Israel's Relentless Genocidal War on Gaza/Palestine

[Sukla Sen]

https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/nat-turner-in-gaza

<<The 2,000 young men who burst the gates of Gaza on October 7, 2023, had been born into a concentration camp. For fully two decades they had been immured in a 25-mile long by 5-mile wide sliver of land that was among the most densely populated places in the world. The vast majority of them could never hope to leave but only to pace each day the camp’s suffocating perimeter; never aspire to gainful employment or eat a full meal; never expect to marry or raise a family. Abandoned by everyone, they were “remaindered” to languish and die. To expedite this process, Israel periodically launched “operations” visiting death and destruction on Gaza: thousands methodically mowed down; homes and critical infrastructure systematically pulverized. It might sound like the script of a bad B-movie, but on the night of October 6 each of those 2,000 men probably kissed his mother, then his father, goodbye. Forever. And then each silently vowed to vindicate the remorseless torture of a twilight existence, and to avenge the murder of a grandparent, sister, brother, niece, nephew by that Satanic power that cursed their lives.

“The owl of Minerva spreads it wings,” Hegel famously said, “only with the falling of the dusk.” That is, one only acquires wisdom into an epoch with the ripeness of time. It’s still high noon and thus too soon to resolve what verdict History will cast on the slave revolt in Gaza on October 7, 2023.>>

That those "young men" were kept inmates of a concentration camp since their birth doesn't alter the fact that they had sprayed civilians celebrating a festival or sleeping in their homes with bullets. Killed them indiscriminately and mercilessly.

One captured woman -- a German tourist dead by now -- was, reportedly, tortured and paraded naked.

As the immediate consequence, whether these civilians (including children) were just "innocents" or were pretty much "complicit" in the monstrous crimes being committed by their state turned instantly irrelevant -- in the minds of too many, both within and outside Israel.

It provided a dream alibi on a platter to the genocidal Netanyahu regime to launch the ongoing operation of mass murder.

It was nothing unanticipated.

Forget the comical (or criminal?) boasts that the committed Hamas would, in a while, overpower the IDF.

This is what I had posted the very following morning:

<<Violence begets more violence, death and destruction.

A long ongoing essentially one-sided war (or genocide?) suddenly turns bi-directional -- for a moment or two at least.

But, that's hardly going to help. Much greater destruction to follow.

It's evidently a hugely unequal war. That's bound to become self-evident soon after the first surprise (desperate) strike by much the weaker and oppressed side.

Operation "Swords of Iron" follows "Al-Aqsa Flood".>>

(Ref.: <https://groups.google.com/.../c/44ymuIKWAJk/m/w4sEEwhUAwAJ>)

And I was, by no stretch a lone Nostradamus.

Anybody, in fact anybody, with some minimum common sense could have foreseen that.

Most unfortunately, even now such criminal and absurd boasts are emanating -- call for escalated war instead of immediate ceasefire!

(Ref.: <https://fightbacknews.org/articles/joint-statement-from-the-palestinian-resistance-on-the-course-of-the-al-aqsa>.)

Of course, the October 7 attack has placed Israeli occupation of Palestine very much on the global table -- overshadowing Putin's brutal war on Ukraine.

And Israel, despite wanton bombings and a monstrous siege, is yet unable to overrun Gaza (and occupy West Bank outright).

Outrage against the ongoing genocide is taking the form of organised expressions all over the world -- in the (democratic) countries backing Israel in particular.

That may, in the best possible scenario, end up in some sort of "settlement". Even in such an event, most likely, that "settlement" would be significantly worse than what was there before October 7.

Even otherwise, even if small concessions are gained, what good that would be???

What tremendous costs are being paid!!!

Addendum: A Personal Note

Just to clarify, I, for one, don't see any Chinese Wall separating "non-violent" from "violent".

Guess, even Gandhi -- the icon of "non-violence" -- was not as rigid as his fans and detractors project him to be.

As a child, it used to be incessantly drilled into my head that Gandhi pretty abruptly withdrew the anti-colonial struggle of the Indian masses after "Chauri Chaura" which was too promising to become a turning point -- panicked by the prospect of an imminent Leftist takeover.

Only when I grew up to have my very own independent thinking far more developed, came to discover that:

I. Gandhi was finally back to India, less than seven years back.

With great efforts, breaking radically from the Congress traditions, for the first time ever in the history of the Party, a _mass_ movement on the streets was launched.

II. "The Chauri Chaura Incident took place on 4 February 1922 at Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) in British India. The police there fired upon a large group of protesters participating in the Non-cooperation movement. In retaliation, the demonstrators attacked and set fire to a police station, which killed all of its occupants. The incident led to the death of three civilians and 22 policemen. Mahatma Gandhi halted the Non-Cooperation Movement on the national level on 12 February 1922 as a direct result of the incident."

III. At that time there was hardly any Leftist presence in India to be able to meaningfully intervene.

The CPI on the Indian soil would be formed in Kanpur only in 1925.

IV. Quite plausibly, Gandhi got panicked that the colonial government would weaponise that act of mindless violence to nip his dream of building up a huge mass movement, all over the land, very much in the bud.

So, he, rather promptly -- just about in a week -- suspended the movement.

V. In stark contrast, in 1942, he'd give the historical call of "Bharat Chhodo!" and, as was his wont, would quietly get arrested by the British Government.

Immediately, the whole country would erupt. _At places_ native administrations would be set up. Symbols of colonial rule would be _physically_ brought or even burnt down, overpowering the local administrations.

It was largely spontaneous and yet led mainly by the Congress Socialist Party. (The CPI then was pretty much in the British camp.) JP, Aruna Asaf Ali, Achyut Patwardhan and so many others became legendary.

"Bharat Chhodo" graduated to become "August Kranti".

VI. Gandhi, let alone withdraw the call, didn't utter a word against

"violence" -- even in whisper.

Again, the plausible explanation was that the movement, which had been in its very infancy in 1922, was by then a grown-up full-blooded adult.

VII. Neither Gandhi's fans nor his detractors are known to be in a position to explain.

Beyond that, Martin Luther King Jr has publicly acknowledged Gandhi as his ideological mentor.

Also, Nelson Mandela paid rich tributes to him. Mandela did lead armed struggles in his country. Regardless.

Real life is seldom a clear choice between either "this" or "that".

Hamas arose precisely because of the failure of the PLO.

But, it's proving itself a far greater calamity.

The task of the moment is, however, to demand an immediate cessation of the ongoing brutal genocide. Subsequent to that a just, durable and peaceful settlement.

Has the World Gone Deaf and Blind!?

A

At long last!

Let's not crib over "pause" vs. "ceasefire".

Let's rather demand that the US must walk the talk and immediately withhold/withdraw all support for the genocidal Netanyahu regime!

[Satinath Choudhary]

Ta-Nehisi Coates Speaks Out Against Israel’s “Segregationist Apartheid Regime” After West Bank Visit

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/2/ta_nehisi_coates#transcript

=========

Another Nakba? Israeli Intel Ministry Proposes Expelling Every Palestinian in Gaza to Egypt

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/3/israel_leak_gaza_expulsion_egypt

=========

State Department Official Resigns, Says Israel Is Using U.S. Arms to Massacre Civilians in Gaza

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/3/josh_paul_resigns_israel_gaza

=========

On Fri, Nov 3, 2023 at 7:18 AM Vera Vratusa via WSM-Discuss <wsm-d...@lists.openspaceforum.net> wrote:

P.S. P.S. Pardon me, I omitted one word in the formulation of the last sentence in the above message: ... thus to have an excuse for state terrorist repression of CIVILIANS due to terrorist attacks on the settlers and military and police Israeli occupying force.  

On Fri, Nov 3, 2023 at 11:59 AM Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

P.S. Please forward this message to  foil-l <foi...@insaf.net> of which I am not a member.

On Fri, Nov 3, 2023 at 11:57 AM Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

I subscribe respected Sukla Sen each and every word in your text. I only think that Hamas did not arise only "because of the failure of the PLO". Namely, British and USA ruling class in fact supported founding and armed military groups like Hamas  exactly in order to undermine PLO and Arafat who attempted to attain the aim of creation of the Palestinian state by more peaceful means , and thus to have an excuse for state terrorist repression of terrorist attacks on the settlers and military and police Israeli occupying force.  

Vera Vratusa

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa

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[Satinath Choudhary]

Watch "US Marine Corps Officer Scott Ritter Reveals TRUTH About Israel War" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/YV_HsiJg8Io?si=bDHg9XfWCMA-dXs1

==========

[Sukla Sen]

The spectacular(!?) Hamas attack on civilians in Israel on October 7th delivered a dream alibi on a platter to the genocidal Netanyahu regime.

It's our immediate task to ensure that the ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza population comes to a halt, right now.

Sukla

[Satinath Choudhary]

Dear Sukla Jee,

Personally, I believe in non-violent resistance, particularly for those who can't see a way of defeating the oppressor(s) in the foreseeable future. I believe in non-violent resistance because I think it can win us the support of a larger number of people on both sides (on the oppressed as well as the oppressor side). When the support is overwhelming, the resistors will win. On the other hand, with violent resistance, it may be difficult to win as much support in spite of a longer period of struggle. Of course, it also depends upon the will of the oppressor. If the oppressor is motivated via religious fervor, the will of the oppressor may be very strong. 

In short, what I want to say is that it is not morality or ethics that motivates me toward non-violent resistance. I just feel that tactically it is superior to violent resistance. It is a lack of resistance to injustice and oppression that is immoral. Further, it is much easier to infiltrate a clandestine armed resistance group (an armed group has to be clandestine) and mislead/waylay them in the wrong direction, or into a trap, than misleading an open non-violent resistance group willing to discuss their tactics openly. 

The day after Hamas launched their attack on Israelis, i.e., on Oct 8th (Sunday) I was talking to a few friends (we meet on Zoom every Sunday). I mentioned that if I were among the decision-makers among Hamas, I would have opposed the attack on Israel, knowing that their reaction would be overwhelming. I even suspected that the attack might have been engineered by an Israeli mole among Hamas, just as 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers was an inside job (to my mind). I have heard that Israel was warned several times by Egyptians that something big was afoot. Yet the Israeli government did not take steps to thwart Hamas's attack. It was just like FDR ignoring information that Japanese planes were coming towards Hawaii (Pearl Harbor) because he wanted them to succeed in killing a good number of Americans so that he would be able to declare war on Japan and enter the 2nd World War in a full-fledged manner (this is widely confirmed). 

In light of the leaked document mentioned in one of the videos in democracynow.com above: (A leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry dated less than one week after the October 7 Hamas attack proposes the permanent transfer of Gaza’s residents to Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the document’s authenticity but dismissed it as a mere “concept paper,” ) I still feel that the Hamas attack on Israel was engineered in connivance with the Israeli government. 

Parts of my thinking are confirmed in the thinking of Scot Ritter. It's just that he thinks that Israel will not succeed in pushing the Palestinians into Sinai, whereas I feel that the Israelis may succeed.

BTW, I vaguely remembered that there are Palestinians who are active in non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation. Indeed, I found the group on Google: Nonviolent resistance in Palestine: steadfastness, creativity and hope

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/civilresistance/nonviolent-resistance-in-palestine-steadfastness-creativity-and-hope/

I do not know if and when they will succeed. It depends upon so many things. 

In conclusion, I do agree with you that "Hamas attack on civilians in Israel on October 7th delivered a dream alibi on a platter to the genocidal Netanyahu regime." 

The only possible difference may be in the fact that according to my thinking, there is a good possibility of Israelis way-laying Hamas into the trap, and possibly succeeding in pushing the Gaza Palestinians into Sinai. 

