Posted on 03/28/2022 7:43:56 PM PDT by delta7
Ukraine is prepared to discuss adopting a neutral status as part of a peace deal with Russia but such a pact would have to be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in remarks aired on Sunday.
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The Ukrainian president also accused the West of cowardice, making an exasperated plea for fighter jets and tanks to help defend his country from Russia's invading troops.
Speaking after US President Joe Biden said in a lacerating speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin could not stay in power – words the White House immediately sought to downplay – Zelenskyy lashed out at the West's "ping-pong about who and how should hand over jets" and other weapons while Russian missile attacks kill and trap civilians.
Ukraine says that to defeat Russia, the West must provide fighter jets and not just missiles and other military equipment. A proposal to transfer Polish planes to Ukraine via the United States was scrapped amid NATO concerns about being drawn into direct fighting.
In his pointed remarks, Zelenskyy accused Western governments of being "afraid to prevent this tragedy. Afraid to simply make a decision."
Another top Ukrainian official, meanwhile, said Russia was trying to split the nation in two, like North and South Korea, while Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Monday that Russia's war on Ukraine has so far cost the country $564.9 billion in terms of damage to infrastructure, lost economic growth and other factors.
In an online post, she said the fighting had damaged or destroyed 8,000 km (4,970 miles) of roads and 10 million square meters of housing.
Zelenskyy said Russia's invasion had caused the destruction of Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine, with damage worse than the Russian wars in Chechnya.
"Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it. This is the most important point," Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine refused to discuss certain other Russian demands, such as the demilitarization of the country.
Speaking more than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Zelenskyy said no peace deal would be possible without a ceasefire and troop withdrawals.
He ruled out trying to recapture all Russian-held territory by force, saying it would lead to a third world war, and said he wanted to reach a "compromise" over the eastern Donbas region, held by Russian-backed forces since 2014.
Zelenskyy focused on the fate of the eastern port city of Mariupol, under siege for weeks. Once a city of 400,000 people, it has undergone prolonged Russian bombardment.
I've talked to the defenders of Mariupol today. I'm in constant contact with them. Their determination, heroism and firmness are astonishing," Zelenskyy said in a video address, referring to the besieged southern city that has suffered some of the war's greatest deprivations and horrors. "If only those who have been thinking for 31 days on how to hand over dozens of jets and tanks had 1% of their courage."
"All entries and exits from the city of Mariupol are blocked," Zelenskyy added. "The port is mined. A humanitarian catastrophe inside the city is unequivocal, because it is impossible to go there with food, medicine and water," he said.
"I don't even know who the Russian army has ever treated like this," he said, adding that, compared to Russian wars in Chechnya, the volume of destruction "cannot be compared."
Russia has denied targeting civilians in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for a failure to open humanitarian corridors.
Zelenskyy pushed back against allegations from Moscow that Ukraine had curbed the rights of Russian speakers, saying it was Russia's invasion that wiped Russian-speaking cities "off the face of the earth."
“...There’s 5000 dead civilians in Mariupol tonight. All nicely denazified by Russian rockets and bombs. Sleep well tonight. Job done...”
In the Southeast Ukraine exists the most famous battalion in the entire world. There are real war criminal outfits in the Russian Army but they don’t get the publicity. I guess they need management.
The UN numbers of civilian Ukrainian dead are laughably low. Our extended family and friends there have been lucky but some have suffered damages to their flat blocks causing their abandonment. My wife is a Russian-speaker from the Donbas but the word “Russian” is no longer in her English vocabulary. It was replaced by “DamnRussian.”
They never had any nukes... thank god. The USSR retained full operational control of nukes LOCATED in Ukraine. But they weren’t owned by Ukraine.
The Budapest Agreement provides “assurances” of borders and sovereignty. The Ukes HONORED the agreement by giving up their nukes; the Rukes VIOLATED it by invading, twice; and due to pantywaist panzie appeasers like you, the US is busy looking for ways to ABROGATE their responsibility.
Hence, we push the Ukes into developing their own nukes. When there is a nuke plume above pootypoot’s favorite Ruke city, we can blame appeasers like you.
