Almost a year ago I wrote a post asking why are our globalist elites so obsessed with Russia? I saw weird things happening around me, but didn’t answer my own question. Now I do know.
What’s happening right now is the single most horrifying thing I have ever seen. It’s even worse than the Islamophobia after the Sept. 11 attacks. That was wrong, but at least there was a reasonable provocation for it. We had been directly attacked, and in a terrible way. It was natural for us to feel angry, and would have been weird if we didn’t. But why now? Why are Americans feeling this overwhelming, burning rage and bloodlust over a regional border dispute on the other side of the world? Only one in six Americans can find Ukraine on a map. I’m not sure all Americans could even find Russia on a map.
This is the first time in my life I have watched the Russians fight a protracted conventional war, and I have immersed myself in both sides of the story, not just ours. At the same time, I have watched almost every person I have ever known explode into a fit of irrational rage and russophobia, and completely overnight.
Why do we compulsively travel to the other side of the world to pick fights with Russia? And when Russia gets into fights of her own, why do we always take the other side, even when the other side is evil? And why is the other side always evil? Not sometimes evil. Always evil. Our allies against Russia are always nazis, terrorists, religious extremists, and drug dealers. There is not even one exception to this rule.
In 1853, Russia was ill-prepared for the Crimean War. That’s mostly because they weren’t expecting it. They were astonished that the “collective West” would side with a crumbling, corrupt Islamic empire and wage total war against fellow Christians, killing hundreds of thousands of them. Think of how different the world might be if the West hadn’t committed this crime. With a partitioned, stabilized Middle East and Balkans, there would have been no Armenian genocide. None of the other wars that broke out during and after the Ottoman Empire’s collapse would have happened. It’s very possible that World War I might not have happened, meaning no World War II or Holocaust either.
In hindsight, Russians shouldn’t have been surprised, because that’s the pattern the West has followed ever since. In the 1940s, the West funded Hitler against Russia. Then in the late 1940s, the West allied with nazis to form NATO, just to prove that the first time wasn’t a fluke. In the 1980s, the West sided with Afghan terrorists and drug dealers against Russia. In the 1990s, the West sided with Albanian terrorists and drug dealers against the Serbs (who are almost the same thing as Russians). In the 2010s, the West sided with ISIS and Kurdish death squads against Syria’s secular democratic government, and (coincidentally) a close Russian ally. If you think I’m being unfair, can you think of even one ally of the West against Russia who wasn’t a terrorist, a drug dealer, a nazi, or all of the above?
Now, Ukraine. The corruption capital of the planet, the poorest, most backwards nation in Europe, a government full of nazis, drug dealers, and assorted other scumbags. Now that Russia has decided to wage open warfare against Ukraine, suddenly Ukrainian neo-nazi drug dealers are the good guys? Why?
And the West’s reaction to the Ukrainian war is nothing short of total, irrational hatred and panic. Let’s be honest with ourselves. This has nothing to do with Ukraine. That little neo-nazi haven is just a proxy for the real war between Russia and the West.
Sorry, I still haven’t answered the question. Why do we hate Russia so much? Life imitates art, and art imitates life. We can find the answer in our own movies. Look at how many of the recent entries are about our war with Russia. Amazon’s Without Remorse and the Jack Ryan series are two of the more extreme examples. These are not nice stories, and they’re somehow even more nihilistic and divorced from morality than the original Tom Clancy books they’re based on.
Even in our fictional fantasies, we depict ourselves committing terrorism and indiscriminate violence against innocent people. Worse, we do it without reason and incompetently. In Jack Ryan, CIA thugs torture people in Yemen. In Without Remorse, a special forces team carries out a botched terrorist raid on Russian soil, killing dozens of innocent people. We don’t even pretend to be the good guys. We justify our atrocities by assuring ourselves that “both sides are equally bad.” Without Remorse even has a monologue about “pawns and patriots.” Ah, I see, the blind man said. Us doing bad things is okay, because we show the Russians also doing bad things that we made up. Makes sense.
It’s not possible to debunk every single bit of fake news about Russian “atrocities” in Ukraine, there’s just too much of it. So here’s a rule of thumb that should pretty much always work. If the story involves Russians doing a cartoonishly evil thing with no plausible motive or any logical benefit they could ever gain from it – like blowing up maternity wards for no reason – then it’s probably bullshit. See? Easy. By the way, if you don’t want the enemy to shoot at hospital rooms, then maybe you should stop putting soldiers and weapons in them. It’s truly not hard.
And it’s not just Ukraine. We make up silly bullshit stories about every Russian war. Like putting bombs inside children’s toys scattered around Afghanistan. Really? Why would the Russians want to do that? I have to really ask an obvious question now. Do our propagandists think that’s a reasonable tactic because we did it at some point?
Russian and Soviet stories are not like ours, by the way.
Speaking of propaganda, I shared this meme to Facebook shortly after the Russian army visited Ukraine:
Someone replied with this comment:
Interesting how both of these statements are not true
Interesting, but that wasn’t my point, and I’m worried that no one understood what my point was. Propaganda isn’t good or bad, it’s just a tool. It’s information, and it reveals something about the person saying it. If someone spouts good, positive messages, then that’s probably what he believes. If someone spouts cruel and horrible messages, then what are we supposed to think of him?
The problem with morality is that we aren’t born with it. Morality has to be taught. Our stories have taught us to be bad and cruel for so long we don’t know how to be any other way. It’s sad, and it’s also deliberate. That’s what our elites want us to think, and will pay any price to keep that illusion over our heads.
So I’ll finally answer the question. Why does the West hate Russia? Our elites hate Russia because she poses an existential, ideological threat to our world order. Russia represents the idea that human beings don’t have to be evil. There is an alternative to being evil, and it’s good to not be evil. That is why our elites hate Russia, and are determined to destroy her at any cost, even at the risk of utterly destroying our own civilizations in the process.
25 March 2023 Video: Ukrainian recruiters kidnap a young man off the street for conscription into the army:
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If you enjoyed this post, please consider my followup, Ukraine is the new Poland.
Also my related post What ‘Come and See’ Can Teach Us About Ukraine.
What’s the fighting in Ukraine REALLY like?
Army Forum 2022 in Moscow Oblast
Are Russians starving?
Ian Kummer
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Great write up off this f”’ked up situation. I live in Sweden (Malmoe)only about 1779 km from Ukraine and people here are generally totally unaware of the war there. I do not make this up, it is true. They do not care and can’t be bothered. Only small groups here and there have an interest. Sad to say, but it is true.
I am neither pro this nor that, but killing each other have solved few, if any, problems.
Come on guys, you can do better than that, civilization here in the North came from both England and Rus, bothe had an enormous impact on us. A 1000 years ago. Not much now.
Hello Den Lille Abe,
Yes, and I must confess that I am concerned about what I see from many (though not all) social media commenters from the EU (and UK). Americans not understanding the Ukraine situation is understandable – though also not understandable considering how deeply invested our government is in this region. But citizens of the EU have everything to lose. Even if a war with Russia never becomes “hot” in the sense of direct fighting with NATO… the sanctions war will certainly hit the EU the hardest. How could people there not at least be concerned that their governments are overly committed to using Ukraine as a wedge against Russia? It’s more than a little crazy to me.
Europe is dead! EU nations have no say in any mayor decision. Eu is dead politically, culturally, spiritually and ideologically.
Based
When the first people came to Europe with agriculture, they were so strong that they destroyed the local populations. In addition, the high population density provoked constant aggression.
The territory of Greater Russia (including Ukraine and Belarus) passed along the border of risk farming. The life of the ancient peasants did not provide an excess of food, and the ancient Slavs could neither destroy the local populations nor create a high density. You could always find somewhere to live. Therefore, historically, Russians lived with other cultures and races together.
This dichotomy in terms of tolerance is clearly visible. Of course, in recent years, Europe has also tried to take steps towards tolerance, but this looks like a crude product and current events show that this idea is not understood by society.
As for the US war against Russia, the reason is simple, Russia is the only obstacle for the US to unlimited world domination.
This results in other cultures (Asia, Africa, South America) being able to develop. The United States has to share resources with the conquered Europe – so that the Europeans do not run over to Russia. The collapse of Russia will provide absolutely incredible opportunities for the United States, all the resources of the world.
For the rest of the world, this will be a nightmare.
Good work . Informative
You do not sound like a Reading Junkie Ian. If you are one you should know better than this.
Elaborate?
I am afraid they just did. This seems to have been the pinnacle of A’s intellectual prowess.
Russian atrocities are well known. It’s not an exaggeration to say that launching missiles at hospitals, schools, apartment buildings etc constitutes war crimes.
During the Chechnya war of 1994, around twenty five thousand civilians were killed during the two months of fighting in Grozny. And during the 2nd Chechnyan war Russian soldiers summary expected civilians. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights have documented these and more crimes against humanity.
They even document their own atrocities and then brag about it on Telegram, like the Russian soldier who castrated a Ukrainian prisoner of war with a box cutter and dragged his bleeding body around before shooting him in the head. Then there’s the theatre where civilians where taking refuge with huge signs advising that there were children in there. The Russians blew it up anyway. Just look at the carnage in Syria! And it is all documented.
You talk about Nazis in Ukraine. Well, we have those in the US as well Russia has Nazis too and so do other countries. Should we Americans, Europeans, i.e. the rest of the world expect to experience Russian missiles targeting us and our children? Of course it’s easy to dismiss the human toll when you have an agenda.
