In a recent article for this site, Noah Carl argued that Russia’s war against Ukraine could have been prevented by the implementation of the Minsk II agreement. He says that Minsk II was designed to forestall possible U.S. arms supplies to Ukraine, suggesting a danger of U.S. escalation, and goes on to question why the U.S. didn’t pressure Kyiv to implement the agreement. He further questions Ukraine’s motivations in signing the agreement and its apparent unwillingness to implement it. Russia comes in for no criticism.
Firstly, the core premise of the article is false: Minsk II could not have prevented a war which had begun the previous year, with Russian troops, weapons systems and GRU and FSB officers on the ground, and with Moscow in overall control. However, let’s assume that by “preventing the war”, Noah means the full-scale invasion of 2022. The key problem with this is that despite the Russian ambassador to Ukraine signing the Minsk II agreement, Russia has consistently denied – right from the outset – that it had any responsibility to implement the agreement, has denied being a participant in the conflict and has even denied being a party to the agreement at all. The omission of these facts is quite inexplicable, condoning as it does Moscow’s absurd pretence to having been a mere bystander and rendering somewhat specious any related argument that Minsk II could have worked.
Before discussing the other aspects of Minsk II, we should also note another crucial omission. Noah quotes the New York Times reporting that the Franco-German Minsk II initiative emerged “in response to reports that lethal assistance was now on the table in Washington”, which is true as far as it goes, but obscures the reasons for the U.S. position. The initiative, aimed at bringing about a cease-fire in the Donbas, was conceived because Russia (both directly and through its proxies) had repeatedly violated the previous Minsk agreement by holding elections in the Donbas, continuing to make advances (e.g. capturing Donetsk International Airport) and generally showing no intention of stopping. It was in response to these Russian actions that the U.S. Congress moved closer to providing arms to Ukraine; or in other words, the need for a cease-fire was because of the continuing Russian invasion, not because the dastardly U.S. was stirring things up. To think otherwise is as absurd as to suggest the reason Pakistan needed disaster relief this year was because the U.S. offered to send aid.
Noah goes on to argue that Minsk II could have worked if only Ukraine had implemented it, which could have happened if only the U.S. had pressured it to do so. Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear that Ukraine has breached the agreement, and Noah offers no discussion of how or why it failed to implement it, nor any discussion of whether and how the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk regional governments (DNR/LNR) or Russia did or did not implement it.
In order to delve into these issues, it’s important to recognise that the Minsk II document, which was hastily drafted by French and German officials keen to be peacemakers, was – in key areas – not a fixed agreement or contract in the strict legal sense. There was far too much that was subject to subsequent unclear and non-deterministic procedures, such as discussion and agreement between the DNR/LNR and Kyiv, which allowed fundamentally irreconcilable interpretations to emerge. Crucially, the order in which parts of the agreement are meant to be implemented is largely unstated. Noah is arguing lack of performance, but to perform a contract it first has to be coherent and capable of relatively clear interpretation, and a contract to purchase an item at a price to be agreed later – and where delivery of the item is left vague – is not a contract.
Take the local elections in the Donbas. Minsk II stated that these should be held according to OSCE standards and monitored by the OSCE, but that “questions related to local elections will be discussed and agreed upon”. Elections were due throughout Ukraine in October 2015, but what happened next? The DNR/LNR unilaterally decided to hold elections at a time of their choosing without the agreement of Kyiv, which eventually happened over three years late in November 2018, and not in accordance with OSCE standards and not under OSCE monitoring – and hence not recognised by the EU or the U.S., and in breach of Minsk II. These sham election were almost universally condemned, with the U.S. calling them a “charade”. But, of course, Moscow blamed Kyiv for not implementing Minsk II.
