Not long ago, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. They denuclearized in exchange for promises of protection and safety given in 1994 by the US, UK and Russia on paper with signatures. It's pretty clear that Russia's leader, and obvious war criminal, Vlad Putin broke the assurances made in the "Budapest Memorandum" not just once, but twice. At least! Putin's defense now and after his 2014 invasion of Crimea was the same: He contends that the agreement was signed with a different government in 1994, not with this new, "illegitimate" one. Since the two governments were not the same, some historical clarification is needed.
2014 was a big year for Ukraine! The "Revolution of Dignity," or sometimes called the "Maidan Revolution," took place early in the year. Then president Viktor Yanukovych was violently ousted largely due to his refusal to enter into a European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement even after promising to sign the deal. This agreement was seen by the people as a way to economic, technological, judicial and financial reform in Ukraine and as a step toward membership in the EU establishing closer ties with other member countries within it. So how did Ukraine end up with this guy as their leader? Well to oversimplify, THIS is Victor Yuschenko. He was the Western leaning opposition for Yanukovych. He was poisoned by Putin. Possibly. He didn't die, but his face was permanently disfigured. AND even though he was HUGELY popular and would have decisively won an election without Russian interference, he won only for a short time due to the orange revolution, but ended up losing out to Yanukovych in the long run.
To be a bit more specific (and to tie a couple things together in the history of the region) Yanukovych was pro-Russia. In the 80's he was actually a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, so he was not very liberal and pretty Eurosceptic. One of the first things he did was he agreed with Russia to knock 30% off the price of natural gas in exchange for a 25-year extension of the lease on the Russian naval base in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea. This was when Medvedev was president and Putin was Prime Minister of Russia in 2010. This was not popular with the people of Ukraine because it was like giving up Crimea, and, sure enough, 4 years later, Putin just moved on in. Yanukovych also adjusted part of the Ukrainian constitution in a familiar despotic way (Xi, Putin for instance) to change limitations on presidential terms, like, you know, by kinda removing them. So it was no surprise that he didn't want to join the EU. This is why Ukraine gave him the boot.
The Russian Federation- by now this was Putin- did not want progress like this in Ukraine, so he did not recognize the interim government. He considered it an illegal coup and the Russian Military intervened, opposing protests, annexing Crimea, and establishing two "proto-states" the names of which, you will probably recognize, Donetsk and Luhansk. A proto-state is not a real state, but a quasi-state operating in an environment of extreme instability. They have been rebel separatist regions not recognized by the people or government of Ukraine since they were established in 2014. The Russian-backed forces and the Ukrainian people's military have been in constant conflict since. An estimated 14000 people have died due to Putin's military bases inside Ukraine. Regardless, the interim government signed the EU association agreement and Petro Poroshenko became the new elected president of Ukraine in a landslide victory in the 2014 election. The Ukrainian people were not intimidated by Putin's Russian bullying posts in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.
Since then there have been developments in fighting corruption, increasing rule of law, decentralization, basically reformation and civilization of Ukraine. But it has all been slowed by the persistent Russian presence. One of the main reasons is that Ukraine has been forced to spend a great deal of its budget on military due to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. Ceasefires and peace treaties have been attempted (Minsk I and Minsk II) but failed. When you factor in the massive loss of status as a transit country for Russian natural gas going to Europe, a loss of more than a billion US dollars a year, not to mention energy problems for Ukraine, Putin has made things tough on Ukraine to say the least.
Then in 2019, a new leader was elected. One of the first things Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to do was settle things in Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively called the Donbas area. So he proposed the Steinmeier Plan, a peace initiative proposed by the former German President, which offered autonomy to the people of the region in exchange for a ceasefire and withdrawal of all Russian troops and weapons. Russia replied, "Elections and autonomy first, then the rest." Knowing how Russia reneged on their denuclearization support in the Budapest Memorandum, it's easy to see why Zelensky, a former comedian, found this proposal laughable. So the Steinmeier Plan was also scrapped.
