Vladimir Putin’s extended justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, under the fiction of “peacekeeping” in two Russian-controlled separatist provinces, makes for uncomfortable reading for Putin’s apologists right across the political and foreign policy spectrum.
For many on the left, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is the fault of the West, and especially NATO, under US leadership. The US has breached commitments there would be no expansion of NATO after the Cold War. Russia is entitled to control its “near abroad”. The West has refused to guarantee Putin’s security.
And for some, the West’s responsibility goes much further. Veteran leftist stereotype John Pilger accuses the West of abetting neo-Nazi genocide by the Ukrainian government (although, to be fair, it might be quicker for Pilger to identify places in the world where he doesn’t think the West is responsible for genocide).
Nor is this “it’s all our fault” line confined to the left. It can also find a home in conservative journals like The Spectator, read by people who regard Putin as the kind of tough-minded authoritarian that the flabby liberal West could do with. Thomas “suck on this” Friedman, long the court jester of neoconservatism who once urged us all to “keep rootin’ for Putin“, echoed this sentiment with his hot take yesterday that the US and NATO are also to blame.
It’s also a line beloved of self-described foreign policy “realists” who like to think they only respond to how the world is, not how we wish it to be, who want Putin to be accommodated on his demands for security, and think anything else is “liberal internationalist” folly.
But Putin has made it clear that the purported threat to Russia from Ukraine is a secondary issue. Instead, Putin devoted more than half of his 7500-word speech to detailing why Ukraine was part of Russia. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us — not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.” Its “pro-Western civilisational choice” was one made by corrupt oligarchs, not by Ukrainians.
“Now is not the time or place to go into matters pertaining to state or constitutional law,” Putin said, but he did exactly that, as well as gave an extensive history lesson on the incorporation of Ukraine into the Soviet Union. No mention, peculiarly, of the four million Ukrainians murdered by Stalin in the Holdomor, but plenty of detail on why “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia”.
That’s why in his speech Putin referred far more often to the USSR, the Soviet Union, Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks than to NATO.
Putin’s invasion is an act of imperialist aggression, one that denies the existence of Ukraine as any sort of independent state. For Putin, it’s a rogue province that must be re-incorporated into Russia, or at least kept under strict economic and military control.
The entire argument that Putin is engaged in a transactional project, in which his goal was security, is in effect demolished by his own words: Ukraine is Russia and must always be so. There’s no transaction or security guarantee that will change that.
Meantime the Morrison government is, inexplicably, still to announce its formal response to Putin’s aggression, long after the EU and the United States announced new rounds of sanctions and financial prohibitions to punish the Putin regime and its friends. For a government that has been warning the Tsar for weeks, it seems to have been caught by surprise by the invasion it long warned of.
250 km north of Australia, Indonesia invaded West Papua, killed 300,000 West Papuans, replaced them with 500,000 Indonesians, and began clear felling the world’s second largest rainforest, all without allowing access to journalists for 52 years.
Can we have an article about that sometime, Crikey?
They write about West Paupa on a regular basis, Go search the archives and you’ll find plenty of incisive reports.
In the archives. Exactly. Forgotten East Timor under Suharto’s brutal occupation?
FFS where else do articles go after they are on the frontpage for a few days.
That was all done with the approval of USA against the wishes of Australia.
But Crikey regularly has articles about West Papua.
Aren’t you really saying that invading Ukraine is not that bad, because of a different atrocity by someone else?
If so, isn’t that normalising brutality?
How do the atrocities of one oppressive right-wing regime nullify the atrocities of another oppressive right-wing regime, Frank?
Wow Bernard, is this the best that you can do? From an e-mag such as Crikey, I would expect a much more independent view and analysis – instead, what you’ve just written looks like it came straight out of a Murdoch newspaper. No mention of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, WMD, etc, etc…. Utter disappointment, that what this article is.
Disappointment perhaps but none should be surprised – viz the repetition of the War party line on all those other abuses which you listed.
Kosovo? How many more Albanians did you want to see killed or expelled? Beyond the 8,000+ civilians already dead and 700,000 expelled? And after the 100,000+ who died in the killings, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Croatia with not much action from the international community to stop it? As for Syria, Russian air force killed over 20,000, many of them deliberately targeted in hospitals and the like. How do sins of US etc in Iraq or Afghanistan mean that Ukraine isn’t as bad or worse?