Is it true that the blame for this lies with Kyiv, and presumably “the refusal of the United States to put pressure on them”? Minsk II states that discussions over elections were to be held after the withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides and the passage of a Ukrainian law giving special status to the Donbas regions – both of which Kyiv performed (the latter very controversially in Ukraine, and under pressure from the West), although the terms of the special status law were immediately condemned as a breach by the LNR/DNR and Russia because it would only come into force once OSCE-approved, free-and-fair elections were held. This was not a technical breach of the agreement, but rather a very reasonable step to shore up the democratic legitimacy of the DNR/LNR political leaders who would, after all, receive recognition from Kyiv as a result. Russia breached it.
That’s one example. Another is that Russia and the DNR/LNR never implemented article 10 of the agreement, which required the withdrawal of all foreign armed formations, equipment and mercenaries, and the disarmament of all illegal groups. Indeed, it’s very hard to imagine Russia ever intended to do so, and all the evidence suggests Minsk II was really just a means to extract concessions from Ukraine while cementing its gains and allowing it to regroup. As Duncan Allan put it:
Yet despite Russia’s efforts, Minsk-2 was not just the product of intense pressure on Ukraine. It also marked the ignominious collapse of the Novorossiya project. Confounding predictions in Moscow in the spring of 2014, few Ukrainians threw in their lot with Russia. On the contrary, Ukrainians fought back en masse, probably killing several hundred Russian troops and irregulars and nearly overrunning the DNR/LNR until they were stopped by Russia’s army at Ilovaisk and, to a lesser extent, at Debaltseve. As they fought, they created a toxic problem for Russia, whose leaders still insist that it is not at war with its neighbour and that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”. Russia could have had little doubt by early 2015 that even if it inflicted mass casualties on Ukraine, it would incur further heavy losses itself. This was a price that its leaders were unwilling to pay for sensitive domestic reasons – indicated by the harassment of Russian journalists and activists investigating this subject, and by the classification of data attesting to Russian casualties in peacetime ‘special operations’. Ukraine could not destroy Russia’s proxies, yet Russia was unwilling to sustain further high-intensity war with Ukraine; Ukraine was unable to prevail, but its readiness to fight to defend its sovereignty gave Russia pause.
However, on the other side it does appear that Kyiv never had any serious intention of implementing article 11 of the agreement, which called for a change to the Constitution of Ukraine to give special status to the Donbas, effectively legitimising the invasion – something which would never have achieved public acceptance in Ukraine. Nevertheless, once again this was made even more impossible by Russia and its proxies, who in May 2015 made additional demands well beyond what was in Minsk II, effectively calling for all-but-full independence, including the ability to make treaties with foreign states (i.e. Russia), hold their own elections/referenda, raise their own taxes, control the border with Russia and charter their own internal executive organisations. Through this, Russia’s proxies could legally have invited Russian troops to occupy the Donbas and then held one of their very special votes on independence. It would have made the Donbas a de facto and almost de jure part of Russia.
Additionally, the demands also included a neutrality clause for Ukraine as a whole, thus handcuffing Kyiv in terms of foreign policy and arguably arms purchases, leaving the rest of the country ripe for future conquest – Putin’s ultimate goal.
Russia was obviously insincere from the very beginning, continuing to attack Debaltseve and capturing it after the agreement was concluded (just as they had captured Donetsk Airport after Minsk I), and then continuing to violate the agreement for its own ends – for instance, by failing to withdraw its armed forces. It’s therefore hardly reasonable to suggest that Ukraine should have made changes to its Constitution in order to implement Minsk II, if that is the suggestion. Of course, Kyiv might well have counted on Russia violating the agreement in all the ways described, the fact of which means that – if we’re trying to hold Ukraine to the highest technical standards of propriety – Ukraine was not bound to honour its side of the bargain. Indeed, it’s very difficult to criticise Ukraine if its original intention was to use the agreement in order to play for time, re-arm and prepare itself for what was coming. Ukraine is a sovereign state in a fight for survival, and if it was forced – largely under duress – to conclude an agreement with the illegitimate DNR/LNR entities, I can only regard it as blameless and laugh at Russia’s disingenuous complaints at having been diplomatically outplayed. Clearly, Ukraine now has a very capable and well-armed military.
