Biden hears Trump's footsteps, plays the early sanctions card.
Putin vs Lenin: Who 'lost' Ukraine?
Things are falling apart quickly in Ukraine as the two giant military powers, Russia and U.S.-led NATO, bring Europe to the brink of war. The chances for a peaceful resolution all but vanished yesterday when Pres. Biden killed the planned top-level diplomatic meeting between Blinken and Lavrov and imposed sanctions, leaving all sides moving quickly towards a horrific military confrontation.
Today, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a General Assembly session:
“It is time for restraint, reason, and de-escalation. There is no place for actions and statements that would take this dangerous situation over the abyss”, he said, calling for a ceasefire, dialogue, and negotiations to save the people in Ukraine and beyond from the scourge of war.
But the State Department responded with criticism of all those calling for “restraint on both sides” (that would be me and the Pope).
Biden, hearing Republican footsteps, was pushed by his neocon friends into playing the sanctions card early. Now, with top-level diplomacy apparently off the table, and energy prices spinning out of control back home, there are not many options left for him short of an all-out, unwinnable war.
Donald Trump, waiting impatiently in the wings for his reincarnation as president and obviously envious of the Russian leader’s autocratic presence, couldn’t contain himself and offered a stiff-armed salute to Vladimir Putin. He praised Putin's aggressive moves against Ukraine, calling his strategy "smart" and "pretty savvy," during an appearance Tuesday on wing-nut radio.
"I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine... of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful... So, Putin is now saying, 'It's independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?'"
It is easy to forget amid Trump’s boasting, that his “perfect call” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019 was a shakedown operation illegally offering to swap a weapons sale for incriminating information about Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian profiteering. Trump’s was a clear criminal act that should have been prosecuted. And yet, here’s he and his grifter family still on the loose despite a mountain of indictable evidence piling up from years of congressional investigations.
Putin takes on Lenin and Stalin
It would be funny, if not so serious.
Vladimir Putin taking on the old Bolsheviks over Who lost Ukraine? As if it were theirs to lose. In a long, rambling speech, Putin went way beyond Russia’s justifiable national security concerns over NATO’s advance on Russia’s doorstep.
It all reminds me of the days following the Chinese Revolution in 1949, when witch-hunting Sen. Joe McCarthy was demanding to know, who lost China?
This, from the Washington Post:
He blamed patriarchs of the Soviet Union — Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin — for effectively allowing the creation of Ukraine, a place he described as a manufactured state that was an “inalienable part of [Russia’s] history, culture and spiritual space.” He blamed Nikita Khrushchev for gifting parts of Russia to this artificial nation. He seemed to blame Mikhail Gorbachev for permitting Ukrainian statehood as the Soviet Union slouched toward collapse.
And he blamed the Ukrainians themselves for turning on their parent — Mother Russia — and suggested they would pay for their transgressions.
“Today the ‘grateful progeny’ has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization,” Putin said. “You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.”
Yes, a “manufactured state” indeed. Like all modern European nation-states that rose and fell through the bloody wars, imperialist adventures, revolutions, and counter-revolutions that have consumed the continent for centuries.
But why is Putin engaging in anti-Leninist polemics at this time? My only conclusion is that this must be part of some sharp internal struggle against some opposition faction.
If anyone’s interested…
Lenin was totally in support of Ukraine’s right to self-determination up to and including the right to separate from Russia.
Russia’s revolutionary democrats, if they want to be truly revolutionary and truly democratic, must break with that past, must regain for themselves, for the workers and peasants of Russia, the brotherly trust of the Ukrainian workers and peasants. This cannot be done without full recognition of Ukraine’s rights, including the right to free secession.
One old lefty joked on Twitter, “Putin’s lucky the old Bolshies aren’t still around to hear that.”
Nick Estes makes some good points here.
Thanks for being a public educator, providing insight for the common good, Mike, challenging peril.
Bill Schubert