The Russian intervention in Ukraine

What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. (Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832)

Since the 24^th of February the world has been riveted on events in Ukraine. Since no one wanted to listen to Lavrov and Russia’s security concerns, the Ukrainian military is dealing with Shoigu now. The suffering in Ukraine is great as a result of the Russian military operation taking place there. But few people in the West, for instance, have been made aware of or care about the fratricidal civil war between the western and far eastern parts of Ukraine that has raged since 2014, where there has been commensurate suffering, and at the hands of other Ukrainians. That was one of the primary causes for the present conflict. This current military action by the Russians is not at all as it is being portrayed in the Western media. For more, read on…

This is a two-part post, the first dealing with the conflict itself and the 2^nd dealing with the propaganda war. The latter is more destructive than the former. I will state at the outset I am anti-war, but at the same time I am not a pacifist. Actions that will negatively impact the lives of countless millions of people need to be called out before they precipitate in wars, like what we are seeing in Ukraine, and aggravated by what we are witnessing in Western media and social media. Much of what follows will be dismissed as disinformation, Russian propaganda, pro-Russian, even anti-American/NATO/Ukrainian – take your pick.

However, in the heat of the emotions, reasoned analysis is abandoned and few people will want to take the time to examine the context and the causes for the conflict we see splattered across our media now. What is presented here is the result of my attempt to make sense of this terrible event over the course of the conflict thus far. There is no single party at fault here, and plenty of blame to go around, with a history that stretches back at least a century. Take from this what you will, or not. I have no interest in debating points. If you feel the mainstream narrative leaves something to be desired, take time, meditate and seek understanding. Extra links to videos and articles are listed at the end of each post.

We all pray and meditate for the innocents in Ukraine, including Russian Ukrainians and a quick end to the war there. We need to pray for the Russians, too, believe it or not, and for all people caught up in a conflict from which the causes have been hidden from the public view. However, the world – most especially the Western world – is being subjected to the most intensive battle of all, the psychological battle being waged to manufacture consent for actions that will go against our own national and personal interests, and are already causing quite negative effects on national economies already brittle from the COVID crisis.

Gas and energy prices are going through the roof, and going higher, for example. And this is only the beginning and the smallest part of it. And to be clear, we are not suffering under these higher prices because of the Russians or to promote freedom, support Ukraine or to ‘stick it to the Russians’. It is better for us if we can wake up and smell the coffee, forcing a change in destructive policies by our own governments, while we can still get that coffee.

We start our investigations with a human rhetorical example. The cause for this Russian intervention in Ukraine can be explained in human terms in a few lines:

Suppose there was a group of people who did not agree with your views and who constantly refused to listen to you and at times threatened you. Suppose you knew this group’s ultimate aim was to seize your property, to do away with you, and then one day they amassed a group on the border of your property and threatened to overrun it and kill your family and friends. Would you just roll over and let them do it, or would you make certain they never threatened you again? The answer in human terms is pretty obvious. One would fight, with everything one had. This scenario is analogous to what the Russians saw coming on the 23^rd of February. This is the Russian view, whether we agree or not. Western media whitewashes and suppresses this view except in a few rare cases (see videos at the end of this post and the end of the 2^nd part).

As a result of the threats Russia was facing, they acted, and we see the results daily on our TVs and plastered across our media. All we see in the media in the West is that Russia attacked Ukraine. And from the vast majority of comments I have seen in social media there is no comment addressing the Russian side or attempts to understand. Even worse, there is no desire to understand. Instead what we see is ‘Russia bad, Putin evil, end of story’. Just why did the Russians intervene in Ukraine, then? I had stated elsewhere, along with many other commenters with far more knowledge than I that I didn’t think there was going to be a war. There were things I did not know at the time.

