In a recent article, I was rather critical of Calvin Robinson’s GB News Ukraine monologue on May 13th, and have since been not-angry-just-disappointed to see his responses on Twitter, beginning with this:
Who’d have thought the Free Speech Union would be arguing in favour of compelled speech?
“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. 🤡 🌎
Perhaps Calvin should have taken more time to digest both his Chicken Kiev and the substance of my article before responding. I didn’t demand anyone say “Kyiv” instead of “Kiev”, or “Ukraine” instead of “the Ukraine”. I merely pointed out that the use of those dated terms – as well as being the kind of patriotic mispronunciation of foreign place-names that many of us enjoy – has mainly served as an in-group signifier for those who take a broadly anti-Ukraine/Kremlin-curious position. This is often done under cover of calls for “peace” – which usually means appeasement, or pacifism of the sort Orwell critiqued. But if Calvin is so piqued by the notion of the name “Kiev” going out of fashion, he’ll presumably be equally upset about the loss of “Leningrad” or “Karl-Marx-Stadt”, and will persist with Soviet nomenclature. Good luck to him.
It was also disappointing that Calvin took my article to be a position statement emanating from the Free Speech Union simply because I’m associated with that excellent organisation (and deeply proud of the fact). It would be rather odd if the FSU did have a position on Ukraine, but of course it doesn’t, and I was merely expressing my personal views – although it shouldn’t be necessary to have to point that out, or for Calvin to have to dissociate his political views from the official position of the Free Church of England.
As to Calvin’s claim that “[a]ll I said was this war has to stop”, that’s simply not true. It was a two-minute monologue which broached a range of topics that I covered in my article.
There were some other rebarbative tweets which I’ll pass over in relative silence, merely noting Calvin’s mockery of Zelenskyy and a possible attempt at exorcism, but notable in all this was the absence of any attempt to engage with the substantive points I made regarding his claims of neo-Nazism, persecution of Christians and so on inside Ukraine. In fact, Calvin said that he doesn’t “write rebuttals to hit pieces” – frustrating, because he missed the obvious punchline: “I reserve that for puff pieces.”
Of course, I can understand Calvin’s irritation with the tone of my article, which was at times ad hominem. “Why so over the top?” I’ve heard people say.
To answer that, it might be helpful to understand that while I’ve been writing at home, safe in the English countryside, I’ve also been psychologically inhabiting a Ukrainian trench since last February. Through news outlets and social media, I’ve read reports and seen videos of the war that will stay with me – despite having previously worked on documenting crimes against humanity, which I thought had made me immune. Much of it I try not to think about, but I’m profoundly sorrowful not just for the Ukrainians and all they’ve suffered, but also for the brainwashed Russian troops who have been ordered to attack a peaceful nation and then commit suicide rather than surrender, and who have done so with rifles and grenades – and for that Russian soldier seen praying in his last moments.
I’ve also seen lies and half-truths spread from Moscow, as they have since the 1920s. Information being crucial in this war, those engaged in the information war are fighting in the battlefield of the mind for one side or the other, whether they know it or not. Perhaps Calvin didn’t realise this, but in saying the things he said on national TV, he marked himself out as an enemy combatant. I saw red and leapt out of my trench to attack him with everything I could muster. And if I did get a bit carried away then that’s regrettable, since what I really want is for Calvin to seriously consider and reflect on the substantive points I raised – without any of the collateral damage.
On this point about collateral damage, Toby has been an excellent Editor-in-Chief throughout all this: the kind that any writer would want, a blue-blooded aristocrat of free speech. He didn’t even mention to me the kind of flack he’s been receiving for my article until I asked him about it – and he would of course publish any rebuttal of my articles (within reason), and rightly expect me to suck it up too. Give that man a peerage, I say!
