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mariacallous · 27 days

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In May 1954, less than a decade after the founding of the United Nations, then-Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold concluded an address to the University of California, Berkeley by asserting that the organization “was not created in order to bring us to heaven but in order to save us from hell.” His words now seem a clear-eyed description of both the world body’s raison d’être and its limitations: The U.N. cannot necessarily prevent wars, but it may be able to disincentivize their worst excesses.

The collegiate audience would have understood “hell” as referring to the horrors of World War II. Hammarskjold also spoke just one year after the end of the Korean War, the first conflict in which the U.N. took a side, supporting South Korea. The Korean armistice created the Demilitarized Zone, freeing those south of the line from the invading communists but trapping those north under a despotic regime. The decision was seen as preferable to allowing the entire Korean Peninsula to fall.

Today, the Security Council, the U.N. organ with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, finds itself at an impasse. Council members are often unable to agree on when to make demands of member states, and when the council does make demands, they are seldom implemented. This institutional paralysis harms U.N. credibility and affects the conflicts currently dominating headlines—in Gaza and Ukraine—and those raging just offscreen, such as in Haiti and Sudan.

Some world powers, chief among them Russia, are using the deadlock on the Security Council to deflect from their own actions—distractions that can quickly reverberate around the world. Both Israel and the Palestinians have recently used the platform to hone their messaging on the war in Gaza. Palestine’s permanent observer to the U.N. has accused Israel of exaggerating some details of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, when militants killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 253 others. Israel has invited diplomats, politicians, and journalists (including this reporter) to view footage from the attack.

Nearly six months into the war, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry estimates that some 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children, and many more have been seriously injured. Israel says at least 134 hostages remain in Gaza, and some are presumed dead. On March 25, after months of back and forth, the Security Council adopted a resolution, drafted by the 10 elected members of the body, demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the unconditional release of all hostages.

The United States abstained, allowing the resolution to go through—days after Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution also calling for a cease-fire. (A Security Council resolution requires nine votes in favor, with no vetoes from the five permanent members.) The United States used its own veto to stop three previous Gaza cease-fire resolutions. In those cases, it cited Israel’s right to self-defense, ongoing negotiations in the Middle East, or the council’s failure to condemn the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, which Washington and other capitals consider a terrorist organization.

The competing Gaza resolutions show how, in the 70 years since Hammarskjold’s speech, the body politic that makes up the U.N. has grown further apart. This polarization disturbs the heading of the organization’s moral compass. Increasingly, the needle swings according to the interest of the dominant faction during a given crisis, which has proved useful to parties seeking to reframe public perceptions—and to nudge this needle in the direction of their choosing.

In the clash of wills over Gaza on the Security Council, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the 11 council members that voted for the recent U.S.-drafted resolution of “cover[ing] themselves in disgrace.” He then stated, without irony, that Russia understood its role as a founding member of the U.N. and recognized the “historical global responsibility we shoulder for the maintenance of international peace and security.” When both Russia and China vetoed the U.S. draft, it was a bit of déjà vu: Last October, the two powers vetoed a humanitarian-focused resolution on Gaza submitted by the United States.

Of course, the latest round of Security Council ping-pong has played out while Russia has a particular incentive to distract from its ongoing war in Ukraine. For her part, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia and China vetoed the U.S.-drafted resolution for two cynical reasons: first, she speculated, because they could not bring themselves to “condemn Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Oct. 7,” and second, because Russia and China simply didn’t want to vote for a draft written by the United States, because they “would rather see us fail than to see this council succeed.”

Meanwhile, Israel has continued its own lobbying. As months dragged on without the Security Council condemning the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s U.N. envoy began calling on the U.N. secretary-general to resign and addressing Security Council meetings wearing a yellow Star of David. Two weeks before the council considered the latest cease-fire resolutions, Israel’s foreign minister came to New York—accompanied by family members of hostages—to speak to a Security Council meeting about a U.N. report detailing sexual violence on Oct. 7 and to demand that the council designate Hamas as a terrorist organization and impose sanctions.