=========

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Sati ji,

Thanks!

Beautifully explicated.

The possibility at this stage, to my mind, can neither be decisively ruled in nor out.

I'd, for the moment, would take a position which isn't based on too much of blank spaces to be filled with a good amount of assumptions.

Sukla

[Ela Gandhi]

Respected Satinathji,

This is a very sober analysis of the situation.  

In a small way we too suffered a similar fate during apartheid.    The Inanda area where the Phoenix Settlement or the Gandhi ashram is located was an eyesore for the apartheid government which was trying to carve out a country where each race group lived in their own tribal areas and as far a possible with little interaction with other groups.  Inanda was a mixed residential area.  

In the late 60's all of us non African residents of this area received an offer from the government to buy our properties.  Phoenix Settlement received a notice to ask whether we had any objections to being incorporated into the nearby Phoenix Township meant for Indian settlement.  We objected and asserted that the Settlement was for all and not just for Indian community.  

The Indian residents of Inanda refused to sell their land.   This caused a dilemma for the apartheid state.  So they orchestrated Indian African antagonism  which resulted in the rooting out of every Indian family from Inanda and the burning of Phoenix Settlement in 1985.  Apartheid police and army did nothing to protect the residents or the Settlement, which indicates their complicity.  

This was not war as in Gaza but the same principle of achieving a purpose through indirect means. 

Ela    

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[Satinath Choudhary]

Dear respected Ela Jee,

Thanks for shining your own very valuable perspective on this issue.

I did not think that observations of riffraff like me would draw comments from a venerable person like you.

Thanks again,

-Satinath

=======

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[Satinath Choudhary]

I tried to find out what Pilger thought about the "original Pearl Harbor," not the "new Pearl Harbor," but could not find any answer from Google. It kept giving me links to references for the "new Pearl Harbor."

[Sukla Sen]

This is something that pertains to October 7 2023: <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-gaza-intelligence-cyber-shield/>.

Sukla 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/socialist-party-india/CAFQoZO9f9yrnykL8Zg_P9LZUmJhRfK2v99%3D%3Do_PggU1fnN9Ktg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Satinath Choudhary]

Dear Sukla jee, 

'The Nation' article you have cited ends with: "Early on the morning of October 7, Israelis paid a terrible price for that mistake."

Time will tell whether it was "a terrible price", or "a master stroke" like that of the masterminds Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), and George W Bush, which was able to transfer $8 trillion from the US taxpayers to the coffers of the MIC (Military Industrial Complex, with plenty of the stocks and bonds of the MIC owned by these masterminds and their friends) and the media corporations following their successful operation on the morning of 911. (Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths

https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar.)

If the Israelis succeed in siphoning the Palestinians out of Gaza, I would call it a master stroke on the part of Netan-yahoo & company. 

=========

[Satinath Choudhary]

Sorry, out of the 8 trillion dollars spent by the US Budgetary Cost, only about 2 trillion were spent by DOD, with the rest going elsewhere, as shown in the pie-chart: 

U.S. BUDGETARY COSTS: $8 TRILLION

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/BudgetaryCosts

[Satinath Choudhary]

Video: Netanyahu Admits To Plan To Wipe Out Gaza!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdq1zhLANT0

=========

[Sukla Sen]

On Putin's War on Ukraine:

Russia had started mobilising on Ukraine's borders about three months

before the actual massive invasion: <

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/11/24/russia-s-military-build-up-near-ukraine-is-different-this-time-say-experts

>.

And almost till the very last just kept pooh-poohing the apprehensions of

the invasion: <https://tass.com/world/1404247>.

The repeated warnings from the US were routinely projected as

misinformation campaign by the US: <

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/15/ukra-j15.html> and <

https://tass.com/russia/1402193>.

Almost on the eve of the invasion, in the making for about three months in

terms of actual mobilisation on the ground, an utterly deceptive

announcement of troops withdrawal is made: <

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-russia-war-invasion-live-26225775

>.

All the while, Ukraine's plea for NATO entry was just not heeded to: <

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia/ukraine-calls-for-path-into-nato-after-russia-masses-troops-idUSKBN2BT1LX>,

<

https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/595040-zelensky-ukraine-wants-clear-timeframe-for-nato-membership>,

<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/politics/nato-ukraine.html>.

Then Putin, finally on Feb. 21, spoke on why the war?

To be fair, he was, for once, remarkably forthright in his address to the

nation.

No pussyfooting.

Clearly identified Ukraine as a part of Russia, by referring to the

glorious (Tsarist) past.

(No, he didn't name Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible.)

Strongly castigated Lenin, as the architect of modern Ukraine, and

chastised Stalin for doing only a half-job - completely subjugated Ukraine

and yet not formally erased its separate identity that had been granted by

Lenin.

Now, he's out to finish what Stalin had left only half done to go back to

glory days of the past (under the Tsars).

Some very helpful fragments:

I. "I would like to emphasise again that Ukraine is not just a neighbouring

country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and

spiritual space."

II. "I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by

Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process

started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his

associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by

separating, severing what is historically Russian land."

III. "When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples,

Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were

worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after

the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991."

IV. "Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be

rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.”"

V. "It is logical that the Red Terror and a rapid slide into Stalin’s

dictatorship, the domination of the communist ideology and the Communist

Party’s monopoly on power, nationalisation and the planned economy – all

this transformed the formally declared but ineffective principles of

government into a mere declaration. In reality, the union republics did not

have any sovereign rights, none at all. The practical result was the

creation of a tightly centralised and absolutely unitary state."

V. "And yet, it is a great pity that the fundamental and formally legal

foundations of our state were not promptly cleansed [by Stalin] of the

odious and utopian fantasies [of Lenin] inspired by the revolution, which

are absolutely destructive for any normal state."

Also, on what he's out to achieve:

"[T]oday the “grateful progeny” [i.e. independent Ukraine] has overturned

monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization.

"You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop

halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for

Ukraine [i.e. complete erasure of Ukraine's separate identity that was the

doing of the Communist regime]."

(Ref.: <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828>.)

That's a very cursory mapping of how the things actually developed.

Not to miss that the explanation proffered above is far from altogether

novel.

Putin, in fact, had put it elaborately forward in a 5000 word signed

article in July 2021 (ref.: <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181>).

[This is how the article opens: "During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe. I therefore feel it necessary to explain my position in detail and share my assessments of today's situation."]

But, it goes even further back.

The July 2021 article is only a comprehensive articulation of the position

that Ukraine is a part and parcel of (Mother) Russia (ref: <https://huri.harvard.edu/news/putin-historical-unity>).

Little to do with NATO or whatever - regardless of what the NATO stands for

and/or stood for.

That's how the war on Ukraine was launched.

On Sun, Nov 5, 2023, 14:05 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Satinath Choudhary, dear all,

Since we are living in the time of the definitive decline of the hegemonic power of the USA + NATO member neocolonialist states , the World War Three is in the full gear. On the territory of Ukraine is being waged a proxy war of Russia and NATO: there are reports that in Ukraine were killed more than hundred USA instructors and several humdred soldiers from Poland and other NATO states. In Palestine is being waged armed rebellion for national liberation against the collective West. There are two possibilities how will these wars and others yet to come, end:  emergence of the multipolar world of states mutualy cooperating to everybodys benefit, or the nuclear extinguishing of the humanity. I believe therefore that genocidal attempt of the Nataniahu religious extremists to kill or expel Palestinians to Sinai can not be succesful in the longer run. It is only the question how long will servile surrounding Arab regimes continue to participate in the genocide of Palestinians by allowing Americans to take part in the war in the Middle East from their territory. 

Vera Vratusa

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa

P.S. Please forward this message to socialist-...@googlegroups.com  and foi...@insaf.net lists of which I am not a member.

[Tanveer A Jafri]

This war was due to USA not allowing flow of Oil and Gas from Russia through Ukraine . Later Russia build Nord stream lines through the sea ,wherein the contractors left midway before completing the pipe line. Which resulted into hike in Oil and Gas prices.

Thanks 

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[Sukla Sen]

Please refer Putin's speech, delivered just three days before the launch of the war of aggression.

Both relevant excerpts and the link have been provided. Also the subterfuges employed by Putin and the NATO's, in effect, refusal to extend its protection to Ukraine -- turning virtually a deaf ear to repeated desperate pleas. Backed up with references to sources.

Any substantiated claim to buttress or negate is of course highly welcome.

Sukla 

[Satinath Choudhary]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: [SP(I)] Re: [WSMDiscuss] Israel's Relentless Genocidal War on Gaza/Palestine
To: Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com>
Cc: Tanveer A Jafri <tanveerahsan...@gmail.com>, Satinath Choudhary <sati...@gmail.com>, Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-d...@lists.openspaceforum.net>

Dear all,

I have the strong impression thet presented citations from Putin are suspectidly selective: omitted are very precisely defined eims of Russian  special military opperation: demilitarization, military neutrality and denacification of Ukraine. These aims are being gradually attained through the tactics of active defense, vaged tragically as the proxy war between Russia and NATO, on the very territory where the Russian speaking Ukrainians are the most densely populated in Donbas and Krim,(similarly to Palestinians in Gaza and West Benk ). Namely, NATO supplied (including forbidden casette and deplated uranium coated shells that for centuries polute earth and undergorund waters causing cancer) and NATO trained Ukrainian Army, was and is still killing Ukrainians who speak Russian ever since Maidan military coup against democratically elected President (https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea ) bringing to Power admirers of World War II colaborationits of Hitler, Josip Bandera, whose heirs performed the burning alive of Russion speaking Ukrainians in Odessa.

Even though Ukraine received statehood in 1991 from the USSR since Ukraine presidents solemly  promised to stay militarily neutral, Zelenski however ever louder demanded that Ukraine joins EU and NATO, bringing potentially NATO taktical nuclear rockets to two seconds from Moskow.. Putin warned to the very dawn of  a SMO in february 2022 that Zelenski should observe february 2015 Minsk agreements I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements  gouranted by the collective West organised militarily into NATO, and should stop doscriminating and harming  Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine  treating them  as a second rate citizens, exercising a kind of appartheid, like Zionists (not entire Juwish people) are exercisiong over Palestinians in Gaza and a Left Bank..  

Just compare the number of civilian victims and children in eastern regions of Ukraine bordering Russia, caught in the cross fire bitween Ukrainean army and Russian army both equipped with the heavy weapons, for more than a year and a half,and a number of civilian victims and children in Gaza during just two weekes of entrance of heavily equiped Israely army with tenks and phosporous bombes  against lightly armed Hamas. urban terrorist or liberation guerillas carrying NATO rifles and shoulder rockets thanks to the corrupted Ukrainian regime which selled to them the arms which collective West sent as a military aid to Ukraine.

International court shamelessly accused Putin for evacuating children from the war zone to Russia, while it is screamingly silent about totaly unproportional response  to Hamas terrorism, through bombing hospitals, scholls and refugee camps of Palestinians, denying them water, fooud, electircity, gas, medical supplies, internet communiation  by Zionists, in the attempt to genocidally exterminate Palestinians from Gaza by party killing them and partly expelling them to Egypt. Paradoxically the  victims of the "end solution" perpetrated by the Nazists, are now becoming themselves genocidal perpetratprs of the holocaust "end solution".We are like talking heads mostly passively watching the genocid enveloping before our eyes through mobile phone videos  in real time. 

Vera Vratusa

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa 

P.S. Please forward this reply to the lists socialist-...@googlegroups.and com foi...@insaf.net, of which I am not a member

[Sukla Sen]

Demilitarisation, i.e. radical degradation of Ukraine's military infrastructure, and denazification -- i.e. regime change -- is only the roadmap for Putin's design to (re)gobble up Ukraine -- for which the detailed justifications and denial of Ukraine's nationhood provided by him, on the very eve of the launch of the aggression have already been cited by me at some length.