Moving back to the topic of Ukraine, Calvin did say that he’d be “debating the topic properly on television”. He then appeared in such a debate with Brooks Newmark on May 15th, which began with a question about whether the U.K. should continue to fund the Ukrainian war effort, to which Calvin replied:
So my problem isn’t necessarily with the funding – I think we should support our allies, absolutely. My problem is that everyone’s looking at this as a winning vs. losing situation, and I’m saying: who’s asking the question about raising peace?
But war is about winning and losing – existentially, for Ukraine. There are no “participation trophies”. And it is always, fundamentally, about achieving an eventual peace – with the winner getting to set the terms. It is both deeply naïve and otiose to talk about “peace” in the abstract without reference to “facts on the ground”. One way to bring about an immediate peace (or at least the cessation of violence, prior to an eventual treaty) would be for the aggressor to withdraw, but it seems Calvin is suggesting something different – that Ukraine should be prepared to cede territory to the aggressor, without considering the consequences for the people of Ukraine and those left in the occupied territories (the rapes, torture, murder, deportations and “re-education”), much less the consequences for the rest of the world in enabling an aggressor in this way. “Peace” is not synonymous with “occupation”, and a real, enduring peace cannot be achieved through appeasement.
Calvin goes on to say:
The only person, the only world leader I’ve seen [talk about peace] so far is President Donald Trump, who when CNN tried to back him into a corner, [asking] “Will you back Ukraine or will you back Russia?” he said “Actually, I’m backing the people. It’s the people that are dying”, and world leaders all around the West are pushing for more and more war […]
There’s a lot to unpack here, but firstly Donald Trump is not, at present, a world leader. Secondly, world leaders have been talking about peace – quite a lot, in fact. We could discuss, for instance, Ukraine’s own detailed Peace Formula, first introduced on November 15th. We could discuss President Macron’s visit to China in April, in which he encouraged Xi Jinping to be more active in pursuit of peace. We could discuss China’s own changing position, and Xi Jinping’s more recent decision to talk to Zelenskyy and to send a peace envoy to the region, who was recently in Kyiv and is shortly to visit Moscow. We could talk about President Biden’s offer to meet Putin to talk peace last December, which was rebuffed because Putin won’t negotiate unless the West accepts his illegal annexations of territory. The list goes on, but it seems Calvin has skipped the lectio and moved straight on to the disputatio.
Since Calvin made his remarks, on May 17th the 46 Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe (supported by the EU, Canada, Japan and the U.S.) issued the Reykjavík Declaration, adopting Ukraine’s Peace Formula:
We express our full support to Ukraine and its people. We will stand with Ukraine, for as long as it takes. Without accountability, there can be no lasting peace and we support the principles for a just and lasting peace as outlined in President Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula. We therefore reaffirm the need for an unequivocal international legal response for all victims, as well as for the State of Ukraine.
So world leaders really are talking about peace, and in some detail. But Trump, being Trump, has declared he can somehow bring about peace in 24 hours, refusing to say how. And in case anyone imagines Trump is some kind of magician when it comes to diplomacy, his attempt to stop Erdoğan attacking Kurdish forces in Syria following the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2019 should undeceive them. Trump wrote to Erdoğan on Oct 9th 2019 as follows:
Dear Mr. President:
Let’s work out a good deal! You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy – and I will. I’ve already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson.
I have worked hard to solve some of your problems. Don’t let the world down. You can make a great deal. General Mazloum is willing to negotiate with you, and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past. I am confidentially enclosing a copy of his letter to me, just received.
History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen. Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!
I will call you later.
Sincerely,
Donald Trump
It’s hard to read that without wincing. Erdoğan, for his part, threw the letter in the bin and ordered the attack that same day. And it would be fair to say that Trump’s interventions on Ukraine are probably the least helpful of any public figure outside Russia or its allies to date, merely emboldening Russia – which has returned the favour by pointedly sanctioning some of Trump’s enemies. (Incidentally, it’s high time for Russia to update its list of sanctioned U.K. journalists. Hint hint, Пыня.)
