The results of the European parliamentary elections are in.
As expected, they represent a repudiation of the centre-Left politics that has governed Europe for the past generation. The dominant Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Right-leaning ‘soft’ Eurosceptics of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the nationalists of Identity and Democracy (ID) all added seats. The big losers, meanwhile, were not only the liberal centrists of Renew but also – and above all – the Greens.
It is too early to say what this will mean for the future direction of the EU, except in very broad terms. As Green influence over the EU wanes, there will be less political capital to spend on climate insanity. The EPP, which has been a terrible collaborator in abominations like the Green Deal, will probably be forced to seek more support from the parties to its Right instead. There may be some shift in momentum, but I am pessimistic that we will see any great change from this election alone. The EU is by design well-insulated from the popular will, and the great centre-Right villain of the past decades, the EPP, has only grown in strength.
But that is less than half the story. The EU parliamentary elections are not only about the EU; they are also an informal referendum on national politics, and here the seemingly minor shifts in party representation have had astounding consequences. In France, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella bested Manuel Macron’s Renaissance party by 31.4% to 14.6%. In response, Macron has announced new elections and dissolved the National Assembly. In Belgium, where they hold elections for national and regional parliaments alongside the European election, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has resigned in the face of strong gains by the New Flemish Alliance and Vlaams Belang.
We will not get new elections in Germany, but what is happening here is no less dramatic. The three parties of the coalition Government barely cracked 30% in Sunday’s vote, with the social democrats posting their worst results in history, and the Greens down a full 8.6 percentage points compared to their 2019 showing. It is a stinging repudiation of the traffic light coalition. Alternative für Deutschland, despite an endless string of media smears and manufactured scandals, came in at 15.9%, the second-strongest party in the Federal Republic behind the centre-Right CDU – and by far the strongest party in the East.
There are four points to make about these elections and their significance for Germany:
1. The Scholz Government has been Humiliated
As the election results rolled in and Macron announced new elections, the German Chancellor maintained a deafening silence. It took him a full day to acknowledge the defeat.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz first commented on his party’s performance on Monday evening. … “The election result were bad for all three governing parties,” he said.
“No one is well advised to simply go back to business as usual,” said Scholz. “At the same time, however, it is also important that we do our work to ensure that our country becomes modern and moves forward.”
Wolfram Weimer sums it up as follows:
With this European election, voters have… issued the coalition Government a death certificate. For months, the polls have shown that this Government is the most unpopular in history… Now the Germans have dramatically deprived their leaders of legitimacy. Any normal Government would draw the consequences and signal to the population: “We have understood.” … In France, President Emmanuel Macron is demonstrating in a particularly consistent way what this can mean with his decision to call a new election.
Scholz does not appear to have this courage. In fact, the Chancellor is apparently planning the opposite. Despite the result, which has been dubbed a ‘debacle’, a ‘lesson’ or a ‘disaster’, he appears unimpressed … In plain language: the Chancellor will not take responsibility, and he hopes to muddle through and sit out the crisis.
Whether he can do that is far from certain. His junior coalition partner, the liberal FDP, will use the election results as a reason to increase its intransigence in the ongoing budget negotiations for 2025. Being in Government has been a disaster for the liberals, and they face a serious chance of disappearing from the German Bundestag entirely in next year’s elections as they continue to bleed voters. Thus, as Weimer writes, “the budget dispute represents for them an opportunity for heroic resistance and even a last-ditch way out of the coalition”. It may be in the interests of the FDP to bring down the Government rather than continue to associate itself with this catastrophe.
Weimer further notes that the SPD has lost 40% of its voters between 2021 and today, and that in the coming elections in Brandenburg, Thüringen and Saxony it will be humiliated yet again. It is not beyond question, for example, that the SPD will fail to meet the 5% threshold and disappear from one or more eastern state parliaments entirely. The internal pressure on Scholz is only growing, in other words, and nothing would be more in keeping with the history of the social democrats than for his own party to bring him down before the voters get their chance.
2. The Greens are in Crisis
Above all it is the youngest voters who are leaving the Greens. Among those 24 years old and younger, 34% voted either for the CDU or the AfD. This is a stinging rebuke for a party that has presented itself as a youth movement and as the way of the future. The problem is both that climate politics are losing their salience for much of the electorate, and that the Greens have terrified everybody:
The decisive factor for the Greens… is that their issue of climate protection has not attracted voters, but rather deterred them. Since Economics Minister Habeck’s Heating Ordinances, the mood has increasingly turned against climate protection and more and more against the Greens.
“We have overestimated the willingness to change,” Green veteran politician Jürgen Trittin said …
The problem for the party is that it cannot hope that anything will change here… One way forward might be to distance themselves from climate issues, and rather to emphasise that they will not leave people to fend for themselves when it comes to climate change … and to ensure social balance. “We have to tell the story differently,” a leading Green politician says.
When the party leaders… appeared before the press… on Monday afternoon, it seemed as if they wanted to put this realisation into practice straight away. They spoke of “security” again and again. This kind of talk is otherwise familiar only from the CDU …
On Sunday evening, some admitted that this tactic had limited prospects. After all, the federal Government is currently negotiating an austerity budget. More social support is hardly possible.
The Leftist parties are caught in a trap of their own making. Their insane home heating ordinances merely accelerated the gradual decay of climate change as a political issue in the Federal Republic, and since the courts ruled against their budgetary wizardry last November, they have no money. A Leftist party that cannot increase entitlements and that manages to be more terrifying than its own sermons about the climate apocalypse has nothing to offer anyone.
