I was a little surprised, this Friday morning, to see in my inbox a newsletter from Thinkspot, which was Jordan Peterson’s social media site. A glitch in the matrix, perhaps, since I’m not subscribed to any of their newsletters. But I was intrigued by the lead article, entitled: “A Political Tsunami Is Breaking In Europe That Threatens To Wipe Away Support For The Ukraine War”. That’s odd, I thought: why hadn’t I heard about this tsunami? So, dear reader, I clicked on it.
The article is written by David Reavill, a Pennsylvanian whose John Bolton-esque moustache screamed “conservative” to me, an assessment confirmed by his writings – at least on fiscal matters. But with his negative attitude towards U.S. support for Ukraine, he doesn’t seem too far removed from the GOP’s Matt Gaetz or Vivek Ramaswamy. And I think it’s worth exploring his arguments, not because he has good ones, but because it reveals how some on the U.S. political right can rationalise shafting an ally.
Firstly, Reavill says that back in 2014, the Donbas was occupied “principally by ethnic Russians”. This is a common misconception, but the truth is that the 2001 census showed that only 38.5% of the population of the Donbas (i.e., Donetsk and Luhansk) were ethnically Russian, with 57.2% being ethnically Ukrainian. This might explain why 83.9% of voters in the region chose independence from Russia in 1991, and why, when the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from the presidency in 2014, he choked at an attempt to have the Eastern and Southern regions declare independence from Kyiv (before fleeing to Russia). Even in Crimea, where there is an ethnic Russian majority, the then-leader of the Russian invasion Igor Girkin had to force the regional members of parliament to declare a fake “referendum” on Crimean independence, in which both options on the ballot were “yes”.
Of course, it’s perfectly true that there is an East-West split in Ukraine, and that those in the East have tended to favour more pro-Russian political candidates, while those in the West have been more pro-EU. But voting for close links with Russia isn’t the same as wanting to be part of Russia. However, it’s also worth noting that many in the Donbas did collaborate with Russia in 2014, although as it was put to me recently by a former Ukrainian diplomat, a key reason may well have been that Russia simply pays better salaries to those on the government payroll than does Ukraine. Also, the local militias – little more than criminal gangs – have been able to extort the local population ever since. Financial self-interest may have been a decisive factor enabling Russia to seize the institutions of government.
Reavill goes on to say:
There were accusations [in 2014–15] that portions of the Ukraine Military (the Azov Battalion) had been shelling these people. It was alleged that up to 14,000 had died in the decade before the [Minsk] negotiations.
Here, Reavill is simply confused. When it was formed in 2014 (and not by Stepan Bandera, as he elsewhere claims), Azov was not formally part of the Ukrainian military, and there had been no shelling at all “in the decade before” – Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine at that point. There’s a serious problem over dates. But what Reavill is clumsily referring to is Russia’s attempted quasi-legal justification for the full-scale invasion of 2022, in which it was claimed that same number of civilians in the Russian-occupied Donbas had been killed by Ukraine since 2014. Russia called it genocide. But Ukraine brought Russia to the International Court of Justice on this point, and Russia was unable to substantiate these allegations in any way, leading the court to order Russia to cease military operations. (Russia is still trying to fight this on the question of jurisdiction.)
What had been happening – and which was being monitored by the OSCE during this time – was sporadic artillery fire from both sides of the line of control against enemy positions. Yevgheny Prigozhin confirmed this on the afternoon of his mutiny attempt:
We fired at them, they fired at us, and this was happening for all these long eight years. Sometimes the number of firefights would increase, sometimes it would reduce.
We do know, however, that during the invasion of 2014–15 and in their occupation of the Donbas, Russia committed the same kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity that they’re still committing today.
Reavill goes on to say:
Not only was the timing of these [Minsk] negotiations a surprise, but they occurred fully eight years before the War [sic] between Russia and Ukraine began.
At this point, readers might be forgiven for thinking I’ve simply picked on Reavill’s article because of the astonishing levels of ignorance (and idiosyncratic capitalisation) on display. But the problem is that practically every pro-Russian claim is complete balls, and practically nothing is so stupid that some people won’t check it. All I can do is try to correct the record.