Since the fighting has erupted captured documents revealed the Ukrainians had planned to overrun the Donbas early this month (March 2022). Yes, documents can be forged. It is an old propaganda trick. We just had an example of that here in Italy, an allegedly official government document calling on men of a certain age to register for military service to be sent thereafter to Ukraine. I hope the perpetrator was caught and is facing charges. I am in no position to confirm or refute the documents in possession of the Russians, but if they are true they confirm other factors that led to the conflict.

In the days before the intervention, Washington kept pushing the Russian invasion narrative, amping up the threat level, misrepresenting the Russian troop movements within Russia’s borders, all the while never telling the public that from 60,000 to 125,000 Ukrainian troops (the latter higher figure being half of Ukraine’s active army) had been massed on the line of contact in the Donbas.

The Russians were not overly concerned about that initially, thinking it to be a repeat of what we saw in April of last year, thinking they could again convince Kiev it was not a good idea to do such a foolish thing. But then things began to change over the course of a few days, and drastically. There were several triggers for the present military intervention:

• Shelling of the Donbas region by Ukrainian forces had sharply increased in the days leading up to the conflict.
• Russia was rebuffed at the Munich Security Conference and instead of listening to the Russian ‘ultimatum’ (otherwise known as their security concerns), instead NATO doubled down on its stance, with Stoltenberg stating there would be more NATO on Russia’s borders
• Zelensky, in a moment of high stupidity, threatened to abandon the Budapest protocol on Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear stance, stating Ukraine needed to look into acquiring nuclear weapons
• And finally, Russia’s intelligence services had ascertained that Ukrainian forces were ready to overrun the Donbas, without knowing exactly when, except that it was ‘immanent’. On the 24^th Putin gave his speech to the Russians (also directed to Ukraine and Washington) and the special military operation began within a few minutes after he finished, just after 5:00 am.

As to the military operation itself, the Western media and governments call it an invasion, the implication being that an occupying force is sweeping across Ukraine, seeking to take over Ukraine. On the Russian side, they call it a special military operation, which by rights would be called an incursion, intervention or police action, not to split hairs. But perception is all-important in the propaganda war. When Western powers pursue a military solution like they did in Yugoslavia, curiously claiming a ‘responsibility to protect’, they call it an ‘intervention’. To the people on the ground, war is war no matter how you want to spin it.

To the Russians, the intervention in Ukraine was a pre-emptive strike. They had two basic choices, given what they had known beforehand. They knew whatever they did they would face condemnation and Biden’s threat of ‘sanctions from Hell’. Those options were:

• Push the Ukrainian army out of the Donbas region as a sole operation. It would have been very bloody, far more so than what we see now.
• Go for broke and completely disarm Ukraine and then go after the Nazi and nationalist factions

The Russians chose the 2^nd option, knowing full well that if they only focused on the Donbas it would only open a wider front and leave re-supply and the Ukrainian military intact, resulting in a still bigger and far bloodier war later, with the possibility of NATO involvement. And the Donbas would have still been subjected to daily shelling. What does the chart of the intervention show, then? The chart is below (bigger):

The chart clearly shows a military action. The horizon axis is squared by Eris, who in the Eris mythology accompanied Mars on the battlefield. Mars is on the Ascendant and conjunct Venus, both square to Eris. Eris is close to the 3^rd house cusp in the 2^nd house. The 3^rd house represents the media coverage, with the quarrelling between the various actors about ‘who is the fairest’, as in the justification for the conflict, whereas the 2^nd house placement shows another layer of the conflict which is closer to the truth – economic warfare. The latter is the big picture here, to be discussed in another post.

The Capricorn Ascendant shows the conflict is about dominance, against an old and brittle order and about more material interests. The square by Eris and conjunction by Mars to the Ascendant shows the destruction of an old order, also shown by the concentration of planets in the 1^st house. The 1^st house represents public opinion and the purpose of the conflict.

In all, the intervention will be successful, shown by the Sun/Jupiter conjunction, and with Jupiter sextile Uranus. This was a well-planned intervention, even though at the same time warfare often does no go according to plan.

