But I do cry for the Crimean Tatars, for they are the native people there. Living in Crimea, history has not been easy on them; being part of Russia, a major source of that unease, is not something one would wish for them either.
That in no way means I reject the reality that Russia was never going to allow Crimea be part of Nato. It’s not better that Crimea is Russia now, but it is the only option on the table we set up ourselves. The tragedy of the Tatars is just another part of the clusterfuck that all of this is. We walked them into this willingly, not giving a rats ass about them, and it is what it is now.

Nothing bad is happening to the Tartars under Russian control. They are far better off under the Russian Federation than they could ever be independently (thus a toy between great powers like Georgia or Armenia, and that’s a best case) or under a Western controlled regime like Kiev.

I’m not sure why Russia or China wants to have anything to do with Western Ukraine at this point. Let themselves be abandoned by Europeans and Americans for a decade or two and see what happens. Gladio type operations are going to happen no matter what and direct involvement will just cause more problems.

I don’t understand why Russia and China are more merciful and kind to their enemies and double dealers than to friends. No matter why or how, abandoning the Syrian people to HTS/Turkey/Israel is a terrible look. Still having normal relations with Israel is a terrible look. Letting Erdogan and Aliyev get away with what they do is a terrible look. They’re letting their purported pragmatism look like there’s no consequences for being their enemy and no benefits for being their friend.

In the second paragraph, I’m pretty sure “suggests that Ukraine owes America nothing” needs to be vice versa, otherwise the sentence makes no sense, and then in paragraph three, “see this academic study” isn’t actually a link.

Agree w/ virtually every word, except perhaps China’s role in supporting Russia seems overstated. Aside from remaining friendly, refusing to join economic war, continuing to buy Russian exports that China itself badly needs, buying them in yuan instead of dollars, and exporting things under the table that Turkey, India and Kazakhstan would have sold to Russia sub rosa, I’ve seen little news of China ‘propping up’ Russia. After and even during the conflict, China will have needed Russia more than Russia needs China. Though the interdependency is significant.

I think you pretty much nailed it, but it’s worth mentioning that this is what America does. It has done precisely the same thing to nation after nation. No nation has ever survived friendship with the United States. Britain? Yes, Britain is in wonderful condition, isn’t it?

Thank you for the clarifying history time-line, Ian. I am thinking of Ukraine now as a damp, bedraggled squeaky toy, tossed between two pit-bulls, Russia and the US, who would eventually tear it to shreds.
But, Ukraine shares a border (that’s the meaning of their name!) as well as history, culture, genetic make-up, with Russia. The US is thousands of miles away. (And let’s stop with this pretense of the US as a beacon of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom:’ we have invaded (and wrecked) more sovereign countries since 1945 than Russia. Or China.)
Ukraine, to survive, needs to be neutral. And the US needs to stop interfering.

“… those who wanted to move into a democratic, free-market, socially progressive future like the Czech, Baltic and Polish countries.”

LOL.

Oligarchs there, oligarchs there, it is all run by oligarchs.

“Democratic” — No such thing, it is and has always been smoke and mirrors. If you are on the side of the United States, you are owned by their oligarchs.

“Free-Market” — Again, no such thing, especially once you have accepted the IMF’s kiss, they then screw you any way they want, any time they want. “Free-market” just means you are reduced to economic and financial concubinage to New York and London.

“Socially Progressive” — OK, I’ll give you this one. But the era of the Democrats with their fiscally conservative and socially progressive policies are over, we are now moving into the fiscally regressive, socially hyper-regressive Christofascist era of the MAGAts. So, caught between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Anglo-Evangelical Christofascsists… I dunno — is that tomato, tomato or potato, potato?

This post should be adorning the pages of every MSM outlet in the nation. If, that is, we were a nation that values the unvarnished truth.

But instead, we drink the #CapitalistPropaganda varnish convinced it will hurt someone beside ourselves.

I just marvel at the stupidity of anyone who watches a television anymore — unless of course it is to monitor the workings of the high priests of propaganda.

>As for American claims that Ukraine used them, rather the other way around, they are without merit and beyond dishonorable.

You are forgetting that Ukraine used BILLIONS of USA dollars to influence USA politics (bribing politicians, bribing journalists) in favor of Ukraine and also in favor of Democrats versus Trump in all of his elections. Ukraine and especially Zelensky (he wasn’t involved in 2016 election, only 2020 and 2024) owes the USA and Trump personally big time for that interference.