Israel’s messaging has made some impact. Some countries have paused their financial support for UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, over Israeli accusations that it employs Hamas members, including some involved in the Oct. 7 attack. The U.N. created a working group chaired by Catherine Colonna, who was until recently France’s foreign minister, to restore confidence in the agency; she is due to release a report in April with recommendations on how to strengthen its neutrality.

Until recently, the fiercest tug of war on the Security Council was over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv has now shifted its diplomatic strategy away from the U.N., two years after Moscow’s veto power blocked the Security Council from condemning the invasion. In February 2022 and 2023, the 193-member General Assembly twice voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine—votes that are nonbinding but are widely seen as reflecting global opinion. However, by the time of the second anniversary of the invasion, the mood had darkened.

The General Assembly did not hold another symbolic vote, but if it had, diplomats say some Middle Eastern countries that once supported Ukraine may have abstained because Kyiv abstained on resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

When Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba emerged from the session marking the second anniversary in February, asked what he expected from the U.N. General Assembly, he told reporters, “My main audience today was our fellow colleagues from Asia, from Africa, from Latin America.” His priority was to explain Ukraine’s peace formula and the peace summit the country was planning with Switzerland, he said: “We want them to understand this initiative. We want them to understand that Ukraine wants peace more than anyone else.”

Kuleba’s answer was telling. He has clearly grasped the need to shore up Ukraine’s support in the global south, where Russia has made headway, and Kyiv is venturing further afield of the Security Council. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year, G-7 leaders declared their intention to work on a series of bilateral security arrangements with Ukraine. Today, more than 30 countries are in bilateral negotiations to help shore up Ukraine’s defenses.

And when it comes to pursuing peace, the center of gravity has also shifted away from the U.N. headquarters in New York—to Switzerland for Ukrainians and to Qatar or Egypt for Palestinians. “I think that everyone quietly understands that the political deals necessary to end the Hamas-Israel war and the Russia-Ukraine war will not come out of the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s U.N. director. “Instead, the U.N. is a platform for governments to vent and cast symbolic votes. It’s a venue for public messaging in these cases, not real diplomacy.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov turned up in New York for a series of meetings on Gaza in January, a week after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—where Russian officials and oligarchs have not been welcome for two years. An old hand at the U.N., Lavrov swept through the U.N. headquarters as if it were his own Davos. He convened a side meeting of envoys of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and held bilateral meetings with the Palestinian permanent observer to the U.N. and with foreign ministers from a swath of Middle Eastern countries, including NATO member Turkey, current Security Council member Algeria, and Iran, which financially backs Hamas.

At the time, Russia’s hard-fought battle to capture Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine, was reaching its climax—and Moscow was arguing vociferously in the Security Council for a cease-fire in Gaza. This strategy has distracted from some of Russia’s other actions, including making North Korea a key supplier for ammunition, artillery, and missiles in violation of Security Council resolutions. Last week, Russia used its veto power to shield North Korea from a long-running U.N. monitoring program to enforce these sanctions after April. (China abstained, and the 13 other council members voted in favor.)

In February, South Korea and Japan, two current Security Council members, both expressed concern that Russian weapons transfers could end up aiding North Korea’s ballistic missile or nuclear weapons program—another global security threat.

There are benefits to dialogue between adversaries at the U.N. The closed-door meetings of the Security Council, where resolutions are hashed out in advance of a public meeting, provide rare opportunities for U.S. and Russian diplomats to interact. “I heard Americans saying that they appreciate talking to Russians at the closed meetings, even if they fight, but that’s the only place where they can actually interact with the Russians,” a diplomat recently said, speaking anonymously under diplomatic rules.

