By Alexander G. Markovsky, AM THINKER
Right before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told lawmakers that Kiev could fall within 72 hours if a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine takes place. But why, if the US expected Ukraine to collapse, didn’t NATO stop the impending conflict by admitting that NATO had no intention of having Ukraine join the alliance? Then, Moscow’s security concerns emanating from NATO’s eastward expansion would be addressed, and Putin would have had no reason to attack Ukraine.
Isn’t what expected from the alliance whose stated mission is:
NATO is an active and leading contributor to peace and security on the international stage. It promotes democratic values and is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes.
But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization launched itself across the world in a wave of ideological exaltation to reshape the world around Western values. The world has witnessed the pursuit of NATO’s new mission statement in the Balkans, Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now in Ukraine.
After the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, NATO needed another war to justify its existence. This war was supposed to contrast with previous NATO misadventures. It would be sharp and short with no Western casualties. And, this time, NATO would be victorious.
NATO leaders seemed to relish the prospect of war. When in December 2021, in a last-ditch effort, Putin demanded that NATO stop eastward expansion and committed to not admitting Ukraine to NATO, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg arrogantly rejected any discussion of the subject.
Nothing prevented Zelensky from avoiding the war either. If he had renounced his request for NATO membership, it would have satisfied Moscow’s demands, and the invasion would have been called off. However, the corrupt rulers in Kiev were not motivated by concern for the stability and integrity of Ukraine. They were moved by billions in financial and military aid and unlimited prospects for personal enrichment.
Some Europeans, lacking any capacity on their own for revenge for centuries of defeats and humiliation, saw an opportunity for reprisal, especially without direct military involvement. Biden looked forward to extricating himself from Afghanistan and making the Ukrainian crisis a turning point in his presidency.
Ironically, everybody wanted this war except Putin.
Indeed, NATO designed a daring gambit. The strategy was that America and its allies would provoke Moscow’s invasion and use it as a pretext to impose devastating sanctions on Russia. The sanctions were supposed to cripple the Russian economy and create domestic pressure on President Putin, which would force him out of power. Putin’s exit would create a power vacuum, which would weaken Russia geopolitically. What would happen to Ukraine was irrelevant; it served as bait.
However, the NATO strategic geniuses failed again. Ukraine did not collapse, the sanctions did not achieve their desired outcome, and NATO got sucked into a war by proxy with Russia.
This sobering reality forced NATO to reshape the conflict and come up with a new strategy. The current strategy is centered on a prolonged war of attrition to weaken Russia economically and militarily and force it into some kind of surrender. Since the war rages on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine pays a devastating human and economic price. About half of the population of 35 million has left the country or were killed or incapacitated. Its infrastructure, which took about 200 years to build, is being destroyed, the economy practically is devastated, and what used to be the breadbasket of Europe recently adopted a law to raise marijuana.
The country is in a state of material penury dependent for its survival on international assistance. Zelensky has been walking with an outstretched hand around the world, begging for military and economic aid. Shamefully, this suffering country with a well-educated population became a country of beggars. Zelensky even dresses like a beggar.
Zelensky believes that since he is advancing Western interests, there should be reciprocal obligations. He sees the country’s salvation in joining NATO and the EU, being adopted, and getting on international welfare. In addition, he expects the West to offer hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstruction.
A recent NATO meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, poured cold water on Zelensky’s aspirations. As cemeteries all over Ukraine are fast running out of space, NATO refused even to issue an invitation for membership. Zelensky, who has been running for NATO membership like a greyhound racing to catch a mechanical rabbit (video here), seemed to realize that the dream of Ukraine ever becoming a NATO member had evaporated and emphatically vented his frustration to NATO’s leadership.
But NATO’s leaders, who are perfectly content avoiding a confrontation with nuclear power and letting Ukrainians fight, did not take Zelensky’s outburst lightly. Some are unhappy that Ukraine sustained the Russian initial assault. If we are to believe General Mark Miley, NATO did not plan for an independent Ukraine even to be there.