It was a giant payola scheme: USA politicians vote for and journalists produce propaganda in favor of money to Ukraine, Ukraine feeds money back to those politicians and journalists. Ukrainian people need to hang their own politicians from the nearest tree or else the Ukrainian people take responsibility for the corruption and therefore owe the USA for every penny they took from USA plus interest.

I think Trump knows that “rare earths” aren’t rare because only Ukraine has them; they’re rare RVERYWHERE. But Trump was savvy enough to know that if he backed out of Ukraine without a bullshit trophy like “rare earths”, the Lindsey Graham wing of his own party is liable to defect. At least now that Zelensky has refused “the deal”, Trump can try to walk away as a spurned peacemaker. Try to walk away…Congress and the MIC still may not let him.

The only points I’ll argue with are that the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine revolted in that they wanted federalism. Our media habitually calls them ‘separatists’, but they actually wanted what would effectively be a United States of Urkaine after the central government in Kiev was clearly taken over by anti-Russian fanatics. Once Kiev’s response was to wage a war of ethnic cleansing against its own citizens, the attitude shifted over a decade to where those oblasts are now fine with just being formally annexed into Russia proper.

Now, related to this is the idea that the ‘separatists’ never had any real legitimacy, and were just Russian troops in disguise. This is the Ukrainian excuse for why their ‘anti-terrorism’ operation failed multiple times. It’s hard to prove what degree of direct Moscow involvement there was, but if you look up the biographies of key Donbass and Lughansk people like Givi (and basically all of those OG militia guys are dead now, mostly killed by Ukrainian terrorist actions), they were all authentic locals who were born in the old Ukrainian SSR. This is also where the habit of fighter pilot style callsign nicknames in this conflict originally came from; these people were actually from the area, still had family there, and were trying to protect their identities. Eventually the Ukrainian troops took up the habit, completely missing the original point, and now you have all these Nazi thug bozos walking around calling themselves Thor or whatever.

A lot of the Donbas militia fighters were genuinely locals, and to the extent there were any Russian regulars going undercover, many of those were volunteers, but I can’t say to what extent they were genuine or were rather Flying Tiger style ‘volunteers’ operating with firm Moscow sanction. I do believe at some point Putin actually at least rhetorically tried to curb the flow of Russian citizens going there to fight.

The reality is that Eastern Ukraine was, and is, extremely tightly integrated with Russia, families and business connections extend across the border to the point there’s little distinction, and plenty of Russian citizens were willing to go there and fight for it entirely willingly. In addition, Ukraine was filled with military equipment (the Cold War Urkainian military was far larger than the 40,000 it had been downsized to by 2014. All that old gear didn’t just vanish), and there were plenty of local people with prior military service to fill out the militias. The ‘separatists’ really were plausibly predominantly homegrown and self-supplied.

I don’t understand the “honor” argument or headlining the “betrayal of Ukraine”.

We (for some value of a collective “we” representing the powers that be, not me personally) made common cause with some Ukronazi’s and Russiaphobes and now changing our collective minds is dishonorable and a betrayal of what? whom?

It seems to me that Victoria Nuland and company were betraying the interests of the United States itself by pursuing a policy of destabilizing a divided Ukraine in a long-shot attempt to weaken Russia when Russia was as pacific as it has ever been historically. Their whole plan was at its core, just evil. There’s nothing honorable about conspiring with crazy, hateful people to start a war those people cannot hope to win. It quickly becomes death and destruction for its own sake.

So waking up from Nuland’s fever dream and attempting to reverse gear is “dishonorable” and “a betrayal”?? I don’t see the honorable purpose and commitment in the original project that anyone could dishonor and betray.

I think you are right, Bruce. And re China: Ian seems to forget that the US’s explicit aim is to smash China.

@Bukko Boomeranger

Interesting info on Kissinger’s quote, but if that’s true it makes the quote even more ‘based’ as the kiddos would say. I mean, what ended up happening to Thieu?

Sorodemos & Finster called it. Ukraine was destroyed in 2014 when a fascist and ultra-racist fantasy regime was installed. I’ll agree with Bruce also: there is little “moral” honor or behavior in diplomacy, absolutely ZERO in US “diplomacy.” They are known to violate every agreement they make, therefore no nation with sovereignty or self-respect wants to deal with them. Globalist thieves like Ms. Von der Lyin’ are happy to serve them. (Had a great laugh when Pepe Escobar called her a “Toxic Medusa”, certainly for Germany’s future, that is 100% so.)

