Pontificating on Ukraine
I’m going to join the crowd.
Even though I know almost nothing about the conflict or any of the players. After all, that hasn’t stopped anyone else. We’ve heard indignation and surprise. I accept the indignation, just not the surprise. This is not an ideological nor ethnic war. This is the most difficult one to win. It’s a war of religious zealotry.
Putin noted that both Estonia and Poland had abandoned the Eastern Rite (which Putin contends means Russian Orthodoxy) in favor of Catholicism. I’m not certain he is correct. Ukraine’s President is Jewish, one of only two Jewish heads of state in the world. Is Putin saying he intends to attack Estonia and Poland next? Possibly. He’s never crossed the Polish border, but Russian troops have gone into Estonia regularly in the past. During World War II, the Russians wound up occupying Estonia. They deported all Estonian males age twelve or older to Siberia, and provided Russian males to replace them. Today about 35% of the population is Russian. Every few months a small number of Russian troops enters Estonia and kidnaps one to ten people. Why, I don’t pretend to know. I suspect the Russians ceased this behavior during Trump’s presidency, but when Biden became President, it was resumed.
All sorts of strange-goings-on have been afoot recently. Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons, and President Macron of France (?/!/?) replied that France was also a nuclear power and would respond. This is astonishing because France withdrew from the military pact of NATO in 1966.
The current military leader of the EU has declared support for Ukraine, and the EU accepted Ukraine as a member following an appeal from Zelensky. This does not mean that EU members of NATO will provide troops and air cover in Ukraine; it does mean that EU aircraft can deliver ammunition and weapons systems to Ukraine, as well as EU rail can deliver both.
Even as he condemns Russia’s action, President Biden told Poland not to provide aircraft to the embattled nation. I don’t know what all the issues are, nor whom all the players are and how reliable reporting on them is. Much is being made of the arrest of six thousand protesters in Petersburg; if Putin is planning to restore the old Soviet Empire, there’s nothing surprising nor unusual about that.
So, knowing nothing, I still managed to write more than a full page on the situation. If you don’t believe me, just ask me.
Dostoevsky novels include a lot abt orthodoxy versus Catholicism. Slavophilism incorporates orthodoxy...and then there are the Old Believers.
Ukraine has been in turmoil ever since the Soviets created a famine there by overtaxing and seizing crops because the farmers weren't meeting quotas. The old folk remember the stories their parents told. And the Soviets re-populated the Donbas region, then forced Russian language in the area. So the turmoil in the Donbas has spilled out and Putin wants to seize the country. Who knows why? We get a lot of pundits to tell us. Per Oliver Stone's movie https://youtu.be/pKcmNGvaDUs about every group has decided that Ukraine must be destabilized, all are neo-Nazi's including the Jewish President and they aren't the right kind of religious people. So a playgroud for social change. Putin may have discovered how to unite Ukraine - get them to defend themselves. Brothers-in-arms really learn to trust, aw we who have served know. Those people are not so easily swayed by propaganda, I think.