Ukraine - The meat-grinder war
Here’s the history that the politicians and media will never tell you about Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have been closely connected for over 1,000 years. Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, was once the capital of Kievan Rus and laid the foundations for Russia itself. During the Soviet era, Ukraine was central to the USSR. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was Ukrainian.
The U.S. & NATO promised Mikhael Gorbachev they wouldn’t expand “one inch eastward", but the West poured billions into Ukraine—funding pro-NATO political groups, NGOs & media to manufacture an anti-Russian state.
In 2004, the CIA backed the "Orange Revolution," to overturn an election that favoured a pro-Russian candidate. Ten years later Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected an EU trade deal that would have destroyed Ukraine’s economy. So the US removed him with the "Maidan Revolution"- a CIA-backed coup—orchestrated by Victoria Nuland. If you have never heard of her you know very little about the region’s recent history. Let’s just say she handpicked Ukraine’s next leader, allowing Kiev to be taken over by neo-Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion, who celebrate their Nazi history and wear SS insignia.
The post-coup regime then banned the Russian language and attacked millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east. That’s when Donbass and Crimea said enough. Crimea held a referendum with over 90% voting to return to Russia and Donbass followed. Kiev then launched a brutal war, shelling civilians for eight years. This started with a massacre of Russian-speaking protestors taking shelter in an Odessa trade union hall. When Russia intervened the media screamed “unprovoked invasion.”
So who is Zelenskyy? Before politics, he was a comedian and actor - literally playing the president on a TV show. Then, with the help of Western PR teams, fiction became reality. His campaign was funded by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned Ukraine’s largest oil company and bank. Once in power, Zelenskyy’s priority wasn’t fighting corruption—it was making sure Kolomoisky, working with BlackRock and Western banks, took over Ukraine’s economy. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy funnelled millions into offshore accounts, and is alleged to have acquired a $34m mansion in Miami as well as a luxury London apartment.
With Ukraine losing the war, Zelenskyy might soon be a resident there as he is being abandoned. Donald Trump told him: "You don’t have the cards." And he’s right. Ukraine needed Western intervention to win and that would mean WW3. Once you’ve chosen to be the puppet of the US empire don’t show disrespect if you want to keep your shirt on. Forget that suit.
This was now a historic catastrophe for Zelenskyy and his version of Ukraine. “A disaster” and “bitter chaos” (The Economist); a “meltdown” that “could not have gone worse” (Financial Times); a “historic escalation” (Der Spiegel); a “disaster for Ukraine” and a “spectacular confrontation” (Le Monde); an “upbraiding” and “debacle” for Zelensky (New York Times).
Meanwhile Ukraine is running out of soldiers, and Ukrainian men are hunted like animals to be shipped off to the frontlines and a hopeless meat-grinder war.
Putin explained to journalist Pavel Zarubin that Moscow is open to business cooperation with the US regarding rare earth deposits everywhere in Russia, including territories recently conquered from Ukraine. Both Trump an Putin, representing US and Russian oligarchic regimes, are in it for the money.
The US has an impressive record of first using and then liquidating puppets. To name only a few, Ngo Dinh Diem of former South Vietnam, Manuel Noriega of Panama, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Osama Bin Laden.
Washington’s European vassals seem to be choosing the worst possible moment to finally rebel: They have helped drive an insane proxy war forward and pushed Ukraine into an abyss with fanatic, self-destructive submissiveness to US rulers. It is the Europeans who are now trying to obstruct the search for peace.
It is as perverse as you can imagine. These European ‘elites’ still manage to surprise: whenever you think they have done their very worst, they upstage themselves.
The U.S. started this conflict, which has always been a U.S. proxy war against Russia as well as a grab for Ukraine resources. Trump? True to form, he shifts position with an ever-eager eye for his personal opportunity. He escalated the conflict by increasing the arms sent to Poroshenko 2017-2019 and to Zelensky 2019-2021. Now he dumps his erstwhile ‘ally’.
And Zelenskyy? He was elected on the promise to end the attacks against eastern (Russian) Donbas regions, and subsequently did the opposite. He shut down all 14 opposition parties, closed all major media, embezzled $400 million of U.S. aid (see Seymour Hersh), closed Russian Orthodox Churches, and jailed opposition leaders and journalists.
He preferred Antony Blinken's and Victoria Nuland's brutal strategy, with approximately a million Ukrainian men killed to date in this conflict. Millions have emigrated, with many forced into the front lines and their deaths.
The mafia third degree televised interview between the orange man and the clown prince has got everyone to a point which started with the US neo-cons and their support for Ukrainian fascists in 2014.
Nevertheless, many prefer to stand with Ukraine and fly its flag, forgetting that a flag represents a state and not its people. The people’s flag would not be yellow and blue but red. Sadly not representative of a socialist present and future, but dipped in the meat-grinder blood that has become the fate of the Ukrainian people.
Meanwhile in Gaza?