This is one facet of a much bigger political shift that will mark the coming decades. Social democracy is already in long-term decline, not only in Germany but across Europe, and if indeed it is true that the Greens have had their moment and are facing a future as a marginal party too small to play coalition king-makers, you have to ask what will become of the Left more broadly. They have no successor movement waiting in the wings, and their own political clients – the migrants they have welcomed to Europe by the millions – have an entirely different illiberal political vision.
3. The Fight against the Right Amounted to Nothing
For months we have had nothing but one freakout after the other about “the extreme Right”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called millions of people into the streets in January to defend democracy against the alleged fascists of the AfD. His Interior Minister and our constitutional protectors have issued proposal after proposal to harass and intimidate their political opponents and to realign the “thought and speech patterns” of ordinary Germans. They have denounced the alleged violent tendencies of AfD supporters and their general “contempt for politics” and demanded that the “silent majority” put the Right-wing extremists in their place.
And after all of that, the AfD is still the second-strongest party in Germany. Yes, it claimed only 15.9% of the votes, well below its polling high around 23% last autumn. Part of that loss, however, is down to competition from the new party of Sahra Wagenknecht, and in any case we must remember that the regime has thrown literally everything it has at the AfD for half a year now. Fake Nazi hysteria, strange stories about collusion with Russia and China, even the late-breaking scandal over Maximilian Krah’s interview with Italian media and the ensuing split with the Identity and Democracy faction – for months our media would talk about little else. The blitz was powerfully reminiscent of the Covid insanity, and in the end the AfD is still standing.
If anything, the attacks have only hardened the convictions of its core voters. Fully 95% of AfD supporters “think it’s good that the party wants to further limit the influx of foreigners and refugees”, 90% “think it’s good that there’s a party that wants to fundamentally reform the EU”, and 82% “don’t care that the party is considered partly Right-wing extreme, as long as it addresses the correct issues”.
Suddenly the press is singing a different, and much more measured, tune:
The affairs surrounding the AfD’s leading candidates for the EU parliament have clearly not harmed the party at all. Nor has it been harmed by the fact that the other Right-wing parties in the European Parliament have turned away in disgust from the Right-wing populists centred around Maximilian Krah. The secret meeting in Potsdam, at which AfD representatives (and also CDU members) pondered the mass expulsion of migrants, did not diminish the AfD’s success either. Neither did the categorisation of high-ranking party representatives as Right-wing extremists.
It is clear that the AfD has become a popular party in the East. And it has successfully immunised itself against criticism. It can now expect the votes of a core constituency, no matter how scandalous the party may appear. … This is also due to the fact that the party has created its own counter-public – primarily via social media. It reaches young voters like no other party via TikTok. Sixteen and 17-year-olds in Brandenburg can also vote in the state elections in the autumn.
4. The East-West Split
The German election results, colour coded by dominant party and broken down by district, yield a clear pattern:
Aside from the urban centres, German voters are no longer divided about whether the Right or the Left represents the best path forward for the nation. Instead, they are divided about which flavour of ‘the Right’ they prefer, with the Union parties continuing to command the plurality of support in the West, and the AfD becoming overwhelmingly the choice of the East.
This split has establishment politicians worried:
In light of these results, Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) has warned of a growing divide between East and West Germans. “In social networks after the European elections, I now read sentences like: ‘Where is the gratitude of the East Germans?’ These are questions that we don’t need right now,” Ramelow said. …
“The East has nothing to apologise for. It should rather be seen as an opportunity. Instead, emotional unity is increasingly collapsing. And the fact that East Germans are expected to be grateful [for reunification] is fuelling this spiral,” Ramelow continued.
Hendrik Wüst, who is CDU Minister President of Nordrhein-Westfalen, wants more cultural exchange between the East and the West, apparently because he imagines that the easterners are just under-socialised or something:
“It’s time for a Unification Treaty 2.0 that not only brings formal unity but also brings people together better – for greater trust and cohesion between East and West,” Wüst said… “Because dialogue creates trust and opens up prospects for greater mutual understanding.”
What Wüst and many others like him are too stupid to realise, is that it’s the West that is the anomaly here. Consider France, where the ‘Right-wing extreme’ National Rally and Reconquest together claimed well over 30% of the vote in most districts. In Italy, the Fratelli d’Italia and the Lega together saw similar results. The preferences of East Germans in this context just look normal. It’s the Wessies who are outliers and isolated with their insanity in the broader European context, who are out of step with the political preferences of younger generations, and whose lectures for all of these reasons will only grow more strident and less convincing every day.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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I think Ian Rons should join the Ukrainian army and go and join the fight against Russia.
Or does he mean, from afar, at a safe distance.
Yes, with our money. I’m struggling to remember how many of our taxpayer £Billions Rishi has sent his man crush, it doesn’t really matter (like many things in our democracy we didn’t have a say in it) while emptying the nation’s armouries.
The ignorance of Rons is about the same size as his ego, the money laundering and the piles of dead and wounded from the NATO forever war.
And Zelensky’s wife’s spending on jewellery is interesting, like they are preparing hard assets ready to leave.
Why does Rons’ tedious verbiage get such an uncritical airing?
If there is an ongoing war in a nation of 50 million smart phone owners, why is there no battle footage? We have seen more in one day from Israel than in the last two years from Ukraine.
There are thousands of hours of combat footage from Ukraine that have been published mostly on Telegram and Twitter, but also in the MSM, including from official and semi-official Ukrainian and Russian sources. There are also foreign journalists in-country who have been reporting on the war from day one. It has been the main news for over a year and a half.
