UKRAINE -HITCHENSBLOG

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‘The truth about Ukraine’


“The last Ukrainian President elected by the whole electorate of that country was overthrown in a violent, lawless putsch in 2014 … The country has since then had no true parliamentary opposition … Its media are shut down arbitrarily on occasion … And Ukraine is very corrupt …

“The history of Crimea [is] highly complex. Leaving aside the [transfer] of that peninsula from [Russia] to the [Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic] in 1954, it *IS* now largely populated by ethnic Russians, and even a fair referendum … would probably have endorsed its return to Russia in 2014.

“… Crimea was disgracefully prevented, by threats of ‘bloodshed’ (unspecified) made by the Kiev government, from holding a referendum on seceding from Ukraine in 1992 …

“[There has been an] admission by Robert Kagan, a leading anti-Russian neoconservative … that the war was in fact provoked … [Indeed,] Nato expansion was chosen by the USA when it need not have been …

“… [The] Yanukovych government, which [was] legitimate and properly elected, was overthrown by mob force … The [revolution leaders] simply preferred force to the ballot box, and violence to constitutional law … [Former US ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock said] these events were ‘an illegal coup d’etat’ …

“… [There was] open involvement of Western politicians in supporting the Kiev crowds in 2014 … [Even] while Yanukovych was still in office, the USA was actively seeking to form a new and more nationalist government in Kiev … [A] very nasty war [then] broke out in the Ukrainian East … The massacre of Russians in Odessa … remains a striking blot on Ukraine … Ukrainian nationalism grew greatly in importance after the 2014 coup …



“The unapologetic persistence, by some, in the use of Nazi symbols such as the Wolfsangel (worn with official permission on the Ukrainian army uniforms of acknowledged units such as the Azov battalion) is a fact … Even in Russia … the state Army has not permitted the use of avowed Nazi symbols on its uniforms.

“… [This nationalism] has been so active in (for example) diminishing the status of the Russian language, making it harder for Russian speakers to be fully integrated into a Ukraine they suddenly found themselves citizens of in 1991. …

“The truth is that lethal large-scale violence was brought to Ukraine - in 2014 - by the lawless deposition of Yanukovych … [In 2008] Bush began to push for Nato membership of Ukraine and … some kind has been inevitable since then …”

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2023/03/good-versus-evil-right-versus-wrong-in-a-complicated-world-sometimes-it-really-is-that-simple-or-is-.html