Alexander G. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a conservative think tank that examines national security, energy, risk analysis, and other public policy issues. He is the author of “Anatomy of a Bolshevik” and “Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It.” Mr. Markovsky is the owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services, LLC. He can be reached at alex.g.markovsky@gmail.com
The claim that 4 million residents permanently left the Russian state following the Russian invasion is a fantastical if untestable claim to make. Richard Sakwa, and expert on Russia, places the number at 500,000 in the early months of the war and another 500,000 following the Russian call up last fall. The reality is that the real number, whatever it might actually be, is irrelevant. A large number, though tiny percentage, of Russia’s population fled the state to foreign shores. The consequence of this is likely to benefit Russia from the respect of having even fewer dissents within its borders to foment the long hoped for revolt for which the West is still waiting to materialize and win this war for them. There is little chance of such a revolt occurring while the economy continues to improve, and I would suggest it is not quite clear as to what might take place even if the economy should plummet.
Do recall that in the mid-1990’s, inflation hit over 2500% and this was directly and unquestionably due to the the failures of the govt to react when the economy began to fail following the Shock Therapy move to a market economy. Yet, despite all of this, there was no revolt by the Russian people, no mass demonstrations, and no coup to provide a govt with better governance skills. Instead, the coup which did take place cemented the Shock Therapy policy in place and made its managers, led by Yeltsin, all the more powerful. The result was to see the Russian middle class crushed into the lower class, and the death rate soared as a consequence. Furthermore, at the time there was no foreign threat around which to stir the people to focus their resentment of those economic troubles. So even if the economy was to become more troubled than it stands today, it may well be that the current frustration being experienced by the West in their attempt to regime change Russia will continue to be frustrated…perhaps…
@seymour
You make a good several important points.
The reintegration would consist of the Russian citizens being ‘cleansed’ of collaborators, something which has been the theme of Ukrainian re-occupation of lost Ukrainian territories over the past two years. Sadly enough for the Crimeans, there was no resistance to the Russian occupation back in 2014, indeed, not a single life was lost, not one Crimean and not one Russian. The level of integration between the Crimea and Russia was a sore point for Ukraine, which is why they keep dreaming of gaining the weaponry to indiscriminately shell Crimea as the have been doing to Donetz city for nearly 10yrs. Of course they did try to deprive Crimea of water for 8yrs, but even that attempt of Ukrainian reprisal failed to be impressive. So should the Crimeans be so unfortunate as to be returned to the control of Ukraine, the retribution would be quite quick and quite severe, have no doubt about it. Of course, it would be reported to a cooperative, uninquisitive press that, once more, the Russians did it.
Oct. 2022
How many more would flee if they could freely go?
Just for clarity 4 million is indeed the number reported for the first three months of 2022, a number that includes travel for business, tourism and other reasons, a mixed bag. It is not at all a reflection of Russian sentiment in general about their country but one of which includes a number of people from former Soviet satellites. And a number of draft dodgers for sure we can concede but that cross sectional history. How many Americans fled the US during the war in Vietnam? Not nice but to be expected. Was there any campaign by Russian security services to close the border. The report itself, officially authorized I would take it, seems forthright not what you would expect from a madman dictator. Contrast with the many lies of American officials. As for the techies leaving in droves would someone kindly explain what nation states have been permitting these orcs entry, and be specific please.
Finally 6 months ago three star general Hodges forecast that Crimea would be retaken by Ukraine by end of August. There’s a video online as well of the comedian Zelensky discussing the reintegration of Crimean residents (!) Does anyone here agree? And if not I would be interested in other forecasts.
Nearly 4 Million Russians Left Russia in Early 2022 – according to the FSB.
100,000 left Technical people about 10% of the techies. Quit a Brain Brain.
Does Putin still get Mussoloni status as the dictator who made the trains on time?
Or is Putin the dictator who over played his hand in attacking Ukraine and has been in charge of the downward spiral of Russia. Russian’s who liked playing the west are no persona non-grata. Russians love their sports but no longer get to play in UEFA.
This history by Greenbaum The Jews of Lithuania is very fundamental. The same threads run through Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland and more
Making it all possible is
* Absence of Trotsky party
* An unchallenged Media
History not known taught or discussed
Nationalism does not have to be Fascist but it was in the case of Ukraine and of the Baltic countries. If there is an absence of Trotskyist leadership as I am creating there is trouble.