Calvin goes on to say:
[…] The idea that there could only be one solution, and that solution is Russia being defeated, it terrifies me because Russia is, like I say, a nuclear power. And that means that if that’s the only option, then we’re looking at a world war […] But the biggest problem I’m seeing here is just raising that conversation, raising that point, has people going “Ha! Putin apologist! Ha!” and it’s like we have lost all sense of nuance.
Calvin complaining about being called a “Putin apologist” is clearly a reference to my previous article, in which I called him precisely that – because he raised, in an uncritical manner, some of the Kremlin’s favourite fake justifications for their invasion. But Calvin didn’t raise the nuclear issue in his monologue, and I didn’t base my characterisation of him on that, so Calvin is once again misrepresenting things. He then talks about “nuance”. Lawdy!
As to the nuclear issue, I’ve previously written about it (specifically in relation to “tactical” or low-yield nuclear weapons), so I’ll try not to repeat myself, and will refer anyone who may be interested in understanding why Putin won’t escalate to that article. However, I’ll note that the public’s understanding of the matter is generally very wrong, and Russia has been taking advantage of these false perceptions – with Dmitry Medvedev, in particular, repeatedly threatening nuclear escalation in response to this, that or the other. But nuclear powers have lost wars before. Putin will lose this war, and will just have to accept it.
More importantly, to give in to nuclear blackmail is to create a very much more dangerous world, in which nuclear proliferation (and therefore nuclear war) becomes much more likely. Besides being common sense, this is a very well-established and non-controversial view in the field of nuclear deterrence, arms control and proliferation, and we have a deep moral and existential responsibility not to make mistakes – based on emotion and ignorance – that could seriously endanger us or our children in future. I therefore view Calvin’s rhetoric on this topic as deeply unwise.
Asked whether continued support for the war should be a question for the people of Ukraine, Calvin said:
I would love to hear from the people of the Ukraine, actually, because I’m sick of hearing from Western leaders who have no input in the Ukraine. I’d love to hear from the citizens, the people that are actually on the ground – and both the Russian citizens too – because it’s the people on the ground that are dying […]
This is a rather strange remark, since there’s no indication that Western leaders have misjudged attitudes in Ukraine, or that Calvin has made an effort to find out the views of Ukrainians.
It’s not difficult to find respectable polling showing a 91% approval rating for Zelenskyy, with 97% of Ukrainians believing they will win the war and roughly 98% support for their armed forces. Nobody is seriously suggesting Ukraine isn’t united in this. However, given the extent to which Calvin seems to have swallowed Russian propaganda, I can’t give him the benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t believe the Kremlin line – that Zelenskyy is a corrupt, deviant, authoritarian, neo-Nazi drug-addict who is hated by his people. That might explain why he’s so dismissive of the statements made by his opponent in this debate, Brooks Newmark, who’s spent the past year talking to Ukrainians, and who reports roughly 90% of Ukrainian people want to continue fighting. Calvin calls these reports “anecdotes”.
But there’s more to it than that. What I’ve personally heard from Ukrainians, and what I’ve heard reported many times, is that they greatly appreciate Western support, but fear that the West might someday abandon them. This came up when Boris Johnson was ousted, with a great deal of anxiety being expressed on Ukrainian social media about whether the new Prime Minister would still support Ukraine. Those fears have been put to rest (and all credit to Liz Truss and especially to Rishi Sunak for carrying the torch), but it’s plain as day from statements made by Ukrainian officials that they believe the long-awaited spring counter-offensive needs to be successful in order to maintain levels of Western support. So if there’s any concern in Ukraine about the war, it’s only that they might not prevail quickly enough to satisfy their international allies.
In this light, Calvin’s question about what the Ukrainians think about the war is no different from his other seemingly-innocent “questions” about things that he seems unwilling or unable to learn about himself, and which he poses – like Pilate – without waiting for an answer. In this particular case, it’s highly disingenuous to claim to care about the views of the Ukrainian people, while cynically maintaining the slanders in his May 13th monologue that, in all likelihood, he picked up from Westerners spouting Kremlin talking-points. I’d like to think it’s simple naïveté, but it isn’t “nuance”.
