Extended coverage: Russia & Ukraine do battle
Just over a week into the conflict, and we have already seen millions of lives upended, hundreds, if not thousands, dead and two countries, with civilians that generally get along, at war.
The people of Ukraine and Russia both deserve our un-ending sympathy. Just about all of them haven’t done anything wrong, and yet they are being punished for the patch of dirt that they were born on and, for one of those countries, the decisions that their dictator leader has made.
The Battle
At this point, we don’t know how many civilians and military casualties have been suffered by the Russians and Ukrainians alike. What we do know is that a great deal of Ukrainian territory, including a number of nuclear powerplants. The map below gives you a much clearer explanation than what I could manage in words.
Now, this might not look like too much land, but in real life this is many, many miles of territory, and thousands upon thousands of lives that have been moved into Russian territory. Some of the Northern Russian-controlled areas are also very close to Kyiv and Kharkov, the two biggest cities in Ukraine.
As it is at the moment, Russia has a massive convoy of personnel, including many tanks, that is approximately 64 kilometers wide, quite close to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine where millions of people live.
There are a number of theories as to why they have stopped. One, believed by the UK government is that mechanical breakdowns and congestion are causing significant problems for the troops. They are struggling to move fuel, food, spare parts and tyres, as well as other things that are kinda necessary for this kind of invasion, according to the former Commander of the UK joint forces, General Sir Richard Barrons. On top of that, Moscow is also struggling to communicate with the personnel in the convoy, due to problems such as faulty radio networks.
Even more problematic is exceedingly low morale within the Russian troops. To understand this fully, you need to understand that most of them do not support this war. As I wrote in my last article on this matter, a large proportion of Russians, 51%, believe that Russia and Ukraine should be separate nations. That is a massive number of people. On top of that, tens of thousands marched against the invasion in Moscow, St Petersburg and throughout the rest of the country. Meanwhile, Russia conscripts males between ages 19-27. A number of these people don’t want to be part of the fight, yet they have to. Understandably, morale is very low.
We have also seen a number of these soldiers be killed in this war. Ukrainian President Zelensky claims it was up to 6000. Russia claims it has lost 498 men (both as of March 2nd). We can expect it is probably somewhere between these two extremes, as both of these men are well aware that an important piece of wartime propaganda is exaggerating the losses of the other side, or, in Russia’s case, under-reporting your own.
If you have followed the news at all from almost all of the rest of the media, you would be under the impression that the Ukrainian military are putting up some kind of superhuman fight. They aren’t really. They are holding their own, but it’s not like Russia’s invasion has been some kind of organized, well thought-out plan. They have largely been a shambles. They have not entered Ukraine with any kind of plan, and have stalled with the slightest of fight back from the Ukrainian military.
However, if we look through history, even if it takes Ukraine a few more weeks to fall, that would be incredibly quick. I don’t like World War 2 comparisons here, because I don’t view the two circumstances as at all similar, but if we look at Germany’s invasion of France, that took 6 weeks. And that was considered historically quick. There are more people in Ukraine than there were in France at that time. This has every possibility of being as quick as France in the World War 2.
However, there is also every chance that this could go about as well as the United States’ invasion of Iraq, where they killed a million civilians, wasted trillions of dollars and lost tens of thousands of American lives, all because they didn’t like the other country. That is possible as well, although Russian tactics seem very different to American ones in Iraq. The Americans tend to bomb from afar, whereas the Russians seem to favour more of a traditional, blunt, ground-force military operation.
Of course, we do need to mention the missiles aimed at civilian areas in Ukrainian cities, especially Kyiv and Kharkov. You have all seen the heartbreaking stories, where the Russian military has aimed at apartment blocks and other such landmarks. The Pentagon claims that over 500 have been launched. Every single one of those brings horror to the people of Ukraine.
The most scary thing that the Russians have done is try to take a nuclear powerplant which is 6 times the size of Chernobyl, in a battle that included much shelling and other warfare. If there is a leak here, it will be much worse than the disaster at Chernobyl. And we got very close with this fight at the powerplant. The US ambassador to the UN said that the world “narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe” here. He isn’t wrong.
Now, this isn’t to say that the Ukrainian side have been perfect in any way whatsoever. The Kyiv Independent tweeted that “Ukrainian special forces will no longer capture Russian artillerymen. The command of Ukraine’s Special Operation Forces has warned that it will kill captured Russian artillerymen in response to their “brutal shelling” of civilians and cities.” They quickly deleted this tweet when they realized that killing prisoners of war who surrendered is a war crime and they didn’t want to admit this publicly.