Reavill is surprised that negotiations were underway to end hostilities in 2014–15, because as far as he knows, there was no war. He seems to believe that Donetsk and Luhansk were merely (as he describes them) “breakaway regions”, and, presumably, that there was a sudden emergence of a militant independence movement in the region, and not an invasion (“war”) by Russia. However, the “little green men” so talked about at the time were, in fact, soldiers under the control of Russia who invaded the Donbas (partly Russian special forces, partly Donetsk and Luhansk militias), including Russian GRU and FSB officers.
Russian heavy equipment was moved into Ukraine for that operation, including the Buk missile system that shot down MH17. Much of this has been admitted by “former” FSB Colonel Igor Girkin, confirmed through open-source intelligence, detailed by Ukraine, and beyond reasonable doubt. Russia has even been awarding medals for that phase of the war, while (e.g.) reciprocally the Donetsk People’s Republic has awarded medals to the likes of Russian General Valery Gerasimov as well as Yevgheny Prigozhin, whose Wagner Group was formed for this invasion – and which we now know without any doubt was an asset of the Russian state. And of course, the official Russian annexation of Crimea was well out in the open.
I can forgive Reavill for not being aware of every detail, but the general lack of awareness that anything nefarious had been done by Russia in 2014 is somewhat alarming. Reavill then goes on to make very odd remarks about the Minsk negotiations:
But [Angela Merkel’s] statement that her objective during the negotiations “was an attempt to give Ukraine time”. In other words, it is time to build up Ukraine’s military in its ultimate conflict with Russia.
It was duplicity at the highest level.
I’ve written about the Minsk Agreements previously, but I’m bemused by Reavill’s assessment that Merkel was “duplicitous”. It’s true that on the Ukrainian side – and as former president Petro Poroshenko has admitted – there was a desire to buy time: the Ukrainian army was in disarray. That’s hardly shocking. On the Russian side, they were concerned that the U.S. might supply weapons, and so it was also convenient for them to buy time and come back later (as, of course, they did). Again, not much of a surprise, and not really a Keith Olbermann “sir!” moment.
However, I don’t think Merkel is being honest if she’s claiming that Minsk was intended by her to buy time for Ukraine, although it ended up having that effect (Google’s translation is dubious). Her motivations were fairly obviously (a) to stop the war getting out of hand, and (b) to be able to continue doing business with Russia. Her motivations now are to preserve her reputation by claiming to have been on Ukraine’s side. And if Merkel had intended to buy Ukraine time, Germany might have done something to help Ukraine build up its defences during that time – like the U.K.’s Operation Orbital, for instance. But that would have upset Moscow. So if Merkel was duplicitous, it was in claiming to believe in Ukrainian national sovereignty while doing everything possible to soothe Putin and to make her country dependent on Russian gas.
In fact, rather than the strange notion that Germany was some kind of Machiavel helping Ukraine behind the scenes, its policy since at least Gerhard Schröder’s time can best be described as unilateral disarmament towards Russia. Schröder – who became Gazprom’s man overseeing Nord Stream minutes after leaving office – shut down the BND’s counter-intelligence efforts in 1997, and the agency was, and probably still is, severely penetrated. The decision to go ahead with Nord Stream 2 was likely tainted by Russian spies, and the lamentable state of Germany’s armed forces under Merkel (and Ursula von der Leyen) generated international ridicule, with barely any fighter aircraft in service, and with soldiers being forced to use broomsticks instead of rifles in a NATO exercise. Reavill’s claims are therefore almost as silly as those of Seymour Hersh, whose top secret source said – without a trace of irony – that Hungary is a leading supporter of Ukraine.
Reavill goes on to say:
And [Merkel’s comments] destroyed the “Ukraine Narrative” developed by NATO. This narrative said the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely unprovoked and was a complete surprise to the Western Allies. At the very least, NATO, the United States, and Europe had been preparing for this conflict for eight years.
If NATO really had been preparing for a full-scale Russian invasion, it might have provided a bit more than a few NLAWs and Javelins. Very few people expected Ukraine to survive a full-scale invasion, and the fact that they have survived is in large part due to the heroic defence of Kyiv (and, crucially, Hostomel Airport), as documented by Col. John Spencer.