How many in the Donbass would you like to see killed, there Ukraine’s who hate ethnic Russians with the fervour of a holy war.
Get your facts right. You hsve absolutely no idea what you’re talking about
but certainly full of information about what is happening in Ukraine with Putin etc
Whataboutism is the furthest thing from ‘independent view and analysis’.
It’s actually pretty close. Its aimed at identified issues which were excluded from the original analysys, making it fairly one sided and biased. An independent, balanced analysis tends to put things in perspective and make readers better informed. Biased articles are typically used to garner support for one side at the expense of another. That is political propaganda, not journalism.
But they (we) do it too is the argument of a child in the playground. To use another simplicity, two wrongs don’t make a right. Most of us are perfectly capable of condemning what Putin is doing and it is not hard with a even a little knowledge to see how self-serving and intellectually poor his case is. We are equally capable of condemning the Western great power behaviours you list, largely based on the same principles that excoriate Putin. Many of us have done so. We don’t have to make some existential choice between “sides”. Especially when Russia is just a more obvious gangster capitalism than the current degradations of liberal democracy found in the USA and Australia. This is all very obvious, perhaps Bernard could copy and paste a version of it before each article on the subject to head off such detours in the comments.
So the complex question is (and always has been really), what is the best political action, in terms of effectiveness and accord with a morality that sees a duty to protect the autonomy of fellow humans, Ukrainians, Russians and Tartars and Roma for that matter? Then, following that, how might we bring that action about about, given all the imperfections, hypocrisy and conflicts of interest in the state and economic systems we live in? Don’t have a pat answer but I’m not going to be an apologist for those who are the source of the problem.And Putin is clearly a major source of it right now.
Agree, but do not expect much structured in analysis in return. One notices a lot of new names popping up on this comments section and blind support for Putin and ‘whataboutery’; Russian Internet Research Agency?
Not sophisticated enough for that to be the case in my view. Remind me of the old pre 68 Comms. Hearts in the right place but doctrinaire and dogmatic. In their case often Stalin’s useful idiots
In recent decades there has been this meeting of minds, mostly on sociocultural issues, between old right wing conservatives and old lunatic left, stuck in the past…. Howard was very successful e.g. creating the Anglo-Irish nexus (Steve Bannon did similar in US), with expert advice informed by imported US GOP/media techniques to target ageing electorates, but lacking skills of critical literacy and analysis.
Bernard, you don’t have to be a ‘Putin-apologist’ to scoff at much of what you present in this article. Even for you, this missive reaches new heights in selective facts and bias that seem to cloud your ability to see the bigger picture. There is a history here that is VERY important context, and you don’t need to go as far back as Krushchev/Gorbachev days to see why we’ve landed here – the 2014 US-prompted and funded far-right coup is well and truly far enough.
If you were aware of the current-day squeezing and slow genocide of the Donbas by these US-trained far-right fanatics in government in Ukraine, would it have been ok to do nothing, and let that just slowly roll along until every russian-speaking citizen was either dead or exiled? No, but you’re right when you say war is good for the right side of politcis – Biden is desperate for one, Morrison badly needs one, and I guess Boris does too – for their survival.
It’s fairly clear – even to neutral eyes – that canceling Nordstream 2 and maintaining NATO budgets are the major drivers of these events. Putin has tried for years to get EU and US leaders to the table to nail down implementation of their own Minsk agreement to no avail – but it appears there was never any motivation to do so. EU got sucked into the US/NATO game of maintaining some kind of bogeyman to keep the $ turning for the military industrial complex.
The losers here – and very big losers – are the EU itself (mainly Germany) with the loss of Russian gas, and Ukraine itself, who have been duped by the west into thinking their instransigence would be fully supported. they were just a pawn in a larger game, and Zelensky was way too naive to know that. The US only knows how to suit itself, and the quicker we realise that in this country, the better.
Articles like these will have much more credibility if they at least reference the rank hypocrisy of the west when referring to peacekeeping vs invasions.