The original Russian planning was for the conflict to last 10 – 14 days. We are now at the two week of the intervention. As of now, the initial objective has been accomplished (the disarming of Ukraine), according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, and we now go into the 2^nd phase of the operation (‘de-Nazification’). According to one US military expert, the war will be over in about a week as of this writing, meaning the main military operation. We’ll see.

That said, what are the Russian objectives with their operation in Ukraine? If we had listened, they are as follows:

• To disarm Ukraine and return it to its constitutional law as a neutral country
• To rout Ukraine of its Nazi influence. We’ll address that shortly, because it is key.
• To ensure the security of the nuclear reactors in Ukraine, that they not be damaged and that they are not used for weapons manufacture, as in ‘dirty bombs’. More on that later, too.
• To push Ukrainian forces out of the two Donbas republics, meaning the entirety of their pre-2014 borders.
• Recognition by Kiev of the two Donbas republics and recognition by Kiev that Crimea is Russian.

There are a few unstated objectives, too, one of which has been achieved:

• Restoring the flow of water to the North Crimean Canal, which was blocked by Ukraine after Crimea’s return to Russia
• Establishing a more secure land bridge to Transnistria, a small enclave between Moldova and Ukraine. That enclave has been on the RAND Corporation’s hit list. The latter is one of the primary think tanks that guide America’s foreign policy.
• Ridding Ukraine of its clandestine biological and chemical warfare labs. There were more than 30 such labs in Ukraine alone (English subtitles). Victoria Nuland basically admitted such (Her body language in the video is quite revealing). There are many questions we should be asking about those labs, as in why the rush to cover them up, for instance.
• Cutting Western Ukraine off from its ports on the Azov and Black seas, denying NATO of naval bases there.

That’s all. Whatever else we are told about the Russian objectives are false, but people are ascribing all sorts of motives to ‘Putin’s war’, trying to get inside Putin’s head. The Russians do not bluff and they are generally very straightforward about their security interests and intentions. The Russians have stated categorically they will not be occupying Ukrainian territory. Arguing about what comprises Ukrainian territory is pointless. Attitudes on the matter are hardened on all sides. But the fact is, the eastern half of Ukraine is predominately Russian-speaking, imbued with Russian culture and until WWII, was a part of Russia. A map of voting preferences shows this quite clearly:

The blue areas show the results for Yanukovich, who was born in and was governor of what is now the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic, the darkest blue area in the far east of Ukraine. The pink areas were all pro-Western. Artificial boundaries mean little to cultural traditions, except as barriers. The west of Ukraine is of a different culture than that of the eastern half, is primarily Central European and has been at different times under the control of Hungary, Poland and Lithuania, hence the Russo-phobia that exists there. Those nations were all occupied by the Soviets after WWII. These distinctions are a key as to what will come after the conflict ceases.

If you do not know about the RAND Corporation, mentioned previously, and its objectives then it is difficult to understand what lies behind the present conflict. It would benefit everyone to read through the linked article, which will go a long way toward explaining the American objectives being pursued in Ukraine. And as they state in the article, the costs of interfering in Ukraine will come at a high cost. That is an understatement. We have yet to find that out, but it is coming.

Just what are the American objectives in the present conflict, then? They are as follows:

• To draw Russia into a quagmire, as was the intent of drawing Russia into Syria. Many commentators have surmised such. The Syrian war failed to produce a quagmire for Russia. It will fail in Ukraine, too. The RAND effort there is to drain Russia of its resources, raise public opposition to the war and ruin Russia economically. The foreign policy people in Washington want another ‘Russian Afghanistan’ That intention is a fool’s errand. Anyone who has a basic understanding of Russia knows why. And we should look very carefully at what that would mean for Ukrainians – years of the most intensive suffering and a destroyed nation.
• To harden public opinion against Russia and to isolate it on the world stage. In this regard, the American effort has been resoundingly successful across the West. But the Global South thinks differently and they are busy shoring up deals with Russia, like Pakistan, for instance.
• To produce regime change in Russia, in the hopes of returning Russia to the Yeltsin years. This was to be done through the ‘sanctions from Hell’. That will fail, too. It will also come back to bite hard on the American dollar and other world currencies. Putin’s approval rating has risen since the conflict started and the Global South sees Russia as a trustworthy partner.