I also note that this claim about no combat footage has been repeated ad nauseam on Twitter in a seemingly co-ordinated manner, as part of Russia’s information war.
Therefore, I have to question the motives or the sanity of anyone making or uncritically repeating such a claim.
It was the main news for a few months and then started drifting in and out, mainly out.
Most of the battle footage in the MSM, YouTub is of Ukrainian successes. Little of what Russia is doing. This is available – such as video of Ukrainian troops surrendering, knocked out Challenger tanks – some on RT which is blocked in our free, democratic, freedom of speech loving Countries, but also on other web sites originating from Russians – of course not to be trusted as much as our safe and effective Govt and MSM output.
There appears to be a puddle of irony that has dripped of your comment.
He may just follow British MSM exclusively, which would explain it.
If that is the case, I can understand why you would question his sanity.
You must be looking in the wrong place. There are plenty of shots of Western armour being destroyed and lots of pictures of hulks. There are considerably fewer shots of Russian armour, although since much of the Ukrainian armour was Russian by design, it is difficult to tell what is whose once it is burnt out.
However, Bradleys, Maxpros, Leopards and Challengers are unmistakable most of the time.
The ukrainian waffen ss (Galician troops) who fought against Russia (our ally) in ww2 are celebrated in ukraine as hero’s! (on Ukrainian stamps etc)
Now ukraine are fighting Russia, we support their hero’s too?
So now the nazis aren’t so bad after all?
What a twisted f-ing world of adjusted history we live in!
Leftists will re-write any history to suit their narrative
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/no-evidence-ukraine-postal-service-issued-stamp-celebrating-nazi-veteran-2023-09-29/
“widely shared online” – originating from a pro-Ukrainian disinformation unit perhaps? A timely distraction from the applause the Jewish president of Ukraine gave for a veteran Nazi.
Take it the standing ovation for the wonderful ukrainian hero appearing in Canada didn’t happen either?.
And, Rueters is just another controlled media outlet.
Reuters is a propaganda machine Ian.
Tough, Our Ian.
I know there are a lot of pro-Russian types who comment here, and expect that, but I’m still surprised at how few comments to my articles ever address any of the points I’ve made. However, “Tough, Our Ian” ranks as one of the lamest.
Lots of pro-Russia types you say? Lots?
Name five.
The author has previously commented on doing IT work for FSU. Does he have access to user accounts on this website?
Why does this matter? He is pro-Ukraine and believes some commenters are pro-Russian. The author has previously been triggered by some of the comments which disagree with his views.
The Myrotvorets kill-list is a dumping ground for data on those perceived to have a scent of Russian sympathy, including children who clearly have no worldly experience to form an opinion on the matter.
I’m not sure how anyone resolves Myrotvorets with a cause worth siding with but if such a person doesn’t take it seriously and in a moment of weakness sends on data as a misguided joke, it may have unintended consequences.
Come on, that’s just scurrilous ad hom.
It’s not an attack, it’s an observation of the risk of an author having access to user data if that were indeed the case.
Jeez dude, I’m an IT professional, and if you knew what I’ve done for FSU and DS in respect of information security (and otherwise) you wouldn’t say that. Toby and I set up both organisations from scratch.
Thanks, it’s good to know you understand the risk.
At least we know about Toby’s background. We don’t know anything about you or your qualifications to offer your opinions on the Ukraine war. If you do the IT then it is worrying that you are not further removed from the issues under discussion.
James Delingpole and Calvin Robinson haven’t managed to cancel me, despite hating my opinions — and like you, failing to address them at all. Do you think you’re going to succeed, richardw53?
I just want to know who you are.
Yet it’s more than you deserve.
Ian, I thought Tough, Our Ian was a Laptop Maestro’s backhanded compliment to your dogged propensity to publish yet another counterfactual to those of us who largely do our own research and see the real situation as somewhat different from your take. I’m not a pro-Russian type nor an anti-Ukraine type; I have hoped for an end to this conflict which impoverishes us all in many ways. Most of the people I know who are still there or over here (as genuine refugees) from both ethic groups seem to agree. My grandmother, who escaped from there over a hundred years ago, before the rest of her family were murdered would no doubt have seen it so were she around today.
Agree wholeheartedly. Most if us are not pro either ‘side’. We are anti-war.
Challenging, questioning, presenting evidence is not ‘pro’ anything except balanced debate. Just as challenging the mRNA jungle juice was not anti-vax.
I’ve addressed your point further up and provided a bit of background. I am not pro-Russian, I’m pro-me and my tax money, and anti-the conspiracy of evil that comprises Western Government and the lies it tells.
I believe you commented on combat footage, suggesting there was a lot of footage of Ukrainian vehicles being taken out. I’d refer you to Oryx for documented equipment losses on both sides.
I am curious as to why you take the word of this web site over any other.
Because they publish documented (i.e., photographed) equipment losses in a completely open manner, and they’ve become the trusted source for this stuff around the world. It’s not a bunch of people making up numbers.
I’m no pro Russian but a long history like this requires more than just for or against? Common sense must tell us that it’s not all one-sided?
It is very lazy to characterise everybody who fails to give unquestioning support to Ukraine as pro-Russian, or even being actually Russian which Ian did to me some months back.
I suspect many, like me, see a complete disconnect between what is reported by the Western MSM and what actually transpires a few weeks later.