Ian Rons is the President of the Free Speech Union, but this article reflects his views alone and not those of the Free Speech Union.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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.
Genuinely ill-informed and clear unhinged. Rons seems intent on fleecing The DS of its donors with this over;-emotive drivel.
Jeffrey Sachs’ latest: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/the-war-in-ukraine-was-provoked-and-why-that-matters-if-we-want-peace
Very disappointed to see Rons double down on his ad hominem line-to-take versus Calvin Robinson, but mostly because of the vacuity of Rons’ arguments and the vacuity of his pro-Zelenskyy invective. I would not have expected to read this in the Daily MSM Parrot, let alone the Daily Sceptic.
Rons has been “psychologically inhabiting a Ukrainian trench since last February” and Robinson had “marked himself out as an enemy combatant”. Rons then “saw red and leapt out of [his] trench to attack him with everything [he] could muster”, before launching into a little side-puff piece thanking “blue-blooded aristocrat Editor-in-chief” Toby Young for publishing his article.
This is not the content that I subscribe for.
I am not, in fact, sure precisely what made Young agree to publish, but it would seem his sub-editors have turned their noses up at the article, as why else would the next sentence have left the grievous typo ‘flack’ for ‘flak’?
That aside, I defend Rons’ right to write whatever he wishes to write. But by publishing, he should also address the holes in his underlying thesis (c.f. “Putin will lose this war, and will just have to accept it”). I think the… Read more »
It is an American war with Russia, just a continuation of the Cold War with the objective of America establishing itself as the dominant world power. It is America we should be concerned about.
I can do without Rons’ tub periodic tub thumping and MSM propaganda repetition for Ukraine. I do know a little as to what is going on, from friends in UK who are Ukrainian emigres and those who live in Ukraine on both sides. None favour war; they can see that everyday life has gone downhill since 2014. My lifetime’s experience starting with working in Northern Ireland during the ‘troubles’ has been that whatever story the media comes out with is slanted and the real situation is orders of magnitude more complex.
I had no idea that Rons is FSU President. I will probably not suspend my occasional contributions, it is supposed to support free speech after all. I would prefer that someone who was in that position both researched the situtaion before writing shallow opinions that now descend to what are childish spats.
Ian Rons should work in a Cinema as he is a world class “projectionist”
Not a word on Gov DeSantis announcement on Twitter last night. Good for the world, good for the USA. Daily sceptic what is going on?
You people are going to cause a flipping nuclear war.
In fact ‘we people’ prevented a flipping nuclear war by persuading Ukraine to give up its nuclear warheads in 1994.
Ukraine only gave them up in return for this commitment from us:
‘ The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression
Should we honour our signature on international agreements, or should we not?
‘Provide assistance’. That includes insisting on negotiations. It doesn’t say ‘arm the country for a war of attrition.’ And one of those signatories is the Russian Federation. So the entire agreement is now null and void.
The real way to have avoided nuclear war was not to recognise the country called ‘Ukraine’ in the Ukraine in the first place and allowed a better controlled breakup of the former Soviet Union.
It’s even weaker than that – the commitment itself is to “seek” immediate action. That’s the same as saying we’ll try to have a babble at the UN Security Council and see if we can maybe get something done. It also talks about UN action, not individual action of the US or UK.
Are you a politician?
Somebody punches you in the mouth.
One bystander says ‘lets all sit down and talk about this. Try and walk a mile in your attacker’s shoes.’
Another bystander gives you a baseball bat.
Which one is ‘providing assistance’?
Fatuous comparison.
Grow up.
Bad news for you.
‘Behavioral therapies are currently the mainstay of treating cannabis misuse, with no pharmacotherapies currently approved by the FDA for cannabis use disorder in youth.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7380653/
To be clear, you’re accusing me – someone who has been teetotal for several years – of drug abuse. Are you willing to back that up in court?
Clearly a sensitive subject.
I would be delighted to see you in court.
