Every so often you come across Stalinists (and earnest, if misguided, vatniks) claiming that Solzhenitsyn called on the US to nuke the USSR.
Here is their “evidence” from a 1975 speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-bOTB6X71U
Problem #1 – Where is the actual call to attack – let alone nuke – the USSR? If you are particularly paranoid, I suppose you can interpret it that way. But that’s a projection, not a fact.
I would interpret it in terms of what Solzhenitsyn actually said – namely, as a call to the US not to fall behind in the arms’ race, so to continue deterring Soviet aggression.
Problem #2 – I went to the trouble of locating a transliteration of Solzhenitsyn’s entire speech, which revealed that video as a primitive, dissimulating smear.
1. It dishonestly splices together two very separate parts of the speech to give the impression that Solzhenitsyn was calling on the US to nuke the USSR.
- In that very speech, Solzhenitsyn said the exact opposite of what sovoks claim he said: “After my first address, as always, there were some superficial comments in the newspapers which did not really get to the essence. One of them was as follows: that I came here with an appeal to the United States to liberate us from communism. Anyone who has at all followed what I have said and written these many years; first in the Soviet Union and now in the West; will know that I’ve always said the exact opposite. I have appealed to my own countrymen – those whose courage has failed at difficult moments, and who have looked imploringly to the West – and urged them: “Don’t wait for assistance, and don’t ask for it; we must stand on our own feet. The West has enough troubles without us. If they support us, many thanks. But to ask for it, to appeal for it – never.”
Here are these quotes in their full context, with the parts quoted in the video highlighted in bold:
At one time there was no comparison between the strength of the USSR and yours. Then it became equal to yours. Now, as all recognize, it is becoming superior to yours. Perhaps today the ratio is just greater than equal, but soon it will be 2 to 1 , then 3 to 1. Finally it will be 5 to 1.
I’m not a specialist in this area, and you’re not specialists either, I suppose, but this can hardly be accidental. I think that if the armaments they had before were enough, they would not have driven things further. There must be some reason for it. With such a nuclear superiority it will be possible to block the use of your weapons, and on some unlucky morning they will declare: “Attention. We’re marching our troops to Europe, and if you make a move, we will annihilate you.” And this ratio of 3 to 1, or 5 to 1 will have its effect: you will not make a move. Indeed, theoreticians will be found to say, “If only we can have that blessed silence . . .”
To make a comparison with chess, this is like two players who are sitting at a chess board, one of whom has a tremendously high opinion of himself and a rather low opinion of his opponent. He thinks that he will, of course, outplay his opponent. He thinks he is so clever, so calculating, so inventive, that he will certainly win. He sits there, he calculates his moves. With these two knights he will make four forks. He can hardly wait for his opponent to move. He’s squirming on his chair out of happiness. He takes off his glasses, wipes them, and puts them back on again. He doesn’t even admit the possibility that his opponent may be more clever. He doesn’t even see that his pawns are being taken one after the other and that his castle is under threat. It all seems to him.. “Aha, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll set Moscow, Peking, Pyongyang, Hanoi one against the other.”
But what a joke! No one will do any such thing! In the meantime, you’ve been outplayed in West Berlin; you’ve been very skillfully outplayed in Portugal. In the Near East you’re being outplayed. One shouldn’t have such a low opinion of one’s opponent.
… [many other things] …
I understand, I sense that you’re tired. You’re fatigued, but you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the 20th century which have rained down on the old continent. You’re tired, but not as tired as we are, lying crushed to the ground for 60 years. You’re tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system aren’t tired; they’re not tired at all.
I understand that this is the most unfavorable time to come to this country and to make this sort of address. But if it were a favorable time, if it were an appropriate time, there wouldn’t be any need for me to speak.
Precisely because this is the worst possible time I have come to tell you about our experience over there. If our experience in the East could flow over to you by itself, it wouldn’t be necessary for me to assume the unpleasant and inappropriate role of orator. I am a writer, and I would prefer to sit and write books. But a concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity is taking place and it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until it comes with a crowbar to break through your borders, until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?
After my first address, as always, there were some superficial comments in the newspapers which did not really get to the essence. One of them was as follows: that I came here with an appeal to the United States to liberate us from communism. Anyone who has at all followed what I have said and written these many years; first in the Soviet Union and now in the West; will know that I’ve always said the exact opposite. I have appealed to my own countrymen – those whose courage has failed at difficult moments, and who have looked imploringly to the West – and urged them: “Don’t wait for assistance, and don’t ask for it; we must stand on our own feet. The West has enough troubles without us. If they support us, many thanks. But to ask for it, to appeal for it – never.”
I said the last time that two processes are occurring in the world today. One is a process of spiritual liberation in the USSR and in the other Communist countries.
The second is the assistance being extended by the West to the Communist rulers, a process of concessions, of detente, of yielding whole countries.
And I only said: “‘Remember, we have to pull ourselves up – but if you defend us you also defend your own future.” We are slaves there from birth. We are born slaves. I’m not young anymore, and I myself was born a slave; this is even more true for those who are younger. We are slaves, but we are striving for freedom. You, however, were born free. If so, then why do you help our slave owners?
One more note. These people have trawled all of Solzhenitsyn’s work and speeches for evidence of his Russophobia. And this stitched-up crap is apparently one of the most damning examples they have found. LOL.
Moreover. Just to beat the final nail into this sovok libel.
Here is Solzhenitsyn’s 1982 letter to Reagan in which Solzhenitsyn explained his refusal to meet with him on account of being lumped together with East European Russophobes who associated Communism with Russianness, and clearly sets out his actual – as opposed to imputed – views on a nuclear strike against the USSR.
If individuals thinking as I do come to power in the U.S.S.R., their first action would be to withdraw from Central America, from Africa, from Asia, from Eastern Europe, leaving all these nations to their own untrammeled fate. Their second step would be to cease the deadly arms race and to direct all the nation’s forces toward healing the internal, almost century-long wounds of an almost dying population. Without any doubt they would throw wide open the exit gates for those who wish to emigrate from our hapless country.
But how surprising: All this does not suit some of your close advisers! They want something different. They define such a program as “extreme Russian nationalism.” And some U.S. generals suggest destroying selectively the Russian population by an atomic assault.
It is strange how Russian national consciousness inspires the greatest fear in the world today for the rulers of the U.S.S.R. — and within your entourage. It is the revelation of a hostility to Russia as such, to her people and to the country as distinct from the state structure, which is characteristic of a significant part of the American educated community, American financial circles and, alas, even of some of your advisers. Such a frame of mind is pernicious for the future of both our nations.
Mr. President, it is hard for me to write this letter. But I think that if, anywhere, a meeting with you were deemed undesirable because you are an American patriot, you would also feel insulted.
Language like “a concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity” was pretty unhinged though in the context of 1975. Those apocalyptic warnings about Soviet communism advancing everywhere look rather silly in retrospect.
Thank you for debunking that old and borthersome canard.
On the level of stupid, it is only second to the canard about Solzhenitsyn having been a KGB informer… that was disseminated by the KGB itself to discredit him.
Do not forget that the period between 1968 and 1979 or so consisted of pure geopolitical win for the Commies.
The Yanks were hit hard by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam syndrome, while the Reds scored major military and diplomatic victories, including the Helsinki Act which basically legalised the division of Germany and Soviet supremacy in Eastern Europe.
From the standpoint of the time, being alarmed about the rising power of the Soviets was 100% logical and expected.
Soviet communism really was advancing at that time, though the communist world was already fragmenting (Sino-Soviet split, Ceaucescu’s nationalism, etc.).
Note that the letter above references Portugal for instance. Portugal had been a bastion of traditionalism, colonialism, and arguably even fascism under Estado Novo. Yet in 1974 it fell to a Communist coup d’etat.
Peter Brimelow, a hero if there ever was one, has written that despair was very common in his circles in those days. They truly thought the Soviet Union was on a successful path to world domination.
I wouldn’t call the language unhinged either. Communism truly is evil. So is “progressivism”, and it would be fair to today refer to America as a concentration of world evil.
In unimportant 3rd world countries.
And even that was counter-balanced to some extent by Nixon starting the rapprochement between the US and China.
“Communism” isn’t some monolithic, unchanging entity. Brezhnev’s Soviet Union was a pretty bad system, and obviously I’m glad it’s gone, but it wasn’t like the Soviet Union in its first three decades of existence (which imo can be described as “evil”, if one wishes to use such metaphysical language).
I’ll probably be called naive for this, but as I see it, one reason for the largely peaceful end of the Cold war was the kind of negotiations and detente denounced by Solzhenitsyn in this speech (note: this doesn’t mean renouncing credible deterrence, the NATO double-track decision in the early 1980s was correct imo), which in the end created sufficient trust for the Soviets to just call it quits and give up their Eastern European empire…which was an incredibly lucky outcome. Triumphalism and the continuing demonization of the other side aren’t the best or most constructive reactions to that imo.
I can’t recall the title of the book, but I read a book published in 1968 by a British officer about communist expansion in the Third World. The book was in my late grandfather’s library, and I read it while visiting as a teenager.
It argued the communists were no longer able to made inroads into Western Europe, and had as a result shifted to expanding into the Third World with a view towards isolating the West and perhaps cutting us off from our sources of raw materials. The book had many quite detailed descriptions of Soviet political penetration in various Third World countries.
Fanciful? Maybe, but I can certainly see why people at that time would be alarmed. And as I stressed earlier–communism really is evil.
Partly true, having Egypt switch allegiances, shortly after the USSR had built the Aswan dam for them, was particularly tough.