Speaking personally I have sought out alternative sources, and generally the ones I rely on have shown over time to be far more accurate with their predictions than any Western source.
A few examples.
Russia will be out of resources within a short time.
Russia will run out of rockets/missiles/ammunition within days or weeks.
New wonder weapons (anti tank missiless, M777 howitzers, Himars, Patriots, Bradley APCs, Leopard tanks, Challenger tanks) will change the war
The Russians will turn round and run when the counter-offensive starts
We will never give up Bakhmut. We will recapture Bakhmut. Bakhmut is not important.
All these have been shown to be wrong
I’ll address the things you say were claimed briefly.
I don’t know anyone who said that. I referred in a previous article to the IISS’s Military Balance, which has lists of Russian equipment, so I’m aware of stocks. I’m also aware that Russia is about half way through them.
Nobody said they’d run out in “days or weeks”. We are seeing Russian shortages in rockets/missiles, and obviously with arty they’ve had to go to North Korea.
I think this is a partially fair claim about what pro-Ukrainian types were saying, in that a lot of people were saying that with Western tanks, the counter-offensive could be swift. Obviously, that hasn’t proven to be true at all, and for various reasons. But Western artillery, inc. HIMARS-launched rocket artillery, has been very effective and in particular HIMARS was a big problem for Russia when it was first introduced (although less so now). In terms of artillery, the more accurate and longer-range systems have enabled Ukraine to just about get the upper hand in artillery/counter-battery fires. Patriot obviously defeated Khinzal, so that’s good. Gepard and other systems have helped greatly too. Western tanks and IFVs are also much more survivable, which is great. It’s a big topic for another time, I’d suggest.
I don’t think anyone was really saying that, although there has been constant talk about Russian morale (which is bad).
Bakhmut was used very effectively by Ukraine in the first phase of the battle to drain Russian resources, and now to fix Russian units in place to prevent them helping in the south. Using the Russian fixation on Bakhmut against them has been good for Ukraine.
Recollections differ as do interpretations.
Uh-huh.
Well my reading of most posts on this subject from commenters is not that they are pro-Russian, just sceptical about the stated aims of the “allies”, sceptical that anything positive will be achieved by pursuing current policies, and sceptical that there is a sufficiently compelling UK interest in the outcome to justify our actions.
Personally I’d like to avoid the following:
If we agree with Ian Rons, all of the above are on the table. I’d prefer a ceasefire, negotiations and a peaceful settlement.
The Ukraine will not be allowed to negotiate – Putin is one of the last people in the way of the globalist totatitarians.
Ask your MP to request a ceasefire and diplomatic effort to resolve the situation. I’d be interested to hear the response.
That aside, rebuild contracts are worth more if more of the country is destroyed. Weapon resupply contracts are worth more if it continues. As Ben Wallace commented on July 18th , this is good for NLAW and Thales in Belfast. Interestingly, my Conservative MP considers such views of war profiteering disturbing but is unwilling to talk of ceasefires and diplomacy.
The sacrifice also buys time for the UK military:
https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/news/2023/06/army-chief-says-one-year-on-and-we-are-rising-to-the-challenge/
And don’t forget the interests of investors like Blackrock, with ‘smart’ cities and control grid etc. re they really fighting for democracy, or is the situation more like, out of the frying pan into the fire.
I wish the defence industry would do a bit more war-profiteering. Artillery shell production is looking a bit lacklustre.
Do you have a link for that?
Any interest in a ceasefire?
I’d agree save for my fear that the all out war and use of tactical nuclear weapons is more likely to come from NATO, to avoid the conflict coming to an end. It seems they have been let off the hook by a new pivot to forever war in Israel. All part of the plan !
I’ve addressed the concept of nuclear deterrence in previous articles. Basically, giving in to nuclear blackmail is highly dangerous, but it seems we have to re-learn what we knew in the Cold War.
I am very disappointed with this article. I confess to not reading it all because I became sad at the framing of the article. Why is it always pitched as ‘right wing versus left wing’? And why does the answer to war appear to be to throw more weapons/money at an unwinable situation? The losers here are clearly those Ukrainians who have died or had their world turned upside down whoever’s fault it is. The only winners I can see in all this are those who profit from war (eg the arms industry).
And those who publish endless drivel about it.
Also the people of Europe will be made poorer the longer this continues, assuming our Nations will keep supplying the conflict.
I don’t think I mentioned the left wing. To be clear, I’m a free market conservative/libertarian type. What I’m doing is taking aim at some of those on my side of the aisle who get it wrong on Ukraine, which others don’t do because they need a career in right-wing journalism and so sometimes it all gets a bit matey-matey. At least, that’s my perspective.
I also completely disagree with your assessment that Ukraine is in an “unwinnable” position. That seems to underly a lot of people’s views here, but it’s not based on reality.
Thank you for replying to my comments. Thank you also for all your involvement with DS. I agree that you didn’t mention ‘left wing’. But by referring to comments being ‘right wing’ this opened the door to that suggestion. I am not pro Russia. I am not pro Zelenskyy. I do believe that this war is unwinnable in the sense that an escalation could involve nuclear weapons. Then there are only losers. A more concerted effort for peace should be the order of the day instead of the war mongering the press and our politicians constantly push.
Thanks Mark. I disagree with you but respect your willingness to engage.
Mark does not appear to have said anything with which anyone could disagree. I think you just like to disagree, Mr Rons.
Name a war which featured a “winner”.
War is not a board game.
Quite frankly, all your “expertise” on military matters, kit, weapons, movements etc annoys the crap out of me.
