There’s scarcely anything more unappealing than sanctimony, or “pretended, affected or hypocritical holiness or saintliness; assumed or outward sanctity”. The word conjures up the Bishop of Southwark’s appearance in the notorious Life of Brian TV debate in 1979, oozing contempt in Tyrian purple, ostentatiously holding up his episcopal cross and making Christianity “uncool” for an entire generation. I have similar feelings about Calvin Robinson, the GB News presenter.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with Christianity, or professions of faith. I came to Christianity rather later in life, after spiritual experiences and historical research convinced me of the historicity of Jesus, the truth of the resurrection and the profound value of holy communion. My favourite saint is Joseph of Cupertino.
Of course, I try not to let any of that hold me back, so perhaps I should be grateful that nowadays it’s considered quite “cool” within a certain strand of conservative politics to be a Christian – though not in the established church. Indeed, it appears that almost anything other than the Church of England would be preferable to some Christians, including the genocidal church of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.
At least they have proper Christian values over in Russia, we’re told. They don’t tolerate men in women’s toilets!
Calvin Robinson’s GB News monologue on Saturday May 13th was an expression of that kind of thinking: pro-Putinism springing from a right-wing but anti-Western, anti-bourgeois attitude, all wrapped up in Corbynesque whataboutery – and with a final “Amen”. It was an intellectual Baked Alaska: cold Russian iciness within, whipped-up airy brittleness without, flambéed with the holy spirit.
Calvin firstly says that his monologue is a “call for prayer for peace”. He should have stopped there, which would have left two minutes for silent prayer. He didn’t:
The situation in the Ukraine has become even more divisive than Brexit, lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Many people who were awake to the media manipulation during the former, seem to be completely falling for the approved narrative on this one, hook, line and sinker.
The eagle-eyed will have spotted that he uses the term “the Ukraine” instead of just “Ukraine”. Like using the Russian form “Kiev” instead of “Kyiv”, it’s become a kind of virtue signal: a stunning and brave refusal to conform to totalitarian pro-Ukrainism that theoretically ought to “wind up all the right people”. But Gene Sharp it ain’t. The definite article in “the Ukraine” pre-dates the Soviet Union, but it’s been dropped in English and in Russian because it later came to imply ownership of Ukraine by Russia, as Ukraine was “the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic” before it became independent in 1991. So Calvin is hardly sticking it to the man, by sticking with Soviet nomenclature. Like wearing a nose ring to assert one’s non-conformance to cultural norms, it’s rather bovine, but most Ukrainians would probably be too polite to comment. And anyway I’m hardly one to comment either, since I’m never going to call Paris “Paree”, even if (or especially if) they get invaded and we need to help them out again.
Calvin’s first claim, that Ukraine is more divisive than Brexit is, of course, not true. Brexit was (and remains) the most divisive political issue of my lifetime by far, with Thatcher coming second. As for it being more divisive than lockdowns and vaccine mandates, I rather doubt that – after all, how many pro-Putin rallies have there been? But since apparently only 3% of Britons want Russia to win (and even they aren’t sure they care), we’re really only talking about how the war should end – whether we should support Ukraine to fight on till the last Russian soldier leaves (53%), or whether both sides should be encouraged to compromise (23%). However, those options aren’t mutually exclusive, so it’s not clear the 23% don’t or wouldn’t support Ukraine fighting to free all of its territory from its genocidal neighbour, in the event negotiations were impossible (which, at the moment, they are).
Calvin goes on to accuse (I assume) pro-Ukraine hawks like me of “falling for the approved narrative”, despite having been “awake to media manipulation” in the past. I haven’t heard any of Calvin’s non-TV sermons, but if he’s willing to insult his congregation’s audience’s intelligence like that, then I’m guessing they’re often quite doomy, brimstone-laden affairs, with a lot of emphasis on sin and the wiles of the devil. It doesn’t seem to occur to Calvin that if a lot of Brexiteering, lockdown-sceptical, free-thinking people like me think differently to him about Ukraine, then maybe we might just have a point – especially when those who know Russia best, like Konstantin Kisin, are pretty adamant about it.
Calvin goes on to say:
It’s a dire situation, and I won’t go into the politics of it, because that’s not the point.
There follows a lot of politics, which actually is the point:
I’d just like to take a moment to highlight the double standards at play. Andrew Bridgen MP quotes a Jewish scientist who says the situation with vaccine injuries is the worst *since* the Holocaust and everyone screams antisemitism. Yet the moment anyone raises the slightest of concerns over Zelensky’s handling of the situation in the Ukraine, they’re instantly called Hitler apologists. Putin is a bad man. He is not Hitler. How is that comparison appropriate? The war in the Ukraine is not WWII and the comparisons are frankly lazy.