Why are the Ukrainians putting military hardware in hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, etc?
to fight back and protect
Whom?
To protect? When you say to protect, you need to answer, when it is started, and who is start the war? Some people say: The war starts in Feb. 2022, but the truth is – 2014. When Ukrainians start to bombing with military aircrafts thr civilians in Donbas. Military aircrafts CAN NOT be used against civilian! It can not named that as a Special Operation!
Of course you can only see a Binary: Russia bad, Ukraine good.
Where do you live?
What are your wartime experiences when the “enemy” attacked your nation?
Have you ever fought in a war?
There is way, way too much evidence that this now becoming global crisis created by and only the “Collective Waste (West)” to consolidate their monopoly on global crime.
Obviously, you are unable to tell the difference between INTERNATIONAL LAW and RULES BASED ORDER.
Skill testing questions: Which global order method views all countries as equal? Which order benefits the Hegemon?
Lastly: Which item is an abstraction and which one is an absolute: Economics or Ecology?
Lastly, we in the West have started to cull our own citizens by virtue of the “Experimental Gene Therapeutics” through direct consequence or deferred by sterilizing pregnant mothers and children.
Didn’t get invented in Russia or China!
Never actuall lived within a war until now. why would a country as big and independent as russia want to cause such hatred and recall of natzism. the whole world detests that description. how can putin call a friendly european country such as ukraine such a horrendous mudering country. They bare nothing in line against yourselves..
we are now at 20 of your supporters that have eithr fallen out of a high level window or big bang to rght ear.
Bite the bullet putin the world we all live in dont want your war we would like to live in peace
>want your war we would like to live in peace
Yugoslavia? Iraq? Lybia? Syria? Ukraine in 2014? You attacked them without any reasons. You don’t want to live in peace.
You started the new Holocaust and dare to be indignant that Russia is defending itself from destruction? Remember what happened to the last European Union and why it is considered criminal all over the world. The same will happen with the new Fourth Reich.
Vanessa, Ukraine and Ukrainians are possessed by nazism. That’s why. Look at this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ukraine+azov+swastika+hitler&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMjKyxnPX9AhXoRvEDHZzADrUQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1186&bih=518&dpr=2.14
“Friendly” Ukrainians renamed some 200 central streets in all Ukrainian cities and towns after Nazi bloody killers Bandera and Shuhevich.
They had established several tens of museums over throughout their country devoted to SS regiment Galychyna, famous for wiping and burning hundreds of Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian villages witn all its inhabitants, mostly elders, women and children. They burn them in the barns. Google Hatyn village tragedy. It’s like Songmi, but much worse.
These butchers were nominated National Heroes of Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers wear with pride tattoos with swastikas, Hitler, Nazi imperial eagle, wolfsangel by SS etc.
Hitler or Bandera portraits are in every office of Ukrainian officials.
Right now western tanks are attacking Russians with white nazi crosses on their sides. Like there were no these 80 years, Nurenberg Tribunal etc.
You don’t know what you’re talking about at all! I was there in the spring. And I stopped fighting for Ukraine when I saw how horrible those people were. They dress up in Russian uniforms and make fake videos. And their organization “CYPSO” then spreads these fakes on the Internet – billions are spent on this. I left Ukraine and will not fight for them anymore. They are horrible people. Forgive my English – I am from Hungary and I don’t know English.
You made such a righteous choice, bro!
Biological and chemical weapon, public torture and executions, the ban on native culture for 80% of the population, the genocide of the eastern population, the destruction of water sources, constant war crimes (real!) and daily terrorist attacks.
Shooting fake videos is a small thing (I have the links).
The Zelensky regime among Russians (in Ukraine, 80% of the population are Russians) is considered and called UGIL, although ISIS is softer terrorists and does not do such atrocities.
The author writes on this occasion that you believe in all the nonsense that CNN, the Ukrainian media and the organizations you mentioned above say. Proof?! And who needs them, right?! The main thing is that Russia is evil. And you love it. Just the opposite! Russia has always protected and protects civilians. Including in Chechnya. Now any Chechen will spit in your face for your words. People in the West are so naive and stupid. It’s a pity.
Russia in Syria at the invitation of the government. Fight against terrorist organizations. What is the US doing there? Right! Steals oil from Syria.
>It’s not an exaggeration to say that launching missiles at hospitals, schools, apartment buildings etc constitutes war crimes.
Nope, it is fake.
And these are very stupid fakes, at the level of children. Their existence is possible thanks to the extreme limitations of the media in the West.
Just two facts:
1. There is a well-known accusation of shelling a maternity hospital in Mariupol, with the testimony of a pregnant blogger. However, this story died down because this blogger, knowing the situation, chose to flee to Russia. And she talked about the Ukrainian military.
2. During the year of high-intensity conflict in Ukraine, many times fewer civilians were killed than in the first month in Iraq. See UN report. And the main number of victims are the victims of Zelensky, who really uses war crimes as the norm for conducting military operations. The shelling of a nuclear power plant or the massive mining of peaceful cities alone is worth something.
>They even document their own atrocities
It is fake. There is not a single, really not a single evidence of war crimes by Russia. Including those made by myself.
The castration story was published by the Ukrainians, and the details of the clothing DIRECTLY indicate that it was the Ukrainian special forces (their special shoes) who castrated the Russian military (russian’s underpants).
So is the story of the recent execution of a Ukrainian soldier. It was posted by the Ukrainians, and there is no context indicating the presence of the Russian army.
But the Ukrainians themselves willingly publish their crimes: the same castrations, executions, torture, beheadings, the use of chemical weapons. This is all they spread themselves on their channels and about themselves.
They also testified that this was Zelensky’s order – do you remember the story when he attacked a prison in Russia where his soldiers were imprisoned?
>You talk about Nazis in Ukraine. Well, we have those in the US as well Russia has Nazis too and so do other countries.
The Nazis in Ukraine and the United States are part of the government. In Russia there is no.
Russian missiles are aimed at the US and are ready to kill everyone there at any given time. That’s why the US is afraid to attack, and that’s why they send terrorists.
Learn to live peacefully. I do not understand why you are proud of your desire to attack other nations.
Madam! You are exactly the person that Western globalist authorities want to see in every European and American! You are their dream and goal! Of all the examples of “Russian cruelty” you cited, there is not a single reliable one. All these “documented evidence” have long been exposed as gross fakes created by the Western authorities. You speak so confidently about documentation that I am amazed that there are still such naive people – real food for propagandists and monopolized social networks, video hosting and messengers! I apologize for the harshness of the presentation.
I know very well about the Chechnya conflict.
1. Do you remember who was a president when it is began? Elcin. In Elcin’s period the White house and Kremlin were full of US “advisers”.
2.Do you remember who finished that? Putin.
Caucasus region is very difficult area to keep peace there, a lot of nationalities with culturial and mentalitet difference. If you never lived here, you can not understand who is who and where expect a knife in back.
I know the blind man, who was the 19 years old young solger in first Chechnya war. He was captured by the Chechens – they gouged out his eyes and mocked him, and he would have died there if this gang had not been defeated. The war is full of cruelty from the both side. Dudaev (the initiator of this situation) and his second hand Basaev was not the angels, In my city, they seized a maternity hospital and many civilians and put pregnant women out the windows, who are about to give birth as a human shield.
The only assertion on the page I take issue with is the negativity regarding NatSocs, who had the decency to actually fight back against the modern cultural marxist and banker juden. The total anti-west, anti-ZOG stance is based though.
Ian, you’re one of the best on the web and you keep me from losing my mind. I’m all over the place and discovering excellent and astute bloggers and commenters. I take what I learn from sites like your’s and your Dad’s and spread it far and wide. I even have references professionally applied to my tailgate.
I’ve been given hope because I had a 4GW vision of how we can increase our impact and get more exposure. What I see is a network with common goals coordinating between nodes. Each provider is a cell, each blog is a sub cell and each individual is a node. It’s a proven mobilization tool and can be replicated with CB and Ham Radio. It’s also useful for civil defense and emergency response.
I got the idea thinking of how to overcome the corrupt narrative. The anti Russian propaganda operation is well coordinated, centralized and top down. Even Silicon Valley social media purveyors have made a special exception of their censorship to allow a Hate Fest against everything Russian, even calling for Putin’s head!
My heart is heavy.
THIS CAN NOT BE!
A few very large blogs shared links to my site, which has brought in a huge amount of traffic, which is encouraging. I’m also encouraged that many people are seeing through the nonsense.
Actually interesting enough, I am a second-hand “victim” of the hybrid war against Russia. I used Tolstoy Comments, a high-end and somewhat pricey third-party provider of messaging boards for blogs. Yesterday it got taken down in a massive ddos attack – which caused my own pages and posts to freeze and have massive load times, then the comments plugin stopped working altogether. It’s amazing that someone at the Pentagon actually put this much thought into which sites in the Russian web they should attack. Too bad (or good, perhaps) they don’t put so much effort into, you know, the actual war.
Thanks for saying all this. I’m an old, retired history teacher who studied Russian history at Ohio State in the late ”50’s. I’d also done some reading while serving in the US Army, mid-50’s. I read about and studied the US invasion of Russia in 1918 to force Russia to remain in the war against Germany and also to assist the anti-communists in their war against the Bolsheviks. It’s a history few in America know, but all in Russia are taught. They rightly fear “encirclement,” and invasions, having been attacked numerous times by “the West.”