Ukraine is also a corrupt country. Weren’t there scandals in the past of political bribes etc? How good is that for democracy?
so it’s no different to a Liberal Party Australia
It’s bankrupt, looted by waves of corrupt oligarchs, politicians and foreigners like Joe Biden’s son. Infrastructure is decaying, and now they have said they will begin to build nuclear weapons – which Russia acknowledges they have the means and technical ability to do! There are, I think, 6 nuclear power plants in the country.
so its corrupt like the Liberal Party in Australia…
I am not an apologist for Putin. However I agree in principle with your summary. The propaganda machines and fake media are at peak production in the west. We don’t seem to get much news from the East. In fact I see a story or comment and go searching for the facts only to often find it is a preemption of something that a person or organisation would like to occur.
There is an enormous amount of BS out there.
This area has an awful lot of history, and views on it can be go back a long way. When you pick a point in history – especially a recent point – then many would want to bring up past actions and resentments as relevant. Just to pick on one – nearly all of the current Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for around a couple of hundred years. Russia was responsible for progressively slicing it to death culminating in the complete partition of Poland between Russia, Prussia and Austria in the 18th century. What is now the western Ukraine was part of Poland between WW1 and WW2. The then USSR reclaimed this czarist territory as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and then the carve up of Poland between the USSR and Germany in 1939. All the smaller countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics resent past Russian hegemony.
I don’t know how the current situation can be resolved, but I am very confident there is nothing simple or straightforward about it.
Exactly, but bit too complicated for many lazy heads here who resort to ‘whataboutery’ versus actual history and events….
The proper starting point is to forget the politicised history and ask the actual people living now, on those territories, what they want now. Most of the rest is just emotional mobilisations serving political ends.
I agree with asking the people – although if you have been to Poland and the Baltic states you will find that the general public have long memories. Personally I think they need to at least tone down some of that to better deal with the present. It is interesting that not only do the Poles (for example) hate the Russians (it is one of the few things they can all agree on) – they regard them as being as bad or maybe worse than the Germans. Of course they have Katyn to keep the hate alive.
Agree, the politics in this area, most places really, is shot through with emotions and prejudices, often based in historical narratives of variable veracity. Polish and Baltic attitudes towards Russia aren’t surprising and Putin’s behaviour has certainly revived memories of recent history. My point concerns those who would impose historical narratives as justifying costs (invasions) being imposed on people living now. What is happening now to real living people outweighs emotional evocations of the past.
One area where this gets complex is where those living now are direct beneficiaries of a past injustice. Australians are an example of this, so are Americans and Israelis. It doesn’t justify violence or widespread dispossession but the history creates a demand for restitution and apology.
Just like the Morrison govt failed
Everything driving this Guvm’t is intended to benefit “business”, and LNP mates. Expenditure on items that may directly benefit the population, our security, and our welfare is WAY DOWN THE LIST of LNP priorities. The overall plan is to keep Govm’t coffers readily available and plump for the next excuse or fraud to raid the funds, perpetrated by the LNP or their mates.
Morrison had to work out the best way he could benefit politically before deciding what next.
Exactly. The first priority is to make this a Test for Labor. Just like those bizarre and unnecessary bills brought to Parliament last week were all tests for Labor. What’s the point of being a Coalition government if you cannot spend all your time and effort testing Labor?
Watching this unfold is eerily fascinating, and makes me feel that this is what it may have been like in the 30s, watching AH and co. encroach on other countries…this one because it’s culturally theirs, that one because they attacked a post office near the border, so on and so forth. Always backed by some sort of excuse that raises an eyebrow, but plausible enough in isolation.
When reading the history, i used to find myself asking “how could they have let him get away with that? They should have done x,y or z.” But experiencing something similar unfold now, i can see now how it’s done….in little steps. No one step too big.
Chamberlain historically cops it for his many appeasements, but when the alternative is war on a large scale, i totally see why AH was tolerated for so long.
If Putin’s aim is to reconstruct the old USSR, there’s plenty of nations that will be breaking out into a sweat at that thought.
A line has to be drawn somewhere, backed by a firm resolve. I am wondering where that line might be drawn?