Andrew Bridgen was treated unfairly by his party for saying something that clearly wasn’t antisemitic. It was merely a convenient stick to beat him with for his views about the vaccines. And if people are calling Calvin a Hitler apologist, that’s unfair too. He’s a Putin apologist.
Also, comparisons to WWII are neither lazy nor even hyperbolic. The German concept of Lebensraum, or “expansionism and Völkisch nationalism”, is everywhere evident – mutatis mutandis – in Russian propaganda. The Ukrainian people are considered Untermenschen, termed khokhols, whose language is a peasant tongue, and who are destined to be ruled over by Russians (who conceive of themselves as a kind of master race). If Russia had been successful, it would have made every effort to “Russify” the country, stamping out the Ukrainian language and culture, as they tried to do before. What were those mobile crematoria for?
Those suspected of resisting Russian rule inside Russian-occupied territory (or even those who might have a cousin in the Ukrainian army) have already been tortured and murdered en masse, and many others have been raped as a weapon of war. Compared to Hitler’s rants against the Jews and Anglo-Saxon capitalists, with their supposedly deviant morals, from Putin comes constant claims of neo-Nazism, drug addiction, homosexuality and transexuality, i.e. that everyone in Ukraine is, in their view, morally and physically depraved (as well as being racially inferior). They also do what every abuser does, which is to have the occasional volte-face and say that Ukrainians are their brother Slavs, that they love them dearly; and that honestly, truly, they only want to care for them in a patrician manner, with their good, clean morals and healthy love of the outdoors. Kinda like the Nazis.
Here comes the whataboutery:
One should be able to call out the financial corruption, the neo-nazis, the shutting down of opposition parties and media, and the persecution of orthodox Christians in the Ukraine, without being painted a Putin sympathiser. One can see the wrong in Russia invading the Ukraine, whilst also seeing that the Ukraine is far from perfect itself. Nuance, people.
This is one helluva call for a prayer for peace, ironically lacking in any nuance – or charity. Let’s deal with each of these Kremlin talking-points in turn.
Firstly, “financial corruption”. Ukrainians are acutely aware that they have problems with corruption, stemming from the Soviet era. But unlike in Russia and the Russkiy mir, which is entirely built upon corruption, in Ukraine they had a revolution in order to wrest their country away from the corruption of the Russkiy mir and steer a path towards the EU and its “normal” non-corrupt politics (yeah, I know, but stay with me here). Not long after that, there was a TV show called Servant of the People, which exaggerated the corruption and rule by oligarchs in order to lampoon it, all the while chronicling the efforts of an ingénu and accidental president to tackle it. The star of the show was of course Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who later set up his own Servant of the People party and ran for president on an anti-corruption ticket, winning handily.
Since then, Zelenskyy has been doing things like removing immunity from prosecution for politicians and government officials, supporting the anti-corruption bureau (although somewhat hampered by Hunter and Joe Biden), carrying through on anti-corruption measures necessary to join the EU, and apparently being willing to sack anyone found to have their nose in the trough. There are nevertheless ongoing concerns, but despite a couple of attempts, nobody has managed to substantiate any claims of money laundering or skimming off the aid budget in any serious way.
As for neo-Nazis, the seeds of this highly-exaggerated story were initially sown amongst Western journalists when, in December 2013, a Moscow-backed agent provocateur named Dmytro Korchynsky staged a far-right riot in order to discredit the Maidan protesters, before fleeing to Russia. But the story really got traction because it then became noticeable that there were genuine far-right activists on the Maidan, who were the ones most willing to get stuck into the police. Then, when Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas, they were the ones who were most effective on the front lines, in volunteer outfits – most famously Azov. In other words, the ethno-nationalists were the ones most willing to use violence to defend their country, and since they got a lot of media attention as a result, it gave the impression there must be vast numbers of them all over the place. In reality, that’s not the case. Allow me to quote from a previous article:
It’s worth noting here that the coalition of ‘far-right’ political parties garnered only 315,568 votes in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Ukraine (2.2% of votes cast, 0.9% of registered voters), gaining a total of one seat for the leader of Svoboda, whose paramilitary Sich Battalion has a total of 50 members. The threat from the Ukrainian far-right is not zero, but even if one doesn’t consider Putin himself to be the arch ultra-nationalist, we should bear in mind that Russia has its own far-right problems, and ironically the founder […] of the Wagner Group, which was sent to assassinate the notably-Jewish Zelenskyy, looks to have Nazi sympathies himself [including prominent Nazi tattoos].
It’s also worth noting that other Eastern European countries have some neo-Nazis too, but most sensible people realise that it’s hardly fair to cut off aid or smear countries for things they don’t much like themselves. And it should be noted that similar “far-right” smears were – and still are – made against anyone opposing mass immigration to the U.K., but it’s unfortunate that many of those same people seem willing to casually shovel that same stinking turd towards others – even those in need.
