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Tag: Ukraine

08/03/2023

An End to the War in Ukraine?

3 March 2023

There is a still a cheerful assumption that Russia can be driven out of Ukraine, and this is accompanied by copious rhetoric about Putin’s unprovoked aggression, the need to fight for democracy, and a dismissal of his claim that it is an existential issue for Russia.

It is also hopefully assumed that the war will end when Putin falls, but that fall is extremely unlike.

Putin sees the war as an existential issue for Russia. Whether this is right or wrong, it is certainly an existential issue for him, and he needs either a victory or a settlement that saves face.

It must be noted in terms of strength that Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine (146 v 41 million) and the per capita income in 2021 of Russia was almost three times that of Ukraine ($US12,259 v $4,594- UN figures). The casualty figures available are decidedly (and no doubt deliberately) vague.

The Chinese have a 12 point plan that, strangely, has not been seriously discussed in the Australian mass media. It was hard even to find the plan, though there was plenty of commentary that it was vague in detail, paid only lip service to territorial integrity and did not condemn Russia.   A copy of it is at [1] or [2].  This is at least a starting point. 

An article by Jeffery Sachs arguing for peace is below some of my comments.

Some background issues:

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and James Baker, the then US Secretary of State is said to have promised Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to the east if Russia accepted German reunification.   Russia also agreed to independence for Ukraine, despite the fact that its base was in Crimea. 

After the Soviet collapse the East European countries flocked to join NATO, which accepted them. The list is extensive: the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania; from old Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia.  Even Albania, which had been the most hard-line communist country in Europe, joined NATO. 

Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008 easily when its government tried to assert its authority over the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were demanding autonomy and were recognised by Russia.  The Russian invasion went beyond those provinces but did not occupy the capital, Tbilisi[3].  Western reaction was muted, which is said to be the reason that Putin was so emboldened and regarded the West as decadent.  Georgia was Western-oriented and had applied to join NATO.

Ukraine wanted to join NATO and since the invasion, Finland and Sweden have also applied.

From a Russian perspective, NATO had been encroaching east.  There had been a pro-Russian government in Ukraine up to 2014 under President Viktor Yanukovych but when he did not sign a treaty between Ukraine and the EU there was the Maidan revolution in February 2014, probably helped by the CIA.   Petro Poroshenko was elected President. 

The provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, collectively called the Donbas, and Transnistra in Moldova are significantly Russian oriented, and Russia supports their requests for autonomy and their separatist movements.  Russian troops are ‘peacekeeping’ in Moldova as they were in the Georgian provinces.    Whether these provinces want to be part of Ukraine or part of Russian is hard to determine, particularly  now, but one might suspect that there is considerable division of views and that they would prefer local autonomy to the highest degree possible rather than a distant government of either flavour.  A number of polls in 2014 came to different conclusions[4].  A 2020 poll showed primary concern was for local issues and fear of war[5].  Ukraine was having trouble dealing with the separatist movements before Russia invaded, so there are parallels with Georgia there.  Perhaps because of the Ukrainian military’s reluctance to fight Ukrainians, the Azov Brigade[6], a right-wing privately funded paramilitary group initially did most of the fighting against the Russian –backed separatists, which allowed Russia to claim it was fighting Nazis who had killed pro-Russian Ukrainians.  The actions of the Azov brigade were not popular, yet they were somewhat controversially absorbed into the Ukrainian army[7].

After the Crimean invasion, separatists seized control in Luhansk and Donetsk and declared their independence in May 2014. There was a civil war there, which led to the Minsk agreements in September 2014 and February 2015 that led to a ceasefire with the separatists having control of about a third of the provinces, with the objective to return the region to Ukraine but with significant local autonomy[8].   Russia recognised the independence of the breakaway regions in February 2022, just before it invaded.  

The Russians invaded Crimea in 2014 in response to the change of government in  Kiev.  The provincial Parliament in Crimea was pro-Russian, and initially Putin claimed that the invasion there was from Crimea itself.  There was little voting in Donetsk and Luhansk as the Kiev government did not have good control there.   While ‘territorial integrity’ is taken to mean existing borders, Kiev’s demand for this means that Russia would have to agree to its naval base being isolated, and Kiev having another attempt at suppressing the pro-Russian separatist provinces on Russia’s border.