As a far right person I’m not going to defend communism, but such categorical statements still seem too black-and-white to me. After Stalin’s death the Soviets gave up mass terror, one can’t just claim that the Soviet system was just as bad after 1953/56 as it had been before.
I’m also not even sure if the Soviet Union can really be seen as unusually aggressive after the establishment of their Eastern European empire…they opportunistically supported all manner of anticolonial and other 3rd world movements, but in retrospect those movements may have exploited and deceived the Soviets just as much as they were influenced by them.
And unless I’m mistaken, the first real war the Soviets waged after 1945 (I don’t count their covert interventions in Korea or the Near East) was the invasion of Afghanistan…and judged from today’s perspective, some of their enemies there were way more “evil” than the Soviets imo.
None of this really still matters today though…the Cold war is ancient history by now, and given what we’re likely to face in the coming decades, it may eventually come to be seen in a similar light as the struggles between Byzantium and Sassanid Persia.
You seriously underestimate the importance of the Helsinki Act and the preceding Ostpolitik, which legalised the existence of two Germanies and had the Bonn government drop territorial claims on Poland and Czechoslovakia. Oh, speaking of Czechoslovakia, the “normalisation” of the Prague Spring
didn’t even earn the Soviets a slap on the wrist.
For most analysts of the period, these trends meant that Communist supremacy in Eastern Europe was not going to end any time soon.
However, you seem to follow the sort of Peaceful Fourth Reich national triumphalism that I have all too often observed in its natural habitat (“With our mighty economy, the glorious Bundesrepublik has done more to conquer Europe than the Kaiser and That Guy With The Moustache combined! Heil Merkel!”). Meaning these might be painful and suppressed memories for you.
As I understand it, the Helsinki process opened up space for dissidence in the Eastern European states, so in the end it probably contributed to the undermining of Soviet power.
As if there had ever been any chance of getting those territories back…
What should have been done in your opinion?
Sorry, but if you’re coming to me with crap like that, you can just fuck off, I won’t stand to be mocked as some German do-gooder pacifist.
It’s not just a matter of terror. And yes, after Stalin (and especially after Khruschev) the Soviets became much easier to deal with.
The entire ideology of “equality” is literally Satanic. Communism is a Christian heresy which replaces the return of Jesus Christ and the Divine Kingdom with the classless society and the abolition of the state. For prophets instead of Moses or John the Baptist you get Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
And yes, this implicates the current ideology in the West just as much as communism.
It’s also simply wrong.
As Hans Hugo von Kleist said, “A nation without class divisions is but a mere horde, like the Huns.”
Well yes, since I’m far right, I don’t like “equality” much either, but sorry, with all due respect, “communism is evil” isn’t exactly an edgy statement. It could just as well come from someone like Paul Ryan or some other establishment “conservative”.
Try “Human rights is evil” and look how people react to that…
Who said I was trying to be edgy? I was simply making a matter of fact statement.
And yes, “human rights” are indeed extremely evil.
I’m among friends here (mostly) so I am generally not trolling you guys, especially you as I respect you.
The truth of the matter is that the medieval Holy Roman Empire was better on these questions than we moderns are. Not perfect of course–they had their own problems.
The idea that all people deserve equal rights (and the equalitarians strangely exclude children and foreigners) is simply absurd.
Mr. Karlin, thank you for setting the record straight for everybody to see. Unfortunately it won’t help much to change minds of people like Martyanov because they see what they want to see.
It was on these pages at unz.com that I discovered for the first time that allegation which are clear libels against Solzhenitsyn existed. This somewhat dampened my optimism for the future of Russia. I did not realize that the damage done by 70 years of Bolshevik rule would be that deep. Martyanovs eventually will die out and hopefully their children will not inherit nonsensical beliefs of their parents.
LOL, Karlin–you should do better than that. There are so many labels out there. For example: take me, not only I am misguided “vatnik” but I am also a Colorad, but I am a Colorad of guided variety. Moreover, there are vatniks who also are very guided and they sometimes combine some properties of Colorads and Stalinists, but some of them could be even involved into this Satanic cult of Patriotism and then there are those truly scary (especially for you) professionals;-) You, know, people who have actual skills. Have a good day.
The other day I was looking through some old school papers that my parents had kept prior to tossing them. There was one booklet of poems the kids in my group had composed according to some formula: “If I ruled the world…”
It was really quite fascinating to read what seemed, in many cases, to be a snapshot of politics at age 11. I think I could have placed at least 70% of them into camps. Several of these people I later went to high school with. I got to know some of them pretty well. Several people wrote about curing AIDs or electric cars or saving endangered animals. Some wrote about taxes.
One guy I know particularly well – my mouth nearly dropped open. He said something like “there would be no more communism.” I was so surprised because I would consider him far left. It hit me that this sort of moral rhetoric had probably bitten into him. We had a safe outlet for virtue signalling, back then. Not so, anymore.
Of course, I mean relatively safe – for us. Not if you were an Afghani or Vietnamese, etc.
You are smart. What I don’t understand is how can you misinterpret those words. It needs no expertise to understand the words of a layperson. He didn’t call on the US to nuke the USSR. (He also apparently at least once refused to meet Reagan because he thought Reagan’s other guests and his entourage were enemies of Russian patriotism.)
So why don’t you read those words once more with an open mind? I don’t really have an opinion on Solzhenitsyn one way or another, only having read Ivan Denisovich (which was good, but not exceptionally so), so I have no dog in this fight.
Now, here is a question for you: which country you are a “Patriot” of? You don’t even have a Russian citizenship as far as I’m aware, and you enjoy living in America. 🙂
No, not remotely a call for the US to launch a nuclear attack on the USSR.
But still, deeply embarrassing for Russian fans of Solzhenitsyn from today’s perspective.
Isn’t “a concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity is taking place and it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until it comes with a crowbar to break through your borders?” the most prescient part of the whole speech?
What’s happened to the USA in the years since he made it?
On the level of stupid, it is only second to the canard about Solzhenitsyn having been a KGB informer
We’ve also been told, by commenters here, that he was working for the CIA. Can we also safely assume that this is equally untrue?
It is the revelation of a hostility to Russia as such, to her people and to the country as distinct from the state structure, which is characteristic of a significant part of the American educated community, American financial circles and, alas, even of some of your advisers. Such a frame of mind is pernicious for the future of both our nations.
Nothing like a prophet that could see into the 21st century.
He may be deliberately lying. He has lied before.
Alternatively:
He is certainly not dumb, but he is not as intelligent as he pretends to be. He likes to insult others and obfuscate with technical terms when he loses arguments but in the end his background is that of someone who finished a second-tier military academy, had a brief and mediocre career in the late-era Soviet Navy, came to the USA fairly young, yet unlike other emigres failed to really succeed, working as a tutor and graphic designer (this is all public info he himself posted). This may explain his nostalgia for Sovok.
Combine his mediocre thinking with his love of the USSR and you have a small chance that he is incapable of seeing what is right front of him. Sad. But most likely he is lying, in service to the Soviet cause.
Sovok was despicable, but at least I can understand where Martyanov is coming from. As a former Soviet officer, it is natural that he retained some loyalty for that regime. What I can never understand is the mindset of these radical Ukrainian nationalists, who live somewhere in North America. lol These are comical people, and not at all succesful.
Some of the foreign Communists supported by Brezhnev were as evil as any Bolsheviks of the early Soviet era.
For instance, Stasi leader Markus Wolfe, the inventor of the “zersetzung” psychological torture technique, or Joe Slovo, the father of “necklacing” in South Africa.
Certainly.
Most of them are children or grandchildren of nationalists from Ukraine, staying true to and pursuing their ancestors’ dreams. They have avoided assimilation after several generations, they are materially doing well (average incomes higher than white average in their countries, they have gotten into some positions of power), and Ukraine is becoming more like what they want it to be.
Why do you think they are not successful?
You don’t have to agree, or accord validity to someone’s views, to appreciate that they are enjoyable to read.
Martyanov is one of the better commentators, even as you disagree with everything he says. I’m skipping about half the comments overall, but I’m trying to usually read his ones.
Think about:
All this said – I don’t agree with his views and he would probably throw me off his ship (well probably he will throw you off before me, and in the area with all the sharks).
Well yes, but you could argue just as well that the US supported jihadis in Afghanistan who deliberately murdered female schoolteachers, or Latin American military dictatorships who had their goons rape pregnant women.
I’m glad the Soviet Union’s gone (obviously very glad there are no Soviet troops anymore in my country), but I don’t see the point of Manichaean moralism.
To be sure, he brings a much-needed and unique perspective here. We don’t often get the opportunity to read what a Soviet officer thinks, and because of his background he has specific professional knowledge that few people here have. But when he brags about himself or demeans others it’s a bit ridiculous, given who he is (graduate of second-tier military academy, brief unremarkable career). And his dishonesty should be kept in mind.
Agreed, even if one disagrees with him, Martyanov’s perspective is very interesting.
He just shouldn’t be so hard on AK, it’s sad how vitriolic their interactions have become.
Not really:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
They are doing better than niggers and Mexicans, but overall it’s a picture of mediocrity.
PS: “doing well” from AP should become a meme. “Lviv is doing well”. lol
You can’t define an ideology as “evil” because you do not believe in evil. You can only say that in your opinion it is creepy and not constructive. But since it does meet those descriptions you cannot find fault with someone else identifying it as evil, unless he does so on grounds which are false by his own criteria.
From your link, that you dishonestly refused to post:
White $61,349
So Ukrainian is above the white average. About $5,000 per year above the white average.