Moving on to Calvin’s claim about the “shutting down of opposition parties and media”, one needs to recognise that these are not “opposition” parties or media in the sense of being independent home-grown organisations. Rather, they are (or were) merely quasi-independent entities directly serving Moscow’s interests as part of the Gerasimov doctrine. One only needs to see how Putin reacted in 2021, when Zelenskyy closed three of these media outlets, and note the fact that the owner Viktor Medvedchuk (whose daughter’s godfather is Putin) was exchanged in a prisoner swap with Russia in 2022, to understand the underlying issues. The U.K. (and no doubt the majority of other countries) has laws pertaining to foreign governmental control of, and donations to, media and political parties – but somehow that’s never a big issue for us. (And of course there is no political or media freedom in Russia.)
Next we come to Calvin’s claim about “the persecution of orthodox Christians in the Ukraine”. I wonder if he’s referring to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)? The clue’s in the name. It’s distinct from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), and has strongly supported and even blessed the war in Ukraine – indeed Patriarch Kirill is a close ally of Putin. Interestingly, in 2018 when parishes were switching over from the Moscow Patriarchate to the OCU, Putin sent FSB agents to try to bully them out of it. Kirill himself has acknowledged links to the FSB, and it’s difficult not to view the church as the religious wing of Putin’s regime – religion having been, as Yuri Bezmenov pointed out, key to ideological subversion in the KGB’s global strategy.
As to persecution, in recent months videos have emerged of Moscow Patriarchate priests beating up a Ukrainian soldier, and another one attacking a non-Moscow Patriarchate priest who was officiating at a soldier’s funeral, to name but two incidents. It’s part of a general pattern of persecution and gaslighting of the Ukrainian people by Russian Orthodox priests, and it’d be fair to say that Moscow Patriarchate priests aren’t very popular at the moment.
Of course, there was a bit of a hoo-ha when authorities raided the Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv and arrested some priests for treason and the like. That’s probably the persecution that Calvin is referring to. But I think he means prosecution. It included putting Metropolitan Pavel Lebed under house arrest, to which he complained that he had “nowhere to spend the night”. It eventually turned out that he did, in fact, have somewhere to spend the night, but he complained that his modest little hovel was quite unsuitable, having no lights, communications, beds or refrigerator. It then turned out that this modest hovel was in fact a large luxury mansion complete with marble floors and gaudy gold… things… with its own guest house and guardhouse. He also claimed that his game leg prevented him from wearing an ankle tracker. He continues to deny all charges.
The authorities in Kyiv have now terminated the lease on the Lavra property, but some priests have holed up and have refused to leave, like it’s some kind of ceremonial bunker that, in Dmitry Peskov’s words, “confirms the correctness of the special operation [i.e., war]”. It’s a somewhat unpleasant situation, but any priests convicted of serious offences might be offered the opportunity to be exchanged in a prisoner swap with Russia, as Kyiv has done with others like Viktor Medvedchuk. One of those might be Metropolitan Iosaf, also known as Petro Huben, who was sentenced to three years in prison a few days ago, after pleading guilty to crimes relating to distributing pro-Kremlin propaganda questioning Ukraine’s sovereignty.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it in the analogous 1919 free speech case of Schenck v. United States, in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the conviction of a man for distributing pamphlets encouraging men to resist the draft:
When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.
First Amendment jurisprudence has evolved since then, but with the exception of the United States, there may be not a single nation on earth where the people, their laws and their judiciary would not greatly tend, both in theory and in practice, to restrict the expression of such ideas in time of war, as Ukraine has done. There would be nothing in the U.K. to prevent us doing the same, as we did in WWII. And while I don’t agree with the conclusions reached in Schenck, instead preferring the later jurisprudence, I could hardly expect a nation in such a situation as Ukraine – with Putin’s FSB always seeking to wrap its tentacles around the minds of its citizens – to be able to meet Calvin’s whiter-than-surplice-white standards. So as Calvin said himself: “Nuance, people.”
Calvin goes on to say:
President Donald Trump seems to be the only world leader who gets this. In his interview with CNN this week, I was taken back by how humane his response was. When the biased interviewer clearly wanted to paint him into a corner by backing a winner, Trump called for peace instead. When he was badgered to pick a side, he said[:] “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people. I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying.”
Surely, that is the approach we should be taking. If you are the praying type, please pray for peace in the Ukraine, and for the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, may their leaders put an end to the bloodshed. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
This is an impressively plunging bathos, from the ridiculous to the vomit-inducing – as if peace can ever come without conditions, in a vacuum devoid of consequences, “close-bordering on the impalpable inane”. And done by Trump, in 24 hours.
Nevertheless.