They have also given weapons to literal neo-Nazis on the Russia-Ukraine for many years. Russia, or the Soviet Union as it was then, lost millions of men to the Nazis, so you can understand why they saw this as an act of aggression. This isn’t to defend Putin, it’s just stating the facts.
Anti-Russian Bigotry
The 2nd most impacted group of people here who have been harmed have been Russian civilians.
I know that me even saying this will be seen as controversial, like I’m siding with the imperialists over the victims. I’m not. The sympathy I feel for Vladimir Putin, his government, the Russian oligarchs and anyone else who has caused this invasion is worth about the square root of nothing.
However, that is not the Russian civilians. They didn’t do this. All that they really did was being born on the same patch of dirt that these oligarchs and leaders who have done some very evil things. Just like I don’t want to condemn a farmer from Kansas for the Iraq war, I don’t want to punish random civilians in any part of Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. Again, that is not to, in any way, show any support for the expansionist war that the Kremlin have waged.
However, most of the world seems to have taken a very different approach. From banning Russian-made products being sold to banning athletes from participating in events, the West have decided to punish the Russian people for actions that they themselves did not take.
A number of UK supermarkets have banned the sale of Russian vodka, as have a number of US states. These are mostly smaller, privately owned businesses in Russia. They did not cause the invasion.
On top of that, Russian Paralympians were banned from the ongoing Beijing Paralympic games. What is a disabled athlete with whatever physical problem they have going to do to Ukraine? Nothing. And yet we are punishing them.
In addition, Russian clubs have been banned from European football (soccer) competitions, including the Champions League, Europa league, Europa Conference League, the European championships (if the ban is still in place in 2024) and the Nations League. They have also been suspended from FIFA competitions, including potentially the World Cup in Qatar this year. And these athletes didn’t do anything wrong.
FIFA never banned the United States for the Iraq war, which was the correct decision. Why should these Russians be punished for something they didn’t do?
At the end of the day, what this is, in reality, is bigotry. We are taking away people’s livelihoods because of the patch of dirt they were born on. That is wrong.
That isn’t to say that every punishment that the West has taken against Russia has been bigotry focused. They haven’t. But they have all massively hurt the ordinary Russian folk, who didn’t deserve this, even if they weren’t meant to do that.
Most of the sanctions that have been aimed at Russia have been focused on the oligarchs and leaders. I would support that if they only hurt the rich & powerful. But they don’t. They haven’t hurt Kim Jong Un in North Korea, but they have massively hurt the people. They haven’t hurt the Communist regime in Cuba, but the people are much worse off than they would have been otherwise. They haven’t hurt Nicolas Maduro, but they have killed 20,000 poor Venezuelans. They haven’t hurt the Iranian government, but sanctioning medicine into the country has certainly hurt the people. Bashar al-Assad still has power in Syria, but the people have been harmed beyond repair. These sanctions don’t impact those in power. They hurt the ordinary folks who happen to be born on a certain patch of land with a government the Americans don’t like.
That is why I cannot support most of the sanctions that have been put on the Russian people. They have had their Visa and Mastercard cards service discontinued. The Ruble has lost 28% of its value, and is now worth less than a singular cent. That is horrific. That hurts these poor Russians more than anyone. This isn’t good. Millions of people have been plunged into poverty than before. That is because of these sanctions. And the fact that many in the West, mostly liberals, have been celebrating this is utterly disgusting, and an example of the association of the innocent Russian people with the horrible acts of their government.
There are some economic penalties that I do support. Seizing Russian oligarchs’ private jets, luxury yachts and overseas assets is pretty much it. If we have some luck, maybe these very powerful oligarchs will cause Putin some backlash and they might oust him, in a best case scenario. But, the most likely scenario is that these oligarchs lose some of their money, which is something I would do for all oligarchs, be them Russian, American or any other nationality.
American Psychopaths
There are a great number of American politicians, military leaders and media figures alike who have pushed for an all-out war between the two biggest nuclear powers in the world, either consciously or subconsciously.
Where better to start than with President Donald J Trump, who is reported to have said in a speech that the United States should “bomb the shit” out of the Russian Convoy using F-22 fighter jets with the Chinese flag on it, blaming the Chinese “and then they start fighting with each other, and we sit back and watch.” Now, there is one minor problem with this. China don’t have F-22 fighter jets. On top of that, this is literally World War 3 being pushed by Joe Biden’s predecessor and possible successor, and quite probably the most influential person in American right-wing politics.