Russia currently occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s territory and now has a land corridor in the south west of the country that links it to its key naval base in Crimea.  The only other link it had was via the 19km Kersh Strait Bridge, which is 19km long.  The bridge was planned after the 2014 Ukrainian coup and was completed in 2018.   Clearly if the government in Ukraine is hostile to Russia, it does not want to have its major warm water naval base only accessible by a bridge, and would never concede Crimea. 

The US arms industry, which is immensely influential in US foreign policy, is the chief beneficiary of the war, and President Biden has pledged support for as long as it takes. The Republicans, however control the Senate, and have an increasing isolationist voice.  The US President has quite a lot of discretion in waging wars, but if the US economy goes into recession there is a significant chance that the Republicans may win the 2024 Presidential election.   That is quite soon in terms of Russian war thinking.

For Americans, war is an inconvenience, fought overseas.  Russians have quite a different history.  In WW2 Russia lost far more people than the Germans and all the Allies in Europe combined, 26 million, or 13.7% of the population[9]. Russians see WW2 as one between themselves and Germany and were very critical of the rest of Allies for not helping them earlier. The long siege of Stalingrad ended in February 1943 and the Russian armies were advancing for 16 months before the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944.  So if Putin can convince Russians that it is an existential issue their expectations of what has to be sacrificed will be quite different to the US.

Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian whose show ‘Servant of the People’ had him as a history teacher who accidentally became Prime Minister because a student filmed his rant about corruption and it went viral.  He was honest and the satire on corruption was a huge hit because Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries. He was elected with his party having the same name as his comedy show.  He is well intentioned, and not a US puppet as some in the leftist media has portrayed him, but it is unlikely that he can end a nation’s entrenched corrupt traditions.  But recent US articles have said that US arms are getting to the frontline, which was a concern early in the war[10].  He wants the territorial integrity of Ukraine and a total victory over Russia.  The question is whether he is realistic, and to what extent the West will support him if the war drags on.

If one is to explore the lofty rhetoric of democracies deterring unprovoked aggression, one would have to concede that the US actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya could be called the same. If one is to draw historic parallels with Chamberlain conceding Czechoslovakia to Germany, one could say that the difference is that Putin would know that even if he moves the border a bit to provinces that already had a Russian speaking and Russian-orientated population, he would have steep and organised resistance to any further moves in Ukraine or elsewhere.

Listening to a Chinese peace proposal sounds like a good idea.

A negotiated peace is the only way to end Russia’s war on Ukraine

[1] www:peoplesworld.org/article/china-calls-for-ukraine-ceasefire-and-issues-12-point-peace-plan

[2] www:johnmenadue.com/china-releases-12-point-plan-for-peace-in-ukraine

[3] www:warontherocks.com/2018/08/the-august-war-ten-years-on-a-retrospective-on-the-russo-georgian-war

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Donbas_status_referendums

[5] https://dif.org.ua/en/article/results-of-regional-public-opinion-poll-in-donetsk-and-luhansk-regions

[6] www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment

[7] www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3659853-azov-becomes-separate-assault-brigade-with-armys-ground-forces.html

[8] www.thequint.com/explainers/ukraine-separatism-donetsk-luhansk-donbas-russia-independent)

[9] Russia: military deaths 10.6 million, civilian deaths 16 million, 13.7% of population. Germany military 5.0 million, Civilian 7.2 million 8.2%; France military 210,000, civilian 390,000 1.4%. UK military 0.6 million, 67,000, civilian, 1%. Australia military 31,700, civilian 700, 0.58%, USA 407,000 military, 12,100 civilian, 0.3% of population. Wikipedia accessed 3/3/23

[10] https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/02/dod-inspector-sees-no-signs-ukraine-diverting-weapons-promises-more-scrutiny/383449/