If it is not a violation of this agreement to conduct a “special military exercise” into Ukraine from Russia, then it is no violation of that agreement for US to do it. What’s sauce for the pootypoot goose is sauce for the NATO gander. In this way we keep the whole thing CONVENTIONAL rather than pushing the Ukes to go NUCLEAR.
Oh and BTW, you did not produce evidence for the original claim. Where is that evidence where we supposedly guaranteed NATO wouldn’t expand eastward? It does not exist. The Budapest Memo DOES exist.
I guess who you want to believe - the Western media that has lied throughout Ukraine, or others with a better track record.
Anyway, no way to settle it, unless one side or the other owns up to it.
The agreement ended when they overthrew the government that made the deal. Then it ended even more when nazi militias rolled to eastern Ukraine and started shelling people for the crime of opting to not join the coup government.
Then it ended even more when they spread their legs for NATO.
Go back and look for yourself. We both know what you’ve been spouting for weeks. I’ll not put the effort out, you just aint worth it.
Disagree. Putin is evil and not to be trusted.
Ahahaha! Now you begin your backtracking journey.
Not even one post’s worth of evidence to back up your claim.
What a puttz.
Shut up and sit down.
The agreement ended when they overthrew the government that made the deal.
***Nonsense. 🐂💩 The agreement is still in effect as long as they don’t return to the status quo, which everyone knows they won’t do.
Then it ended even more when nazi militias rolled to eastern Ukraine
***I really don’t GAF about NAZIs — the whole thing didn’t even start until there was oil discovered in those regions and Putin started stirring shiite up.
and started shelling people for the crime of opting to not join the coup government.
***If that is what this was about, Pootypoot woulda ONLY invaded those regions.
Then it ended even more when they spread their legs for NATO.
***The Budapest Agreement says NOTHING about NATO. As per usual, your remarks are far from the truth.
The Russians weren’t even interested in western Ukraine until oil was found there. Their interest is simply in raping that country. Russia gets 60% of its revenues from oil exports. Europe gets 40% of their oil from Russia.
In 2012 massive oil and gas reserves were found in Crimea. Crimea signed a $10 billion exploration contracts with Shell and Chevron to develop the new found oil and gas fields. These oil and gas products would compete in Europe with Russia’s oil and gas, reducing Russia’s oil revenues, which we recall amount to 60% of their total GDP. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, cancelling the contracts with Shell and Chevron.
But Ukraine still had massive reserves in, you guessed it, Donetsk and Luhansk, and other areas East of the Dnieper River. In 2019, Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited Ukraine, and soon after Ukraine awarded exploration contracts to a consortium of U.S. oil companies. Again, these oil reserves would compete in Europe with Russian oil, so Putin is invading Ukraine to shut down this latest attempt to extract Ukrainian oil and sell it in competition with Russian oil.
This explanation makes more sense to me than the “Putin feels threatened by NATO expansion” excuses for the invasion.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4044221/posts?page=1#1“
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CmdSzVFSKc
If the Ukes allow some small region in the west to be its own republic, but the OIL belongs to Ukraine, do ya think Pootypoot would allow that? Nope.
I'm sittin' down, I'm quiet.
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“Where is that evidence where we supposedly guaranteed NATO wouldn’t expand eastward? “
There isn’t one. It was just a verbal promise confirmed by the man who made it and the people who heard it. There is a great NBC long interview with Putin and they threw that very thing in his face. He smiled and gave a golf clap and said “Good work”. He was basically saying congratulations to a used car salesman who successfully cheated him.
They learned not to depend on our word.
After the 90s, the Russians emerged with a childlike trust that our side launched depredations on. Another example was right after 9/11 when they opened their airbases to our use, complete with fuel for the Afghan war. No contracts... just a handshake. They thought it might make a difference.
Show me evidence from any source saying azov shot the plane down.
Elderly citizens in Mariupol are overwhelmed with emotion as the Russian flag is hoisted over a ‘newly liberated military base’..... They break into tears, hug one another, and thank the Russian soldiers profusely as the national anthem plays
“My Donbass is free!”