Kosovo and Diego Garcia come to mind.
How about drawing the line in Palestine? In Yugoslavia? In Syria? In Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Iran? Where were you when little johnny sent our kids to look for WMDs? And on top of that, when they return, you find out what they did there, and then charge them for not fighting fair. I wonder do you or any od our politicians actually realise what a freakin’ terrible mess a war actually is! What a bunch of hypocrites!
Hypocrites only exist in western democracies, at least the despots around the world say it like it is.
Gandra, i have no idea how your reply relates to my comment, or why you seem so cross at what I’ve written.
All this ad hominem stuff, “where were YOU when…”, “when they return, YOU find out what they did there” etc.
Have you read this article? It’s about Putin and the Ukraine. I didn’t write the article. I am responding to what’s in it.
You’re off on some weird jag I can’t get my head around.
I’m actually responding directly to your comment that a line be drawn, backed by firm resolve. Sounds like a pretty clear call to war to me. Based on this, I am assuming that you were also a strong supporter of Australia’s war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Gandra, i am genuinely interested in what your thoughts are re. the Ukraine situation.
Could you just tell me what they are, without getting angry at me?
For instance, if Putin goes further into Ukraine…what should other nations do? Let it happen?
If that is what you reckon they should do, then just say it. It’s a perfectly valid opinion, and it is in fact what might end up happening.
But if you could just discuss it clearly, without flipping your lid, then we might actually end up having a meaningful exchange, and if you can explain to me your reasoning, i might end up going “Gandra, i didn’t think of it like that, thanks for letting me see another side to this.”
But “what-aboutism” is so much easier and requires a lot less thought.
Ukraine should have fair elections now, elections where all opposition parties can have a say. It also need a new constitution because I’m pretty sure their current one has anything in it about removing the government by a foreign financed coup.
You are simply resorting to ‘whataboutery’ an old lazy Soviet PR technique for disrupting narratives and deflecting from Russia. It has now been refined by RT, Fox, etc. and has become very popular with LNP, GOP and Tories too.
You’re watching this unfold through the MSM, do you know people on the ground there?
Epimenides and Tony P, like Gandra, you guys need to try and keep your comments related to the issues, rather than launching into overheated ad hominem attacks too. All you do is derail the discussion into a personal argument.
Next time you write a comment, before sending, look at what you’ve written, and honestly ask yourself what the snarky stuff is trying to achieve. Does it make your position more cogent? Are you going to persuade people with it? Or is it just a display of ego-tripping or a lack of self-discipline?
I’ll leave it at this comment for today, as i am pretty sure there will be raging torrent of snark in reply if you are unable to take my comments. I don’t want this thread to become an endless back-and-forth. But try using your comment writing for good, and not for endless put-downs, and you might actually persuade people to your pov rather than repelling them.
It is not snark to observe that those calling most loudly for ‘lines to be drawn‘ are never those at the fore.
There was no ad hom attack in my reply.
Agree, they seem obsessed with derailing any conversation or narratives that may shine a negative light on one of their heroes in Putin and autocracy.
I do. In the LDNR – they are hugely relieved, because the shelling from Ukraine had ramped up massively – as verified and logged by the observers from the OCSE. Shelling is still going on, however, so they are expecting blowback against the Ukies before much longer.
Yes John you’re correct. Now that the demarcation line has been pushed back we both know what will be discovered, graves of murdered people killed by Ukraine forces but the powers in the west will scream it’s propaganda.
Can you give a source for this? Shelling and explosions around the area have been frequent for a long time but there is an uptick at present. OSCE reports log them as ceasefire violations but mostly are unable to determine sources, especially for explosions.
More fog of war is descending and both sides are making it harder for observers to move around. OSCE have now verified the kindergarten was shelled and most likely from the non-government areas. Generally projectiles are recorded by OSCE as travelling in both directions. However, I have not read anything in these reports that confirms Ukraine is the principle aggressor at this time.
People can visit and read OSCE reports but they get dense and specialised very quickly. https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/512842
Source? Preferably several credible ones as you have made a big claim with zero support except your own opinion, why?
Were you garrisoning ‘that line‘ – instead of just wanting it drawn – perhaps you’d know.
