ISSUE #118: This Ukraine thing is escalating quickly.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on the national TV and in an address to his nation, he made a variety of statements that deserve attention.
Let’s start with the referenda that he said will be held in the four regions of the northeastern Ukraine - namely Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye - which would enable the residents of those regions to decide whether or not to join the Russian Federation, much like the Crimea referendum of 2014, in which the overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to join Russia.
“The parliaments of the people’s republics of Donbass, as well as the military-civilian administrations of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, decided to hold referendums on the future of these territories and turned to us, Russia, with a request to support such a step,” said Putin.
The Western leaders didn’t seem to be happy about referendums, which would let people decide their own fate. I wonder why.
Every statement by every Western leader about the war in Ukraine drips with hypocrisy. On the one side, they say “Hey, look at us, we are the leaders of the free world where the people are free to choose what they want”, and on the other side, they say “We won’t recognize these referendums. We don’t care what people vote for.”
To make sure the referendums go as they are planned, Putin said Russia is going to mobilize additional 300,000 soldiers, while also reminding the West of the principle of Mutually Assured Destrcution that has been in place for centuries.
“Nuclear blackmail was also launched. We are talking not only about the shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which is encouraged by the West, which threatens a nuclear catastrophe, but also about the statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia – nuclear weapons.
To those who allow themselves to make such statements about Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for some components more modern than those of the NATO countries. And if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff.
The citizens of Russia can be sure that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured, I emphasize this again, with all the means at our disposal. And those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the wind can also turn in their direction.”
According to a recent NYT article , the possibility of sending long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine which could hit the Russian territory are being discussed within the US power establishment, and Putin is well aware of this and sees this as an escalation.
“Some irresponsible politicians in the West not only talk about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine – systems that will allow strikes against the Crimea and other regions of Russia.”
A sane person would read the above passage about nuclear war and never conclude that Putin is going to use nuclear weapons to defeat Ukraine because that’s NOT what he said. He just reminded the West that his country also possesses weapons of mass destruction, but when you work as narrative manager for the most powerful empire in the human history, your job is to spin stories in ways that further the agendas of the empire you serve.
So, the Western media listened what he said, and tried to portray him as an evil warmonger who desperately wants a nuclear war:
The Westerners who are freaking out at Putin for saying that he would use all means necessary to protect his country's integrity, which also includes nuclear weapons, are just admitting that they never knew where the NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is gonna lead. They never had any idea what the stakes are for Russia, they were getting lined up like sheep to chant “Slava Ukraini” at the orders of the Western media.
In their partisan worldview, the US will never use the same weapons if its territorial integrity is threatened, while knowingly forgetting that the US is the only country in the world to have ever used such weapons even when it wasn't threatened.
The use of nukes is not some weird way of attacking that Putin invented today. Anti-war activists have been warning about this since the West started provoking Russia over Ukraine. The West's intervention was always going to lead to this. If you are thinking that there was no way to figure out the West's involvement in the war in Ukraine could lead us here, it's time you grow up and start acting like an adult instead of dancing to the war drums whenever they beat.
"OH MY GOD, PUTIN MIGHT USE NUKES." Yes, dipshit. This was bound to happen since the day you started supporting the proxy war in Ukraine. You don't have a functioning brain if you thought the West can keep provoking the country with most nukes as long as it wants with no further escalation.
Without a doubt, the world today is much more dangerous than when the war began, and it’s not because of what Putin is saying.
Putin also mentioned that gone are the days when Russia was believed to be fighting against Ukraine alone. “Today, our Armed Forces…. are confronting not only neo-Nazi formations, but in fact the entire military machine of the collective West.” Russia vs. Ukraine has escalated into Russia vs. NATO, which can very well lead to the WWIII, err, last world war.
There’s something called as “escalation ladder.” The way it works is that if I go up a level, you go up a level too because you don’t wanna look weak, which encourages me to go up a level, and so on. It’s easier to go up on such a ladder than it’s to go down.
Even if we avert the nuclear war, the death of thousands of innocent civilians is baked into these escalations that, by any chance, can’t be averted. The worst case scenario is the death of us all, and the best case scenario is the death of a few thousands of us who are directly affected by this war and the suffering of millions who are being indirectly affected by the Western sanctions on Russia in the form of food crisis and the high energy prices.
A few months ago, the people who were warning that the NATO’s involvement in the war can create more tensions rather than cooling the situation down were being called “Putin puppet” by the Western liberals and now that the situation has indeed escalated so much that both factions are threatening each other in the name of a nuclear war, calling for de-escalation means “you’re afraid of Putin’s bluffs.” It’s like, no idiot, you are a puppet of the Western regimes who thinks it’s an act of bravery to push the world towards a nuclear catastrophe. I never thought that someday I’d be saying that “Advocating for freedom and democracy is different from advocating for the most powerful empire in the human history,” but here I am.
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