Putin’s premeditated assault against civilization is the gravest crisis since 1938, the year when Hitler tipped so deep into the Darkest Side, that he could not come back. Aside from this, Putin’s psycho crisis is fascinating as it demonstrates how entire populations become seized with madness (and how belief systems work in general).
So I hope my readers forgive me to insist a bit on what looks increasingly as the beginning of WWIII. Today Russian forces, using grenades, captured an Ukrainian frigate. The Ukrainians are stalling for time, aware as they are, that Putin does not want to allow them to prepare for the all-out war he obviously long planned, and for whom no one, but for him and his thugs, is ready. Get Your “What Would Hitler Do?” Bracelet
In war, it’s most important to choose the place and time of one’s battle. Putin quadrupled Russia’s military budget, for years, and then struck, as he could not resist anymore the temptation of showing his muscles. I will deconstruct here more of Putin’s lies and hallucinations, from the major discourse he gave March 17, 2014, in which he does not hide his ambition to recover what he calls the “big country”. Starting with the invasion of Ukraine (which he claims he got the authorization to proceed with, see below in his own words).
The big problem for the rest of the world is that the “big country”, the USSR, not satisfied with terrorizing 145 million Russians, also directly terrorized more than 155 million NON Russian people (the USSR was 300 million, Russia is not even half of that, only 145 million), and the USSR also subjugated another 100 million in Eastern Europe. Relative to that, Hitler’s dream of rebuilding a “Great Kingdom” (“Grosse Reich”) was puny.
Let me say in passing that my critique of the Soviet Union was always from the left, and the more progressive point of view. From that admittedly advanced perspective, Stalin was the Twentieth Century’s greatest capitalist (he commanded the greatest capital, including millions of slaves). Stalin was also addicted to the sort of behaviors that used to be associated, for millennia, to the Devil (making him a first class plutocrat).
In the preceding essay, Kill Tatars, Own Crimea, we have seen Crimea has been made into Mother Russia through a recent holocaust. Let’s go back to Putin’s discourse this week and what he calls with spite the “sovereignty parade”. (I use the official translation of the Kremlin.)
Sovereignty Parade? This means that the independence of nations, an idea Gorbatchev respected, is for Putin a flaw. Moreover, these nations are not just nations. They often have their own languages, have their own civilizations, and are sometimes 3,000 years old (example: Armenia).
Ukraine, in particular, is more than twice older than Russia. Duration over greater eons entails greater wisdom. Russian tyrannical military expansionism is reminiscent of ancient Assyria. (That did not end very well for Assyria, as world coalition annihilated it.)
Putin: “I would like to share with you some details of the negotiations that took place in the early 2000s.Russia SEEMED to have recognised Crimea as part of Ukraine. by agreeing to delimit the border we admitted de facto and de jure that Crimea was Ukrainian territory.
[Tyranosopher: But the Russian leadership is a bunch of lying snakes, so that it “SEEMED to have recognized de facto and de jure” is nothing, but lies. Putin goes on, justifying his lying ways by inventing a cruel victimization Russians, those great invaders, are subjected to, in a way identical to the victimization of Germans Hitler had invented to justify his annexations and invasions:]
Putin: “However, this is not how the situation developed. Time and time again attempts were made to deprive Russians of their historical memory, even of their language and to subject them to forced assimilation. Moreover, Russians, just as other citizens of Ukraine are suffering from the constant political and state crisis that has been rocking the country for over 20 years.
I understand why Ukrainian people wanted change. They have had enough of the authorities in power during the years of Ukraine’s independence. Presidents, prime ministers and parliamentarians changed, but their attitude to the country and its people remained the same. They milked the country, fought among themselves for power, assets and cash flows and did not care much about the ordinary people.
[Tyranosopher: One can observe the exact same “milking of the country” in Russia, except that it’s much more orderly, as Russia is a dictatorship, not just a plutocracy. Moscow is the city in the world with the most billionaires. “Forced Assimilation” happened nowhere: Russian colonizers were allowed to stay wherever they had colonized, such as the Baltic nations.]
Putin: However, those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots. Nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites executed this coup.
[Tyranosopher: Here Putin is lying big time: there was NO coup in Ukraine whatsoever; let alone by “neo-Nazis”; the deposition of the president was fully constitutional, and Putin knows this. That means the sort of regime he heads can afford giant lies. That means his opposition has been completely muzzled, and also that the propaganda is so thick in Russia that the so called president can murder the truth in peace. Notice also that he implicitly identifies “nationalism” and “neo-Nazism” by putting them in the same litany of horror.]
Putin: “They continue to set the tone in Ukraine to this day.
It is also obvious that there is no legitimate executive authority in Ukraine now, nobody to talk to. Many government agencies have been taken over by the impostors, but they do not have any control in the country, while they themselves – and I would like to stress this – are often controlled by radicals.