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16/10/2022

Finland

22 June 2022
I am currently in Finland, holidaying after the EuPRA (European Peace Research Association)
Conference in Tampere.
I had hoped that there would be more insights on the Ukraine situation, but peace research has its
topics and budgets set years ahead, so Ukraine was barely mentioned and no new insights given.
Finland generally is very pro-Ukraine, with Ukrainian flags flying alongside Finnish ones at railway
stations and even Ukrainian flag stickers on traffic poles.
The conference was mainly about ‘positive peace’ which means trying to get harmonious social
policy, with papers on minority, immigrants and disadvantaged groups, rather than ‘negative peace’
which is taken to be the absence of war. So there was surprisingly little on politics or foreign policy.
The situation of the indigenous ‘Sami’ (formerly called Lapps) was also a big topic. Researchers claim
it is very hard ever to get funding for peace research, and it has to be framed as ‘conflict resolution’.
The conference had a distinctly feminist flavour both in attendance and in tone. It was very
competently organised, principally by Masters and PhD students from the Tampere Institute of
Peace Students. Despite their acronym, TIPSY, the students were very serious and organised.
Participants were shepherded around by Norse goddesses, who seemed charmingly unaware of
their aesthetic attributes.
Finland is an affluent, modern country of 5.5 million with an ambience very like Sweden. They have
the best education system in the world, and almost all speak excellent English. Signs used to be
written in Finnish, Swedish and Russian, but there is a trend towards Finnish and English, as all
Swedes speak English, and Russian is becoming less important to the Finnish economy. Finnish is
quite a distinct and unusual language, quite different from Swedish, which was used by the elite
when Sweden occupied Finland, and is widely spoken. Finland has high taxes, a good welfare system
and a very high standard of public facilities. Incomes seem high as prices are about 50% higher than
in Australia. Petrol is about $A3.75/litre. There is a Universal Basic Income and no visible poverty.
I had not known much about Finnish history, but it had been something of a rural backwater with a
very low agricultural population, principally populated from Sweden. It was under Sweden until the
Swedish-Russian war of 1721, when it came under Russia. The Swedes took it back in 1788, and
Russia took it back in 1809, but left it relatively autonomous. Finnish nationalism was relatively late
to develop, starting in the 1850s. A Scot, Finlayson, set up textile factories in Tampere in the 1850s,
based on the model of Manchester, England. Tampere became the industrial heart of Finland. Lenin
came to Finland and stayed for some time in Tampere as it had a high population of workers. He
promised to give the Finns autonomy if the revolution succeeded. He actually met Stalin in Tampere
so the Lenin Museum there claims that there was the birthplace of the Soviet Republic.
Stalin had his own methods of funding the revolution, which included robbing banks such as the
Helsinki branch of the Russian bank. Relations between the Russians and the semi-autonomous
Finns had generally been good, though the Tsar in his last days from 1899 tried a policy of
Russification, which was not popular.
Lenin had to flee Finland from the Tsarist police, but after the revolution succeeded in 1917 the
Finnish Senate declared independence. Lenin kept his promise and supported the new republic but

he hoped for world revolution, so sent help to the Reds in Finland who initiated a civil war in 1917.
The Reds were strong in the industrial cities such as Tampere. The White nationalists were more
middle class and rural. The war was short and brutal with victory to the new White republic but
many were killed and there were considerable recriminations. Russia at that time was fully occupied
with its own internal strife, but Finland respected their power, remained neutral and benefitted
from trade with Russia, as it increasingly industrialised.
In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement, which pledged non-aggression
between Germany and Russia and gave the western half of Poland and Lithuania to Germany. The
eastern half of Poland and all the countries east of it were ‘given’ to Russia.
The Baltic States, Latvia and Estonia were in this agreement, and so was Finland. Safe from attack by
Russia, Hitler then started WW2 by attacking Poland, and the Russians moved to take their half (so
that Poland ceased to exist). The Baltic States quickly fell to Russia, but Finland resisted, successfully
at first, but the Russians overcame them and took some territory in an unfavourable settlement, but
left them some degree of independence. When Germany invaded Russia, they demanded passage
through Finland to attack Norway, and the Finns agreed, not having much option. The Finns then
supported the Germans to get some of their territory back from the Russians, so in the settlement
after the war in 1944, the Russians took even more territory from the Finns, including part of
Lappland in the north, so that Finland no longer reaches the Arctic Ocean and Russia meets Norway
above them.
After WW2 the Finns built a Nordic welfare state and developed their industries, Nokia being the
best known example. Farm forestry is still a major industry, particularly pine and silver birch. There
are almost no grazing animals. They concentrated on education and industrialisation and their
economy grew as fast as many of the Asian ones, but with higher wages. They took a very neutral
foreign policy stance not to offend Russia, but did join the Euro currency launch in 2002.
Geographically, Finland is quite a large country as it extends so far north. It has no mountains and
only low hills and a large number of lakes which tend to have their long axes to the south-west due
to fact that the country was covered by a huge sheet of ice in the Ice Age, which moved to the south
west. It is quite warm in summer (now) and the Finns go to their summer cottages on the lakes. In
winter it is very cold, so all the houses are triple glazed and well insulated. There are no solar panels
and they are trying to become carbon-dioxide neutral, telling you on the tickets how much carbon
dioxide is produced by your bus or train journey. 28% of the electricity used is of nuclear origin.
Travelling is reasonably easy, though the Finnish language is difficult but almost everyone speaks
reasonable English. Getting used to cars on the right side of the road is a bit of a challenge, and
walking on the footpaths also, and the latter is rendered more complicated by the fact that the
footpaths also have a section for bikes and electric scooters which takes half the footpath, but there
is no consistency on which half. Finns smoke more than Australians and seem to have a lot of junk
food restaurants, so I suspect that the prevalence of obesity will be rising, especially as electric
scooters now considerably outnumber bikes, and are available everywhere to be picked up and used
after buying a plan and putting in a code.
It is a question of getting used to things, but in the meantime I am enjoying the capital of Lappland,
Rovaniemi. It is not possible to see the Northern Lights as these are at the Winter solstice in