But when the Security Council approves resolutions, there can be little to show for it on the ground. Last October, the council authorized a peacekeeping force manned by Kenyan security personnel to grapple with the breakdown in public order in Haiti, but the deployment has been delayed amid spiraling violence. In Mali, where Russia’s Wagner Group forces have sealed a protection deal with the country’s military leaders, the junta forced out U.N. peacekeepers in December. The Security Council recently called for a Ramadan cease-fire in Sudan; three weeks into the Muslim holy month, the guns have not been silenced.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was one of the bright spots of U.N. diplomacy—until it wasn’t. The U.N. and Turkey brokered a deal to permit Russian and Ukrainian food and fertilizer shipments through the Black Sea. When the Kremlin withdrew from the arrangement last summer, the U.N. warned that the end of this deal might result in sharply higher global food prices and even famine in vulnerable countries.

In the end, the worst didn’t come to pass, in large part because Ukraine called Russia’s bluff that it would sink commercial vessels and kept the sea lanes open by sinking Russian military vessels in a series of sea drone and missile strikes. It wasn’t the United Nations’ moral compass that averted catastrophe—it was warfare.

Some analysts have unfavorably compared today’s U.N. to its predecessor, the League of Nations, which failed to prevent World War II. Others have suggested that it should be condemned to the dustbin of history. Things have changed since Hammarskjold’s 1954 speech. The Security Council’s commitment to support South Korea would not happen today; at the time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the council, and China was represented at the U.N. not by the Chinese Communist Party, which had just seized power, but by the Republic of China, the government that had fled to Taiwan.

But the challenges that the U.N. faces now are not new. The most significant change to the body in the last eight decades was the composition of the Security Council, and there have long been calls for reform to better reflect today’s world. The council expanded from 11 to 15 members in 1965, but there is no consensus on how to fairly add more. And more to the point, increasing the number of council members with veto power might enhance equity while further impairing the body’s effectiveness. Focusing on reforming procedures, including the veto power, may be more productive.

None of this accounts for the fact that the U.N. has become more polarized over the last decade because the world has too—both between countries and within them. But in the end, it would be a mistake to write off the U.N., which still ultimately aims toward Hammarskjold’s vision. The international community must hope against hope that these good intentions push the needle back in the right direction.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months

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Michael de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 23, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 24, 2024

Two years ago today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky made a passionate plea to the people of Russia, begging them to avoid war. He gave the speech in Russian, his own primary language, and, reminding Russians of their shared border and history, told them to “listen to the voice of reason”: Ukrainians want peace.

“You’ve been told I'm going to bomb Donbass,” he said. “Bomb what? The Donetsk stadium where the locals and I cheered for our team at Euro 2012? The bar where we drank when they lost? Luhansk, where my best friend's mom lives?” Zelensky tried to make the human cost of this conflict clear. Observers lauded the speech and contrasted its statesmanship with the ramblings in which Putin had recently engaged.

And yet Zelensky’s speech stood only as a marker. Early the next day, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a “special military operation” involving dozens of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities before dawn. He claimed in a statement that was transparently false that he needed to defend the people in the “new republics” within Ukraine that he had recognized two days before from “persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime.” He called for “demilitarization” of Ukraine, demanding that soldiers lay down their weapons and saying that any bloodshed would be on their hands.

Putin called for the murder of Ukrainian leaders in the executive branch and parliament and intended to seize or kill those involved in the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which sought to turn the country away from Russia and toward a democratic government within Europe, and which itself prompted a Russian invasion. He planned for his troops to seize Ukraine’s electric, heating, and financial systems so the people would have to do as he wished. The operation was intended to be lightning fast.

But rather than collapsing, Ukrainians held firm. The day after Russia invaded, Zelensky and his cabinet recorded a video in Kyiv. “We are all here,” he said. “Our soldiers are here. The citizens are here, and we are here. We will defend our independence…. Glory to Ukraine!” When the United States offered the next day to transport Zelensky outside the country, where he could lead a government in exile, he responded:

“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

That statement echoes powerfully two years later as Ukraine continues to stand against Russia’s invasion but now quite literally needs ammunition, as MAGA Republicans in Congress are refusing to take up a $95 billion national security supplemental measure that would provide aid to Ukraine.