People I meet do not or cannot express themselves in terms of categories as Stalinism, as Trotskyism, not even aware, so discussion is stunted
The role and crimes of Stalinism
But when the Fascists and Nazis began their killing the Jews of Lithuania desperately tried to reach Russia
‘
PERSPECTIVE
NATO summit in Vilnius: War plotting at the site of a historic crime
Clara Weiss, David North
10 July 2023
Today, NATO leaders will convene in Vilnius, Lithuania, only a few hundred miles away from the battlefield of the war in Ukraine, which has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
There will be no shortage of denunciations of Russian brutality. No doubt, the Lithuanian government, in particular, will be thanked for its efforts in spearheading the NATO war, or, as the obedient lackeys in the media call it, the fight to defend “democracy.”
Joe Biden, who just approved the delivery of cluster bombs to Ukraine, one of the most brutal and criminal weapons of modern-day warfare, will decry the inhumanity of Vladimir Putin. Olaf Scholz, whose government is engaged in the largest rearmament since Hitler and is about to station 4,000 German troops in Lithuania, will return to the scene of some of the worst crimes of German imperialism, spouting well-prepared war propaganda.
What will not be spoken about is the history of the city where they are meeting: Vilnius, once known as the “Jerusalem of Europe,” was the site of some of the largest and most barbaric massacres in the history of the Nazi-led destruction of European Jewry. With 95 percent of its prewar Jewish population of about 210,000 murdered, Lithuania recorded a higher death rate than almost any other country in Europe. Lithuanian nationalists were among the principal perpetrators of this historic crime.
Lithuanian Security Police members burning a Lithuanian synagogue in 1941
Much like its Ukrainian counterparts, the Lithuanian bourgeoisie historically combined a tradition of bitter anticommunism with vile antisemitism. Following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940, far-right nationalists and generals fled to Germany, where they founded, in direct collaboration with the Nazi regime, the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF).
Almost contemporaneous with the pogroms that were now launched by the Nazis and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in West Ukraine, the LAF and the German occupiers began an orgy of mass slaughter in Lithuania. Within less than three years, an 800-year-old community, which played a central role in the development of Jewish and world culture, was almost completely annihilated.
Of the approximately 210,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania prior to the Nazi invasion on June 22, 1941, 195,000 had been murdered by the end of the war in 1945. The overwhelming majority were dead by the end of 1941.
The most horrifying feature of the Holocaust in Lithuania was the open and unashamed participation of substantial sections of the population in the hunting down, torture and murder of Jews. Historian Masha Greenbaum has provided a searing account of the murderous rampage that swept through the country in the days preceding and immediately following the Nazi invasion.
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The entry of the Nazis into Lithuania, which had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, was enthusiastically welcomed by the nationalist, anticommunist and violently antisemitic forces. Among its leading figures was the Lithuanian ambassador to Berlin, Colonel Kazys Skirpa, who was widely known to be an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler. In advance of the German invasion, Skirpa directed a substantial network of Lithuanian fascists. Greenbaum writes in The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community 1316-1945:
These cells of Lithuanian fascists, Nazi sympathizers, and Lithuanian nationalists were important constituents of the LAF, Lietuvos Aktyvistu Frontas (Lithuanian Activist Front), the largest and best organized of the nationalist groups. But there were many other factions, such as the Iron Wolf, the Lithuanian Freedom Army, the Falcons, and the Lithuanian Restoration Front. They penetrated the universities, the civil service, the professions, even the high schools. According to Lithuanian sources, the number of members in these clandestine groups and anti-Soviet units reached 100,000.
Three days before the invasion, Skirpa—in constant contact with the Nazi Gestapo (secret police) and Wehrmacht (army)—issued Leaflet No. 37 for mass distribution throughout Lithuania. It was an undisguised call for the total destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. It stated:
The crucial day of reckoning has come for the Jews at last. Lithuania must be liberated not only from Asiatic Bolshevik slavery but also from the long-standing Jewish yoke.
In the name of the Lithuanian people, we solemnly declare that the ancient right of sanctuary granted to the Jews in Lithuania by Vytautas the Great is abolished forever and without reservation.
Jews who are guilty of persecuting Lithuanians will be brought to trial. Those who manage to escape will be found. It is the duty of all honest Lithuanians to take measures by their own initiative to stop such Jews and, if necessary, to punish them. The new Lithuanian State will be rebuilt by Lithuanians only. All Jews are excluded from Lithuania forever. … Let the Jews know the irrevocable sentence passed upon them; not a single Jew shall have citizenship rights. The errors of the past and the evils perpetrated by the Jews will be set aright, and a firm foundation for a happy future and the creative work of our Aryan nation will be laid. Let us prepare for the liberation of Lithuania and the purification of the nation.
