It must be that everything that is happening in Eastern Europe is just a big misunderstanding. NATO’s expansion to the east has nothing to do with the attempt to subdue and tear Russia apart. No, the goal is to make the strongest possible defense alliance so that the Earthlings would be ready to resist the alien attack, once it happens. Finally, who will defend the planet if not NATO, and in that alliance Ukraine is irreplaceable. Hence, this is not about a NATO campaign in the east and has nothing to do with some earlier, bloody attempts of a similar kind. No, this is a misreading of Western intentions. This is a classic case of Russian paranoia which sees threat and conspiracy in everything, even in foreign bases and missiles right next to its border.
The irony and cynicism from the previous paragraph probably does not suit the situation in which Ukrainians suffer and whose lives are dissolved in a thousand ways. But how to hide the nausea from the crocodile tears that are shed over the fate of Ukraine by those who pushed Ukrainians into war and who would drink them in a glass of water, unsweetened? How to react to the diabolical hypocrisy of those who have been systematically destroying foreign countries and making their citizens unhappy for decades, not caring about international law or elementary civilizational norms, and who, suddenly, right now and in Ukraine, discovered that international law exists?
Years of madness
The Russian-Ukrainian war was inevitable, it was planned and everything, step by step, led to such an outcome. The plan was not made in Ukraine or Russia. Both countries are tragic objects of other people’s plans and their own weaknesses. All we are looking at is a crescendo of processes that began long before 2022. It did not take much intelligence, in-depth strategic insights, intelligence or doctorates to predict what would happen.
I wrote a couple of paragraphs that follow in early September 2014, on the occasion of the first Ukrainian crisis, and they were published on mine blog:
“There are moments in history when it seems that madness is rushing unstoppably, that everything is getting out of control, that some hidden hand is pushing the world into ruin and that chaos cannot stand in the way. The triumph of evil and madness is always seen more clearly in retrospect, always when it is too late.
Never since the end of the Second World War has madness ruled Europe as it does today. Europe is reminiscent of a puppet stage run by an invisible hand, or, at best, a stage dominated by conceited or perhaps blackmailed political Pygmies.
The Ukrainians will lose the most, because there is no winner in a war like this. Who does not believe, let him ask the former Yugoslavs. Let him ask them for whose grandmother’s health they died, were expelled or were expelled, and for when and why they made each other unhappy. How did they live before the war, and how do they live today? Who are the real war winners and who profited from their misfortune? History has not forgiven the Yugoslavs for their stupidity, so neither will the Ukrainians.
Russia will also lose, whatever the outcome. If he does not surrender, it will be a small consolation that he had nowhere to go, and that he chose between hopeless, slow dying on his knees, or dying with hope and a rifle in his hand. Russia’s suicidal policy in the 1990s is only now gaining its full meaning. It is not worse to repeat – history does not forgive stupidity.
The only visible winners, at least for now, are the United States. The power at sunset manages to slow down its descent from the throne, it manages to weaken both Europe and Russia at the same time, preparing for the great Chinese final. And maybe it won’t even reach the finals and everything may end with a big fireworks display that won’t have its chroniclers. And as history teaches us, only human stupidity is eternal. “
I was wrong only in the last sentence – this is not just about human stupidity. This is a much blacker, much more terrible evil – an inhuman evil, the one mentioned in the New Testament.
Life is nowhere else
Before our eyes, a given tragedy is unfolding between two close Slavic peoples who were in the same state until yesterday, which only changed its name. And when they parted peacefully in 1991, everyone went their own way, bravely, headlong, straight into economic and social chaos. Foreign advisers led them by the hand and showed them the way. On that path, Ukraine managed to make a feat and go much worse, even than Russia.
Today, Ukraine is the country with the lowest gross domestic product per capita in Europe and has just lost the battle for the penultimate place from Moldova. This sad staggering cannot be explained by political reasons and conflicts in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainians cannot blame the Russians for their economic ruin. Even before 2014, Ukraine was constantly falling on the ranking list of European countries. At the beginning of the transition in 1991, Ukraine had a GDP per capita higher than Belarus by about 63 percent, higher than Poland by about 37 percent, and higher than Albanian by about 293 percent. Before the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine in 2013, its GDP per capita was lower than the Polish by about 51 percent, the Belarusian about 33 percent and higher than the Albanian by only eight percent. There is no country in Europe that has fallen so badly in transition.