Instead, Republicans spent the day insisting that they do not oppose in vitro fertilization, the popular reproductive healthcare measure that the Alabama Supreme Court last Friday endangered by deciding that a fertilized human egg was a child—what they called an “extrauterine” child—and that people can be held legally responsible for destroying them. Since the decision, Alabama healthcare centers have halted their IVF programs out of fear of prosecution for their handling of embryos.

Republicans who oppose abortion have embraced the idea that life begins at conception, an argument that leads naturally to the definition of IVF embryos as children. But this presents an enormous problem for Republicans, whose antiabortion stance is already creating warning signs for 2024. Today a memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) noted that 86% of the people they polled support increased, not reduced, access to IVF procedures.

The good news for the Republicans is that their frantic defense of IVF means that the media has largely stopped talking about the news of just two days ago, the fact that the man whose testimony congressional Republicans relied on to launch an impeachment process against President Joe Biden turned out to be working with Russian operatives. House leaders have quietly deleted from their House Impeachment website the Russian disinformation that previously was central to their case against Biden.

But today, as Republican House members remain on vacation, President Biden announced new sanctions against Russia, and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was in Ukraine, where he challenged House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to pass the national security supplemental bill. “The weight of history is on his shoulders,” Schumer told reporters in Lviv. “If he turns his back on history, he will regret it in future years.”

“Two years,” Ukraine president Zelensky wrote today. “We are all here…. Together with representatives of Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Egypt, Estonia, the EU, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, the Holy See, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Türkiye, the UAE, the United Kingdom, the USA, Viet Nam, as well as international organisations….”

Slava Ukraini.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#history #war in Ukraine #useful idiots #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Zelensky #IVF #US House of Representative Theocrats #Putin's war

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glvlvukcan · 3 months

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What Could Happen

(SOPA Images / Getty)

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Ukraine is fighting for the lives of its people and its very existence, and it is running out of ammunition. If the United States does not step back in with aid, Russia could eventually win this war.

Despite the twaddle from propagandists in Moscow (and a few academics in the United States), Russia’s war is not about NATO, or borders, or the balance of power. The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin intends to absorb Ukraine into a new Russian empire, and he will eradicate the Ukrainians if they refuse to accept his rule. Europe is in the midst of the largest war on the continent since Nazi panzers rolled from Norway to Greece, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is by far the most important threat to world peace since the worst days of the Cold War. In a less febrile political era, defeating Russia would be the top priority of every American politician.

The Republicans in Congress, however, remain fixated both on their hatred of Ukraine and on their affection for Russia. Their relentless criticism of assistance to Kyiv has had its intended effect, taking a bite out of the American public’s support for continuing aid, especially as the war has been crowded out by the torrent of more recent news, including Donald Trump’s endless legal troubles and Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

And so it’s time to think more seriously about what might happen if the Republicans succeed in this irresponsible effort to blockade any further assistance to Ukraine. The collapse and dismemberment of a nation of millions is immediately at stake, and that should be enough for any American to be appalled at the GOP’s obstructionism. But the peace of the world itself could rest on what Congress does—or does not do—next.

First, what would it even mean for Russia to “win”? A Russian victory does not require sending Moscow’s tanks into Kyiv, even if that were possible. (The Russians have taken immense losses in manpower and armor, and they would have to fight house-to-house as they approached the capital.) Putin is reckless and a poor strategist, but he is not stupid: He knows that he doesn’t need to plant the Russian flag on the Mother Ukraine statue just yet. He can instead tear Ukraine apart, piece by piece.

The destruction of Ukraine would begin with some kind of cease-fire offered by a Ukrainian leadership that has literally run out of bullets, bombs, and bodies. (The average age of Ukraine’s soldiers is already over 40; there are not that many more men to draft.) The Russians would signal a willingness to deal only with a new Ukrainian regime, perhaps some “government of national salvation” that would exist solely to save whatever would be left of a rump Ukrainian state in the western part of the country while handing everything else over to the Kremlin.