I’ll end by quoting Duncan Allan again:
Minsk-2 can […] be read in quite different ways. Ukraine’s version puts the re-establishment of control in the east before a political settlement. Russia would evacuate its troops and return the border to Ukraine. Elections would be held according to OSCE/ODIHR standards. Donbas would be reintegrated in line with the national decentralization programme (with some extra powers) and subordinated afresh to the authorities in Kyiv. As a result, Ukraine would be restored as a sovereign state. Russia’s version of Minsk-2 reverses key elements of this sequencing. A finalised political settlement would come before Ukraine retakes control of Donbas: elections would be held in the DNR and LNR; and Kyiv would agree a comprehensive devolution of power to these regimes. This would entrench Russian-controlled statelets, breaking the back of the Ukrainian state, preventing the central authorities from running the country as an integrated unit and torpedoing its westward integration. Only then would Ukraine regain control over the border, although whether Russia would allow that is moot. In short, Minsk-2 supports mutually exclusive views of sovereignty: either Ukraine is sovereign (Ukraine’s interpretation), or it is not (Russia’s interpretation) – this is the “Minsk conundrum”.
Which version of this should the U.S. have pressured Ukraine to accept?
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
You do yourself no favours by simply concentrating on one battle in a much bigger war that is the context for the crisis in Ukraine. The west and Russia have been at loggerheads over NATO in Eastern Europe for years and the USA in particular has reneged on commitments to Russia. Russia feels threatened.
This public spat with Noah Carl is becoming tedious
Yep, I said the same some time ago. While I appreciate that it’s always good to hear two sides of the argument, this has long stopped feeling like this is the intention. It seems to be just two people having a personal disagreement in the public space; don’t we have Twitter for that?
As far as I’m concerned, the only way this could go forward, and be of any interest to others, would be if they sat down and did a face to face discussion and aired it as a podcast. They could rebut each others arguments in real time and that would be something I’d be keen to listen to.
I have no idea at all what is going on in Ukraine. It is far away and I rely on what others say – others in whom I am not able to establish trust.
What I do see around me in this country is that pretty much every government action has been to the detriment of the population that it is paid to serve. That includes its stance on Ukraine and Russia.
You can argue the toss about Ukraine, but the immediate issue to be resolved is the suffering of this country due to the government – indeed, due to the whole of parliament assembled. All else is a diversion.
What is clear from this mess is that the conflict started years ago and that it wasn’t simply a case of Russia invading a peaceful state.
The role of the USA in this is troubling, given that they appear to be hostile to Russia (for multiple reasons).
What support was the UN offering during this time?
It is more than appearing hostile. Regime change and the breaking up of Russia is their stated objective.
…..Only naive people think the UN could do anything against the USA’s interests….
Just one example….at the beginning of this month the UN voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US embargo on Cuba…this is the 30th time they have done so….!!
The USA’s belief in its own exceptionalism allows it to disregard any international laws or rules with impunity…..
I can’t take seriously anybody using English who calls it “Kyiv”: they reveal themselves as PC dolts.
(Waitrose still sell Chicken Kievs!)
The fundamental truth of this conflict is that it simply doesn’t matter to us which bits are ruled from Moscow and which from Kiev.
Re ‘I can’t take seriously anybody using English who calls it “Kyiv”: they reveal themselves as PC dolts.’
A) Yes, clearly using the correct local pronunciation of a word is ‘PC gone mad’
B) Kremlin Ministry for Information Instruction Manual for Sympathisers Point 2.A:
Always personally smear opponents of our foreign policy and military activities as stupid, brain-washed etc rather than deal directly with their detailed arguments.
