Ukraine - BCA Statement

[pwhole]

Patrick Cockburn usually knows what he's talking about on matters of war, and he's got another good one in i this weekend, referencing the Saddam Hussein/Halabjah/WMD angle that kicked off the Iraq war:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/the-threat-of-nuclear-weapons-being-deployed-is-greater-now-than-it-ever-was-in-the-cold-war-1540730

The public reason given by the US for supposing that Russia might be considering chemical warfare is that Russia has claimed that biological weapons were being developed in Ukrainian laboratories funded by the Pentagon. This appears to be a crude piece of propaganda and the laboratories in question were developing common pathogens for public health purposes. The most likely explanation for President Vladimir Putin?s accusation is that he was groping around for imaginary threats to explain to the Russian public why he launched his war and not because he plans to use chemical weapons himself.

Nevertheless, the raising of the WMD issue is another step in the escalatory ladder in Ukraine and adds to the grim uncertainties. In Iraq, the very existence of WMD was long debated. In Syria, controversy raged over whether or not they had been used and, if so, by whom. In Russia, there is no doubt the weapons are there and could be deployed immediately.

 

[droid]

The BCA Statement is unlikely to be read by many Ukranians.

It's for UK cavers' benefit.

It's also about a month late.

Don't get me wrong, I fully support the statement of opposition to the invasion of a sovereign country, but let's not kid ourselves it's any more than a gesture.

 

[Fjell]

This is in the most pro-EU news outlet you could hope to find:

https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-merkel-germany-scholz-foreign-policy-ukraine-war-invasion-nord-stream-2/

A lot of people in the UK had thrown in the towel trying to influence EU policy in the last 15-20 years, which led to all sort of spats and vetoes. Maybe things will go a bit better in future. It can?t go worse.

 

[nearlywhite]

...but let's not kid ourselves it's any more than a gesture.

I'm not sure many cavers care about the FSE/UIS politics on this issue, which is what seems to have prompted the statement.

What should have been included in the statement, again about a month ago, are practical ways to help Ukrainians as has been seen on various social media caving groups.

I've donated through https://novaukraine.org/ but there are a plethora of groups, and I'm sure other people have better suggestions.

It would have been nice to have the organisation do the background work and vouch for one of those cavers asking for surplus equipment to take to Ukraine/surrounding countries to help set up refugee camps.

 

[Cosmo Smallpiece]

  - and the idea that deliberately shelling apartments is the same as 'collateral damage' sounds like it's straight from the Russian embassy twitter account 

In the same vein, complaints of "Russophobia" and "erasing culture" are key features of Putin's propaganda. Frankly I care far more about unnecessary deaths, shelling and suffering in Ukraine than the dropping of a piece of inappropriate music from a concert in Cardiff.

 

[LarryFatcat]

We are going to have to be nice to Russians (or at least tolerate them) at some point in the near future. Some of this Russophobia is not very helpful and you are going to end up winding it back.

I'm all for giving the Ukrainians large quantities of weapons in order to enable a military stalemate driven by the realisation in Russia they cannot successfully pacify all of Ukraine in the long term. Not enough people have died yet, but they are getting there.

The relationship between Russia and Ukraine is enormously complex and Ukrainians I have worked with can often be very ambiguous as to whether they are Russian or if Russians are really Ukrainians anyway. It is quite reasonable to characterise Russia as a historic colony/offshoot of Ukraine (or rather Rus). Belarus is the northern half of Rus. The Russians have memory muscle for being invaded and it doesn't take much to set them off. They think they need huge buffer zones which is based on the historic reality of such invasions. It didn't help that Stalin nicked a large chunk of Poland and added it to western Ukraine, this being in living memory. No Russian thinks Crimea belongs to anyone but Russia, they shed a river of blood for it. Ditto Odessa to a a fair degree, the southern St Petersburg - be very telling to see if Putin is willing to blow it up if you give any credence to his Russian Empire spiel. Putin has also been going on about how Europe is perennially ungrateful for saving it from tyranny (they destroyed Napoleon and Hitler but people like us claimed the credit, which is as close to the truth as makes no difference). It's not a hard sell to the Russian people, even if they don't particularly want to be poor and/or dead.

You can see SE Ukraine being annexed by Russia and then what does everyone do? It will have a Russian population. In the south you can see the Dnieper river being the new boundary, although Putin absolutely does not think that is good enough as he really wants the entire Black Sea coastline. We might end up with significant population exchange, which hasn't happened in Europe for a while (the Germans losing most of Prussia being the last really). Poland got Prussia to compensate for losing Western Ukraine...

Be good to avoid everyone getting nuked. Not entirely impossible, the current Russian government is not as disciplined (or battle hardened) as the old Soviet ones.

It's not unlikely the UK will need to take at least a million refugees (mostly permanently), so maybe that needs some planning.

Russophobia is a Kremlin propaganda word invented when people don't like their criminality- whether it is the 5 imperialist wars under Putin, the Kremlin's mass criminality and theft for self enrichment and tower of mass bribes, mass doping or it's assassinations abroad, including the use of chemical and radioactive methods within the UK etc, etc- Please don't buy into Kremlin obfuscation.

 

[mikem]

Fjell is on about it becoming extended to the whole population, rather than just the leadership.