I don’t quite know what to think. What do we, or how do we know how to, think in this age of propaganda by our government and corporate media? Something stinks…and that could be said about nearly everything anymore.
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Good article. I think the author is right - this war could have been avoided, but the U.S. (which was probably behind the provoking of it to begin with) wanted to escalate it instead, to use Ukraine in a proxy war to force a regime change in Russia.
Whether they win, lose, or start World War 3, it will be at the cost of the lives of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, and possibly Americans.
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Zero Hedge is a libertarian site. These libertarians are devotees of the Austrian School, and I agree with them there. But this article is very disturbing. It seems to me to be nothing more or less than Russian propaganda. If one didn’t know better, one would gather from it that Putin was the most reasonable man in the world, that his cause against Ukraine was entirely just, that Russia is one of the most temperate and well-intentioned of nation-states, that it has been forced to invade Ukraine against its will in the name of all that’s humane, compassionate, and wise. Thing is, the opposite is the case.
Ukraine is not an admirable country, not virtuous - in fact has a horrible history. But it is an independent country. And Russia invaded it. Several times this century. Atrocities have been reported from both sides of the conflict. They are utterly appalling, but not the issue. Russia is one of two powerful enemies of the West. The West is rotting, going gangrenous green. But it is still, as yet, even in its decay, worth protecting from the belligerence of Russia and China. Nothing must be conceded to either of those aggressive, cruel, tyrannical powers.
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The point is…what has the world been told. And, then…why? Whom does it benefit?
We see that Russia is moving in on Moldovia.
Obviously, Putin is not stopping. But…why? Could there have been a point at which he would have? Why was that screwed up…deliberately maybe?
I am not sure there are any good guys here. I do know that regular people bear the horrible cost of this war that is being perpetuated.
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Yes, it seems like Russian propaganda, because it makes Putin, a bad guy, seem like a good guy.
But that is what exposes the horrid truth - that as bad as Putin is, the U.S., under its current rule by fascist tyrants - is worse!
Our CIA (along with the rest of the Deep State) is completely out of control. They are like the Mafia, deposing and installing world leaders like chess peices, pulling off “regime change” at will.
The fact is, if it weren’t for their covert provocations, Putin could have been kept in check.
But instead of working to maintain a “balance of power” with Russia, they have deliberately worked to undermine it.
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Liz, I understand your position on this issue. If Trump were still in power, I doubt that Putin would have again invaded Ukraine.
But Russia has invaded Ukraine yet again, and Putin must surely be held accountable for his act of war. If the West merely shrugged and allowed him to get away with it, would our world be less insecure or more? More, I think. Much more.
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And, yet that is practically what has happened. The time to have stopped Putin was before he invaded and “persuaded” him to withdraw his military back into the depths of Russia.
Now we wonder what is the truth about it all and how it happened to get so far? Putin is obviously emboldened by the weakness of our current leadership (as is Xi) and this has become a giant money-pit that may stumble us into a global war.
What the hell were They thinking? Did They think the game being played would result in the “good guys” coming out on top?
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How could Putin have been stopped from invading Ukraine and what would have persuaded him to withdraw?
By promising him that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO? Or the EU?
What a manifestation of weakness that would have been!
No, the West has not shrugged and let him get away with it. And its failure to do so is what many conservatives are angry about.
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Jeanne,
Your bafflement at pro-Russian propaganda is no excuse for dumping it here. Ten minutes taken to verify the claims made by this article - which lifts a Mike Whitney article from the Ron Paul Institute’s website - would suffice to show the agenda being promoted by it.
Libertarians take an absolutist position against war. War and children are areas where puritan - fundamentalist - libertarianism breaks down and their policy degenerates into stupid, cruel, self-deluded nonsense. They may desire an anti-war (direct or by proxy) American foreign policy, but in denying that America has any interest that may need to be protected by war, in insisting that this foreign war is none of our business and that we should not give arms or treasure to support Ukraine, why do they feel it necessary to exonerate, excuse or justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Why prefer Russia to Ukraine? All the purported legal arguments justifying the aggression (which started in 2014, not February 2022) are specious. And the moral arguments - that Ukraine is a nazi state - are ridiculous: anything that Ukraine’s Azov Brigade is accused of by way of war-crimes is matched and doubled by the Wagner Group’s war-crimes; anything Zelensky has done to suppress political opposition (i.e. Russia-support) in a time of war is trivial beside Putin’s murderous suppression of dissent from his autocratic rule and imperial ambitions, which includes going to war with a sovereign country that dissents from his control.
As I did with Yazmin - who seemed to think that dumping Russian propaganda here would inform us gullible rubes of the truth hidden by corporate media and the military-industrial complex - I ask you, if you must draw our attention to anti-war/pro-Russian proselytizing, to make it relevant to this forum. I would love to find an explanation for why free-market/ anti-statist individual-liberty-loving conservatives are tempted to take Russia’s side in its war against the west? The autonomy of individuals and the self-determination of democratic nations are libertarian tenets. How do the Ron Paul Institute, Tucker Carlson, ZeroHedge et al. square being patriotic Americans with rooting for Putin to win?
The OSCE is a NATO partner. Its mission in Ukraine is to monitor the Minsk Agreements’ ceasefire, which included weapons-reduction in the region. Please go to its web site which publishes its reports. Go to the actual report that contains the map given in the article to implicate the Ukrainian army in a “bombardment of its own civilians”. It contains NOTHING to support such an implication. The article simply lies when it claims: What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged . The data published - not suppressed - nowhere mention “Ukrainian Forces” killing their own people. The report simply lists events which give evidence of ceasefire or weapons violations. Who set off the explosions is utterly opaque.