Re ‘The fundamental truth of this conflict is that it simply doesn’t matter to us which bits [of Ukraine] are ruled from Moscow and which from Kiev.’
A) Daily Mail editorial, September 1938 ‘The fundamental truth of this conflict is that it simply doesn’t matter to us which bits [of Chekoslovakia] are ruled from Berlin and which from Prague.
B) Alongside its invasion of Ukraine the Russian Federation has declared a general ideological and potential military war against the ‘decadent and dying liberal democratic West’, especially the much-hated UK.
It has also repeatedly threatened the whole of humanity with nuclear annihilation if anybody dares to directly stand in its way in Ukraine.
C) Beyond all that the suffering of human beings anywhere in the world, including obviously Eastern Europe, effects / is the moral responsibility of everyone else.
A: Do we have to pronounce Paris as ‘Par-EE’ from now on? Do we refer to Vienna as ‘Wien’ (‘Veen’)? Do we make the French refer to ‘London’ now, rather than ‘Londres’ (‘Lorndrer’)? Do we have to call Gothenburg ‘Göteborg’ (‘Yerter-BOR-ee-ah’)? Should we call Cornwall ‘Kernow’?
B: Does disagreeing with you make me a Russian sympathiser? Leftists can never get over that HUAC and McCarthy accurately rumbled a large rump of Hollywood as communist propagandists and were proven correct when the wall fell! So they like to accuse libertarians and conservatives of Russian sympathies.
We need Russia and Ukraine at the negotiating table now. No ifs, no buts. The question is: why is the West allowing the wholesale slaughter of Russians and Ukrainians to continue? One day, the people of Russia and Ukraine will realise how they’ve been played in a proxy war by the West and gang up. Knowing their history, their revenge on the West will swift and bloody!
there is hope that Russia and Ukraine will reconcile at some point, but as we’ve learnt very well from our past ‘democratic’ endeavors, first, there is going to be a blowback from our past friends the radicals when we/US/UK stop having common interests.
First CIA or/and NED-like state affiliated organizations go and meddle in a foreign country’s affairs with all means possible, including using neo nazis and other radicals, then the thugs or juntas are in power directly or indirectly, fighting our proxy enemy, then the country is in tatters, then our past friends predictably turn against us as they were only needed for a dirty work so that we don’t have to fight ourselves.
Re: “ Do we have to pronounce Paris as ‘Par-EE’ from now on? Do we refer to Vienna as ‘Wien’ (‘Veen’)? Do we make the French refer to ‘London’ now, rather than ‘Londres’ (‘Lorndrer’)?”
Kiev (‘Kee-ev’) is not an anglicisation of a foreign word but rather a direct transliteration and pronunciation of the Russian name for that city, as opposed to the currently correct and local Ukrainian word Kyiv (‘Kee-iv’).
So using Kiev certainly can be designed to make a deliberate pro-Russian political statement, just as using the colonial era Bombay for Mumbai can.
Of course all these old terms are usually used completely innocently and without any ideological content at all. However I was responding to a personalised attack on somebody choosing to call the capital city of the Russian invaded Ukraine by its correct contemporary rather than Russian name as ‘a PC dolt’.
“Does disagreeing with you make me a Russian sympathiser? Leftists can never get over that HUAC and McCarthy accurately rumbled a large rump of Hollywood as communist propagandists and were proven correct when the wall fell! So they like to accuse libertarians and conservatives of Russian sympathies.”
I don’t hold to any political view-points (right, left or centre, whatever these extremely loose terms actually mean) but rather moral and practical ones. Neither do I accuse fellow posters of anything at a personalised level (eg of being ‘Russian sympathisers’) but merely respond to and where necessary challenge the content of postings, including those that promote the current neo-fascistic Russian Federation agenda.
“We need Russia and Ukraine at the negotiating table now. No ifs, no buts. The question is: why is the West allowing the wholesale slaughter of Russians and Ukrainians to continue?”