Peace, yes – but on what terms? The only terms that the Ukrainian people are willing to accept are that the aggressor, Russia, leave their sovereign territory. That would be justice. And if the cost of peace on those terms would be to show mercy to Russia – dropping sanctions, let’s say – then surely goodness and mercy would follow us all the days of our life, and we would dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.
Stop Press: Calvin Robinson has responded, saying:
Who’d have thought the Free Speech Union would be arguing in favour of compelled speech?
— Fr Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) May 14, 2023
“It’s not *the* Ukraine, it’s Ukraine”
“It’s not Kiev, it’s Kyiv”
All I said was this war has to stop.
When the FSU becomes the language police, you know things have gone too far.
https://t.co/QJSho3vEOu
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I love these comedic pieces by IRons.
I do agree on how frustrating it is that so many Covid sceptics are unable to appreciate nuances in the Ukraine war. Wars have never been black and white before, and it’s naïve to think that for some reason this one is a historical exception.
Of course the media is aggressively pedalling a narrative, as they did with WMD in Iraq, and also with support for the Mujahedeen during the Soviet-Afghan war (remember the unbelievably accurate Rambo III).
Russia nor the West is the ‘good guy’ here. Ukraine is the geopolitical destination where they have chosen to do battle. NATO was expanding, Russia was countering by creating a ‘sphere of influence’ (Yanukovych was Putin’s man), and then the CIA decided to engineer the Euromaidan coup.
As if this wasn’t complicated enough, the Ukraine already has diverse demographics with pro-Russian and pro-European elements.
bio labs
one party, no free speech Uke state
Jewlensky and the kleptocracy (send money now or…)
money laundering to the criminal US political elite
endless wars for the criminal US military industry
NWO
Nazi Azov brigade….. but according to LRonHubbard the Uketopia is a democracy and the last hope. I think the Russians should copy all of this in say Mexico.
Oh FFS. Tell me you know nothing about Ukraine in one easy phrase.
Yeah but more importantly, is this Zalensky or has he been ‘deep-faked’? Please tell me it’s the latter because he looks way too comfortable in those stilettos!
Even BoJo couldn’t pull off getting elected if he had this camptastic skeleton lurking in his closet, and he’s a professional buffoon.
https://rumble.com/v1gyrgl-zalensky-bdsm-video.html
Hard hitting post laced with truths. Well done
“Kiev” isn’t the Russian form: they don’t use the same alphabet as us.
It’s the name of the city in English. Just as Florence is the English name for Firenze, and Londres is the French name for London.
I’m 62 and had never seen the city called Kyiv before last February.
Exactly. The Russian Cyrillic form of Kiev is Киев.
Agreed. I’ve used ‘Ukraine’ and ‘The Ukraine’ interchangeably for my entire life. ‘Kyiv’ is just a load of nonsense. Since when do you randomly change the spelling of cities in foreign countries because someone invaded it? Do I start calling Paris ‘Paree’ if someone from Berlin starts firing off a capgun in the middle of the street?
Do we start calling Helsinki ‘Helsingfors’ if a Russian decides to take a dump in one of their bathrooms?
It’s Kiev and it’s always been Kiev, the same as there was Kievan Rus centuries ago (which Putin wants to re-establish.) When the BBC was taking about ‘Harrr-heave’ (with lots of phlegm, I had to look it up. Turns out it’s Kharkov, which I’d always known of.
The Ukraine is the first real social media war with all the imbecilic virtue signalling associated with that particular cultural cancer.
If we’re not supposed to call it “the Ukraine” why does the MSM call it “the Donbas?”
In my experience, Ukrainians are happy to hear “the Ukraine”, because historically it referred to a region defined by purely natural characteristics (as opposed to a purely political entity defined by a disconnected elite). Ukrainians would rather ally themselves to a region to which they feel bound naturally.
I am proud to say I am born and bred in the Yorkshire Dales; in no way do I see the definite article as demeaning to the region or the people therein.
Load of fuss about nothing. Our Rons has fallen for it.
Same. I’m from the South West (of England). We’ve always called it ‘The South West.’ Sure it’s part of the Kingdom of England, which is part of the modern political entity called ‘The UK’, but my real loyalty is to the region.
Why is the West supporting Ukraine?
It’s definitely not because the West opposes armed aggression as a matter of principle, supports democracy and freedom or gives a toss about the horribly white Ukrainian people.
Waitrose still sell Chicken Kievs
And I’ve never seen Mumbai Mix.
Even M&S are calling the bloody things Kyivs.
I buy Birds Eye because they still call them Kiev. I feel pathetic doing it but can’t bring myself to buy the other ones. I guess I’m not more pathetic than all the virtue signalling.
They aren’t diffcult to make yourself …. then you can pick any name!
They’re a handy freezer standby for those ‘can’t be arsed’ days!
