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Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!


We heard the crowd as it moved along Birutė St. toward Nemtsov Square in Žverynas.  We call the park the Duck Pond, a place were parents take their kids and dog-lovers walk their dogs.  On the other side of the pond is the Russian embassy, an imposing building with its double-eagle crest on the broad gable.  One of the reasons for naming the park after Boris Nemtsov is to constantly remind the Russian officials of his murder on the streets of Moscow in 2015.  Soon, the park was swelling with persons waving flags and banners not just of Lithuania and Ukraine, but also Georgia, Belarus and Moldava, countries that have also seen the tyranny of Russia in recent years.  "Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!" an estimated 10,000 persons shouted out to Russian officials.  "Glory to Ukraine!  Glory to heroes!"

There was a makeshift podium and large screen set up that allowed various speakers and musicians to offer their support of Ukraine.  National anthems were sung and popular Lithuanian musicians sang songs both in Lithuanian and Ukrainian.  Unfortunately, the sound wasn't very good, so it was hard to hear the words.  People once again shouted "Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!" waving their cellphones and candles in the air, giving so much light to the gathering.  A bonfire was also lit next to the pond, backlighting a large flag of Ukraine.

It was cold but not bitter.  I held Daina close to me.  We felt it was important to be here, not just because the event was in our own backyard, so to speak, but because we both feel utterly crestfallen by the events taking place in Ukraine.  We had visited Lviv several years ago, a beautiful city near the Polish border that dates back to the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.  We stayed in the Hotel St. George, a patron saint to so many cultures, and one that seems so apropos today.  Ukraine is St. George battling the Russian dragon as it tries to encircle and cut off the country from Europe.

Of course, this is not Russia's war, but rather Putin's war.  Unlike the petty little tyrant in Moscow, we draw distinctions between his failed government and the great people of Russia.  It was heartwarming to see so many Russians defy bans and gather in protest to the war throughout the country.  Putin must realize he is alone in this war.  He has no support, not even among his own people.  Instead, he relies on a compliant cabinet, Duma and army willing to obey his orders.  How he plans to impose his order on Ukraine remains to be seen, as the Ukrainian army certainly won't support whatever puppet regime he tries to install in Kyiv.

Mostly, we feel incredibly sad for the people of Ukraine and its leadership, which finds itself all alone.  Of course, many residents will flee, and like Poland and other Eastern European countries, Lithuania has already made plans to house refugees.  The government is asking residents to register extra flats and rooms to help harbor these dislocated people.  

Of course, we worry too that Putin may not be done with Ukraine.  His idea of a "Greater Russia" includes the Baltics as well.  How else to reconnect his wayward little colony in Kaliningrad to Mother Russia?  But, for now we feel safe in knowing that NATO and the EU finally realize that Putin is not a man who can be reasoned with.  Are we on the brink of WWIII?  It would certainly seem so, as the US sent an 800 additional troops this week, and NATO plans to send more troops in the coming weeks.  We all hold our collective breath and hope that Putin at least recognizes NATO boundaries.

To hear him talk, this is why he launched his invasion into Ukraine.  For years he has complained about NATO joint exercises in the Baltic states and Poland, which he considered a threat to his national security.  It didn't matter that he held similar joint exercises in Belarus, or that he regularly encroaches on Baltic airspace with his fighter jets.  Western leaders thought this was just a game of tit for tat, similar to the ones during the Cold War, but Putin was gauging NATO reaction, as he is now with his invasion.  He knows he can't win a war outright with NATO, but he figures if he can break NATO unity, then he can reclaim the historic "Pale of Russia," once again creating a buffer zone between Russia and the West.

It doesn't matter that Russia is already so vast that he is unable to manage it.  He can't even properly manage its natural resources, let alone its people.  As I've said many times, the standard of living in Russia lags far behind its Eastern European neighbors, even Ukraine and Belarus.  This is why you increasingly see protests in Russia, which Putin stamps down, arresting its organizers and convicting them of phony charges so that they spend 5 to 10 years in jail.  Yet, there are many who still see Putin as trying to create a democracy in Russia, as cynical as that sounds.