There's no whatever contradiction between the two. On the contrary, they are only pretty much complementary.

Whether Putin's (evil) plan is succeeding or not, right at this stage, is needlessly diversionary.

In that context, only two things may, however, be fleetingly mentioned.

1. A Russian news agency has published [on Feb. 26th -- just two days after the launch of the massive aggression] and then deleted an article prematurely praising Russia's success in invading Ukraine. [Bold in original.]

It applauds Russian President Vladimir Putin for solving the Ukraine "problem", saying that "Ukraine has returned to Russia" through military action...

(Ref.: <https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240>.)

2. Equally, or maybe even more, significant: 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has [today, on Feb. 26th] turned down an offer from the United States of evacuation from the capital city Kyiv, the Ukraine embassy in Britain said Saturday on Twitter.

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," Zelensky told the US, according to the embassy.

"Ukrainians are proud of their President," the tweet adds.

(Ref.: <https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/europe/ukraine-zelensky-evacuation-intl/index.html>.)

The rest, as they say, is history.

Just two days after the launch of the aggression, the aggressor -- or a significant drumbeater, to be more accurate -- declares victory over the aggressed.

Even before that, the would-be main international backer of the aggressed comes up with an offer of flying the President out -- presumably, so that he can head a symbolic government while in exile.

And, today it is 622nd day of the aggression, the initial success of which has just not only come to a halt, it is being slowly pushed back too. The aggressor -- with a much larger armed forces -- had to go for forced conscription, triggering a veritable exodus from the country.

That's the actual status of Putin's fiendish design.

On Tue, Nov 7, 2023, 19:17 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

I have the strong impression thet presented citations from Putin are suspectidly selective: omitted are very precisely defined eims of Russian  special military opperation: demilitarization, military neutrality and denacification of Ukraine. These aims are being gradually attained through the tactics of active defense, vaged tragically as the proxy war between Russia and NATO, on the very territory where the Russian speaking Ukrainians are the most densely populated in Donbas and Krim,(similarly to Palestinians in Gaza and West Benk ). Namely, NATO supplied (including forbidden casette and deplated uranium coated shells that for centuries polute earth and undergorund waters causing cancer) and NATO trained Ukrainian Army, was and is still killing Ukrainians who speak Russian ever since Maidan military coup against democratically elected President (https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea ) bringing to Power admirers of World War II colaborationits of Hitler, Josip Bandera, whose heirs performed the burning alive of Russion speaking Ukrainians in Odessa.

Even though Ukraine received statehood in 1991 from the USSR since Ukraine presidents solemly  promised to stay militarily neutral, Zelenski however ever louder demanded that Ukraine joins EU and NATO, bringing potentially NATO taktical nuclear rockets to two seconds from Moskow.. Putin warned to the very dawn of  a SMO in february 2022 that Zelenski should observe february 2015 Minsk agreements I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements  gouranted by the collective West organised militarily into NATO, and should stop doscriminating and harming  Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine  treating them  as a second rate citizens, exercising a kind of appartheid, like Zionists (not entire Juwish people) are exercisiong over Palestinians in Gaza and a Left Bank..  

Just compare the number of civilian victims and children in eastern regions of Ukraine bordering Russia, caught in the cross fire bitween Ukrainean army and Russian army both equipped with the heavy weapons, for more than a year and a half,and a number of civilian victims and children in Gaza during just two weekes of entrance of heavily equiped Israely army with tenks and phosporous bombes  against lightly armed Hamas. urban terrorist or liberation guerillas carrying NATO rifles and shoulder rockets thanks to the corrupted Ukrainian regime which selled to them the arms which collective West sent as a military aid to Ukraine.

International court shamelessly accused Putin for evacuating children from the war zone to Russia, while it is screamingly silent about totaly unproportional response  to Hamas terrorism, through bombing hospitals, scholls and refugee camps of Palestinians, denying them water, fooud, electircity, gas, medical supplies, internet communiation  by Zionists, in the attempt to genocidally exterminate Palestinians from Gaza by party killing them and partly expelling them to Egypt. Paradoxically the  victims of the "end solution" perpetrated by the Nazists, are now becoming themselves genocidal perpetratprs of the holocaust "end solution".We are like talking heads mostly passively watching the genocid enveloping before our eyes through mobile phone videos  in real time. 

Vera Vratusa

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa 

P.S. Please forward this reply to the lists socialist-...@googlegroups.and com foi...@insaf.net, of which I am not a member

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 7:56 AM Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Satinath Choudhary]

Dear friends, 

I think the debate going on between Sukla jee and Professor Vera Vratusa, (In her own words: I am sociology professor at the Belgrade University Faculty of Philosophy in retirement. In cooperation with students who choose one or more courses that I was facilitating at the undergraduate, graduate or doctoral studies ...)

are very interesting, to say the least.

However, Prof. Vratusa is not a member of the list-serves SP(I) and foil, as such, her words cannot reach these two groups. I am therefore going to forward the parts of conversations that have not reached members of these two groups. 

This is the first one.

On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 8:47 AM Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

I have the strong impression thet presented citations from Putin are suspectidly selective: omitted are very precisely defined eims of Russian  special military opperation: demilitarization, military neutrality and denacification of Ukraine. These aims are being gradually attained through the tactics of active defense, vaged tragically as the proxy war between Russia and NATO, on the very territory where the Russian speaking Ukrainians are the most densely populated in Donbas and Krim,(similarly to Palestinians in Gaza and West Benk ). Namely, NATO supplied (including forbidden casette and deplated uranium coated shells that for centuries polute earth and undergorund waters causing cancer) and NATO trained Ukrainian Army, was and is still killing Ukrainians who speak Russian ever since Maidan military coup against democratically elected President (https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea ) bringing to Power admirers of World War II colaborationits of Hitler, Josip Bandera, whose heirs performed the burning alive of Russion speaking Ukrainians in Odessa.

Even though Ukraine received statehood in 1991 from the USSR since Ukraine presidents solemly  promised to stay militarily neutral, Zelenski however ever louder demanded that Ukraine joins EU and NATO, bringing potentially NATO taktical nuclear rockets to two seconds from Moskow.. Putin warned to the very dawn of  a SMO in february 2022 that Zelenski should observe february 2015 Minsk agreements I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements  gouranted by the collective West organised militarily into NATO, and should stop doscriminating and harming  Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine  treating them  as a second rate citizens, exercising a kind of appartheid, like Zionists (not entire Juwish people) are exercisiong over Palestinians in Gaza and a Left Bank..  

Just compare the number of civilian victims and children in eastern regions of Ukraine bordering Russia, caught in the cross fire bitween Ukrainean army and Russian army both equipped with the heavy weapons, for more than a year and a half,and a number of civilian victims and children in Gaza during just two weekes of entrance of heavily equiped Israely army with tenks and phosporous bombes  against lightly armed Hamas. urban terrorist or liberation guerillas carrying NATO rifles and shoulder rockets thanks to the corrupted Ukrainian regime which selled to them the arms which collective West sent as a military aid to Ukraine.

International court shamelessly accused Putin for evacuating children from the war zone to Russia, while it is screamingly silent about totaly unproportional response  to Hamas terrorism, through bombing hospitals, scholls and refugee camps of Palestinians, denying them water, fooud, electircity, gas, medical supplies, internet communiation  by Zionists, in the attempt to genocidally exterminate Palestinians from Gaza by party killing them and partly expelling them to Egypt. Paradoxically the  victims of the "end solution" perpetrated by the Nazists, are now becoming themselves genocidal perpetratprs of the holocaust "end solution".We are like talking heads mostly passively watching the genocid enveloping before our eyes through mobile phone videos  in real time. 

Vera Vratusa

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa 

P.S. Please forward this reply to the lists socialist-...@googlegroups.and com foi...@insaf.net, of which I am not a member

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 7:56 AM Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Sukla Sen]

"I believe that Putin's intentions have [strong] correlation with his utterances and actions!"

Hi Vera,

That's nice to know.

Now would you care to lay out the basis of your belief and correlate the two?

Would you tell us in what way his utterances/actions are reflective of his (what) "intentions"? 

Only a few, you may explain.

AA. Utterances:

I. "During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe."

(That's in July 2021 from a 5,000 words signed article: <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181>.)

II. Cut to February 21 2022, 3 days before the launch of the invasion:

"I would like to emphasise again that Ukraine is not just a neighbouring

country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and

spiritual space.

...

"I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by

Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process

started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his

associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by

separating, severing what is historically Russian land.

...

"When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples,

Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were

worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after

the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

...

"Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be

rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.”"

...

"[T]oday the “grateful progeny” [i.e. independent Ukraine] has overturned

monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization.

"You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop

halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for

Ukraine [i.e. complete erasure of Ukraine's separate identity that was the

doing of the Communist regime?]."

(Ref.: <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828>.)

BB. Actions:

I. 'Putin signs law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification' at

<https://tass.com/politics/1700673>.

II. 'Russian nuclear-powered sub launches Kalibr, Oniks missiles in state trials — source' at <https://tass.com/defense/1702513>.

III. 'Advanced Sarmat ICBM systems go on combat alert in Russia — Roscosmos head' at <https://tass.com/defense/1668567>

Just a few.

Sukla

On Thu, Nov 9, 2023, 05:51 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes dear colleagues, I believe that Putin's intentions have [strong] correlation with his utterances and actions!"" The problem of the collective west militarily organised into NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation) that it simply refuses to listen to Putins loudly and clearly expressed concerns for the safety of Russian speaking Ukrainians and for integrity and sovereignty of Russia itself, ever since the orchestration of Rusofobic, neonazist drung nach Osten Maidan putsch in 2014 in Ukraine.

Vera

P.S. Have you heard on the news that Russian speaking Ukrainians recruited by force into the Ukrainian Army are coming over and joining Russian military forces, not wanting to storm the defense lines of Russia  and get massively killed, badly instructed and equipped. 

On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 8:08 AM Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Do Putin's intentions have any correlation with his utterances and actions?

Apart from the ongoing aggression, the latest in the series is deratification of the CTBT -- yet to come in force -- coming on top of incessant threats of nuclear cataclysm.

Sukla

On Wed, Nov 8, 2023, 02:36 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all, it is a wrong interpretation of Putin's intention when he started the SMO in february 2022, that he wanted a blitzkrieg and overrun Ukraine. Russian military entered Ukraine numbering 120 000 mobilised soldiers, while collective West has been arming and training Urkainian Military since 2014 numbering 350.000 mobilised soldiers. Russia later mobilised 300 000 well trained soldiers, while Yelenski is kidnapping untrained men older than 65, some of them having mental problems, to send them to killfields where they die massively and have began to desert and some even join Russian soldiers against dogs of war from the collective West NATO countries, In fact the ruling class of Russia has better strategists than the ruling class of NATO member states:  the letter wanted to exhaust Russia through threatening Russia's security by expanding NATO towards Russian borders. Russian strategists seem to be succeeding to exhaust the collective west, not only of the USA. 

Russia is the geographically greatest state on the earth and they need only the safety belt the nearest to its borders, which would not have been needed if the collective West did not breach the Minsk II accords. USA, a NATO state, attacked another NATO state, Germany by exploding the North gas flow. Declining unipolar hegemonic power, USA, in the attempt to get out of the deep depression crisis and horrendous public debt , is selling arms all over the world instigating civil and international wars in different parts of the world. There was no more than a single week of peace in the entire world ever since the USA military industrial complex dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after Japan capitulated. It seems that the USA military industrial complex is searching for the exit strategy from Ukraine where it is losing the war, so it now wholeheartedly participates in war crimes of Zionists against Palestinians, in the geostrategically the most important part of the world needed for flowing of gas and world trade, inciting the World War Three with the sick idea that in the entire world should remain only the "golden billion" of elite earth population.