Or Mumbai Duck, Sapphire, Cat or aloo.
How is this long war going to end? With compromise? Or when one side totally destroys the other side?
If it’s going to end with compromise, why wait, why not compromise now, and save a lot of lives and destruction?
Yes please.
When the Ukrainian people realise that the West doesn’t care two figs about them and only wants to use their country as a proxy battlefield outside of Western territory to try to take down Russia, they’ll be within their rights to turn on the West. It’s so sad: I’d long hoped to visit Russia and the Ukraine. The hatreds that have been created here will take at least a century to die down
And where is our supranational wannabe-world dictatorship government, the UN, in all of this? They were fast enough to pile into the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The two sides should have been dragged to the negotiating table a year ago! Someone or someones are getting rich and powerful from all this…
100% correct
like Eisenhower warned the military industrial complex. me too want to visit russia the ukraine and kiev , i refuse to call it the new way.
Both sides are Soviets. The USSR was not a healthy society.
This war is, essentially, between Gorbachev/Yeltsin Soviets and Brezhnev Soviets.
And if you look at a map, Putin wants to incorporate Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic States into a ‘Union State’ with an iron curtain stretching from Kaliningrad in the west to Izmail in the east.
We know this because he makes no secret of his intentions, supported by leaked Russian government documents.
He is backed, economically, by China and, to some extent, by India, Turkey.
So, essentially, any peace short of the full restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity promised by this country and the U.S.A. in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 is a win for Putin and China.
And a win for Putin is the de-europeanisation of occupied Ukrainian territory and de-europeanisation is described by Putin’s mouthpiece, RIA Novosti, as de-nazification.
So where, logically, does such a policy end……maybe a town nearer to you, vicar?
Tomorrow Moldova, a week next Thursday Russian marines arriving on Skegness beach to discover they’ve been beaten to it.
You total tit
You have embarrassed yourself.
Of course” leaked” Russian documents can’t possibly be misinformation, can they?
They certainly can be. And they can also be genuine. That is why individuals who have seen FSB documents before are used to assess their authenticity.
In much the same way that 51 “experts” assessed the Hunter Biden laptop?
The answer will be based on political expedience, not reality
I’m sure you are right.
These documents were, no doubt, fakes as well:
‘……classified intelligence from the Pentagon revealed details of Ukraine’s plans for a counteroffensive against Russia, as well as secret assessments of U.S. allies.
The latest leak includes material from the U.S. National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Directorate for Intelligence.
The documents reveal the FSB’s behind-closed-doors accusations that officials in Russia’s Defense Ministry have been underreporting Russian troop casualties in Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The FSB has also been critical of the Defense Ministry’s death toll not including casualties suffered by the Russian National Guard, the Wagner Group, or fighters under the command of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the leak revealed.
In September, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine since the war began. No subsequent death toll from the Russian side has been made public since then.
The FSB “calculated the actual number of Russians wounded and killed in action was closer to 110,000,” one document cited by The New York Times reads.
Official U.S. estimates of Russian casualties over the past year total around 200,000. However, documents made public in the earlier leak put this figure somewhere between 189,500 and 223,000, including as many as 43,000 dead.
While The New York Times was unable to independently verify the documents, U.S. officials consulted on the matter did not dispute the information revealed.
The security breach, which has embarrassed Washington and shaken its allies, has given observers a rare insight into how the Pentagon’s intelligence gathering works in Russia. Most significantly, it appears to show that U.S. intelligence has penetrated nearly every branch of the Russian military including the General Staff, the Defense Ministry, Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, and the notorious mercenary group Wagner.’
The Moscow Times 13 Apr 23
..not forgetting their third largest customer…the EU…. Who have spent around €40 billion on Russian energy……
Nothing like that was promised in the Budapest Memorandum, no matter how many times you try to pretend it was…or try to twist it to your purpose…
”assurances, unlike guarantees, do not impose a legal obligation of military assistance on its parties. It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine…”
The United States refuses to sign or to ratify foundational international laws and treaties that the vast majority of countries in the world have signed, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), ( even though the ‘warrant’ for Putin was issued at their behest… CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), ICESCR (the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), CRC (the Convention on the Rights of the Child), ICRMW (the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families), UNCLOS (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), PAROS (the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space), the Ottawa Treaty (the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention), and many more….
There are also a slew of international treaties the United States has signed, but simply violates anyway: examples include the Biological Weapons Convention, UN treaties prohibiting torture, rendition and kidnapping and of course, wars of aggression which are considered ”the supreme international crime”—a crime that the United States engages in routinely at least once a decade, not to mention routine drone attacks, which are in violation of international law. Most recently, the AUKUS Agreement signed between the United States and Australia violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by exploiting a blind spot of the (IAEA).