Their fears are obviously not unwarranted. Consider our overthrows of many socialist governments: Chile; Iran; Iraq; etc. And some failures: Venezuela, etc. I wish all this weren’t true, but sadly it is. The US tries to run the world for capitalism.
Do you know that Ukraine shot down two civilian planes? Including MH-17 was shot down by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Everyone knows this, but the “tribunal” in the Netherlands officially forbade taking into account any facts accusing Ukraine. It’s not hidden.
The first plane flew to Israel, Ukraine shot it down, but did not admit it. When they lifted it up and found holes from a Ukrainian rocket, they said it was an internal terrorist attack. However, Israeli citizens were compensated, but Russia was not.
“Propaganda isn’t good or bad, it’s just a tool.”
-it’s just THE TOOL for torture…..
(the other guy was about moving to R,
wellcome aboard comrade resident!)
Torture is officially legal in the US. In Ukraine, Zelensky uses public torture to intimidate the population. In Russia, torture is prohibited. What is the conclusion?
> In the 1940s, the West funded Hitler against Russia
This just isn’t true. The allied powers sided with Stalinist Russia against Hitler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#:~:text=Roughly%2017.5%20million%20tons%20of,January%201942%20to%20May%201945.
> In the 2010s, the West sided with ISIS and Kurdish death squads against Syria’s secular democratic government
Also not true. The US supported the YPG, who are not ‘death squads’ and Bashir al-Hassad is as far as you can get from a democratic government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad
> Our allies against Russia are always nazis, terrorists, religious extremists, and drug dealers
Also untrue. Just because you find one group of people in Ukraine waving a swastika does not mean most Ukranians are Nazis
There were no “sanctions” against Hitler. The British even gave him the Czech treasury, when they could have quite easily not done this. American corporations continued dealing with Hitler, even AFTER declaration of war, and even helped provide technology used in the concentration camps.
Kurdish militias are terrorists, ISIS are American trained – even if you want to claim this is a conspiracy you cannot deny the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who deserted and joined ISIS/ISIL immediately after completing their training..
If you had read the social media and other propaganda produced by the Ukrainian military, you would not deny that they are nazis.
Continuing the arguments against Edward “I wouldn’t even cite wikipedia to argue about the Assad government.” Totally biased. The US has financed and trained Islamists in Syria, saying they are “moderate rebels”. They follow the pattern of England when they want to expand and dominate the Middle East: always relying on fundamentalists to divide and conquer.
Not to account for the phoney war of sep-39, apr-40 so that germany’s small army can go east without fearing a collapse of the western front, or the other gift of the chechoslovakian Pt-38 tanks that the germans used in order to invade France later.
To top it, when the germans got that they will lose the war in 1943 and tried to form an anti-communist league the British were very happy to oblige. We know now how happy churchil was to finish the war in the west with germany in order for the western front to concentrate on the east. The only condition was a regime change in germany (ie neutralize hitler).
It was only FDR (who didn’t share the anglosaxon russophobia and admired the soviet revolution as he shared many of their methods with his famous “brain train”) that put a veto on this idea and sticked to the alliance with stalin. Unfortunately for all of us, the DNC even from back then had trimmed their course and installed Trumman in the vice-presidency against the will of the base who wanted the “red” Wallace, vice president in the two previous terms of FDR.
Oh and Red wasn’t his first name 🙂
As FDR died, trumman and the russophobics created the cold war and nato using the invaluable experience of nazi germany during the fight against the soviet union.
just a few random examples there are dozens of them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
Hi Waste,
You should check out my post comparing 2022 Ukraine with 1939 Poland:
https://readingjunkie.com/2022/03/18/is-ukraine-the-new-poland/
Hi Ian,
While I generally agree with most of your posts, I have one question (and maybe you have answered it in another post), will you please define “global nazism” for me? Are you referring to what actual Nazism is, which doesn’t include the extermination of a people, or something else?
And also, with Churchill saying he’ll collaborate with Germany to get rid of Communist Russia so long as Hilter is gone, wasn’t that a good thing? Was it not true that Stalin wanted to eventually go into Europe to establish communism? (I ask these questions as a true ignoramus when it comes the modern history, not as some snarky intelluctual).
Dear Beth, even here in Russia the majority don’t know that Stalin’s repressions exterminated the worldwideRevolutioners. The siblings of the latter raised their voice in 1960s depicting Stalin as crazy sadist. Nope; he changed the аgеnda from world-wide revolution to international friendship.
With Wikipedia lies you want to attack this excellent and 100 % truthful article?
Shame on you the only excuse you could have is that you are brainwashed as 90% of the populations.
But that doesn’t make your comment any better
By now it’s common knowledge that Adolf got massively financed by the US for his little war.
You don’t need Wikipedia for that
@Ian
Really great article very much appreciate it, you where mentioned in a comment at the saker blog from Petri
Edward, they funded YPG later in the process. The main criticism IMO is about this, where the US supported syrian “rebels”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
Well, as George Friedman said, funding both sides is a “good thing”.
It’s funny how the shameful Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is never mentioned by Russian propagandists. That agreement paved the way for the joint invasion and occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Stalin and Hitler agreed on which countries they would subjugate. Instead they crow about how they beat the Nazis and oh what heroes they are!
Don’t forget to add France, Estonia, Latvia and France to that list.
It’s funny that the Poles were the first to sign a similar pact with Hitler. Who together with him started the war in Europe.
And everyone forgets WHICH TWO countries attacked Poland after that. The second was not the USSR – it was participation in the attack of this modern propaganda.
Similar agreements were with all European countries, including England concluded the same.
The ignorant author of this trash is correct, the Biden administration and family, Soros, etc. are a form of drug dealing Nazi’s.
Who is ignorant now? 🙂
>This just isn’t true.
It is true. Will you argue with Einstein, who made similar statements in his letters (he knew more about the situation than you do)?
Lend-lease went when Russia had already stopped the European army (1942). And it’s funny that most of the lend-lease went to defend against the United States. This fact is not advertised, but Russia had the resources to win even without the United States, and American supplies were actively replenishing reserves.
>The US supported the YPG
And ISIS. It’s funny that thanks to this, the Kurds were slaughtered by the Turks.
The US is now occupying Syria and the US invasion has literally destroyed the cultural diversity of Syria. The US also supported the White Helmets and other extreme terrorists, as well as the Nazis in Ukraine. Literally the same militant groups that implemented the notorious Holocaust.
>Just because you find one group of people in Ukraine waving a swastika does not mean most Ukranians are Nazis
It’s about the fact that the Nazis are a key part of power. They commit all the same crimes, implement the same Holocaust (I remind you that 27 million Russians were killed, in contrast to 6 million Jews). They do not hide their desire to do genocide and they do it.
It is foolish to say that the Ukrainian authorities are not Nazis.
And 80% of the population of Ukraine are Russians. It is impossible to attribute to the people some common property, this in itself is Nazism.
So, if Russians “embrace the dark side” and nuke the west into oblivion, would they west rulers think they have won?
What do they crave for, their own luxurious life and joys of power? or “proving the point” and turning the world into perpetual bellum omnium contra omnem, even if their precious selves would be among losers?..
Also, it is eerily resonant wit hsome thoughts on Weimar Classicism from https://www.sott.net/article/465432-Germanys-Stockholm-Syndrome-and-the-Firing-of-Valery-Gergiev
Really Ian, it’s simply good vs evil and nothing more? Well, that surely makes it easy, doesn’t it?
Sorry, you’ve hardly scratched the surface, and far from answering, truly: WHY.
You don’t have to go all the way back to 1853 (a very valid point, however). You can start at 1991. Russians put aside their historical differences in trying to become accepted by the West, it seems the West had not. Please don’t reply requesting proof, it’s everywhere, you just have to open your eyes.
Hello John,
Of course there is more to the issue than “good versus evil.” And if you explore the tags here, you’ll see that I have written at least 20-30 posts trying to figure out the root of the conflict. I do, however, agree with your statement about 1991. Russians wanted peace, and wanted peace so much they willingly gave up the Soviet Union. But rather than meet them in the middle, the West took advantage of the situation and tried to destroy them, economically, militarily, and culturally.
As for good versus evil… well, I wouldn’t be so bold as to call Russia “good,” but it is a completely fair statement to call the West evil. The West is evil. The West has, at best, embraced moral nihilism. At worst, the West has openly embraced and relished global nazism. The West worships evil, and is irrationally afraid of anyone who isn’t evil. Like Russia.
Hi Ian,
While I generally agree with most of your posts, I have one question (and maybe you have answered it in another post), will you please define “global nazism” for me? Are you referring to what actual Nazism is, which doesn’t include the extermination of a people, or something else?
And also, with Churchill saying he’ll collaborate with Germany to get rid of Communist Russia so long as Hilter is gone, wasn’t that a good thing? Was it not true that Stalin wanted to eventually go into Europe to establish communism? (I ask these questions as a true ignoramus when it comes the modern history, not as some snarky intelluctual).
Communism at its base is social democracy, in the interests of the workers (the middle class). The same Switzerland in many ways resembles the very communism that Lenin tried to build. In fact, he lived there. He fought against the monarchy and the violation of people’s rights.
It should be noted that the nature of Russia is extremely problematic, it is difficult to live here, hence poverty. There is a confusion that communism and poverty are somehow connected. Second, Russia was attacked from all sides in general. Therefore, the communists strongly militarized and defeated all enemies. This shows their effectiveness.
On the other hand, the communists opened the way to outer space, created mass science of the modern type, introduced observance of people’s rights into world practice (yes, all this is tolerance, the rights of people of different skin colors and the rights of women are their merit), and freed most of countries of the planet from England and France.
