This in from yesterday’s Guardian.
Both Green ministers in the German government, Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, are proving excellent ministers in the current Ukraine crisis.
Impressive people.
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
In praise of democracies where the rule of law reigns
Approximately half the countries in the world are democracies.
Over two thirds of the world’s population live under some form of autocracy.
1.05 billion people live in liberal democracies, 1.25bn in electoral democracies, 2.5bn in electoral autocracies and 2.05 in closed autocracies.
The war in Ukraine reminds us all what it means to live in an open and free democratic society, where we are all equal before the law.
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
How I found out that I am a ‘virtue signaller'
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
Last week on radio I heard HSE CEO Paul Reid tell us all to be extremely careful concerning Covid and he strongly recommended that we wear masks any place where there is a number of people. He specifically mentioned public transport and shops.
That same day I was on two buses and because of having earlier heard the advice from Paul Reid I noticed how few passengers on both buses were wearing masks.
Later in the afternoon on my return journey home there was a young woman sitting behind me on the bus.
Her conversation on the phone was laced with many expletives. I was back thinking of my train journey of some weeks ago, which I wrote about in my weekly column.
On this occasion I presume the person using the bad language was not a member of the Travelling Community.
Wise or unwise of me I did turn around to her and in a gentle and polite manner said that I had never heard my father use the f-word and he lived to the ripe old age of 95.
Some 15 minutes later as I went to get off the bus she commented to me that I was wearing a mask and was obviously a ‘virtue signaller’. I said nothing and proceeded to alight from the bus. I had never heard the expression before. I presume it means that I was showing off my virtue on two scores, mentioning her bad language to her and then secondly parading my mask in public - telling the world what a wonderful chap I am.
I have asked a number of people if they had ever heard of the expression ‘virtue signaller’ and I eventually found someone who had heard it. It’s a new term for me and it might well be a good one to have. At least, it sounds cool and it is a clever putdown.
Since then I’ve been asking myself was it a good idea to have engaged with the young woman. I presume she was a student as she got on the bus somewhere near a third level college. From her response I can only deduce that I annoyed her. Will she think again before she uses the f-word and the other expletives I was privy to?
But her comment about my wearing the mask was strange to say the least. At first I was not too sure what she meant but I presume she was more or less mocking me for wearing the mask.
All during the Covid pandemic I have been impressed how we have complied so well with the rules and regulations. Every train and bus that I travelled on passengers were wearing their masks.
And then suddenly when the obligation was lifted off came the masks. Have the State authorities and specifically the HSE jumped the gun too quickly? On both those bus journeys I was on last week most of the passengers were young people and probably students, and the maskers were in the small minority.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: ‘The Government must now revisit their decision on mask-wearing in indoor and crowded settings. There is a clear link between reduced transmission and mask wearing.’
Covid is on the march and whatever about being laughed at for wearing my mask, as sure as hell I’m going to keep wearing it anywhere there is a gathering of people.
Monday, March 28, 2022
Reports of Russian soldiers raping in Ukraine
War is evil from beginning to end and rape is always part of war.
The women of Berlin were scared of being raped as the Red Army entered the city. But that is not to say the German Army did not rape as it marched north, south, east and west.
After the war it would appear more concentration was given to the literature that wrote about how the Red Army raped.
While the full horror of war rape has never been discovered, in the years following the war more and more people spoke about warring soldiers raping in the occupied lands.
It is significant that writers are now reporting about the raping Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
This link is from today’s Guardian.
Sunday, March 27, 2022
European Union is doing exactly what it was designed to do
The founding fathers, and they were all men back then, of the then Common Market went that extra ‘mile’ to create a community of nations that would make it its objective to create an environment of peace.
Those leaders had lived through the terror of two world wars and had seen firsthand the terror unleashed by Hitler and Stalin too, even if he did play a significant role in the defeat of Germany.
In recent years there have been times when the renamed/rebranded European Union has received bad press.