Are the estimated 250,000-500,000 (94,000 in the summer offensive alone) Ukrainians KIA are not enough for you Ian. When will your blood lust end? 1 million. Throwing billions more $ at the Ukraine war machine will not change the inevitable outcome, just more destroyed Challenger 2 tanks. Sunk cost fallacy anyone! We should have negotiated back in March 2022 when the opportunity arose. Better still we should have not provoked Russia into invading in the first place. The collective West mistakenly took on Russia thinking it would be an easy win, look how that turned out. Nearly two years later individuals like you are still making catastrophic errors of judgement.
That is a question to put to that spineless Boris, the darling of most GB News presenters.
I haven’t checked, but so far I think one Challenger 2 has been lost. Your Ukrainian KIA figures are also based on fantasy. And Putin wasn’t “provoked”, as I’ve said many times in my articles.
It’s not a fantasy, it’s a tragedy. If the quoted figures are a fantasy, why did Ben Wallace recently call for a WWII attitude towards mobilising ever younger men to join the meat grinder. It’s because the Ukrainian Army are running out of people.
Also, a recent report by the US Army War College predicted mass casualties of 3,700 a day against a peer opponent like Russia. Ukraine is not a peer opponent, so the figures I quoted are not unrealistic. 500 KIA a day x 18 months roughly equates 270,000.
“According to the Dnipropetrovsk funeral bureau, at least 22,000 people who died on the frontline have been buried in the city over a year and a half. (There are 20 such regions in Ukraine)”
Whilst one piece of information is not definitive, when all the little snippets are added together you can begin to build a picture of the true scale of the carnage.
The Russians are also suffering losses in the order 50,000 to 70,000 KIA. Which to add some context is more than Americans suffered in the Vietnam War.
It’s generally accepted that 2 Challengers have so far being confirmed to have been destroyed, backed up by photographic/video evidence. Rumours are just starting to circulate that a further two have also being destroyed/damaged, but without direct photo evidence this remain just a rumour.
Not provoked, you sir, when in comes to Ukraine are living in fantasy land.
Come on mate, US Army War College projections? And that would presumably be of a US-Russia war, which might be a bit different. You don’t link to the source document, of course.
Also, what’s your source for the claim about Dnipropetrovsk dead? And why would you just multiply that by 20?
You may be aware that from Russian payouts, the Russian KIA figure is 230K+.
From Russian payouts? Source?
The link you asked for;
https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3240&context=parameters
You multiply the figure by 20 because that is the number of regions in Ukraine, so one could argue that each region would ‘donate’ to the cause equally and suffer similar losses give or take a few thousand.
Where is your link referring to the payouts?
I suggest you read the latest article in TCW
Ukraine: Why Defeat is Inevitable.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/ukraine-the-beginning-of-the-end-part-1/
To be perfectly honest Ian, I am at a total loss as to your total tunnel vision when it comes to discussing Ukraine. I am a big fan of the Daily Sceptic and I absolutely laud your efforts with the Free Speech Union. But many (not all sadly) commentators have put forward many valid arguments which you simply bat away and repeat ad nauseam MSM talking points. It’s not about being pro this or that, it’s about clearing a path to the truth and reality, so we don’t repeat the same mistakes which will be to the benefit to all of us.
I also refer you to the link to the Critic Article “Buried Roots of War” which is listed in the Daily News Round Up.
These statements are all of course just opinion.
All figures for casualties are speculative. Estimates of Russian KIA figures have been made from published obituary notices and I understand Ukrainian figures are gleaned from front-line intercepts of operational reports. I have no way of knowing they are anything like correct, but I will say that the fact that some prisoners taken by Russia were conscripted from the senior end of the Ukrainian population suggest that Ukrainian casualties may have been quite heavy.
As to provocation, there are many public figures who have gone on record expressing that view, as mentioned elsewhere here. Indeed, it was my view at the before the start of the conflict that the USA was continually goading Russia into action, and believe they may have advanced on Kiev before they were fully ready.
I suspect wjy many people around the west are suspicious of war and war-like activities by governments is a hang over from Iraq2 and Afganistan. There was no clear purpose to these beyond disabling the Taliban and destroying Al Quaeda. Those two went across the border to Pakistan (an “ally” where they found securityt amnd new weapons with which to retakle Afganistan when Biden walked out contrary to intelligence and military advice. This has enabled Iran, Afganistan, Russia and China to form a contiguous alliance with Palistand onside too. This is very very dangerous.
In short, western leaders have engaged in unjustified (and in my view unjustifiable) war for 20+ years. They have besmirched the name of my country and the wider west thereby.
With this background there is considerable scepticism about the claims and motives of the political class. Clearly, for example, the EU hopes to gain territory and a new client state if Uklraine can get out of Russia’s entanglement.
My own view is to compare the Russia – Ukraine and Georgia etc situations with the 1930s. If we do not enable these countries to resist Russia then more of them will be overcome in the future until western interests are seriously damaged.
.
“War is a racket” is almost 90 years old but nothing changed.
Edit: I meant to reply to Mark Nind.
Facts.
Donetsk and Luhansk, predominantly ethnic Russia, are part of Donbas not its whole, and now are independent States.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and moved troops in in 2022 to thwart attempts by Ukraine to reclaim it by pending military action.
Black Sea and Sea of Azoz are strategically important to Russia, the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea giving access to the Med and Suez Canal, is Russia’s only warm water port open all year round, for surface and submarine vessels, and merchant ships. The Sea of Azoz is connected by canal to the Caspian Sea an important trade route to Central Asia.
