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  3. @Andrew
    One more point occurred to me after writing the previous post.

    In the article you share on Helsinki, its final paragraph states:

    It is really difficult to see who can now stop Putin, except perhaps an awakened Russian public opinion, that will become sickened by the casualties Russian soldiers will suffer in a needless war against another Slav country.

    This was written in 2014, though its content is eerily and ironically reflective of the same Western propaganda being broadcast today. So, how many Russian soldiers lay dead due to the inter-Slavic war caused by Russia’s occupation of Crimea back in 2014? In fact there was no war launched by the Crimeans over the Russian occupation there. Perhaps it was because of the relief they felt knowing that the anti-Russian Azov, Dnipro, etc Battalions would not be butchering Crimeans, precisely due to the presence of the Russian army in Crimea. Indeed, the Russian protection extended over the Crimea was the envy of every ethnic Russian in the Dombas as they were forced to make due the best they could for another 8yrs before Russia came to their rescue, quite literally.

  4. @Andrew Benjamin
    The irony never fails to impress me as the neocons endlessly, yet selectively, point to the violations of the BM made by Russia in invading the Crimea while ignoring the US BM violations which took place during the Orange Revolution and certainly during the Maidan Revolution, all of which predated the Russian occupation of Crimea. I will quote the following passage from one of Ted’s articles, Ukraine: The right of self-determination supersedes sovereign inviolability, :

    They cite the Budapest Memorandum, of 1994 in which signatories, including Russia and the US, committed to ““refrain from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine and undertook to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing (1994) borders.”, They claim the 2022 Russian invasion violated this fundamental commitment.

    They ignore the fact that the CIA orchestrated coup disrespected the sovereignty of Ukraine, employed coercive actions against the political independence of Ukraine, and subordinated the economic interests of Ukraine to that of the EU, and thereby violated the provisions 1, 2 and 3 of the Bucharest Memorandum, respectively, and, these actions, each of which preceded Russia’s invasion of Crimea, actually triggered Russia’s occupation of the Crimea..

    The 2014 CIA masterminded coup, sometimes referred to as the Maiden uprising, which removed the pro-Russian head of state, Viktor Yanukovych and installed a pro-West head of state is not mentioned. That’s OK in their book, but best forgotten. They take no responsibility for the bombardment by Ukrainian Army of the citizens of the Donbass since then, killing over 10,000. Nor do they acknowledge the role of the Nazi Azov Battalion which Ukraine made part of their army and which did most of the killing.

    In the article which Andrew cites, it states that

    The “Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances” is a diplomatic memorandum that was signed in December 1994 by Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

    It then goes on to ignore the violations made by the non-Russian signatories. In fact, the article does mention the CSCE which later was renamed to be the OSCE. What the article ignores, and which no neocon will reveal, is that the OSCE is referenced in the BM, and that the OSCE mandates the protections afforded to the minority populations. So while the description from Ted’s article above explains how the US, and UK violated the BM, it is the targeting of the Russian population by the US/UK installed regime which displays Ukraine’s violation of not just the BM, but also of the OSCE. Their use of the Azov, Tornado and other neo fascist, right wing or simply criminals to effect a blunt trauma on the people in the Dombas, violates not only treaties, but everything which we in the West have come to believe is the basis of civilization. The use of state borne terror and politicized violence are the tools by which the US/UK installed regime has maintained a hold on power. More than this, this US/UK Ukrainian installed regime began a war with the Russian population which led to the significant reduction in the Russian voting population. Even those Ukrainians who sought refuge outside of the Ukrainian state were refused any participation in the elections following the violent attacks by the Battallions on the Dombas.

    By the way, just for clarity, I am in no way suggesting that you, Andrew, are a neocon, only that you are subscribing to the standard neocon narrative when selectively addressing the issue of Crimea without acknowledging the fact that the Crimean occupation was not a direct result of the failure of the US/UK to control the coup which they initiated.

    One more point which should be raised and is quite related to the Crimean occupation. How many Crimeans died during the Russian occupation? I think the answer is none. How many Crimeans would have died had Russia not occupied Crimea? Given that over 10K Ukrainians died as a result of the Ukrainian assault on Dombas, I think the number of Crimeans who still draw breath today due to Russia’s occupation are likely to have been numbered in the thousands. Whatever the number would be, however, it would be difficult to suggest that Russia’s occupation of Crimea did not lead to the Crimeans being protected from the savagery which their neighbors in Dombas suffered. Recall the amusing observation that the reason why the Ukrainians were killing ethnic Russians in Dombas rather then killing the real Russians in Crimea was precisely due to the fact that the real Russians were in Crimea and the Ukrainians couldn’t even subdue the ethnic Russian militia force in the Dombas.

  10. The inconsistencies surrounding both the concern for the innocent as well as the application of international law are so blatantly obvious that it is quite disingenuous to claim that the outrage surrounding Russia’s actions is due to anything more than a preferred narrative. The innocent have not been dying for a year now, as it has been 9 years since the slaughter began. Also the violations of international law did not begin last year with Russia’s moving to support her allies in the Dombas, but, rather, it began over twenty years ago with the savage bombing of the Serbian people as NATO violated Serbian sovereignty while coming to the assistance of the terrorist organization, the KLA. If NATO could carve Kosovo from the Serbian state, while NATO shares no border with Serbia and NATO was not threatened by Serbia, how is it that Russia is acting in an inconsistent manner when responding to a hostile neighboring nation, massing more than a 100K force on her border while murdering ethnic Russians and making threats against Russia. To deny the obvious implications and relevancy of these parallels is simply an exercise in mendacity.