Putin surrounds himself with oligarchs, who Paul Krugman believes launder billions of dollars for Putin in offshore accounts.  Krugman believes that this fabulous wealth may amount to as much as 85 percent of Russian GDP.  If there is a way to cut off access to these finances, then Putin finds himself literally stranded, unable to fund his invasion and subsequent takeover of Ukraine.  Already, the EU, Britain and the US have moved to freeze those assets that they have access to, but it will require a global effort, as this money is spread far and wide.

Most importantly, Europe has to cut off its oil and natural gas supply from Russia.  Sure, it will be hard at first.  As much as 40 percent of European natural gas comes from Russia, but winter is almost over and there are other sources for liquified natural gas.  The US has already offered to help make up the shortfall.  Of course, Europe has to be circumspect of American motives, as it hears a former president praising Putin, and who knows who will be in the Oval Office in 2025.  That is why it is imperative to make the switch to solar, wind and geothermal energy in the next five years, so Europe will no longer need any oil or natural gas.

Russia will still have its patrons, notably China, but Beijing only sees Russia as a temporary supplier.  Once it makes the switch to sustainable forms of energy, it will lose interest in Russia, and Putin will look like Kim Jong-Un in his golden palace, if he is even still around.  Many suspect that his health is failing and this is essentially his last hoorah, an attempt to give back to Russia its imperial boundaries before he kicks the bucket, and can be embalmed like Lenin and given a special place of honor in Red Square.  These rumors have circulated for the past decade, but how else to explain his irrational behavior, which has left his closest advisers at a loss for words to describe his actions?

I can only speculate on these matters.  I have no idea what is going through that addled mind of his.  I don't know how Putin expects to bring Ukraine into his sphere of influence after launching a full scale invasion like this?  He will have no support among its people.  There will be no Ukrainian army to support his puppet leader, just as there was no army to support Viktor Yanukovych when he was ousted in 2014.  He can call the current Ukrainian government Nazis as much as he likes, but that is not going to alter perceptions.  He is so clearly the aggressor that it is he who has been likened to Hitler, not Voldomyr Zelensky, who by the way is proudly Jewish.  It reminds me of the pathetic attempt to brand George Soros an SS officer, when he was only 9 years old when WWII broke out in Europe.

At this point, I think there are very few Russians who believe anything Putin says.  This maybe why he launched his invasion?  His troll farms have been exposed.  Countries have learned to combat his cyber attacks.  It's back to conventional warfare, hoping to impose his order on a people that have grown so far apart from Russia that there is no turning back.  If Putin decides to stay in Ukraine, he will encounter an insurgency that will last for years, a proxy war that will see NATO countries supply the Ukrainian rebels, resulting in another "Afghanistan" for Russia.  Of course, it will mean untold hardships for the Ukrainian people, but they've endured this before.  They are a very strong people.  Putin will never break their will!  

This is why we shout Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!

Comments

  1. Difficult to understand Putin's "rationale" for his attack on Ukraine. I can understand why he would be interested in Dombas as its population majority is Russian. However, I have not seen any referendum or plebiscite vote taken by its people in which they ask to join with Russia. So why march into Kyiv when it is hundreds of miles away??? I don't get it. The best thing for him to do is to withdraw his forces back across the border.

    I am also disturbed by reports of racism against blacks at the Polish border by its police and by Ukrainian authorities: https://tinyurl.com/2p8kh6b7

    Putin calls for "de-Nazification" of Ukraine. Maybe that's what he had in mind (?). Whatever the case, it does not justify what Putin is going.

