general, you are correct. It is more dangerous in many cases to be an American ally than an enemy. We often over promise and under perform. Our foreign policy elite make promises that turn out to be not vital interests of the US. So we end up leaving, and the wreckage in our wake is truly awful. Then we just up and do it again. Like in Ukraine.
This article is outstanding! Thank you!
The USA has been responsible for many evil acts throughout its history, in the distant pass as well as recently. The wars with Mexico certainly fall among them. But I don’t see the relevance to the current conflict – pointing to an evil act by the USA from nearly 200 years ago in order to shift attention from the person committing the evil act right now is an exercise in whataboutism, which should be irrelevant to Orthodox Christian ethics.
And while the USA does indeed engage in evil acts on a weekly basis, comparing Russia’s current action to American actions is an exercise in false equivalency. American actions against Mexico in the 1830s and 1840s are indeed by far the closest parallel in US history…and that was two centuries ago. While the actions were just as wrong at the time in the eyes of God, they were obviously far more acceptable by the standards of human governments of the time. There’s a reason why America, despite all its sins, hasn’t engaged in an expansionist war in over a century.
The closest parallel to Ukraine in the last century is Cuba, just 70 miles off the Florida coast, only Russia did far more to instigate in Cuba in terms of the closeness of their ties than USA has ever done in Ukraine. And yet the USA never launched an invasion of Cuba. Yes, they armed and trained dissidents at one point 60 years ago and it failed, that action was far more analogous to almost daily Russian actions in Ukraine over the last 8 years than to the invasion that Russia launched this week. The USA never brought its own invasion of Cuba, never put its forces on Cuban territory, never blanketed Cuba with cruise missiles. After Bay of Pigs the USA and Cuba went 30 more years of Cold War animosity with Fidel Castro living well into old age happily aligned with USSR.
The point is not that the USA is a “better” country than Russia. (Whether true or not the point is irrelevant to the discussion.) The point is not whether the USA has done “worse things”. The issue is that the article sets is up as if Putin’s violent aggression is acceptable, or normal, or something anyone else would do in the same situation. It’s not! After Bay of Pigs the USA went 30 years with USSR’s Cuba right there on its doorstep and yet never invaded, but after a far more intensive invasion in 2014 Putin has continued to do more and more, sending his own soldiers and mercenaries in, flooding the region with weapons, maintaining almost constant conflict. And now has invaded. It didn’t have to happen, just like the USA never needed to invade Cuba.
Could the USA have avoided this simply by saying, “Ukraine doesn’t get to join NATO”? It looks unlikely. Putin has said repeatedly that he sees Ukraine as a fake country and believes he should control it. Those sentiments go back all the way to the dissolution of the USSR, they would be there regardless of US actions. Suggesting the USA could unilaterally prevent conflict simply by stopping NATO expansion where it’s at is unrealistic – the only way the USA could have unilaterally stopped the conflict was by offering up the Ukrainians as a sacrificial lamb to Russia. And why should America consent to that, solely because Putin has worldly power?
This is not “whataboutism.” There is no justification here for war. It is simply a fact – any Great Power would act the same way as Russia. We should have recognized that fact and not put Ukraine in this situation. This was entirely foreseeable and preventable. It is also not a question of Orthodox Ethics. All Great Power exercise of “privilege” is a product of a fallen world. This is simply the reality of the situation. As mentioned elsewhere, China invaded Vietnam over that nation’s interference in Cambodia. When you are neighbors with a big power, these things will happen if you poke the Bear, or the Eagle, or the Dragon. Stop war, stop overthrowing other people’s governments, stop invading, and respect other countries. Russia will do likewise.
The US has invaded how many countries in just the 21st Century? Iraq had no connection to 9/11. We invaded Afghanistan and stuck around for 20 years. We bombed Syria, destroyed Libya. Why? Because as a Great Power we assigned ourselves the right to judge others and punish them for our perception of their sins. You are also totally forgetting the Spanish American War which ended with us controlling Cuba, owning Puerto Rico, and even annexing the Philippines which resulted in an “insurrection” in which 600,000 died. That was end of 19th century into early 20th. Again, as a Great Power, we felt we had the right to do such things. That is how Great Powers think. The only thing that has changed is that America believes that only her strategic concerns are valid, no one else’s.
The US certainly sponsored an invasion of Cuba. Multiple leaders advocated invading Cuba up till…well, now. You can find many Cuban-America politicians that wax poetic about liberating Cuba with US Marines. Thank God for John F. Kennedy and his wisdom to negotiate rather than invade immediately, which was the military advice he was given. If the Soviets hadn’t blinked, then we would have gone to war rather than allow the missiles to stay. That is the part you are missing. If the Soviets had said no, then we would have gone to war. Ukraine refused to negotiate in good faith, Russia invaded rather than take chances. You are also forgetting that we maintain possession of Guantanamo Bay. In other words, we continue to occupy part of Cuba’s sovereign territory based on an agreement we dictated to them after we had occupied them. Again, that is simply how Great Powers operate. You are also leaving out all the other interventions in Latin America, some of which were in the article. The Contra war on Nicaragua. The overthrow of the Chilean government. The invasion of Grenada, the overthrow of the Guatemalan govt in 1954. The attempted overthrow the Venezuelan govt in 2019. We could go on and on. The point is that the US is no different than any other Great Power. We insist on having our way in our sphere of influence. We expect other nations to respect our position in the Western Hemisphere and even beyond, but we don’t grant Russia the same consideration.
We embargoed Cuba for next 30 years, while the CIA plotted how to kill Castro. It is not like we “accepted” Cuba, we simply abstained from invading it as we couldn’t do so practically. If we could have, I assure you that we would have. As a former Marine, I understand the complexity of mounting a sea borne assault on a place that big. If Cuba had been connected by land, they would have been toast. You are actually backwards on the situation since 2014. It is NATO that has flooded Ukraine with billions of weapons since the coup we sponsored. The coup and the attacks on the Russians in the Donbas are covered here: https://orthodoxreflections.com/an-eyewitness-to-the-us-coup-detat-in-ukraine-tells-the-truth/ The Kiev Government would not abide by the Minsk Protocols (1 and 2) and would not stop killing Russians in the Donbas. Had this happened to Americans in Mexico, we would have invaded without hesitation. Do you believe otherwise? In fact, if you recall, we used the protection of Americans as the reason for multiple invasions, not the least of which was Hawaii. Which, by the way, we kept.
Putin has stated his war aims and before the war his non-negotiable stances. These include a disarmed Ukraine and no NATO membership. Putin does not want to control Ukraine, which is why he is already willing to negotiate and why the attack has been marked by restraint (so far) in the destruction of civilian areas. The Russians don’t want Ukraine, though they may end up with the Russian East. We were never going to fight for Ukraine, so there was no reason to flood them with arms and hold out the hope for NATO. We precipitated this crisis and then left the Ukrainians holding the bag. We never should have sponsored the coup, caused the schism, provided weapons (Obama didn’t, Trump did and that was wrong) or held out hope for NATO. Ukraine will have to learn to live with Russia.
What are you basing this on? No one has invaded Russia. Only Putin has invaded Ukraine. Putin said explicitly that he doesn’t view Ukraine as a real nation and thinks it should be part of Russia. He said it this year, he said it in 2014, he even said it in the 1990s. You have no justification for making this claim that poor Putin is only doing things because he is provoked. And you are engaging in serious revisionism regarding why Yanukovych lost power – USA didn’t have nearly the influence in Ukraine to make that happen, at most they slightly influenced it (just like Putin attempts to influence changes in power across the world), but it is so ridiculously far from the discussion at hand and so much of what happened is beyond even the possible knowledge of you or I that I’m not going to get in the weeds of that one too.
Literally everything is a question of Orthodox Ethics.
More whataboutism. The USA has done numerous evil things throughout its history. That doesn’t somehow justify Putin invaded a sovereign nation with the purpose of expanding his borders – something the USA hasn’t done since the 1800s and which would be evil and wrong even if they had.
More whataboutism. As I already pointed out, the Bay of Pigs was one day over 50 years ago and no different than what Putin has been doing literally continuously in Ukraine from 2014 until now. But you know what the USA never did in the last 50 years? They never invaded Cuba. Not once in the last 50 years have they even come close to invading Cuba. And it would have been wrong even if they did do it.
That author makes a gigantic list of claims without any support, just expecting us to take them on his own authority. I looked him up and he’s not a credible authority – he was a partisan to Russia and to the Ukrainian government that lost power, had wanted them to join up with Russia, defends Russia’s historical claims to Ukraine (and for the same reason refuses to recognize Kosovo), and constantly repeats Russian propaganda narratives without question or verification. He claims the West is beset by “Russiaphobia”, a spiritual illness that he claims is because Russia is the world’s largest Orthodox Church (even though in reality very few Russians attend church), and claims the rest of the world is racist against Russians.
I started looking through some claims he’s made in other speeches and the degree to which he repeats Russian propaganda narratives is disheartening. Fore example.
* He says Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian “junta”. This is a ridiculous conspiracy theory that is ONLY promoted by Russian disinformation sources. Russian media first claimed that pro-Russia rebels had shot down a transport plane and declared it a great victory. The rebels bragged on social media that they had stolen a Buk surface-to-air missile launcher from a Ukrainian base they had occupied and moved it into their own territory. When it was revealed that a civilian aircraft had been shot down, they immediately deleted the tweet about stealing the Buk missile launcher and changed the story to claim the Ukrainian government had shot the plane down. First they falsely claimed that it was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet. When it was revealed that it was literally impossible for a Ukrainian jet to have shot the plane down and it was actually shot down by a surface-to-air missile, Russian media revived their original Buk launcher story but now claimed the Ukrainians had operated it and somehow snuck it into rebel-held territory. They also alternatively made up the wild conspiracy theories that the plane had not been shot down but blown up from the inside, that the plane had been purposely directed over the war zone by the Ukrainians in order to cause such an incident, and that the plane was not full of passengers but full of already dead bodies. While making all these crazy and contradictory claims, Russia singlehandedly vetoed an UN resolution to investigate the cause of the incident and pro-Russia rebels attempted to block the crash site. A Dutch team investigated, often under duress, and found quite clear evidence that the pro-Russian militants had shot down the plane – their numerous pieces of evidence eventually including a video taken by the militants themselves where they approach the crash site expecting to find a Ukrainian military jet and instead find the passenger plane.
NO ONE can repeat the claim that Ukraine shot down MH17 unless they are completely beholden to Russian propaganda. It isn’t just one wrong fact, it’s a claim so obviously wrong, so obviously carried by a Russian propaganda operation, that it can’t be taken seriously in any respect. That alone should completely discredit him on this issue.
I seriously urge you to read this, check every source in it that you question at all, and tell me how anyone could come to the conclusion that Ukraine shot down the jet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
* He also repeatedly claims that over 90% of Crimeans chose to join Russia, while completely neglecting that they made that “choice” in an election staged by Russia, where staying in Ukraine wasn’t even an option on the ballot, with nameless troops in blank uniforms patrolling all the streets, where anyone who didn’t support Russia simply stayed home out of fear. NO ONE thinks that was a legitimate election regardless of what Crimean opinion on staying within Ukraine is, it was one of the shadiest elections possible. Why does he repeatedly talk about it’s results without mentioning that and while pretending it was a fair election? No one credible would do that.