Many judges enjoy a good laugh.
You may very well be teetotal now; completely irrelevant.
Did you ever ingest harmful chemicals in your youth?
The reference concerns adolescents.
Have you even read it?
I wonder which one of these coves on here is the real Spode?
‘The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone.
You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.
That is where you make your bloomer.
What the Voice of the People is saying is:
‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags!
Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?’
You have a romanticised concept of war: preppy young men whistling the Colonel Bogey March marching off to a recruitment station. Many of those men in 1914 never came home and the ones who did had lungs wrecked by poison gas and were traumatised for life.
You know nothing of war.
2,466,719 of the British Army were documented as volunteers 1914-15.
Similarly hundreds of thousands have volunteered in Ukraine, 20,000 of them from overseas, including, as we have recently seen, from Russia.
War is a brutal and unpleasant, inhuman, experience.
These volunteers only join up because:
“Before the full-scale invasion started, I was 100 per cent a civilian person,”
“I didn’t see any other options for myself. I had to go to the army to defend my home country, my family, my children. And also to defend all the freedoms that we have, which Russians unfortunately don’t have.”
Artem 17 Feb 2023
Bore off you total more on
A two syllable word……congratulations!
Point…..made
Not so good this time….baby steps…….
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
The ingestion of harmful chemicals is associated with excessive daytime sleepiness in adolescents.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150213164721.htm#:~:text=Marijuana%20use%20is%20associated%20with%20excessive%20daytime%20sleepiness%20in%20adolescents,-Date%3A%20February%2013&text=Summary%3A,drug%20s
More brainwashing going on in the daily sceptic? Not a word about the Johnson investigation, not a word about Ron DeSantis’ announcement on twitter last night. just more bs about the proxy war in Russia/ukraine, no wonder britain is going down hill at such a rapid rate. The UK, is on its knees. Look after your own country. When the cabal decided Russia and ukraine is over it will be over.
The polls about Ukrainians’ attitudes to the war presumably are only taken in the part of Ukraine that is still in Ukrainian hands. There might be a different result in the Eastern part, and especially in Crimea.
The real problem is that there are two Ukraines, with different cultures and even different languages. Any solution to the war needs to take that into account, as well as the security interests of Russia
Ian needs to explain what he means by “victory” for Ukraine. Presumably he would answer withdrawal of the Russians to internationally recognised borders. He really needs to say what he thinks about Crimea. Does he want that area handed back to Ukraine as well? That would obviously mean Sevastopol becoming a US naval base. Is that what he wants? Does he think Russia could ever accept that? Does he think the citizens of Sevastopol would want that?
The war will clearly eventually end with a peace deal of some sort, and that surely would need to include Ukraine giving up some territory, if only Crimea.
The real problem is that there are two Ukraines, with different cultures and even different languages. Any solution to the war needs to take that into account, as well as the security interests of Russia.
Indeed. Which makes Rons’s mockery of the use of the term ‘The Ukraine’ all the more ridiculous.
Hitler and the Wehrmacht couldn’t defeat Russia, so the money laundering tee -shirted shirtlifter Zelensky has no chance. He’s got more chance of winning the Eurovision Thong contest.
Personally, I’m sick to death of seeing Zelensky prancing around the world and posing in his “fatigues.”
Crude propaganda …. which may work in Ukraine, but when he’s visiting the UK, USA, Japan or anywhere else and posing with other (so-called) world leaders, there is no reason whatsoever why he can’t put a suit on.
He’s a scruffy so and so with his bottomless begging bowl that he demands to be filled with taxpayers money at every opportunity in his global jaunts.
Ditto! Can’t stand the fake fatigues he puts on for the cameras. A basic, simple suit when showing up at a big event where no one else would even dream of showing up without being dressed to the nines is the least he could do. In the beginning a lot of people fell for the idea it represented, that Zelensky himself was out there fighting on the front line and didn’t even have the time between battles to change his fighting clothes. Do they still really believe that now? It’s a joke – just like wearing a dress does not make a man a woman, wearing khaki green sweats all the time does not make you a soldier.