I think I know one of the possible answer on “why”, a bd the root lays even much more deeper into the past, it’s all started during the 4fh Crusade when crusaders conquered and looted Constantinople. Why it was done – the other question completely, but before that Orthodox church and Catholics though understanding the differences were still considered as brothers and it wasn’t allowed back than to run such wars against other Christian nation. To explain to the ordinary people who took part in the Crusade – the Pope decided to call orthodox to be heretics and evil, so it wouldn’t be against the God’s will what happened in Constantinople, it’s even for their own good to go to the God this way. And for quite a long time it was spreading all around the Catholics that Orthodox (and upon the fall of Constantinople it means slavic nations only) are evil and barbaric as they are. That’s to tell the long story short, of course.
This is an excellent post. Large elements of the Anglo-American world including IBM and the Bushes, did provide aid and comfort to Hitler and were slow to switch. The tragedy is that Russians really are part of or at least closely associated with the ‘west’ and represent traditional western values better than the degenerate multi-national deep state and the retooled Nazi Klaus Schwab and George Soros’ Davos crowd. I think the Russians are the last bastion of real western civilization and it is reprehensible what the multi-national regime is doing.
Russia is no bastion of western civilization. Their low Church attendance rates, drug problems, and friendliness to communist China (ruled by an openly anti-white government which armed nationalists in South Africa but never considered doing so in Ireland) speak for itself. Moreover, China has long been stealing Russian military technology and Russia still chose to arm China. Russia could have saved what they openly claimed was the “decadent west” but never did.
Omg, smb is full of stereotypes like my cat is full of
Truly excellent post. I do think Russia and the former Soviet Union represent a different way of approaching the dilemmas of mankind and the human condition. Despite Russia’s failures, and the failures of the USSR, there remains a sense of decency and honor in their practice of statesmanship. Yes, at the end of the day it’s wrong to invade another country and inevitably end up killing civilians. But you have to step back and look at NATO expansionism since 1999. Russia has been all but surrounded on her western flank. What’s the intent of NATO? It’s definitely not benign. They’ve proven that time and again. What does anyone think the US would do if Mexico formed a military alliance with China and brought over personnel, weaponry and new technologies? Rest assured we’d be invading Mexico in short order. I’m really not saying anything new here but it’s helpful to contribute some thoughts. I worry about the situation in Ukraine and regarding Russia and the West pretty much all day every day. It could spell the end for humanity.
“It’s even worse than the Islamophobia after the Sept. 11 attacks. That was wrong, but at least there was a reasonable provocation for it. We had been directly attacked, and in a terrible way. It was natural for us to feel angry”
If you base your argument on that false premise you’ll never understand anything. Muslims were the scapegoat.
I do agree that Muslims were the scapegoat. And Afghans were DEFINITELY the scapegoat – the 200,000 who died had absolutely nothing to do with 911, not even within three or four degrees of separation of it.
All I mean by that statement you quoted was that the USA had been directly attacked, and our people were told that Muslims were the responsible party, so being angry at that group was natural, though not right.
I really enjoyed this read! I was talking to my daughter last night wondering the same thing, why so much hate (she had expanded the question to communist)? I started spitballing and thought what if it’s because that form of thinking leaves no room for the elite. They don’t get to exist. They don’t get to dominate the narrative. There is no US vs Them story they can spin to keep us occupied with one another while they do the evil they do.
Here’s hoping the mind control will wear off and we become immune to it.
Ok, as a russian expat I have to thank you for attempting bringing the hatred problem to the surface, bit I must add some to your knowledge about what’s going on, at least from my point of view.
1. Nobody gave up USSR willingly. It was doomed to fall at the moment of creation due to the law, allowing any republic to leave union with no consequences. Add to that idiotic politicians and you have what you get
2. 1991-1999 was the time of absolute lawlessness, banditism and forever drunken president. Basically current oligarchy is established at this time period.
3. About current situation and war: there are several geopolitical reasons that made this war inevitable since 2012-2014, including but not limited to Crimea. AFAIK at 2012 there were news that Shell would develop newly found natural gas deposits near Donbass. Also, Crimean sea region apparently contains oil supply. Allowing EU firms to develop such deposits means loosing exclusive status of the only European petrol state, loosing profit due to concurrence and higher transportation costs in the eu gas market and, therefore – loosing pressure point, one of the most important. Also, loosing Ukraine as a neutral state to NATO, with the border of that length and on flat surface, is catastrophe for defences
So, despite me absolutely abhorring the situation itself, the war that’s being wages and so forth, I tend to disagree with people who thinks Putin is a madman. He have a point, and that’s what blows my mind
Hi Alex,
Yes – and one would think that when two faraway countries get into a conflict, or an existing conflict escalates… it would be logical to look into it and see what both sides of the argument are. Instead, the entire western media paints it as a “good guy/bad guy” situation with the Ukrainians as the good guys, of course.
The support for so called neonazis in Ukraine is for preventing trade under fair conditions for the rival of the anglosaxon empire, Russia.
The original reason for launching nazism in Germany was, unlike what many believe, likewise for preventing trade under fair conditions for that rival of the anglosaxon empire.
Fair conditions comprise being treated equally by the financiers which, back then, required that the Rothschilds and other bankers would be allowed to be neutral investors in Germany’s expanding trade routes as well as in Russias industrialisation.
Nazism was brought about to discourage the Kaiser and his people from trusting the bankers but since Bismarck had unified Germany financed by those bankers it wasnt enough to discourage the Kaiser, so Edward VII in 1907 openly threatened the Rothschilds that they would not be welcome unless certain conditions were fulfilled. Those conditions probably were about total lojalty to the pound as a dominating currency ie British imperial money power. And not about Edwards private money as in the official version.
Historians have largely hidden the fact that there was a british agent of influence who actually worked the Kaiser in the above mentioned direction. And that the agent was referred to as the pathbreaker by the leading nazis.
Since the historians are totally obfuscating their subject, the period before WWI has not been clearly explained and what happened between 1907 and 1914 was quite dramatic. Bankers and aristocrats joining in supporting revolutions while still some of them invested and later (partly under pressure of revolutionary terror?) divested in Russia. The bankers must have been divided in that phase.
Finally in 1915 the western financiers agreed to oust the Tsar.
But how did the protocols of Sion affect the bankers?
The last version registered in the British Museum in 1906 had emerged in 1904 from the russian freemason Sergei Nilus but he, beginning in 1901, used older fragments and there were anglophile servants involved. An early fragment emerged much earlier in 1858 when Bismarck consulted the Rothschilds. Quite timely if there was a plan to counter collaboration between Britains rivals and the bankers.
In 1904 again it coincided with the war with Japan.
If the truth is that the protocols were commandeered by the (british) aristocracy (which is actually implied by the text!) and not by any antisemitic russian or french rivals, then would the bankers, if they knew, still have taken sides like they did?
Everybody goes about with the term ‘international financiers’
And yet they never seem to act as independent international actors.
The only thing which is international, is the anglosaxon imperial agenda.
If the financiers had been truly international, both Germany and Russia would, at least before the FED, have been more promising partners. Only war could change that.
And even with the FED war was still needed, only more viable.
Finally there were during a century reformers in the US, France, Germany, Russia and China. The common traite was nationbuildning not british liberalism.
All the reformers were outmanoeuvered by the British.
You don’t necessarily need to go into that level of detail to say that the whole reason for the hate is to do with Russia standing up to Atlantic based imperial interests. I agree that the Nazis and Germany were pawns used by the Anglo Americans to devastate Europe and threaten the USSR. Britain was too, as the power base has shifted to Washington by WW2. My guess is that the Bolsheviks were funded by British interests but went rogue, with Stalin eventually cleaning everything out.
No empire. Power doesn`t have anything under guard. It is the unguarding of everything. Beware those that hide deserts within.
Thanks. It won’t change the reality around, but it’s nice to know that there are still people who dont’t hate my nation and my country
Ian, this was a rather thoughtful piece and a good read. However the most interesting thing for me was that it reads 100% percent the same as the propaganda fed internally and externally by Russia. I will not object to the statement that US (and I exclude EU here because the stance there is way lighter) considers Russia and China as their opponents, painting the world in black and white as you do in your opinion is not a healthy statement as all.
There are couple of points that stood out to me here:
Im Russian myself and thanks to work had a lot of time talking with Ukrainians and visiting the country during the past 10 years. And what I’ve seen is a country that was well on the way to being good. Good to people, good to business etc. Yes, there were fringe elements and strange thing happening there, but overall – they were getting better. And they were definitely getting closer to valuing general human values. There was less corruption compared to Russia, there was a good drug replacement policy in tune with what worked in European countries, jeez, they were better than Bulgaria even, in terms of doing proper business and living safely. The same can’t, unfortunately, be said about Russia. In the past 12-14 years we’ve seen a change that is not healthy by any standard. And this war against Ukraine is the epitome of that.
The breaking point for me came in 2014, after Crimea. The whole media was shouting that this taking was made due to referendum of the people. But just a week or so later Russia created a new law forbidding her own people to even request such referendum if it would involve some of Russia’s own territory. People who would initiate the same process glorified just days ago became subject to jail sentence.
Just yesterday a person was arrested and given guilty sentence by the court for simply standing with a piece of paper on which there were two words “net fashizmu” (no to fascism).