Western Allies, many of the same countries now condemning Putin, abandoned many countries including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary Estonia to USSR occupation and turned their backs on the atrocities, murder and ethnic cleansing that took place. By abandoning these countries and doing nothing they condoned the murder and ethnic cleansing
Trapped in moderation; can you elaborate on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Soviets and Germany in 1939 and the impact on the nations you cited?
“If Putin’s aim is to reconstruct the old USSR,” – why do people keep bringing out this old trope. He is on record, several times, affirming Russia has as much land as it needs, and the last thing they want are bankrupt nations, bleeding the coffers of Russia dry, whilst contributing nothing. If people had ACTUALLY been following what’s been going on the last few years, they might have a better idea of the why’s and wherefores of what’s happening and the probable scenarios of what may play out.
The standard western trope of “Putin’s a blood crazed evil dictator trying to crush the world and recreate the USSR” is neither correct nor helpful, but is all that seems to be excreted by the west, even among people who one would think should know better, after 20 yrs of US and UK demonising propoganda!
Putin is an expert with a degree in International Law. Russia has spent a long time, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, trying to solve this diplomatically, but there are no diplomats left in the west – they are all of the shout and demand variety – do what we say, we’re of listening variety. He warned the US what would happen, Russia is now powerful enough not to have to listen to the braying of the US any more, so, the time for talk is over! If the west won’t listen, it will get what is promised!
These are the reasons you think it’s ok for Russia to invade Ukraine. Really?!
Putin has a reputation for contradicting much of what he ways on the record, hence, his word means nothing; bit like several senior LNP types?
The Poles have an old saying about dealing with Russia and/or Soviets, assume now Putin, ‘we play chess but they kick our arses‘.
“He is on record, several times, affirming Russia has as much land as it needs” Hmmm, must explain why he’s trying to gobble up Ukraine.
When China exploits.
I’ve been undecided on this issue. I started thinking about how NATO reneged on its policy not to extend membership to former Soviet satellites and then that those former Soviet satellites wanted to join NATO precisely so that Russia couldn’t reimpose its repressive rule. So really, Putin should be stopped. If Ukraine doesn’t want to be part of the Great Russian Empire, then it should be entitled not to be. As you are asking, how should this happen. A bit of muscling up by the West?
There is a conga line of nations in Central Eastern Europe looking nervous or gone quiet, most in NATO, some not, from Scandinavia through Baltic States, Central Europe and Balkans, all bordering on the EU but formerly in the Soviet sphere.
Poland (Kaczynski, been aggravating the EU but no love for Putin nor happy with Russian troops in Belorussia and pushing migrants across border), Czechia/Slovakia (already ditched their older Putin friendly leaders for younger western facing), Hungary (PM ‘Mini Putin’ Orban’s regime has a FOX/GOP CPAC event then a ‘very tricky’ election in a nation with strong antipathy toward Putin/Russia… he has most to lose…), Romania (whilst chaotic politics, their most enduring leader is Pres. Klaus Iohannis very much western facing), then Croatia (latest EU entrant), now dealing with Serbia i.e. Vucic and with Bosnian Serbia’s Dodik, both allies of Putin (but like Orban, also looking nervous) and making issue for the EU…..
Accordingly, those who have been linked to corruption/cronyism and/or have been willing to do Putin’s bidding i.e. constant attacks against all things liberal democracy, open society and EU, are in a bind, as liberal democracy etc. are also the aspirations of their younger voters, middle class and elites….. Russia too (whole towns in EU nations and Med inc. Turkey, made up of long term Russian middle class emigres).
Reports of Putin’s berating and challenging his senior military & security people of whom some were visibly nervous or uncomfortable; they are disciplined but are not used to white collar types like Putin (lacking combat experience) giving them ‘attitude’ and what would be the reflections of military, their families and friends when Putin humiliates them?
Erdogan had a big surprise and close escape some years ago in Turkey for similar leadership, nepotism/cronyism, business dealings but then ignoring advice, warnings and taps on the shoulder….. and divided military loyalties….
Yes, but Russian is such a poetic language: it can make “Donetsk” rhyme with “Sudetenland”.