And so naturally you refused to post:
Similar pattern with per capita income:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_per_capita_income
White: $32,910
Ukrainian: $39,785
Ukrainian is lower than Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Scottish but higher than English, Italian, German, Polish, Irish, Dutch, French.
::::::::::
You are rather foolish to be so brazenly dishonest, Felix.
Was Markus Wolfe really that evil (not suggesting he wasn’t evil to some degree — so was Alan Dulles, for that matter — just wondering whether he was as existentially evil as the comment suggests)?
I suspect “White” in these surveys includes the “Hispanics”, so it’s lower than it should be. Medium household income for non-Hispanic whites in the US is actually around 65000.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/233324/median-household-income-in-the-united-states-by-race-or-ethnic-group/
Let’s face it: Ukrainian nationalists are a bunch of proud, angry, but ultimately very mediocre people, despite your attempts to portray them otherwise. Одним словом – селюки. LOL
Well, by world historical standards Stasi probably wasn’t that evil, they didn’t do mass murder or anything of the sort.
DDR was still a pretty bad system though, I wouldn’t have wanted to live in a state that maintained a vast network of informers (sometimes even spying on their close relatives).
I’m not really sure though if discussions about “evil” are enlightening. But maybe I’m already too morally jaded.
Wiki uses data from the 2015 census. For some reason Ukrainian Americans do better on both 2016 census and 2014 in relative and absolute terms:
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk
So in 2016 Ukrainian American media household income was $72,449 compared to $71,925 for Scottish, $71,172 for Polish Americans, $70,454 for Czechs, $64.187 for Scotch-Irish, etc.
See my other post. Your link here is for 2016. In 2016 median household income for Ukrainian Americans was $72,449:
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk
That is well above the white non-Hispanic median income of $65,041 for that year.
So in summary, you wrote:
Well, Ukrainian diaspora are a lot wealthier than most other white people, in some of the richest countries on the planet. They have avoided assimilation to a greater degree than have others, retaining their identity after generations. Some have achieved positions of considerable influence (i.e, Foreign Minister of Canada). And Ukraine is becoming more like what they want it to be.
So rather than lie like you did last time Felix, why don’t do try to honestly answer the question –
How are they “not at all successful”, as you claimed?
His stock went up a bit after it turned out that the American and satellite strikes in Syria were probably just as ineffectual as the Russians claimed it.
The supposed Russian superiority in missiles definitely got more believable.
The liturgy and the folk art may account for some of that. Odds are, the Catholic parish in your area for which it’s worth it to drive 40 miles to attend would be the Ukrainian parish.
See here:
http://www.stjohnbaptistucc.com/
Well sure, most Ukrainian ancestor people are probably doing well economically in America or Canada.
But I’m not sure her Ukrainian ancestors were a good role-model to use, or reducing unfair stereotypes:
https://www.fondsk.ru/news/2017/03/02/glavnaja-tajna-hristi-friland-43618.html
My question was really about Markus Wolf in particular, not the Stasi in general. Given that most of his activities were external (I think), I had the impression that he was more or less simply playing the Cold War game (very effectively) and that there was indeed a certain mutual respect (if not admiration) with his Western counterparts.
Although perhaps I am unduly influenced by the John Le Carré character Karla (nemesis of George Smiley), for whom he was supposedly the model (although Le Carré denied it, I believe).
I can’t claim to be that well-informed about Markus Wolf’s activities tbh, and my impression is that a lot of what East Germany’s security services did abroad will probably never be known, because there’s no documentation and those who might know don’t talk. So it’s hard to be sure what they really did or what might just be myth.
E.g. a case like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Eigendorf#Death_under_suspicious_circumstances
It seems quite possible to me that the East Germans murdered that guy, but we’ll probably never know for sure. Similarly, it’s known that the East Germans supported Rote Armeefraktion terrorists, and Palestinian terrorists as well…but quite how far that went, is hard to discern. Some of the murders attributed to the 3rd generation of Rote Armeefraktion in the 1980s (which were never solved) used very sophisticated methods that made the involvement of foreign intelligence services seem likely…but who knows?
It’s of course true that a lot of dubious things happened during the Cold War in Western security services as well.
As for Le Carré’s novels, I read them a long time ago as a teenager…tbh what has stuck most in my mind is the strong theme in his 1960s novels of West Germany being basically an unreconstructed Nazi country (A small town in Germany is especially explicit in this regard, but it’s also present as a subtext in the early Smiley novels), which despite some elements of truth strikes me as a rather misguided view. So I have my doubts about the accuracy of other elements of his novels.
Le Carre is a globalist. If I recall, he decried Brexit, and any attempt to control immigration into Britain. I wouldn’t say he’s an especially good writer either. That he is famous is more a reflection on the genre than anything else.
Yes, I don’t have the most positive opinion of him either…can’t agree with his political judgment.
I’ve only read his Cold War novels though, don’t know about his more recent ones.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/07/john-le-carre-on-trump-something-truly-seriously-bad-is-happening
He’s a witless crank who likely hasn’t had a peer-to-peer conversation with a serious interlocutor in 40 years.
It’s pretty amazing how three Cornwells (Bernard, David and Patricia, although the last only by injection) have become bestselling authors. I think David Cornwell is a great spinner of yarns whose observations on the human condition need to be taken with a grain of salt. I have always enjoyed his novels, because he really knows how to tell a story. But the way he equated both sides during the Cold War, because of the West’s occasional less than ethical maneuvers, was more than a little overwrought. He had a particular contempt for Americans that way pre-dated Trump.
It’s a bullshit article (I skimmed through it), though you’d have to be familiar with Ukraine during the war to see that.
Dilo was the newspaper of the anti-Banderist, moderate UNDO movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_National_Democratic_Alliance
He was an editor of this newspaper.
During the war he edited another newspaper. All newspapers had to go through the Nazi censors, and were funded in part by the Nazi authorities. So the article makes much of the fact that he “edited a Nazi-sponsored newspaper.” He probably had to include or write some anti-Semitic things once in a while too. Perhaps he should have simply been unemployed and not used his writing talents?
One of my grandparents was a medical student in Lviv during the war. This involved treating Germans at times. A similar article can be made about this situation.
I found a detailed article in a Canadian newspaper:
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/paula-simons-school-of-hate-was-foreign-affairs-minister-chrystia-freelands-grandfather-a-nazi-collaborator
Another Reich subsidiary. Not impressed.
The poor fellow ‘had to’ disseminate Nazi propaganda. Of course. No doubt he burned with anguish and wept bitter tears as he did so.
Yes. That is what a non-Nazi would have done. But Chomiak, being a Nazi, did the opposite.
A tremendous sin in itself.
UNDO declared support for the Polish state when the Nazis invaded.
So in your world nobody should have written anything under Nazi occupation.
I suspect in schools something pro-German had to be announced to students. Teachers were paid from the government. For this reason, in your world, teachers should have stopped teaching during the time of the occupation.
No evidence the man was a Nazi.
Really. So a non-Nazi writer or journalist would have spent four years in silence, rather than write in a newspaper because the authorities mandated that 25% of its content be German propaganda. Do you also believe that everyone writing in French, Dutch, Polish, etc. newspapers (even about the weather, or about plays, etc.) was a Nazi too?
So in your world, under occupation, people should not have studied medicine or worked as physicians or nurses because this entailed treating Germans too.
Of course, Germans collected some agricultural products. So in your world, people should not have farmed either because that would be collaboration, feeding the Germans..
Sound and fury, signifying nothing. Germany doesn’t seem to have been overly troubled by such pro forma objections.
Yes. The chance to pen local gossip didn’t justify spouting Reich gibberish.
In Poland, the Germans did their level best to suppress schooling at all levels, at least for Poles, so this was not really a consideration in Chomiak’s time and place.
Working for a Reich propaganda organ is pretty good evidence. No doubt Chomiak was one to take his politics from the same source as his paycheck, but during those years it’s evident that he believed what his masters believed.
Nazi is as Nazi does. Those who really objected to the New Order didn’t involve themselves in its public life.
Ideally, but terrorised and subjugated eastern European farmers are not to be compared with willing and favoured Reich servants like Chomiak or your grandparent.
There is no evidence that Chomiak writer anything pro-Nazi in the paper he edited.
And yet schools existed. To your apparent dismay, someone was teaching children under the Occupation.
And in your world, every school was a Nazi indoctrination vehicle.
So “ideally”, in your world, people and their families should have starved to death (the result of nobody farming) rather than give the Germans some % of their crops, as was demanded of them.
Good example of your morality.
My grandparent was a medical student. Treating Germans occasionally was required. You consider medical students and physicians to be “favoured Reich servants.” In your world, people should not have practiced medicine if this meant sometimes also treating Germans. Letting non-Germans go untreated and die was a price you wanted to have been paid.
Another example of your morality.
How much death do you wish upon people?
Editorial responsibility. Streicher didn’t personally write everything in Der Sturmer either.
Not sure where or how this is apparent to you.
Reich-sanctioned schooling for Poles was worse than worthless. Perhaps you are unaware of Himmler’s instructions on the subject:
The ‘someone’ teaching children under occupation was the people running the underground schools.
The Reich didn’t permit any other kind.
Ideally nobody would have remained under German rule. Ideally they would flee to anywhere that the swastika did not fly. But ideals are only that.
Being allowed to continue his studies in his own city was terribly generous treatment for an easterner to receive. Students in the Polish universities were less fortunate.
The Germans you refer to would have included military personnel, SS, Government-General officials and the like. Their survival meant death for others. Their deaths meant life for others. Practicing medicine under the Reich’s auspices was your opa’s own choice. No doubt he was happy with it.
Upon Germany? Not more than strictly necessary.