So, instead of calm analysis of every aspect of the intervention, we have media hysteria and double standards on the part of Western government. It is 1984 all over: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

We have been here before, with 9/11 and many other wars, where any view opposing ‘The Narrative’ is rejected and people who speak out against it are marginalized at best and hounded at the worst. So, while military infrastructure is being bombarded in Ukraine, the Western public is being bombarded, too, with a propaganda blitz specifically aimed at manufacturing consent against Russia. And it has worked across the West to a treat.

The purpose for this media blitzkrieg was described in an interview with a NSA operative in 2014, just after the Maidan coup and Crimea’s accession to Russia. (I will eventually find the actual text. The following is quoted from a video):

Interviewer: “So, the West has no intention of giving Ukraine to the Russians?” NSA operative: “What does Ukraine have to do with that? Whether a united Ukraine will remain on the world map or collapse is absolutely irrelevant to the solution of the main problem. The main objective of the events in Ukraine is to separate Europe from Russia, to such an extent that the Europeans completely abandon cooperation with Russia and reorient their economy toward full cooperation with the United States. The main goal is to anchor Europe’s economy more tightly to that of the United States. And what will happen in Ukraine in the meantime doesn’t really matter.”

From the quote, we see the national security interests in the United States and other European powers – but most especially the United States – have no concern whatsoever for the welfare of the people of neither Ukraine nor Russia. Europe is to be used to the whims of the United States, to be denied its sovereignty and exploited – Ukraine, Ukrainians and Russia be damned.

Speaking of Ukrainian interests, just what are the Ukrainian objectives in this conflict, then, except to survive? It depends on who one asks:

• To draw NATO and the collective West directly into combat against Russia. Ukrainians should pay especial attention to the actions (actually, inactions) of the West here. If it is not clear to them now they are being thrown under the bus, then they have a brutal lesson in front of them.
• To survive intact as a nation. It is probably a fait accompli that Ukraine will begin to break apart. It will not return to its pre-2014 borders.
• To be a member nation of the EU. That will go the way of its membership in NATO once the fighting is finished. Europe does not want to pay for Ukraine, to be stuck with the mess they created. That is another long story.
• And, to the trigger for the intervention, the original intent of the Ukrainian assault on the Donbas (which was thwarted) was to push all Russian influence out of the territory of pre-2014 Ukraine.

The preceding bullet points will have to be explained elsewhere, but suffice it to say Crimea is Russian now and neither of the two Donbas republics wants to return to the old Ukraine.

As to where the intervention stands now, we have the following:

• Effectively, western Ukraine is landlocked now. The coasts of the Azov and Black seas are under Russian control. Ukrainian forces cannot be resupplied by sea, largely meaning they cannot receive any heavy military equipment now except through Europe.
• The main objective cities are surrounded now, all in the eastern half of Ukraine, where the bulk of Ukrainian military are now and where the concentrations of the extremist and Nazi fighters are stationed. Those troops are cut off – ‘cauldroned’ – and they know what awaits them.
• The bulk of the Ukrainian air force and navy were destroyed in the first day of fighting, more or less completely neutralized by only the third day.
• Russian forces have taken military control of a third of Ukraine’s territory (200,000 km²) in the first two weeks. From there they plan to move westward to fully seal off the Black Sea coast and then northward in order for the reality of the situation to dawn on the Ukrainian leadership. At this point there is no plan to move westward.
• Kharkov and Odessa are the main cities targeted now for cleansing of the Nazis, with the aim of minimizing civilian casualties. The Azov battalion, for instance, were using a hospital and kindergarten as firing bases in Mariupol. Once those two aforementioned cities have been secured it is seen to be a turning point in the conflict.
• As the Ukrainian forces are being pushed out of the Donbas they continue to fire on civilian areas of that region as they retreat.
• Ukrainian forces are no longer a united force, having been broken up into many smaller groups cut off from central command.