Wrong.
The endless US wars. The US coups in Uketopia starting in 2004. The US pushing NATO to Moscow. The US aka the Ukes murdering some 15.000 Russians post the 2014 coup.
The US biolabs. The US military equipment sent post 2004. The US has been begging for a war since 1991. And now they got one. And they and their 51rst state are losing and losing badly. The Russias are quite happy to grind the US 51rst state into meal powder. And they will.
You can say this about Mr Rons – he sure draws a crowd!
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” – Sir Walter Scott
Another tedious, rambling, ad hominem piece from Mr. Rons, who already has form having previously written an article parroting pro-war propaganda pulled from the British MSM. The appeal to his FSU links is unhelpful and denigrating to that organisation. Questionable judgment also on the part of whoever authorised publication of this piece.
This is a ‘war’ made up of ignorant people posturing for social media in the West while Ukraine is used as a proxy battlefield. Post your little Ukraine flag icon next to your name on Twitter and feel really proud of yourself when people ‘like’ it!
Get real! This is war! Real war! This is bombs dropping, body parts and blood spattered across streets, people burning to death, the smell of roasted meat as bodies cook and the stench of rotted meat as dead bodies get turned into scrap food for stray dogs amidst the ruins of your home. This is your parents, siblings, children and friends dying. This is a Western proxy war using Zelenskyy as a front! Most ordinary people are not behind it.
Wars end with negotiation in the present day, because nuclear, chemical and biological weapons ensure no one can be defeated without taking their opponents with them. There’s no comparison with the lead up to WWII. Negotiating a settlement is not ‘appeasement’ which is the lazy recourse. Putin is not Adolf Hitler. No one gets everything he wants from negotiation, but ordinary people stop being killed in vast numbers. Wars that end in the utter… Read more »
Excellent! And spot on – we have had such a good life for so long in the West, we just can’t imagine things going wrong and certainly not the harsh reality you paint.
Yep, this thing could get out of control and drag many many millions more in, eventually still leading to a negotiated peace. Having said that, I can’t quite determine whether that is the plan or not. Current Western leaders seem so hell bent on destroying out contries by destroying our energy supply and our economies with their ridiculous net-zero nonsense, our security by giving all our weapons to the Ukraine with zero oversight into where they’ve gone and our cultures and way of life by unfettered immigration from cultures so different that it is inevitable that ours will either disappear or be diluted to a shadow of what they once were, it’s hard to figure out if this is sheer incompetence (for many hack MPs who just show up to vote as they’re told to vote, yes) or outright intent by puppet cabinets whose strings are pulled, like senile Biden, by players behind the scenes.
Oh my bloody hell.
What an annoying screed.
Your call to Orwell is dated. This was Orwell 1942, prior to his awakening to the horror of authoritarianism home grown and insidious found in his 1984 script penned in 1949.
Many may sympathise with getting carried away with government propaganda, like you, and only after the fact, like Iraq, do they realise they were foolish. I’ll wait.
But really you are quite ill. You rant and rave and TY gives you a forum which makes him look really bad. Indeed so bad i personally am not sure I can keep funding both the FSU and the DS. It’s just getting irritating. You aren’t sceptical, you are nauseatingly mainstream. You don’t bring anything to the table.
If fisticuffs were a thing I’d ask you to bring them.
And you are the president of the FSU.
Oh boy.
Quite agree with you.
Apparently Ian Rons is described by The Daily Sceptic on Twitter and facebook as a “military expert” but he won’t reply to me with his qualifications.
He has also found Jesus.
Anyone with a religious fervour shows they are not a critical thinker and can be easily swayed by indoctrination.
I delayed resubscribing to The Daily Sceptic because of Ian Rons but I couldn’t put up with his lies and propaganda any longer without replying to his nonsense which is no different to what we read every day in the main stream media and has no place in The Daily Sceptic.