* I checked just one of his claims, the “Korsun Massacre” since I had never heard of such a thing and it sounded dramatic and scary. It looks like there was good reason not to have heard of it – it didn’t happen. There is no evidence that anyone was killed in the “Korsun Massacre”, outside of repeated reports that it happened from Russia propaganda sources. I can’t find any evidence of any independent sources verifying the identity of a single person killed in the “massacre”, much less a massacre-level number of people killed. So why does he simply repeat it as fact?
I didn’t even look at most of the other claims because the point was already made. He’s not credible. And that’s your source on events in eastern Ukraine. Which, again, is disheartening.
Yes, his stances “included” that. They also included the demand that NATO withdraw from every other nation they’ve expanded to since 1999. Which he obviously knows is a poison pill that will never happen – the Baltic states and many other nations are terrified of leaving NATO for this exact reason – they’re terrified of Russian invasion. For quite obvious good reason, both historical and current.
And why do you assume he doesn’t want to control Ukraine when he’s already taken control of Crimea (after repeatedly insisting that he wouldn’t control it) and has quite clearly said he thinks Ukraine isn’t a real country and belongs with Russia? He wishes to control it in fact or control it de facto, he’s not hiding that.
Remember just a couple weeks ago when Putin repeatedly claimed his military was only conducting exercises and wasn’t going to invade Ukraine. When will you stop believing him?
At least in terms of this article, Jonathan, you have seriously lost the plot. “Whataboutism” is a redirection based on hypocrisy. You criticize something or someone I support, so I then flip around and bring up the beams in your own eye to imply you don’t have the right to judge based on the sins of your side. the message is – your side is just as bad as my side.
We don’t engage is “whataboutism”. What we gave you are examples of the United States behaving like what it is – a Great Power. Great Powers expect that smaller countries in proximity to them will be deferential in a lot of ways. It is simply the nature of Great Powers. The US behaving like a Great Power is not hypocritical, anymore than when China acts like a Great Power, or Russia, or Germany, or Brazil (coming soon), or Iran (regionally that is) or any other Great Power throughout history.
Smaller, weaker countries need to learn – Don’t poke the Bear, the Eagle, or the Dragon if you are too small to stand up to them.
What constitutes hypocrisy is when the US expects to exercise Great Power prerogatives while denying the same to other Great Powers. So we can be hyper concerned about the alliances of countries in the Western Hemisphere, and we can reserve the right to unilaterally intervene in other countries as befits our interests, but we deny other Great Powers those rights in their own spheres of influence.
That is the hypocrisy, and that is what got us into trouble with Ukraine. You can post all you want trying to prove it is not “fair” or not “just” that Russia felt threatened by an armed Ukraine on its border with aspirations to join NATO. This isn’t about fairness or justice, even if those were on Ukraine’s side.
Any more than fairness or justice would matter to all the Mexicans we would kill if their government tried to host a Chinese military base. We wouldn’t allow it, but we somehow believed we could bully or bribe Russian into allowing it.
That is the point. If we looked the world rationally, we would never have made promises to Ukraine we never had any intention of backing up. And we would have understood the impact of those promises on Russia. We are not serious people or serious scholars at this point.
Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, one of America’s most distinguished political scientists, did a great video on Great Power politics and our particular errors in Ukraine. We’ve posted it before, but here it is again.
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
The final issue we plan to address is that of morality. Great Powers act in ways that if individuals did the same thing, they would be labeled sociopaths. This is a fallen world, and Great Power politics is part of that world. We try to ameliorate this situation by opposing the immoral things our own country does. That is the only place we have influence, and precious little even there. Democracy is largely for show. We have zero influence on Russia or on Ukraine as individuals. We should have insisted on the US staying out of Ukrainian affairs. That is something the electorate might have been able to accomplish. But we didn’t, and our meddling and false promises brought us here.
What Great Powers do is not moral, but it is real and we must account for it in foreign policy or tragic consequences ensue.
Ron Paul was right.
My last message was long so I just want to make this clear point.
The source you repeatedly cite on Russia-Ukraine issues is an admitted Russia partisan who makes unsourced claims without support and has repeatedly repeated Russia disinformation. He is not remotely credible. In the message I gave just three examples of that (literally the first three I checked), but I’m sure I could have found many more. One of the most obvious is his suggestion that the passenger plane MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian “junta” forces, and not the pro-Russian rebels who initially took credit and have been found by every investigation to be responsible.
It is not remotely plausible that anyone other than the pro-Russia rebels shot down that plane. Russian media changed their story on the incident a dozen times, every time their previous story was proven false. They only people still claiming that MH17 was shot down by Ukraine are pro-Russia propagandists and people who repeat their propaganda. Casey is clearly one or the other.
Please, if you are not already aware of MH17, just at least read the wiki, carefully check the sources, and tell me how anyone who claims to be a Ukraine-Russia expert can possibly come to the conclusion that Ukraine was responsible unless they are simply repeating Russian propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
And if he is using something so obviously wrong as that when speaking to Orthodox audiences, and wrong or withholding crucial information on multiple other similar issues, why would you promote him as a source of information? Where has he backed up that and all his other claims with evidence? What has he done to prove that he can be trusted on this issue?
I would take you more seriously, Jonathan, were it not for the fact that you just cited Wikipedia.
Do you deny that pro-Russian rebels shot down MH17 or have evidence to the contrary?
I suggest you read the wikipedia and check the sources for yourself, just like I said in the comment. The positive aspect of wikipedia is that it is transparent – it compiles sources in a clear framework where every fact that be easily checked against its linked source and maintains a complete edit and discussion history at all times. It doesn’t mean wikipedia is always right, but it is certainly more easily verified and corrected than almost any other source.
Why is it okay to cite the speech of a clearly biased person who makes dozens of claims without citing a single source, but it is wrong to cite the combined encyclopedia effort of hundreds of people who can’t make an unsourced statement without it being flagged for correction?
Um, being biased is not a bad thing.
Pretending you’re not IS.
https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site-is-now-propaganda-for-left-leaning-establishment/
Sanger is an early wikipedia employee, potentially important enough to be considered a co-founder (it was a very small staff in the beginning) who was dropped from the project over 20 years ago and has held a grudge against them ever since. He’s been criticizing them ever since they dropped him and is just doing it again. If you’re going to make a case against them, you need to do better than simply post the unsourced opinion of a guy with a grudge.
What is wrong with the extensive sources linked on the MH17 article? Is there a different source on such issues that you consider definitive? If not, then why not just start reading the sources right there?
Ok! I will.
Five studies, including two from Harvard researchers, have found a left-wing bias at Wikipedia:
1.A Harvard study found Wikipedia articles are more left-wing than Encyclopedia Britannica.”Using a matched sample of pairs of articles from Britannica and Wikipedia, we show that, overall, Wikipedia articles are more slanted towards Democrat than Britannica articles, as well as more biased,” the study’s abstract reads. Harvard researchers Greenstein and Zhu examined articles covering U.S. politics on Wikipedia and compared them to similar articles in Encyclopedia Britannica. They looked at word choices more consistent with left-wing and right-wing views respectively, and found articles on Wikipedia tended to show greater left-wing bias.
Notably, Wikipedia becomes less biased the more a post is edited and reviewed, and the study also found the most liberal-biased entries are ones least edited or reviewed.
2.Another paper from the same Harvard researchers found left-wing editors are more active and partisan on the site.The same researchers above followed up their study with another one that found the most frequent editors are leftists and they are also far more biased partisans, according to their study.
3.A 2018 analysis found top-cited news outlets on Wikipedia are mainly left-wing. Established leftist outlets The New York Times and BBC News are the most cited sources, around 200,000 stories. The Guardian, an equally left-wing outlet, is cited third at almost 100,000 citations. Among the top 10 most-cited, only one was right-leaning.
4.Another analysis using AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ found that pages on American politicians cite mostly left-wing news outlets. The ratio is almost 3- or 4-to-1 left wing vs. right wing. And even centrist sources are used to the same ratio vs. right wing ones, per the analysis. The analysis used AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ to check the bias of Wikipedia sourcing. It found that “articles on American politicians tended to rely on left-wing media. Based on AllSides ratings, 33,000 sources used were left-wing with 44,000 being left-wing based on MBFC (Media Bias/Fact Check) ratings. Right-wing sources were shown to be more rarely used with such sources being cited less than 10,000 times according to either rating site. Centrist sources were used more often and closer to the number of times left-wing sources were used. Neither ratings site has rated all of the outlets cited on Wikipedia, while some ratings differ between the two sites.
5.American academics found conservative editors are 6 times more likely to be sanctioned in Wikipedia policy enforcement. Those espousing right-wing views on topics like politics, abortion, gun control, race, and intelligence were six times more likely to be sanctions by the “Supreme Court” of the Wikipedia editors, especially those reviewing things about President Donald Trump.
Fox News (rated Lean Right by AllSides) ran a story last month stating that Wikipedia’s two main pages for “Socialism” and “Communism” “span a massive 28,000 words, and yet they contain no discussion of the genocides committed by socialist and communist regimes, in which tens of millions of people were murdered and starved.”
“The omission of large-scale mass murder, slave labor, and man-made famines is negligent and deeply misleading,” economics professor Bryan Caplan, who has studied the history of communism, told Fox News.
Caplan said the pages focus on “flattering claims” of the regimes, noting that Wikipedia’s Socialism page says: “The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century” while ignoring the Holodomor, a man-made famine in which Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin commandeered the food from regions like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, leaving millions to starve to death (and even resort to cannibalism) as the Soviet Union exported grain to foreign countries.
Fox says the socialism page mentions China’s Communist history, but “only begins its description in 1976, after Mao Zedong’s reign of terror had already killed tens of millions.” The article fails to mention Mao’s communist programs such as his “Great Leap Forward,” in which private farming was abolished, leading to mass famine that killed tens of millions. Nor does it mention Mao’s Cultural Revolution, in which millions of young people formed the paramilitary Red Guards, which according to New World Encyclopedia “begun vandalizing bookstores, libraries, churches, temples, and monuments; and breaking into private homes to destroy old books, Western-style clothing, paintings, and art objects. Red Guards attacked intellectuals, professionals, and anyone who had contact with the West, or represented traditional Chinese culture or religion. Hundreds of thousands were beaten, tortured, or sent to hard labor camps.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/wikipedia-or-encyclopaedia-britannica-which-has-more-bias/?sh=23caf5007d4a
https://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia
Veteran journalist and specialist on Russia, John Helmer, reports that the trial in the Netherlands of three Russians and one Ukrainian accused in the July 17, 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, killing 298, has called into serious question evidence of Russian involvement.
Sad to say, the evidence the U.S. earlier claimed to have on the shoot-down apparently fits snugly into the category of “nonexistent intelligence” – the adjective actually used in a bipartisan study by the Senate Intelligence Committee to describe prewar intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
There are serious problems as well with the attempts by Ukraine to provide their own “intelligence” as a substitute for the here-you-see-it-here-you-don’t evidence from the US (Yes, although a prime suspect in this case, Ukraine was allowed to be one of the investigating countries.)