Populists, nationalists and the far right have decried the EU and its aspirations. There have been those who have concentrated too much on the economic aspects of the Union.
It has taken Vladimir Putin to show the world all that is good and positive about the European Union.
A Europe without a European Union is unthinkable in these days during terror and brutality of Vladimir Putin.
The European Union is doing today exactly what it was designed to do.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
God is beyond all words
The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.
Michael Commane
I can still remember our teacher in fourth class telling us the story of the Prodigal Son. He told the story so well that I vividly recall the wayward young man return to his father’s farm and how his father was waiting for him at the gates. Our teacher had little or no time for the son who stayed behind, kept working and felt he had been hard done by his father.
In the intervening years and there have been many of them, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the son who stayed at home and worked hard while his younger brother went off gallivanting and enjoying himself.
Like so many of the New Testament parables there is a wealth of nuance in this story. There are corners and alleyways that lead us in so many directions in every paragraph. It’s so easy to cliche it out of existence and give it one simple pat interpretation.
This Gospel reading is something like putting a mirror up to our lives and looking at so many aspects of how we progress through what some might call ‘a valley of tears’, an expression I often heard my mother use.
Watching footage from the war in Ukraine, language and words have almost lost their meaning for me.
What must this war be costing and who will repay and repair the damage? It might sound strange that I mention money and damage to infrastructure before I refer to the cost to human life.
This war that I am seeing on television every evening and reading about in the newspapers is actually beyond my sense of understanding. I simply can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine for one moment how I would respond if I were living in Mariupol or Kyiv or Lviv.
It is simply beyond my comprehension. I am also dumbfounded by the bravery of the media people who are reporting the stories back to our homes. And nor can I begin to think what it must be like for the fighting soldiers, the fighting soldiers on both sides.
What must it be like in Ukraine? I cannot imagine. But one question I keep asking myself what’s the difference between this evil and mayhem and what has gone on in Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Chechnya and indeed across much of Africa. I suppose this is closer and it’s part of our nature that we are always more upset by what happens closer to home.
How will the people recover from this, that is, those who are not blown to smithereens? What must it be like to lose a limb, to be left blind and paralysed? There can be no happy ever after story in the reality of what is Ukraine.
I cannot imagine the anger and indeed the bitterness of the aggrieved people. What will the young Russian soldiers think when they hear the full story of what they have done?
Bitterness can so easily eat into us. It can destroy us and I imagine most of us have some sort of idea or glimpse of what it means to experience bitterness. I have.
In tomorrow’s Gospel reading (Luke 15; 1 - 3, 11 - 32), it’s understandable to see why the older son is annoyed and bitter. It’s farfetched to say that he should heed his father’s loving and wise words. It is farfetched but so is everything about God, at least from our vantage point.
The war in Ukraine is farfetched and in the midst of all this mayhem and evil if only I could realise that God is with the people. How in God’s name can that be explained? There are no easy ways or easy words to do that and certainly pious platitudes don’t work, at least they don’t work for me.
These days I keep saying to myself that God is beyond all words. And there is no harm saying that. That great school teacher, who explained the story of the Prodigal Son to us, saw one aspect to the story. But there is another side to it as well. It’s almost impossible for us to picture God and once we try to pigeonhole God we are into the world of idolatry.
The hope that I hear expressed by the people of Ukraine is almost beyond belief. The hope that the father offered his older son in tomorrow’s Gospel reading is difficult for the son to appreciate. Isn’t that more or less how most of us hang on to our faith.
How many of us feel like the child who feels forgotten? Remember, none of us is forgotten.
Are we like the elder brother in tomorrow’s Gospel, aghast looking on at what’s happening ?
Friday, March 25, 2022
Putin has learned so much from Stalin and Hitler
Mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko yesterday compared Russia’s present-day tactics in Ukraine to those of the Nazis.