But hey, let’s give Sir or Madam Tallifer some credit. S/he makes for great comedy, blathering the nonsense that society’s least informed and most gullible patsies would stake their lives on. Keep on keepin’ on, Tallifer. You are an endless source of entertainment, on a site that sometimes features grim and unhappy content.

For fair-minded folks, Judge Napolitano, Larry McGovern and Ray McGovern are in Moscow now, reporting on how beautiful, rich and cop-free it is!! Who is the Soviet Union now, with a sclerotic, corrupt, & ancient nomenklatura, open corruption, and a miserable and beaten-down populace without hope, the infrastructure decayed and mostly non-functioning? Also, Trump is “negotiating” with “Governor Trudeau” over the tariffs, another story the troika cover. Who is the real Imperialist, who changes borders willy-nilly, based on false narratives? Intelligent people can figure it out. Link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhhAGcDCWeU

Good luck with the “Modern, Global” Shiny Object, Tallifer!! Long may it entertain and delight you.

Scholar — was that a biographical question, about Thieu, or were you making a point? As for the actual guy, he was in charge of South Vietnam until the final days, then fled to America and lived out the rest of his life quietly before he died in 2001. I was a kid while the Vietnam war was on, my dad was in the U.S. army and the TV news was always on, so Thieu’s name was familiar to me. If you were being rhetorical about what ended up happening to Thieu, I’d say he did OK as far being America’s friend. He lived, unlike a million or more Vietnamese on both sides of the DMZ who got killed. The only person whose life was SAVED by Kissinger the Killer…

The division in Ukraine, visible in the maps of results of every election in independent Ukraine, is between the eastern half that was part of Russia for three centuries (and the middle that was part of Russia for nearly two centuries) and on the other hand, the westernmost region, which only became part of Russia during WW2.
The eastern 3/4 of Ukraine that was part of Russia for centuries was industrialized by the Soviets and was economically, culturally, and personally deeply interconnected with Russia.
Meanwhile the westernmost part was part of Poland then Austria then Poland again, all of which were strongly anti-Russian. This western part is often referred to as Galicia, though technically there were other small regions of Ukrainians not belonging to Russia.
The entire Black Sea coast of Ukraine was conquered by Russia from Ottoman Turkey, mostly in the 1700s.
Crimea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954. No one seems to know exactly why. Ukrainians were never more than 10% of its population. It was an autonomous republic within Ukraine from 1954, meaning that it reported to Moscow, not to Kiev. At some point, its autonomy was withdrawn. There was a plebiscite in 1991 to restore Crimea’s autonomy and that passed. After Ukrainian independence, there was an attempt to hold a plebiscite on independence. The Ukrainian government threatened to cut off Crimea’s water and energy supplies, so that attempt was abandoned.
According to Zubok’s book about the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was clear to the Russians in 1991 that Donbass and Crimea being part of Ukraine would be trouble.
What should have happened (and the US could easily have made this happen at that point) was plebiscites (in fine detail, at least oblast by oblast) to see which nation people wanted to belong. Most likely that would have resulted in a smaller but much more Ukrainian Ukraine.
After WW1, such plebiscites were used to set the Danish-German border, the Austrian-Slovenian border, and the Austrian-Hungarian border. There have been no issues about those borders since then.

@ Bukko Boomeranger

No, I meant it only as a rhetorical question. Being a ‘friend’ of America in South Vietnam’s case meant the United States upped and ditched the country to it’s fate (although you are correct, Thieu himself survived into exile). I can’t recall who said it, but they made the point that the United States is a sea power that is far away from all the misery that it causes, and that the United States has no problem cutting their ‘allies’ loose and sailing away from the mess they created. Land powers and bordering powers are stuck with you no matter what, which makes for a different geopolitical dynamic.

@Failed Scholar,

I haven’t thought about Thieu for decades. My memory is that when South Vietnam fell, he flew off into the sunset in a helicopter full of gold bars.

By the way, I remember seeing a political cartoon decades ago in the Knoxville News Sentinel, by a cartoonist last-named Bassett. I have never been able to find it online.
It may not be online. I will describe it as best I can. LBJ is looking sad and stumbling forward. He has a little Thieu puppet on his hand. The little Thieu puppet is grinning.
The little Thieu puppet is holding a string leading to a ring in LBJ’s nose.