Far from being defeated, exhausted, depleted and bogged down, the Russian intervention is going according to plan and schedule and has been rather quick:

“So far the Russian military operation in Ukraine has been a reconnaissance in force preceded by the destruction of the supplies and headquarters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by standoff weapons. The object being to suss out where the Ukrainian forces are, to surround them, to check existing Russian intelligence against reality and, at the same time, destroy known headquarters, air and naval assets, supplies and ammunition depots. And, perhaps, there was the hope that the speed and success (Russian/LDPR forces dominated an area of Ukraine about the size of the United Kingdom in the first week) would force an early end (aka recognition of reality).”

Well, as with any military operation there are always unexpected and unintended consequences and setbacks. But the Russians have re-evaluated the situation to this point and have increased their resolve, picking up tempo. They say there is no hurry, but the Ukrainians so far have not capitulated, probably due to American influence and fear by Zelensky he will be shot if he capitulates.

What about this conflict then, and our collective reaction to it? If one thinks this conflict is a black-and-white issue, that Russia is solely at fault, that this is ‘Putin’s war’, that it is a fight between good and evil, so on and so forth, rather than simply repeating media talking points, it would be a better idea to study the history of Europe, Russian and Slavic culture and then to actually listen to what the Russians have been saying since the turn of this century. And one will not get such an understanding from mainstream sources.

There are several ways of viewing this conflict, each of which is correct along its given line:

• The latest phase of the Ukrainian civil war, which began in 2014, and probably the final phase
• A proxy war between Russia and the United States and the EU
• A war between capitalism and socialism
• A war meant to draw the EU strictly under the American orbit

Some of these points were mentioned above. There is one point of several that was left out of the points above, though – that this is a war between Russia and Ukraine. To anyone who understands Ukraine-Russia relations, this is clearly not a war waged against Ukraine. It could be seen this way only in one respect, and that is as a purge of a small group of Nazi ideologues from positions of influence in Ukraine. But those people have wielded a very potent and poisoning influence on Ukrainian society and government. The Russians say they want to minimize casualties among Ukrainians, military and civilian and so far have managed to do so, despite what we hear in Western media.

The fact is this is still a civil war. There are family members on both sides fighting against each other for a variety of reasons. Russians and Ukrainians see each other as cousins, at least among Ukrainians who have not been completely brainwashed. Ukraine, though, is a fractious state and always has been. The nationalist western half has tried to completely de-Russify Ukraine, which has been a crime in itself. And behind that process is a long history of internal corruption, foreign meddling and a complete lack of regard for the lives of average Ukrainians. Ukraine remains the poorest nation in Europe. It is more pertinent to ask why that should be instead of blaming Russia for the current hostilities. From here we move on to a look at the West and where we actually stand in the conflict. And it is not a pretty sight. Continued in the next part…

 

• Scott Ritter on Ukraine
• The view from the other side of the conflict zone: https://t.me/intelslava
• Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Salon (Mearschimer and McGovern) introduction to video is poor
• Ukraine War, Putin’s Legacy (Mearschimer)
• Former NATO soldier’s view of the conflict
• Russia’s Incursion Into Ukraine Necessary for Security (Orlov)

Other posts at this blog about Ukraine:

The fractious state of Ukraine

Valentine’s Day in Ukraine

The Russian R2P decree

The Pandora papers (Ukrainian corruption)

A Ukrainian fandango

Shoigu’s other workshop

Featured pic from Then24