Best regards,

Vera

On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 2:48 PM Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

I have the strong impression thet presented citations from Putin are suspectidly selective: omitted are very precisely defined eims of Russian  special military opperation: demilitarization, military neutrality and denacification of Ukraine. These aims are being gradually attained through the tactics of active defense, vaged tragically as the proxy war between Russia and NATO, on the very territory where the Russian speaking Ukrainians are the most densely populated in Donbas and Krim,(similarly to Palestinians in Gaza and West Benk ). Namely, NATO supplied (including forbidden casette and deplated uranium coated shells that for centuries polute earth and undergorund waters causing cancer) and NATO trained Ukrainian Army, was and is still killing Ukrainians who speak Russian ever since Maidan military coup against democratically elected President (https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea ) bringing to Power admirers of World War II colaborationits of Hitler, Josip Bandera, whose heirs performed the burning alive of Russion speaking Ukrainians in Odessa.

Even though Ukraine received statehood in 1991 from the USSR since Ukraine presidents solemly  promised to stay militarily neutral, Zelenski however ever louder demanded that Ukraine joins EU and NATO, bringing potentially NATO taktical nuclear rockets to two seconds from Moskow.. Putin warned to the very dawn of  a SMO in february 2022 that Zelenski should observe february 2015 Minsk agreements I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements  gouranted by the collective West organised militarily into NATO, and should stop doscriminating and harming  Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine  treating them  as a second rate citizens, exercising a kind of appartheid, like Zionists (not entire Juwish people) are exercisiong over Palestinians in Gaza and a Left Bank..  

Just compare the number of civilian victims and children in eastern regions of Ukraine bordering Russia, caught in the cross fire bitween Ukrainean army and Russian army both equipped with the heavy weapons, for more than a year and a half,and a number of civilian victims and children in Gaza during just two weekes of entrance of heavily equiped Israely army with tenks and phosporous bombes  against lightly armed Hamas. urban terrorist or liberation guerillas carrying NATO rifles and shoulder rockets thanks to the corrupted Ukrainian regime which selled to them the arms which collective West sent as a military aid to Ukraine.

International court shamelessly accused Putin for evacuating children from the war zone to Russia, while it is screamingly silent about totaly unproportional response  to Hamas terrorism, through bombing hospitals, scholls and refugee camps of Palestinians, denying them water, fooud, electircity, gas, medical supplies, internet communiation  by Zionists, in the attempt to genocidally exterminate Palestinians from Gaza by party killing them and partly expelling them to Egypt. Paradoxically the  victims of the "end solution" perpetrated by the Nazists, are now becoming themselves genocidal perpetratprs of the holocaust "end solution".We are like talking heads mostly passively watching the genocid enveloping before our eyes through mobile phone videos  in real time. 

Vera Vratusa

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa 

P.S. Please forward this reply to the lists socialist-...@googlegroups.and com foi...@insaf.net, of which I am not a member

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 7:56 AM Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Satinath Choudhary]

Here is another conversation between Sukla jee and Prof. Vratusa that did not come to the members of SP(I) and foil.

-Satinath

=======

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Dr. Hiren,

Thanks!

Just two points.

First, your wish as regards your views being widely circulated is granted with delight.

(This is Bcc-ed to quite a few.)

Second, without straying into the various side issues, except for pointing out that the USSR had imploded in 1991 and not 1990, would like to come straight to the central point.

When you talk of "Ukraine's unreasonable mulishness", it very much mirrors the expectations in a traditional society that a (good) woman must always be ready to be bossed over by her man -- her "master". In the case of Ukraine, Russian Federation is its (celestially ordained) "master" and remains so even after legal separation.

The Ukrainians' determined refusal to live up to that, thus in your eyes, is utter "unreasonable mulishness".

That's quite understood.

Nonetheless, I, for one, also can't go with that.

That's all for now.

Thanks again for responding.

Sukla

On Thu, Nov 9, 2023, 19:37 Dr Hiren Gohain <hiren....@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Mr Sukla,

If you wish you may consider giving wider publicity to my response to Putin's view on Ukraine.

The difference between Lenin and Putin,both of whom are dismissed by influential circles as vicious monsters, is this.

While Lenin based his views on a searching and thorough consideration of the facts in the case from his point of view,Putin forms and airs his views as expediency demands.

Putin is right in holding that Lenin had not only granted the states of USSR the right to secede,but also after voluntary association of Ukraine after 1917 with the new federal state stinted no resources in promoting economic development of the state and strengthening the nationality forming the majority and its culture.The USSR,as everyone know today imploded in 1990.If Ukrainians wanted  to end all formal ties with Russia it had then the right to do so.But it so happens that it also wanted  to join an active ANTI-RUSSIAN camp threatening Russia's security.Russia had the right to oppose and resist it too.

        If Ukraine turns a deaf ear to such serious protests out of sheer hatred of Russia,then it stands to reason that Russia has little option except using force to pressure Ukraine.

          It so happens that Putin's response has over-reached itself and the results have been quite costly for him.But that by no means justifies Ukraine's unreasonable mulishness.

Hiren Gohain.

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Sati ji,

Have you noticed that my response two days ago, reproduced below for ready reference, has gone unresponded?

Sukla

"I believe that Putin's intentions have [strong] correlation with his utterances and actions!"

Hi Vera,

That's nice to know.

Now would you care to lay out the basis of your belief and correlate the two?

Would you tell us in what way his utterances/actions are reflective of his (what) "intentions"? 

Only a few, you may explain.

AA. Utterances:

I. "During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe."

(That's in July 2021 from a 5,000 words signed article: <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181>.)

II. Cut to February 21 2022, 3 days before the launch of the invasion:

"I would like to emphasise again that Ukraine is not just a neighbouring

country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and

spiritual space.

...

"I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by

Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process

started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his

associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by

separating, severing what is historically Russian land.

...

"When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples,

Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were

worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after

the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

...

"Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be

rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.”"

...

"[T]oday the “grateful progeny” [i.e. independent Ukraine] has overturned

monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization.

"You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop

halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for

Ukraine [i.e. complete erasure of Ukraine's separate identity that was the

doing of the Communist regime?]."

(Ref.: <http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828>.)

BB. Actions:

I. 'Putin signs law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification' at

<https://tass.com/politics/1700673>.

II. 'Russian nuclear-powered sub launches Kalibr, Oniks missiles in state trials — source' at <https://tass.com/defense/1702513>.

III. 'Advanced Sarmat ICBM systems go on combat alert in Russia — Roscosmos head' at <https://tass.com/defense/1668567>

Just a few.

[Satinath Choudhary]

Dear Sukla jee,

Look, dear comrade, the way that I see it is this:

There are lots of people in the world, particularly among those who are bad enough to be able to climb up the political ladder in current electoral or non-electoral systems, who would be worse than anyone we can imagine if they could get away with their badness. 

One can quote a lot of things from any of the heads of state of various countries (particularly for the sake of domestic consumption, to stay at the head of their respective states,) which have been declared to be the enemies of the USA for the sake of shoveling unimaginable tons of money into the coffers of the MIC. However, today (or since the end of the 2nd WW) no country has been as brazenly and shamelessly aggressive around the world as the USA. Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008 has a great deal of parallelism with The Ukrainian conflict (see: Russo-Georgian War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Further_reading).

The main difference is that in 2008 the US was still in a good deal of influence of its agreement with the Russians not to absorb the newly independent East European countries into NATO, effectively encircling Russia as closely as possible. By 2014 & 2022 the US had/has all but forgotten about such promises, and the US is more firmly in the grips of MIC, with the loosening of campaign finance restrictions following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2010. 

Today, Georgia and the Russians are more or less at peace. Most of the people displaced during the 2008 war have returned back to their homes. The same might have happened between the Ukrainians and Russians in 2022, had the USA not intervened, effectively preventing Zelinsky from entering into a peace talk with Putin. All that the Russians were asking for was to abide by the Minsk-II agreement between Ukraine and Russia, supposed to have been supported by the West. (French and German leaders were the facilitators of the talk between Ukraine & Russia.)

But Biden had to sell more of the bombs, tanks, planes, ammunitions, and a whole lot of other infrastructures of war to Ukraine. You have to remember that the US President + possibly more than 90 out of 100 of the US Senators + 100% of the Republican members of the House of Representatives + more than 50% of the Democratic members of the HR are nothing but paid agents (via legalized bribery called election campaign contributions) of various corporations, the most important of which happens to be Military Industrial Complex. 

See:

Russo-Georgian War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Further_reading

=========

Explainer: Why Russia wants autonomy for occupied Donbas (and why Ukraine doesn't)

https://kyivindependent.com/why-russia-wants-autonomy-for-occupied-donbas-explainer/

=========

Also see:

Russian-Georgian conflict explained (Abkhazia & South Ossetia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2jpMWNoJLE

=========

The Russia-Georgia Conflict: What Happened and Future Implications for US Foreign Policy; Sep. 12, 2008

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-russia-georgia-conflict-what-happened-and-future-implications-for-us-foreign-policy

=========

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Sati ji,

That's your reply to my flagging that Prof. Vratusa has silently evaded responding to my call to link certain specified utterances (and actions) of Putin with his (noble?) "intentions".

Since she had, in her immediately preceding response, asserted: "I believe that Putin's intentions have [strong] correlation with his utterances and actions!"

Thanks!

Guess, your response speaks for itself.

Rather eloquently.

Sukla

[Satinath Choudhary]

Just as in Georgia, through the twists and turns of its history, Russia intervened, not very justifiably (when weighed according to international laws), but left to themselves, things have settled to relatively peaceful coexistence (in spite of injustices that the non-Russian speaking Georgians have to tolerate in spite of being in majority in the regions of conflict). 

Likewise, Zelinsky was ready for a negotiated settlement of the dispute over Dunbas and other regions but was prevented by the US & UK, at the behest of MIC. But you seem to be very insistent on the technical law of inviolability of the sovereignty of the neighboring countries, ignoring the history of the region. And you seem to see the violation of the said sovereignty as the intention of Putin to gobble up the rest of the East European countries, as he seems to have spouted sometimes. But his actions in Georgia do not seem to bear out your suspicion that Putin intends to gobble up the rest of Europe and that he must be stopped and nipped in the bud. 

But we have to see how many countries have been aggressed by Putin. If anything, he has protected Bashar al-Asad and somewhat stabilized the situation in Syria preventing it from being overrun by the US, as they did in Iraq, Libia, and Afghanistan. It is the existence of Russia, with its powerful arsenal of nuclear bombs, that is preventing the rest of the world from being overrun by the US. You and I need to be thankful to Putin for standing up to the biggest bully in the world. Had Putin or the head of another state been in the shoes of Joe Biden, how bad a bully they would have been is something we can speculate about forever, keeping in mind Lord Acton's evergreen maxim: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is a key proverb that most of us keep forgetting about. We need to focus on how to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a few, particularly one.

Today, what should be feared is that the US has been trying to probe (through drones by its proxy) how close it can go to the Kremlin, to the situation of overwhelming them in a first-strike possibility, without the Russians getting a chance to fire any of their nuclear-tipped rockets.  If Russia capitulates in Ukraine, the US warmongers would be extremely emboldened badest bullies. 

In view of all of the above, and what I have said in the previous letter, I figure, Prof. Vratusa may have felt, no point squabbling with you. She may have many other pressing things to attend to. I don't know.