Has Freeland ever spoken out against Bandera? Her faulty biases against Russia are clear cut.
Depending on the situation, there should (out of fairness) be some sympathetic understanding to those who had limited choices under Nazi occupation. Consider the scenario of that period where you’re taken prisoner and given the choices of either doing something the occupier wants, or going to a prison with the understanding that the conditions are horrid.
Under these circumstances, some carried on in an ethically decent enough way unlike some others.
I make these observations as someone who absolutely loathes the anti-Russian bigotry promoted by the Cold War era created pro-Stepan Bandera Captive Nations Committee.
The newspaper Chomiak edited wasn’t Der Sturmer. It was a Ukrainian newspaper where 75% of the contents had nothing to do with Nazism but that was required to include 25% Nazi propaganda content. No evidence that Chomiak wrote any of the propaganda articles.
The instructions were not fully realized. At any rate, even teaching basic writing and math was something.
Medical schools were kept open.
Nonsense. An ill German official would be replaced by another one if he died. Nobody’s life would be saved if some bureaucrat in the administration went untreated and was replaced by another one. As for military personnel – it wasn’t a front-line hospital sending people back to battle. Saving such lives would not have meant death for others. OTOH abandoning the field of medicine altogether would have just meant a lot of untreated and dead non-Germans.
You’d be satisfied to let untold numbers of innocent civilians die, just so that some Germans would die too.
According to your moral standards people should not have practiced medicine under German occupation. More civilians should have died than did. The hundreds of millions under occupation failed to all run away, maybe you think they deserved it.
The people with highest IQ that ever lived, Bertrand Russell and John von Neumann, advocated for preventive nuclear attack against Soviet Union from the beginning of Cold War. Just to be curious, what was Solzhenitsyn’s IQ?
Your case is that Visti Krakivski wasn’t a Nazi newspaper because it wasn’t entirely devoted to extolling the glory of the Eternal Reich, and that Mike Chomiak wasn’t a Nazi propagandist because he didn’t set his name to, for example, the piece gloating over the failure of the Dieppe operation. That is a terribly weak and unconvincing position, and I am quite sure you realise that.
False dichotomy. The choice was not between working of the Reich or treating nobody at all.
Your German friends certainly think so.
Again, the ordinary fellow is not to be compared with a favoured servant. Chomiak had a cushy number and he was undoubtedly glad to get it.
It wasn’t a Nazi newspapaer becaue its editors and writers weren’t Nazis, 75% of its content wasn’t Nazi, and the 25% that was, was as a requirement by the authorities.
Yes it was. Physicians don’t magically produce medications and instruments on their own.
No, you do.
You believe that people should not have gone to medical school or worked in hospitals and clinics during the occupation because a condition of doing so was occasional treating Germans. You accuse such people of being collaborators and call them “favoured servants.”
If no one studies medicine or works in hosptials or clinics many regular innocent civilians die.
Therefore, you prefer for innocent civilians to die. Just as long as a few Germans die too.
That you are a bloodhirsty and malicious creature is well-established. You have gloated over the death of your own cousin, for example. This is simply yet another manifestation of your persnal morality.
LOL, Felix has decided to once again hide after his dishonesty was exposed, as usual.
You are free to stand upon your own definition, wrong as it is.
Descending into bare contradiction. Well, you have your point of view. Enjoy it.
At last. Getting a rise out of you is difficult but it’s all the more satisfying for that. Given that your creed is Ukrainian integral nationalism I’d say you have enough malice and bloodlust for us both, but I appreciate what vituperation you offer.
Funny that an argument over the ethics of working for the Reich is what gets you going.
Make yourself useful and say some prayers for his wretched soul as I already have. It’s the least you can do for one of your own.
I object to mindless death of innocent people. You support it, as has been shown. My description of you is accurate.
My creed is no kind of nationalism. I prefer traditional prenationalistic states such as Austria-Hungary or the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I see signs that there may be a return to some such order. That having been said, nationalism is, of course, generally a lesser evil than Bolshevism or other forms of self-destruction.
Claim what you wish.
Where do you see this? The European Union is the only entity in existence that resembles the medieval supra-national empires at all.
For ‘self-destruction’ Euro-nationalism of the 20th century is unmatched.
Then you should adjust your contemporary political sympathies. Quite significantly.
An interpretation worthy of Timothy Snyder himself. Well done.
On reflection, I’m not quite satisfied with it – perhaps you could come up with a more florid and overblown one? That might be fun.
Just remember the prayer for cousin idiot.
I observe trends in parts of the EU.
You must mean Ukraine? On the one hand, you have a government defending its borders and fighting rebels and their foreign allies within those borders. In the other hand, you have a government supporting rebels in another country in such a way that ensures the war’s continuation. A reasonable and decent person, the type doesn’t refer to a country’s conscripts in this war as “genetic waste” and hope fervently for their deaths, would be able to see who is wrong there.
It’s in essence a similar situation to Syria. only much less barbaric, with the Russiam state doing to European Christians what the West, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia do to Arabs.
That you support this is understandable, given who you are.
Your words reveal you, with no interpretation being necessary.
Detailed here already, no need to repeat.
errmmmm……you have an ILLEGAL “government” you fuckwit ( one now entirely run by Americans, Canadians, Gruzians, Lithuanians and Poles…anybody except Ukrainians) that came to power against it’s own Constitution and UN rules and immediately starting murdering and other war crimes against it’s own citizens, like the crazed-loser Bandera-fucktards they are. On top of this, just before their despicable and cowardly war crimes started , they appointed Oligarchs as governors of a few regimes….even though the fake revolution (funded by the CIA) was based on the myth that they were trying to get rid of the Oligarchs ( the Oligarchs now control far more a larger slice of Ukraine, albeit a Ukraine that is a much,much,much smaller pie of faeces, than it was before. On top of this their Parliamentarians immediately tried to introduce a law on banning Russian as an official language at majority regional level.
The people defending their borders are the brave rebels you lowlife cunt…the Banderatards are defending ( and hilariously failing) their IMF parasite payments you dipshit….in between this the Banderatard “Cyborgs” are killing themselves in shame ( 1 in 9 of their deaths, against a bunch of miners using near-obselete weaponry, has been because of suicide you retard). Iit’s their own lying, murderous, failure-mentality shitheadness that it’s prolonging the war you lowlife prick.
Whereas in Syria you had a LEGAL government, actually defending it’s borders against terrorists, not peaceful and great , brave, loyal civilians as in Donbass. They Syrian government only started launching airstrikes more than a year after the war stated…….the “Ukrainian” vermin started their cowardly airstrikes a matter of days.
Whereas in Syria the people in the rebel -held areas are desperate to escape…..in Ukraine they are desperate for the rebels to hold on
One thing that is so laugh-out-loud funny/tragicomic, is this:-
Ukraine exports to Canada?……………………50 million USD
Russia exports to Canada?…………………….600 million+ USD
This, even with sanctions, no great energy relationship of Russia with Canada
Not much better on the imports side…….there’s not reason for Canada to import it’s high-tech products to a Ukraine with large parts of it’s area living under African conditions, no compatability of their high-quality services to be used in the chaotic failed state of Ukraine
This embarrassing moronic failure of the artificial, creation of Communists, state of “Ukraine”, is that in normal conditions, Russia should be exporting , or aim to be exporting $6billion+ to Canada each year. That Ukraine is doing only $50 million…….(so these primitive nazi dipshits can wear their Vishivanka’s twice a year at some gathering that makes African tribal events seem highly sophisticated by comparison)……..is incredible (but not really surprising for anyone who actually knows anything about Ukraine)
President Yanukovich, in early 2014 was doing that. The present coup-imposed regime has no such justification.
I take the rhetoric of the Ukrainian regime and its media, and turn it back upon its authors. If you don’t like it, you should engage in a little critical reflection upon the cause you love so dear.
What you’ll actually do is complain about Donbass residents not wasting their lives in wretched churches where morons make idols out of hillbilly psycho murderers. Save it – I’ve heard it before and it doesn’t get more compelling from repetition.
Only on the DNR side, hence the eagerness of Ukrainian troops to surrender rather than fight to the death, as Russian soldiers fighting the Ukrainian-backed terrorists in Chechnya generally had to. The Ukrainian forces are nearly as cruel as Jihadis, only much lazier and more cowardly.
Schismatics, loopy Protestant sects and pagans who’d have us all sacrificing Jewish virgins to Chernobog or whoever? Not a crowd that’s in a position to play that card, doctor, not at all.
Vishivanka’s actually cool, don’t knock it just because it’s popular with absolute dickheads.
Ukrainian folk culture in general is the one thing about the place that’s not wretched or embarrassing (except possibly the chub haircut, still can’t stand that).
Yanukovich wasn’t fighting against a bunch of foreign fighters. He became deeply unpopular, faced a native rebellion, in terms of national support he was outnumbered 2:1, and his power/support base was far from the capital.
10% of Donbas fighters have been non Ukrainian citizens volunteers. Donbas is largely armed by the Russians. There are Russian trainers and there have been Russian soldiers/trainers on the ground (number vastly exaggerated by Ukrainians, but still at least a few hundred).
Again, on a much milder level, Poroshenko is in the position of Assad while Russia is playing the role of Saudi Arabia/USA/Turkey/Israel.
So either you were insincere (which, actually, speaks better of you) or you are just as bad as the worst elements on the Ukrainian side. Congratulations.
So you believe the fairytales about crucified children. Good to know.
