Here’s a “joke” on part of NATO, quote:
Secondly, all of NATO’s deployments have taken place on NATO territory, with the intention to deter threats to NATO territory.
True, but of course this ignores the promises that were made more than twenty years ago not to expand the NATO eastwards. But since Poland has now moved towards the north Atlantic coast with Georgia and Ukraine slated to join them soon, the Russian bear feels somewhat cornered. Possible after a first few growls it might lash out soon. Let’s hope it won’t get that far.
Russia, on the other hand, has illegally annexed Crimea, allowed mercenaries and heavy weapons to flow across its border into Ukraine, and refused to condemn the aggressive and illegal actions of armed separatists in Ukraine, as it committed to do in Geneva in April. Recruiting efforts for separatist fighters are also expanding inside Russia.
Oh the irony1! As one German political satirist quipped so nicely: Putin let the Crimeans vote by whom they prefer to be oppressed – and they opted for Russia/Putin.
Quite frankly I think that perhaps the referendum was even legit. We might never know. But the outcome could make sense in the light of the ethnic-Russian population et cetera. It still doesn’t matter. “The West” condemns anything not fitting its own agenda while praising the exact same thing, sometimes in an even more ridiculous shade, where it fits (e.g. Kosovo vs. Crimea). And the best part is that the democratic “international community” is led by a country in which there are two big parties whose agendas differ by not much more than 10-20 years. What’s the difference compared to Putin’s “directed democracy” or the single-party socialistic countries that went the way of the dodo at the beginning of the 1990s?
And if I remember correctly ‘t was Greystone mercenaries – a “private military company” closely affiliated with Academi2 formerly known as Xe, formerly known as Blackwater and headquartered just around the corner from the CIA headquarters in McLean – that were spotted in Ukraine during previous escalations that led to the current state of a civil war in Ukraine’s East. But of course those mercenaries were probably all legally deployed, I guess?!
One thing is remarkable in that statement, though. They don’t use the term terrorist, which is good. Calling someone terrorist is the modern version of dehumanizing your opponent in order to justify crueler actions. Of course the Ukrainian government in Kiev doesn’t mince their words quite that much, neither to the separatists themselves, calling the opponents fascists and the like.
You can think of Putin what you will, but he’s right about one thing: if the “international community”, AKA “the West”, wants to support Ukraine, they shouldn’t exclude everybody below the oligarchic elite of Ukraine. Unfortunately that’s something that many Ukrainians are willingly blind to. Why? Because on a smaller scale many of them benefit from the corruption which keeps the oligarchs at the top in power. No one sees the damage this does to society as a whole and in turn to themselves. It’s the same cognitive dissonance at play in people that commit tax fraud for their individual profit, not recognizing the implications this has for society as a whole and still lamenting about shortcomings that can well be attributed to asocial behavior like tax fraud.
It would be nice if Ukraine would once again become the country I love and remember as my second home3. It doesn’t look like it ever will be, though. What a tragedy.
A hundred years full of wars, including two world wars, and politicians the world over seem not to have learned one bit. Sleepwalking into the next one? …
// Oliver