Difficult to remain calm reading this drivel. I suggest the writer does some research. Slava Russia!
This is the voice of the Mister Rons.
At least we are starting to understand things and bear in mind that our enemies assume that we will never understand. Understanding throws a spanner into the works – they don’t know how to deal with it.
If you sense the gravity of the situation and the alignment of the BRICS coubtries in recent months then you will adopt a conciliatory response. From the Western perspective it would be foolish try to assert dominance at this point. There are pathways to major influence if you can see them. The late twentieth century through so much mud in our faces that we founf it difficult to discern the most simple truths.
I would advise anyone who is hungry for war to look at industrial capacity. The hope of the West is that they can take this to an airborne war and a war of exchange of missiles. This is a very irresponsible view for obvious reaons and they would retort that we are faced with annihilation and so anything goes. This is going to start in the next three weeks and I think it is important that when it does we need to make our views known. Because looked at from every angle and every possible outcome the only resolution comes through nuclear conflict. And a post-nuclear world is a dreary inheritance for anyone. It is about to happen. the air war and the consequences of an air war go way beyond bombs being dropped, in terms of trade,
I wonder when Ian Rons starts working at Marianna Spring’s new ‘Disinformation’ unit?
The war in Ukraine is a sad,sad situation. Of course, Putin is the obvious aggressor and bad guy, but Zelensky and the corrupt Ukrainians, and their Nazi sympathiser supporters are hardly angels either. Not to mention many acquisitive American fingers in the pie..
Putin and Russia will not be defeated without a nuclear holocaust. Get real Mr Rons, reenter the world of Realpolitik, and recognise that we need a climbdown/compromise in this situation, regardless of whether it fits your high minded principles or not (PS Putin is not Adolf Hitler)
…oh yes America wins, whichever way you look at it..and if there’s no one left to argue about who owns what …all the better……??
But I’m sure Mr Ron’s thinks this is just democracy in action and totally normal…
https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/ministerstvo-ekonomiki-ukrayini-pidpisalo-memorandum-iz-najbilshoyu-investkompaniyeyu-svitu
INVESTMENTS
The Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing on a framework for consultative assistance in developing a special platform to attract private capital for the recovery and support of Ukraine’s economy.
The platform will focus on mobilizing investment in key sectors of Ukrainian economy, while taking into account the reconstruction needs resulting from the full-scale russian invasion.
I think if we all red flag the spamming troll-bot, or whatever ‘Timans’ is, hopefully the DS team will deal with it. It’d be even better if it swore then I’m sure the DS mods would react even quicker! lol
The most ridiculous part of this is this ‘Putin’ nonsense. I say with complete honesty that in much of Russia Putin is seen as a pussy and it is his weakness tha will be his undong in the months to come in my opinion. The view among the masses is way more aggresive than he has been. This is yet another stupid blind alley that the West has fallen into which means that whoever comes next will have to be much more ruthless. I don’t even like addressing these matters in a sincere fashion given the lies that underpin these discussions. You want to be more careful. Not long ago there was a taboo about mentioning the nuclear option. Now it is just bandied about like the most natural thing in the world. Do you really want to continue a path of escalation based upon a foreign affairs doctrine that is twenty five years out of date?
Everything you said..but applied to Biden and the USA..for which there is actual evidence..
This is why we need to understand true power relations if we are to have any hope at all. Corporate control, you can call it neocon or neoliberal it doesn’t matter – this is a very tough nut to crack.
Putin is a moderate yet the calls to replace him will only result in a hardliner taking over and that can only result in WW3, which is apparently what the West seems to want. We are governed by crazy people and Putin seems to be the only adult. We need more Putins and less Biden and Sunak!
What a petulant article. I dont understand why Toby gave this rubbish a platform.
Putin will never be defeated and Ukraine can’t win this war of attrition.
The bodies and suffering increase whilst western leaders grandstand and our armed forces deflate themselves.
The only solution is international pressure for a ceasefire with sanctions on both sides.