Ukraine is not part of Saharan Africa, nor is it a country of illiterate or ill-educated people. How is it possible for Ukrainians to tolerate such a stumble, how is it possible that their tycoon and corrupt political elite so enchanted them and redirected them to the wrong side through manipulations? Instead of confronting their political scum, the Ukrainians, again with a lot of help from Western friends, estimated that the snake is not in the bowels, but on the other side of the eastern border – in Russia, so they need NATO protection. And when it becomes a member of NATO, Ukraine will prosper just as, for example, Northern Macedonia prospered.
Ukraine has thus decided that those who are further away from it are closer to it – not only geographically, but also spiritually and culturally, those who despise Ukrainians just as much as Russians, if not more. That contempt is hidden for only a moment in the name of strategic reasons, and it will last for a few more days after the end of the war, regardless of its outcome. And then everything will return to normal. Solidarity with Ukrainians who remain in the West will be replaced by intolerance towards foreigners who burden the social system, take jobs, raise the crime rate and lower the salaries of domestic workers. Ukrainians will again be the others – those who are not “us”. Even if Ukraine one day joins the European Union or NATO, that contempt will not disappear, nor will the status of Ukrainians as second-class citizens change.
And then when you renounce yourself and try to become something you are not, and what they have convinced you is more civilized and better, you will not become that other – you are more likely to become nothing. This is true not only for Ukrainians, but also for “enlightened” Russians, Serbs and others, for all those who would like to be what they are not, in the hope that they will be acceptable to those who will never accept them. Ukrainians could inquire a little with Bulgarians, Romanians, and even Poles, and exchange experiences with them regarding acceptance, respect, integration and “Europeanization”. And they can pour oil into the water quite scientifically and exactly and see how it mixes.
In the name of humanism
At the risk of sounding silly, it seems to me that contempt for Eastern Europe, for the Slavs, and especially intolerance for the Orthodox, is metaphysical and inexplicable to the rational mind. She is not from the other day, if she is from this world at all. Only this intolerance on the verge of hatred can explain why Europe’s suicide policy does not meet with rebellion from its citizens.
Why do the citizens of Western Europe support the insane policy of NATO expansion to the east, which is already hitting them on the head, due to the large increase in the cost of living? What kind of rush into a war that can become atomic? If geostrategy is left aside, the Ukrainian war is just an excuse for hidden Russophobia to explode uncontrollably. What kind of hatred is that that obscures the view and suppresses even the instinct of self-preservation?
This hatred gave itself the appearance of humanism and hid behind a mask of compassion for Ukrainians – except those from eastern Ukraine. Western humanity (which is honest in some parts of society) has clear boundaries and is guided by the media. Those who sincerely and wholeheartedly cared about the suffering of Iraqis, Libyans and Syrians are shedding tears over the fate of Ukraine, just as they care about the hell of Yemen today. Those who today, in the name of humanism, sincerely participate in the tragedy of Ukrainian refugees and their children, will harass Russians and Russian children tomorrow when they recognize them in their environment. Perhaps Russophobia is strongest in the most educated parts of Western societies, which are not bothered by pathological outbursts of Russophobia related to Russian culture or the humiliation of its employees. Are we on the way to erasing Russian culture from European culture, and maybe even banning it?
Is Russia innocent in this tragic story? No, but her guilt is on the other side – on the side of incompetence, on the side of delay and indecision. Russia has not been able to control the processes in Ukraine by soft power, nor to use the advantage of the Russian language, historical, family or economic ties. Corrupt Russia, Russia of huge property inequalities, could not even offer itself as an attractive alternative social model. There is no Russophilia who can or should ignore these sad facts.
An even bigger, fatal mistake is that Russia, with its sluggish and indecisive foreign policy, persistently sent the wrong, defeatist signals. It has done almost nothing to make the world aware of the decades-long humiliation of Russian minorities in the Baltics or Ukraine, nor has it done anything more serious to protect them. Russia also reacted lukewarmly to the constant strengthening of Nazi movements in its neighborhood, even though the Russians and Russia were the main targets of that madness. She allowed the processes in Ukraine to go too far, without setting clear red lines much, much earlier. That is why no one took Russia seriously until a few days ago, hence this great, global shock.
Only today, with a huge delay and for the first time in the last few decades, are they starting to take Russia seriously. The price of the delay is high, much higher than it had to be, the risks are huge and the outcome is uncertain. The only thing that is certain is the suffering of Ukrainian citizens and the death of soldiers on both sides. It is even blacker and, I am afraid, it is even more certain that some dark forces are pushing the world into chaos and that chaos is the goal.
Cover photo: Wojtek Radwanski / AFP via Getty Images
Source oko.rts.rs
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