    And while it is good to have the world take punitive action against Putin for his evils, I remain disturbed that the international community did not do the same with imperialist Bush or when Madrid sent its falangist troops/cops against Catalonia and arrested President Puigdemont. It needs to take a consistent position against all of these evildoers rather than to employ its standards on such a selective basis. For decades we heard the expression "Yankee Go Home!" Now it's time for the world to shout "Putin Go Home!" Employ this standard at all times.

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  2. Jose Andres on this issue:

    https://twitter.com/chefjoseandres/status/1498512664208752641


    Yes, it is time for international unity although I would have said we should have had it when Bush launched his terrorist campaigns 20 years ago. If we had, Putin would not have been so emboldened today.

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  3. There is no consistency, I agree, but right now I'm focused on what is going on in Ukraine. For Lithuanians, it brings back memories of 1991, when the tanks rolled into Vilnius, hoping to squash its uprising. However, Gorbacev quickly recognized it was a lost cause and withdrew with relatively minimal bloodshed. Putin has no such qualms. He seems prepared to bomb Kyiv if he can't take it on the ground. Russians don't consider Ukraine a separate country, given that they appropriated its culture centuries ago.

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  4. I tuned into RT website last night. It paints a very different picture of events that have gone on in that region over the past decade. Evidently, Ukraine killed many independence seeking folks from Donbas and the network presented video evidence to prove it. It also showed mass graves of people who were victimized by the anti-independence violence.

    Can't say I know what the proper solution to all this is. Am mindful of the fact that black/brown folks in the USA are targeted by cops each and every day. As a Latino myself and one who despite my advanced age has been the victim of police targeting, I want to see us solve our own domestic problems before we deal with anyone else's problems.

    So let's hope the problems there are solved with tact and diplomacy, not with violence. Same with our problems here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RT, formerly Russia Today, is a Kremlin propaganda channel that has been operating for years. This "independence seeking" was the direct result of Russian instigation following the annexation of Crimea. As a result, there has been an ongoing civil war in the region for 8 years. One can imagine atrocities committed by both sides, but these breakaway republics are a sick joke.

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    2. They say Transistria in Moldovia may well be next. Hopefully violence can be avoided by having people vote in a referendum and by governments respecting the outcomes of those votes.

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    3. I think he has more of a battle than he thought in Ukraine. He already has a battalion in Moldova. It is still part of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the hollow economic trade union that was set up after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine pulled out after the attack on Crimea. Belarus is still a member. Putin sees these as client states. He views the Baltics in the same way, but given they are part of EU and NATO, makes it a little more difficult for him.

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  5. I post on a couple of websites where some European and American chickenhawks are demanding that the USA invade Russia. These demands are not without a series of strong challenges from me. Since when, I ask, is it the USA's responsibility to fight Europe's wars? If they hate and fear Putin so much, do your own fighting, I say. How can anyone expect us to be world policeman when we can't even solve our own problems? Just about every week some innocent black or Latino is murdered by cops but nobody demands a UN invasion in order to stop this holocaust. And that's the problem - we are always helping everyone solve their problems while ignoring our own. We built up Europe's infrastructure with the Marshall Plan while our cities and farms got f_______d up and degenerated beyond repair. What we should is to fix our problems first. Then we worry about all else.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD3XEatgJiw&t=1s

    There are other problems world wide and at home. Teachable moment indeed.

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  6. We are part of NATO, so Europe's wars are our wars too. Always have been. The teachable moment here is that Ukraine is very much our Poland moment of 1939. Do we stay out and let Putin regroup to attack other Eastern European countries in the years ahead, or do we help defend Ukraine when he obviously is at his weakest. The longer we let this war drag, the more emboldened Putin will become.

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  7. 𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐎𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝𝐨𝐱 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐔𝐤𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞'𝐬 '𝐆𝐚𝐲 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞'

    A major religious leader in Russia has come out in support of the invasion of Ukraine and laid the blame on the support of gay rights.

    Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, during a Sunday sermon called Russia's "military operation" in Ukraine a conflict over "which side of God humanity will be on" between Russia and Western countries that embrace more progressive values. In particular, he called attention to Ukraine's support of gay rights and the presence of gay pride parades, The Moscow Times reported.

    "Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one variation of human behavior," Kirill said during the sermon. "That's why in order to join the club of those countries, you have to have a gay pride parade."

    The church leader characterized pride parades as "loyalty tests," and said that countries looking to ally with Western powers must embrace them or be shunned. Further, he claimed that the breakaway regions of Ukraine at the heart of the current conflict, collectively known as Donbas, have "fundamentally rejected" such values.

    Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/russian-orthodox-church-leader-blames-invasion-ukraines-gay-pride-1685636


    The guy preaches like a right wing American television evangelist.

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    Replies
    1. The current Russian government and church believes itself an autocracy based on traditional values, pretty much in line with the GOP platform and religious conservatives in our country, which is why so many conservatives love Putin. This is the "Moses" they want. However, what the Russian Orthodox grand wizard is mostly upset about is that Kyiv reestablished its patriarchate in 2019, a direct slap in the face to Moscow, which considers itself the center of the Orthodox universe, forgetting that they stole the seat from Kyiv back in the 16th century.

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    2. I have read of those so called schisms from the 1660s and the final breakup of that church in 1686 or thereabouts. One thing churches have in common is the desire to control people as this invariably means having unlimited access to people's money.

      Reminds me of the New Testament teaching which restricted the power of women in the pulpit. Some believe these strictures apply to all women but it does not. In the 2 instances in which women were restricted from the pulpit it was only in Ephesus which was a Greek colony in Anatolia (1 Tim 2:11,12) and Corinth (1 Cor 14:34,5). The restriction was site specific and not meant to involve all churches. This because the ancient Greek pagan temples were controlled by women. When they converted to Christianity they usurped the pulpit as they did in pagan days but the apostles forbade it. In many other parts of the New Testament there are numerous female preachers which debunks the myth that women are not allowed to preach.

      This validates to some extent the Marxist belief that religion is the opiate of the masses. If there was no money to be made in religion churches would not exist. Same with the military industrial complex - take all the profit out of war and we will have peace. Guaranteed.

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  8. Is Zelenskyy the angel the way he is often projected in the Western media? He is clearly trying to goad the West into taking up his fight with Russia thereby threatening to bring on World War III. He demands a no fly zone to be imposed by NATO even though his country is not a part of that alliance. He imposes demands for arms and other support from Biden and from the West even though what goes on there is none of our goddamn business. After all, how much did he do stop Saudi Arabia from committing genocide in Yemen? Did he offer to intervene to stop racist cops from committing their endless holocaust in the USA? Did he do anything about African nations killing one another? Did he offer refuge to people fleeing persecution in Guatemala or Honduras? Now he is practicing prejudice against transgenders in his country, his Nazi Azov allies attack and impose depredations upon Donbas and its people, will not recognize the independence of the two states, and refuses to go to the negotiation table. This is hardly the work or ideals of some holy angel deserving of a Nobel prize.

    Said before and say again: this is none of our business. Let them earn the respect of the international community, fight their own battles, win their own wars. I don't want to see anyone on either side of the border suffer any form of hardship. But we have more than enough problems here in the USA with racist genocidal cops, crumbling bridges, people forced to live in substandard housing, no universal health care, and a plague that won't go away. It's time for the USA to handle its own problems and to stop allowing other countries to us what our priorities should be.

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  9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwCNfsHSTS4
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iopwx6hDRwo&ab_channel=WGNNews

    Hate to say it but this guy is a truckload of shit. As commentators say, "don't bite the hand that feeds you". Zelenskyy is obviously trying to goad the West and its naive puppets in the USA into invading Russia and fighting the war for his benefit. I say, stay the f___k out. It's none of our business.

    ReplyDelete

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