I do understand that my comment is going a bit off because you’re talking about overall approach and I’m going into detail, but overall point is – what people get from your post is that Russia’s action is justified. That people currently being killed and left without their homes in Ukraine deserve that. Because Russia is being hated by the West. This is the angle used by people sharing this post on Russian websites. There’s no black or white here, as with any huge issue, but what we can do is try and do less harm.
You have a very short memory.
Here is a video (autumn 2013, before “maidan” and Crimea) of a rally allegedly for European integration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-QJ1SB7P10
You understand what these people are shouting. They shout: “Hang the Russian.” Not even like that. They shout: “Hang the moskal”. “Moskal” is a rude ukrainian name for Russians, the same as the word “nigger” for african people.
2012 long time before “maidan” and Crimea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iQyzw2LkaA
In the first seconds, a happy Mr. Yatsenyuk is visible (Mr. Yatsenyuk was by that time the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine, and after the coup he became Prime Minister). A minute later, the crowd starts shouting “slaughter the Russian”. Goverment and nazy are perfectly together.
Is this “democraty”? I can give dozens of such videos. Small children shout: “Kill the Russian.” Soldiers shout “Kill the Russian.” Some videos are very reminiscent of torchlight processions in National Socialist Germany in the 30s of the last century, where Jews were the main enemy.
2016 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB01ka4NhR8
2017 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAHfZ8v6j9g
2018 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z68LwkjmdEw
(They also shouted “kill the Russian.” This video has been deleted because of unacceptable statements and incitement of hostility. But this hostility has become a norm for ukrainians.)
In your opinion, there should look like a country that is approaching universal values? No. Ukraine has built an amazing form of government – “national democracy”, where Russians have become the main enemy. It is presented to the West as a democratic state (in my opinion, it is an ordinary banal republic). But Russians see nationalists.
There are many citizens of Ukraine, especially in the east of Ukraine,who are russian by blood or have Russian relatives. Many people just did not want enmity with Russia. They began to be oppressed and even killed. On May 2, 2014, 50 people were burned alive in Odessa. All this was captured on video. No one was punished. For 8 years in the Donbass (eastern region of Ukraine), as a result of shelling, about 10,000 civilians were killed. Europeans and Americans haven’t even heard of it. Russian Russian is considered by 40% of Ukrainians to be their native language, but in Ukraine the Russian language has been banned in the media and in educational institutions. Is this democracy? LOL.
At the same time, Ukraine, with the help of the West, strengthened its armed forces, received weapons from the West. And all this happened with the cries “Kill the Russian.”
Is this a motive for military action? Over the past 30 years, several states have been destroyed for much less serious motives. In Libya, no one shouted “kill a European”, it had only internal political problems. Libya was bombed and destroyed. For Iraq, on the other side of the world from the United States, americans had to invent a reason – a “test tube”. Iraq was bombed and destroyed. But a really embittered and gaining bad power Ukraine is nearest for Russia. It’s not even a motive, it’s the real reason.
Hello from Mother Russia, comrades!
Спасибо а правду
It’s interesting that de Toqueville in his 1835 book “Democracy in America” predicted that USA and Russia would one day emerge as the two great rivals for global dominance. When he made this forecast, the US was in its Jacksonian populist phase, struggling to build a real democracy on the bare bones of the Founders’ aristocratic republic, while Russia was an imperial autocracy. Human beings were bought and sold under both systems, and both ended the practice in 1863; but beyond this, the nations’ roles have reversed in many ways.
A new Hundred Years War was declared by the US against Russia when the American Expeditionary Force landed at Archangel in 1919 to violently overthrow the Bolshevik Revolution. A temporary, uneasy alliance was later forged by FDR and Stalin chiefly to prevent Germany and Japan from emerging as viable rivals. After that, the Russophobic American propaganda machine again went into high gear. That staple of US journalism, the wild-eyed Bolshevik bomber, joined the wartime kindly, smiling Uncle Joe Stalin in the dustbin; both were replaced by the coldly sinister agent of the Red Menace, who was everywhere in the postwar media.
Ukraine may prove to be the war’s final battle. Washington will have a hard time retaining any credibility when the inevitable defeat of its client regime is a fait accompli, not after Vietnam and the catastrophic, murderous “war on terror.” Ultimately both the combatants are outclassed by a greater power to the east, unimaginable to de Toqueville, which is slowly and patiently building the global commonwealth of nations that promises to finally end the savage era of western colonialism.
Ian, bravo! I am also appalled by the hatred and the russophobia, so I have decided to do my own study of its causes. I have focused on Poland, which I consider to be the most pathologically russophobic country in the world. I am very glad I have found your blog and will now read some of the other articles you’ve written. Btw: can I re-post your article on my blog?
Hi Kaz, you should check out the couple of articles I’ve written about Poland specifically (you can find them under the “Poland” tag) and absolutely feel free to share! Do you have a link to your blog?
Yes, I do: kazdziamka.com. I will now read the articles you have mentioned. (The system seems either slow or even unresponsive. I hope you are not being targeted.)
Hi Kaz! I will add you to the blog roll in the sidebar!
Great! (“No to super,” as we would say in Polish.) My blog is “fifty-fifty”: half in English, half in Polish. Likewise the books and articles I have published and posted are both in English and Polish. But I have no unrealistic expectations: if I can reach a dozen American and Polish readers, I will be OK. If not, then I will still write. (I write, therefore I am.)
Hi Kaz, if you see this, I’m finally getting around to editing the site. You’ll see your link in the blog roll in the sidebare. Take care!
“So I’ll finally answer the question. Why does the West hate Russia? Our elites hate Russia because she poses an existential, ideological threat to our world order.”
Let me say this in response to the above answer. Foosh. There is a much simpler reason why the White West hates Russia. RUSSIANS ARE NOT WHITE! You have been deceived by their White skin. But race is not always determined by skin color although it is the major US marker for race. The Nazis had more political detrminations for Untermenchen. They included Slavs and especially Russians. And as Joel Kovel noted in WHITE RACISM, the central relevant conception is not race, but racism. As Noel Ignatiev documented in HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE.
There can never be enough Islamophobia. Syria is the only decent Muslim country and is EXACTLY what we should hope is the model for all the Islamic world. Naturally, as the West is indeed utterly evil, it is doing all it can to destroy Syria.
Those particular movies prove nothing. I missed the immorality in the Clancy novels.
Postwar Germany and France, Italy, and the UK were not Nazi countries.
“Nazi” is as useful a term as far-right, racist, neo-liberal, capitalist, progressive, discrimination, fairness, vote suppression, democracy, hate speech, fascism, anti-semitism, or gender.
You’re correct. Russia is a stark contrast to the self-destructive Western nations. It’s independence and social, economic, and fiscal sanity are an intolerable rebuke.
Hostility to Russia also stems from Jewish emigres, such as Max Boot, who were sidelined in the Soviet Union. Jewish Bolsheviks were the Revolution then they weren’t. Putin also stopped the takeover of Russia by the Jewish oligarchs. He has also frustrated Israeli plans for chaos and expansion. This did not play well in the West and the Jewish-controlled media have responded with unbelievable hostility. The wildly exaggerated pogroms also fuel Jewish hatred though Jews won’t tell you that the premier mass murderer of the last century was Genrick Yagoda of the NKVD.
All propaganda is a lie and thus evil.
Your take on the West’s unbroken string of anti-Russian alliances is pure gold except for the “Nazis in NATO” part.
Well, there WERE nazis in West Germany and NATO, also see Operation Paperclip and Operation Keelhaul (when Stalin forced Churchill to repatriate a portion of his pet nazi collection)
Greetings from Russia, I am very glad that there are sensible people here. Thanks to the author for such articles.
Привет, и спасебо)
History written from the mid-eighteenth century up to around 1914 is the `the bomb`. …. post 1945, blah blah blah.
`If you wanna` know the truth of it one is not actually allowed to `teach` history` anymore. One is to `preach` the sordid orthodoxy of control.`
All free on kindle….
History of the British Army (vol.1&2) J.W.Fortesque
History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia (Charles Cambell)
Memoirs of Napoleon- Complete (Louis Antoine Fauvelet De Bourrienne)
Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)
The British Atlantic Empire Before The American Revolution (Edited by Marshall & Williams)
History of the Conquest of Peru; with a preliminary view of the civilization of the Incas. (William Hickling Prescott)
The Passing of the Frontier; a chronicle of the old West. (Emerson Hough)
Korea`s Fight for Freedom F.A. (Frederick Arthur) Mckenzie
Just a load of lies and Russian propaganda. Absolute garbage!
The Echo Chamber in here is deafening.
Sadly Russia and China and allies( Syria, Nth Korea, Iran, the list goes on) have been the catalyst for many modern conflicts and atrocities, more than the west no matter how hard you try to cherry pick.
The period of early 2000-2010, it looked like Russia was finally modernising and joining the global community, prejudice was dropping but 2014 sealed that deal.
No one hates Russians, it’s the fact that an elite element of Russia is attacking Ukraines sovereignty.
You can spin it however you want so you don’t get arrested or die of mysterious circumstances.
But using essentially Racism as your main defence of why the internationally community is appalled by Putins actions is very morally weak.
That is why their is disappointment from the international community because only some Russians are standing up, the rest-like you are emulating bystander behaviour.
> No one hates Russians, it’s the fact that an elite element of Russia is attacking Ukraines sovereignty.
Liar. I live in the EU and I can tell you hatred of Russia and Russians is quite common, at least among Professional / Managerial types.