-Satinath

=======

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Sati ji,

That's your reply to my flagging that Prof. Vratusa has silently evaded responding to my call to link certain specified utterances (and actions) of Putin with his (noble?) "intentions".

Since she had, in her immediately preceding response, asserted: "I believe that Putin's intentions have [strong] correlation with his utterances and actions!"

Thanks!

Guess, your response speaks for itself.

Rather eloquently.

Sukla

[Satinath Choudhary]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 10:49 AM
Subject: Re: [SP(I)] Re: [WSMDiscuss] Israel's Relentless Genocidal War on Gaza/Palestine

To: Satinath Choudhary <sati...@gmail.com>
Cc: Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com>, Tanveer A Jafri <tanveerahsan...@gmail.com>, Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-d...@lists.openspaceforum.net>

Dear Dr. Satinath Choudhary, you guessed well that I was away from the internet for several days.
   
Dear Tanver, you made a good point on the NATO blowing  up of the North gas pipe stream as one of the economic triggers of тхе war in Ukraine

Respected Sukla Sen,
You have concluded too soon that I did not answer your Russo-phobic or Putin-phobic remarks on war in Ukraine because I remained
without arguments.In fact I came down with the very bad grippe which took me away from the internet all this time. Also, sometimes I simply do not have time to check my email inbox. I do not understand as well, why did you erase the entire thread on genocide in Gaza анд њар ин Украине, expecting that it is done with when you have had the last say?    

Please let me reiterate the argument to which you did not answer that behind both wars (in Ukraine and Palestine) is the economic interests of the "declining unipolar hegemonic power, USA, ... attempting to get out of the deep depression crisis and horrendous public debt ,.. selling arms all over the world instigating civil and international wars in different parts of the world. There was no more than a single week of peace in the entire world ever since the USA military industrial complex dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after Japan capitulated. It seems that the USA military industrial complex is searching for the exit strategy from Ukraine where it is losing the war, so it now wholeheartedly participates in war crimes of Zionists against Palestinians, in the geostrategically the most important part of the world needed for flowing of gas and world trade, inciting the World War Three with the sick idea that in the entire world should remain only the 'golden billion' of elite earth population."

Respected Sukla Sen, you also did not answer anything to my reminder that NATO trained and armed Ukrainian numerous regular army, giving it the green light to treat Russian speaking Ukrainians in eastern parts of Ukraine as a second rate citizens, forbidding them to use Russian language, read classical Russian writers and listen to classical Russian music, listen to Russian TV and radio stations. The same sanctions are still valid in all EU NATO member states.!!! This sanctions back-fired since EU is now made to buy Russian oil via India and other big nations which did not introduce Russia the sanctions, or to import liquid gas from the ubiquitous USA hegemonic power in decline, at seven to ten times higher price!

Probably this is one of the sources of your Putino and Russo phobia respected Sukla sen.

At the last, here are my answers to Putin's utterances and actions on Ukraine which you cited>:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments.

Dear Satinath Choudhary, I am most grateful to you for having taken the time to forward some of my messages to SP(I) and foill.list-servers. Please, keep on doing this forwarding, since it enables me to learn about colleagues who might have similar or opposing views on the theme of Genocide in Gaza and war in Ukraine.

Vera

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusahttps://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa
 .

[Satinath Choudhary]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 9:47 PM
Subject: Re: [SP(I)] Re: [WSMDiscuss] Israel's Relentless Genocidal War on Gaza/Palestine

To: Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com>
Cc: Satinath Choudhary <sati...@gmail.com>, Tanveer A Jafri <tanveerahsan...@gmail.com>, Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-d...@lists.openspaceforum.net>

Dear Prof. Vratusa,

It's reassuring to know that now you're again back in form.

So, let me reproduce verbatim what I had written to Sati ji:

Have you noticed that my response two days ago, reproduced below for ready reference, has gone unresponded?

Suklaw

In the above, I don't see myself claiming that you'd never reply.

Of course, a line informing that you'd do later would have helped.

Now, coming to the essential issue, would you specifically tell how these utterances and actions of Putin's correlate "intentions" and how?

If you want to bring in other issues, please do it in the next round.

Let's focus specifically focus on this, in this round.

Sukla

On Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 21:19 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Dr. Satinath Choudhary, you guessed well that I was away from the internet for several days.
   
Dear Tanver, you made a good point on the NATO blowing  up of the North gas pipe stream as one of the economic triggers of тхе war in Ukraine

Respected Sukla Sen,
You have concluded too soon that I did not answer your Russo-phobic or Putin-phobic remarks on war in Ukraine because I remained
without arguments.In fact I came down with the very bad grippe which took me away from the internet all this time. Also, sometimes I simply do not have time to check my email inbox. I do not understand as well, why did you erase the entire thread on genocide in Gaza анд њар ин Украине, expecting that it is done with when you have had the last say?    

Please let me reiterate the argument to which you did not answer that behind both wars (in Ukraine and Palestine) is the economic interests of the "declining unipolar hegemonic power, USA, ... attempting to get out of the deep depression crisis and horrendous public debt ,.. selling arms all over the world instigating civil and international wars in different parts of the world. There was no more than a single week of peace in the entire world ever since the USA military industrial complex dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after Japan capitulated. It seems that the USA military industrial complex is searching for the exit strategy from Ukraine where it is losing the war, so it now wholeheartedly participates in war crimes of Zionists against Palestinians, in the geostrategically the most important part of the world needed for flowing of gas and world trade, inciting the World War Three with the sick idea that in the entire world should remain only the 'golden billion' of elite earth population."

Respected Sukla Sen, you also did not answer anything to my reminder that NATO trained and armed Ukrainian numerous regular army, giving it the green light to treat Russian speaking Ukrainians in eastern parts of Ukraine as a second rate citizens, forbidding them to use Russian language, read classical Russian writers and listen to classical Russian music, listen to Russian TV and radio stations. The same sanctions are still valid in all EU NATO member states.!!! This sanctions back-fired since EU is now made to buy Russian oil via India and other big nations which did not introduce Russia the sanctions, or to import liquid gas from the ubiquitous USA hegemonic power in decline, at seven to ten times higher price!

Probably this is one of the sources of your Putino and Russo phobia respected Sukla sen.

At the last, here are my answers to Putin's utterances and actions on Ukraine which you cited>:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments.

Dear Satinath Choudhary, I am most grateful to you for having taken the time to forward some of my messages to SP(I) and foill.list-servers. Please, keep on doing this forwarding, since it enables me to learn about colleagues who might have similar or opposing views on the theme of Genocide in Gaza and war in Ukraine.

Vera

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusahttps://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa
 .

[Satinath Choudhary]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 12:54 AM
Subject: Re: [SP(I)] Re: [WSMDiscuss] Israel's Relentless Genocidal War on Gaza/Palestine
To: Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com>
Cc: Satinath Choudhary <sati...@gmail.com>, Tanveer A Jafri <tanveerahsan...@gmail.com>, Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-d...@lists.openspaceforum.net>

Respected Sukla Sen,

You seem to have missed my reply, point for point to your request, how do Putin;s utterances and actions correlate 'intentions' and how. Bringing in the case of Serbia and national antagonisms in former Yugoslavia are not opening the "new" theme, but putting the happenings in Russia and Ukraine into a wider historical perspective. Namely, the collective West organised into NATO under the declining hegemony of USA MIC, ALWAYS tried its plans for destroying Russia, first on Serbia. I have therefore no other possibility but to repeat my answer to your query, hoping that it will be better understood by you when I have given this short introductory historical contextual note:

"At the last, here are my answers to Putin's utterances and actions on Ukraine which you cited>:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments."

On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 3:47 AM Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Prof. Vratusa,

It's reassuring to know that now you're again back in form.

So, let me reproduce verbatim what I had written to Sati ji:

Have you noticed that my response two days ago, reproduced below for ready reference, has gone unresponded?

Suklaw

In the above, I don't see myself claiming that you'd never reply.

Of course, a line informing that you'd do later would have helped.

Now, coming to the essential issue, would you specifically tell how these utterances and actions of Putin's correlate "intentions" and how?

If you want to bring in other issues, please do it in the next round.

Let's focus specifically focus on this, in this round.

Sukla

On Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 21:19 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Dr. Satinath Choudhary, you guessed well that I was away from the internet for several days.
   
Dear Tanver, you made a good point on the NATO blowing  up of the North gas pipe stream as one of the economic triggers of тхе war in Ukraine

Respected Sukla Sen,
You have concluded too soon that I did not answer your Russo-phobic or Putin-phobic remarks on war in Ukraine because I remained
without arguments.In fact I came down with the very bad grippe which took me away from the internet all this time. Also, sometimes I simply do not have time to check my email inbox. I do not understand as well, why did you erase the entire thread on genocide in Gaza анд њар ин Украине, expecting that it is done with when you have had the last say?    

Please let me reiterate the argument to which you did not answer that behind both wars (in Ukraine and Palestine) is the economic interests of the "declining unipolar hegemonic power, USA, ... attempting to get out of the deep depression crisis and horrendous public debt ,.. selling arms all over the world instigating civil and international wars in different parts of the world. There was no more than a single week of peace in the entire world ever since the USA military industrial complex dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after Japan capitulated. It seems that the USA military industrial complex is searching for the exit strategy from Ukraine where it is losing the war, so it now wholeheartedly participates in war crimes of Zionists against Palestinians, in the geostrategically the most important part of the world needed for flowing of gas and world trade, inciting the World War Three with the sick idea that in the entire world should remain only the 'golden billion' of elite earth population."

Respected Sukla Sen, you also did not answer anything to my reminder that NATO trained and armed Ukrainian numerous regular army, giving it the green light to treat Russian speaking Ukrainians in eastern parts of Ukraine as a second rate citizens, forbidding them to use Russian language, read classical Russian writers and listen to classical Russian music, listen to Russian TV and radio stations. The same sanctions are still valid in all EU NATO member states.!!! This sanctions back-fired since EU is now made to buy Russian oil via India and other big nations which did not introduce Russia the sanctions, or to import liquid gas from the ubiquitous USA hegemonic power in decline, at seven to ten times higher price!

Probably this is one of the sources of your Putino and Russo phobia respected Sukla sen.

At the last, here are my answers to Putin's utterances and actions on Ukraine which you cited>:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments.

Dear Satinath Choudhary, I am most grateful to you for having taken the time to forward some of my messages to SP(I) and foill.list-servers. Please, keep on doing this forwarding, since it enables me to learn about colleagues who might have similar or opposing views on the theme of Genocide in Gaza and war in Ukraine.

Vera

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusahttps://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa
 .

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Prof. Vratusa,

Thanks for repeating what you had already said.

Now, let me, yet again, reproduce the list of utterances and actions cited by me.

END

You were then urged to "specifically tell how these utterances and actions of Putin's correlate [what] "intentions" and how?"

Now, your response:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments."

END

My observations:

AA. I am, in the above, unable to locate any listing of Putin's "intentions", as perceived by you; let alone linking of these utterances and actions to those (perceived/claimed) "intentions".

BB. Never mind.

Now, let's take these observations as stand-alone ones and evaluate accordingly.

I. "Having in mind... Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;"

What does it relate to!???

The "utterances" (I and II) that I had cited, as per my perception, go to show Putin himself claiming that it's his persistent belief that Ukrainian nationhood is an evil fiction -- an artificial creation -- authored by Lenin. (Hence, it has no right to exist and he'd now erase it off.)

Do you agree or disagree?

II. Then you've, apparently in desperation, again resorted to the silly claim as regards the "guarantee given to Gorbachev".

XX. The first thing is, assuming for the time being that any such guarantee was ever given, when that guarantee was given???