[Tyranosopher: The same lie again. Actually the executive authorities in Ukraine are fully legitimate. Putin claiming he had “nobody to talk to” is beyond grotesque.]
Putin: “Those who opposed the coup were immediately threatened with repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.”
[Tyranosopher: “Preventing the events”? So they had not happened yet, according to Putin? Putin admits, in his stupidity, to a pre-emptive strike.]
Putin: “Naturally, we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.
First, we had to help create conditions so that the residents of Crimea for the first time in history were able to peacefully express their free will regarding their own future. However, what do we hear from our colleagues in Western Europe and North America? They say we are violating norms of international law. Firstly, it’s a good thing that they at least remember that there exists such a thing as international law – better late than never.
[Tyranosopher: Ukraine had a seat at the United Nations for 65 years, and has been fully independent since 1991, and has existed as a nation for well above 11 centuries, about twice longer than Russia. Putin just invaded it, in complete violation of International Law, and is flippant about it.
By the way, using soldiers without national identification and identifying marks, the way Putin does, is against International Law.]
Putin: “They did not wonder why it was that millions of Ukrainian citizens saw no prospects at home and went to other countries to work as day labourers. I would like to stress this: it was not some Silicon Valley they fled to, but to become day labourers.
Secondly, and most importantly – what exactly are we violating? True, the President of the Russian Federation received permission from the Upper House of Parliament to use the Armed Forces in Ukraine. However, strictly speaking, nobody has acted on this permission yet. Russia’s Armed Forces NEVER entered Crimea.”
[Tyranosopher: Another huge lie. That’s why Putin’s soldiers are invading without marking. Notice that Putin considers he has permission to use Armed Forces in Ukraine. One could not be clearer: Putin intends to attack Ukraine.]
Crimean authorities referred to the well-known Kosovo precedent – a precedent our western colleagues created with their own hands in a very similar situation, when they agreed that the unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia, exactly what Crimea is doing now, was legitimate and did not require any permission from the country’s central authorities. Pursuant to Article 2, Chapter 1 of the United Nations Charter, the UN International Court agreed with this approach and made the following comment in its ruling of July 22, 2010, and I quote: “No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to declarations of independence,” and “General international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence.” Crystal clear, as they say..
[Tyranosopher: What’s crystal clear is that Crimea was ANNEXED by Moscow. The situation of Kosovo is completely different. First of all, Kosovo is independent.]
Ironically “If authorities in Moscow demand that Crimea join Russia, Tirana [Albania’s capital] and Pristina [Kosovo’s capital] should demand the same for Presevo valley,” Jonuz Musliu, head of Bujanovac Municipality, was quoted as saying by Serbian radio B92 and CROSS news agency. Presevo valley, as well as all South Serbian municipalities, Bujanovac, Presevo and Medvedja, are populated mainly by ethnic Albanians, who form a 90% majority. Crimea is only 60% made of ethnic Russians, and they came in after holocausts and ethnic cleansing directed from the Kremlin. Notice that Putin considers Western Europe his business.]
Putin: “if the Crimean local self-defence units had not taken the situation under control, there could have been casualties as well. Fortunately this did not happen. There was not a single armed confrontation in Crimea and no casualties.
[Tyranosopher: By self defense units, Putin means his thugs.]
Putin: “They keep talking of some Russian intervention in Crimea, some sort of aggression. This is strange to hear. I cannot recall a single case in history of an intervention without a single shot being fired and with no human casualties.
[Tyranosopher: Hitler said the same in 1938. And it was true. However this time, the invading dictator, Putin, is lying: there are several dead so far, including an Ukrainian officer.]
Putin: “Colleagues,
Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades. After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle “If you are not with us, you are against us.” To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organisations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.
This happened in Yugoslavia; we remember 1999 very well. It was hard to believe, even seeing it with my own eyes, that at the end of the 20th century, one of Europe’s capitals, Belgrade, was under missile attack for several weeks, and then came the real intervention. Was there a UN Security Council resolution on this matter, allowing for these actions? Nothing of the sort. And then, they hit Afghanistan, Iraq, and frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, when instead of imposing the so-called no-fly zone over it they started bombing it too.”
Tyranosopher: More of Putin’s lies. In Libya, the UNSC authorization was for force as needed to protect the civilian population. The French had made no mystery that they intended to do so. After the French had fought on and off Qaddafi for decades all over Africa, using the heaviest weaponry, and nearly having killed the Libyan mass murderer one in an air strike in Chad (which Qaddafi had invaded), it was clear that they were going to use the UNSC’s check to strike. They did so, without asking the USA for authorization.
Serbia, at the time of Putin’s indignation was under Milankovitch’s dictatorship. The Serbian dictator was later arrested, by the Serbs, for war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sent to the International Criminal Court in La Hague, where he died.
And that’s where Putin is going too. Lest he dies first.
Patrice Ayme