Judging by your spelling – and poor command of English in general – you appear to be a Brit. I have an idea: do something about your degenerate kiddy fiddling ruling class before getting your knickers in a bunch over Putin.
Yes British commenters here and on social media are the most profoundly ignorant and badly educated people I have ever seen. Even the most underprivileged school districts in the USA produce better results. Their entire system seems to revolve around “yes, things are bad here but it’s worse in Russia”
How does it feel to sell your soul?
How does it feel to have Mr Sausage hands as your King?
“Mr. Sausage Hands HA! Not to mention a pedophile.
While I have no love for Ukraine and neither does the West for that matter (this war is indeed a proxy war, I don’t deny it), I find your article breaches the absurdity envelope. Russians are some of the most brutal people on earth. I have tried to search for the truth, not starting with erroneous assumptions that Russians are somehow innocent and I find something totally un-redeeming in the Russian character that you absolutely miss. Maybe you are just trying to make a name for yourself by being a contrarian but a dispassionate historical view of Russia shows a people with a great deal of inbred psychopathy. It was not without reason that Lord Nelson said over two hundred years ago, “Close with a Frenchman but maneuver with a Russian and he will defeat himself. There is nothing new in Russian culture, it is a culture of brutality for brutality’s sake. Ukraine is nothing special it shares close to the same culture as does much of Eastern Europe, but there is a lessening of degree as one moves West. Russian needs to have it’s culture destroyed in the manner that the German’s and the Japanese had their cultures destroyed and then forcibly rebuilt to accept a new set of values. The Russian people are not evil, no one people are Evil, but the Russian culture hamstrings the Russian people and creates an artificial psychopathy that mimics nature. The Russian culture is a rabid dog that needs to be put down.
Your comment is the single most stupid and ridiculous thing I have seen today. You shouldn’t be locked up for your stupid beliefs, just put in a special classroom to be reeducated with the other retarded children.
Ian, please don’t be rude. He is so sincere; his stereotypes have deep roots.
Your article (blog-post) puts in simple words my study of the Medieval Europe. Indeed, the Europeans experienced very hard times, which changed their menthality to cope with evil.
But, in any country there are people who think: I am not perfect, my country is not perfect, we ought to improve. Such countries, helping each other, can more than all-allowing-liberal countries can.
Tank You very much !
WhatTF are you saying?
Have the Germans forgotten Goethe and Wagner?
Must the Russians burn Dostoevsky books, or will you do it?
…And these same people are genuinely surprised “why are Russians so hostile?”
>Russians are some of the most brutal people on earth.
This is 100% false.
How many genocides were staged by England, France, Germany, the Netherlands? Can you name at least one genocide by the Russians?
Russia invented human rights. Yes, it may seem absurd to you because of propaganda, but human rights are Russia’s achievement. Russia was the first to give full rights to women. Russia has always been a tolerant country in relation to other nationalities and races. And it was she who made the equality of people, regardless of their origin, a total trend.
In reality, Europeans are wild and aggressive. We see how you fight – publicly shoot unarmed people, carry out genocide. Damn, torture is legal in the US. And the EU supports terrorists who cut off the heads of even children (the same Zelensky).
My grandmother rebuilt Kharkov, and now the Nazis have come again with the support of Europe and destroyed everything. You can’t even talk to Europeans, you don’t understand human language – only power. Who violates the UN charter, attacks countries and imposes illegal sanctions? Europe.
The same Ukraine attacked: Moldova, Russia, Iraq, LPR and DPR. Find at least one unprovoked attack from Russia?
Dear Ian Kummer,
Thank you for your post.
I came across your site by searching for: “Why do the Anglo-American élite hate Russia?”
Rather than give you my version of ‘wisdom’, I would like to refer you to others, who may give you more insights to add to your own. The first two below are by a British writer, Terry Boardman, who takes the story a long way back and also brings in the overarching spiritual view of what is going on. The third below is from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Please do NOT read in to anything of what I have written that I approve of the means which President Putin is using. I do not approve. He is, however, the leader of a European (and Asiatic) power.
It is such a great shame that the main stream media, at least in Britain (where I am) seems only to be able to put one point of view at a time. During the Covid-19 debacle it was: “It’s deadly and we must all get the jab!”. Now it’s: “Ukraine is good and Russia is bad!”
I expect you know who it was who said or wrote: “The first casualty in war is the truth.”.
Best wishes, Luke Wiseman
https://threeman.org/?m=202204
https://threeman.org/?p=3076
‘Putin has an ultimate goal, and it’s not Ukraine’
Amos HarelFeb. 25, 2022
On Thursday, a few hours after the start of the Russian assault on Ukraine, Prof. Dima Adamsky was unusually emotional. A lecturer at Reichman University, Herzliya, Adamsky is one of the world’s leading authorities on Russian strategic thinking. In recent years he’s divided his time between Israel, Europe and the United States, advising security establishments in a number of countries. He was stunned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eve-of-invasion speech.
It was, Adamsky says, the “distillation of everything Putin has projected in the past few years. I don’t tend to the dramatic, but I felt shivers as I listened to it. I recalled Stalin’s famous speech in November 1941, when the Germans neared Moscow.” Putin’s aggressive speech led Adamsky to five major conclusions. I asked him to sum them up.
“The first conclusion is that Putin has a supreme goal, and it is not Ukraine. Ukraine is from his perspective the most painful symptom of what’s bothering him. He is out to overhaul the rules of the international game that were formed at the end of the Cold War, contrary to Russia’s will. It was a unipolar world with one hegemonic power, the United States, whose victory in the Cold War sent it into a state of euphoria and spawned an attempt to dictate America’s principles and way of life to the rest of the world.
“Putin has been talking about this since his speech at the Munich Conference 15 years ago. A year later he invaded Georgia and initiated a cyberattack on Ukraine. Russia is trying to arrive at a world in which there is not one hegemonic power that wields unconstrained might. From Putin’s point of view, he issued warning after warning, but the world didn’t heed the Russian distress signals. When the West started to expand its influence in areas close to Russia, it thereby maximized its security at Moscow’s expense. For eight years Putin demanded a diplomatic solution, since the Russian invasion of Crimea. In his eyes, the government in Kyiv has no independent right of existence; it is only a tool in the hands of the West. He has now moved to address both the symptom and the big problem: the system of international relations. The goal is to restore Russia as an equal partner at the table of the great powers. For the Russians, this is not just propaganda – they really and truly believe in it.
“The present crisis was aggravated in November 2021. The second conclusion is that what is happening since is unfolding according to two central notions in Russian strategic thinking – levels of escalation and multidimensional coercion (or deterrence). Every move of theirs will intertwine military and nonmilitary elements, soft power and harder power. In the past three months they have gradually escalated the use of power across the breadth of the sector: diplomacy, propaganda, cyber, concentration of forces and, at the extreme, also nuclear muscle flexing. The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons is always mentioned, already from the outset.
“The third conclusion is that the Russian army isn’t what it used to be. Since 2008 it has undergone a significant organizational reform which has produced a strong organization that is able to work as a conglomerate combining intelligence and inflicting a military strike. The Americans preceded them in applying these ideas during the wars of the 1990s in Iraq and Kosovo, but the Russians have extended themselves to close the gap since. The first time they implemented these principles was in the civil war in Syria, beginning in 2015. What we will see in the coming days is their attempt to reprise their successes in Syria, with double the might. They will seek to demonstrate the advanced combat capabilities they have developed, this time on the global stage. This will involve as few boots on the ground as possible and as much precision fire as possible. And in contrast to what they did in Syria, they will try to reduce the harm to the civilian population – not because they suddenly care about questions of combat morality, but in order to show off their military excellence.
“The fourth conclusion has to do with their historical traumas. In his recent speeches Putin often mentioned two major failures: the German invasion in 1941 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the Russian consciousness those grim experiences are alive and kicking. He maintained that the lesson from both affairs is that Russia must not adopt a policy of appeasement. It needs to act militarily to defend itself against a larger calamity that is liable to occur. If you will, this is the Russian version of the “campaign between the wars” that Israel is conducting in the Middle East. He himself said that he would embark on a special military operation, to prevent a larger strategic disaster.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with representatives of the business community at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia.Credit: Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS
“The fifth conclusions has to with the question of how all this is supposed to end from their point of view. Because the Russian build-up before the offensive was so large, it can’t end with a whimper. Russia is striving to demonstrate that it has improved its national security. Putin perceives himself in historical terms. He identifies totally with Russia’s destiny and greatness. There is nothing in his life that interests him more than that. After all, he’s not apprehensive that he won’t be reelected.
“When he talks about the West’s attempt to impose on Russia a way of life that does not suit it, he sounds almost messianic. On the other hand, the Americans can’t allow themselves to buckle under and display weakness either. They are in the midst of a strategic competition with China, Accordingly, they too will be ready to escalate some of their moves. Russia and the United States will have to find a way to exit from this collision. It’s only Ukraine that no one is taking into account.”
Ukraine crisis? Time to call it the Putin crisis
Ukrainian Jews angry and appalled at Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim
Separation of religion and the bomb
Adamsky’s 2019 book, “Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy” (Stanford University Press), was published in Hebrew translation last year. The book analyzes the complex relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian army, focusing on its nuclear arsenal. Adamsky told Haaretz that “Putin is driven by a potent concept of values, religion and tradition. Of this confrontation he talks in terms of a war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness. Simultaneously, all along the way, the Russians are evoking their nuclear might. In his latest speeches, too, Putin said that he wants to remind everyone about their advanced arsenal and added a warning: Don’t put us to the test.”