“At first, they blockade a peaceful city, purposefully start killing people, and then forcibly deport them to their territory,” he said.
That was exactly what Nazis Germany did in Ukraine and indeed, was what Soviet dictator Stalin did in the country.
From 1945 until now it was a seriously taboo subject to compare anyone to Adolf Hitler.
In 2022 we now have a Russian leader who can legitimately be compared to Hitler, and Vladimir Putin is that man.
Another nasty free-sheet newspaper on the streets
A relatively new free-sheet newspaper is being delivered door-to-door. It’s called ‘The Irish Light’.
Editor is Gemma Doherty, associate editor is John Waters.
The story on the front page on the current issue is titled ‘Irish to become minority in Ireland’
On page two the title of the lead story is: ‘Irish should stay out of Ukraine conflict’.
A picture collage on page one carries the headline: 'No Irish need apply: Most ads in Ireland promote Africans'
The same free-sheet gives a UK email address for letter writers.
The back page is an ad for the newspaper. It contains the following headlines:
1) Doctors kill more people than criminals, 2) Meds kill more than street drugs, 3) Government kill more people than terrorists, 4) Vaccines kill more people than diseases.
The paper announces that it is a 'people-funded paper’.
Unfortunately the free-sheet is hate-filled.
Every day as bombs and missiles destroy Ukraine we are forced to realise how fortunate we are in Ireland to live in a democracy and not in a dictatorship, a kleptocracy autocracy or a theocracy.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Clerical abuse poses ‘systemic questions’ of church
This from The Irish Times yesterday
Survivors express optimism senior German cleric has grasped scale of issue
German cardinal Reinhard Marx has conceded that confronting the legacy of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Catholic Church can only happen when “systemic questions” are asked of the institution and its hierarchy.
Two months ago a report commissioned by Cardinal Marx, as archbishop of Munich and Freising, documented nearly 500 cases of clerical sexual abuse of children and youths and at least 235 perpetrators in the archdiocese in the postwar decades – with the true number likely to be much higher.
“Through this discussion, the entire system is in question, from its foundations up,” said the cardinal at a public event in Munich with abuse survivors on Monday evening.
In 2010 he commissioned – but did not publish – a first report into clerical abuse in his diocese, a bulwark of German Catholicism. Now, 12 years on, he said he sees the issue “even more radically” and said he finally understood “that we need to dig deeper”.
“We have to look deeper, that we are all linked to each other in this system,” he added.
January’s report has triggered a veritable earthquake in Munich, with at least 7,000 people applying to leave the Catholic Church.
Survivors attending Monday evening’s event in Munich said they were optimistic that – some 12 years after the first wave of clerical sexual abuse revelations in Germany – one of Germany’s most senior Catholic clerics has finally grasped the scale of the issue.
Progress
Reinhard Kick, who was abused by a priest and is now a survivor representative in the archdiocese, said he was “cautiously optimistic” that survivors are finally making progress. “I wrote Marx letters for 10 years, begging letters, asking for help, and got nothing,” said Mr Kick. “On Monday I told him, ‘now I am here to help you.’”
The Munich archdiocese has promised to adopt a proactive approach towards abuse survivors, rather than waiting to be approached. Officials have agreed to address outstanding financial concerns on compensation and on unpaid therapy costs. From June, the church in Munich will have a dedicated priest and support team for survivors and their concerns as well as a programme to assist priests who were themselves abused.
But Cardinal Marx has yet to address a key accusation in the Munich abuse report: that Emeritus Pope Benedict, in his four years as archbishop of Munich until 1982, was aware of abusing priests in his archdiocese.
In a statement last month, the 94-year-old expressed his “profound shame” at abuses that occurred while he held senior positions within the church. Responding to four cases flagged by investigators, the former pope said he had no knowledge of them and thus no responsibility. He also denied attending a meeting where one abusing priest was discussed, which he later corrected as an error.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein, his personal secretary, has now admitted this was a “grievous oversight”.
