The Other side of the River

The recapture of the Khar-kov region at the beginning of September appears to be a success for Ukrainian forces. Western and American media exulted and relayed Ukrainian propaganda to give a picture that is not entirely accurate.

For the Ukrainians, it is a Pyrrhic victory. They advanced into Kharkov without encountering any resistance and there was hardly any fighting. Instead, the area became a huge “killing zone” where Russian artillery would destroy an estimated number of 4,000-5,000 Ukrainians (about 2 brigades), while the Russian coalition suffered only marginal losses as there was no fighting.

Firstly, since 2014, linguistic minorities in Ukraine have been subject to restrictions that have made them 2nd class citizens. As a result, the Ukrainian policy has caused Russian-speaking citizens to no longer feel Ukrainian. This was even emphasised by the Law on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in July 2021, which is somewhat equivalent to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which give different rights to citizens depending on their ethnic origin. This is why Vladimir Putin wrote an article on 12 July 2021 calling on Ukraine to consider Russian speakers as part of the Ukrainian nation and not to discriminate against them as proposed by the new law.

Regarding Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilisation, it should be recalled that Russia has intervened in Ukraine with considerably fewer troops than the American and Western experts consider necessary to conduct an offensive campaign.

The combat actions in Ukraine are mainly carried out by the Donbass militias. Instead of saying “the Russians,” they should say “the Russian coalition” or “the Russian-speaking coalition.”

Much has been made in the West and America about those who have sought to leave Russia to avoid mobilisation. They certainly exist, like the thousands of Ukrainians who sought to escape conscription and can be seen in the streets of Brussels driving powerful and expensive German sports cars! Much less publicity has been given to the long queues of young people outside military recruitment offices and the popular demonstrations in favour of the decision to mobilise!

As to the nuclear threats, in his speech on 21 September, Vladimir Putin mentioned the risk of nuclear escalation. Naturally, the conspiratorial media (i.e., those that construct narratives from unrelated information) immediately spoke of “nuclear threats.”

In reality, this is not true. If one reads the wording of Putin’s speech, one can see that he did not threaten to use nuclear weapons. In fact, he has never done so since the beginning of this conflict in 2014.

In his speech, Vladimir Putin does not threaten to use nuclear weapons, but other types of weapons. He is of course thinking of hypersonic weapons, which do not need to be nuclear to be effective and which can thwart Western defences. For one thing the use of tactical nuclear weapons is no longer in the Russian employment doctrine for many years. Moreover, unlike the United States, Russia has a no-first-use policy.

In other words, it is the Westerners and their erratic behaviour that are the real factors of insecurity and nuclear escalation.

It is also interesting to compare the current general situation with what was described in the RAND Corporation reports published in 2019 as the blueprint for trying to destabilise Russia.

 This document shows that the US was aiming for a campaign of subversion against Russia, in which Ukraine was only an unfortunate instrument. The real problem is that America is not looking for Ukraine’s interest, but to weaken Russia. And the West is obliging the Uncle Sam. Their one-point agenda at the moment is how to prolong the war and cripple the Russian economy.

[Contributed]

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Frontier
Vol 55, No. 19, Nov 6 - 12, 2022