This makes keeping NATO out of Ukraine – thus Crimea and Donbas – of great importance to Russia. For sure with Ukraine in NATO and Russia expelled, the US would install naval and air bases that could contest the Black Sea and Sea of Azoz and potentially restrict Russia navy and merchant operations.
Imagine if Russia were to install navy and air bases in Guatemala and Cuba to contest the Gulf of Mexico, the Panama Canal, Mississippi with its trade route to the interior, and US naval base, Port of Houston.
Would the US Government just accept this?
Russia is dug in in three well constructed defensive lines over 20km and tens of thousands of mines densely dispersed around and in front. It is near impossible to advance armour up to them. Ukraine is feeding thousand of men into this are in ‘meat assaults’ with enormous casualty rates because infantry cannot be supported by armour and does not have air superiority.
The reality is, Ukraine will run out of troops long before Russia, armour even the whizz-bang NATO stuff is mostly useless, it is running out of ammunition and NATO cannot resupply fast enough.
Russia is playing defence, letting Ukraine deplete its men and resources for no gain. Russia doesn’t have to do anything, just sit and wait. Then it may well pounce and there won’t be a peace agreement, just total, unconditional surrender.
There is nothing NATO can do, except send in its own forces, but since NATO forces are better called farces – priority being diversity and inclusivity, not fighting fitness – they won’t last long.
The reason not to support Ukraine, is because they will lose sooner or later, and it would be better sooner rather than later, stringing them along with false hope that a few more tanks and $billions will make them victorious.
This is a fight about US global hegemony, not about saving plucky Ukraine from a cruel, barbaric invasion, just as that cruel, barbaric invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with WMDs and everything to do with US global ambitions.
What short and convenient memories some have.
Have you even read my article? Your first two paragraphs just contradict it without evidence. I can’t be bothered with the rest.
More total drivel from Ian Rons which we can read in any main stream media.
We pay money to The Daily Sceptic because we are sceptical of the establishments lies and propaganda.
Ian Rons amplifies those lies and propaganda.
The fact that Ian Rons believes that Russia wasn’t provoked shows his total lack of understanding of the situation.
Russia was provoked by the US via Ukraine as admitted by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky, Henry Kissinger, Robert Kennedy Jr, John Pilger, Peter Hitchens etc. etc. etc.
Noam Chomsky continued, “Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/not-justification-provocation-chomsky-root-causes-russia-ukraine-war
“So, as you can see, the notion that this war is “unprovoked” is a fairy tale for idiots and children; there’s no excuse for a grown adult with internet access and functioning brain matter to ever say such a thing.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/01/08/caitlin-johnstone-unprovoked/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=d523aa2a-0e68-46e9-9783-a9c05d1c7232
“Nearly a year after Russia’s invasion, the western narrative of an ‘unprovoked’ attack has become impossible to sustain”.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2023-01-10/russia-ukraine-war-us-pave-invasion/
“It is an old tactic in high-stakes diplomacy to provoke your enemy into an unwise war, in the hope you will then destroy him”. Peter Hitchens.
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2022/04/peter-hitchens-the-usa-wants-this-war-so-it-can-drive-russia-back-to-the-stone-age.html?cid=6a00d8341c565553ef0282e14d5a0c200b
We (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out.
Colonel Jacques Baud of Nato.
https://www.sott.net/article/466340-Retired-Swiss-Military-Intelligence-Officer-Is-it-Possible-to-Actually-Know-What-Has-Been-And-is-Going-on-in-Ukraine
The War in Ukraine Was Provoked.
The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/24/the-war-in-ukraine-was-provoked/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=ff658442-9aa8-49c9-8bd1-1bf7ccef308e
Henry Kissinger “I think the offer to put Ukraine into NATO was a grave mistake and led to this war,”
https://tass.com/world/1623817
This was stated by US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. He recalled that there was an agreement between Russia and Ukraine in April last year and Russian troops withdrew from the outskirts of Kiev. However, the United States intervened.
“And now we have killed 350,000 young people there. And I am not an apologist for Vladimir Putin. It was a brutal war. But we also need to look at our role in provocations since 1997,” he said.
https://t.me/NewResistance/21012
“But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.” John Pilger May 2014
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
This War Wasn’t Just Provoked — It Was Provoked Deliberately.
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/september/25/this-war-wasnt-just-provoked-it-was-provoked-deliberately/
I await Ian’s rebuttal point by point.
When are making such weak points I would not expect an extensive reply.
I don’t understand the point you are making. I suspect something is missing
“More total drivel from Ian Rons which we can read in any main stream media.
We pay money to The Daily Sceptic because we are sceptical of the establishments lies and propaganda.
Ian Rons amplifies those lies and propaganda.”
I have to agree; maybe this is what I was thinking when I wrote my toned down comment above. But “The fact that Ian Rons believes that…”. I am mystified as to what Ian believes other than his tenacious adherence to MSM on Ukraine. TY and his DS/FSU contributors seem to ignore him and his views. Maybe his MSM views balances DS and FSU content against Ofcom.
It now seems to be coming out that many of the weapons unleashed by Hamas were sourced in Ukraine – I was made aware about a year ago that NATO missiles were being sold by UAF conscripts for $10-$15k each. Not suprised they seem to have been saved up for a massive strike.
I don’t suppose I could trouble you for some… you know… evidence?
You are so clever that you should be able to source it yourself.
RT?
