Substack has an unspecified max comment length and my response, Stefan, which includes all of your comment, is too big it seems. It wouldn’t accept it. Nor would half of it be accepted.. still too big.
So to hell with them. I’ll put it here:
Stefan Korshak
8h
SK
Well, the facts about Donbas that you say are facts I never saw, and I was there. I speak the languages, I talked to the people, and I studied the region.
Reply
can’t comment really for I don’t know which facts it is that you never saw. off the cuff though: you never saw donetsk being shelled for eight years (ten now) ? Strange.
SK
What I saw was thugs hired and armed by Russia who took over local government and then announced they were their own country, but really, they wanted to join Russia. I talked to guys who told me they were from Altai, Siberia, the Far North, Krasnodar Oblast’, Rostov Oblast’, and Moscow Oblast’. Most of these guys spoke Russian with non-local accents.
Reply
‘thugs’ is probably subjective opinion betraying bias rather than objective fact. If what this intimates were true we’d expect it to manifest during the next eight years via much Donbas unrest and dissatisfaction with these ‘thugs’ being over them.
That is the opposite to what appears to have actually happened.
SK
The set-up was, the guys from the Russian Federation were in charge and handled the complicated equipment like the tanks and the artillery. By this I mean, I talked to tank commanders and artillery battery commanders. The local guys did the grunt work.
Reply
that in facts supports my earlier contention. I think I know this ‘set-up’ to be true even to the first year or two of the war, 22, and 23. The front line in the Donbass overwhelmingly manned by Donbass soldiers. The Russians in the rear with their artillery.
Had the Donbas ordinary people, ordinary soldiers, been against this the front would simply have melted away.
SK
To be clear, I also met and spoke with Ukrainian citizens living in the Donbas region who told me they saw the Ukrainian army as hostile and that they were defending their homes and families. They told me, frequently, that the Russian language was being repressed by the government in Kyiv. There were two demographics that seemed particularly inclined towards this way of thinking. First was the uneducated, unemployed and possibly criminally-inclined. Second was smarter people benefiting directly from associating with the new rulers.
Reply
Yes. This is you seeing the facts I expressed that you say you never saw.
SK
As to the validity of the repression by Kyiv, the thing is, I also traveled extensively in Donbas region prior to 2013-14. It was peaceful. The Russian language was overwhelmingly dominant. Donbas elected officials were a powerful force in parliament. The factories worked, the mines produced, and although admittedly the air was very polluted Donbas was the wealthiest part of Ukraine. There was no repression of anything Russian. I mean, for quite a while there the godfather to one of Putin’s children ran a big political party in Ukraine’s parliament. This is the opposite of repression.
Reply
yes. all was good until the cia and mi5 moved in and began whipping up rabid nationalism. the ukraine was at peace. The Donbass
people had no reason to expect what came down on them, were astounded, shocked, indignant and ready to take arms against it.
Please note that today there can be no doubt whatever about this stance from Kiev, can there?
SK
So my conclusion is those guys who told me about the Russian language and ethnic Russians being repressed by the Kyiv government, were lying to me. You get that a lot in my line of work. People have agendae and they lie to journalists sometimes. After a while you can get pretty good at spotting the lies.
Reply
well I don’t know about those guys or those tellings or that time but you’re right of course: people have agendas and the cia and mi5 and, probably, corrupt politicians and oligarchs, they have agendas, too. ergo this.
SK
As to Ukrainians hating Russians, that is absolutely the case, from what I have seen. But to be clear, that means “Russians from the Russian Federation who invaded Ukraine and are complicit in killing Ukrainian citizens and destroying Ukrainian property.” This is not, specifically, “Russian-speaking Ukrainians, not from the Donbas region nor from anywhere else.”
Reply
now there’s two things here:
- Hating seems characteristic of Kiev (and the usa). Hating is ipso facto not good.
- Yes it is ‘specifically Russian speaking Ukrainians’ – that’s government policy, govt decree but apart from that lawerly fact the Donbas is not considered part of ‘Ukraine’, ‘help Ukraine’ means exclusively ‘help Kiev Ukraine’, ‘help Ukrainians’ means exclusively ‘help Kiev Ukrainains’. It means give money and arms to kill Donbass Ukrainians. That IS what it means.
And there has never, ever, since the beginning, been one single utterance of one shred of sympathy or concern for the Donbass Ukrainians. Not for the men, not for the women, not for the children. I am the observer. I am the outside world. I am the Westerner. I have heard Kiev speaking to me for three years. Text and video. While Russia says nothing but gives formal govt. responses when it must. I have listened to and watched Kiev plead, coax and coerce me for three years. They tell me my life in in danger if I don’t support them. They tell me I must give them nuclear bombs. They tell me I must nuke Russia. There has been a constant stream at high volume, high velocity of propaganda from Kiev aimed at me and I’ve heard it all, suffered it all. And I never once heard any mention of the sufferings of the Donbass Ukrainians they want me to help them kill, or wound, or cripple, or exterminate, or dispossess, or silence, or lock out of church, or out of politics… etc. etc. They are doing this repression of Russia/Rusian culture/Russian history throughout Kiev Ukraine as we speak.