In the same speech, Trump said “Are all of these nations going to stand by and watch perhaps millions of people be slaughtered as the onslaught continues?" At what point do countries say, 'No, we can't take this massive crime against humanity. We can't let it happen. We can't let it continue to happen.'" Dude, you literally killed over 3 times as many civilians as war criminal Obama, AKA ‘The Drone King’, across 8 different countries. You don’t get to complain about crimes against humanity, just like any post WW2 American President.
In a similar vein was Condoleezza Rice, who was one of the main proponents of the Iraq war which killed a million people, said in a Fox Sunday interview “Well, [Russia’s invasion] is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.” She also agreed with host that what Russia is doing is a “war crime.” Now, gal ain’t wrong. But war criminals don’t get to complain about other people’s war crimes. If the US was held to international law, she would be behind bars in the Hague.
MSNBC are no better. Their hosts, including on Morning Joe, has voiced support for a so-called ‘no-fly zone’. A no-fly zone sounds like we’re going to do something like Israel’s Iron Dome or some magical spell making it impossible for Russian jets to fly in Ukrainian areas. That’s not what it is. It means that either the US or NATO shoots down any Russian jet in Ukrainian airspace. It means World War 3. That’s not good. At all.
We have also seen some comments, including from CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata, that Ukrainian refugees, unlike Middle Eastern ones, are “civilized” and “Europeanized.” ITV’s Lucy Watson pointed out that Ukraine is not “a developing Third World nation. This is Europe,” as if this means we should care more than we care about Syrians or Iraqi’s or Afghans or Yemeni people.
What they are all trying to say here is that these are white people, unlike Middle Eastern people, so they deserve our respect and refugee status more than people from those countries do. That is racist, dangerous thinking that serves only to divide humankind.
Don’t listen to these people. They are dangerous.
I will add that print outlets have generally been more reliable and less sensationalist than TV ones, mainly because they don’t have to fill in 24 hours a day worth of news.
Russia’s Demands
These are Russia’s three demands to end war in Ukraine.
I think that the most important thing to realize here is that these will happen anyway if we go ahead with war. Crimea will be part of Russia. Luhansk and Donetsk will as well. Ukraine probably won’t be part of NATO. These are things that are going to happen with the war anyways. I can’t think of why they wouldn’t agree to these basic things.
All that agreeing to these things means is that the same end is met without everyone dying, in the best case scenario. Worst case, Russia are revealed as massive liars, and even China, who have aligned with Russia to some extent (will detail later), might halt their cooperation, because why on earth would they trust proven liars?
Free Speech
Both the West and the Russians have shown that they don’t give half a shit about freedom of expression.
I’ll start with Russia, because their offences are worse than the West’s.
They have already arrested over 4000 anti-war activists. That is anti-free speech and is actively locking people up for criticizing a government’s actions. That is dictator-style shit. They have banned journalists from calling this war a war. They have blocked access to social media platforms such as Facebook and international media for coverage of their invasion. They have made releasing or sharing ‘misinformation’ about the war punishable by up to 15 years in prison. That is banning thought crime, to use George Orwell’s term for it.
However, we can’t ignore the West in this either. The EU and UK have banned RT and Sputnik because of their association with Russia. RT America had to shut down. I don’t like RT, but part of free speech is allowing speech we don’t like. And the EU are actively shutting down that speech they don’t like. That doesn’t set a good precedent.
China
Something that became clear after Russia were cut off from Western banking systems was that Russia made a deal with China beforehand that they would, at least in part, attempt to bail out the Russian economy.
I simply cannot believe that Putin has lost his mind over Ukraine so much that he is incapable of thinking about the economic lives of all Russians, or at the very least his own legacy.
He knows that if he is known as that dude who cost the Russian ruble 30% of its value in a week and never managed to get any of it back, his legacy among the Russian people will be awful. This is a man who seems to care about history. He wants history to look upon him favourably, at least in his country. It won’t if he fails awfully economically.
He was forced to make a deal with China. We have already seen them switch over to Chinese banking systems, and I would suggest that there are many moves still to be made.
I don’t know what the endgame will be here. I don’t know if this is a precursor to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or something similar. We’ll see. It will be interesting nonetheless.
As always, this is an incredibly fluid situation, and by the time that you have finished reading this it will have inevitably changed. Keep that in mind when you read this, please.
I also have a question for you all about this. Some of you might have watched my State of the Union address reaction (again, sorry about the low quality video). I was wondering what you would rather have as the format for my Russia/Ukraine coverage. Would you rather a video version or a written version? If I do a video version, I might have more time to focus on other things with writing, such as the massive spike in gas prices, COVID updates, and other stories. Please comment below with your preferences.
Much love to all of you in these incredibly difficult times.