In your world Catholics are not real Christians. In the real world, the Russian state in Ukraine is making possible a war that results in the largest number of deaths of European Christians in the world today. The Russian state could have chosen to do nothing, in which case Donbas would have been about as quiet as Kharkiv, with thousands of lives saved. Or it could have chosen to annex the territory as in Crimea, with also thousands of lives saved. But instead it has chosen to bleed a European Christian country for several years.
The Maidan mob had Belorussian and Georgian contingents, as well you know, and the DNR army has always been primarily Ukrainian.
As above, and your ‘native rebellion’ was fuelled by external interference.
If unpopular presidents should be overthrown by force, then Poroshenko ought to be leaving office on a tumbril right about now.
There was no justification whatsoever for armed rebellion.
Ukrainian soldiers being painted as the victims does not inspire calm, measured responses.
How could somebody pick any of those ghouls as ‘the worst’? Among Denisenko, Butkevich, Tuka, Zhebrivsky, Kirilenko, Parubiy, Biryukov, Geraschenko and the rest, even Irina Farion is barely an outlier.
They aren’t, but that’s not really the point. You don’t get to persecute Orthodox Christians and then cite Christian fellowship to avoid retaliation.
The Ukrainian regime started the war and can end it any time they wish, and at no risk to themselves because the Russian government has no interest in further exploiting their weakness, nor in allowing the DNR to.
Kharkov is paying the price for failing to arm itself, and the Russian assistance to the DNR was downright niggardly until at least August. There would still have been plenty of bloodshed if Ukraine had been allowed to win, but this way many of the dead have been the Ukrainian regime’s supporters. Not a good outcome, but better than allowing the Maidanauts to achieve their aims without cost to themselves.
A happy thought. But that was never going to happen with such cautious and risk-averse liberals as one finds in the Kremlin. Nor would it have been enough, since Donbass must trade with the rest of Ukraine.
Low single digit percentage, if that. Not 10%. At one point the Donbas People’s Prime Minister and 1 of his 2 vice ministers (the same guy the Russians used to set up the Transistria Republic in Moldova) were Russian citizens. Who were the most famous warlords? “Strelkov” and “Motorola” – both Russians.
There’s no comparison with respect to foreign involvement.
You know it was not only because of Yanukovich’s unpopularity. It was also because he had also amassed all power semi-legally and undemocratically, making it dclear to the general population that h was not going to go peacefully. Such conditions do not apply to Poroshenko, nor did they apply to Yushchenko.
Only to someone whose perceptions are warped.
I didn’t mention retaliation. I pointed out the fact that the Russian State’s policies are killing more European Christians than do the policies of any government on Earth now. Claiming that many of those dead European Christians aren’t real Christians because they recognize the Pope is silly to any reasonable person.
War started when people, led mostly by non-citizens (first People’s’ PM was a Russian from Moscow), and unelected activists from marginal groups, took advantage of chaos and a weak central government to split from the county’s central government (you will be inclined to make make an absurd comparison to Maidan, which was led by actual Ukrainian citizens and which brought to power elected politicians who had won the popular vote in the last national election prior to Maidan)
Ukraine’s government is operating on Ukraine’s legally recognized territory and attempting to establish control over its own territory. Russia’s government is sending volunteers, military advisers, and bullets into another state for the purpose of killing government forces of that other state. No comparison.
Yeah, I’m sure that the people of Kharkiv are sad that their city has not become a warzone, a playground for petty-criminals-from-Russia-turned-warlords like Motorola, with a trashed economy as in Donbas, thousands dead, 100,000s fled. Paid a price for not arming themselves, indeed.
I’m sure you would have wished such a fate on those people, a price worth paying (not by you, naturally) for further weakening Ukraine.
Probably hundreds, not thousands (and counting) dead.
Plenty of comparison – foreign militants fighting on Maidan and in the Ukrainian regime forces, foreign nationals appointed to high government offices, foreign government officials flying in to intimidate the lawful authorities promote disorder – you live in a glass house, put down the stone.
It’s no secret that the canonical church is stronger than Denisenko’s larpers.
When the Maidanauts waged war upon the authorities.
Legally and democratically, and in accordance with Ukrainian political practice.
The defenders of democracy being the people who seized power by force, suppressed their opposition by violence, and waged war against those who wouldn’t accept their rule.
The threat to democracy being the man who wouldn’t fight when the election was stolen from him in 2004, and who wouldn’t fight even when he was shot at in 2014.
Risible. Absolutely risible.
Kharkov got to enjoy the same ruined economy as the rest of the Ukraine, lost its own share of young men to the war anyway, and has been afflicted by Ukraine’s own warlords ever since. Such great fortune, to host Andriy Biletsky instead of Arsen Pavlov!
Your logic, as always, is that everything would have been fine if the people you hate hadn’t fought back. Since the Maidanauts were the first to take up arms that argument applies strongest to them: if they had just gone home there’d have been no war and the thousands you claim to care about would still be alive. Who cares if their politicians won the last Parliamentary election? Yanukovich won the last Presidential election and had the perfect right to stay in office until his term was up.
My recollection of the events is that the Russians and their numerous local sympathizers tried to do pretty much the same thing all over Eastern and Southern Ukraine. I think that the different outcomes at different places were mainly a result of the different level of popular support for separatists and, in consequence, the different ability of the authorities loyal to Kiev to control power.
Likewise, Ukraine could have chosen to do in Donbass as it did in Crimea, with thousands of lives saved.
As it happened, Ukraine chose to use all its might in Donbass whereas Russia only used limited, half-covert support for the rebels with the result being thousands of civilians dead. As in any military conflict, most of these civilian casualties were caused by the forces advancing and regaining control of the civilian areas. Namely, the Ukrainians. Once the Russians stepped up their support, the Ukrainian advance was thwarted and civilian casualties were drastically reduced.
Whatever their past decisions, if Russia now retired its military support for the rebels, a bloodshed and massive displacement of Russo-phones seems guaranteed. Some months ago the head of the OSCE mission Hug himself had to take cover when his party came under fire from Ukrainian servicemen wielding the Right Sector banner. This kind of volunteers have been made part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They will not enter Donetsk and Lugansk in a brotherly mood.
It is not clear to me that the Kremlin has a great desire to prolong the situation in Donbass but, absent the above scenario of unconditional withdrawal, its choices look very limited because Ukraine today is unable to fulfill its part of the Minsk Agreements. Last time an attempt was made to introduce the agreed-upon special status legislation, bloody street protests in Kiev stopped the process.
Christian or not-Christian, as long as the “international community” turns a blind eye to Ukraine not fulfilling its part of the agreement and only demands an unrealistic withdrawal of all Russia support for the rebels, we’re going to continue seeing a lot of civilian suffering on European soil.
….Motorola or Givi, or any number of them would have been a great improvement on Kravchuk, Kuchma, Yushchenko,Turchynov or Poroshenko you mentally disturbed, spambot scumbag. Again this is just projection from a POS failure you because thieves, warlords,Nazi’s ( not to mention Americans,Chechens,Gruzians,Poles,Lithuanians, US funded Afghans and Canadians) control the Ukrainian pseudo state….but as I said before…if a POS freak like you loses your anonymity on here,it’s a certainty you commit suicide out of shame.
…”trashed economy as in Ukraine” ( a country that is now African in all but name now….there I fixed it for you ,you crazed fuckwit
Again…fake news. Suicide isn’t an Orthodox Chrisitian teaching….it does seem to be mandatory in the Ukrainian army though. Dnepropetrovsk, has many soldiers, basically less fighting for their pseudo-nation but mercenaries/ on the payroll of the biggest Oligarch there…Kolomoisky, who coincidentally, was Governor during the time the illegal war was initiated. Deaths of Nazi cunt soldiers from Lvov in the last 2 years alone have been more than for Kharkov and the Kiev-controlled parts of Lugansk and Donetsk, combined you sick lowlife.
errmmm……pretty much all the citizens of the fake state of Ukraine who organised the revolt, like Gubarev, were locked up within weeks of Maidan, long before Strelkov even entered the territory you retard. That and the fact your retarded algorithm misses out- the Kiev vermin started killing it’s citizens before Strelkov even entered ( in other words he arrived because of the Kiev puppet state war crimes you fuckup)
….hahaha that fake argument, insecure, insidious retardness is a bit like saying the people of Paris should be proud their country , weakly capitulated against the Nazi’s as quick as they did, because their 1940-45 death toll was relatively small. In reality the Poles capitulated even more meekly but still got it’s country destroyed and its people annihilated to the point of near extinction until the Soviets saved them. In other words, the responsibility for war crimes and destruction is with those who commit them ( the Kiev vermin) not the victims, because consequences when dealing with evil can be unpredictable.
hahahaha! So the insiduous retarded cunt is trying to deny dismembered mother? obliterated Babushka? Sniper-fire killed 15 year old? and sure, crucified boy most likely did occur, together with thousands of war crimes and tens of thousands of inhumane acts by the Ukronazis… and is hardly unexpected judging by some of the freaks in the Ukrainian militias ( or government for that matter) Thank God for the Russian media, the only side interested in telling the truth about Ukraine and the war there ( rather amusingly , even the western media has NO interest in what the Ukrainian media say about anything…..though that shouldn’t concern a POS as you, seeing as you don’t know Ukrainian or Russian)
Again…all retarded lies only promoted by the Soros funded dipshits. Now a suicidal freak like you probably has another 12 hours doing this nonsense on here…so I will leave your stupidity , and all the many, non-stop lies I haven’t bothered to reply to
Why don’t you stop that sorry habit of anonymously throwing insults to people you don’t know on the internet? It reflects very poorly on both yourself and the positions you defend.
Unlike any other Ukrainian nationalist I have found on the net, AP is able to engage in constructive debate when properly addressed to.
