I copy here three e-mails sent to our morning current affairs programme here in New Zealand "Nine to Noon" usually fronted by Kathryn Ryan. She's an effective presenter, conventional, conservative economically and politically as her way of questioning and the prior assumptions she must have made reveal.
Anyway here they are
4th March 2014
Dear Kathryn and team,
I was interested to hear your interview this morning with Louisa (Louiza Savage, US correspondent) but if you'd hoped to enlighten your audience about this matter, it was a bit of a failure. You can't talk about the Ukraine without considering:
That Ukraine is a failed state, basically a kleptocracy which controls and corrupts every aspect of life in that country,
Nor that fanning the flames, as usual, is the USA, who have spent at least $100 million in so-called democracy movements in Ukraine,
Nor ignore the contempt the USA has shown to the more measured response from Europe as revealed in the phone conversation between Victoria Nuland, a right wing neoliberal, and Geoffrey Pyatt,
Nor that both walked in the Maidan Square, handing out leaflets to the protestors, many of whom belonged to fascist and neo-nazi style extreme parties,
That the so-called "government" in Kiev is unelected and has no democratic basis
And that Crimea was until the 1950's part of Russia, and the tensions between Crimea and Ukraine have existed for many years
And that Russia has a reasonable interest in preserving its interests in the Crimea, both its naval base, and the majority of its citizens, who see themselves first as Russian - its is after all, Russia's back yard.
That the USA and the West has no right to interfere in Ukraine, other than through the UN and other international bodies they belong to,
And the calls for more direct action from right wing zealots are yet further destabilising this situation.
It's a bit of a shame that this perspective was missing in this interview, I wonder why?.
Nor should you consider that the USA's reaction is self-righteous and dangerous humbug,; that country having meddled in the affairs of so many countries for so long, often with tragic results, it seems to be the usual order of things, and not even remarked on by the media, including yourself. The USA has the Monroe doctrine, perhaps Russia now has the Putin doctrine, they don't seem that dissimilar to me.
And lastly perhaps you could remind your listeners that 2014 marks the centenary of the First World War, which arose in not such dissimilar circumstances as today, with failing historical powers jostling for supremacy and the tragic consequences that arose. It seems to me that the powerful and privileged who run the world, as they've always done, have learnt very little from the last hundred years of history. We should be more worried by our own leadership than we should by Russia's.
When you read the Colin Power has said "The U.S. will stand strongly and proudly with the people of Ukraine as they chart out their own destiny, government, future" then you know they truly are mad. .
Yours faithfully, .
26/2/2024 (I here add this letter was precipitated by an interview with a mercenary soldier from NZ fighting for Ukraine - I can't presently find this recording)
Dear Team,
Two sentences to summarise the following e-mail:
Ukraine is losing this war, as it was destined to do from the very beginning - avoiding this war in the first place, which honest diplomacy might well have done - was the only rational course, which the West spurned in its fatal under-estimation of Russia’s intent and capabilities and a fatal over-estimation of its own. The result of this failure is the tragedy now unfolding and is unretrievable, other than by declaring war on Russia and commencing WW3 or by negotiating now with Russia to end the fighting, the so-called “off ramp”, and the US and NATO admitting yet another devastating defeat.
Some years ago, President Obama, refusing to get involved in the continued provocation of Russia and realising the dangers of doing so, said “Russia has escalatory dominance in the region”. Tragically the US/NATO have ignored his prescience, and the result is the avoidable tragedy of Ukraine. New Zealand’s $100 million “contribution” is merely to fuel the flames of war and the death and destruction in Ukraine. Our mercenary soldiers are tragically similarly misguided - they are fighting unthinking for forces of murderous chaos. There is no honour in war and if this was avoidable, as it was, then every death is blood on the hands of those promoting and fuelling this war. Russia is winning, slowly but inexorably, and Ukraine cannot “win”, though with a country on its last legs, population dispersed and its infrastructure ruined, how can Ukraine now “win” in any meaningful way? The idea is delusional. I think Pyrrhus had some thoughts on this.
In the very early days of this war, I had a letter published in the Wellington “Post” warning of this - the tragically inadequate figure of Zelensky, and the inevitability that as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Vietnam, the US and its NATO puppets would ultimately abandon and betray Ukraine and Zelensky. The only alternative to not doing so is fighting Russia ourselves, and starting WW3, and anyone with any understanding of history would have understood this from the very beginning. In March 2014 I wrote a letter, at the time of the Russian re-annexation of Crimea, to Kathryn Ryan of Nine to Noon, following an interview with a US correspondent, Louiza Savage, pointing to the many dangers of interfering in Ukraine and refusing to recognise Russia’s own security interests - re-reading this proves a degree of prescience that surprises even myself. .