..agreed Neil….the ‘incursion’ into Belgorod just seems to have been a bullshit PR stunt to cover the Bakhmut failure..and yet again more young Ukrainian men die..and for what?? The PR media war? The only one they are winning?…
Hundreds of thousands dead now…for American hegemony, and the US/Ukrainian war machine..I thank God I have never called for a continuation of this horror…and I have no time for Mr Ron’s or the morons virtue signalling while Ukrainian men and women die for their hubris, stupidity..and a sound bite in an egregious article…….shocking depressing and vile….
This is from a Telegram post: an update on Bakhmut from a Russian perspective.
What struck me was the senseless slaughter & maiming of thousands of young men. Stuff the politics, well over 100,000 dead & injured on just the Ukrainian side, numbers not given for Russian casualties.
This is an abject failure of the political class to broker peace, but then peace isn’t as profitable as a war & TPTB see the dead & wounded as useless eaters, so why should they broker peace?
Yevgeniy Prigozhin
Bakhmut results:
1. 6.5 thousand foreign mercenaries of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were destroyed.
2. 10 thousand units of military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed.
3. 35 thousand units of weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were taken as trophies.
4. More than 50 aircraft and helicopters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed.
5. 55,000 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed.
6. 85 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were wounded.
7. Such a large percentage of the dead was due to the fact that the Armed Forces of Ukraine were almost surrounded and did not have time to take… Read more »
All of it is just horrendous, and of course from the beginning peace and diplomacy should have been sought. We are led by political pygmies…
America is following the exact same path against China..I can’t find anything that China has done in the last couple of years to make the US reaction and Sinophobia what it is at the moment..like the totally unjustified hatred of Russia, it’s off the charts for no logical reason..it’s purely political propaganda nonsense…and who suffers….the poor ordinary person…..always…..
Zaluzhnyi wanted to withdraw from Bakhmut weeks ago…to stop the amount of deaths and casualties they were receiving…..now he’s missing, presumed dead or injured…and it’s still been taken….
‘They had, say, 500 tanks at the start of the special operation, now they have 5,000 tanks.
They had 20,000 people who could fight back then, now 400,000 can.
In what way have we demilitarized it (Ukraine)?
It turns out we did the opposite.’
Prighozin May 2023
Absolutely right. Russia will not be defeated. During Operation Barbarossa Hitler initially made quick gains taking 600 000 Russian prisoners, but the Russians simply replaced them with 2 million more. They stood their ground at Stalingrad, organised their industry to make thousands of T34 tanks, and then pushed the Germans right back to Berlin taking 1.5 million prisoners in the process. Russia is a country with tremendous resources, underestimate them at your peril.
Great that Toby and the Daily Sceptic give Mr Rons a voice. His is a fairly mainstream, Narrative stance, which allows us to critique, without being censored.
I soundly disagree with him, but it’s his and our free speech, and he’s not actually killing anyone.
Yes, it’s reminiscent of Fraser Myers’ recent petulant behaviour.
OK this seems like an appropriate place I can talk about piss and deliver an off-territory dump. So if this doesn’t scream, ”I’m completely unhinged and a menace to society so please ring for the men in white coats, stat!”…I don’t know what does. Absolutely chuffing mental!
”Trans activists in London staged a urine-filled protest outside of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on Monday in response to proposed alterations to the Equality Act which would strengthen women’s sex-based rights.
Members of the organization Pissed Off Trannies (POT) gathered outside of the EHRC on May 22 to leave 90 liters of human urine around the perimeter of the building. The protest was in response to a recent statement by chief executive of the EHRC, Melanie Field, in which she affirmed the definition of “sex.” Field’s comment reflects a slow-moving trend at the EHRC to implement stronger protections for biological sex as a protected characteristic, as well as recent plans to prevent trans-identified males from accessing women’s facilities unless they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).
GRCs are documents which legally recognize a person’s transgender identity in the United Kingdom. The bar for acquiring one is not particularly high, having… Read more »