10% of Donbas fighters are foreigners. Perhaps 1%-2% of Ukraine’s forces have been foreign volunteers. There was no foreigner in the Ukrainian side as important as Motorola or Girkin.
So no real comparison.
The head of the Donbas state in the beginning was a foreigner from Moscow. 1 of his 2 vice ministers was another foreigner, the same guy who had earlier helped set up the Transnstria Republic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Antyufeyev
It has fewer members in non-Donbas Ukraine than the Kievan Church, but enough that there are plenty of dead members of the canonical Orthodox Church among Ukraine’s forces, and probably more members of this church within Ukraine’s borders than within Donbas.
“Legally” and “democratically”, in the manner of Maduro’s reforms in Venezuela. The rules were changed, so that under the new rules the opposition to Yanukovich’s was shut out of power despite winning the popular vote in the last parliamentary election. Prior to that, he had changed the judges and changed the rules to turn an elected Opposition parliament into a pro-Yanukovich parliament without any new elections.
It was quite clear that Yanukovich was becoming a dictator. Unfortunately for him, he had little popular support and a weak security force. The majority seized power. How terrible for those who had hitched their hopes onto that loser.
LOL. He wasn’t in charge, it was Kuchma. You know about all sorts of marginal nationalists but you didn’t know that?
No one was willing to fight for him, such was his popularity in Ukraine. Better to retire in a palace outside Moscow.
You think Ukraine’s economy is ruined. Very cute.
Would you like to compare the economy of Kharkiv to the economy of Donbas? Hmm..which is currently better? You might wish Donbas’ fate for Kharkiv, but it’s residents didn’t and don’t. It’s why they didn’t tolerate Russian Rambos on their territory and didn’t join them in such adventures.
Contempt is not hatred.
Compare Kharkiv 2018 to Donetsk 2018 and it is clear which place is more “fine.”
Moreover it wasn’t even about locals “fighting back” it was about foreigners having an adventure. Without them it would have been over long ago.
The Russian activists were claiming also Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, even Kiev. You would like if Ukraine simply abandoned half or more of it territory without firing a shot. But it is reasonably for a government of a country to fight for its own country’s territory. Not so, to send arms, volunteers, ammo, military advisers, and small numbers of troops into another country. Russian nationalists understand this when it comes to Syria but somehow forget this when it comes to Ukraine.
If Yanukovich decided to take a stand in Donbas where he was elected, you would have had a point. Instead it was Russian citizens Girkin and Pavlov leading battle-hardened Chechnya war vets for a state led by Russian citizen PM Borodai, fighting against a government headed by the Ukrainian parties who had won the last Ukrainian parliamentary election.
Generally correct, however the Russian fighters such as Girkin and Pavlov appeared in Donetsk. This was likely because the people who sent them understood that the locals were more receptive to them there than they were elsewhere. But it’s not like a homegrown movement would have been popular enough to get off the ground entirely on its own.
There were other factors involved – it seems the Donetsk oligarchs initially supported this (as a way of threatening Kiev’s new rulers), but then it got completely out of their control.
Perhaps. Or, if there was no resistance in Donbas, the actions would have moved to Kharkiv, or Dnipro, or along the Black Sea towards Odessa. Why wouldl they stop if no one offered any armed resistance? At some point a country’s government is going to resist attempts to seize its territory by separatists and foreign adventurers. It’s an entirely reasonable and legitimate thing for a government to do, be it Russia in Chechnya or Assad in Syria. Not reasonable or legitimate, is sending a lot of aid and military advisers to the rebels in some other country. And Ukraine has been far milder than either Russia in Chechnya or Assad.
I spoke to some people from Dnipropetrovsk, former Yanukovich voters, who supported ATO. “We did nothing in Crimea, so they took it and went for Donetsk. If we didn’t do anything in Donetsk they would have come to our city next.” A typical, and normal approach.
Correct.
Or, civilian casualties were caused by rebels and their non-Ukrainian allies digging in in inhabited areas rather than fighting in the open field. Do Russians blame Putin for the casualties in Grozny, or the Chechen fighters who chose to rebel and use inhabited areas as their fortresses? Assad for the casualties in Syrian cities caused by the government trying to reestablish control over its territory?
They are now kept at a constant trickle by the lack of military resolution.
Not impossible, but doubtful. This was the supposed fate of Odessa and Kharkiv but these threats never materialized (ridiculous propaganda about the so-called Odessa massacre aside). Leadership and officers would of course have to retire in Russia, as would anyone engaging in war crimes but large-scale massacres and destruction would be very unlikely. When Ukrainian forces took back Sloviansk and Kramatorsk such things weren’t happening.
The nature of a warzone. Surrender or retreat would make it no longer a warzone.
To be clear – I hope Ukraine does not ever retake Donbas. The place is a cesspool that had kept Ukraine down for 20+ years. The current boundary seems like a good one. But I point out that by not annexing the territory as it did Crimea, or letting Kiev take control, the Russian government is pursuing a policy that maximizes bloodshed.
The low quality of Ukraine’s foreign volunteers is immaterial, nor is the number of Russians highly relevant given how long Russia and Ukraine were the same country for.
More to it than the numbers you can threaten or cajole or the buildings you can steal, but Denisenko has never understood that and I don’t suppose you will either.
Undoing the changes imposed in 2004 by mob rule was by no means undemocratic. And Yanukovich is not the one who seized power and crushed the opposition by force. If you destroy and claim you had to do it to save it, you can expect to be laughed at.
Thank you for the admission. Note that the important word in that sentence isn’t ‘majority’.
Who said he was in charge? The election was stolen from him and he let it happen.
None of those named are marginal people, not even Farion.
The answer is Donetsk, where your nationalist friends will never set foot again (except perhaps as POWs).
They didn’t tolerate the nationalists. I remember seeing the video clips from the March street brawls – the nationalists lost and lost badly. People in Kharkov were under the impression that they could keep the Maidan out without having a war. They were mistaken.
You wanted to save lives? That would have done it.
The standards of conduct toward avowed enemies allow a more flexible definition of ‘reasonable’. And what goes around comes around – Ukraine abetted the activities of the UNA-UNSO terrorists and their Chechen allies for years.
He never made any attempt to defend the state or his own presidency.
Crowds in Donetsk called for just that. He lacked the resolve to do what was necessary, so they found better leaders.
Maidan seized power by force. You don’t get to cite earlier elections as sources legitimacy once you’ve ripped the existing constitutional order. Maidanauts ushered in rule by the gun, and it is just their ill luck that they were not quite as strong as they imagined.
Sheer numbers and importance are. And there is no comparison between the two situations.
Since he wasn’t in charge, he was in no position to let anything happen or not happen. Kuchma was the guy.
The majority was denied power through democratic elections due to Yanukovich, so it seized power. Do you find this controversial?
Has Yanukovich not decided to become a dictator, the Opposition who won the popular vote in the election would have therefore controlled the Parliament, none of his measures would have been ratified, there would have been gridlock until the next election, and no popular revolution.
Donetsk has thousands dead, hundreds of thousands fled, and an economy poorer than that of the poorest non-Donbas oblast.
You have a very funny idea of better. But then, you don’t have to live there.
Sure. And if Kiev and Lviv had also surrendered without a shot, even more. And if Russians demanded Poland surrender without a shot – more lives saved. Or it can be vice versa – Ukraine can demand parts of Russia, Russia should surrender them without a shot – to save lives. It’s a ridiculous argument.
The Ukrainian state made no territorial claims against Russia.
There were perhaps 200 Ukrainian volunteers in Chechnya. Some small numbers of weapons may have been smuggled in.
10% of the Donbas forces were Russians from Russia. In addition, there were a couple hundred actual Russian troops on the ground, fighting in key battles. There were Russian military advisers, plenty of Russian weapons and trainers.
Not comparable.
Because his own security forces abandoned him. Rather than grab a Kalashnikov and end up in a shootout to the death he opted for a comfortable retirement outside Moscow.
Couldn’t find locals or any significant elected local officials. Just happened that the PM was a Russian adventurer from Russia, as were two of the top military commanders. Looks like locals were mostly just passive.
Existing constitutional order was already destroyed by Yanukovich. Winners of the parliamentary election, prevented from getting power through the election thanks to Yanukovich’s destruction of the constitutional order, were forced to seize power by force. You would be very happy for the Ukrainian majority to meekly acquiesce to whatever the Sovok minority wanted (from seizing territory without shots fired, to accepting the shredding of the constitution in order to keep the minority in power, election results be damned) , but Ukraine’s majority didn’t go along with such a plan. Boo hoo for you.
The UN Human Rights Office found secret detention centers outside Kramatorsk and Sloviansk operated by the SBU. It documented multiple cases of torture, arbitraty arrests and even cases of killed and missing persons. This is all consistent with similar reports by HRW and Amnesty International. As we all remember, the rebels had been forced to flee that area but this didn’t prevent retribution on civilians that chose to remain. The UNHRO reported cases of ordinary civilians being arrested for the purpose of being swapped by POWs.
Perhaps the people you spoke to in Dnipro were exaggerating. Once the pro-Russians were defeated in the streets of Odessa and Kharkov, nothing much happened there anymore. The Novorossiya project (to the extent that it even existed) fizzled out and the Russians/separatists were even unable to prevent Ukraine from retaking most of the Donbass territory that they controlled. And that was 4 years ago, anyway. I doubt anyone in Dnipro or Kiev seriously fears a Russian invasion today.