I could go on, but of course there is no equanimity here..only one is doing something wrong and one is always innocent and right..apparently …..
Both sides are Soviets. One is backed by China. One is backed by the U.S.A.
Which side are you on?
For the past 45 years I have been well read on modern world events and modern history and obtain my information from a variety of “trusted” sources.
I compare this information to the lies, propaganda and omissions from Western governments and their “presstitutes” in the main stream media to formulate a well informed opinion.
I find some of the current Russian media and independent Western alternative media are more trustworthy than the Western main stream media.
Consequently, having been well informed on the situation in Ukraine, I find Russia were provoked by the US and Nato and I support their actions against Ukraine which are more legal and more justified than the US/Nato similar actions against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. etc. etc.
How will the war end?
Only 200,000 members of the Russian army are currently fighting, and about 400,000 to 600,000 are waiting in reserve for the Ukraine attack. While they wait they are in constant training; so waiting works to Russia’s advantage.
Once the famous “counter-offensive” peters out, Ukraine will be hit with massive force. There will be no negotiated settlement. Only unconditional surrender.
Dead right. The tragedy is the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands in support of this proxy war.
Another long update last night from a Russian volunteer on the battle situation in and around Bakhmut.
He says the Ukrainians have massive superiority in air recon and “unlimited shell supply”, softening targets before any infantry advances.
He confirms officer kills in the 4th Brigade of the DPR yesterday.
The defensive lines built by Russia are too weak and shallow, some of the trenches only knee deep.
The defensive lines are too wide to be covered by fire across their frontage.
So believe what you will because you will see……
What will we see, Monro? Genuine question, I think I agree with your assertion that Russia is not at all incapable and is quite far from being exhausted.
There are only two options. It is not complicated.
Deluded ranker
You have embarrassed yourself again.
Is this volunteer fighting in the front line? If so, I call bulls**t on his claims. It is impossible for an individual soldier to draw any conclusion about “the situation on the battlefield”, especially in a complex, rapidly changing urban situation like Artemovsk.
He’s been right before.
Go on, when and with what?
‘Of course, the infantry have nothing but the R-159 to communicate with tanks. Tankmen and artillerymen along the whole frontline are frantically looking for at least some portable radios operating in the 30-50 MHz range. Things that the KTsPN [Novorissiya volunteer organisation] brought before 2022 immediately became a drop in the ocean of “things urgently needed yesterday”. And of course, it’s not even about the numbers of the R-159s, but about the amounts of decent batteries for them, and the number of charging devices. Old ones, god knows when made. Replaced by devices such as Imax B6, but these Imax B6 still need to be bought and brought and people taught how to use them.
However, signalmen from the tank battalion called next, and now I realise that no one will survive until the problem with radios actually emerges, since headsets have run out too. And no, dear reader, a headset is not a cloth cap with foam inserts protecting the head of a tankman. It’s a cloth cap with foam inserts in which a tank intercom device is installed, which connects to the intercom via the appropriate connector. And through this intercom the tankman speaks to other crewmen, and if necessary gets into radio contact with other vehicles, infantry or command. Head phones, throat phones, etc. This all has run out. The working “stuffing” of the headsets has run out. Everything possible has already been taken off the winter headsets and put into the summer ones. And that ran out too. And there are no supplies.
You already know everything about the intercom tangents, I covered the topic many times.
So, in principle, there are no doubts about the fate of the remnants of the “tank relics”. Without communications, these miserable remnants will be finished off.’
‘Why is everything so slow and difficult?
A lot of people are wondering why is the war in the Donbass being fought so slowly? Why the offensive in the Donbass has begun, but after taking Pisky it’s not really moving forward? Why did they say ten times as if the enemy was running from Siversk and abandoning it, but Siversk is still not taken? Why so slow?
Fine, I’ll act as an explanatory brigade, although I wrote about this already. Even Strelkov talks about this day after day mentioning the personalities and events of the First World War that are widely known in close circles.
It’s actually pretty simple. Due to presence and constant replenishment of military air defence in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including MANPADS, there is no complete superiority of our aviation in the air, and it’s unlikely to happen soon. Accordingly, it is not possible to hang in the air over the front line of the enemy and destroy all of their vehicles and all artillery positions. Accordingly, we come to the conclusion that both a successful offensive with a breakthrough of the enemy’s defence, and a successful defence with the ability to stop such breakthroughs come from the presence of artillery, the ammunition needed for it, its controllability, mobility, accuracy, range, and more, more, and more. If you do not conduct encircling operations, then you are not destroying the enemy’s most valuable resource – their experienced military managers, their experienced military signalmen and their experienced artillerymen. If a cauldron is closed then all these people either go for a breakthrough and, with your correct approach to suppressing it, for the most part die or surrender. If you create a threat of an encirclement, but do not close it, these people dump all their metal and leave the encirclement on cars, taking with them the most important thing – their experience.