Recall that three days after the shoot-down, then-Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC’s David Gregory:
We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.
And yet, Washington has consistently resisted appeals from several quarters to make that evidence public. This strongly suggests that Kerry’s claims were as bogus as his repeated assurances ten months earlier that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ordered a chemical attack outside Damascus in August 2013. (Turns out that was a false-flag attack mounted by Western-supported rebels.) False flag; Hmm.
Where’s the Beef?
In July 2014, the part of Ukraine, near the Russian border, over which MH17 was shot down was almost certainly saturated with all manner of highly sophisticated US technical collection means – including, but not limited to imagery. It seems a safe bet that Washington knows exactly what happened. Besides, releasing this kind of data can be done with minimal risk to sources and methods. So, where’s the beef?
The most likely reason to hide the results of such collection would be to avoid admitting that the results of the actual collection do not square with what Kerry claimed repeatedly, starting right after the shoot-down. It is important to recall that it was only after Kerry et al. blamed Russia for the shoot-down that the Europeans were finally strong-armed into imposing serious economic sanctions on Russia “in retaliation”.
According to Helmer, Dutch intelligence has concluded that “the US has been lying about what the satellite records show and has reason to believe that they do not exist at all”. US imagery has not been provided to the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD, which has requested them, nor to the Dutch police and prosecutors who have been trying to prove premeditated murder in the shoot-down.
As is his custom, Helmer includes a wealth of highly relevant detail in yesterday’s report. Summing up, he writes that the Dutch trial judge has now revealed a “US Intelligence switch – from [citing] satellite images which don’t exist in Washington, to tapes and videos fabricated in Kiev”.
It remains to be seen whether the Dutch court will behave in as U.S.-vassal-like a manner as British courts are behaving in the case of Julian Assange. But now we know that Dutch intelligence, at least, has decried the absence of the evidence Kerry claimed to have just three days after MH17 was shot down.
Context
Award-winning investigative journalist Robert Parry followed this case closely until his untimely death in January 2018. Five years ago, in The Ever-Curiouser MH17 Case, Parry wrote: “The shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine has served as a potent propaganda club against Russia, but the US government is hiding key evidence that could solve the mystery.” That article is among several written by Parry, based largely on his own painstaking detective work, to provide serious analysis and important context for this curious but highly significant case.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2014/07/18/the-tragedy-of-flight-mh17-who-benefits/
Wait, are we serious, this site has MH17 truthers too?
The Dutch investigation and their evidence is covered in enormous detail in the link I already gave you. The evidence is far more extensive that Helmer suggests and is given in excruciating detail in the link. John Helmer isn’t the best source (he let himself get turned into a KGB asset by Yuri Shvets in the 1980s and has been based in Moscow for Putin’s entire tenure) and his attempt to suggest the West isn’t believable because USA won’t make one particular source of intelligence public is laughable considering that from the beginning Russia has absolutely refused to participate in any international investigation at all.
Since you have ignored the copious evidence I already linked that MH-17 was shot down by pro-Russian rebels, and since it seems likely you will refuse to believe any source that disagrees with your assumptions, how about we just post one source even you can trust – the Russian media.
This is the order of events how the Russian media themselves reported it to the world, from the beginning.
Once again – literally no one who is not a Russian asset or a very naïve conspiracy theorist can buy that story. How can you deny that Russia was reporting the successful shooting down of the aircraft by pro-Russian militants on the very night of the tragedy? How can you deny that Russia then ran with a completely false “Ukrainian jet shot it down” story with doctored evidence for a full year? How can you deny that they’ve now doubled down on the “Russian missile owned by Ukraine snuck next to rebel-controlled territory”, their third completely different narrative and one not remotely believable?
Without even getting into the extraordinary amount of evidence that has been gathered proving the rebels are the ones who downed the plane and even knowing exactly which Russian military handlers provided the missile and launcher to them, all you would have to do is watch Russian media and you would already know beyond any doubt that the rebels did it.
You asked for evidence. There is evidence. There is also a criminal trial ongoing, so more evidence will come out. You don’t like the evidence, that is great! Are you aware that the US and NATO fake evidence? But in any case, you sling the pro-Russian tag around very freely. Based on your responses, it is very clear that you quite anti-Russian. There was no benefit to the Donbas forces or to Russia to shoot down the plane. So the question is – why would they?
The thing is, no one is really going to enter into much of a discussion with you as you will simply ignore what any one says. Some readers have indicated they think you are Jonathan Hill and were referred to as a “troll.” Considering how dismissive you are, we would have to agree.
What do you mean, “There is evidence”? There is literally no evidence whatsoever that Ukraine shot down that plane, where as the evidence that pro-russian rebels shot down the plane is so overwhelming as to be undeniable. Helmer’s entire article was complaining that America hadn’t given the source for some of their evidence (as they often do), but it doesn’t include the slightest counterevidence that Ukraine was responsible, nor would such a narrative make the least bit of sense.
If there was evidence that Ukraine shot down the plane, then why did Russian media initially celebrate the downing of a Ukrainian military plane by their rebels and declare it a great victory? Where did they even get the information that a plane had been shot down at all? Why are there recordings of both Russian military personnel and rebels discussing what they had done? Once it was exposed as a passenger plane that was shot down, why did Russian media lie and claim for over a year that a Ukrainian jet had shot it down, using clearly falsified evidence? The rebels were controlling the territory, the rebels were first on the scene, the rebels controlled all the evidence first…so why two proven false narratives?
You can’t deny that they took credit for shooting it down before they realized it was a passenger plane. You can’t deny they lied and used falsified evidence to claim a Ukrainian jet had shot it down, before being first to abandon the lie when it was proven impossible. How do you explain that?
And no, I’m not the least bit anti-russia. My sister and one of my former roommates are committed Russophiles who have lived in russia and love the country, I’ve never had the slightest problem with a single russian person or the Russian Orthodox Churches I have attended. However, I do think you could fairly call me anti-Putin. And unfortunately he controls (through violence and the threat of violence) a great deal of the narrative that emanates from Russia.
And yet, there is evidence to the contrary. And even if there wasn’t, what difference does it make? We goaded and supported the Ukrainians into poking the bear, and now they are dying as a result. If we insist on sending planes from Poland, we could all end up dying in a nuclear holocaust. Are you ready?
The interesting thing is, none of this really matters. This is Great Power politics, so whether the plane was downed by the Russian-affiliated Donbas forces, or the Ukrainians, the issues will be decided on the battlefield. To his credit, Zelensky is negotiating. We may be out of this yet.
It is not about right and wrong, if it were, then the U.S. would not have the freedom it has.
Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine
By Isaac Chotiner
March 07, 2022: Information Clearing House — The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics—a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”
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The current invasion of Ukraine has renewed several long-standing debates about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Although many critics of Putin have argued that he would pursue an aggressive foreign policy in former Soviet Republics regardless of Western involvement, Mearsheimer maintains his position that the U.S. is at fault for provoking him. I recently spoke with Mearsheimer by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the current war could have been prevented, whether it makes sense to think of Russia as an imperial power, and Putin’s ultimate plans for Ukraine.
Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think the world got here?
I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.
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You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
You keep saying “turning Ukraine into a liberal democracy,” and it seems like that’s an issue for the Ukrainians to decide. NATO can decide whom it admits, but we saw in 2014 that it appeared as if many Ukrainians wanted to be considered part of Europe. It would seem like almost some sort of imperialism to tell them that they can’t be a liberal democracy.
It’s not imperialism; this is great-power politics. When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.
The Monroe Doctrine, essentially.
Of course. There’s no country in the Western hemisphere that we will allow to invite a distant, great power to bring military forces into that country.
Right, but saying that America will not allow countries in the Western hemisphere, most of them democracies, to decide what kind of foreign policy they have—you can say that’s good or bad, but that is imperialism, right? We’re essentially saying that we have some sort of say over how democratic countries run their business.
We do have that say, and, in fact, we overthrew democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.
Of course we did, but I’m wondering if we should be behaving that way. When we’re thinking about foreign policies, should we be thinking about trying to create a world where neither the U.S. nor Russia is behaving that way?
That’s not the way the world works. When you try to create a world that looks like that, you end up with the disastrous policies that the United States pursued during the unipolar moment. We went around the world trying to create liberal democracies. Our main focus, of course, was in the greater Middle East, and you know how well that worked out. Not very well.
I think it would be difficult to say that America’s policy in the Middle East in the past seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War, or in the past thirty years since the end of the Cold War, has been to create liberal democracies in the Middle East.
I think that’s what the Bush Doctrine was about during the unipolar moment.
In Iraq. But not in the Palestinian territories, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or anywhere else, right?
No—well, not in Saudi Arabia and not in Egypt. To start with, the Bush Doctrine basically said that if we could create a liberal democracy in Iraq, it would have a domino effect, and countries such as Syria, Iran, and eventually Saudi Arabia and Egypt would turn into democracies. That was the basic philosophy behind the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine was not just designed to turn Iraq into a democracy. We had a much grander scheme in mind.
We can debate how much the people who were in charge in the Bush Administration really wanted to turn the Middle East into a bunch of democracies, and really thought that was going to happen. My sense was that there was not a lot of actual enthusiasm about turning Saudi Arabia into a democracy.
Well, I think focussing on Saudi Arabia is taking the easy case from your perspective. That was the most difficult case from America’s perspective, because Saudi Arabia has so much leverage over us because of oil, and it’s certainly not a democracy. But the Bush Doctrine, if you go look at what we said at the time, was predicated on the belief that we could democratize the greater Middle East. It might not happen overnight, but it would eventually happen.
I guess my point would be actions speak louder than words, and, whatever Bush’s flowery speeches said, I don’t feel like the policy of the United States at any point in its recent history has been to try and insure liberal democracies around the world.
There’s a big difference between how the United States behaved during the unipolar moment and how it’s behaved in the course of its history. I agree with you when you talk about American foreign policy in the course of its broader history, but the unipolar moment was a very special time. I believe that during the unipolar moment, we were deeply committed to spreading democracy.
With Ukraine, it’s very important to understand that, up until 2014, we did not envision NATO expansion and E.U. expansion as a policy that was aimed at containing Russia. Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a threat before February 22, 2014. NATO expansion, E.U. expansion, and turning Ukraine and Georgia and other countries into liberal democracies were all about creating a giant zone of peace that spread all over Europe and included Eastern Europe and Western Europe. It was not aimed at containing Russia. What happened is that this major crisis broke out, and we had to assign blame, and of course we were never going to blame ourselves. We were going to blame the Russians. So we invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe. Putin is interested in creating a greater Russia, or maybe even re-creating the Soviet Union.
Your first sentence is wrong, you have yet to bring forward any evidence that anyone other than pro-Russian rebels shot down that plane, in the fact of massive evidence that they did so. You have also ignored that overt and cynical lies on this issue have been pushed by Russian media in general as well as several of the commentators you have put forth as infallible authorities on Ukraine-Russia (infallible because you want us to accept their claims without evidence and without challenge).
And the fact that you seem unacquainted with basic details of this very major case, repeatedly asking me questions with obvious answers and then responding with copypasta of irrelevant articles, suggests the level at which you’ve educated yourself on these issues is not high.