The Russian side is overwhelmingly responsible for the destruction and carnage currently taking place in Ukraine (plus threatening to annihilate the entire population of the world via nuclear armageddon if anyone directly intervenes), but regardless of that I don’t support military action or violence in any form.
“One day, the people of Russia and Ukraine will realise how they’ve been played in a proxy war by the West and gang up. Knowing their history, their revenge on the West will swift and bloody!”
Again, Russia rather than ‘the West’ (including Ukraine) is overwhelmingly responsible for what is currently happening in Eastern Europe.
In any case, and further to the above, violence (especially using revenge as an excuse) is both immoral and self-defeating, and every human being has the ability to reject it at any time. When enough do so the whole malign structure of intrinsically war-mongering and sectarian nation-states will evolve into peaceful and cooperative administrations.
But within that overall framework multi-party liberal democracies (including Ukraine) are vastly more progressive and heading in the right direction compared to increasingly tyrannical and aggressive powers such as the Russian Federation and CCP-controlled China.
A…..Kyiv is pretentious nonsense..
B…..Western MSM smears, propagandises, brainwashes… ‘Mad Vlad’,
‘Russia running out of weapons’, etc etc…Not one article, ever, detailing the genuine questions Russia might have…
C…..it really doesn’t matter to the West weather Donbass is Ukrainian or Russian…it only matters to the people of the Donbass, who should be encouraged and assisted by the West to their right to self-determination..per UN Charter.
(conflating it into something it isn’t is simply Western propaganda)
D……Not agreeing with western/Ukrainian propaganda doesn’t mean you are either immoral or lacking in compassion….
(again the faux-moral argument is a tool of western propaganda)…
Luckily for me I have full use of my moral compass which tells me that the sooner the West stop interfering in Ukraine, and actually allow them to make their own decisions, the better…..
I would have thought it was obvious from my article that I was referring to the second version. I even stated, “Critics of Minsk II say it was too favourable to the Russian/separatist side,” and then argued this wasn’t a good enough reason to reject it.
Here’s what Lieven said in his article that I quoted: “The United States ought to promote … A Ukrainian constitutional amendment establishing the Donbas region as an autonomous republic within Ukraine … In order to secure the establishment and maintenance of autonomy, the referendum on autonomy and the establishment of a regional government … must come before Ukraine takes control of the border with Russia.”
He added: “The police and courts in the Donbas Autonomous Republic would come under the regional government. Military security would be provided by a UN peacekeeping force drawn from neutral countries … US and NATO forces would not be included, nor would Russian forces or those of countries allied to Russia.”
That is not what Minsk II says. The demand that everything Russia wanted should have happened before Ukrainian territorial integrity (control of the border) was restored is emphatically not what Minsk II says. So you are saying that Ukraine should have implemented something that was never agreed to.
Of course, what would have happened if Ukraine had capitulated in that way would have been that Russia would not, then, have honoured their side of it. Putin never does. He didn’t do so with Minsk I, and indeed he makes a show of such things – most recently attacking Odessa harbour just after the grain deal was signed, then trying to back out of it altogether on spurious grounds (until Turkey called his bluff). That should be obvious.
I never claimed Minsk II stated that events had to happen in the order Lieven said they should. In fact, he acknowledged that one of the main stumbling blocks was “the sequence in which the establishment of local autonomy and the resumption of Ukrainian control of the border with Russia are to occur”.
Out of interest, do you think the West should have tried to prevent Russia’s invasion through deterrence, or do you believe the invasion could not have been prevented?
When you said “I would have thought it was obvious from my article that I was referring to the second version”, surely you were referring to Duncan Allan’s second interpretation as quoted at the end of my article, in which the sequencing of events is as I just said – in Russia’s favour? So unless I’m much mistaken you were advocating that position. But the point about Minsk II is that it’s too vague to just “implement”, because of the possibility for these irreconcilable interpretations to emerge.