December- here at present the sun sets for about half an hour a day and it never gets dark. The 8am
temperature is 14 degrees. I have heard that it is cold in Australia.

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12/05/2022

A Russian Perspective on Ukraine- (Gregory Clark article below)

25 April 2022

While the brutal tactics of the Russians in Ukraine make horrendous continuing news, significant aspects of the origins of Russia’s Ukraine invasion have been ignored by Western media.  This does not justify the invasion, but one might wonder if the Donbas region in the East could ever have been retained within Ukraine.

It is well known that there is a gradation across the Ukraine from West to East, those in the West favouring Europe about 90%, but those in the East, the Donsek region, has almost 90% keen to merge with Russia.  There was a strong separatist movement in these provinces, with ongoing fighting. The Ukrainian army was not keen to fight other Ukrainians and it was said that neo-Nazi groups were involved in fighting the separatists using very Fascist tactics. 

Historically there had been some strong right wing groups in the Ukraine, and it might be noted that when Germany invaded, troops from Ukraine were recruited and fought with them against the Russians.  At the end of the war, naturally these groups were not seen, but it has been said that the CIA was in touch with them, and that they facilitated the successful storming of the Ukrainian Parliament in the coup in 2014, which led to the Donbas region in the east attempting to secede from Ukraine and Russia seizing Crimea.  It might be noted that Crimea was given to Ukraine by Russia in 1954 when they were both part of the USSR. The transfer was facilitated by Nikita Khrushchev who needed the Ukrainian votes to further his own career, and made little difference while Ukraine was in the USSR.

Fighting continued in the Donbas region which includes the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. The fighting led to the Minsk Agreement in September 2014, but the agreement failed leading to Minsk II in February 2015.  Luhansk and Donetsk were supposed to become autonomous regions, but it has never happened.  Fighting has continued, so Russia’s claim that they are fighting Nazis is not as absurd as it has been painted, at least in those regions.

When the USSR was collapsing the US Secretary of State James Baker promised Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev on 9 February 1990 that NATO would not recruit countries to the East.  However, those countries were fearful of a Russian resurgence and wanted to join NATO.  The USSR collapsed in 1991. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999 and Russia objected.  Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004.  Note the marked move of NATO to the East.  Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.  The Balkan countries presumably joined as protection against Serbia, which started the wars as Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991-1999.  Serbia was a strong Russian ally. 

Prior to invading Ukraine, Russia wanted a guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO, but Ukraine along with Georgia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have expressed membership aspirations.  No one was willing to give a guarantee the Ukraine would not join NATO even as the Russian troops massed for the invasion, though some hoped that Putin was bluffing.

Russia is now the 11th biggest economy in the world, ahead of Spain and Australia at 12th and 13th, so economically it is only a middle power, but having been a superpower with an empire recently, it has weapons far in excess of other middle powers and as it pursues a commodities-led recovery it hankers for its old Empire.