And Russia, of course, did launch an unprovoked attack in 2014, and again in 2022. Nothing Merkel has said about Minsk is even remotely relevant to that. Putin, for his part, has claimed that Ukraine is not a real country, and consequently there’s nothing wrong with attacking it; while on the world stage he’s made false accusations of genocide in order to justify it. He’s also tried to claim that Ukrainians and Russians are really just one cute Slavic brotherhood (which should be governed by Russia, naturally, because Ukrainians are inferior and led by drug-addicted neo-Nazis, of course). Like Hillary Clinton’s accent, the explanation changes with the audience.
But it’s really about plunder (as Prigozhin pointed out), as well as political and economic power, and partly to do with ethnic demography. It forms part of an attempt to restore at least some of the old borders of the USSR – the collapse of which was a tragedy to Putin (although he did get away from Dresden with a washing machine, in typical Russian fashion). The aim is to bring as many states as possible – beginning with Georgia and Ukraine – into the Russian Federation. And if it had anything to do with Putin feeling threatened by NATO, then why doesn’t he care about Finland or Sweden gaining membership, even to the point of moving troops away from its borders with Finland and Norway?
Of course, that’s not the full story. Putin did care very much about NATO membership for Ukraine, but only because that would have prevented him from looting and pillaging the place. That’s something the likes of Peter Hitchens don’t seem able to grasp (while ignoring Ukraine’s wishes). But then, Peter Hitchens thinks Euromaidan was a coup, largely (it seems) because of the leaked Victoria Nuland phone call. Perhaps he’s unaware that Nuland was there completely openly in order to broker an agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders. But I digress. The point is that if anyone supposes that Euromaidan or anything that happened in 2014 or later was the true, underlying reason for the Russian invasion, note that Russia had been preparing its people to invade Ukraine since at least 2011, and it’s likely the decision was actually made in 2008.
Reavill then tries to make a connection between Merkel’s comments about Minsk and the spat between Ukraine and Poland over grain exports. Much like the spat with Ben Wallace, I found that spectacle unedifying but understandable. Poland’s farmers don’t want cheap Ukrainian grain ending up on the European market, and they have a powerful voice in Poland’s upcoming elections. Similarly, Zelenskyy and his country are in the fight of their life, and they need all the help they can get. But if I agree with anything Reavill has said, it’s that Zelenskyy’s tone can sometimes be badly off. His speech to Israel’s Knesset in 2022 went down, as I said at the time, like “a cup of cold sick”. But we all have our faults, and I know that I can sometimes be bullish when I should be polite and conciliatory.
Reavill then goes on to suggest Merkel’s comments have given rise to Poland saying it won’t supply more weaponry to Ukraine. Nobody really cares what Merkel says anymore, but in fact Poland has clarified that it’s simply committed as much weaponry as is available, and that those commitments will be fulfilled. Poland has since affirmed its ongoing commitment to support Ukraine, including with diplomatic support for EU and NATO membership, and as a transport hub for weaponry entering the country, until victory. So it all seems a bit of a stretch.
In fact, Reavill doesn’t just misunderstand the past and the present, but in my view he also misreads the future. There have been some recent diplomatic and political setbacks for Ukraine, with troublesome moves in the U.S. Congress, a disappointing election result in Slovakia, and an absurd display in the Canadian Parliament. At the same time, the real battle to dislodge Russian forces from Ukraine is proving very tough. But nothing has changed very much, and it’s simply otiose to ignore the reality on the ground in hopes of finding something meaningful in the political tea leaves.
On this point, it does seem that many on the political right in the U.S. are looking to find reasons not to support Ukraine. Perhaps in large part it’s because the Biden administration supports Ukraine – so obviously there must be something wrong. And for the more conspiratorially-minded, it might be because there’s a bipartisan agreement on Ukraine – and the “uni-party” is always deceptive in some way. But the facts are very straightforward for anyone with an ounce of decency and honour, and those are that we must continue to support our ally Ukraine in its fight against a cruel and barbaric invasion that blatantly violates international law, the hideous accomplishment of which would embolden our enemies to do things so destabilising to our security and way of life that few can but dimly perceive them at this point.
And doing so comes cheap. But Ukrainian lives don’t come so cheaply as the ignorance and apathy of others.
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All six Prime Ministers this century have done huge damage to this country.
However all MPs are worried about are events on a different continent.