….
And the entire rest of your comment is a red herring. Mearsheimer has his own theory of “realist great power politics” that is only as strong as his powers of reasoning. He doesn’t even consider ethics, much less Orthodox ethics, in evaluating what we should do, we merely have to trust his judgment as a pure realist. Should we also trust his judgment when he said we should elect Bernie Sanders president? If you’re going to make one argument from authority after another, then will you trust said authorities on everything, or just in the narrow cases where they agree with what you already believe?
Be curious to see the outcome of the criminal trial. Last we will respond on that.
Great Power politics isn’t about ethics, its about reality. Great Powers expect to have a sphere of influence. Do you disagree with that statement? We aren’t talking about what is ethical. Keeping other countries hostage because the are close to your border is not ethical. But it is what Great Powers do. And if you pretend they won’t or don’t, then you end up with a war in Ukraine. Actually, not sure Bernie Sanders would not have been a better choice than Biden. Simply because he is articulate and understands Great Power politics doesn’t make him a guru on all subjects.
If you took PoliSci or history classes, then you would have come across Great Power politics, MacKinder’s heartland theory, etc. He didn’t invent these concepts. We all studied them decades ago. Plus several of us are veterans, so military history is our forte.
Are you saying Great Power politics doesn’t exist? Or that it is immoral. No clue at this point what you are driving at.
There are those — this is one person; a French journalist — who are on the ground in Ukraine and who assert that Ukraine is bombing its own citizens.
Sorry, that was a dead link.
https://www.shine.cn/news/in-focus/2203102957/?fbclid=IwAR2AyPpCWTOB37vJ9BNdAx7AiWK9aWK-uFi7JJmRMAi6vpWcCMFPSUcRkRY
Cui bono? Who benefits? Who stood to gain? That is the first question everyone should ask with any potential crime (although of course it’s not the only one). Yet, that is the question that is being generally ignored regarding the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Instead, the western media leaps to “whodunnit?” only to immediately answer their own question with, “Well obviously either Russia, the separatists, or both.”
The reason for this is obvious. If they were to even consider the “qui bono?” question, they would have to admit that there is virtually no way that either Russia or the Donetsk separatists could possibly have expected to benefit from downing an airline full of internationals. There was no strategic value in it, and they couldn’t have expected it to be blamed in western media on anyone else or to do anything other than galvanize world opinion against them. Therefore, if either did do it (which is highly unlikely, given that the Russians were not directly fighting in the area, and the separatists were most likely not prepared to reach a flight at that altitude, given the limitations of their equipment and experience), it was almost surely by mistake.
This does not eliminate any culpability and liability they might carry, but it does make ridiculous their characterization by some as mustache-twirling super-villains, on the part of the Russians, or crazed international terrorists, on the part of the separatists, out to murder any citizen of the free world who wanders into their grasp. It should also knock the legs out from any attempt to use this tragedy as a justification for the U.S. to increase intervention, for the E.U. to increase sanctions, or for world opinion to deny the separatists’ right to self-determination.
If the Ukrainian government downed the plane (which they were fully equipped to do), it might have been by mistake on their part as well, but not necessarily. That is because they, in contrast, could very well have expected to gain by downing the plane, for precisely the opposite reason: namely, that it was very likely that the western media, already sympathetic with them anyway, would pin the blame on their enemies, as of course they actually did.
The situation is similar to the gas attack that was almost used as casus belli by the U.S. for bombing Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Especially after Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons would be a “red line”, the international fighters trying to overthrow Assad had everything to benefit by attacking locals with such weapons, since it could easily be pinned on the Syrian government, and Assad had nothing. Ignoring this obvious fact, the political class used the incident to (unsuccessfully, thankfully) try to convince the western public to support airstrikes on Syria. And the most likely interest-analysis assessment of the situation turned out to be the correct one, as subsequent conclusive evidence showed that Syrian government forces could not have been behind the sarin attack, and it very likely may have been Syrian rebels provided with chemical weapons by Turkey.
And yet, Russia and the separatists had even less to gain from an atrocity than the Syrian government, since Assad could have at least conceivably gained extremely short-sighted strategic benefits from gassing his enemies, whereas the former could gain absolutely nothing from killing tourists.
Speaking of cui bono, not even the biggest sell-outs in the establishment media stand to gain from the nuclear holocaust they are risking by whipping up anti-Russian hysteria in the west and tension between two nuclear powers. So they should seriously consider going off-script for once, ask the most basic questions, and be honest about the most obvious truths for a change.
That article is a terrible red herring. No one claimed the pro-Russia rebels purposely shot down a civilian plane. They said the rebels thought they shot down a Ukrainian military plane, and that’s the story because the REBELS THEMSELVES said they shot it down, as did their Russian military handlers, and had already disseminated that claim through a proud Russian media within just a couple hours of the event….until they found out it was a passenger jet rather than a Ukrainian jet.
Turning the question around, how did Ukraine benefit? Literally nothing happened to Russia as a result of the incident. Nothing happened to the rebels. It took years for investigators to determine exactly what shot down the plane – something nonsensical for a false flag operation. Why would Ukraine sneak into rebel-held territory and then shoot down a large passenger plane over their own airspace for no meaningful gain?
But again, the entire argument of “who was to gain” is a huge red herring. We already know the answer of why it was shot down – because the rebels mistakenly thought it was a Ukrainian military jet – and that’s because the Russians themselves told the whole world so on the very night it happened.
Where’s your link that Russian media reported that? The criminal case is not nearly that open and shut, and this is substantial reason to think the US has oversold the evidence. The narrative seems to be quite stable on the Russian side since within days.
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-media-says-cia-shot-down-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh-17-260381
But in the end, who shot this plane is not going to change any of the facts on the ground.
Here is the link breaking down the changes in Russian coverage. Notice among other things, how quickly they went from claiming that the rebels had brought down the plane to claiming that they didn’t even have the capabilities to bring down the plane:
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-37496581
Here is another link of the rebels themselves discovering the wreckage of the plane and being shocked to realize it was civilian. Notice also how quickly they are instructed to institute the cover-story claim that a Ukrainian Sukhoi jet had brought it down – a claim immediately picked up by Russian media and “proven” through numerous doctored evidences, to the point that it was eventually abandoned by even the Russia media over a year later.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-video-shows-rebels-surprised-mh17-wreckage-civilian/27133474.html
And here is another link giving numerous phone calls between various rebel leaders, rebel forces, and their russian contacts, where they negotiate the delivery of the Buk launcher, describe shooting down the plane, and describe shock when realizing it was civilian. Remember that even though these recordings were released within days of the downing, Russian media denied for over a year that the rebels even had a Buk missile system and claimed they were not capable of shooting down such a plane.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/06/19/identifying-the-separatists-linked-to-the-downing-of-mh17/
Here is another link to some of the intercepted communications:
https://www.interpretermag.com/novaya-gazeta-editor-boroday-called-moscow-press-about-downing-of-civilian-airliner/
“In the area of Torez an AN-26 was just downed. It is rolling around somewhere beyond the Progress coal mine. After all, we warned them: don’t fly in our sky.”
” Civilians were not injured. The bird fell behind the slag heap, it did not damage the residential sector.”
In that article are also the words of Alexander Boroday, who called himself the “Prime Minister” of the Donetsk People’s Republic, who according to Dmitry Muratov, (editor of Novaya Gazeta) repeated them to several media outlets the night of the crash and then resigned a few days later.
“likely we shot down a civilian airline.””
In case you want to claim those intercepted calls are faked somehow….won’t work because several of the leaders recording on the calls have already admitted they are legit, while trying to talk around it and claim the recordings don’t prove that they themselves were the ones culpable (even as they try to blame the pilot for flying in that area).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYEH6Tfzouo#t=16
Yes, but watching people lie about who shot down the plane despite massive piles of counterevidence should tell you who to trust.
Remember, this plane was shot down over rebel-held territory, by rebels with a Buk missile launcher, who initially were credited with shooting down a military plane, who then lied about having a Buk missile launcher despite numerous photos, videos, and eyewitness reports of said launcher along with recordings of the rebels themselves talking about said launcher and who delivered it. There are numerous pictures, videos, and eyewitness accounts showing that the missile launcher was transported from Russia under Russian control and then moved to that location and given under militant control. Stratford has publicly released satellite imagery showing the launcher and these movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
On the other hand, the evidence that Ukraine fired the missile is….none. There is no evidence of a Ukrainian missile launcher anywhere in that rebel-held region, no evidence of Ukrainians discussing having fired such a missile, no motive for them to have fired the missile (and you claimed motive was such a big factor just last week), nothing. And the Russians have refused to cooperate in the investigation or provide any evidence that disputes the clear facts pointing to who did it.
You think that we should mistrust this conclusion because the US government has failed to release the basis for their additional evidence (evidence I haven’t even cited nor that was cited in the article!) on exactly where the missile was fired from. Yet you suggest we trust the people who lied about pro-Russian militants shooting down a Ukrainian military aircraft, lied about the rebels not having a missile launcher, lied about a Ukrainian jet shooting down the plane, and who literally can be shut down or even killed if they fail to support the right narrative.
And you still want to trust them no matter how much they lie.
Ukraine is not run by “ultranationalist fascists”. The nationalist leader lost power to a reformer 3 years ago. The article gives the appearance that Putin is going into Ukraine to eliminate a threat that in fact isn’t even there. Ukraine’s current administration is a popular movement sparked and led by non-politicians focused on anti-corruption and they have been trying to bring unity and peace between Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking peoples.
In fact, Ukraine’s current president was elected in 2019 by explicitly defeating the incumbent nationalist candidate in a landslide. Your article fails to make that clear and has already confused some readers, especially considering that calling the Ukrainian government a bunch of “facist neo-nazis” is one of the main lines of current pro-Russia propaganda right now.
In general the article feels like a capitulation to the ways of the world rather than advocating the ways of God. It takes power politics as a given and uses it to deflect blame for horrendous acts. Ukraine has not joined NATO nor was it going to happen anytime soon. And even if they did, there is absolutely zero chance that will lead to an invasion of Russia – there is no reality where the USA or NATO invade Russia under any circumstances unless Russia has already started an all-out war with NATO. And if Ukraine wishes to join the EU (which obviously could be to the benefit of its people in many ways), then why can’t they join the EU? Solely because there’s a tyrant close by who doesn’t like it?
Sadly, I have already seen Putin apologists forwarding this article to support their claim that the war is the “West’s” fault and Putin is only acting as he should.
Stating the war was a horrific act and goes against all our Lord Jesus Christ commanded us. Fundamentally, that should be the first and primary focus of an Orthodox Christian response to it. It cannot be justified by the ways of power – Putin, who claims to be an Orthodox Christian and receives the open support of certain installed Orthodox leaders, is acting just like the rulers of the Gentiles who lord over the weak. Exactly how Christ told us not to act. And as many of the earliest Holy Fathers told us, “When Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed every Christian solider.” Putin is solely responsible for that decision to start killing people, and he is solely responsible for the continued killing. At any point he could choose to stop and the war would be over.