My workmate from Kharkov (as he says every local calls their city) identifies himself as Russian whenever asked where he is from, even though he has a Polish/Ukrainian sounding surname. A friend from Odessa has an opposite view and says that “nobody” there wants to join Russia but this is hardly credible. Odessans elected a notoriously pro-Russian mayor. She also used to identify herself as Russian before the events of 2014 and was a member of a Russian expats group.
When you have such an allegiance problem is some parts of your country you don’t go Chechnya or Assad and disregard civilians’ lives to take control of the territory. Especially if you’re trying to join the EU and claiming to be more civilized than your Northern neighbor. There are much more humane choices, such as the referendums in Scotland and Quebec, the Czech example, the autonomous regions in Spain, the Swiss confederacy,…
Correct These cases, terrible as they are, occurred in the dozens. Victims seem to have been mostly enemy activists. And they occurred on the other side too. Remember Rybak?
It’s not a mass slaughter.
Nor does it compare to the thousands dead as a result of this ongoing conflict.
Terrible, and with perhaps a few hundred victims unfairly detained. Donbas removed, no need for swaps.
Sure. They had to be defeated, and the rebels have to be contained in Donbas and not allowed to move freely into other areas, in order to keep the peace in those other areas.
He is also a gangster. He got 52% of the vote. Your friend might be young and not many young people support Russia, but it may be different for pensioners. I only know one Odessan in the USA, a young guy, Russian-speaking with “Ukraine” stickers on his BMW.
Ukraine hasn’t, unlike Putin or Assad when faced with a similar problem. There have been single digit thousands civilians casualties in Ukraine. Compared to 100,000s in Syria and high 10,000s in Chechnya.
America has’t had such a problem since the Civil War but it has moved violently against far smaller scale problems (Waco).
It’s not a claim, as evidenced by the far lower amount of carnage.
In those regions separatist parties first won elections. Never happened in Ukraine outside Crimea, such parties never had more than single digit support. Referendums shouldn’t happen because Russia demands them. They are banned now, due to the war.
Thirty thousand violent morons do not a ‘majority’ make. You don’t get to cite Parliamentary majorities as an alibi when you’ve made the decision to win power by the gun and rule by murder.
The lawfully-elected president and his party revised the changes that the Orange set forced through by mob rule. One would think it would be a trivial matter to vote that president out at the coming elections, but the Maidan leaders had gained power and lost it before, and elections were far enough out that they still had plenty of time to shoot themselves in the foot. So they decided on rebellion and tyranny.
Then don’t make it yourself.
Avowed enemy nonetheless.
Perfectly comparable. Ukraine’s malice isn’t excused by its cowardice or its ineptitude.
Defeated and dispersed owing to lack of effective leadership from the top. They did not at any point ‘abandon’ the president.
Turchinov and Yatsenyuk, however, were indeed abandoned by the elements of the army in April 2014. But enough purging and brainwashing was applied to get the army into something that could pass for fighting spirit.
Your Right Sector friends presumably thought so. They got a painful and humiliating correction. But since you didn’t follow events at all you wouldn’t remember that.
Trading out useless regions party officials for relative unknowns is the sort of thing that happens in actual grass-roots uprisings. A coup d’etat like the Maidan replaces one set of familiar faces with another.
The Sovok is the absolute superior of the Ukrainian nationalist.Braver, smarter and tougher. The battlefields of Donbass testify to this.
You start from the premise that your side is entitled to absolute power, and every argument you come up with after that is just a reflexive grab for any plausible-sounding justification. So they won a Parliamentary election? Whoop dee do. This doesn’t entitle them to seize power if they don’t get what they want. It’s not a ‘destruction of the constitutional order’ where your side transfers power away from the president only for the other side to take it back when they manage to return to power. It’s just politics – if you lose power you gain it back by legal channels.
You are, in short, not a European – except perhaps in the late 30s sense. You don’t have the mindset that a citizen of a country of laws, checks and balances needs. I don’t suppose that will ever cause a problem for you – either in America, which no longer believes in these things either, or in the Ukraine, which looks like to continue with its reenactment of the Vyhovsky hetmanate for the foreseeable future.
Good luck to you.
I was disucssing the ~52% of the Ukriane’s voters who voted for anti-Yanukovuch parties in the election preceding the overthrow of Yanukovich, whose choice had been blocked by Yanukovich’s special election reforms, a problem rectified by Maidan which brought the national popular vote winners to power.
Changes ratifed/agreed upon by elected parliament and president. There had been a problem in that voters would choose ne parrty, only to have the elected representitives switch sides when paid off. These were the changes – ones meant to insure that the parilament actually reflected the wishes of voters – that you disapprove of. Since you are anti-Ukrainian, it makes sense that you would dislike measures designed to guarentee Ukrainians their desired representation.
But the other reforms came later, as you probably know but pretend you do not. Later reforms made elections first-past-the-post. So that if in a district 35% vote for Party of Regions, and 65% vote for three anti-Party of Regions parties but none of them have 35%, Party of Regions represents the district where 2/3 of the voters hate Yanukovich. A neat trick, but the ultimately it just led to Yanukovich’s overthrow because the people would not be denied their right to be represented one way or the other and he wasn’t capble of stopping them.
Girkin and Pavlov were locals?
Without massive Russian support the rebellion would have come to nothing, even against the shambling 2014 Ukranian army and untrained volunteers.
This must be why Lviv has low crime rates, beautiful clean streets, high level of education, low HIV rates, high life expectancy, low drug rates, and Donbas has the opposite of all these things.
Sovoks saved by Russia because this population of 6 million couldn’t on its own even fight off a virtually nonexistent Ukrainian military and a couple thousand utterly untrained volunteers. Too busy shooting up, robbing one another, aborting their children, and getting HIV, Sovoks as they are?
They won the previous parliamentary election also. When Yanukovich won his fluke presidential election (under 50% of the vote in a 2-person race, after a world-wide econoic crisis) he cancelled the results of the previous parliamentary election and gave himself an unelected majority. Then he and this unelected parliamentary majority made new elections rules designed to keep the majority from getting power, as happened. So that’s twice that the “pro-Western” majority was denied control of parliament despite winning the popular vote. It’s a consistent pattern of shutting down legal ways of regaining power by the majority of the country’s voters.
Ukrainian people were very patient when it came to finally overthrowing this would-be dictator.
As explained above, Yanukovich had shut off legal channels of gaining back power. You prefer to ignore this.
Well, it’s your country. If you are happy with your government shelling your own civilian countrymen with indiscriminate weapons rather than pursuing any of the alternatives I mentioned above, we’re never going to reach any agreement.
I don’t have any connection to Ukraine beyond my two acquaintances from Kharkov and Odessa. And my personal links to Russia are even smaller. But, as a EU citizen, I would vote against inviting Ukraine to the Union. I am very confident that most Western Europeans would do the same if they had unbiased information about what’s going on in Donbass.
Granted, we ordinary citizens are unlikely to be consulted or listened to. But the EU is never going to let Ukraine join as long as it has an active military conflict inside its borders anyway.
I also don’t believe that Ukraine will be able to meet the economic and social convergence criteria for joining the EU. And the main reason for this is precisely what is going on in Donbass. Regardless of how worse you think your neighbors are, a society that lets that sort of brutality against fellow civilians carry on cannot be expected to become prosperous and peaceful.
I doubt anyone is happy with the status quo. The alternative (give this one, dysfunctional region, veto power over national policy, as Russia would like) is worse.
The people of the EU collectively prefer Africans and Muslims over Europeans, that is well known.
They let Croatia in, remember?
It will be along time until it reaches that point.
You seem to ignore the fact that this conflict exists precisely due to Russian support. The EU elites are well aware of this.
I don’t think you really mean that giving Donbass some sort of autonomy and ending the war is worse than continuing to shell their civilian areas. If you do, I may have misjudged you.
In fact, not even the elites really have such preferences. Morocco and Turkey have been waiting for decades and are much further away than Ukraine in the accession ladder, in spite of the latter having a significantly higher per capita GDP. While not being a fan of the EU at all, I do support its being European-only.
Russian support or not, the decision to bomb civilians is exclusive responsibility of those ordering and executing the shellings.
I didn’t like our own (EU-US) meddling in the Maidan revolution from the very beginning. But for me a turning point was the missile thrown by the Ukrainian Air Force at the beginning of the hostilities on a peaceful square in Lugansk that killed and maimed civilian passers-by. That definitely told me all I needed to know about the nature of the people we had decided to turn into our new allies. I don’t believe that they would have been any less cruel if Russia had remained idle in Donbass. There were very few (if any) Russians in Odessa when a vicious confrontation between opposing parties led to 46 people burned alive.
The hatred and brutality were obviously there before the Russians had made any move.
The “autonomy” they demand is to veto national policies. No government allows such “autonomy” to a specific region. USA doesn’t allow, say, the state of Texas to reject NAFTA. Germany does not allow Bavaria to by itself leave the EU or NATO.
Civilian areas are shelled because anti-government fighters choose to base themselves in civilian areas. It’s the same reason why Putin and Assad shelled/shell civilian areas. Looks like Ukrainians are more careful and less zealous than those guys, because civilian casualties are far lower.
So you have rebels and foreign fighters based on civilian areas, and occasionally firing out of those areas onto Ukrainian forces. Two choices:
Take over the territory and end the misery. Russia won’t allow that, providing the rebels with just enough support to make this impossible.
Status quo. Both sides armed, occasionally firing into each other.
None of the choices are good ones.
.
Actions mean something. Western Euros have allowed their countries to be flooded by Africans and Muslims. Dutch rejected bringing Ukrainians into EU (okay, about 25% of Dutch, most didn’t bother with the referendum) but have created an Islamic homeland on their own territory. So clearly western Europeans prefer Africans and Muslim to eastern Europeans. It’s a symptom of their self-hatred and nihilism. The Poles, one of few peoples in the EU who actually respect themselves and promote European values, have been Ukraine’s supporters.