Evidently, it has got to be in 1989. Or in any case in 1991 or before. (Gorbachev was dethroned in 1991.)

Russia ratified the CTBT in 1996 or thereabout.

Putin ratfies the decision to withdraw from the CTBT in 2023 -- more than three decades after Gorbachev having been dethroned because of some guarantee 

given to him having been dishonoured!!!

Is it some sort of a joke!? 

I am dumb enough not to get it.

YY. Who had given the guarantee???

Who authorised whom to give such a guarantee?

Who endorsed?

In which treaty it has been laid down???

Surely, international guarantees are not given via private whispers??? Or are they???

Let's once again remind ourselves that you had claimed: "I believe that Putin's intentions have [strong] correlation with his utterances and actions!"

Hence, I had cited some specific utterances and actions of his urging you to link these with his (specified) "intentions".

Bye for now.

Sukla

On Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 11:24 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Respected Sukla Sen,

You seem to have missed my reply, point for point to your request, how do Putin;s utterances and actions correlate 'intentions' and how. Bringing in the case of Serbia and national antagonisms in former Yugoslavia are not opening the "new" theme, but putting the happenings in Russia and Ukraine into a wider historical perspective. Namely, the collective West organised into NATO under the declining hegemony of USA MIC, ALWAYS tried its plans for destroying Russia, first on Serbia. I have therefore no other possibility but to repeat my answer to your query, hoping that it will be better understood by you when I have given this short introductory historical contextual note:

"At the last, here are my answers to Putin's utterances and actions on Ukraine which you cited>:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments."

On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 3:47 AM Sukla Sen <sukl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Prof. Vratusa,

It's reassuring to know that now you're again back in form.

So, let me reproduce verbatim what I had written to Sati ji:

Have you noticed that my response two days ago, reproduced below for ready reference, has gone unresponded?

Suklaw

In the above, I don't see myself claiming that you'd never reply.

Of course, a line informing that you'd do later would have helped.

Now, coming to the essential issue, would you specifically tell how these utterances and actions of Putin's correlate "intentions" and how?

If you want to bring in other issues, please do it in the next round.

Let's focus specifically focus on this, in this round.

Sukla

On Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 21:19 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Dr. Satinath Choudhary, you guessed well that I was away from the internet for several days.
   
Dear Tanver, you made a good point on the NATO blowing  up of the North gas pipe stream as one of the economic triggers of тхе war in Ukraine

Respected Sukla Sen,
You have concluded too soon that I did not answer your Russo-phobic or Putin-phobic remarks on war in Ukraine because I remained
without arguments.In fact I came down with the very bad grippe which took me away from the internet all this time. Also, sometimes I simply do not have time to check my email inbox. I do not understand as well, why did you erase the entire thread on genocide in Gaza анд њар ин Украине, expecting that it is done with when you have had the last say?    

Please let me reiterate the argument to which you did not answer that behind both wars (in Ukraine and Palestine) is the economic interests of the "declining unipolar hegemonic power, USA, ... attempting to get out of the deep depression crisis and horrendous public debt ,.. selling arms all over the world instigating civil and international wars in different parts of the world. There was no more than a single week of peace in the entire world ever since the USA military industrial complex dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after Japan capitulated. It seems that the USA military industrial complex is searching for the exit strategy from Ukraine where it is losing the war, so it now wholeheartedly participates in war crimes of Zionists against Palestinians, in the geostrategically the most important part of the world needed for flowing of gas and world trade, inciting the World War Three with the sick idea that in the entire world should remain only the 'golden billion' of elite earth population."

Respected Sukla Sen, you also did not answer anything to my reminder that NATO trained and armed Ukrainian numerous regular army, giving it the green light to treat Russian speaking Ukrainians in eastern parts of Ukraine as a second rate citizens, forbidding them to use Russian language, read classical Russian writers and listen to classical Russian music, listen to Russian TV and radio stations. The same sanctions are still valid in all EU NATO member states.!!! This sanctions back-fired since EU is now made to buy Russian oil via India and other big nations which did not introduce Russia the sanctions, or to import liquid gas from the ubiquitous USA hegemonic power in decline, at seven to ten times higher price!

Probably this is one of the sources of your Putino and Russo phobia respected Sukla sen.

At the last, here are my answers to Putin's utterances and actions on Ukraine which you cited>:

I. Having in mind that MonteNegrin nation, for instance, was also recreated during the Tito's communism,in ex Yugoslavia (let me just remind everybody that the first name of Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, meaning that other ex/Yugoslav nations were not recognised until communists led by Tito''s communists came to power and had admirable success in industrialising until than agrarian country,  Another reminder: the greatest Montenegrin poet and Orthodox Patriarch, Petar Petrovic' Njegos', for instance, declared himself to be a Serb, I can understand also Ukrainian Russian speaking people that they themselves feel to be Russian, and should not be just because of that mistreated and attacked in the eastern part of Ukraine by the pro-Nazist regime in Kiev;

II ..."Lenin’s (read Tito's) principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (read Socialist Yugoslavia) in 1991.
I underline that I am not having anything against any people feeling themselves not to be Serbs or Russians, but this right should not turn them, rather their political elites, into Russophobes (read Serbophobes)..

BB I Putin signed  law on Russia's withdrawal from CTBT ratification', when NATO member states headed by USA MIC violated guarantees given to the Russia''s Gorbathcev when he allowed reunification of Germany, that NATO would not spread eastwords, towards the Russian borders, threatening its very survival in an attack by the collective West, that attempted to conquer Russia to get the access to its mineral and other riches in Siberia. I have the impression that Dr Hiren Gohain and Satinath Choudhary have an open ear for these arguments.

Dear Satinath Choudhary, I am most grateful to you for having taken the time to forward some of my messages to SP(I) and foill.list-servers. Please, keep on doing this forwarding, since it enables me to learn about colleagues who might have similar or opposing views on the theme of Genocide in Gaza and war in Ukraine.

Vera

https://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusahttps://f-bg.academia.edu/veravratusa
 .

[Satinath Choudhary]

Sokla jee says:

<<<

II. Then you've, apparently in desperation, again resorted to the silly claim as regards the "guarantee given to Gorbachev".

XX. The first thing is, assuming for the time being that any such guarantee was ever given, when that guarantee was given???

Evidently, it has got to be in 1989. Or in any case in 1991 or before. (Gorbachev was dethroned in 1991.)

Russia ratified the CTBT in 1996 or thereabout.

Putin ratfies the decision to withdraw from the CTBT in 2023 -- more than three decades after Gorbachev having been dethroned because of some guarantee 

given to him having been dishonoured!!!

Is it some sort of a joke!? 

I am dumb enough not to get it.

YY. Who had given the guarantee???

Who authorised whom to give such a guarantee?

Who endorsed?

In which treaty it has been laid down???

Surely, international guarantees are not given via private whispers??? Or are they???

>>>

Here is a document, I did not have to sweat too much to find on the web:

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner  Slavic Studies Panel Addresses “Who Promised What to Whom on NATO Expansion?”

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early#:~:text=Washington%20D.C.%2C%20December%2012%2C%202017,leaders%20to%20Gorbachev%20and%20other

Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).

===========

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Sati ji,

Thanks a lot for referring to a document.

It tells: "U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University."

Excellent!

Now, what did I ask???

"Who had given the guarantee???

Who authorised whom to give such a guarantee?

Who endorsed?

In which treaty it has been laid down???

Surely, international guarantees are not given via private whispers??? Or are they???"

Did it ever strike you what are the implications of this revelation as regards the shaded portion of the questions!???

This is apart from the (alleged) absurdity, that I had flagged just before putting these questions, of linking something that had happened back in 1989(?) with some action in 1923 with so much of water flowing down the Volga in between.  

Bye, for now.

Sukla

[Sukla Sen]

Yeah.

Now, you have come to the point!

Putin's "intention" is to  "denazify" and "demilitarise" Ukraine.

That means, at the very least, (i) regime change (via direct aggression) plus (ii) permanent elimination of its military infrastructure.

Just short of formally gobbling it up again.

That's precisely what I had tried to tell by citing from Putin's own testimony.

Thanks for concurring.

Something pretty similar Netanyahu is right now trying to do in respect of Palestine, in an even more grotesque fashion.

I, like so many others, feel morally compelled to oppose both Netanyahu and Putin -- and their nefarious projects -- in whatever way possible.

Sukla

On Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:54 Vera Vratusa <vera.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

It is you, respected Sukla Sen, who keeps on repeating himself much more than I repeat myself.You are repeating arguments back from the time we first dialogued about the Ukraine war and Putin, when you called me Putin's mouthpeace and I retorted that you might be as well characterised as NATO mouthpiece as far as the war in Ukraine is concerned.

I decided then to give up on you, since you had nothing better in store but name calling.which is the most unproductive waste of time. If I remember well, at the time Brian gently reminded you that there is the place to blame the pronazist regime in Kiev after putch in 2014 which acclaimed Hitler's collaborationist Bandera and raised children in a military fashion to hate Russian speaking Ukrainians as much to be prepared to mistreat them as second rate citizens and consequently preparing them to be ready to kill them.  
I Since you are still deaf on your ears for these arguments, please read "Commentary: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem", by Josh Cohen
March 20, 2018, 8:51 AM GMT+1, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary-idUSKBN1GV2TY/.
In conclusion of point one, Ukrainians have the right to feel themselves Ukrainians and have their state, as long as they do not go around killing Russian speaking Ukrainians

II I am the most grateful to colleague Satinath Choudhary who corroborated by the source on internet the claim that Gorbachov was promissed by the imperialist West militarily organised into NATO that it would not expand eastwards if Gorbachev agreed that Eest and Wastern Germany may be reunited.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early#:~:text=Washington%20D.C.%2C%20December%2012%2C%202017,leaders%20to%20Gorbachev%20and%20other

In conclusion, Putin has by now realised the first of his intentions, demilitarisation of Ukraine, so much so that Ukrainian solders are coming over to Russian forces and made the contract with Russian army to turn against their deranged commander in chief who keeps on pushing them to march into certain death. It is also now already the common knowledge that the military specialists and commending generals like Zaluzni, openly claim that Ukraine can not reconquer Donbas, let alone Krimea. Another source for you to read and learn: Zelensky is at war – with his generals
In Zaluzhny’s World War I stalemate analogy Ukraine would play Germany’s old role, losing for lack of supplies, https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/zelensky-is-at-war-with-his-generals/.

This means that soon will be realised also another SMO aim of Putin, denazification of Ukrainian government.
The west lead by the USA, the hegemonic power in steep decline, is already leaving Zelenski down the drain.

I publicly declare that I will in the future remain silent and will not any more react to your repetitive pro NATO version of events in Ukraine let provoke me to answer you again.
Best regards,
Vera

[Satinath Choudhary]

Sukla jee,

Please don't put Neetanyahoo on the same page with Putin. If you have to, the honor has to go to Biden! They (Netanyahoo & Biden) appear to be conjoined twins. Actually, it is not just Biden who is conjoined with Netanyahoo, it is the whole American establishment (the American President, together with the US Congress) that is conjoined with Netanyahoo. And it is the International Military Industrial Complex (IMIC) that glues the worst elements of humanity together. 

The simple reason why the US wants ‘full spectrum dominance’ of the Earth

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/31/the-simple-reason-why-the-us-wants-full-spectrum-dominance-of-the-earth/

The leading sentence for the above-mentioned article is:

The United States demands that the world bow down to its leadership. A failure to do so is met with the full force of the international military-industrial complex controlled by the US (government).

I would put it a bit differently:

The United States demands that the world bow down to its leadership. A failure to do so is met with the full force of the US government controlled by the international military-industrial complex.