The Iranian gulf
Israel is following tensely the far-reaching strategic implications which the new war that erupted in Ukraine is liable to have. If the brutal aggression displayed by Russia ends successfully, that will also be a signal to China, which is already hurling threats at Taiwan. And indirectly, Iran, too, is attentive to the developments, while consistently perpetrating violence against its Gulf neighbors and assisting organizations that are fighting against Israel.
In the shorter term, the sharp confrontation between the world powers might disrupt the finalization of the renewed nuclear accord that is now under discussion with the Iranians in Vienna. Recent weeks have seen reports of considerable progress in the negotiations, but the view in Israel is that unresolved disparities remain between the sides. Now it will be difficult for the powers to work out a joint agreement. The war in Ukraine will delay the signing of the new accord in Vienna. In fact, it might even bring about the collapse of the talks. From the viewpoint of Tehran, which apparently intended to sign the agreement in all seriousness, that could be disappointing news.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in 2013.Credit: Hasan Shaaban/Reuters
In the meantime, a little steam is being let off in the Lebanese arena, where Iran is involved indirectly. Last week, the Israel Defense Forces downed a drone that Hezbollah launched into the skies over the Galilee. The next day the organization launched another airborne craft (which the IDF described as a model airplane) that flew successfully over Israeli territory for about half an hour before returning to its base. Two days earlier, on February 16, in a speech marking the 30th anniversary of Israel’s assassination of his predecessor, Abbas Musawi, Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah floated a series of threats. He presented the technological advances of his organization, which, he said, is manufacturing remotely piloted vehicles, upgrading the precision of its rocket arsenal and deploying antiaircraft batteries that are hampering the freedom of action of Israeli aircraft.
Nasrallah’s most interesting point related to the precision-upgrading project. Israel has been saying for years that it is successfully crippling Iran’s smuggling efforts in Lebanon, which focus on the upgrading of the rockets. In a United Nations speech, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed sites connected to the precision-upgrading project, and in August 2019 a critical element in the project was bombed in Beirut. Yet Nasrallah is claiming that Hezbollah is succeeding in converting thousands of rockets into precision weapons, and is hinting that he no longer needs the smuggling activity. Nasrallah threatened Israel with “Ansariya 2” should it attempt to raid the missile sites. In 1997, 12 Israeli naval commandos were killed when they raided the village of Ansariya, near Tyre. For years, the IDF pondered the circumstances of the disaster, but today the prevailing view is that there was a Hezbollah ambush, apparently after an intelligence leak.
Dr. Shimon Shapira, an expert on Hezbollah from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, wondered about the considerations that prompted Hezbollah to dredge up that incident. Shapira found an interesting report that appeared this week in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai. The paper, a well-known clearing house for intelligence services that want to transmit messages, quotes an American diplomat who maintains that Israeli elite units recently raided sites suspected of being involved in the precision project in Lebanon, wrecked equipment, collective intelligence information and also left threatening messages for Hezbollah. What does Nasrallah know about all this? That’s not clear, but he’s known to read the Kuwaiti (and Israeli) press avidly.
Do you understand that in objective reality, Putin did not attack anyone? the facts are that each time he waited too long. Georgia attacked and this is a recognized fact. They hoped to destroy communications before the peacekeepers crossed the mountains and they attacked, but could not complete the atrocity.
And then Putin was not president, Medvedev was the president.
Compare with attacks to Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afganistan, Yugoslavia and 50 other countries? All EU countries are agressors, not Russia. And now Russia protect our lives on russian lands like we did it 80 years ago. The same nazies, the same manufactors of the weapon.
You understand that there is no difference between “german’s racism” and “american democracy”? Both is anti-science misanthropic ideologies needed to justify aggression.
It is insane. I don’t believe I have literally just read a post that retells the stories we hear on TV. You do realise that the war is on Ukranian territory and it was Russian troops that crossed the border with a neighbouring country? And oh, have you followed what has been happening in Russia for about twenty years? If not, try googling Politkovskaya, Bolotnaya 2012, protests 2014, Nemtsov, Navalny, and so on, and so on. It is not “geopolitics” or “neo-nazi drug dealers”, it is people who dream about creating a mix of USSR and Russian Empire at the price of millions of lives.
Speaking about your propaganda. Yes, some of the atrocities you talk about are definitely fake, but others are not, and the reason is simple: war brings the worst in people. Especially after being surrounded by violence all your life and after hearing multiple times that Ukranians are traitors, nazis, and whatever.
As you could’ve guessed by now, I am from Russia and seeing this pile of garbage devastates me. I know it can be difficult to find information and not get influenced by state propaganda while living here, but writing all of this from a relatively free country? Really? Anyway, sorry for bad English and I really hope that you’ll at least try asking yourself questions (if somebody ever sees this comment lol). Also in case you’d like to read about what’s happening from another point of view, there is a good online newspaper called Mediazona: they fact-check information before publishing and overall tend to be less emotional and more professional than other media. OVD-Info is good too, as it may give an understanding of just how much people suffer because of the government.
Why are you lying? You know that Ukraine was destroyed in 2014, that since then there has been a war and people have been deprived of the slightest rights. Putin is guilty of starting this operation late.
Hi, Ian.
Thank you for such a good text. I live in Russia, Moscow, in a state called aggressive and barbaric with a leader tyrant. Unfortunately for western public we are shown like this via media. But I’m sure the situation is more complicated.
We need to watch attentively at the NATO map and its explosion during the last years even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For collective west the Cold War was not finished, I suppose.
Russia took all the debts of the Soviet Union (for example, we paid for “land lease” help to our dearest friend (the USA) only in 2006). I remember how many foreign products invaded my country after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we are big market for business. Our factories were not working since then. So the collapse was needed to the west. We got poor country with bad president and oligarchs invaded by foreign products and companies that robbed our resources, with weak army (army = independent position).
After 10 years of such life came Putin, who made many transformations in the life of his country (ordinary people) and I can say he’s a good president whatever your media tell you, creating a monster. For sure he can’t be a favorite of the collective west cause he has his own way not bending before the west.
There many countries rovinate by the democratic west before Ucraine. Unfortunately Ucraine is a weapon (I was born in Kiev and many people of Russia has relatives in Ucraine). Ucraina was not a country before its creation by communists for electoral purposes (idiots, I think, but now we can’t change this).
I think that this war is a war in Russian world (Russians are killing Russians with the help of democratic west). For many years the west has been sponsoring anti-Russian organizations to use stupid brainwashed young “ucranian” people to fight against all the Russian, the west (Soros) printed books for ucranian schools (as he did in Russia during 1991-1999) with false history creating anti-Russian society.
And now we have that we have. The west made all the possible for the first step to this war that Russia did not plan. And we know who planned. Unfortunately it’s a battle between West and east and the west (as usually) make it with the hand of others with democracy slogans. Many people died and many will die.
Many times I noticed that your media lie, when they take a foto/video of Donbas (where ucranian “good fellows” are still killing people as well kids) and say it’s another part of Ucraina and blaming Russia of killing them..That’s all a fake specially for western voters.
I wish we could live in a more safety world.
Ian, I woke up this morning and noticed my watch is an hour behind the clock on my phone. I had a crazy happy dream last night about sneaking into Russia to visit you and Maria. I’m serious, I really did have that dream and it was vivid. Your handsome face and beautiful Maria were so vivid. I got up smiling.
I went to readingjunkie to see your book list and Gunfighter Channel. While scrolling down I saw this old post and decided to reread it. The comment thread is one of the longest I have ever seen and people are still commenting!
What a great morning!
Very best to you both.
You do realize that the US installed Ukrainian government was killing Russian citizens in Ukraine, right?
Jan, good afternoon!
Thank you for the detailed post.
You have correct observations about the plots that are accepted in Western culture. But it seems to me that you are making the wrong conclusion when you see in this a confrontation between “being evil is normal, since everyone is like that” and “there is an alternative way.”
The evaluation of “good” and “evil” depends on the evaluating parties. Therefore, these are only subjective judgments.
I think this is a confrontation between the ideas of “individualism” and “collectivism”.
I’ll explain. In the West, “individualism” is the dominant idea. Individualism and maximum efficiency in achieving your goals. As a rule, all the heroes of Western stories are individualists. They achieve their goals either on their own or using other people. Thus, the narrative is suggested that there are three sides:
1. “Me”
2. “Those who are with me”
3. “Those who are not with me”
“Me” is the main character, who usually stands out from the mass of people.
“Those who are with me” – if these are significant characters, then they help the hero in achieving his goals, if these are insignificant characters, then this is just a weak-willed “herd” that the hero takes care of.
“Those who are not with me” are those who interfere with the main character in achieving goals. Since they interfere with the achievement of goals, they need to be dealt with as efficiently as possible, that is, ruthlessly. What kind of pity can there be for the enemy? The enemy must be destroyed, deceived, and used against him by all means. Other ways of interacting with the enemy are equated with weakness.
This philosophy can be traced in Western books, films, games. Even in the national anthems. Glorification of one’s own greatness and absolute ruthlessness towards the enemy.
It is easy to see that such an ideology consists of exalting the “Me”, contempt for the “crowd” and hatred of the “enemy”.
It is clear that if the West is used to thinking this way, then it expects the same motives from everyone else.
“Collectivism” is the idea that the good of the majority is more important than the good of one person. What is an effective model of existence when people unite to achieve long-term goals.