This diatribe unleashed a rampage of homicidal violence. Be forewarned: It is difficult to read Greenbaum’s account of the monstrous crimes perpetrated against the Jews by Lithuanian mobs, who had been whipped into a frenzy by the nationalist antisemites and anticommunists. Greenbaum writes:
On June 25, Lithuanian partisans who defined themselves as freedom fighters began a three-day killing rampage against Jews in smaller towns and villages, during which the entire populations of over 150 Jewish communities perished. Some Jews were driven from their homes and burned alive, after having been savagely beaten and herded into synagogues, schools and other public places that were then torched. In other instances, entire Jewish families were driven to nearby forests or riverbeds where pits or trenches had been prepared, and then shot. In several localities, such as Reiniai and Geruliai in the Telsiai area, in Meretz (Merkine), Plungian (Plunge), Sakiai (Shaki), and Kelm (Kelme), Jews were forced to dig their own graves. Virtually all the Jews in Ukmerge were herded into the synagogue and burned alive. In Seirijai, Jews were dragged naked throughout the streets and then brutally murdered in the presence of a cheering crowd. In Panevezys, Jews including several young women who had been raped were hurled into burning lime.
In Kovno alone, Lithuanian partisans murdered almost 4,000 Jews during the two days that elapsed between the invasion and the arrival of German forces in the city. A particularly brutal atrocity took place later in the downtown Kovno garage of the Lietukis cooperative. Some 60 Jewish men, chosen at random in the streets by the partisans, were taken to the garage and savagely beaten and tortured as a large crowd stood by and observed. As the Jews lay wounded and moaning on the ground, their torturers continued for the amusement of the crowd to beat them mercilessly until they died. Another group of Jews was dragged in to clean the garage and haul the victims away for burial.
In Slobodka (Wilijampole), partisans went from house to house searching for Jews. Their victims were thrown into the River Vilija: those who did not drown were shot to death as they swam. Jewish houses were set afire and their occupants burned alive as partisans blocked the path of approaching firefighters. Hooligans who called themselves freedom fighters slaughtered Jews indiscriminately. In many instances, limbs were torn off bodies and scattered hither and yon.
On June 25, partisans decapitated the Chief Rabbi of Slobodka, Zalman Ossovsky, and displayed his severed head in the front window of his house. His headless body was discovered in another room, seated near an open volume of Talmud that he had been studying.
Most of these 150 localities became Judenrein (Jew-free) 24 hours before the German occupation forces arrived. This gave the local population a brief opportunity to pounce upon the homes and businesses of their former Jewish neighbors in a frenzy of pillage and plunder. Many of the killings and lootings were carried out in broad daylight amid acquiescent, often cheering witnesses. When they attended Mass in church, the partisans were praised by the priests for their courage and patriotism.”
This was all done under the combination of hatred of Russians hatred of Jews
Obviously the former pushed to the front at this point
Bear, I commiserate with your sentiments at
Bear Klein
August 10, 2023 at 7:42 am
One of these days, Peloni will come to his senses concerning Putin and his barbaric regime
https://imgs.search.brave.com/I98MpD9IMO87Z1zaM7rr0ruJJAwV8SSSiQON6Uek-k0/rs:fit:500:0:0/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRp/YS50YXJpbmdhLm5l/dC9rbm4vZml0OjU1/MC9aM002THk5cmJq/TXZObVk1Wm1Nek1t/RmtNekk0WmpJMU1H/WTVOR1JpTURVMVpq/RmtOVGhqWWpjdWFu/Qm4.jpeg.
@Peloni if I have imisunderstood your feelings about Putin, I will accept your own words as describing your feelings. I just interpreted what you had previously written. It was not my intent to mischaracterize your feelings or views.
By the way I come back to this site occasionally, so do not interpret a non-response at all times as avoidance. Though to be precise I time I do not feel answers to all questions or comments are warranted nor do I wish to be dragged in needless debates about things that do not interest me or I find ridiculous. Reading long convoluted comments such as you often write is not interesting or beneficial to me. So I just dismiss them as uninteresting or irrelevant.