The Minsk Agreements have been broken continuously since the signing of the first - the Minsk Protocol - in 2014, between Ukraine and the leaders of the Russian-backed governments of the internationally unrecognized self-declared autonomous LPR and DPR. The spate of ceasefire violations in this region in February 2022 did not provide R2P justification for Russia to invade. They occurred in full knowledge of the imminence of the invasion for which Russia had amassed troops on the border for months. On 21st February, 2022, Putin officially recognized the LPR and DPR. On February 22nd Putin said the Minsk Agreements no longer existed. On February 24th, Putin invaded Ukraine, again.
And the OSCE data is merely a hook to hang the whole smelly laundry bag of Putin rationales for his conquest bit-by-bit of the whole of Ukraine.
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No, Liz. That is not a good article. The conquest of Ukraine was started by Russia when it annexed Crimea in February 2014. The destabilization of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions was part of the strategy - the settlement by Russians was a de facto occupation of those regions of Ukraine. War was not avoided in 2014. Obama winked at it. Russia’s reasserting its hegemonic power was essential to Obama’s foreign policy, which was based on ending the “unipolar” world of American dominance. If Putin’s war has been provoked by America, it is through the provocation of weakness. Russia was appointed Obama’s fixer (see Syria, see the Iran deal) in effectuating America’s self-abasement. Under cover of the Minsk Agreements, Obama refused to send lethal weaponry to Ukraine, while making a great show - with European nations - of helping Ukraine purge itself of corruption to help its application to join the west.
To suggest that there was ever a policy to force regime change in Russia by “using” Ukraine to fight a proxy war is quite mad. When was it formed? When Trump sent lethal weapons to Ukraine? Was this the start of the proxy war? And when did the proxy-war develop the war-aim of regime change in Russia? When Ukraine was sent Stingers after the invasion in February 2022? How would regime-change be accomplished in this “proxy-war”? The US allows Russia to make war on Ukraine, supports Ukraine with money and weapons, and imposes economic sanctions on Russia, thereby putting up the economic costs to Putin, which together with the loss of life of his troops will cause a drop in his popularity which will in turn mean he will lose the next election? Who is fooling whom with this nonsense? Or are we to believe that the Biden administration is arming Ukraine to invade Russia, march to Moscow, lay siege to the Kremlin and remove Putin by force? Even more nonsensical.
Russia knows just how to manipulate anti-war opinion. Its influence agents are aware of the “trigger” words to rouse leftist and libertarian pacifists and conservative isolationists into demanding that Ukraine be delivered into Putin’s maw. “Regime change” is being used to equate US support of Ukraine’s self defense with the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
And if one can say, blithely, “whether [Ukrainians] win, lose, or start World War 3, it will be at the cost of the lives or thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, and possibly Americans”, then I fear that anti-war absolutism has swallowed rationality in the assessment of war and the international order.
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So “saving democracy in Ukraine” is worth the thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict being used as cannon fodder?
That “noble cause” is as much of a crock as Putin’s propaganda. Ukraine is being destroyed along with Russia. But the oligarchs profit off of it.
And yes, the U.S. is attempting regime change.
Victoria Nuland has as much as admitted it, and we know that under her direction, courtesy of the CIA, regime change was effectuated in Ukraine.
Russia is a dictatorship, but so are many other countries. Why does that mean we have to annihilate them at all costs?
We managed not to for all the decades of the Cold War. What changed? The weakness and corruption of American leaders, which emboldens our enemies, and makes our leaders incompetent to prevent conflicts, but eager to profit from them.
Russia is not attacking us, and their attack on Ukraine is not a National Security threat to the U.S.
It could - and should - have been avoided through negotiations. As the article states, his terms of peace at the beginning were not unreasonable. But it was our leaders who failed to negotiate, and escalated the conflict.
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How about this to persuade Putin to pull back his troops before he invaded Ukraine:
Pull back your troops or we will bomb them back. Keep your hands and troops off nations that wish to be separate from you. Tell your Russians in Ukraine to make up their minds about which nation they wish to belong. Short of bombing, the West will sanction you till you fall.
If the West was going to stand together against Putin’s desire to bring back Mother Russia, then they should have done it long ago…about when they first realized Putin’s troops were gathering along the border.
What do you think the West should have done, Jillian? Of course, it would be good to know the truth about all matters of this war before our people were committed to fighting it.
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If Trump had been in his second term as president, out of which he was cheated by the fascist “Democrats”, Russia would not have re-invaded Ukraine. He was an excellent foreign affairs leader. I don’t know what action should have been taken, or when, but he would have known. I doubt that Russian troops would have been massed on the border of Ukraine at all under the eyes of President Trump.
A weak and stupid American government is a provocation to our enemies. But the only actively guilty party in this war is Putin the Invader.
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Oh you are so correct, Claire. I DUMPED an article of Russian propaganda here on this forum, because I knew you RUBES would fall for it. Haha…my evil genius plan has worked! I wanted to turn TAC Forum into a pile of smoldering irrelevance…and look at how I have spread my bafflement to all the members, those who post and those who only read.
Alas, if only I had more time to spend online, I could do so much more to lead you all astray.
Chill, Claire. I am not “rooting for Putin to win” despite the fact that I like Tucker Carlson. You gotta admit, he is a cutie, especially when his hair is messy.
You, Claire, obviously are much more astute and more educated than I. I thought the article was of interest, and yes, it caused bafflement. What is the truth and where do we get it?
But, you are accusing me of deliberately “dumping” propaganda to encourage people to think that Putin is being unfairly treated…or something. I should be insulted, but such are the ways of forums and no doubt the fault is mine for not thoroughly examining the article with research, coming to the conclusion that it was all Libertarian hogwash and then never reading a Zerohedge article again. Sorry, however, I still adore Tucker.
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