Sukla jee, when did you turn into such a Putin hater that blinds you from what the US (cheered by the Europeans) has been doing around the world? Particularly in the kind of democracy that is prevalent around the world, it seems it would really be miraculous if a politician were a halfway decent person. They all have their own frailties. What is more important is what they do with their frailties - whether they execute them. That is why the US frailty becomes so important. Because its military has become so fattened, eating more than half the US budget year after year, nobody can dare disobey it. That's why the continued existence of people like Putin and Xi is so important, irrespective of their own frailties. In the absence of these two giants, the US war machine would have made minced meat of the rest of the world. Just see what they have done to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestinians, Syrians, and a host of Latin American and African countries.

==========

I do not know how much Putin and the Russian establishment make from arms production in Russia, but it would certainly pale compared to America. And the jacked-up price of TV/media political ads that make the American glue invincible. On the whole, nothing can be compared to the horror machine that America has been for the rest of the world - just see what they have done in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and umpteen other countries in the rest of the world. How many countries have Russian or Chinese establishments been destroyed since the Second World War? 

You and I should be thankful to the Russians and Chinese for deterring 

[Satinath Choudhary]

You and I should be thankful to the Russians and Chinese for deterring the US war machine from chewing the rest of the world.

[Sukla Sen]

Dear Sati ji,

Thanks for your candour.

So, two points, finally, stand settled.

I. The "assurance" (to Gorbachev) bit is just a propaganda bluff. Now, you, sort of, concede that -- without being too explicit though.

(It's, however, not too clear whether you were aware of that all along. Perhaps not.)

II. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is in pursuance of his "intentions" to effectively gobble Ukraine up once again.

The third point that follows is that, in this, you'd stand Putin by.

The reason being the US (or Biden?) is a mega criminal -- out to dominate the world -- and hence you'd back its any and every countable opponent, no matter how heinous its own track record is. You'd, unwaveringly, stand by even their gruesome crimes. For it helps to restrain a bigger criminal.

Stripped of customary window dressings, that's the sum and substance of your position.

It should be frankly acknowledged that the Left -- with its traditional reliance on "moral" planks -- is pretty divided on the issue of Ukraine/Putin. Not on Netanyahu/Palestine though.

You and I are far from unique.

It's a sort of interminable debate.

Never mind.

In that context, reproducing below an exhaustively and solidly argued account of the debate on Ukraine, within the Left.

Sukla

<https://www.radicalsocialist.in/articles/world-politics/974-ukraine-divisions-among-the-left>

Ukraine: Divisions Among The Left

Published on Sunday, 30 October 2022 13:57

Written by Radical Socialist

It was never expected that the response to the war on Ukraine of the Left internationally, would be so divided. Broadly there have been four positions held by those who consider themselves to be anti-capitalist socialists of one kind or the other. The arguments, rationalisations and justifications provided by the first three of these groups do, in some degree or the other, overlap. 

The first group (which is certainly the smallest of the four categories) includes those who fully support the Russian invasion as well as those who while not going gung-ho in supporting the invasion will neither call it an invasion nor condemn it in even the mildest of language. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation fully supports the action which it describes only as a "special military operation". The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM calls the war "unfortunate"  and insists that US/NATO expansionism is the real cause forcing Russia to behave as it did. The older and smaller Communist Party of India (CPI) says much the same without using the word "unfortunate" even, and makes a meaningless general call for peace in the region. That is to say, neither of these parties make even a cursory criticism of the Russian action and put not just primary but sole blame on the US/NATO. Whatever the leaders and ideologues of these two parties in India may think privately, in public they do not even declare that Russia (and China) are now capitalist countries let alone that they are imperialist. In fact, a principal ideologue of the CPM, Vijay Prashad who has written a number of good books on the Middle East and on the Indian diaspora in the US, says that the only imperialist country in the world is the US. So France and the UK, despite their behaviour in Africa, the Middle East or elsewhere are no longer to be seen as imperialist powers despite their past. While lower order powers making military-political incursions abroad whether they be Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Israel, etc. are also absolved of any charge of being weaker imperialist countries or even sub-imperialisms. It is not just that the US is the biggest imperialist power with the ugliest historical record which it is; but that it is uniquely imperialist!. However, this claim cannot be used to deny the ugly and unjustified behaviour of either China or Russia or even the former USSR. Loyalty to the CPM/CPI, however, has generally triumphed to the point of its acolytes and leaders repeatedly defending the indefensible whether it is the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 or of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or post-Soviet Russia in Chechnya and Ukraine.

Second Group: Two Variants

The second group do condemn the Russian invasion in milder or stronger forms. But they generally avoid reference to Ukraine's 'right to self-determination' since if one were to endorse this clearly and unequivocally or even half-heartedly, then what follows as a matter of logic is endorsing the right to resist of the Ukraine people, whatever be the nature of their current government, to fight as they see fit to regain their freedom and sovereignty. However, the central preoccupation of this group of leftists is to focus on the iniquities of the US and NATO. The latter's expansionist drive is not seen as the sole reason for the invasion but it is seen as the main reason. This is the dominant prism used for understanding the why of the invasion and what the response of the Left and progressives should be to this development. Depending on whether one sees Russia as itself an imperialist country or not, there will be variation in the degree of culpability to be attached to Russia. a) Those reluctant to identify Russia as an imperialist power (even if of much lesser weight than the US) can then talk of its 'misadventures' or its 'imperial' behaviour but above all emphasize its 'reactive' character mistaken though this is or might be. They will highlight the iniquities of the Ukrainian government, its rightwing and even its supposedly far-right or Nazi character which can then serve as a kind of excuse for Russia's assault. b) Then there are those who say very clearly that Russia (and China) are imperialist powers though weaker than the US. Hence there is an inter-imperialist dimension to the Ukraine issue and a corresponding geopolitics that must be unravelled. That there is a geopolitical dimension that has to addressed is obvious since the impact and implications of the Russian invasion are not confined to Ukraine and yes, these inter-imperialist rivalries have also been playing out within Ukraine's own internal politics. 

The crucial question is how much weight to give to this inter-imperialist dimension as a causal or explanatory factor behind Russia's decision to invade. Those subscribing to approach a) given above will give much more weight to the geo-political dimension (they are reluctant to call Russia imperialist) and will in their arguments provide at least implicit rationalisations, even justifications, that will greatly soften their explicit words of formal condemnation. Supplementary arguments will be used to buttress their case. There will be talk of Kiev's repression in the Donbas region where pro-Russia separatist forces are presumably wanting to exercise their choice of political self-determination. This argument then becomes a cover of sorts for Russian intervention in the past (the 2014 takeover of Crimea) and the 'understandable' desire of Moscow today to 'counter' this drive against the more culturally Russified eastern part of the Ukraine. Focussing more attention in one's arguments on the 'Nazi' character of the government and the ruling classes for example, becomes a way of  diverting attention away from the fact that it is the huge mass of ordinary working people in Ukraine who are angry, who are suffering deaths, injuries and devastations from the military assault and who are fighting back in whatever way they can. To pretend or even imply that the broad masses are dupes of their authoritarian rulers is shameful. One can certainly criticise the far-right forces and ruling government in Ukraine but there are liberals, socialists, Marxists, feminists who are very much part of the forces resisting the Russian forces. This is rarely if ever mentioned; nor is it pointed out that Ukraine's quite flawed democratic polity is less flawed than that of Putin's Russia. Instead, most efforts are made to promote the view that since the 2014 Maidan protests (supposedly engineered by Washington) the Kiev regime is basically a puppet or near-puppet regime of the US led West.

Those subscribing to approach b) will usually say a lot more about Ukraine's sovereignty being violated. They will make more noises about the suffering of the Ukrainian people and that they are resisting. They will generally be more critical of both the domestic and external behaviour of Putin and the Russian ruling classes---after all, Russia is an ambitious imperialist power. Its recent record from 1990 onwards can be brought in to defend the argument that they too are an imperialist power though not one able to match the US. So Russia's military-political interventions into Afghanistan, Georgia, Moldova, Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kazakhstan, Chechnya, Armenia and Azerbaijan and its own establishment of a pact of countries over which it can exercise some degree of control and influence, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) are much more likely to be pointed out. But since this lot of leftists also claim that the primary factor in causing this war is inter-imperialist rivalries, this section of the Left will also greatly underplay the more fundamental reason for why the Russian government carried out this invasion. Ironically, this is not something that Putin and the key decision-makers and supporters around him have ever been shy of publicly voicing---that the very formation of a post-Soviet Ukraine as an independent country is unacceptable and that, in part or preferably whole, it should cease to exist and be part of a Greater Russia and subordinate to the dictates from Moscow. That Putin declared as much to the Russian people just before invading is either ignored or only very briefly mentioned in the most cursory way. No, it is US/NATO expansionism that is the main culprit alongside the geopolitical ambitions of Russia beyond the specific concern with Ukraine that must be understood to make proper sense of what has happened. 

In both the cases of a) and b) it is essentially assumed that Putin is so naive that he would not recognise that his attack on Ukraine (the country had not even reached the stage of getting a NATO Membership Plan), far from weakening this western expansionism, would solidify and spur it forward towards greater hostility and efforts to militarily encroach nearer Russia's borders. It should occasion no surprise that Finland and Sweden have now decided to become members of NATO thus providing newer border outposts against Russia. It is also revealing that Putin has dismissed  these developments as of little worry or consequence indicating that for him, capturing as much as he can of Ukraine and dismembering it is a much greater priority than concern about US/NATO expansionism. Both a) and b) use the language of this being a 'proxy war' between Russia and the US-led West. What an extraordinary claim! The term 'proxy war 'is used in cases where within some country there is an internal conflict between two major forces, something like a civil war situation where two major external forces or blocs are militarily-politically respectively supporting opposing sides. The 'external' aspect is then to be seen as the major arena of contestation rather than the internal conflict itself. The geopolitical dimension is given a higher political status and concern than the national dimension. Is it any wonder then that upholders of this approach go on and on about the global impact of the war in Ukraine, of how global food supplies are being affected and how a new Cold War is emerging and how this new and growing tension is making things globally worse and dangerous. All true of course. But this then should lead to a more severe and forthright condemnation of the culprit Russia which has caused it and should reinforce support from the international Left for Ukrainian resistance. Moreover, to call this basically a 'proxy war' is absurd. It is an actual war launched by one side, Russia against another capitalist country which is not itself an imperialist country or a weaker imperialist power or even a sub-imperialist one. The use of the term 'proxy war' disguises what is the central characteristic---that for Ukraine this is a war of national liberation against a foreign power out to crush and subordinate it and that Ukraine therefore deserves the support of the international left which must always be both unconditional in defending its right to self-determination and yet always prepared to be critical and even opposed to the ways its government and other forces may go about conducting this struggle. 

As for the possible advocacy and exercise of the right to self-determination in Donbas and Crimea, this cannot ever be justifiably done under the military jackboot of a foreign occupier. The military takeover of Crimea in 2014 followed by a referendum under occupation was a deliberate and ruthless violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum whereby Russia, in return for retrieving Ukraine's nuclear arsenal (then the third largest in the world) promised never to violate its territorial integrity---a betrayal that gets little or no mention among the geopolitical preoccupations of the Left rationalisers of Russian behaviour.