A decision made because rebels chose to operate out of civilian areas.
You believe the fairy tale about the “Odessa massacre.” Good to know.
In Odessa there were some clashes between both sides. At the trade union building both sides threw Molotov cocktails at each other, the building caught on fire, and 46 people died.
In Kharkiv there wasn’t even that.
Those are the places where Russia didn’t meddle.
In Donbas there are thousands dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, an economy shattered, with billions in repair costs, all because Russia prevented Kiev from taking control over its own nation’s territory while also refusing to secure this territory itself. That you view the Ukrainian government as the main problem here is telling.
Ukrainians do exactly the same thing. Both are indeed trying to hold control of towns and villages rather than empty fields.
But the example I put of the Lugansk Square aerial bombardment shows that your side was willing to shell civilian targets from the start, even when no fighters were present.
I believe what my eyes saw in footage coming from the area on the same day of the events, which is largely consistent with the Wikipedia entry and doesn’t resemble a fairy tale in the slightest.
What is quite astounding is that so few people died, considering the amount of them on both sides that were willing to massacre their opponents with firearms and molotov cocktails in the absence of any police force. It could perfectly have been worse.
Having been born in the Basque Country during the years of terrorism and police repression, I know how much nationalism can distort one’s beliefs, including mine sometimes, but I honestly recommend that you refrain from convincing yourself that the victims of the Trade Unions building set themselves on fire.
Then you saw the video footage of people from the Trade Union building shooting guns and throwing Molotov cocktails at the people outside? And you saw some people outside beating the escapees, but other people saving their lives? Or did you only see the parts shown on Russian nationalist sources.
It’s not astounding at all, when you see the videos and know the facts.
So you do believe in fairytales.
Reality is that two groups of thugs were violent with each other, both were armed and both attacked each other. In Donbas the pro-Russian thugs would have won but in Odesa they were outnumbered and lost. They decided to take a stand in their Trade Union building, which during a mutual exchange of Molotov cocktails caught on fire. Although both sides were violent it was mostly in the manner of soccer hooligans, demonstrated by the fact that when the deadly nature of the situation became clear many of the Ukrainian nationalists were rescuing the people in the building; here is a picture of a large number of them bringing scaffolding to the building to get people out of it.
http://khpg.org/files/photos/1407617107.jpg
Perhaps more people would have been rescued, if the rescuers weren’t having to deal with pro-Russians lobbing Molotov cocktails at them.
There was a UN report:
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/HRMMUReport15June2014.pdf
(pg. 9)
and plenty of video, like here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1sBMnpcgxE&feature=youtu.be
2:06 – rescue attempts begin
6:09 – ” games are games, but shit, nobody needs victims”
7:14 – “the storming of the building has turned into a rescue operation”
14:08 – the scaffolding goes up
Crowd of nationalists cheers as people are rescued.
This event became a dark fairytale about an Odessa massacre waiting for all Russians if the Ukrainians take over.
In response to rebel attacks on Ukrainian positions, the Ukrainian air force bombed the rebel-controlled government building, killing innocent civilians in the adjacent square.
You refer to this as bombing the square, as if they deliberately targeted the square and not the rebel headquarters.
So now you have chosen to make a false claim about me. If you choose not to retract it, it will be a public confirmation of dishonesty. So far I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are just a consumer of one-sided half-truths from the Russian nationalist media and their useful idiots.
Thank you. Nowadays I have two tabs permanently open in my browser for UNIAN and the OSCE SMM website to make sure that I am receiving balanced information on the events in Ukraine. I guess I could do better and I have long understood that such efforts of intellectual integrity will not spare me from being accused of being a Kremlin propagandist but well, even though the Maidan revolution marked the stupid return of the world to the Cold War, there is only so much time I can dedicate to trying to find out what is really going on in your country.
Unfortunately, I am unable to return the favor and give you the benefit of the doubt. I am not sure what exactly you are claiming I got wrong about the 1914 Odessa massacre. But you are clearly stuck in a pro-Ukrainian nationalist narrative and disputing the Wikipedia recount of what happened that day, with rival parties armed with firearms and coordinating through social media to attack their opponents in a city with basically no police presence. Note that Wikipedia chose to rely on UNIAN, the BBC and the Kyiv Post to present their version of the events on May 2nd, which I do accept nonetheless as a good enough description. What would you have preferred, a Right Sector Bulletin version?
According to Wikipedia, during the Odessa clashes, the first person to be killed (by a gun, an AK-47) was a pro-Maidan activist. After that five more persons were killed by gunfire (one pro-Maidan and four anti-Maidan activists).
While it’s unclear what caused the fire in the building, it’s perfectly possible that the fire was started by pro-Maidan activists, just as it is possible the fire was started by anti-Maidan activists throwing Molotov cocktails from the top of the building.
I find the violent death of so many people regrettable, but it was basically a violent riot (in which apparently both sides eagerly anticipated) gone wrong (with the fire engulfing nonviolent activists inside the building). It must be made clear that some (unclear what proportion, but I’d guess a minority) of the victims were by no means totally innocent of the violence.
In any event, I think there’s been a lot of bad blood on both sides, so I’d guess there’d be a lot of violence if Ukraine finally reincorporated the Donbas, but probably not wholesale massacre.
In general I think it’s very unfortunate that there is such a conflict, and while I’m largely sympathetic to Russian concerns about NATO encroachment etc., but it’s obvious that here we’re facing a situation where there’s no totally just situation is possible: one of the parties will feel humiliated and wronged at the end, and not without justification in either case. It’s actually possible both sides will feel they lost. (Actually, in a sense, that’s how they both feel about the status quo…)
Moreover, I don’t think joining NATO and the EU was all that beneficial to Central Europeans, and I don’t think that for a large country like Ukraine joining it would be beneficial either. It must be supreme irony that probably not even the present or even the core members of the EU would benefit, nor did they benefit from the Central European enlargements, at least if we identify a country’s interests with that of their citizens. On the other hand, just as we Hungarians were foolish two or three decades ago to want to join the West at any price (and are still foolish to want to stay – though exiting would be way more difficult than not joining in the first place), I can understand Ukrainian desires. Especially since part of their internationally recognized territory was annexed by a neighboring near-superpower.
Anyway, we don’t need to all sing Kumbaya together, just recognize complexities here. You don’t need to support one side in order to understand that they stand for something honorable themselves, or that you would do the same were you also a member of their ethnic group.
Referring to a riot where things went wrong and people died from a fire as a “massacre” is already wrong. It implies that those people were deliberately and violently killed, which is a false description.
You are not a native English-speaker. A massacre is defined as “an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people” and “deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people).”
Wikipedia does not use the word “massacre.” False, Russian nationalist sources do that. As do you.
This reminds me of how you used a Russian nationalist false narrartive to describe another event in Ukraine when you write:
” the Lugansk Square aerial bombardment”
Reality: in response to rebel attacks on Ukrainian positions, the Ukrainian air force bombed the rebel-controlled government building, killing innocent civilians in the adjacent square.
To be sure, the Ukrainian government should have issued a public warning for people to avoid going near rebel-controlled buildings because they would be subject to bombing. Instead it bombed that building without warning and innocent people nearby were killed as collateral damage for no reason. I think this was criminal.
But referring to this as the Luhansk square bombing, as if the government was just targeting the square so it could kill civilians, is to repeat a lie. Which you have done, and which you have refused to retract.
I read the UN report and saw video. Now I have read the wikipedia article too. It doesn’t seem that what I wrote disputes or contradicts what is written in wikipedia.
You make some good points. I think that Ukraine is very late to knock on the EU door. Who knows what will be left of that union by the time it manages, after huge sacrifices, to meet the convergence criteria (if it does, which I doubt). The EU has grown too large to manage the big political and economic gaps that are becoming ever more obvious. The moment someone decides to follow the Brexit example we may witness a stampede.
You also point out an obvious fact. As reported by Wikipedia, the Odessa clashes involved groups of people armed with Kalashnikovs and other firearms shooting and killing each other. I have no idea why AP wants to portray these events as violence “in the manner of soccer hooligans”.
The discussion in this thread reveals how much bad blood is indeed still present. But, at the end of the day, Ukraine will be no exception to the natural resolution of this type of conflicts. If they want to keep what remains of Donbass, which they probably shouldn’t do for their own benefit, they will have to arrange some negotiated settlement with the pro-Russians living there.
Sorry, I’m done with you in this thread.
Calling someone a liar may be no big deal in Ukraine (in fact, your government, after committing the criminal act that you recognize in Lugansk, also lied about it and blamed it on the rebels). But in my book that is descending to the level of Gerard, from whom I defended you above.
To make matters worse, you’re also wrong about the semantics. Massacre is by no means an English word. It is used in all Latin languages and has exactly the same meaning as in English in one of my two native tongues.
I stated that you repeated a lie. Which you did do. I did not call you a liar. You could have repeated the lie out of ignorance, after all. Sorry if a factual description of your action offends you.
But now you did lie – when you falsely stated that I called you a liar.
Maybe it’s not a big deal in your country?
Accurately stating what you did is not “the same level” as vulgar abuse.
We are writing in English so the English-language definition of this word is what matters. In the English language, massacre is defined as “an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people” and “deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people).”
Since the fire was not deliberately set for the purpose of killing large numbers of people it was a massacre.
In asinine fashion, he claimed that what happened to Yanukovych isn’t a coup, adding that Russian propagandists are behind that take.