Zelensky was elected as a reformer who was going to bring unity and peace. He then promptly embraced the worst policies of his predecessor. Right Sector and the Azov Battalion are still there. The government continued the attacks on the Donbas. Russians kept dying. The persecution of the canonical Orthodox Church continued. The law against Russian language rights was not repealed. Zelensky continued to accept billions in military aid. Ukraine is the poorest nation in Europe. They did not need $5 billion in weapons, they need jobs. NATO poked the bear, then left Ukraine to fight.
See above.
The reality of a fallen world is the reality of a fallen world. Great Power politics is the way the world works. It has nothing really to do with Putin. We highly doubt any Russian government would accept NATO troops on the borders of Russia. You seem to have skipped a bunch of points in the article. If Mexico signed a mutual defense treaty with China, and opened a Chinese military base, what would happen? Be honest. Don’t come back with, “That won’t happen, or hasn’t happened.” Last time offensive weapons systems were based near the US, we blockaded Cuba and were completely ready to go to war. Fortunately, JFK was wiser than his generals and negotiated rather than just invading. The Soviets blinked. Ukraine had the chance to negotiate in good faith and did not. Bad things happen when you poke the Eagle, the Bear, or the Dragon.
And, really, if you want to talk about the ways of God, did He approve of the US invading Iraq, occupying Afghanistan for 20 years, destroying Libya, bombing Serbia (twice), bombing Syria, attempting to overthrow the government of Venezuela…. There’s more, that is just a starter list. The fact is that we simply give ourselves as pass, as if the rules of international decorum do not apply to us. That double standard, that disregard for other Great Powers is the root of current global instability. The Golden Rule goes a long ways in international politics if you practice it.
Two things can be true. It is the West’s fault that we are in this situation. Putin did not have to do this the way he did. We do not apologize for Putin as he went too far. Had he occupied the Donbas and stopped, that would have been understandable. Attacking into Ukraine proper is too far and we do not support it. We need immediate negotiations and a ceasefire. This is brother killing brother, and is even more odious to God than a regular war.
We not only quoted Metropolitan Onuphry that war is a sin against God, but we also published his entire letter. Stating reality is not endorsing that reality. Bears bite, so don’t poke them. In a perfect world, the bear would be under human lordship. Not a perfect world. It is a fallen world, and we need to acknowledge the way of the world. The US sponsored a coup and installed a govt that attacked Russians in Ukraine and which imported billions of dollars in weapons. Was that pleasing to God? We set this up and it exploded. We should have been smart enough to not sponsor a coup, and to not pump in billions in weapons next door to Russia. The Kiev Regime chose to kill Russians in the Donbas, and to keep killing them. Was God pleased by the killing of innocent people in the Donbas? Both sides need to negotiate. We need a ceasefire immediately. Our guess is that Zelensky still thinks if he draw out the war, it will bring in Western forces. That could easily end in all of us being vaporized. If we don’t learn our lessons, then we will blunder into war with Russia or China, or both.
Let me focus back on the main point so we don’t get lost in the weeds.
It is strictly false to claim that the current Ukrainian government are ultranationalists fascists who came to power in a 2014 coup. There is no realm of interpretation where that statement becomes true.
You can choose to disagree with any action of Ukraine. That is fully your right. But anyone who states that the current government of Ukraine are “ultranationalist fascists” or “neo-nazis” who “came to power in a coup in 2014” are speaking complete falsehoods and pulling narratives directly from Russian propaganda.
The article on How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia is posted below and very good. Here it is again:
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/
However, it is important to note a few additional things. First of all, Ukrainian nationalism has historically been more anti-Russian and anti-Polish than anti-Jewish. The NAZI fascination partially dates back to WWII and Stepan Bandera:
https://www.parisbeacon.com/53415/
It goes back to the collaboration of some Ukrainians with Nazis to fight the Russians. If you think any use of Nazi slogans / symbols / ethos is strictly anti-semitic, then you are being too WWII-centric. Even in WWII, the German Nazi Party had racial hierarchies that classed my family, the Slavs, as sub-humans to be used as slave labor. The Russians associate Nazism with anti-Russian animus more than they do with anti-Semitism. For Russians, the use of Nazi swag triggers a visceral reaction as the German Nazis slaughtered them. The Ukrainians who use the Nazi regalia and slogans know that, and do it on purpose.
First off, that entire article disproves the original claim. The original claim was that the Ukrainian government is ultranationalist fascists and neo-nazis, and now the claim is that the Ukrainian government explicitly confronted a faction of neo-nazis within Ukraine’s military ranks but didn’t succeed in expelling them so instead has made them cannon fodder on the front lines?
If that’s your entire argument against Ukraine, then I’d love for you to run an article on who Dmitry Utkin, former Russian Commander and the neo-Nazi founder of Russia’s famous Wagner Group is, and explain why he’s covered in swastika tattoos, and explain what the Wagner Group and their neo-nazi leaders have been doing fighting for Russia in Donetsk and Luhansk for the last 8 years.
You claimed there were no Neo Nazis. The president is Jewish! Remember. But, of course there are. And Zelensky has the same financial backer as Azov. The Neo Nazis did not leave the military, police, security, and admin sectors after 2019. They are still there. And Zelensky works with them, and even gives them awards. So obviously you were wrong, but being a troll means never admitting you are wrong.
Nothing excerpted above would be good enough, of course. But still, you never did talk about corruption? None of us are worried about what happens in Russia, our tax dollars don’t pay for it.
By the way, did you see that the Ukrainians shot one of their negotiating staff?
https://twitter.com/ASBMilitary/status/1500217147339034628
It is completely false to say I claimed there were “no neo nazis”. I said explicitly that there were nazis in the military, but that they had failed to win a single seat in government and they are not running Ukraine. And then you insult me and call me names for being accurate?
Meanwhile, this entire discussion emanates from you suggesting that Ukraine was run by an ultranationalist fascist regime which came to power in a coup in 2014. Now we’ve backed all the way to Zelensky being a fairly and democratically elected anti-nationalist president who came to power in 2014, who explicitly opposed the nazis both before and after coming to power, but who ran into resistance and began to tolerate them withing the military ranks including in at least one leadership position.
Are you going to admit being wrong?
So we agree. There are neo-Nazis fighting for Ukraine. There were neo-Nazis at all levels of government until the 2019 election. You claim they are still in the military, but what? Not in the rest of the government such as intelligence, command and control, civil service, etc.? Is that the point? If the elected governments were all that matters, Trump would’ve been able to run the country instead of having so many of his orders countermanded. If Ukraine was run by and for the people, then Zelensky wouldn’t have openly discussed developing nukes and joining NATO, which Kamala Harris’ public bakcing, while moving 50k troops to the Donbas.
A Jewish president did not stop neo-Nazis nor did the corrupt president stop this war. And he could still stop this war. Why are you not talking about his wanting to prolong this war when it could be ended?
So you can’t even name these insidious Nazis who are supposedly embedded through all levels of Ukrainian government, but you think a violent Russian attack will eliminate them….how? Just like the USA magically eliminated radical Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan, right? Oh, wait, maybe several social disruption by a hated outside enemy tends to strengthen and empower extremists rather than eliminating them, doesn’t it?
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I am interested – do you believe there are Soviet-style Communists embedded throughout the Russian state? Do you believe there are fans of the Confederacy embedded throughout American state and federal government and the military? Do you believe that Russia or America should be invaded in order to eliminate this element? Simple yes or no answers will suffice.
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And the only person who knows for certain he can end this war is Putin. Putin is the only one who started the war, Putin is the only one who invaded another nation, Putin is the only one who could end the war at any moment with a single command. Zelensky doesn’t know if his surrender will end the war, doesn’t know if Putin’s forces will actually leave, doesn’t know if Putin will ever stop trying to control Ukraine completely. Didn’t Putin say once that he wasn’t taking Crimea? Didn’t he say that he didn’t have forces in Donbass? Didn’t Putin say that he wasn’t going to invade Ukraine? Doesn’t Putin STILL say there is no war going on, it’s just a military action? But you admit all those things happened, you even admit there is a war. Not to mention a million other assertions by Putin that literally no one believes, to the point where he has to purge his own media over and over just to get them in line. How can Zelensky believe the word of a liar who has never shown he can be trusted?
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I think your energy could be much better spent trying to educate Orthodox believers on the Orthodox interpretation of Biblical statements on war and violence, and what an Orthodox state should and should not support in terms of aggressive war, than to keep running up these counterfactual political hypotheses for the sole purpose of partisan politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR1r_Gri7gzc0DO5rHL0nshyXd3UY2W7ryZKZIs6VLkbm2RtGlQbcxCVAfw&v=KfaAyiP8Wuc&feature=youtu.be
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/how-ukraines-jewish-president-made-peace-with-neo-nazi-paramilitaries/?fbclid=IwAR0p6b08_CviDfnFv_0kxTfjeUPiZL00pngvYdkY-htk362xKskUlUWzJdg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR07luveEfUqShPQsMUGZSBtUZcmA-U3ywL4V1luQHKMbaNsQqjkz_imqGI&v=b8j0tJsKltg&feature=youtu.be
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Who told you the Nazis were no longer part of the government? Was there a purge after Zelensky won, backed by the same oligarch who originally financed the Azov? The Nazis are still there in the military, but have been magically purged from the rest of the regime? Perhaps now that Victoria Nuland has confirmed the existence of US funded bio labs, she can also comment on embedded Nazis? There are known Nazis in material we have provided. There will be more embedded in the bureaucracy. See below answer on commies in Russia and Poland.
The US created radical Islam in Afghanistan and it spread its poison to Pakistan and the rest of the ME. If you dial the clock back to the 70’s, there was talk of the death of Islam. No one was praying. Arab socialism was on the upswing. Art and literature were flourishing. Then Brzeziński had the joyous idea to give the Soviets their own Vietnam by funding an Islamist insurgency and drawing them into it. Stupidest damn move ever. The commies had given Afghanistan the best government it ever had. Most Islamists are radicalized by propaganda written by the CIA to attract anti-Soviet fighters.
Whoops.
And Iraq? Iraq was run by a secular dictator, just like Syria. How much better the whole world would be if we had just stayed home?
Just like Ukraine. If we had not poured 5 billion into fomenting revolution, then pouring in billions in weapons, encouraging thoughts of NATO, and our political class using it to funnel tax money back to their kids – then things would be 100% better.
The US leaves carnage everywhere it goes. Interfering in countries within our sphere of influence is at least somewhat understandable Great Power behavior, if not particularly moral. Going abroad thousands of miles to countries with whom we have no legitimate quarrel is simply demonic.
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Nicholas and Alexander who contribute here are both related to unrepentant commies who serve in various positions of the Polish Govt. They are not shy about their allegiances. The are hard left, and manage to survive just fine even though the current regime is center-right. They are even atheists to boot, in a very Catholic country.
So yes, absolutely there are commies in the Russian Government. Probably at all levels of the permanent bureaucracy. Not all of them old, either. Which is one reason we cry “BS” to you saying that surely all the Nazis are gone in Ukraine. The permanent civil service class is quite resistant to change, unless you deliberately set out to purge them.
We don’t support Russia’s invasion. We have made that very, very clear. We also don’t support making Zelensky a hero or encouraging Ukraine to keep fighting a lost cause.