Tony Blair was responsible for the murder of 600.000 Iraqis with WMD lie. Mrs T shut a few mines and dealt with unions infested with communists. Who gets more grief from MSM and is labelled extreme?
The panic amongst the MP class is that their gravy train, truffle hunting and downright thievery is going to come to an end.
Squeaky bottom time for many of the 600 as they face the ride in to the valley of death.
I quite like that vision.
Thank you ellie.
Tory MPs I presume?
”If Israel was not a Jewish nation the world would not care at all about the ”Palestinians”. Meme.
Palestinians seem to always be taking precedence over the many people across the world who are legitimately facing persecution and genocide, be they Muslim, Christians, Yazidis, Uyghurs etc…for years this has been happening and nobody takes to the streets to bring attention to their plight, but as soon as there’s Jew involvement and another Middle East conflict kicks off involving those nations the Palestinians get the world’s sympathy while the state of Israel gets the world’s hate. Antisemitism dressed up as social justice with hypocrisy and selective outrage off the charts. So many people outing themselves as deeply unpleasant individuals who are worthy of our contempt. And it’s not hard. Just don’t be on the side of the terrorists, irrespective of how you feel about Israel’s handling of things!
Not possible for the George Galloway/Jeremy Corbyn/Hamas/Houthi/Hezbollah/Jihad Fanclubs though. They’re hardwired to hate because they’re all ‘useful idiots’ and traitors to the West. You’ll all bend over for Islam when the time comes, won’t you??
Wipe your chin, you seem to be drooling.
Out of order.
Surely the article you are commenting on contradicts exactly what you are saying? Palestinians taking precedence … but the article reports that Labour is taking action against its MPs because of their supposed anti-semitism. In other words, any criticism of anything Israel does is classified as anti-semitism and is to be punished.
Why? What is so special about Israel that does not apply to other countries? Does Israel have a special right to commit genocide? No, of course not.
You are right to condemn terrorism but one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and one should at least question why there has been a ‘Middle-East Problem’ ever since the British assumed responsibility for the area in 1918. Only 130 years ago there were hardly any Jews in Palestine at all, but in less than 50 years the Zionist cause very successfully managed to displace and subjugate the Palestinians who had owned and worked the land for the previous 2,000 years – and the Zionist cause and its effects continue to this day.
The result is understandable: strife, discontent and millions of refugees. Now place the remaining Palestinians in their own country in ‘open-air prisons’ and you have succeeded in creating a nicely explosive situation.
If you want to read some alternative sources of information regarding the alleged crimes of rape, decapitations and whatever, performed by Hamas, and the recent allegations against the UNRWA then I recommend:
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/10/questions-nyt-hamas-rape-report/
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/18/israeli-army-gassed-auschwitz-soldier/
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/11/beheaded-israeli-babies-settler-wipe-out-palestinian/
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/12/06/scandal-israeli-october-7-fabrications/
https://expose-news.com/2024/02/12/absence-of-evidence-israels-case-against-unrwa/
But maybe it is all just plain anti-semitism …
What a shame he did not support the working class or the people who pay the tax to keep the whole show on the road.
Will be interesting watching the various Muslim factions forming and running their own political parties.
No time for the man. Wasn’t he also one of the ones who couldn’t say if a woman can have a penis and that he’d rather be at Davos than Westminster?
Kneel is identical to Fishy only dressed nominally in a different coloured flag. They are both fully paid up members of the WEF fan club. And that is all they will ever be – fan boys. They seem to believe that for doing Klaus’s bidding they will eventually gain access to his Round Table but the reality is that they will be discarded when deemed of no further use. Fishy may be allowed to cling on a little longer because of his father-in-law but he will be discarded eventually.
Kneel has no interest in this country and is about as trustworthy as a Democrat CIA operative. He is so dishonest he doesn’t even know if his progeny are male or female and yes he did say that he would prefer to work in Davos rather than Westminster – “every time.” A statement which confirms how bloody thick he really is.
A dangerous, treasonous P O S who is clearly still being coached by Traitor Number One – T. Bliar.
The Working Class has only ever been a useful tool to advance its Socialist ideology. And the Working Class its useful idiots.
Can’t we at least have a new pre-election smear tactic every now and then? And maybe just let people in the middle-east kill each other in whichever ways they see fit and worry about real problems closer to home instead?