The US and NATO’s refusal to countenance any kind of true diplomacy with Russia in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, to continue to seek the undermining and disadvantage of its geopolitical rival, its role in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, and the insistence that Ukraine should join NATO (recall the absurd phrase “NATO is an open door”?} and the spending of billions of dollars on re-arming Ukraine and doubling its army was a direct and believable threat to Russia’s own security.
The media’s role in all western countries, including in New Zealand, has not just been pathetic and misguided but has directly misled the citizen as to the true nature of what is happening, and as any alternative rational view, such as mine and many others, is disdained and its promotors attacked as “Putin apologists”. This is the sort of thinking in powerful Western elites that brought us WW1 and it is dismaying that 100 years later we seem to have learned nothing from last century’s tragic follies.
Cheers,
28/2/2024
Dear Kathryn and team
Post-script to my prior letter. Please read the NY Times’ breathless puff piece about the US brave and masterful CIA in Ukraine and their integration in the intelligence and security apparatus of Ukraine -
The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html
It is behind a paywall but no doubt you’re able to access the material from Radio NZ and I have read it in an unapproved internet available form.
Reading as a sensationalist spy thriller, and providing the basis for a future Hollywood film script no doubt, this article tells us this all began (but this is probably misleading as the CIA will have been involved covertly much longer) on the night of 24th February 2014 and the US backed coup-like ousting of Victor Yanukovych (the long practiced US organised regime change in many other countries). The prior government’s intelligence officers’ abandoned seats in Kiev were still warm as the new US backed and controlled regime in Ukraine took over.
The CIA established twelve secret, concealed and reinforced redoubts and control centres in Ukraine’s forests and elsewhere close to Russia’s borders. Most are still there. They provide satellite surveillance, intercept Russian communications, direct Ukrainian military and covert action, training and providing cover for spies and assassins in Russian controlled Ukraine and in Russia itself, actively guide Ukrainian missiles and drones, (not mentioned in the article is the finance and development of a number of secret biological warfare laboratories), coordinating with other NATO intelligence agencies and military including of course in the US, and provided targets for Ukraine's artillery and rocket fire. Sometimes there is a spectacular success - downing Russia’s spy planes, killing large numbers of Russian troops temporarily assembled in one place, or damaging Russian military assets. CIA operatives remain ensconced in Ukraine with their Ukrainian counterparts. (Presumably there’s a similar facility in Odessa involving MI6 and Ukraine’s surface drones attacking Russia’s navy and shipping.)
One could go on. But basically it proves this simple fact - this is not a Ukraine / Russia war, but an undeclared proxy war of an existential extent between Russia and NATO, which Russian citizens fully understand, but the West’s for the most part remain entirely ignorant of. This war has over two years dangerously escalated NATO’s responses, as they find each prior escalation ineffective and further “red lines” are willingly crossed - now we have France’s Macron suggesting sending NATO troops to Ukraine, and British generals telling the public to get prepared for war.
This is literally insane, and it should be the media’s job to say so. And that includes you.
But what is totally amazing about this article is that it might have been a US Boy’s Own adventure story of daring-do, but it’s equally a story, if read in Russia, proving the US and NATO’s bellicose intentions against Russia all along - throughout the whole decade. That all negotiations and diplomacy, such as the Minsk agreements, were conducted in bad faith on the side of NATO. This explains to this observer the sheer inadequacy and intransigence of NATO member negotiators. Do the writers not realise this or are they so blinkered by their jingoism as not to see how others might interpret this astounding release of secret information?
I write this further e-mail as what has been revealed here substantially reinforces my (and many others' of course) long held claim that this Russia/Ukraine war was not “unprovoked” as all the politicians and media in the West continually claim, and which they have bamboozled their own citizenry, but is Russia’s rational though horribly violent response to a degree of provocation on its very border that no great power is going to tolerate for ever.
The US and NATO would certainly know this, but as I wrote last time, they thought they could win and bring down Putin and Russia, and if a war in the meantime killed a few hundred thousand Ukrainians, well, so what - as according to some US senators it was still a good investment if Putin and his Russia could be brought to heel and no US soldiers died doing so? Wasn’t it Victoria Nuland, the poisonous Russophobe and unelected neocon still there in the State Department, who exclaimed “Fuck Europe” in 2014?
Hubris, humbug and murderous cynicism powered our side – fear, steely determination and willing sacrifice on Russia’s. That’s no contest as events are now proving.
Cheers.
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