“But it is going too far to accuse him of lying; that hit him hard,” he told Die Zeit weekly, insisting the meeting did not go into details of the priest’s record. “Not one of the claims stood up to a careful examination of files; they don’t get any more true through repetition.”
Instead Archbishop Gänswein accused the team of lawyers of posing “suggestive” questions, that “didn’t always differentiate between assumption, claim and fact”, resulting in “tendentious reporting” of the affair. His lawyers have accused the Munich investigators of relying on “rumour and second-hand gossip” to support allegations.
Cardinal Marx has yet to say in public whether he believes the former pope, but has said he has “no reason to doubt” the work of the lawyers he commissioned, or their findings.
In recent months the Munich cardinal has emerged as an influential, progressive voice in an ongoing reform debate inside the German Catholic Church. In mid-March he celebrated a Mass with members of Munich’s leading LGBT community and criticised ongoing discrimination against same-sex couples within the church.
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
It’s time to stop the brutal dictator Putin
Channel 4 News last evening showed a clip of a Ukrainian doctor talk about what was happening in his hospital. He was a man in his late 50s, tears in his eyes as he spoke about the evil that Russia was perpetrating on Ukraine.
In that same programme a member of the Ukrainian parliament told the story of how the Russians are kidnapping children and sending them to far off places in Siberia.
It was shocking news.
On Monday morning the Russians bombed an ammonia factory in Ukraine. They are turning the country into ash. For what?
Does Vladimir Putin still believe he is saving the people of Ukraine?
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was sentenced yesterday to a further nine years in prison.
It’s clear to the world now that Vladimir Putin is a despot, a dictator. He must be stopped.
It so happens on this day, March 23, 1933 that the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany.
Did the world think that within 90 years Europe would see a second brutal dictator?
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
European bishops could stop the tanks in Ukraine
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
There are no words to describe the hell of Ukraine and yet when Russia razed Grozny to the ground or destroyed Aleppo I sort of shrugged my shoulders, realised it was awful but I easily forgot about it and got on with my normal life. Ukraine is different and I’m wondering why.
Yes, it’s closer to us in Ireland. It borders Poland and Romania. There is something about the power and might of Russia that has always been a dark foreboding force. Russia made enormous sacrifices in World War II but on the other hand the leadership had no hesitation in sacrificing millions of lives to achieve victory.
The barbarity of the Soviet leadership shared much with their predecessors, the tsars. Saying that, am I being racist and making Russians out to be more violent than other nations?
What exactly is the stance of the Russian Orthodox Church on this war? Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has accused the West of disregarding Russia’s security concerns.
Kirill argues that the genesis of this war lies in Nato’s eastward march. He accuses them of inciting hatred among the ‘brother peoples’ of Russia and Ukraine.
He blames the Ukraine war on western ‘Russophobia’.
On March 9 in a Lenten liturgy Kirill in a sermon referred to Russians and Ukrainians as one people and accused the West of supplying arms to Ukraine in an attempt to weaken Russia.
Ties between the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and the Orthodox Church in Russia have been broken.
It would be interesting to know if there are lines of communication open between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Holy See.
Pope Francis sent two cardinals to Ukraine and the Vatican has offered to mediate.
Ukrainian actress and fashion model Anna Afroncik, who lives in Italy, has appealed to Pope Francis to go to Kyiv. She argues his presence in the Ukrainian capital would force Putin to stop the bombs.
What if a sizeable number of European bishops, including some from Ireland, went to Kyiv and stood in front of the Russian and Ukrainian tanks dressed in their episcopal robes, with their mitres and croziers? It would make sensational media footage and surely Vladimir Putin would not allow his tanks to keep rolling.
The bishops have asked us to pray for peace in Ukraine. A noble idea. But their presence in the midst of the hell that is Ukraine would scream out to the world that would be far mightier than their request for us to pray for the people.