In regard to whether or not the West should have tried to deter Russia, yes of course. The question is: how? The only way would have been to arm Ukraine properly, in advance of 2022. But there were so many people saying that that would provoke Russia, and that Ukraine was full of Nazis.
As I understand it, the sequence issue only matters insofar as both sides thought the other would try to rig the referendum. But assuming a free and fair referendum had been held, it would almost certainly have resulted in the outcome favoured by the Russian/separatist side. For example, a 2014 poll carried out by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that only 35% of Donbas residents wanted to maintain the current status, whereas 54% wanted autonomy/separation from Ukraine.
Regarding deterrence, don’t you worry that sending Ukraine huge quantities of offensive weapons would have prompted Russia to invade even sooner – to forestall their deployment?
Not at all. The “sequence issue” involved almost every aspect of the agreement, including the not-so-trivial issue of when the invading army was going to leave.
And how else could Putin have been deterred? There are some people in this world who can never be deterred except through force, or the credible threat of force. Anything else emboldens them. I first learned about Putin’s intention to take Ukraine – one way or another – back in 2009, but the policy presumably pre-dated that by some years. If Yanukovych hadn’t been deposed, it would have proceeded through political means, but Euromaidan meant he had to invade instead. The West failed to take him seriously back then, and there are still many illusions now.
What evidence is there that Putin was planning to “take” Ukraine prior to 2014?
Back then my social circle in London included a couple of people with credible connections to the Kremlin, and this came out in a private conversation after a few drinks as a kind of boast/threat. Of course, at the time I thought it was pretty crazy, but I later realised it was the truth. That was in the wake of the invasion of Georgia.
Oh, Georgia is a part of Russia now and was the first on Putin’s crusade to take over other post soviet countries? Care to share a link?
Stupid russian men fleeing conscription and moving to georgia don’t know it’s a part of Russia now. how bad.
on another note, a neighbor of mine who was close to Kremlin but fled to UK due to persecution says that Cornwall is next on the Putin’s list after Ukraine…
While Noah can argue that Russia were never serious about Minsk 2..and I can disagree…
What is clear is that America/NATO have certainly never been serious.
After the American backed coup of 2014, there has been a massive influx of weapons and training….what for exactly?….if not to be the proxy army for a war against Russia…?
(Not to mention money-laundering on an epic scale..FTX, Hunter’s Laptop, BioLabs..)
Jens Stoltenberg has openly discussed European/NATO aid given to Ukraine since 2014…
and this from the Wall Street Journal….
”The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training…Through classes, drills and exercises involving at least 10,000 troops annually for more than eight years, NATO and its members helped the embattled country shift from rigid Soviet-style command structures to Western Standards….”
Point out which country, with a NATO border, that Russia has been arming and training for eight years?……and then tell me how it would be seen as perfectly acceptable, and no one would raise an eyebrow?
As for sovereignty? It’s an argument only used by the West when it suits them..it’s totally meaningless…..
Presumably Syria is sovereign, Iraq, Iran? Don’t see you working yourself into a lather over the atrocities being committed in relation to those countries…..
Presumably China is a sovereign country? Doesn’t stop US/NATO from thinking it can interfere does it?
The usual hypocrisy…..
Given the lack of success of Kiev forces (they have never permanently regained land that was contested), I think NATO might want to rewrite their training manuals.
Yes….it’s just childish when the media go into a frenzy about Ukraine regaining territory, when in reality Russia has left the area..
The Americans might want to take note, and watch how it’s done….with the exception of a very few armaments, Russia managed to evacuate Kherson with all its men, weapons and vehicles intact!….
I just simply can’t understand how you measure success or failure in the case of Ukraine war. I might be old fashioned, but for me, allowing 2 nuclear powers to have a proxy war in your country, is a big fat fail. no ifs, no buts. You do whatever you can to prevent and to stop it as soon as possible.