SK
For instance, I can name a half dozen of the best Ukranian combat brigades, where the entire chain of command speaks Russian amongst themselves, and yet they have dedicated themselves to hunting down and killing every Russian Federation soldier anywhere inside Ukraine’s borders. They hate the invader and they are really dedicated to killing him. They’ve been at it for years, they’re pretty lethal. The North Koreans got the same treatment, as did the Chinese mercenaries.
Reply
yes, we know. it’s part of Kiev’s hatred that they want to make the foundation of a beautiful ethnic ukrainian state.
it is what we point to when we say they are foul.
SK
I don’t see a path to peace. The Russians started a war they can’t finish and now they’re in a quagmire. The Ukrainians will never give up.
Reply
so we’re at the end of investigating your disagreement with my facts. turns out there was none really.
I see a path to peace. A clear and obvious one. Not a likely one. But nevertheless a clear and obvious one.
Make ‘Ukraine’ mean not ‘Kiev Ukraine’, not ‘Kiev corrupt Junta’, not ‘Kiev USA and UK puppet’, but make it mean all Ukrainian people as was before this and, in fact, as the West and Kiev would insist is now.
i.e. all Kiev Ukraine and all Donbass Ukraine. The people. Make ‘Ukraine’ mean all the people. Let it mean all the ukrainian people. No americans. No british. No French, Poles, Lithuanians etc. etc.
Let it mean the people who live and workd there, grew there, build the place. Bought their homes there, bought their farms, worked the land. Let ‘Ukrainian’ mean them.
And let them get some pride and turn against all these filthy trouble makers and let them see that a glorious Ukrainian nation can rise overnight if they simply look at each other and call each other brother and cease any desire to kill each other but instead unite and turn agains any trouble making influence.
SK
The only positive I can offer is that my reading of the tea leaves is that the Ukrainians would probably agree to a ceasefire at the Feb. 2022 ceasefire line and tacitly agree to Russia’s control over those portions of Donetsk, Luhansk and all of Crimea prior to that time. No one told me this, it’s just my judgement.
Reply
see? You can’t help it. You say ‘the Ukrainians would probably agree’. Who’s these ‘Ukrainians’ ? You mean ‘Kiev Ukrainians’. You mean uk and usa dupes. You mean a junta of corrupt politicans and oligarchs. Above all you do NOT mean the 10 million Donbass Ukrainians. They are gone from your mind. They simply do not exist.
And that’s the problem.
To them it’s not ‘Russia’s control’ over those people. It is their control. They control themselves. They have their own government on their own land. You – and all the west – are happy to devise agreements and settlements that please you and the usa and uk and etc but the wishes of 10 million actual ukrainians means nothing and less than nothing to you.
Knee jerk reaction to me saying that is always that they are not Ukrainians now, they are Russians.
But that is Orwellian double speak. The West and Kiev insists those people are still Ukrainians and living on Ukrainian land !
It is their definition I am using ! Not mine. Theirs. My definition is that they are independent Republics.
But you and kiev and usa etc. etc, fifty nations, insist they are Ukrainians living on Ukrainians land.
But you totally ignore them as question of considering their wishes and as for considering their safety – well ! your whole ambition is to destroy them.
SK
The problems of course are first this is nothing even close to Russian terms, which are basically wholesale Ukrainian capitulation. So there’s that. The other problem is that Russian credibility is shot so there’s zero chance of a peace based on treaty commitments, Russia would either have to dis-arm or Ukraine be armed to the teeth, for the Ukrainians to stop trying to kill the Russian soldiers invading their country.
Reply
Russia wants safety. Russia has not changed its stance in twenty years. Russia wants safety and said do not move NATO this way because it is not safe for us. Deliberately, with great deliberation and malice aforethought, they moved NATO closer to Russia. Russia want what America wanted in Kennedy’s time in Cuba. Just exactly the same. No big mystery.
And the one thing Kiev will NOT give Russia is that: any guarantee of safety. That is the ONE thing Kiev will not give. For it is a dupe. A dupe for hostile forces. Kiev could be the saviour of Russia. Kiev could be the saviour of Kiev AND the saviour of Russia and the noblest, smartest, greatest nation behaving with more maturity than has ben seen on the world stage ever, I think, if Kiev had the balls and the wit to stand up and say ‘Christ, yes, we are devoted to love and peace, we don’t want to hurt anyone, we happily guarantee Russia that they need fear nothing from us.’
Then Ukraine would stand as a bulwark between the lunatic west and Russia. And peace could reign everywhere. And that’s what the West fears. America fears a strong Europe. America is a craven coward and it fears fair competition. It fears Germany and Russia united. It fears Europe united. It fears Ukraine and Russia at peace.