Full marks to the Russian television producer Marina Ovsyannikova, who interrupted a Russian news programme by holding up a poster that read; ‘Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.’ She certainly is inspirational, a woman worth listening to.
I write this column as there are embers of hope at the peace talks. Too many lives have been lost. Too many people have suffered far too much. This war must stop now.
Monday, March 21, 2022
From defeat in Afghanistan to crimes in Ukraine
ON MARCH 21, 1980 the then US president, Jimmy Carter announced that the United States Olympic team would boycott the Olympic Games in Moscow that year. It was in protest to the Soviet Union at war in Afghanistan.
That war proved an unmitigated failure for the Soviet Union. There were myriad reasons for the Soviet defeat, but one reason often given is that by the time the Soviet Army gave permission for an operation to take place the Mujahideen had done the damage. The local Soviet commander on the ground had no real authority and everything had to be sanctioned by the political leaders in Moscow.
There are those who say that the failure of the war in Afghanistan was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.
History has shown the world how Mother Russia reacts to its being invaded and it has suffered badly at the hands of invaders. But that does not give it the right to invade an internationally recognised neighbouring State.
This blog had its highest ever number of readers in the Russian Federation yesterday.
The German defence minister, Christine Lambrecht attended the Alertus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Viernheim in the state of Hessen.
Among the weapons Germany is providing Ukraine with are 2,700 surface-to-air rockets manufactured in the Soviet Union.
They were part of the arsenal of the former German Democratic Republic. It is said that until delivery to Ukraine the surface-to-air rockets were still in their delivery housing.
Germany is also supplying Ukraine with anti-tank systems and modern anti-aircraft missiles.
Sunday, March 20, 2022
P&O’s bad behaviour cannot be allowed in any organisation
The behaviour of P&O towards its staff is reprehensible.
The company dismissed 800 staff and while the staff were frogmarched off their ships the company had new cheaper labour ready to board.
Any company or organisation that treats its employees in such a manner is not fit for purpose.
Surely when employers behave in such a manner the State should move in and take drastic action against those who have violated staff in such an egregious manner.
And that should apply to all organisations, companies, NGOs, churches, State bodies, irrespective of the work done and the esteem in which the organisation may be held.
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Vladimir Putin is Germany’s great recruiting officer
It would seem Vladimir Putin has forgotten what happened at Stalingrad and why the Germans were defeated.
In the early days of the battle in August 1942 the Luftwaffe destroyed the city from the skies. That destruction made it impossible for German tanks to negotiate the streets and gave the upper hand to Red Army snipers.
The encirclement of Paulus’ Sixth Army also meant supplies of food and ammunition were cut off.
Soviet commander Georgy Zhukov very quickly realised the weakness of the Romanian and Italian armies fighting with the Germans so they were the first to be taken out.
Today the Russians are attempting to destroy Ukraine from the skies and are employing among other foreigners fighters, 16,000 Syrians. It is also claimed that Chechens are fighting with the Russians.
According to US experts the Russians have in three weeks lost 6,000 soldiers.
That the Russians have lost four generals in such a short time must tell a worrying story to the Kremlin.
There is an irony about this war and how Germany is now becoming once again involved in conflict with Russia.
German arms company Rheinmetall has seen its shares rise by 51 per cent on pre-war levels.
In March SPD German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a €100 billion special fund to boost Germany’s military.
The Luftwaffe is to purchase 35 new F35 stealth bombers from US Lockheed-Martin, costing €100 million each and 15 Tornado surveillance aircraft from Franc0-German Airbus.
In 2020 German companies sold approximately €336 million worth of product with both commercial and military uses, such as sensors, lasers and other high-end technologies.
Russian tanks in Ukraine are fitted with Bosch technology.
These days it is widely said in Germany that Vladimir Putin is the best recruitment officer the Bundeswehr (German Army) has ever had.