Assuming I had a right to vote, I’d be interested in political issues affecting the UK, like, say, why is tendencially every existing building been torn town and replaced with another tower block of empty flats, and what opinons party leaders and prospective MPs have about them. I really don’t care for their opinons about either Israel or Palestine.
Part of the problem may be redefinition of what anti-semitism means. It’s not obvious that criticism of the Israeli military is automatic anti-semitism, or even criticism of the local government being conflated with anti-semitism.
I’m sure some people hate Jews but the term isn’t helpful. I think it’s better to talk about what people’s views are on what the UK should be doing wrt Gaza etc, and what the other sides should be doing, whether there should be a Jewish state etc etc – actual concrete proposals or opinions on specific matters.
A Jewish state exists (again) because the people who wanted and want to have one had and have the military muscle to ensure its existence. The question whether or not it should exist is entirely immaterial.
I would have thought it is highly relevant as what shape some future Jewish state might have would influence choices made now. In what direction should we be working?
That’s one of these completely bizarre human statements I absolutely cannot understand …
Do you believe that the Jews are the rightful owners of this country because God awarded it to them? If so, Israel should obviously exist because such is the will of God! However, what happened to Gods will during the time between 70AD and 1948AD? Did it become his un-will or was it perhaps temporarily suspended? If so, why?
Do you plan to recruit and army of your own or at least send the English army into the region in order to support some kind of outcome? If so, which outcome, if not, what do you mean by working on it?
Singing the songs of one side of the other side in the UK is nothing but local noise.
Of what interest is the existence or non-existence of Israel to anyone who isn’t living in the area and also not planning to conquer it?
This is a political game. Anti-semitism is one of the few sticks the Conservatives have to hit Labour over the head with.
And as always the useful idiots will buy into the game and will be outraged by the “anti-semitism” which in some cases might be real, in some cases might just be sympathy for Palestinians expressed in a way that can be exploited as “anti-semitism”.
What I am pretty sure is that the people driving this care about actual anti-semitism as much as they care about anything else. It goes as far and only as far as it’s politically expedient for them to care.
So for example caring about the jab injured isn’t at all politically beneficial so… they don’t give a sh*t.
Being outraged about “anti-semitism” yields political capital, so they care deeply.
Nail on head.
Graham Jones suspended?
He should have been arrested for inciting racism!
Don’t you mean “arrested for inciting murder or rape”? That’s the only reason for arresting anyone, not for inciting tribalism, for Pete’s sake.
If I were to say ‘F*** Iran’, anybody fighting for Iran should be arrested’, would you say I should be arrested for inciting racism?
I don’t understand how one particular religious group has been given a special protected status everywhere in the world, so that it is an international criminal act to criticise that group. Another religious group has been campaigning at the UN to give themselves a similar protected status, declaring any criticism of them to be a “hate crime”.
You never hear of people having to be investigated for “Anti-Christianism”, do you?
Let’s just drop all this nonsense.
Such a shame, my heart bleeds for him! Poor old kneel.
Labour Party – antisemitism, a feature not a flaw.
Antisemitism is actually written as ‘anti-Semitism’. The contraction makes no sense in logical terms. I know it sound weird but the notion of ‘Semitism’ isn’t that clear. If you look at the Semitic tribes there are certainly cultural tendencies but these are above this level of scrutiny. Therw were certain tribes possessing a certain language group that moved westward. I don’t mean to sound pedantic but frankly this level of discourse is kindergarten or retard level. I am not insulting you personally I am just letting you know.
The excuse being trotted out for Starmer initially supporting anti-Semitic Ali to remain the Labour candidate in Rochdale, is that if Labour didn’t field a candidate which the very large Muslim community there will approve of (ie an anti-Semite), then George Galloway (boo, hiss) might win.
Personally, I see very little difference between anti-Semitic Ali and George Galloway (boo, hiss) except Galloway has been very verbal about Blair’s illegal war in Iraq and also supported leaving the EU.
Labour imported and has assiduously courted “the Muslim vote” and is now reaping what it has sowed. Starmer can only excise anti-Semitism from the Party by removing a very large number of MPs, Candidates, Councillors and Members.
And he isn’t going to do that. He’ll get rid of one or two, mouth platitudes and tell all the other anti-Semites in the Party to keep their mouths shut …… until the crosses are on the ballot paper.