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NATO provoked this war. Regardless of how you try to dismiss them, the Russian demands are reasonable for a Great Power. The alternative is to continue this war until a Russian victory which will mean destroying Ukraine. There is no other alternative. You will negotiate a settlement or Russia will level Ukraine if it has to use tactical nukes to do. Putin’s popularity has gone up 10 points. The Russians are angry about sanctions and calling for victory. Putin cannot go home without achieving that, even if he has to kill every Ukrainian. The only hope is to negotiate.
After the war, the US already plans a government in exile to continue the fight. Ukraine will never recover. Regardless of what you want Putin and Russia to do, these are simply the facts.
Here’s a very good resource on where we are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppD_bhWODDc
Where’s the partisan politics? The Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats on issues of war and peace. If Republicans were Ron Paul, or the Democrats were Tulsi Gabbard, sure we would be partisan. They’re not. Both sides seem hell-bent on war. Which, we are all anti-war and against the MIC.
https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-divorce-of-american-conservatism-and-the-national-security-intelligence-state/
You are more than welcome to submit an article on topics of war, peace, etc. This is a group blog, and we post guest submissions all the time.
Sorry typo – the second “2014” is supposed to be “2019”.
And once again I’d love for you to run an article on who Dmitry Utkin, former Russian Commander and the neo-Nazi founder of Russia’s famous Wagner Group is, and explain why he’s covered in swastika and other Nazi tattoos, and explain what the Wagner Group and their other neo-nazi leaders have been doing fighting for Russia in Donetsk and Luhansk for the last 8 years. Why his Dmity Utkin – winner of four Orders of Courage – photographed standing next to Putin? Why does he work directly for one of Putin’s main confidants? We’re supposed to believe that Putin is willing to start a war to “deNazify” Ukraine but won’t even deNazify his own inner circle?
Do a deep dive into the Wagner Group, they’re pretty disgusting. Named after Hitler’s favorite composer in a hat-tip to their inspiration. Or is your anti-nazi sentiment only relevant when it serves other purposes?
The if you haven’t had enough, jump to “The Base” and explain why Putin allows the leader of an international neo-nazi terrorist organization base himself in russia so he can stay out of the reach of American authorities.
https://www.respublica.lt/signs-of-neo-nazi-ideology-amongst-russian-mercenaries
When our tax dollars fund Russia, we will be concerned about such things. As they do not, then Russia is not issue. Russia is willing to negotiate. There is not one Russian demand on the table that has been reported that Ukraine should not be willing to grant. This whole thing should be over. Now.
lol – so you care more about the American state than you do about the Orthodox church? If you want to get technical, Russia has made plenty off of American dollars, we have bought a lot of their oil you know.
I already answered your spurious claims about Russian demands. Besides resembling the demands of an abusive spouse “I’ll stop hitting you if you would only be weak, meek, obedient, and give me everything”, there isn’t the least reason to trust them any more than we should have trusted Putin’s claims that he didn’t have forces in Crimea, wasn’t putting forces into Donbass, and wasn’t going to invade Ukraine.
I seem to recall another violent tyrant who repeatedly occupied adjacent territories and was appeased due to promises that he would stop soon….
A few of many sources which take this question seriously and discuss it. I am unable to find any serious sources that affirm that Ukraine’s current government is “ultranationalist fascists” or run by neo-nazis.https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-ukrainian-jews-angry-and-appalled-at-putin-s-denazification-claim-1.10632913https://jewishunpacked.com/can-ukraine-have-a-nazi-problem-with-a-jewish-president/https://www.vox.com/2022/2/24/22948944/putin-ukraine-nazi-russia-speech-declare-war
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/
How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia
ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN AND MAX BLUMENTHAL·MARCH 4, 2022
While Western media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage to refute accusations of Nazi influence in Ukraine, the president has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fighters.
Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.
Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.
With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.
Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.
Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.
Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.
By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.
A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.
This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”
In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.
But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
The president’s Jewishness as Western media PR device
Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.
Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.
Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.
A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video):
PBS NewsHour noted Putin’s comments on denazification with a qualifier: “even though President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his great uncles died in the Holocaust.”
On Fox & Friends, former CIA officer Dan Hoffman declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrainian nation to denazify — their president is Jewish after all.”
On MSNBC, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Putin’s “terminology, outrageous and obnoxious as it is — ‘denazify’ where you’ve got frankly a Jewish president in Mr. Zelensky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of personal jihad to restore greater Russia.”
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Fox Business she’s “been impressed with President Zelensky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denazify’ and Zelensky is Jewish.”
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Nazify” while the newsman and former Israel lobbyist shook his head in disgust. In a separate interview with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistleblower” and Ukraine-born Alexander Vindman grumbled that the claim is “patently absurd, there’s really no merit… you pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish… the Jewish community [is] embraced. It’s central to the country and there is nothing to this Nazi narrative, this fascist narrative. It’s fabricated as a pretext.”
Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.
In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.
The Azov Battalion marches with Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel flags in Mariupol, August 2020
Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi militants unleash a wave of intimidation
Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.
In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.
President Zelensky (C) meets with billionaire oligarch and business associate Ihor Kolomoisky on September 10, 2019
When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”
Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.
In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the US State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”
Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Zelensky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up collaborating with them
Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”
A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
Zelensky meets with “veterans” including Yehven Karas (far right) and Dmytro Shatrovsky, an Azov Battalion leader (bottom left).
During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.
As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.
C14 neo-Nazi gang offers to carry out violence-for-hire: “C14 works for you. Help us keep afloat, and we will help you. For regular donors, we are opening a box for wishes. Which of your enemies would you like to make life difficult for? We’ll try to do that.”
A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.
As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.
Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the US government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official US government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”
Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”
“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.
Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.
Then-Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk onstage at the neo-Nazi “Veterans Strong” concert
After Prime Minister attends neo-Nazi concert, Zelensky honors Right Sector leader
Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk – then the Prime Minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.
Zelensky’s Minister for Veterans Affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several antisemitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.
Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”
In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.
Dmytro Yarosh poses with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces
A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”
Zelensky awards Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” award
Ukrainian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influence on the eve of war with Russia
On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.
“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”
The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.
Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.
Yevhen Karas delivering the Nazi salute.
“If we get killed…we died fighting a holy war”
When Russian forces entered Ukraine this February 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, President Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.
With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.
On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.
A day later, the Azov Battalion’s National Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Regional Police would begin using the city’s Regional State Administration building as a defense headquarters. Footage posted to Telegram the following day shows the Azov-occupied building being hit by a Russian airstrike.
Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.
According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”
Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.
Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.
Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.
“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”
That article disproves the original claim. The original claim was that the Ukrainian government is ultranationalist fascists and neo-nazis, while the article states that the Ukrainian government explicitly confronted a faction of neo-nazis within Ukraine’s military ranks but didn’t succeed in expelling them so instead has made them cannon fodder on the front lines.
If that’s your entire argument against Ukraine, then I’d love for you to run an article on Dmitry Utkin, former Russian Commander and the neo-Nazi founder of Russia’s famous Wagner Group. Explain who he is and why he’s covered in swastika tattoos, and explain what the Wagner Group and their neo-Nazi leaders have been doing fighting for Russia in Donetsk and Luhansk for the last 8 years.
Now that is whataboutism. Did you skip the article?
Giving them positions, money, free hands in progroms, awards – none of that means anything, right?
It didn’t mean anything to you when I pointed out that Putin had made his neo-nazis the heads of powerful military organizations and given them awards, funding, and literally sent them around the world on his missions, did it? Guys with literal swastika tattoos, guys throwing actual Sieg Heil salutes, standing proudly shoulder-to-shoulder with Putin accepting his awards and attending his events, and carrying out his direct orders.
Nor did it mean anything when your own link showed that Zelensky had opposed nazism, had tried to fight nazism and eliminate it from his military, yet had struggled when he ran into resistance – resistance that was accentuated due to the ongoing war and in fact existential threat of Russian takeover. Instead you damn her solely because he backed off and has temporarily tolerated them in the ranks.
So is Putin an ultranationalist facist Nazi then or no? Because if employing nazis for military purposes is your own evidence against Zelensky, then the evidence against Putin is stronger and less excusable, and the evidence for Putin doing anything at all to push back against them is weaker than it is for Zelensky.
Why the double-standard?
If Zelensky tried to fight the Nazis, but then gave up, who dominates the country? If you support them or can’t purge them or simply have to let them be – then who is in control? None of us care what Putin is or is not. Putin is not backed by our tax dollars. Whatever Putin is or is not, he is simply not a threat to the United States unless we blunder into a nuclear war by sticking our nose in even further where it does not belong.
People push aside a lot of priorities when faced with an overwhelming existential threat. If Zelensky wasn’t dealing with, “This massive powerful nation next door is trying to take over my country piece by piece”, then maybe he could exert more energy on removing every last bigot from his military forces.
Did the USA do everything they could to remove their bigots from their military and police forces before they went to war in World War II? Or Korea? Or Vietnam? Or ever, honestly? Anyone can tell you we still have White Supremacists through America and US Congressmen are happy to speak at their functions. Funny you don’t seem the least bit concerned with writing an article about that. Or with caring that an “orthodox nation” like Russia is using neo-nazi leaders as its main mercenaries overseas and sponsoring neo-nazi rebellions in America and elsewhere.
You care less about Putin, who claims to be the most powerful Orthodox political leader and who many of your readers see as an Orthodox hero, than you do about a fringe group in the poorest country in Europe because….tax dollars?
Let’s say Ukraine wasn’t backed by any US tax dollars, and instead was supported entirely by the EU, Japan, and Australia. Would your focus of argument then shift entirely?
Our tax dollars have been spent overthrowing the government of Ukraine, and subsequently arming it in a way that provoked a regional war. We then piled on sanctions that made Putin more popular at home, radicalized a good segment of the Russian populace, and has the potential to destroy the global economy.
Russia is not an “Orthodox” nation. Russia, by law, gives special privileges to the ROC. Putin is at least nominally Orthodox. However, Russia actually recognizes multiple “official” religions and Putin has been very chummy with all of them. Seen the pictures of him opening the largest mosque in Russia recently? A majority of Russians are probably nominally Orthodox. Orthodoxy does have a substantial amount of influence on society. But Russia is far from perfect and has decades of internal evangelization to go before anyone should consider Russia an “Orthodox” nation.
Putin, like Orban and Duda in Poland, have been very supportive of traditional morality, Christianity, and family-friendly policies designed to encourage young people to have more babies. Whether it is good politics (it is) or deep-seated belief is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t matter. Those are very good policies. Is Putin a hero? That is not for us to say. He’s a cagey politician. He has done some good things. Vast majority of Russians support him. Hero or goat is more a function of historical perspective. We are too close to the moment for clarity.
Our argument is that we do not need to be involved in Ukraine. If other countries meddle in Ukraine, then that is their business. As for white supremacy in the U.S. military, my unit was 38% African American. In the modern military, a white supremacist would probably have a nervous breakdown.
https://twitter.com/mazemoore/status/1500641513281359873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1500641513281359873%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fnick-arama%2F2022%2F03%2F08%2Fvictoria-nuland-opens-up-a-can-of-worms-about-whats-in-danger-in-ukraine-n533431
Gee, maybe we did have something to do with the Coup in 2014.