The Russians would then dictate more terms: The United States and NATO would be told to pound sand. Ukraine would have to destroy its weapons and convert its sizable army into a small and weak constabulary force. Areas under Russian control would become, by fiat, parts of Russia. The remaining thing called “Ukraine” would be a demilitarized puppet state, kept from integration of any kind with Europe; in a few years, an internal putsch or a Russian-led coup could produce a new government that would request final union with the Russian Federation. Soon, Ukraine would be part of a new Russian superstate, with Russian forces on NATO’s borders as “peacekeepers” or “border guards,” a ploy the Russians have used in Central Asia since the 1990s.

Imagine the world as Putin (and other dictators, including in China) might see it even a few years from now if Russia wins in 2024: America stood by, paralyzed and shamed, as Ukraine was torn to pieces, as millions of people and many thousands of square miles were added to the Kremlin’s empire, and as U.S. alliances in Europe and then around the world quietly disintegrated—all of which will be even more of a delight in Moscow and Beijing if Americans decide to add the ultimate gift of voting the ignorant and isolationist Trump back into the White House.

The real danger for the U.S. and Europe would begin after Ukraine is crushed, when only NATO would remain as the final barrier to Putin’s dreams of evolving into a new emperor of Eurasia. Putin has never accepted the legitimate existence of Ukraine, but like the unreformed Soviet nostalgist that he is, he has a particular hatred for NATO. After the collapse of Ukraine, he would want to take bolder steps to prove that the Atlantic Alliance is an illusion, a lie promulgated by cowards who would never dare to stop the Kremlin from reclaiming its former Soviet and Russian imperial possessions.

Reckless and emboldened, emotional and facing his own mortality, Putin would be tempted to extend his winning streak and try one last throw of the dice, this time against NATO itself. He would not try to invade all of Europe; he would instead seek to replicate the success of his 2014 capture of Crimea—only this time on NATO territory. Putin might, for example, declare that his commitment to the Russian-speaking peoples of the former Soviet Union compels him to defend Russians in one of the Baltic states. After some Kremlin-sponsored agitation close to the Russian border, Russian forces (including more of the special forces known as “little green men”) might seize a small piece of territory and call it a Russian “safe zone” or “haven”—violating NATO sovereignty while also sticking it to the West for similar attempts many years ago, using similar terms, to protect the Bosnians from Russia’s friends, the Serbs.

The Kremlin would then sit on this piece of NATO territory, daring America and Europe to respond, in order to prove that NATO lacks the courage to fight for its members, and that whatever the strength of the alliance between, say, Washington and London, no one is going to die—or risk nuclear war—for some town in Estonia.

Should Putin actually do any of this, however, he would be making a drastic mistake. Dictators continually misunderstand democracies, believing them to be weak and unwilling to fight. Democracies, including the United States, do hate to fight—until roused to action. Republicans might soon succeed in forcing the United States to abandon Ukraine, but if fighting breaks out in Europe between Russia and America’s closest allies—old and new—no one, not even a President Trump, who has expressed his hostility to NATO and professed his admiration for Putin, is going to be able to keep the United States out of the battle, not least because U.S. forces will inevitably be among NATO’s casualties.

And at that point, anything could happen. The world, should Russia win, will face remarkable new dangers—and for what? Because in 2024 some astonishingly venal and ambitious politicians wanted to hedge their bets and kiss Trump’s ring one more time? Perhaps enough Republicans will come to their senses in time to avert these possible outcomes. If they do not, future historians—that is, if anyone is left to record what happened—will be perplexed at how a small coterie of American politicians were so willing to trade the safety of the planet for a few more years of power.

From The Atlanic Newsletter Feb 9th 2024

#politics #gop #donald trump #ukraine #russia

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archtroop · 5 months

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"Tell me who your friends are,

and I'll tell you who you are"

Palestine - Iran - Russia - China - N.Korea.

HAMAS, as the elected party of Gaza, are backed by all of the above.

Palestine, as we know it in Gaza, is a terrorist state.

Each of those is an EXTREMIST, violent, oppressive dictatorship. All of the above are IMPERIALIST COLONIAL POWERS. N.Korea is a literal ethnostate. Each of them has a genocide to their names.