If Russia is failing, then what is the gold standard of invading Ukraines with the same number of troops and w/o previously bombing everything to smithereens disregarding any civilian casualties and infrastructure damage?
Many things went wrong for russians and there is enough stupidity and corruption and other things. But Ukraine has also been trained and supplied by Nato and having being in a constant war in Donbass knowing that Russia might invade at some point, anyway, allowed Russians very deep into the country. I mean, where the country’s air defenses? why didn’t they buy or manufacture enough by Feb 2022?
I don’t know what will make me, personally, think that tens of thousands of dead Ukrainian soldiers (forget the russians), displaced civilians and half ruined country have been justified and worth it. Trudaue and Fauci are finally in jail? still not sure
I thought I made it clear – I judge failure by the inability to achieve no offensive success.
It’s looking currently like a lose-lose situation for both sides. Russian territory gains are being eroded as Western weaponry takes its toll, however Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is shattered and much of the country are facing a very difficult winter.
Meanwhile the corrupt officials continue to pour in billions which will no doubt be laundered into their own coffers one way or another.
As usual it’s the ordinary people that suffer the most.
Russian regular troops being on the ground (prior to 2022) mentioned many times, but where we can check the evidence of that? In Feb 2022 US/NATO knew exactly where russian troops were, how many, how many tanks, etc, providing satellite pics, but is there similar evidence for years 2014-2021?
There is no doubt that Russia had been helping breakaway regions with the weaponry and that russians were fighting on the side of LDPR armies, but to a much less extent than Ukraine is helped by the whole western world/NATO now. If US and Britain sends weapons to Saudis so that they can murder Yemenis, does it mean they’re taking part in the war there? There are certainly many specialists on the ground as well as remotely helping and training Saudis to operate modern and complex war machinery. If British volunteers go to fight ISIS (or for ISIS), does it mean that Britain is a part of the conflict?
Ian seems to stress Russian assistance to Donbass like it’s something which has never been done before hoping that this argument alone will invalidate all other inconvenient facts about Ukraine.
Negotiations are always better than war and all those war mongers from the UK and US don’t realize how incredibly ridiculous they look. As they’re unable to fathom that it’s OK to want to fight Russia and Putin, if it’s such a good cause, but only if they’re prepared to fight themselves, ricking their own lives and destruction of their cities. But they’re not prepared. When murderous clown Zelensky fires rockets into Poland in the hope to start WW3 (a sign of an imminent victory), he immediately gets toilet trained by NATO and the west that there is a red line separating Ukrainian and western lives.
Yes Russia pursued their interests in Ukraine like any other country would do having on an order of magnitude more reasons to meddle there than US/Britain did in Iraq/Afghanistan and many other places. Let alone that the US openly meddled in Ukraine teasing and humiliating Kremlin.
Yes Russia is not completely innocent (which country is?), it’s true and everyone knows that, but all other things branded conspiracy theories are also true: neo nazis, civil war prior to 2022, US involvement, etc, etc.
As a mental exercise, imagine Donbass was a part of Russia deciding to seek independence from Moscow to identify as Ukrainian with Ukraine being in the US orbit. What would BBC have allowed us to think about Donbass fighters? Separatists or freedom fighters? Everyone knows the answer.
UK seeking independence from EU, good or bad? Scotland seeking independence from UK, good or bad? IRA in northern Ireland, terrorists or freedom fighters? Kosovo seeking independence from Serbia, good or bad? Israel occupying Palestine, good or bad? And many, many other examples where it’s a gray area, but somehow, Ukraine is black and white. Like ‘safe and effective’ and lockdowns to save our NHS.
PS: would be great to have a look on the evidence and links next time supporting Ian’s conclusions. As an example of a more thorough journalism on Ukraine
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/10/16/the-response-newsguard-rejected/
Brilliant greggsy…..
I have been bewildered, from the beginning, as to why they keep making out as if this is the first time anything like this has ever happened before…..? Then I realised that it’s the new normal….they want the sheep to think it’s something different or exceptional….(like a ‘new’ cold!)?