Third Group

This third group is for peace and an end to militarism. It notes the suffering of the Ukrainian people and condemns Russia for what it has done. But for various reasons---the danger of further military escalation, the nefarious designs of the US for wanting to 'bleed' Russia over time by continuing the war---it wants a settlement as quickly as possible. This group is therefore against US/NATO supplying of arms to Ukraine---a posture also held by the first and second group of leftists discussed above. Another common position held by these three groups is that economic sanctions against Russia should be opposed because these will hurt ordinary working people economically. That they are in fact endorsing and supporting an undeclared regime of sanctions against the Ukrainian people (their desired embargo on arms) whereby on a mass scale the suffering endured by Ukrainians---millions displaced as refugees, physical deaths and injuries, destruction of homes and devastation of everyday life is far beyond what can happen in Russia through sanctions---does not even seem to register on the minds of these leftists. How is this settlement to be achieved? Why, through diplomacy presumably! And how is that going to happen? Is a ceasefire and settlement to be somehow imposed on the belligerents or at least made more possible through pressures applied from outside powers?  Since Russia is much the more powerful side in this war isn't it logical that it would be easier to achieve a settlement by pressuring the weaker side, the Ukrainians? In brief, what follows from this logic is that for the peace advocates, in the name of a practical and realistic assessment of the balance of forces on the ground, the least consideration should be given to what the Ukrainians themselves think or want. 

Ukrainians want justice; they want a retreat of Russia, they want reparations. Their only hope of being able to move some way at least towards these goals depends on changing the course of this war in a direction whereby the costs to Russia, material and political, become progressively higher. Weapons support, whatever be the motivations of the suppliers which are not the same as those of the Ukrainian people fighting, is vital. Certainly, those motivations can be fiercely criticised by left voices but solidarity with the people of Ukraine is primary. They have to decide whether and when to stop fighting. We on the outside can disagree with tactics, strategies and policies and warn about this or that. But we must respect their freedom of agency to decide as they see fit because they are the people oppressed! On this issue the position of Chomsky and other peace votaries like him is not to be upheld or supported.

Fourth Group

This fourth group aligns itself with what the anti-Stalinist Marxists and Socialists and Socialist Feminists and progressive Anarchists of Ukraine themselves say. Listen to us, they say. We are as much against the US and NATO as you in the West and elsewhere are. But this war is not about Russian security concerns but primarily about its imperialist ambitions. We are fighting this war; we need political, moral, material support and yes a continual supply of weapons to enable us to effectively resist this military onslaught. The more determinedly the international left supports us the stronger can the Ukrainian left become internally, for we are much more aware than you outsiders of our own class and internal divisions and its dangers even as we are broadly united as we must be, in opposing the Russian military and its government. We, like leftists internationally, also want a dismantling of NATO which has now become more difficult to attain. But what about the dismantling of all imperialist blocs like the CSTO about which you say little or nothing?

Any end to this war, whether temporary or prolonged or permanent will be shaped by the course this war will take. And that trajectory will itself depend on the strength and durability of the will of the Ukrainian people to keep resisting this great injustice done to them. The calculations of the US and other Western powers, that currently say they support Ukraine, are always subject to change and to the proclivity of their elites/governments to making unprincipled deals with others including Russia if they think this will best suit their 'national interests'. The international revolutionary and democratic left should be the most principled supporters in the fight against injustices everywhere. 

Even as we criticise those sections of the Western left who are not prepared to give unconditional yet critical support to Ukraine and go on and on about the Russian invasion as basically a reaction to the US and its allies, we can be grateful that at least they are strongly critical of and opposed to their own governments for their imperialist behaviour or collusion in imperialist pacts like NATO. In India, however, too many liberals as well as many of those who see themselves as on the left refuse to similarly attack the stand of the Indian government but actually applauded its so-called neutrality on the war in Ukraine. This is an India which is, in all but name, a strategic ally of the US and whose own imperialist ambitions to become a dominant regional (perhaps global) power require it to maintain a strong military relationship with Russia and Israel and with the US as well. India has the second largest army in the world. It has the third largest military budget and is the fourth largest purchaser of arms. Its healthcare expenditure as a proportion of GDP is the fourth lowest in the world and it has the largest absolute number of malnourished and undernourished people in the world. India itself is a lower order imperialist power with ambitions to become an ever more powerful imperialist one. Why should leftists support such an orientation let alone cover it up with false references to India having a foreign policy of 'strategic autonomy' or 'neutrality'? 

In a world divided into separate nation-states the left everywhere must always also take a stand against the pernicious, immoral and unprincipled positions adopted by its own national governments. This, much of the Indian organised left has failed to do. The  position of the Radical Socialist (RS) group is clear. That the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist-Liberation (CPIML-Liberation) has also taken a forthright stand condemning the Russian invasion and supporting the Ukrainian resistance is to its credit. The Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) does condemn Russia and declare its support for Ukrainian sovereignty and resistance. However, its public statement is a very long and rambling text which spends most of its time making generalities about 'proletarians of the world unite' and of 'turning the imperialist war into a civil war and revolution'. The statement has more to do with propagandising the general perspectives of the Party than with analysing or focusing on the specificities of the Russia-Ukraine issue. One of the more interesting sidelights revealed in the text is that the CPI-Maoist calls China a "social imperialist" country. This means it sees China as still not a capitalist country but one which turned towards social imperialism presumably after the leadership of Mao ended. That the two biggest parties of the mainstream Indian left---the CPM and CPI---have neither condemned Russia nor the stand of the Indian government nor offered solidarity to the Ukrainian people, is but another symptom of why we need to build a newer  revolutionary and democratic left in India.

Achin Vanaik 

An Addendum 

Many of those who position themselves on the anti-capitalist radical Left nonetheless have viewed the war in Ukraine through a lens which saw the primary conflict as between a much stronger and more hegemonic imperialist power the US and a weaker one Russia. Even for those who didn't give primary status to this imperialist face-off, some did believe that this would require them to more generally support the lesser imperialism since counter-balancing against the stronger US (and allies) opens up greater spaces globally for progressives forces and struggles against capitalism. Another term when used on the left buys into a similar kind of thinking. This is the belief that in today's world there is real merit in supporting the development of 'multipolarity' as against a unipolar order represented by the US. In effect, the way is made clear for these sections of the Left to, in some way or the other, take sides with the "lesser evil" imperialism and endorse its regressive foreign policy behaviour. 

A Realist Discourse

This language of 'poles' and 'polarity' (whether of unipolarity, bipolarity or multipolarity) is a standard refrain in the Realist discourse on international relations and foreign policy behaviour and is used by rightwing and liberal thinkers who have no interest whatsoever in fighting against capitalism, domestically or globally. So why do leftists who believe they are inspired by Marxism, adopt the same terminology not only using the term 'multipolarity' as a conceptual tool but also ascribing virtues to it as a desired outcome? 

In this Realist discourse, states are seen as the primary actors on the world stage. But the state entity that that they refer to is understood as a 'national territorial totality' when it is actually a much smaller set of apparatuses that is encased within a much wider social formation involving all kinds of tensions and relations between the state and civil society, between different sections in that larger social order, with above all, the division between classes. All states are class states that are structurally biased towards the interests of their ruling classes. In the post-1990 overwhelmingly capitalist world we live in today, these are the interests of capitalists, weaker or stronger, more or less independent from others. However, this much more important reality is covered up and obscured by the notion of the state in its foreign policy acting as a 'national territorial totality'. The fact that world politics is very much shaped by the competition among the most powerful such states, each pursuing the interests domestically and externally of their own capitalist classes and TNCs, is similarly obscured. 

Talk of polarity (single, dual or multi-) is another way of shifting the understanding of vertical power relations away from its social and class nature to a supposedly horizontal set of power relations between a few 'poles', each of which is also understood as a 'national territorial totality'. A state defined in such a way is then axiomatically pursuing the 'national interest' and to question this means one is being anti-national and unpatriotic. There is all too often  much wisdom in the saying that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." 

Revolutionary Marxists should (a) unconditionally but critically support oppressed nations subject to military invasions by imperialist powers even if they are capitalist and autocratic e.g., opposing the US invasions of 1991 and 2003 of Iraq. b) They should support progressive anti-capitalist forces and struggles in all countries (whether liberal democratic or authoritarian) against their own capitalist ruling classes even if these capitalists are feeble and subordinate to other ruling classes in other countries. c) It is important to fight for greater democratization even within a capitalist country and to oppose any steps being taken toward greater authoritarianism internally. However, when it comes to the external bullying and imperialist behaviour of the stronger countries it is not their internal political character i.e., whether they are liberal democratic or authoritarian that is the key explanatory factor but their capitalist character. All such imperialist behaviour and efforts to establish their respective 'spheres of influence'---a euphemism for bullying and trying to subordinate in one way or the other weaker neighbouring and even more distant countries---must be opposed.

No Longer the Cold War Era 

What about the idea that multipolarity provides greater global space for progressive and revolutionary struggles? In today's world this is a dangerous delusion. Today's world order is fundamentally different from that in the Cold War era. Then the world was not 'Bipolar'---a deeply misleading term---but had a systemic divide. That is to say, there were two fundamentally different socio-economic systems, a capitalist vs. a non-capitalist bloc arraigned against each other. The existence of such a non-capitalist  but far from socialist bloc meant that an objective space was created for progressive struggles in the developing world to advance, most notably de-colonization. But even here the primary reason for successful liberation came from the internal struggle for national liberation howsoever much it may have been helped by outside material and political support. Even so, in this misnamed 'Socialist or 'Communist' bloc, because of their governments ridiculous belief in the possibility of "socialism in one country", the nationalism became much more important than socialist aspirations which required the  strongest commitment to the principles of  Proletarian Internationalism. The end result was nationalist hostilities and rivalries---Stalin vs. Tito, the Sino-Soviet split, the USSR against Albania, China militarily attacking Vietnam (1979), Kampuchea's war with Vietnam, not to mention the diplomatic games played between the USSR and the US, the former's repressions against progressive and pro-Socialist struggles in Hungary (!956)  and Czechoslovakia(1968), and the shameful entente between Mao's China and the US under Nixon.  The best characterisation of the external behaviour  of the most powerful non-capitalist regimes of USSR and China  is that they were deeply contradictory---both progressive and reactionary.  

Today's world order is very different. The most powerful countries are now capitalist and imperialist. Different imperialist powers (US, Russia, China and a few others) are interested in supporting regime change in other countries if this can result in governments that are more amenable to their own regime. Even better if after such changes they become subordinate or best of all if they become basically puppets. Of course over time, even such alliance arrangements and networks because of imperialist competitions will be subject to shifting compositions among their country-members. But the one thing to be absolutely sure about is that none of these imperialist powers want to promote or see anti-capitalist regimes emerge anywhere. Capitalist competition will always create temporary or longer term winners and losers as well as shifts in power rankings. But what remains the common global commitment is that the world must remain capitalist. 

Nor do the imperialist countries care whether their allies are internally more democratic or authoritarian--- the crucial thing is that they remain allies and subordinates. As for the weaker and smaller countries which are capitalist or seeking to establish a more stable or independent capitalism, they too are bitterly opposed to progressive anti-capitalist politics and struggles. Why then should revolutionary leftists see any virtue in today's world of such inter-imperialist rivalries? We should not be fighting to shift the world from a "super-imperialism" to a "multi-imperialism" but against all imperialist and capitalist states. Our strategic allies in this much longer term domestic and global struggle are not governments but progressive and anti-capitalist forces and organisations everywhere. 

From the time of Marx till the 1990s despite all ups and downs, the banner of internationalism was upheld by the Left. Today, contra the hopes of Marx,  it is the biggest capitalists of the world who are saying "Despite all differences let us try and unite to protect and strengthen the world capitalist order since we having nothing to lose, certainly not our privileges"! 

The struggle for the Revolutionary Left to once again capture the banner of internationalism has now become more necessary than ever. 

Achin Vanaik

[October 11, 2022]

[Had posted once earlier.]