Nor do I go along with being manipulated or cornered in debates. I think you also try and avoid that. You have great for patience and energy for endless debating, more than I do is my observation. I likely will back away again from this site again, as I have better things to do with my time.
Currently I am for regime change in Russia and Iran. Certainly Iran but less so in Russia. Until Putin launched the latest war with Ukraine I would have been for finding a way to live with him. Not sure that is possible now but maybe his replacement might be worse.
@Bear
You are quite a funny fellow. I raise questions to you which you ignore as my opinion, or state you have no interest in debating me, or simply ignore entirely as you did just a few posts before this one. Yet you feel I should follow thru and answer your questions. Well, for what it’s worth to you, you have my answers such as they are, but you should respond to one or two of my own at some point just to clarify your own position if not also to better direct my thoughts.
You are once again ascribing a sentiment to me which does not exist. I recognize that Putin has provided Russia with good governance, and this is the least which any people might expect from a ruler. It is this fact which most represents the reason why judicial reform must not be delayed in Israel, because the High Court jurists make such poor policy that delaying the end of their tyranny would be too great a threat to the nation. The Russian people seem to support the notion that they are better off with Putin than without him, and I would add that without him, Russia would choose someone who is far more anti-Western rather than the narcissistic view of the West that the Russians would pick some Western neocon to rule over them – something which Russia would never do.
Be well.
@Bear
I recently read a book on Russia and the very first sentence stated
My response: Now do America and the rest of the ‘liberal West’. You say Putin is a dictator, well I would say that he is just one of many.
You say he is a mass murderer? In the age of Covid, this statement simply makes me laugh to help hide my tears. As to living in Russia, I would never visit that country, so there is little chance of me living there. Now tell me why you are so happy to unleash a reckless war of regime change against the largest nuclear power in the world? Why are you so dismissive of Ukraine’s Nazi problem? Why are you so determined to ignore the villainy played by the West in both concocting this crisis and not dealing equitably with it?
Russia tried to move towards the West in the years after they shed their Soviet skins yet it was blocked, isolated and found itself further and further surrounded. What was its crime? Why did they draw a line prohibiting Russia from joining NATO, or at least form some unifying pan-European security blanket which would incorporate rather than isolate this great nuclear state. You say that Putin is a monster, a mass murderer, well, if this is so, let the Russians deal with him. Instead, during a recent uprising in the Russian ranks, not a single Russian led in protest against this mass murdering dictator, not from any corner of the country, political establishment of armed forces. This was the testimony of the Russians that, like him or hate him, they accept him.
Compare that to Iran, where the mullahs beat to death young girls simply because they dropped their veil, or hang some gender confused fellow for the sin of being found out. The people have been rebelling against the Mullahs for years while the same nations which are feeding Ukraine bullets to kill Russians support the mullahs as they beat these young women into an early grave and make the local homosexual into a community pinata. Hence I suggest hat the move to remove Putin has nothing to do with his being a mass murderer or his autocratic rule which I would share is not so fully autocratic as you suggest.
Russia is a nuclear state, Iran is not. Russia has not threatened the West, yet Iran does so regularly. Russia has fired rockets at American servicemen, whereas Iran has done so several times. Russia has not murdered thousands of US and allied servicemen, but Iran has done exactly this.
Yet the West would choose to make war against Russia? I disagree, not because I am enamored of Putin though he is a capable ruler, but because I have enough sense to recognize that this war has nothing to do with the propagandized nonsense under which it is being sold to the public at a heafty price against a nuclear power. There are of course real threats to the free world today, and most of them lie within the realms of the very nations comprising the free world, and if there is a pariah state which should draw a coalition of opposition against it, it should be the soon to be nuclear state of Iran which should be the target of the West’s collective HIMARS, Stormshadows, and Javelins, and not the largest nuclear state in the world Russia. The obvious nature of this statement is too great to easily ignore, even as so many seem ignorant of the sense of it.
@Peloni you and anyone who so admire’s Putin and are not Russian’s is truly shockingly perplexing to me (then their has always been those who admire the worst of the worst human’s for whatever strange reason). Actually I am surprised by the Russian’s who do admire Putin or are they just scared to death of him and his goons. Are they afraid they will get thrown off a building if they say something bad about him or his “Special Operation”.
I noticed you failed to answer if Putin is a dictator or not.
I noticed you failed to answer if Putin is a mass murder or not.