Oh, from Afghanistan too. The Yanks did leave quite a bit behind when they ran away.
It is reported that the Americans have asked the Israelis to gather any manufacturing marks from debris so that they can provide some evidence, so they clearly have their suspicions.
I have heard from contacts in Ukraine that for some time Western missiles gifted to Ukraine as part of the support for the war were being sold to ‘ISIS’ . While I don’t have written evidence it is instructive that DS today has the reference of IDF concerns https://www.newsweek.com/israel-worries-us-weapons-ukraine-are-ending-irans-hands-1806131
Very well researched and written, you ought to be one of the authors on here!
I’ve discussed all this stuff about “provocation” repeatedly in my articles, including this one. You can’t just link to a bunch of people who disagree with me nd expect me to repeat my own arguments to you once again. Why not directly address the points I’ve made?
Discussed or just disregarded.
Your Russophobic diatribe was full of misinformation and it would take me ages to rebut each error and would probably exceed any character limit (eg facebook character limit is 8,000).
I chose your ridiculous notion that Russia wasn’t provoked and provided a list of luminaries with a link explaining why Russia WAS provoked.
I will leave it up to the readers of The Daily Sceptic who they would rather believe, people like Noam Chomsky, Henty Kissinger etc. or Ian Rons.
It would take surgery to remove this ‘writers’ lips from the Ukranian fundament.
You come across as hysterically deranged in your penultimate paragraph.
The threat to our security and way of life comes overwhelmingly from our own government. Population replacement, the destruction of our culture and freedoms, the theft of our wealth and all of the other horrors clearly intended for us are nothing to do with the Russians. You clearly daren’t say what the negative consequences of a recently-created country we’ve never been formally allied with losing part of its territory would be because we’d all laugh at you.
Aside from military assistance since 2014, an in-no-way-provocative military pact was setup between Britain, Poland and Ukraine just prior to the Russian invasion. There is a formal alliance to some extent.
It’s hard to disagree with Ian’s point by point take down of Reavill’s self-serving and error strewn thesis.
I think what Ian is missing is that what Reavill is trying to do is justify the inevitable collapse in his home country for the war in Ukraine.
Depending on what poll you believe, support for Ukraine and the US support for their defense is waning with about half indicating enough is enough…let Ukraine and Europe protect it’s own backyard.
Similarly about 50% support peace negotiations.
As an Englishman who lives in America I shared Ian’s sympathy and support for Russia on these pages too.
However I am rethinking my stance. This is a war Putin cannot lose and a war that for that reason alone, absent a coup in Russia by a more dovish regime, Ukraine can’t win.
Russia also has a military that is 3-4 times the size of Ukraine’s, and about 10X better armed than Russia even with Western arms.
Reavill’s facts may be wrong but he does have his finger on the pulse of America’s support for Ukraine.
On that front, Ukraine is losing and an appreciation of the history of American conflict should focus on outcomes in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Korea, not the inputs that got the world in this mess.
Thanks for taking the time to address some of the issues raised in the article. By the way, I think a couple of times in your comment you refer to “Russia” when you meant to say “Ukraine”.
Anyway, I’d agree that support for Ukraine in the US has waned – and that it’s become a political football. If Reavill had just made that point, based on polling, I wouldn’t have had much to work with!
Also, I’d urge you to take another look at stuff like Russian equipment losses and their difficulty in resourcing the war, and also note historical stuff like the Finnish Winter War. Russia can lose, and I think it will. The figures you quote in re: Russian military are not accurate.
Russia now hopes to portray this as a “forever war”, playing on Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc., but it isn’t.
“Stuff like the Finnish Winter War”
Finland lost the war and Karelia.
( I once had a Finnish girlfriend whose family became refugees from there. A reason why Finland used to have astonishingly high rates of heart disease.)
“I once had a Finnish girlfriend”
Is that supposed to constitute some kind of rational response to my post?
Not our business and no democratic consent for going to war with Russia over Ukraine and we don’t have the money and a proxy war with the lives of conscripted young Ukrainians is downright immoral.
Oh, and World War 3 could be a problem.
I don’t think the war in Ukraine is going well for the likes of the author.
May I suggest he considers joining the front line to help bring about his desired objectives.
Seriously, why not. Go on put your money where your mouth is.
Anything wrong with my article, then?
It’s the work of an owned, charmless midwit of limited education and less intellectual honesty.
You’re the only DS contributor who is actually despised by the commenters.
“…it reveals how some on the U.S. political right can rationalise shafting an ally.”
Ukraine? An ally? Ukraine?
I think Mr Rons likes to view events as they were told in his boyhood comics.
I am so done with all this oversimplified, binary codswallop. Still, I am aware that (at times like these) nuanced, balanced interpretations of events and their causes are rather unfashionable. Shame.
It’s become increasingly clear to me that the people who dislike my articles are unable to articulate any specific objection, and instead resort to name-calling. But maybe that’s the level of their intelligence. So, “Marcus Aurelius knew”, I say na-na-na-na-na back to you.
Hilarious.
You’ve responded to one of my posts by essentially calling me a liar about having had a Finnish girlfriend whose family had to flee their ancestral homeland in Karelia after the Soviet Union defeated Finland..
I saw that, too. Doubtless Mr Rons will now take great pleasure in claiming that he was not calling you a liar, and that you just misinterpreted his words…
You’re getting a bit desperate mate.
Good night, Mr Rons.
Nighty-night.
The region defined as “Ukraine” by entirely arbitrary and absurd political lines on the map has been an inferno of corruption and violence on all sides for many many decades. You seem to think that American and Western involvement can make things better, and that wars have winners. You deserve all the name-calling.