– What do I need the sights for, son?! – the Colonel interrupted bitterly. – What do I need the sights for, my dear fellow … There will be guns, but not people…
It doesn’t take much time to prepare new infantry, “any infantry”, just to drive them into the trenches instead of those knocked out – two weeks of “training” and a person will be able to play “pow-pow”. He will not resist a competent assault, but how many “competent assaulters” do we have now?
But the new skilful, trained and experienced artillery officers and signalmen do not lie on the road and do not grow on trees in the forest. It takes a lot of time. If you knock them out, degradation of enemy’s speed and quality of control and fire damage will begin. But how to knock them out? Only with encirclement operations, with cauldrons with dense walls, from where the only way out is to the cemetery or to the prisoner of war camp. Do we have such operations? Apart from the capture of “Azov” in Mariupol, we have no such operations. This means that there will be an exchange of infantry in positional battles, and the coefficient of the exchange depends on the quality of control and fire damage on our part.’
Totally incomprehensible.
‘….there are no doubts about the fate of the remnants of the “tank relics”. Without communications, these miserable remnants will be finished off.’
Correct.
‘…there will be an exchange of infantry in positional battles….’
Correct
It will end when USA does another Afghanistan.
Or Vietnam.
Bit of a track record …..
Is Ian Rons there in order to prove that The Daily Sceptic is pro free speech, or do the guys actually take his ad hominem arguments seriously? He never deals in terms of the fundamental issues.
The one thing I am sure of is that I don’t believe any of them.
Not a fan of Putin.
But Zelensky seems dodgier than a nine bob note (did he get to speak at Eurovision by the way?).
I feel for ordinary Russians and ordinary Ukrainians.
The article above has a whiff of protesting too much.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this war, like WW1 and WW2, is essentially about killing and mutilating lots of white Christian men.
Yet more inane drivel Ian Rons
I’m not pro Putin. I am against foreign wars of aggression started by America masquerading as NATO and paid for by me and the rest of the British taxpayers. However if a national leader was to say publicly “mothers are women and fathers are men” I might feel well disposed towards them, as opposed to the snivelling charlatans that sit in the House of Commons.
I’m so pleased the downvoter got around to sneaking in his opinion. He doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.
There’s scarcely anything more unappealing than sanctimony, especially when it is spread over more than 30 paragraphs.
On a different tack, was the fact that Zelensky’s Charlemagne award fell on the floor during his thank-you diatribe an omen?
Thanks, Ian Rons, for another interesting piece challenging the ‘Team James’ view on this topic. I think you’re probably right.
Reading through other comments on this thread, however, I’m perplexed. Having opposed the authoritarianism experienced in the West in recent yrs, what’s the point of then effectively supporting the even worse authoritarianism of Putin’s regime – like so many of the black-pilled nihilists commenting on this thread seem to do?
.
Most of the people you refer to belong to the same organisation, or similar organisations, all adding to the gaiety of the nation!
Thanks, Monro. But what organization or organizations do you mean?
‘That Russia serves as a reliable cash machine for Europe’s far-right political forces has long been an open secret.’
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/russia-ukraine-war-putin-europe-far-right-funding-conservatives/
‘Britain First’s links to Russia and support for Putin go far beyond what they are now claiming.’
https://hopenothate.org.uk/2022/05/03/putins-british-mouthpiece-britain-first-leader-paul-goldings-long-history-of-pro-putin-propagandising/
A pathetic reply like that could only have come from WEF Wales.. another parasite hanging onto the taxes of English tax payers.. FO..
” It doesn’t seem to occur to Calvin that if a lot of Brexiteering, lockdown-sceptical, free-thinking people like me think differently to him about Ukraine, then maybe we might just have a point – especially when those who know Russia best, like Konstantin Kisin, are pretty adamant about it.”
———–
I didn’t watch Calvin Robinson. Personally, I prefer an arrangement whereby if I want to be preached at, I go to church – where I can listen to the prattlings of people like him, or Welby, based on their biased and very selective extractions from a book compiled several millennia ago by people unknown who also “had an agenda.”
I do take issue with the extract I’ve quoted above. Interesting and intelligent though Konstantin Kisin undoubtedly is, he can’t be included in a group called “Brexiteering, lockdown-sceptical, let alone free thinking when it comes to Ukraine.
He didn’t vote for Brexit, he has stated several times that he voted Remain. His lockdown-scepticism was a little belated and he has made it perfectly clear that his personal family history has (quite naturally) had a major influence on his attitude towards Ukraine, Russia and Putin. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t provide some insight into the conflict, but “free-thinking” it most definitely ain’t.
