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Ron's avatar

The real winners in this war are the arms industry and the fossil fuel industry.

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Thom Prentice's avatar

Let me be a bit of a Fact Check pest: Are there really conscripts in Ukraine after Putin forbade them and when conscripts were sent when OPutin found out he ordered them withdrawn? Do they therefore really suffer from disorganization, ineptitude and low morale?

Apparently conquest of Kiev was *never* an objective for Russia... the presence of troops around Kiev was pressure to force Zelensky to negotiate which his Azov Nazi and US Nato overlords would not permit. So they were withdrawn and repositioned, considered a Great Patriotic Victory of Zelensky!

Russia has encircled the 2/3 of ALL Ukrainian forces positioned just outside Donetsk and Luhansk -- they were poised for an invasion of Donbass which Russia *successfully foiled* -- and the Ukrainian forces vastly outnumber Russian troops committed so far ANYWAY. This "Special Operation" NOT a Germany-Thru-Belgium strategy and never was and you err in assuming it was.

Ukrainian troops have PLENTY of training from the US and Nato, ***NOT*** "little or no training" and Ukie forces are *NOT* poorly equipped (since 2014) NOR are they a numerically inferior force. Where do you get this shit?!

But you are right that Russia poses no threat to the NATO alliance or the United States, barring a nuclear attack ... EXCEPT the nuclear attack would be PROVOKED by the US and Nato, lets have the accurate chain of causality here, please Chris.

Other than those corrections to your reporting -- which you presumably got from the US Military CIA State media propaganda ministries, Great Essay.

You have also *totally missed* the *Clash of Christianities* involved here. The Roman Catholic Church has never ceased wanting to control the Eastern Orthodox Church and it is clear that the so-called East/West divide accurately follows the borders of the1054 schism. Plus the Crusades were as much to crush the Eastern Orthodox Church as they were to crush Muslims in the Holy Land. Count the Crusades as an invasion -- the first invasion -- from the West prior to Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler. Long Orthodox and Russian memories of the sack of Constantinople.

Perhaps you should read more of The Saker and Moon of Alabama, links here.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

Gonzalo Lira, the War Correspondent like you, Chris, who is on the ground in Ukraine but has one upped you by being disappeared for a week by the Zelensky Ukraine KGB, Recaps the War in Ukraine on Moon of Alabama:

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/a-recap-of-the-war-in-ukraine-by-gonzalo-lira.html#more

And The Saker

https://thesaker.is/

Another fine Chris Hedges kind of reporter and analyst, Pepe Escobar in The Saker also writes about the Clash of Christianities:

Clash of Christianities: Why Europe cannot understand Russia

Western Europeans see the Orthodox and eastern Christians as satraps and a bunch of smugglers, while the Orthodox regard the Crusaders as barbarian usurpers bent on world conquest. By Pepe Escobar, Christianity, once again, at the heart of a civilizational battle – this time among Christians themselves.

EXCERPT: "Under an ubiquitous, toxic atmosphere of cognitive dissonance drenched in Russophobia, it’s absolutely impossible to have a meaningful discussion on finer points of Russian history and culture across the NATO space – a phenomenon I’m experiencing back in Paris right now, fresh from a long stint in Istanbul.

At best, in a semblance of civilized dialogue, Russia is pigeonholed in the reductionist view of a threatening, irrational, ever-expanding empire – a way more wicked version of Ancient Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Ottoman Turkey or Mughal India.

The fall of the USSR a little over three decades ago did hurl Russia back three centuries – to its borders in the 17th century. Russia, historically, had been interpreted as a secular empire – immense, multiple and multinational. This is all informed by history, very much alive even today in the Russian collective unconscious.

https://thesaker.is/clash-of-christianities-why-europe-cannot-understand-russia/

And The Saker has its own article on the Clash of Christianities by Walt Garlington:

The Two Poles of Post-Schism Western Religion

https://thesaker.is/clash-of-christianities-why-europe-cannot-understand-russia/

But the focus and thrust of your essay is both accurate and correct.

I never understood the religious zealotry against Russia by the US as I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s -- how could a competing economic system fuel such hatred starting w Woodrow WIlson and his Palmer Raids thru McCarthy/Nixon/Hoover and then NO peace dividend after Reagan/Gorbachev and now anti-Russia FURY unleashed once again starting in 2016 and before.

It has a religious character and a religious base to it. Ther Schism. The US and Nato are following the supposed injunction of Jesus to ...

"Go therefore and conquer all nations, baptizing them in the name of the petrodollar, the free market and the rules-based international order."

N'est pas?

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