How many more strawmen and deflections are you going to post in this discussion? I never once said, “The USA had no interest or involvement in the Ukrainian coup”. In fact that link proves nothing more than the minimal involvement I would have thought they had. They were open at the time that they were in communication with the opposition (they said publicly they were talking to both sides), but the “embarrassing” part of that leaked exchange is that they clearly hoped the opposition would come out ahead and had their preferences as to how it would look. That’s supposed to surprise….who exactly?
….
What that completely fails to establish, of course, is how you can claim that a government that was fairly elected in 2019 in DIRECT OPPOSITION to that 2019 coup government can somehow be equated with them. From the very beginning you’ve played up the 2014 coup of “ultranationalist fascists” as justification for Russia invading Ukraine (which would be ridiculous nonsense from an Orthodox perspective even if they weren’t two completely different governments).
It’s like someone said that Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 election was justification for overthrowing Biden. It’s a nonsensical deflection and just one more of a long list of excuses to someone make literally everyone other than Putin into the bad guy here.
Gee, you think that if Putin’s case for aggressive war was so strong, he would have actually made it in advance rather than lying to his entire army and nation and telling them they weren’t going to war.
Putin made the case prior to the war, multiple times. Still don’t support his war, but he made it and so did Lavrov. Putin’s approval rating is up 10 points. Even anti-Putin Russians are now turning on the West. Our sanctions did that. Seeing FB and Twitter allow for praising Nazis in Ukraine and calling for violence against Russians did that. Not to mention even blocking international phone calls so Russian abroad can’t call their families. Putin is going to be stronger as a result of this war and sanctions than he was before.
Good moves there. And the sanctions are going to wreck the dollar and the global economy. We orchestrated the coup. Yes, Zelensky campaigned on one set of promises – reform, respect for law, make peace with Russia. He then turned his back totally on all those promises and openly speculated about developing nukes while continuing the talk of NATO members, keeping the Azov and other Nazis in business, gave awards to Nazis, and kept the war going in Donbas. So yeah, can’t see any real difference. We never needed to be involved in Ukraine. At all. The place would be much better off if we had stayed home.
If Zelensky cared about his people, he would negotiate in good faith to end the war.
You did an incredible job of skipping both paragraphs completely right there.
Here’s a great interview with a Texan living in the Donbas. We are certain he is not credible for you either, because anything that contradicts the narrative is bad. Obviously.
https://youtu.be/VFTi0mnLohA
lol – I don’t dismiss Russell “Texas” Bentley because it contradicts the narrative, I dismiss him because he’s a clown. Everyone knows about Bentley, he’s a 61-year-old self-proclaimed Communist and drug dealer who claimed Ukraine was full of nazis before he even left America and then ran off to Donbass to “fight them”, while in reality he runs around making clout-chasing youtube videos. I don’t think anyone on either side takes him seriously.
When you accept Arguments on Authority without evidence, and use the most ridiculous possible authorities, you look ridiculous.
I accept eyewitness accounts as part of the picture. Ukraine is way more complex a situation than you are attempting to pretend it is.
He was interviewed by Gerald Celente, for whom we have a lot of respect. https://trendsresearch.com/about-gerald-celente/
You have to admit, Bentley has his d**k in the dirt, as we used to say in the infantry. He’s there, and he put his butt where his mouth is. He certainly can speak firsthand. Do we take it with a grain of salt? Sure, but we take everything at this point with a grain of salt. Many of us know first hand, even when you are under fire you don’t necessary know what is happening around you. The last person to understand the flow of a battle is an infantryman under fire. We just know what is immediately in front of us.
Quite a bit from both sides sounds less than credible. The truth always comes out after the fight, but usually only if you win. The Ukrainians keep falling back, yet somehow have very precise counts of OPFOR casualties. You can’t count enemy KIA unless you own the field after the battle.
Both sides are immensely sketchy, with the Ukrainians winning as the most sketchy.
We care most about 3 things.
1) The Ukrainians may negotiate in good faith at the moment as things may have changed. However, up till now they appear to have been drawing out the war. The demands put upon them are not unreasonable, but Zelensky and company seem to believe that if they can keep it going, at the expense of their own citizens, they can draw the West in. That will be a catastrophe. Regardless of what Zelensky was before the war, right now he is the mouthpiece for Armageddon. The war needs to end.
2) NATO must keep out of the war at all costs. The charges of war crimes, the images of women supposedly fighting, the babies in bomb shelters, the tales of women dying performing acts of charity – none of it is special to this war (40 other wars are ongoing as we speak), but they are designed to illicit an emotional reaction that could get us all nuked.
3) The UOC must be respected and defended. The UOC and her flock are suffering. We need to end this war while respecting the real Orthodox Church.
Beyond those three points, all discussion is academic. Zelensky will not survive as president of Ukraine, unless he cuts a deal quickly. If he survives, he is president of a ruined country that will be neutral. The Nazis will be gone. Ukraine will lose territory. These are foregone conclusions. So we can discuss him or the pre-war situation for the rest of our lives, but it won’t change what is coming. God willing, the war does not expand. God willing, the war ends soon to save lives and property.
Russia is now cutting the cell towers, power, and water. Russia waited on doing this. Putin was hoping for a surrender. Instead, Ukraine and the Western media whooped it up that Russia was somehow losing. Or had not properly gauged the Ukrainians. The truth is they were hoping for a quick capitulation without the need to destroy Ukraine and freeze Orthodox Ukrainians to death.
What happens next will be fantastically awful. God have mercy on anyone who facilitated this or encouraged worthless resistance.
Again, repeating the completely unverified takes of a clown with no credibility, who states clearly that he already decided on an extremist narrative before he even stepped foot there for the first time, does not show anything at all. Bentley is a convicted felon, prison escapee, and committed Communist at over 60 years of age, who already believed all the claims he’s making about Ukraine and knew who he would support before he ever went to Ukraine. He literally states that he went there in order to convert Ukraine to Communism. I kinda suspect that if we were talking about literally any other issue and I quoted a convicted Communist as my source, with no evidence to support his assertions, you would laugh at me.
There are millions of Ukrainians who know more about what’s going than Bentley does – and no surprise, they have a variety of opinions. Which is why random “eyewitness” accounts in isolation have no power in themselves unless the eyewitness has special credibility. Any one “eyewitness” can carry any one narrative. As someone who was already ideologically hardened, has not lived with Ukrainians, does not so far as I’m aware speak Ukrainian, and who is entirely embedded with pro-Russian forces, his word means nothing to me.
I am curious – do you identify more with the Orthodox Church or with America? Do you identify more with Ukraine or with Russia? Because you keep talking about what America should do, you keep talking about what Ukraine should do….but I don’t see you state that Russia should pull out of the war. I don’t see you state that Orthodox Church members should unilaterally decry the war. The fathers have given us a range of developed theology on the use of violence and war, I have yet to see ANY that would justify Putin’s actions. He lied and said he was not going to war (and many commentators you’re likely listening to now pushed those lies along with him), he lied to his own troops and told them they weren’t going to war, he attacked a people that posed no danger to him and is killing people who could not threaten his country, he has used force that is far and away overwhelmingly more destructive than anything he faced. You have pushed “realist” geopolitical commentators who suggest America has made a strategic blunder (which they may have, but it’s tough to trust the views of someone who earlier argued that Ukraine should develop nuclear weapons to prevent Russian invasion), but you have failed to exert any energy on critiquing Putin or his Orthodox backers from an Orthodox perspective. Do you consider yourself more of a expert on international geopolitics than on Orthodoxy, or do you feel more ownership of US political decisions than of Orthodox decisions? Why take this tact then?
Everyone should put God first. We support Metropolitan Onuphry and his call for peace. We published it. We publicized it. The Metropolitan is correct, the Russians should not have invaded. No one would have said much about occupying the Donbas, but Russia coming all the way in is wrong. On the other, this was obviously a NATO set up job. Putin was drawn in. He didn’t have to take the bait, but we had no business dangling the bait. Russia is willing to negotiate. Its demands must be met or else the consequences will be dire. That is simply the facts of the situation. Zelensky will not get NATO troops or planes, a No Fly Zone, whatever. The sanctions will hurt the poor and middle class everywhere. Time to end this. Ukraine has to give way, NATO needs to back off and let that happen. Russia will keep going till it has completely destroy the place. And we, under no circumstances, can fund an insurgency.
From this article:
We don’t think Putin’s actions are justified under Just War. They are justified under a theory of Great Power politics, which we also adhere to when enforcing our hegemony in the Western hemisphere (and elsewhere) and we should have known that pushing the bear into a corner would result in Ukrainians dying. And we shouldn’t have done that.
We really don’t think he was going to war. Russia was prepared, but the Zelensky and VP Harris comments at the Munich conference appear to have been the final blows to peace. The Ukrainians certainly posed a threat to Russians in the Donbas. An ongoing threat that they were not going to resolve. NATO troops in Ukraine, more offensive arms in Ukraine, and potential nukes in Ukraine are certainly going to be seen as threats. Those threats got Ukrainians killed. We aren’t Russians. We are Americans and Canadians. Our goal is for America to stop meddling in other nation’s affairs. We have zero influence on Russia, but we might have some effect on North Americans. Anti-Russian hysteria is building to the point that it is okay to call for anti-Russian violence on Facebook and Twitter. Students are being expelled just for being ethnically Russian. People are losing jobs. In Germany, hospitals are refusing medical care to Russians. Let the Russians deal with Putin. We have our own problems with hate, xenophobia, and pure hypocrisy. We deny others the Great Power prerogatives we exert for ourselves. We kill people around the world, and our sanctions regime is going to destroy our own currency.
And all this is done in our name, because we have elections. All of this is immoral, and needs to stop.
Here’s a great Bentley profile. As I pointed out already, he was a convicted felon who decided that Ukraine was run by a bunch of neo-nazis before he even left America because….wait for it…he read it in Russian media. He also pushed the “MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian jets!” conspiracy that even Russia has given up on now, as well as the claim that 9/11 was an inside job and the tower was taken down by demolitions. He is as adamant that the USA is controlled by fascists as he that Ukraine is. He repeatedly pushes Russian propaganda and states he hopes to turn Donbass into a Communist state (suggesting he may have a weak grasp of geopolitics).
This has gone beyond simply being “wrong” about facts here and there. Why do you regularly take the claims of propaganda pushes without evidence, believe claims from such untrustworthy sources with such little support, and then signal-boost them to your audience? If these were regular no-name people then taking their claims without evidence would already be ill-advised. The fact that they’ve so clearly demonstrated their biases and their lack of respect for the truth on numerous previous equations suggests incredible judgment errors on your part.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/son-wealthy-businessman-foot-soldier-vladimir-putin-russia-hacking/
Yep. Told you. Instead of refuting what he has to say as an eyewitness, you attack the witness. Jonathan Hill, right?
How can I “refute” supposed eyewitness claims with no evidence from a person with no credibility? There are millions of Ukrainians who disagree with “Texas” Bentley, and they have a lot of advantages in language, culture, and experience that allow them to know a bit more about the situation than some foreign radical making Youtube hype videos. If you discuss the information from verified sources, whose claims can be checked, we can discuss them reasonably.