Scroll til video
https://twitter.com/razor_destiny
No matter how many dogs roam Russian streets, Ukraine remains a s***hole and Zelenskyy a corrupt asshole.
That's $14 billion worth of cowardice dickhead.
Experts and observers criticize Putin’s “mythical use of history”
Putin’s claims contradict and distort important parts of 20th-century history while furthering his own agenda, the experts tell NPR.
They characterize it as an effort to hark back to the Soviet Union’s heroism in fighting fascism during WWII.
But Casanova notes that Ukraine “suffered more than Russia from Nazi tanks,” saying it lost more of its population during the war than any other country (without counting Europe’s 6 million Jewish victims as a nation).
He calls Putin’s tactics “simply a mythical use of history” to justify present-day crimes.
It’s true that many Ukrainian nationalists initially welcomed the German invaders as liberators during WWII and collaborated with the occupation, a fact that Ukraine’s small far-right movement is quick to emphasize. Putin’s claims seize on that kernel of truth but distort it — a classic Soviet propaganda tactic.
Lautman, who is Ukrainian and Russian, says Russia considers WWII its biggest victory and places a big emphasis on its defeat of the Nazis, celebrating WWII Soviet holidays many times a year.
Russian television channels played WWII movies on the day of Putin’s announcement about invading Ukraine, Lautman says, which she describes as an appeal to the older generation.
And Russian leaders have successfully rewritten parts of that history, she says. For example, Putin signed a ban on comparisons between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany last July. That means someone could be jailed for mentioning the collaboration between Hitler and Josef Stalin, Lautman explains.
Jockusch notes another gap in Russia’s retelling of its 20th-century history. “Stalin perpetrated a man-made famine that can be called a genocide in Ukraine 90 years ago, the ‘Holodomor’ which Russia still does not recognize and which claimed some 3 million Ukrainian lives,” she says.
So why would Putin use this particular language to justify an invasion now?
Lautman says Putin has long mourned the collapse of the Soviet Union and has “nothing to show” despite having been in power for two decades.
“If he’s able to reclaim some of this lost territory, on top of having a few satellite states, which he’s been attempting to do over the past decade ... then at least he would have a legacy to leave in the history books of Vladimir the Great,” she says.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a speech next to a menorah at The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv on Aug. 19, 2019.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a speech next to a menorah at The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv on Aug. 19, 2019. Image: Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
What this distortion of history can teach us
While the West may not have been paying close attention before, many critics in Europe and beyond are now pushing back on Putin’s claims.
Lautman says Ukrainians are used to this kind of language, since it’s consistent with what Russia has been putting into the information sphere over the last eight years. And despite strict media censorship in Russia — where outlets aren’t even allowed to refer to the current incursion as a war — citizens are risking imprisonment by protesting in the streets.
Yale historian Timothy Snyder described the charge of denazification as a perversion of values, telling CNN that it is “meant to confound us and discourage us and confuse us, but the basic reality is that Putin has everything turned around.”
He said Putin’s goal appears to be to take Kyiv, arrest Ukraine’s political and civil leaders to get them out of power and then try them in some way. That’s where the language of genocide comes in, he added.
“I think it’s very likely, and he’s said as much, that he intends to use the genocide and denazification language to set up some kind of kangaroo court which would serve the purpose of condemning these people to death or ... prison or incarceration.”
Casanova and Lautman praise the strength and determination of Ukrainians, noting they are putting up a resistance. If Russia does succeed, Lautman says she is confident it would round up and execute political leaders and journalists there.
The experts point to the importance of learning from history and the present moment, something that the U.S. and other countries have not always done.
Casanova says the current moment proves that the world must create an equitable security system that is “not manipulated by the superpowers.”
And both he and Lautman call for the world to hold Russia accountable, including by trying it for war crimes in international court. (The top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said on Monday that the body would open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes “as rapidly as possible.”)
“[We have to] understand that Ukraine today is the sacrificial lamb for all the unwillingness of the West to act united in defense of its own norms and values, in defense of the world security system that they tried to establish,” Casanova says. “And if they can’t fight for that, I don’t know for what they can fight.”
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