The German Social Democrats, the coalition partners of Angela Merkel, assumed that if Russia were integrated into the European economy by Germany buying their gas there would be no wars.  This has been a major miscalculation. Germany was dependent on Russia for 55% of their gas, this having gone up when then they closed their nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster.  They still get 39% of their gas from Russia and are reluctant to turn it off as it would cause a major recession there.  This is very controversial in Germany at present.  Someone calculated that German purchase of Russian gas can pay for a tank every 20 seconds.

Here is an article by Gregory Clark, who spent 10 years with the Australian Dept. of External Affairs (which was the Foreign Relations Dept.) and resigned in 1965 in protest at Australia going into Vietnam. He went to Tokyo and was the lead correspondent for The Australian in Japan 1969-74 and a Japanese academic. He came back as an advisor to Prime Minister and Cabinet in 1974-76 (the Whitlam era), and returned to Japan after that. 

Western media have failed dismally in reporting the Ukraine war

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06/02/2022

Will Russia Invade Ukraine?

6 February 2022

Probably not, but it is possible and they are likely to take some action.


The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 was largely due to their economy being unable to compete with more efficient market-based ones. But US Secretary of State James Baker in 1990 promised Mikhail Gorbachev of Russia that NATO would not expand eastwards.


The Eastern European countries were effectively given independence. Their attitudes varied. The Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were very keen to have protection. Poland, which was abolished as a nation in WW2, simply being divided in half and incorporated into Russia and Germany by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was also looking for protection.

NATO, led by the US has been joining up countries so that only the two closest to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have not joined. Now the US is now loudly proclaiming Ukraine’s ‘right’ to join NATO if it chooses. The US has a lot of hubris, a tin ear, an arms lobby that needs sales and a recent history of doing what it likes. It has also installed military facilities in some of the countries closet to Russia. Those with long memories may recall the Cuban missile crisis of 1961 when Russia tried to station missiles there and there was a major confrontation. The US has bases all over the world encircling its rivals. The Russians do not, and when they tried to these was a major confrontation. One can also note that there are no natural barriers to military advances in Europe. Napoleon and Hitler swept across Russia and Russia swept them back.


Ukraine, the former ‘breadbasket’ of the Soviet Union is the closest big country to Russia and also could control Russian access to the Black Sea so has special significance. Internally it has quite a varied attitude to Russia. Those in the Eastern part of the country are very pro-Russia, while those in the West would like more integration with Western Europe. There is a succession movement in Donbass, an eastern province, and Russia is accused of helping the separatists. The capital, Kiev, is on the Dnieper river, which bisects the country from north to south, just downstream of Chernobyl. In 2014 there was a coup which was shown to be CIA-supported. The Parliament was invaded, much like the US on 6 Jan 2021, but in Ukraine’s case the President fled and new government was installed, highly favourable to the US. Russia responded by annexing the Crimean peninsula, which has their key naval base in the Black Sea. It might be noted that in a plebiscite a huge majority of Crimeans supported Russia against Ukraine.


In an interview on 7.30 on 1/2/22 Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner pointed out the US hypocrisy on NATO membership. He also pointed out that Russia does not want to invade. There would be Western sanctions, but Russia would also be stuck with a guerrilla war situation having to suppress part of what they occupied perhaps indefinitely. They cannot count on being welcomed even into eastern Ukraine. Invading armies usually are not. They would lose a lot of face internationally and there would be trouble on side or another in selling their gas to Western Europe.


It might be overlooked with all the US statements on Ukraine that Germany, France and Italy, surely the heavyweights of Europe, have been very silent. Germany has decommissioned its nuclear plants, cut down on coal and now gets a third of its energy from Russian gas. It cannot replace that amount of energy in the short-term. They are very aware of what a war in Europe means. Europe is more economically integrated and in general, this is good thing.


Russia will be supported by China if the sanctions start to bite, and the US dollar is gradually becoming less important as a world currency, a trend that the Chinese are working hard to accelerate.Even the Ukrainian President is now on record saying that the US must take much of the blame for the current situation.


It seems that the US arms industry, which has spent decades having little wars to keep itself at the centre of that fading economy is lost in its own hubris. It sees this merely as an opportunity to sell arms to the Ukrainians. It is a market, and an economic game. The Russians have existential concerns, not to mention the loss of face. They are likely to take some action. Diplomacy needs to work and the US has to be restrained. Finland has lived on the Russian border for many years as a democracy that minded its Ps and Qs. The Ukraine should probably do the same.

Press stunned as Ukraine leader points finger at West

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