But if we do do that, and I provide every evidence you ask for regarding my claims, will you then proceed to deflect and ignore everything I said without admitting any of it, like you just did with the MH17 discussion?
Exactly. So you impeach the source, but since we are suffering a barrage of propaganda on all sides, who the heck knows what is actually happening? So he could easily be telling the truth from the perspective of the Donbas. That other Ukrainians have other opinions does not mean he has not seen what he says. The history of this war must be sorted out when the fighting stops, because the level of sheer lying on all sides is breathtaking.
What happens in Latin America is that Marxists and fascist populists take over by claiming victim hood status and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are you seriously suggesting that we should support every Marxist regime in Latin America?
Also, we now know from recent events that Mexico could easily put a stop to the cross border invasion of the U.S., virtually overnight, if they wanted to.
We seem to not be communicating. Not sure why. We are not advocating that the US support every Marxist or fascist regime in Latin America. We are saying that anti-American regimes, regardless of their ideological orientation, are not going to fair well. They end up invaded, overthrown, and/or embargoed. That is simply a fact. We gave an example of China attacking Vietnam, and now we have Russia attacking Ukraine. Great Powers expect to have their sway in their own spheres of influence.
Are you arguing against that point? You seem to keep coming back to Latin American victimhood. That is not our point, and has never been our point. Quite the opposite. Even if you somehow think you have a legit grievance against a Great Power, who cares? The reality of the situation is not about fairness or the “court of public” opinion. That is all irrelevant.
Yes, Mexico could police the border. Mexico does not, because the elites running the US don’t want it to. That is our policy. If Washington demanded that Mexico do so, then Mexico would comply. Our political elites want an open border, so they get an open border. We have to fix this from our side.
I’m sorry, but there is no way all of Latin America is “chained” to the U.S. Not sure anyone today is “chained” to the U.S. American influence historically in Central America, yes. At times, militarily. Not much elsewhere except when we are fighting the narcos in Columbia. Central America is invading the U.S. with impunity.
You seem to be conflating two separate things. We have an open border, which is a suicidal policy for our civilization. You can refer to this as an invasion if you like, but it is really unchecked migration. It is a horrible policy on our side. Is it directed by Latin American govts to bring down or destroy the US? Not that I have seen.
On the other hand, the United States has not given up the Monroe Doctrine. We will not tolerate foreign troops in the Western Hemisphere, nor will we much tolerate anti-American regimes. We are really not sure why this isn’t obvious. We attempted to overthrow the government of Venezuela in 2019. We still sanction it and still claim the other guy is president. You must be aware that we have occupied various countries such as Guatemala and Nicaragua for decades at a time. Haiti also. We overthrew the government of Chile in 1973. Then there is Cuba where we backed an invasion by expatriates, then threatened to go to war over Russian missiles, then spent decades embargoing them and/or plotting to kill Castro.
We are not taking a position on whether any of the above is good, bad or indifferent. They are simply facts. The United States is a great power, and will not tolerate foreign troops close to us, foreign missiles / offensive weapons, or really even governments that don’t like us much. We expect to control the Western Hemisphere. That is understandable. China went to war with us in Korea because we put troops on their border by taking North Korea. When Vietnam got uppity China invaded in 1979. Did you know that?
This is just Great Power politics. If you are Vietnam, then intervening someplace China doesn’t want you ends up with a war. This is all the article is about in essence. Not new. America will not tolerate Western Hemisphere nations going rogue and allying with China. China has limits to its tolerance. So does Russia. So will Brazil and India as they become more powerful. So has South Africa, historically, as they were a great power in Southern Africa and so dominated multiple neighbors.
This is just how the world works, but for some reason, the current elite class in the US believes we are exempt from all reality.
The mistakes of the United States do not justify the mistakes of Putin… of Russia.
The entire text is a sophistical defense of a Ukraine chained to Russia.
Nowhere in the text is any mention of Holodomor. Also nothing was said about Kirill and Hilarion’s silence about this war that they support behind the scenes.
No, it’s not time to listen Onuphry.
Ukraine will always be chained to Russia in a certain sense. The same way all Latin America is chained to the US. And much of Asia is chained to China. That is the reality of Great Power politics. This article is not justifying Putin’s actions. It simply points out they are understandable. It would be much better for everyone had Putin not exceeded protecting the Donbas.
The Holodomor was perpetrated by the communists. In fact, the man running the Soviet Union was a Georgian communist. This was not a Tsarist policy. When Poland owned Ukraine, it was not a Polish policy. You can’t transfer anger over the Holodomor towards modern Russians. In any case, even if the Ukrainians had a legit grievance towards Russia over this communist atrocity, this conflict is not about Ukrainian independence. Russia accepted Ukrainian independence with the limit that the nation not join NATO and not abuse the Russian minority. This is about Great Power politics, and not about justice or fairness. This is about power. Many Latin American countries have legit grievances against the US. It really doesn’t matter. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.
As for Patriarch Kirill, he could be doing a much better job demanding a cease fire. But then again, why is the US intent on funding this war (to the benefit of our military industrial complex), rather than ending this war?
Now, interestingly, Metropolitan Onuphry is setting the exact right tone. He is a man of God and a peacemaker. He recognizes the world as it is. If everyone had listened to him, we wouldn’t be here. What have you got against Metropolitan Onuphry – a Ukrainian man leading a Ukrainian Church?
I will only comment on your question at the end of your answer.
I expressed myself in a hurry and I expressed myself badly. I have absolutely nothing against Metropolitan Onuphry. What I would have liked to have said when I said that we should not listen to him, is in the sense that he should not be heard from the context and arguments presented in the text.
Forgive me if I was too harsh in my previous comment.
God bless you.
Agreed. However, if we were to really treat a hostile neighbor in the same way, we would invade Mexico and occupy it’s border cities in order to protect our border from an invasion that has been facilitated by Mexico for 75 years.
As much as I appreciate this call for peace, it seems to me that it ought to be directed at the U.S. and Nato more than toward Putin and Russia?
Yes, and no. The U.S. and NATO put us here. They need to back off. But the only side that matters now, and will drive events, is Russia.
This is a great video on how we got here:
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
Okay. I’ll watch that video. Meanwhile, could you clarify? The letter is written to tell Russia to stop it. But if they stop it, other than ending hostilities and bloodshed, won’t that just further the West’s goals?
The situation has changed. The letter is from Metropolitan Onuphry who, being the rightful head of the canonical Ukrainian Church, really had no choice but to call on Putin to cease. Now the interesting thing here is that the Patriarch of Constantinople and his GOARCH / Fordham supporters in the US have been making the case that His Eminence is some kind of Russian stooge. That was a justification for the schism – the Ukrainians must have a purely Ukrainian Church with their own “Patriarch”. So the fact that Met. Onuphry called for peace on behalf of his people goes long ways towards putting that excuse for schism out to pasture. Now had we never had the schism, and Met Onuphry been freer to keep all sides together, then we may never have gotten here.
Even Public Orthodoxy is now publishing an article that compliments Met Onuphry. https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/02/25/patriarch-kirill-and-vladimir-putins-two-wars/
So depending on how this crisis ends, we may at least see the schism gone.
The situation is such that Putin can negotiate. We would have preferred he stayed in the Donbas, but at this point he is in charge of Ukraine. The government is collapsing. Putin can call a cease fire and negotiate from strength. Ukraine will never be militarily part of NATO, and will agree to disarm while letting Donbas go. The Russians have won. The question is – will they stop after taking Kiev or does Putin plan to push the Ukrainians all the way to the floor before negotiating the withdrawl?
Thank you very much!
Are you saying that the Mexican declaration of extending their boundary well into Texas, which had fought a war of independence against Mexico in 1836, was NOT a provocative act? Look, at the time, Mexico was the big, tough guy, imperial power on the block. Liberal and leftist historians have long blamed the Mexican War on the U.S., claiming that Mexico was just a victim. That’s revisionist history. Just citing your college prof. is not good enough.
Mexico was an empire, America had imperial aspirations, yes, slave states wanted Texas to join the union as a slave state, but the fact remains that Mexico invaded a free and independent Republic of Texas.
Every Latin American country has used the U.S. as an excuse for their own internal corruption and political failures.
You misunderstand the article. Mexico was absolutely hostile to the United States. It is irrelevant whether they had a legitimate case. What matters is that smaller, weaker powers (which Mexico was) don’t get to be belligerent to a bigger, more powerful next door neighbor. The US expects Russia to allow Ukraine to become a bastion of anti-Russian sentiment, when we would not tolerate that out of any neighbor.
That is the point. If Mexico was provocative, that only proves the point more. You don’t get to the poke the Eagle, the Bear, or the Chinese Dragon. Someday the same may apply again to Germany, India, and/or Brazil. As for the Latin American examples, they prove the same point. We don’t willingly tolerate anti-American regimes. We convinced Ukraine that it could poke the Bear and we would help them live through it. The believed us, sadly enough.
We didn’t. We won’t. And if the situation were reversed, we would pound Ukraine into submission, possibly even worse than the drubbing they are getting by Russia. This isn’t about right or wrong, it is about how great powers operate and what they will tolerate. The Orthodox position is anti-war. But as we live in a fallen world, we need to be fair in our dealings. The West never should have meddled in Ukraine and set up what should have been an entirely foreseeable and useless war.
BTW, your treatment of the U.S./Mexico War is an example of revisionist history.
In what way? This was a land grab from a recalcitrant, belligerent neighbor. That was part of my American History course in college 30 years ago. Major powers frequently make offers that smaller nations “can’t refuse.” As Americans, we just like to ignore that part of our history.
You could have also added that the Texians who “joyfully welcomed annexation” were actually White Anglos, primarily Americans, many of whom had moved into Texas just a few years earlier and then violently took the state from Mexico with the help of the American military. The USA had been plotting to acquire Texas from Mexico for over 40 years by that point.
There is of course plenty of blame to go around. On one hand Santa Ana himself was an extremely violent dictator who ruled Mexico with an iron fist. On the other hand the White Americans who settled in Texas refused to pay taxes and refused to release their slaves (slavery having been banned by Mexican president Vicente Guerrero, whose own father was afro-Mexican). The American defeat of Mexican forces in Texas meant that those Black Texans remained enslaved for another 30 years, until a different military violently put an end to the practice.
This is the sort of thing that Great Powers do. They take land from their neighbors. Kind of a running theme in human history really.
There is a missing element to your analysis. The Western Left always loved the Soviet Union and made excuses for it. Anti-communist books and films were few and far between. When the USSR collapsed, the left relentlessly attacked Russia as a kind of fascist dictatorship and continues to do so. Dozens of books and films about the Russian threat to Western liberal democracy. This has brainwashed and conditioned a generation of people in the U.S. This anti-Russian view (also an anti-Christian view) dominates our political class and our entrenched Deep State .
True, and so do “Orthodox” academics who are also leftists, but try hard to pass as faithful. https://twitter.com/GDemacopoulos/status/1497213442486423552
Alexander, thank you for this effort. You make some valid points. Eternal memory to your Polish ancestors.