Russia is located in a very harsh region. Our ancestors had only one chance to survive and develop in such conditions – the support of each other.
Until now, in our villages, all people help each other. There is such a thing as “help”. This is when the whole village people gather to do work on the site of first one family, then another, and so on. And everything is free, just for lunch. Although now it is not necessary at all. It’s just that everyone is used to it.
“Individualism” is an idea about the separation of people. “Collectivism” is the idea of uniting people.
For Western elites, “individualism” is convenient. There are always fewer elites than all other people. Elites can only manage society as long as people are divided. While people are bickering with each other, the elites can freely control them. Therefore, in its plots, the West extols “individualism” as the only true idea.
And “Collectivism” scares Western elites. Because there are few elites, and there are many other people. And if people forget about the strife and start to unite, then the united mass of people will simply demolish their elites if this mass does not like something.
The biggest scarecrow was the USSR. A country in which “collectivism” was the state ideology. And now Russia is the scarecrow, because “collectivism” could not be eradicated.
So my opinion is that it’s not about “good” and “evil”, but about the struggle between “individualism”, as a useful idea for elites, and “collectivism”, as a dangerous idea.
You mistaken about reasons …
If we talking about near past , its related to 7 November 1917 , to Revolution in Russia , when elites loose everything ( money , power , position , motherland , themselves ) and who didn’t scape in time , even their lifes ( Russian Royal Family).
Then was made decision, at any cost don’t let it happen again anywhere else.
Russian elites without Russia loose purpose and stoped bean elites and its left a lot of pain in descendents .
Hi Olga. I agree with this statement.
Technically, the West is now a far-right dictatorship.
General organization: The US totally occupies Europe, Japan and South Korea. The relationship is reminiscent of feudalism.
None of these regions has a foreign policy subjectivity.
There is no military subjectivity and there is not even a right to it (the key components of European weapons must be from the United States).
No country in Europe or Korea has freedom of the media. And all the media are controlled by a single force. This was very noticeable in the crash of MH-17, when all the media immediately released one single media concept. Without doubts and reservations. This is impossible with at least minimal freedom. I lived in Norway for a long time and was amazed at how totalitarian the local media is, worse than in the USSR (where I also lived).
There is no freedom of opinion, there is criminal prosecution for it and they actually put them in jail. They can go to jail for singing.
In Europe and the United States, they openly use torture on prisoners. In the USA it is simply legal, but in Europe it is not legal, but no one is punished for revealing facts. Recently, a well-known blogger, Kirill Fedorov, was captured and tortured, no protests.
Speaking of protests. They are all unsuccessful and are brutally repressed.
Russia’s exit from the International Association of Prosecutors looked crazy. Then it turned out that none of the European countries has an independent judiciary. There is not even a declaration of the objectivity of investigations, they are all subject to the policy of a foreign state. Hence the penalties for lawyers who might try to defend Russians.
A ridiculous green policy that is clearly not green.
It’s very funny to hear about democracy from countries where it never existed – like European monarchies. All stories about democracy in these countries are propaganda.
It’s funny when they say that Putin is a dictator, while Merkel ruled longer and no one elected her.
This leads to the fact that Russian politicians are popular – they need to be elected. And the European ones – no, they are just managers in the interests of the United States.
Russia has its own problems:
– the main thing is the cold and huge empty territories.
– Ridiculous urban policy.
– often low competence of managers.
But everything that is higher is better in Russia. + better bureaucracy (in the USSR it was terrifying), better services, often better medicine.
Did you use chatgpt to construct this amount of bullshit?
Incidentally, the hatred against Russia from all media is very similar to the astounding attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party in the UK, particularly after the 2017 General Election which he nearly won.
I campaigned on the ground, in 17, 18, and 19 because I wanted a better, fairer, kinder Britain. I knocked on hundreds of doors. Suddenly the Labour Party was Antisemitic and the propaganda was turned up to 11. I had dozens and dozens of people repeat verbatim the media lies.
Incidentally during this period there was never any antisemitism in the LP, none, zero, zilch, that I came across. All the fantastic Jewish comrades I met were anti-zionist, pro justice for Palestine. (most of them have now been expelled).
It was for exactly the same reason as demonising Russia. Jeremy Corbyn was/is still a threat to the Anglo empire, and has to be destroyed to stop an outbreak of peace. If he had won in 2019 would UK send arms to Nazis in Ukraine? I rather doubt it.
Russia is great, you should learn the language and try to understand people instead believing anything on any media or listening to absolutely anything the corrupt American warmongering government says. All governments are ran by corporations and it really does seem Russia was lied about and the rampant propaganda to line the Biden crime family pockets along with Ukrainian Jews is just the same old tricks you all are falling for. Not one mention of the Ukraine attacking Russia or any history of the US in Russia or anything other than “Russia is evil propaganda”. It’s Quite narrow minded, and as the last remaining human with a brain I invite you all to give it a thought.
Putin is certainly firing propaganda towards Western countries, but never forget that the Western countries are doing exactly the same thing, if not on a larger scale.
p4fy5j
Hey Ian — I don’t know how I tripped across a link to this old post in March 2024. I noticed the headline for it and thought “That must be a new one I missed. I’ll screen-capture it and read it at my leisure.” When leisure-time came around, I quickly saw it was from the month after the war started, not anything recent. But I had grabbed the page, and all the electrons I used for that would have been burned into greenhouse gas for nothing if I did not absorb your wisdom! /s/
But srsly, I sometimes like to read ancient things by someone who I’m paying attention to in the “now”. Does their perspective stand the test of time? And in this case, I wanted to pay attention to what people who DISagree with you are saying. Do they have any good counter-arguments? I notice that many people who have beliefs that are opposite to mine have confirmation bias; they are unable to acknowledge that anyone else might think differently. I don’t want to fall into that same error.
Well, your opponents here seem to be pretty biased, not “based.” Most of what I saw “agin ya” was regurgitated proUkeaganda. “Russians are stupidrunken commie Mongols who were mean to Chechens!” Same as I see from that side today (minus the atrociganda like Bucha, which had not happened when you wrote this.) Nobody on the opposing side mentioned the Minsk accords, or what led to them being necessary. Only some commenters on your side knew the context. I was hoping to learn something new in support of the Kiev krewe. No dice.
Something else that disappointed me was how garbled the writing was from many commenters. On both sides of the fence, but moreso with the pro-Ukes. A lot of people have trouble stringing coherent sentences together. They can’t make a logical argument. Even granting that some commenters are not native English speakers, and they might have had difficulties putting it into the lingo of this blog, there’s a lot of disjointed prose here.
I worked with dementia patients when I started my second career as a nurse, and toward the end of my time in that profession I dealt with psychiatric patients. I consider myself good at finding the meaning of what someone’s trying to say, even when their mental functions don’t express it like most people. But crap — too many of the comments in this thread have parts that seem to be written by random word generators. And this came out before artificial “intelligence” bullshit was all over the Web. So what’s here is a reflection of brains that are slipping a few gears when they rotate. Not all of the comments, but more than I would have expected.
I don’t enjoy finding myself taking the Russian side. I grew up in the era of Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side” song: “I was taught to hate Russians, all through my whole life. If another war comes, it’s them we must fight.” But I’m not “rusted on” (as Aussies say) with my beliefs. I try to ingest multiple perspectives, and if the evidence points strongly in a different direction, I change. It’s sad that the West is such a mess compared to what it used to be. Except it probably was never what I thought it was. Before the Internet, it was harder to avoid what the mass media was feeding us. Now, there’s no excuse for buying the BS. Just mental laziness.
Anyway, good onya for what you do on your blog. I disagree with you about a lot of things, because I’m to the left of you politically. From the REAL boss-hating pro-union left, not the ponces who pretend to be “pwogressive” these days. And I LIKE “Apocalypse Now”! (It’s better if you think of it as a collection of discrete, unforgettable scenes, like the helicopter assault with “Flight of the Valkyries” playing in the background, but I don’t want to divert into film criticism.) So keep up the good work. This post stands the test of time even though there’s been a lot of water over the Kakhova Dam since it was written.
I happened to see the notification that you commented here, and thanks. As for Apocalypse Now – hmm, well yes maybe I was too harsh on the movie in my review, BUT everyone marketed it to me as the GREATEST, so maybe it is less “it is a bad movie” and more “overhyped”
I do wonder how many of the negative comments like the ones you referred to are written by bots.
I agree with your point about Western civilization’s evil and unreasonable hate towards divine Russia.
However, I must argue that the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war is not only the fault of Western countries. I understand that Putin was forced to declare war against Ukraine due to his concern for Russia’s national security, but I somehow doubt that was the core reason for his military campaign. He claims to have only Russia’s future in mind, but then why hasn’t he signed a peace treaty after so many Russian soldiers have died on the battlefield? Families have been torn apart, and I can be certain that this is not a welcoming change for the Russians. Putin initiated the war because of his hunger for land, for power, for his own gain. I would not oppose his campaign if Crimea and Ukrainian lands into Russia’s hands at the end of the war, however that is not the case. Putin was too impulsive, without thinking of whether this ideal dream was possible, thus putting his own country at risk in a pathetic scramble to gain land. Therefore, his military campaign is only for his own gain, not for Russia and her people. His war is morally wrong and Russia lacks a strong enough army to defeat the opposing Western countries, and that is what triggered the rage of the Western countries and fueled their greed to destroy Russia once and for all. I love Russia, and I only want the best for Russia, but it seems that Russia’s own leader has gotten his own country into a mess that might end in devastation for Russia.