War Of Words

WAR OF WORDS

Shootin' Putin: shooting from the lip

Front Lines:

Ukraine reigns! Russia won't crush her!

This is not NATO's war – yet. The Russian government would be well advised not to make it NATO's war.

There are no legitimate targets in an illegal war except for the forces and military assets of the aggressor.

UKraine – as one under the sun.

Disreputin' Putin:

Thuglines: the blustering bully; the snarling psychopath; the paranoid pariah; the unfeeling thug; the landgrabbing kleptocrat; the KGB killer in the Kremlin; the bloodthirsty butcher of Grozny; the macho maniac of Moscow, commander in-chief of the mass murderers in Mariupol; the swaggering warmonger; the bloated despot; the two-faced tyrant with roid rage.

Putin put-down: The best thing about Vladimir Putin is his name. "Poo-tin". It sounds like a makeshift chamberpot. "Oh no, the toilet's backed up again. You'll have to go in the poo-tin!". President Shit-can to the rescue!

Lines to take with the Russian people (incontrovertible truths) :

When the Russian government ordered its military to invade the territory of an independent neighbour, it was launching an attack on part of the free world. It is therefore disingenuous in the extreme for them to feign surprise and even outrage when the free world pushes back.

The Russian government talks of fake news with regard to the reports of war crimes committed in Ukraine, yet how can anyone believe, as they allege, that any country would inflict that amount of damage on its own fabric or on its own people merely in order to make another country look bad ?

How much of a danger can Ukraine really be to a nuclear superpower well over twenty times its size ?

Must thousands of Russian soldiers, not to mention Ukrainians, die just because some Russian speakers in Donetsk and Luhansk can’t get on with their Ukrainian neighbours ?

And as for Ukraine being led by Nazis, there are far right groups in many countries, including Russia, which has more than its fair share, but that does not mean that they are in charge. In fact it is absurd to suggest that the Ukrainian government is run by anti-Russian Nazis when the heroic president of Ukraine is both Russian-speaking and Jewish…

Almost equally absurd is the idea that Russia is facing unprovoked NATO aggression when the only hostilities so far have been instigated by Russia itself, while NATO has clearly been striving to avoid direct conflict. In fact the actions of the Russian government threaten to bring back the twin threats of global warfare and nuclear Armageddon to the world stage.

Whichever way you look at it, Russia's occupation of the sovereign territory of a fellow United Nations member is a clear violation of the UN charter and therefore illegal.

The Russian government has shown its true imperialist colours by signalling a desire to extend its "special military operation" to part of Moldova. Having scared neutral Sweden and Finland into the arms of the North Atlantic Alliance, Putin would only have himself to blame if NATO were to fast-track any membership application from Moldova.

Never forget that the combined military might of NATO far exceeds that of Russia. President Putin is gambling that the alliance won't risk taking direct action over Ukraine for fear of it leading to a global conflict or nuclear war. Pray that he doesn't push NATO too far...

Putin’s actions in Ukraine have undermined global security and the world economy as well as devastating his own military and ruining Russia economically. He has caused the ramping up of countermeasures against Russian aggression internationally with the consequent expansion and re-energising of NATO and is responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths on both sides. This is the true cost of Russia’s fratricidal folly, and for what? The illegal seizure of a few thousand square kilometres of Eastern Ukraine which Russian forces might not even be able to hold onto? By this reckoning, Putin’s military adventure has already failed on its own terms, by making Russia’s position weaker, not stronger.

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Vladimir Putin continues to make outrageous, rambling speeches about the geopolitical situation peppered with the odd valid point or semi-insightful remark about a "multipolar world" as a smokescreen to mask the true nature of his vicious war of terror against the Ukrainian people. He calls out the West over its colonialist past while lying about the nature of our commitment to Ukraine as well as the actions of his own military. The West is not above reproach; indeed, our record may fall short in this regard but Russia is far from blameless. In conflict after conflict, in Chechnya, Syria and now Ukraine, the government of the Russian Federation has continued to plumb new depths of ruthlessness, aggression, cynicism and inhumanity while practising deceit on an epic scale. And while the West's policy of supporting the efforts of Ukrainians to defend themselves through the provision of aid rather than force of arms has been consistent, as has our avoidance of pre-emptive escalation, the "Ruscists" in the Kremlin have moved the goalposts once more: the "special military operation" which became a "partial" mobilisation has now morphed into a "civil war" and their original stated war aim, spun by the Russian goivernment as "denazification", now seems to be "reunification". (Some of) the lies may change but the underlying truth remains the same. Russia is trying to rebuild its empire, undermining the rule-based world order embodied by the United Nations, as well as destabilising international relations, in the process. Thus it is the "Putinistas" who are jeopardising world peace while falsely accusing others. It is telling that Vladimir Putin and his cronies reject "Western" liberal values when the opposite of liberalism is the kind of intolerance and opppression that we see in the anti-democratic policies routinely practised by the regime at home under the thin veneer of Russian so-called democracy.