All the world the FreePalestine Movement so pikes to fling around.

These are the forces who use the people of Gaza as a stuck to beat the Jews with.

Not new.

If you are having a hard on over FreePalestine, you are a proxy of all of the above.

Congratulations, you've fallen head first into a totalitarian rhetoric brainwash, and are arading it on the streets like the gullible peasant that you are.

You are not helping any civilians. You are promoting terrorism and literal theocratic Islamis ideology.

If you gave a fuck about people in Gaza, you would've supported the elimination of HAMAS.

Just like taking down the Nazi regime back in the day.

HAMAS is a tumor, funded by Iran, UN aid that just "disappears," and US funds, billions of them gone to no humanitarian purpose.

HAMAS terrorizes their own, and terrorizes others. They call for the Genocide if Jews everywhere.

Are you a coward or do you have it in you to look the truth in the eyes?

Egypt has already gave a cautious statement, that they will agree to the existence of a demilitarized Palestinian state.

There is a reason Egypt keeps a very secure and tight border with Gaza.

Are anyone who is high on a trend ready to take those facts and process them?

#palestine is a terrorist hub #and gaza is the biggest kiddy bootcamp in the world #free Palestine movement is a death cult

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real-total-drama-takes · 6 months

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Intro to Ukraine

Ukraine

Head Of Government: Prime Minister: Denys Shmyhal

Capital: Kyiv (Kiev)

Population: (2022 est.) 43,637,000

Head Of State: President: Volodymyr Zelen

Russia

Head Of Government: Prime Minister: Mikhail Mishustin

Capital: Moscow

Population: (2022 est.) 143,377,000

Head Of State: President: Vladimir Putin

Lead up to the invasion.

October 2021.

In October 2021, months of intelligence gathering and observations of Russian troop movements, force build-up, and military contingency financing culminated in a White House briefing with U.S. intelligence, military, and diplomatic leaders on a near-certain mass-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nov/Dec 2021

In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion, the Joe Biden administration made the unconventional decision to reduce information-sharing constraints and allow for the broader dissemination of intelligence and findings, both with allies—including Ukraine—and publicly.

The goal of this strategy was to bolster allied defenses and dissuade Russia from taking aggressive action.

Commercial satellite imagery, social media posts, and published intelligence from November and December 2021 showed armor, missiles, and other heavy weaponry moving toward Ukraine with no official explanation from the Kremlin.

Dec-Jan 2021/22

By the end of 2021, more than one hundred thousand Russian troops were in place near the Russia-Ukraine border, with U.S. intelligence officials warning of a Russian invasion in early 2022.

Dec 2021

In mid-December 2021, Russia’s foreign ministry called on the United States and NATO to:

● cease military activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

● commit to no further NATO expansion toward Russia

● prevent Ukraine from joining NATO in the future.

The United States and other NATO allies rejected these demands and threatened to impose severe economic sanctions if Russia took aggressive action against Ukraine.

February 2022

On February 24, 2022, when Russian forces invaded a largely unprepared Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized a “special military operation” against the country.

In his statement, Putin claimed that the goal of the operation was to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and end the alleged genocide of Russians in Ukrainian territory.

Background Info

The Soviet Union

In 1918, a year after Russia’s communist revolution, Ukraine declared independence, but in 1921, the Red Army conquered most of it and Ukraine became a republic within the Soviet Union.

Following the end of World War I, former foreign minister Sergei Sazonov, remarked, “As for Ukraine, it does not exist. Even the word is artificial and a foreign import. There is a Little Russia, there is no Ukraine . . . The Ukrainian movement is nothing but a reaction against the abuses of the bureaucracy and of Bolshevism.”

Putin’s view of Russia

He interprets Russia’s purpose and role in world politics through an imperialist frame and believes that it should dominate others; he believes powerful countries dominating large regions is a norm, not as a thing of the past.

- nat5 mods anon

(Finally got to the new topic! Unfortunately the slideshow we got is a bit dissapointing.)

#nat5 mods anon #long post

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