So you think Ukraine doesn’t exist as a sovereign nation.
“Sovereign nation”. Cling to these cute concepts. You’re so naïve. And you don’t know it.
What will lead you to become unplugged from the Matrix, I wonder?
Any coherent argument in favour of your absurd position.
Why am I not surprised that you don’t understand the difference between “state” and “nation”?
For the avoidance of doubt
This seems to be very clear that Ukraine lacks the closeness and the common culture. Indeed, their hatred of Russian culture and the treatment of the people of Russian heritage clearly disqualifies it from nationhood since the moment it was created.
Am I the only one who thinks Mr Rons doesn’t look very British?
So, having failed to find anything incorrect in my article, you are reduced to questioning my ethnicity. You’ll lose that one, mate.
Nah, I decided to operate on your level.
Mate.
Given that your response to my comment about Finland losing to the Soviet Union and Finns being ethnically cleansed from Karelia was essentially an accusation of dishonesty.
(But if you really are British, why do you look so foreign, mate?)
If you think the Soviet Union won the Winter War, you’re deluded. I’m also amused at your attempts to officiate over British ethnicity, random internet person “Nearhorburian”.
I am astonished that Daily Sceptic keep printing these articles which show an enormous amount of bias and ignorance. What footage is he watching (he could start watching UK Column!)? What history has he read? – not someone like John Mearsheimer, that’s obvious. It’s also equally obvious that he doesn’t want peace for those poor Ukrainian soldiers who are being used like cannon fodder in this war. At the very least Daily Sceptic could print an article from someone with the other point of view: ie that Putin/Russia had good reason to be alarmed by NATO expansion in Ukraine, not to mention the biological labs. The ordinary Ukrainian people are, indeed, to be pitied: they are totally expendable in this avoidable war and have a criminally corrupt government. Giving weapons and ammunition (that is often outdated and on which the Ukrainian soldiery don’t get sufficient training) and money is simply postponing the day of reckoning and are weapons, ammunition and money that we (in the UK at least) can ill afford, particularly in view of our emasculated and hugely reduced defence forces and our massive debt. It is yet another huge burden on us, the tax payers, who already suffer from the results of the sanctions (greatly increased energy costs), not to mention the crazy Net Zero policies of our politicians.
Yet more brain dead pro Nazi pro war party(s) nonsense.
The voice of the Mr Ron’s asserts:
Perhaps he’s unaware that Nuland was there completely openly in order to broker an agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders
How are you, Mr R, definitively aware of Nuland’s complete openness in this or any other area? You are a mind reader?
He accepts assertions of complete openness from one side only. Is that journalism?
This author fails from the outset of this woolly meander through another author’s woolly meander. His ability to judge someone’s political leanings from their moustache is one of his more convincing deductions, although Stalin did have a big bushy one. Perhaps a monograph for the Xmas market?
For Russia the goal is plunder, he rails.
For the US and EU not so much, in Mr Ron’s blinkered view. Bit partisan maybe?
Like legacy media, Rons cherry picks to back up what are effectively his beliefs. How often does an article in the Telegraph (and others) have what constitutes a ‘journalist’ these days, reporting on Ukraine while stationed in Brussels. Their senior foreign correspondent Roland Oliphant only found out the Ukraine conflict had begun when called by a radio station in London to get his thoughts. And he was actually in Ukraine. And so it is with Rons, cut and pasting second and third hand reports and videos and adding the layer of dishonesty (there were actually two referendums in Ukraine during the crumbling of the Soviet Union, the first one to remain part of the USSR which also garnered the majority of the vote. Both votes included promises to have no recognised borders and the right to retain ethnic language). Ukraine is currently being colonized by the IMF having lost its fiscal assistance (est 80BN since 1991) from Russia following the 2014 US coup and courtesy of Zelensky signing a bill (opposed by the majority of Ukrainians – and which officially needed a referendum before coming into law) which allows huge swathes of farmland with the world’s most fertile soil to be sold to foreign companies. Right now those companies include US GMOs who intend patent the seeds, allowing financiers to control not only the money supply but a large proportion of the food supply. These companies currently have over 170,000km of the farmland – way more than the 4 regions Russia has moved into. Unltil Rons visits Donbas and talks to local residents, he will have no idea what’s really going on.
.
I gave up on this silly article at the point where Ian claimed that only 38% of the population of Donbass are ethnic Russian.
The census figures he links to show that 38% have Russian NATIONALITY, not ethnic background.
See this from the United Nations, which shows that 30% of the entire population of Ukraine are Russian speakers:
http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=POP&f=tableCode%3a27%3bareaCode%3a0%3bsexCode%3a0&c=2,3,5,7,9,11,13,14,15&s=_vcvv2:asc,_countryEnglishNameOrderBy:asc,refYear:desc&v=1
No, you’re wrong. They are just being a bit vague/bad translation in introducing the census, but you’ll see the list includes “Jews”, “Tatars” and “Gipsies”. Obviously, those are not nationalities.
As for Russian speakers, Zelenskyy’s first language is Russian, so does that make him Russian? Or are all English-speaking people English? Clearly not. The reason there’s so much Russian still spoken in Ukraine is because the Russians tried to wipe out the Ukrainian language.
I also asked for clarification on this from the former Ukrainian diplomat I mentioned in the article, and he said:
You asked a Ukrainian diplomat. A Ukrainian.
“Journalism”, huh.