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Nailing the (recent) lies

In his latest pronouncement, Putin has claimed that NATO's expansion into what the Kremlin refers to as near abroad poses a miltary threat to Russia. In fact NATO's enlargement has only occurred becasue Russia's neighbours have applied for membership out of fear of the Kremlin's intentions, fears that have proved to be totally justified. The truth is that NATO has only ever been a defensive alliance, as per the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty; this is borne out by the organisation's continuing refusal to engage Russian forces in Ukraine directly. Indeed NATO ceased to be any kind of military threat to Russia after the end of the original Cold War, when both sides were haunted by the spectre of mutually assured destruction. And Putin's claim that Russia does not want to "absorb" anyone is clearly at odds with the illegal annexation of territory in Eastern Ukraine. Finally, his recent assertion that Russia would not make pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons is directly contradicted by the warlike rhetoric of earlier addresses in which he threatens first use of nukes. This warmongering talk, which is easily confirmed by an examination of the text of Putin's speeches, should be a matter of concern to all. It is indeed ironic that he falsely accuses the West of doing what he himself has done repeatedly.

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Putin says we are tearing Russia apart when in truth it is Russia that is trying to tear Ukraine apart. If Russia tears itself apart in the process then it will only have itself to blame. We are merely helping the Ukrainians to (more than) hold their own against a tyrannical aggressor.

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Russia has shown itself to be capable of great viciousness, brutality and spite in Ukraine, notching up record numbers of war crimes, and for what ? Fairly minor, possibly temporary territorial gains in Eastern Ukraine, achieved at the cost of sustaining huge mililtary losses, considerable reputational damage, widespread condemnation, growing international isolation, accelerated economic decline and reduced independence as the country comes to rely increasingly on Chinese support.

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Any case that the Kremlin may have had against Ukrainian aspirations to sue for membership of NATO has been totally negated by the actions of Russia's leadership and military since the beginning of the war. Indeed, the industrial-scale destruction and slaughter visited on Ukraine, not to mention the criminality shown by the invaders on the ground, have put Russia so far and so firmly in the wrong that much of its leadership and military stand rightly accused of crimes against humanity.

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Russia's blatant violation of its own self-declared ceasefire shows that the cynicism and hypocrisy of the regime knows no bounds...

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One wonders how much of their hate-filled paranoid rhetoric Putin and his cronies actually believe...

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In a staggering display of hypocrisy, Putin preaches to audiences both domestic and global against "Western hegemony" and neo-colonialism while actively engaged in trying to rebuild the Russian Empire. The Russian Federation of today is just the latest iteration of the Tzarist Russian Empire, previously rebranded ideologically as the USSR. It should be noted that every incarnation of Russia has embraced autocracy and expansionism; it continues to be a "prison of nations" and as such remains itself the last active European colonial power.

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Dam' Russians. Not content with wreaking havoc on Southern Ukraine by blowing up the Kakhovka dam in an efforrt to protect their Western flank, thus inundating numerous towns and submerging vast swathes of agricultural land, Russian forces are racking up further war crimes by shelling fleeing evacuees trying to escape the worst of the flooding. In fact, and not for the first time, the Russians are guilty of a crime against humanity in the widest sense, as the devastation of so much arable land, which will lead to food shortages in Ukraine on top of the the more immediate problems caused by the disruption of fresh water supplies, is also likely to engender worsening food poverty and even starvation in parts of the Global South.

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The façade of Russian unity cracks: interesting that the hyenas are now fighting amongst themselves. A welcome distraction for the Russian war effort as far as Ukraine is concerned, at least Yevgeny Prigozhin's "truth" seems to be closer to reality than Vladimir Putin's. However, it should be remembered that Prigozhin's Wagner Group of mercenaries is itself guilty of doing much dirty work and committing numerous atrocities abroad on behalf of the Putin regime, and that instability and disorder in Russia bring their own problems for the rest of the world. Prigozhin may be gone for now, but one can still ponder what might have been and what might still be.