RUSSIA, THE WEST, NATO & UKRAINE: FIGHTING A RERUN OF WWII

All sides in this conflict can be seen to be fighting a re-run of the last war, the second world war, and some of them are obviously doing so quite blindly regarding the motivations and intentions of the other side.

For Russia the mentality they are fighting mirrors that of the Nazis, a foe that Russians have never been allowed to forget and with good reason. The western powers and their media, heavily invested in their struggle deny that the Russians have any cause to feel as they do. However, as the coup took place in Kiev and in the aftermath a significant number of these news outlets (including the BBC) reported on the dangers that those who looked back in honour of Hitler’s Nazis. That streets in western Ukraine were named after those Ukrainians who worked with the Nazis against Russia and all else including the proliferation of Nazi-like symbols and swastika tattoos were facts soon cast aside as irrelevant. Not so to the Russians.

On the side of the two successive Ukrainian regimes since the coup of 2014 those the Russians called Nazis were extremely useful as they were the fiercest of fighters and most willing to shell the civilian populations of the Donbass region who they looked upon as Russians to be eliminated by one means or another. These regimes who took over the political system of Ukraine that had previously elected presidents and governments who reflected the entire population of Ukraine saw their task as fighting only for the Ukrainian-speaking population. Those who spoke Russian and any source that communicated in Russian were to either be banned or heavily suppressed and if possible, driven out of existence.

For the best part of a decade the Russian-speaking majority in eastern Ukraine were relentlessly shelled by the Ukrainian army who had incorporated the fierce Nazi-loving west Ukrainians who had been at the centre of the insurrection and coup in Kiev. To those bombarding the apartment blocks, schools, hospitals and town centres of the Donbass the people there were subhumans, Moskals as they called them. Russians to be eliminated whether man, woman or child. None of this was reported by news outlets of the West now firmly behind the demonisation of Russia as the cause of all evil.

To NATO this is a war to survive. Left without any true reason to exist after the cold War ended there were too many reasons for its high command to wish to stay relevant and continue to exert its power. Nation after nation joined the alliance that had been formed to counter the Soviet Union. Closer and closer to Russia’s borders it came despite protestations among many high-ranking officials across the West. Due to the insistence of George W. Bush despite protestations by Angela Merkel and others it was announced at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 that both Ukraine and Georgia would join. As the man who now heads the CIA said at the time, this was the reddest of red lines for Russia. 

For the USA and Britain a mythology of greatness, superiority and exceptionalism has developed since WWII which has imbued their reaction to the refusal of Russia to accept Ukraine in particular joining NATO. The fervour of their support for Ukraine and negation of any semblance of good reason in Russia’s stance echoes the kind of rhetoric seen during the fight against the Nazis. The same attitude of their being totally good as well as their Ukrainian allies and the Russians being totally bad is clear. This is ‘war mode’ when only a black and white analysis of a conflict is allowed and any deviation from this mode is shunned and attacked. That Russia might have reason to act as it is doing and reasonable intentions, is anathema. No middle ground is allowed to exist.

The blindness of the rhetoric used by the western powers and their media along with the complete absence of diplomacy augers very ill as anyone can see. No quarter is to be given, no understanding applied, not even a thought process that might generate understanding. Nothing.

In Zelensky we see a mirroring of Hitler’s stance throughout WWII, especially in his disallowing any retreat by his army from Stalingrad when it was caught in the firm grip of the Russian winter. That army suffered every possible extreme and subsequently surrendered. Frostbite ate at their extremities, food was scarce, to the extent that any flesh was eaten, including human flesh. Out of fuel and ammunition their only hope for survival was to surrender or be captured. Hitler refused all requests that they be allowed to retreat. The same mindset can be seen in Zelensky throughout this war. Anti-surrender squads who are in fact death squads force the Ukrainian troops to remain at their positions no matter what as Zelensky voices fantastical tales of victory.

The parallels are many with the second world war, however in the case of being on the right or wrong side there is no such parallel. The western powers have chosen to aid the oppressors of the Russian-speakers of the Donbass, they have sided with the modern day Nazis who have acted since 2014 with the utmost criminal cruelty. They have provided weapons to men who bear swastika tattoos and who have sworn to effect a genocide against all Russians, including those of the Donbass. Instead of allying themselves with the powers of good against Hitler’s Nazis they have allied themselves with those who honour Hitler and his Nazis and who seek to perpetrate a genocide in the Donbass. 

Watch any documentary series on the second world war and you cannot help to recognise the similarities between then and now. A Russia defending herself as she defended herself during WWII is a target for western neocons, little better than Nazis themselves who seek to undermine and break her up. Is it any wonder that Russia has chosen to engage her enemies and is now resolutely seeking to defeat them as a matter of existential necessity? There can be no doubt that as in the second world war that Russia will prevail. She must, the alternative is to see the Russian nation undermined and broken in pieces. No Russian is going to stand for that. Neither to live in fear. The lessons of WWII, or ‘The Great Patriotic War’ as the Russians call it are too fresh and the warnings too loud to ignore. 

Therefore, these various sides in this war, the Russians, NATO, the USA, UK and EU, and the Russia-hating western Ukrainians are locked in this struggle to the death. Only one side can win and the other be totally defeated and humiliated. As with WWII the side that has most to lose will fight with most vigour and the side with largest and most powerful resources will win. That side is clearly Russia and as with WWII those with the most self-sacrificing and noble aspirations and cause worth fighting for will win. And that side, without a shadow of a doubt, is Russia.