“The definite article in “the Ukraine” pre-dates the Soviet Union, but it’s been dropped in English and in Russian because it later came to imply ownership of Ukraine by Russia, as Ukraine was “the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic” before it became independent in 1991.”
Wrong. The Russian language does not have the definite article. This is only an issue in English.
And we speak English.
I used to attend Clatterbridge Hospital on the Wirral, as we locals refer to it.
I think I would worry a lot less about anything Calvin says when the goofy royals are virtue signalling like mad. The caped dresses on Kate and her daughter like something from a creepy movie, Kate in her Ukrainian blue dress playing the piano on Eurovision show. The carpeting in the church where the coronation took place, blue and yellow. honestly when your “king” and his handlers virtue signal like this, you better wake up folks, things are going to get messy.
So.. so right.. the bar-stewards are going for it now.. and it needs to be recognised..
I wish you had given us the 20 pence version of that ramble. It would have saved both you and I a lot of time.
Yeah he does go on a bit!
He’s only trying to get his
pointbull across guys..Replace the nouns Covid and EV’s and you have Ukraine. Bombarded with more lies from the media and the elites. 30000 more churches in Russia under Putin, whilst Satan’s acolyte Welby gleefully closes ours.
‘All I said was this war has to stop’
I seem to remember John Lennon (and so many others) singing something similar.
Would be great if it worked…….
The Donald had it spot on.
What a lot of words. Jesus, Trump cut to the heart of it “I want them to stop dying.” Yes there’ll be conditions and it’s pretty obvious what those will be: Crimea stays Russian, Donbas is left ambiguous with low-level violence, Nato gets lost. That may be unjust, especially insofar as those bastard, depraved war criminals don’t receive the justice due to them, but it’s reality. Ukraine isn’t our responsibility because we don’t run the world and shouldn’t want to. Our meddling is anyway prolonging the suffering and raising the risk of direct war.
As a general rule, it appears safer to avoid and ignore religious zealots.
Is ‘the’ or ‘not the’ Ukraine with its chicken Kyiv, or is it chykvin kevov- still the Latest Thing we are all to care so deeply and passionately about? Must I put my flag back up?
I thought is was passé – they didn’t even win the Eurovision Freak Contest this year.
Who is ‘Ian Rons’ ?
A to$$er.. sorry.. but the truth must out..
Today…LOL!
KyivPost
@KyivPost
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has detained the head of the Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyasev for accepting a bribe of $2.7 million…
Ian artfully skirts over the Euromaidan revolution of 2014, a colour revolution whipped up by television if ever there was one. It transparently served the purposes of the State Department and the European Commission. NATO (oops, The NATO) must expand into the Ukraine to defend it from Russian expansionism. Moreover, The EU (oops, EU I mean) must extend its hard border up to Russia to integrate the Russian and Ukrainian economies with… er what?
Oh, and the television news channels which did the whipping were owned by the oligarch Petro Poroshenko. This is a war for the Blob.
Almost immediately lockdown restrictions ended, the war in the Ukraine started and Archbishop Welby sent his nauseating letter to be read out to all Church of England parishes telling congregations exactly how the conflict was to be interpreted and who was ‘the bad guy.’ Good on Calvin Robinson for presenting a different and more nuanced view. As for the so-called ‘genocidal’ Russian Orthodox church, a read of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is in order to see how abysmally the Russian Orthodox, its clergy and faithful were treated under the Soviet Regime – a Regime that, according to Anthony Sutton’s extensive research, was backed by Western financial and big business interests. Who’s genocidal?
Rather than taking sides, how about calling out the interests promoting war: the Military-Industrial Complex, the banks financing it, the commercial interests seeking to monopolise Europe’s gas supplies, the Chinese Communist Party to whom Russia, now alienated from the West, is obliged to sell its natural resources, the USA, whose world dominance has historically depended on East-West division between Europe and Asia, governments seeking a distraction from the ongoing financial collapse and effects of their COVID policies, the Biden family looking to cover-up its money-laundering, etc….
I’ve just listened to the debate on this issue between Toby and James Delingpole on London Calling. First of all I would say that there is no good reason for a media service like The Daily Sceptic to take a position on political issues such as the Ukraine war. It’s job is surely to expose the arguments and leave readers to draw their own conclusions. I would support Ian Rons or anyone else making a case and defending it with evidence rather than slurs. There is therefore no need for Toby to attempt to be even handed between his contributors such that each has their say – his editorial job is surely to ensure that anyone contributing is making a proper evidence based case, and not, as the Daily Sceptic, adopting a particular position on Ukraine, Bridgen, the shots or anything else. The evidence will do the job of ferreting out the truth.
Maybe I’m looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but 40 or 50 tears ago, wasn’t this the way the press behaved? Sure, different papers did have different political leanings but this didn’t mean that all they did was support the political narrative.