I can't speak from personal experience on this, and I don't want to appear like a Saturday morning European geopolitics quarterback, but this certainly makes ME think Putin doesn't "trust" these areas to remain "pro-Russia" if Russia gets the hell outta there. The quotation marks around "pro-Russia" signify that it's pretty hard to believe those areas are as pro-Russia as their voting might make it appear. Would it be THIS kind of "pro-Russia" pro-Putin support do you think???:
This is no wimp. He's the head of the Russian espionage department trying to sell Putin on one of the Minsk agreements that would give Putin what he CLAIMS to want in the Donbas region, sovereignty and independence, but it would also require military withdrawal, something Putin doesn't want because without the military there, it sure looks like he doubts the strength of the Russian support. This poor dude appears to be fishing around looking to say whatever Putin wants him to say. To be flippant, he looks like a guy trying not to get poisoned. "Speak clearly" meant say what I want you to say and in the end, Putin got his "pro-Russian" statement. I wonder if this has any relation to the "pro-Russian" sentiment in the areas of Ukraine that have been hostilely taken over by Russia. Hmmm...So what do you do if you can't get Donbas independence from Ukraine without getting your illegally occupying ass out of there? You simply declare it independent on your own and bring MORE troops and weapons into the country under the thin disguise of a "peacekeeping force." A move Donald Trump gushed about while calling his comrade crush a genius. If Trump says it, you can be fairly certain it's the opposite of the truth. In fact, a lot of giant douchebags in positions of political power have started using the "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" elementary school tactic and because of the narcissistic detachment from reality that can come with such power, they think they invented it and it's super duper smart! You simply take the worst shit you do and accuse your enemy of it. "Nobody will think I'm doing it if they think I'm angry at the other guy for doing it," is ostensibly the mentality. It's only a little cleverer than "I know you are, but what am I," in that you are first, not second to accuse. Is that genius? Absolutely not, but I worry about the mean intelligence of the people on our planet when I see how well it seems to work. Let's not rehash the hundreds of examples from 45's assault on US national intelligence, let's just listen to Vladimir Putin and what he's saying right now about what he's doing. Here's a good one: He considers the Zelensky government illegitimate as he did the Poroshenko government before it. He actually stated that part of his reason for invasion was to "denazify" Ukraine. Considering Zelensky is a Jew who had part of his family wiped out during the Holocaust, (not to mention 70% of the popular vote and was legitimately elected to his office unlike Vlad the Accuser) this is already a stupid statement. But when you consider the many parallels between what the Nazis did and the global force that Putin seems to think he's the self-appointed leader of...
There are those who believe that EU membership and/or NATO membership would be a solution to the problems in Ukraine, but there are reasons why Ukraine has yet to receive either. It's pretty certain that EU membership would almost instantly lead to mass migration of Ukrainians to other parts of Europe in search of better lives and the other member countries of the EU generally don't want that. As for the membership in NATO, it is pretty much agreed that much greater military support would be necessary for Ukraine, which might lead to large scale clashes with Russia and possibly Russia's allies, which could amount to world war III.
But let's just concentrate on two members of NATO, shall we? The ones who PROMISED to defend Ukraine in just such an eventuality. What are the US and the UK doing to honour their commitments made to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum? Sanctions. Sanctions won't work. Here are several reasons experts agree on that. There are always workarounds when normal trading routes are sanctioned. Past sanctions have a failing record. Past sanctions on RUSSIA have a failing record. It's not going to work, in fact the sanctions may hurt other countries in Europe such as Germany and, of course, Ukraine.
Now there is talk of PERSONAL sanctions. There are people in Russia, bankers and such who have used their positions of great power to amass tremendous wealth (Putin might be the richest among them, even the richest in the world) and they will be the targets of personal sanctions from the governments of the US, Australia, UK, Canada, other EU countries and maybe others. Really! I'm sure I read something about people amassing too much power and wealth and why it's dangerous. I may have even played a board game. What was that called again? Geez, I seem to forget...
How many times do I need to say it folks? It's always the same! EVERY bit of bad world news seems to boil down to the same few holders of concentrated wealth on the planet. Those who are anti-socially and psychotically driven to believe they NEED more money and more power. There may be one or two cells in Putin's body that legitimately yearn for the Russia of yesteryear and fondly remember when Ukraine was part of it prior to 1991. But if you want to know what is behind this whole mess, just look at the long list of resources in Ukraine.
Call it personal sanctioning, or call it responsible regulation, the super rich are out of control and we need to do something about it. But governments don't like doing this sort of thing because it's biting the hand that feeds them.
We have the luxury of praying for Ukraine and gasping at the horrors when we watch them on CNN or Youtube, but we'll be in the same situations if we don't start regulating greed worldwide. Heed the warning of Ukraine and don't wait till it comes to that in other countries around the world. That's something I think we should all add to our prayers.
Putin is NOT Russia. He's not even a real person. He's a giant douchebag and nobody really likes him. The walls have probably started closing in on him like they did on Stalin. He'll probably be totally paranoid in the end, if he already isn't. That is what too much money and power does to people. Don't be a Putin. Or as someone in this vid calls him, Putler. THESE are the real people of the world. These are the ones who do almost all of the work that makes the ruling class so rich and these are the ones who always suffer when things go bad for the businesses of the rich. Do you think Putin will ever go to prison? I doubt it. Like the banks in 2008 that were "too big to fail," he's "too big to jail." Nobody should be that powerful. Let's act like these people:
One last thing to add: I saw a sign on another video that I liked. It was a woman in Ukraine protesting possibly because she might not see the male members of her family again since they're all fighting in this war. Her sign said, "If Putin stops fighting - no more war. If we stop fighting - no more Ukraine." Nobody should be put in this position. Ah HA! Found it again:
No comments:
Post a Comment