(Even as the USA sits, not many miles away, in (sovereign country) Syria….? Stealing oil, food, and occupying a third of the country! The difference being??….)
It shouldn’t have taken very long to recognise the usual psyops ……”safe and effective”…”sovereign country” …..“unprovoked attack”…..etc….the one-sided propaganda is both embarrassing and frankly childish….but people never seem to learn..?
I haven’t seen the, now confirmed by the UN, reports in the British Media, of the Ukrainian army murdering eleven Russian Soldiers, but it is available to view in American Newspapers and on-line…along with the widely published photographs of people in Kherson being tortured and tied to lampposts…..
As this is a media war, I suspect this will have a profoundly negative effect for Ukraine, and rightly so..if it brings a bit of balance to the conversation.
As for fighting for themselves…the US have never had any intention of doing so…like most Western countries, the actual electorate want peace and talks..not more war..and even though the propaganda continues there are plenty of American commentators who suggest that the USA is in no shape to fight Russia, and especially with China waiting on the side-lines….
This egregious piece from CEPA spells it out …..
https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-defeat-russia/
“It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat RussiaIn cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives.
The US military might reasonably wish Russia to continue deploying military forces for Ukraine to destroy.
Meanwhile, replacing destroyed kit, and keeping up with the new arms race that it has now triggered with the West will surely end up bankrupting the Russian economy;
Wars are shop windows for defense manufacturers; any buyer in their right mind will want the technology made by the winner”
Where, in all of this you might ask, is there any talk of the thousands of deaths of Ukrainian soldiers?……the cost of the war to the Ukrainian people? …the cost to the people of Europe? God bless America…..
Agreed. All through the lockdowns, normal behaviour by a virus was being reported as if its abnormal. I can’t count how many times an announcement was made about VOMIT-19 that made out normal virus behaviour into something dramatic. The same trick was pulled with Truss and Kwarteng: the Bank of England met to make adjustments following the Budget, which is entirely normal, but was made out to be a huge emergency to save the country. The same is being done with Russia: report the normal as abnormal. It reminds me of that old Jeff Daniels film, Checking Out, when Daniels’ hypochondriac main character starts panicking and shouting ‘My heart is BEATING!!’
You are right, for almost every criticism you can level at Russia you can use the same against USA over numerous conflicts that they meddle in.
A recent example is the US backing of Tigray in their fight against Ethiopia, recently (3/11/22) settled in favour of Ethiopia. Didn’t hear about that in the MSM. Another one of America’s protegees that they walked away from when they didn’t get the result they worked for.
Paying the British public to put up Ukrainians reeks of the government’s nudge unit.
Why has no one in the west shown any interest in negotiating a peace settlement ?
What about FTX recycling money to the U.S. Democrats ?
What about all the Biden Ukranian corruption pre-war ?
What about the U.S. owned Ukranian bio-labs the U.S. have admitted to ?
Why does the situation require such a one sided U.K.government propaganda campaign ?
What is the purpose of us giving billions of pounds worth of money and equipment ?
Our government’s behaviour is very suspicious and there are many similarities to the covid conspiracy.
LOL! Agreed..all questions enquiring Minds want an answer to!
But by what mechanism are you questioning the ‘Borg’..why the fluck don’t you understand your part in this..it is to never question and OBEY!
This article is the epitome of good debate – one piece carefully rebutted by a second without recourse to childish swearing. Free speech at its best. For an example of the opposite readers should go to the story of the defenestration of Nancy Spector at the Guggenheim…
However the author dresses up his arguments there is irrefutable proof that the USA has been for many years instrumental in purposely directing antagonisms in Russia’s backyard that it would never tolerate any foreign power doing the same in its own backyard.
‘it’s ok when we do it’, ‘we coup wherever/whoever we want’ (US)