Friday, March 18, 2022
Pope Francis speaks with Patriarch Kirill
The link below from the National Catholic Reporter.
Pope Francis on March 16 spoke with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a backer of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. According to the Vatican, Francis rejected justifications for the invasion as a "holy war."
Read more: https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/pope-francis-video-conference-russian-patriarch-kirill-rejects-religious-defense
Thursday, March 17, 2022
St Patrick’s Day greetings
A happy and blessed St Patrick’s Day to all readers of this blog.
The trout fishing season begins on the River Dodder today. Good luck to all those fishing on the river.
Most likely there will be no one fishing on the River Dnieper today, at least in that part of it that flows through Ukraine.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Tuesday’s ‘A Word in Edgeways’ on RTE Radio 1
The link below is to RTE Radio 1’s ‘A Word in Edgeways’ aired yesterday morning on 'Rising Time’.
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22074345/
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Making peace with noisy rail passengers
This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
When it comes to travelling by rail I have it down to a fine art. I try if possible to travel on off-peak time trains and know where the quietest seats are.
But there are occasions when my plans don’t quite work out and just that happened some weeks ago.
I sat in my usual seat, the coach was quiet and I was delighted with myself. But the delight did not last too long. Three or four stops on, some adults and a large number of children boarded. They were loud and unruly.
I presumed then and still presume they were members of the Travelling community. For a moment or two I thought of moving to another coach but decided against as that would have been a rude thing to do. I stayed put. The roaring and screaming moved up the decibel range and mixed with that was a large quantity of bad language.
Regularly I heard adults tell children to keep quiet but doing so using strong expletives. And once that happened the children would begin to cry. It was a vicious circle and it kept going for the entire journey.
But it did appear the children were generally well behaved. I got the impression most of the the shouting and bad language came from the adults.
In the midst of the bedlam, shouting and bad language there were moments of quiet but they never lasted too long. While all this was happening I was texting a friend and giving him a blow for blow account of how my most recent rail journey was going. I’m not the most patient of people but on this occasion I decided I was going to sit there, say nothing and mind my own business.
We were approximately ten minutes from the next station when one of the adults asked me if I might know the time of their connecting train.
She asked the right man. Not only was I able to tell her the time of the train but I could also tell her from which platform her train was departing and when it would arrive at her destination. She was delighted with the information and thanked me profusely.
One thing led to another and we began chatting with one another. I asked her where they were going and told her where I was heading. After about two or three minutes chatting I felt very much at ease in her company. I can’t speak for her but I got the definite impression that she too was at ease talking to me.
Yes, the shouting, the bad language is never acceptable. But the question I keep asking myself is, had I made up my mind about those passengers the moment they boarded the train? I’m inclined to think I had. What if I had politely asked them to keep their voices down and desist from using bad language?
And I could have done it in a friendly and pleasant manner. We could have got chatting much earlier.
But what strikes me most about the whole experience is that once the passenger and I began speaking to one another the ice was broken and we were both engaged with each other in a friendly and pleasant manner.
We all need to talk and listen to one another far more than we do. It’s important to look outside our own little bubbles. How often do we make up our minds about people never having spoken with them?
Monday, March 14, 2022
Bosch tehncology guiding Russian tanks in Ukraine
On Germany’s public broadcaster, ARD last evening on the Anne Will programme the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba told the panel that captured Russian tanks in Ukraine were outfitted with technology made by German manufacturer Bosch.
Packaging carrying meaningless words
Written on a food wrap this
What exactly does that mean? Has it any meaning other than saying the chicken could be made anywhere in the worldand we are not telling you but we have to write this sort of gibberish on the packaging.
Sunday, March 13, 2022
Endgame: How could the war play out?
An interesting article in The Irish Times yesterday.
Russia’s campaign has been beset by strategic errors, logistical shortcomings and intelligence blunders but it still has overwhelming military advantages
Western intelligence officials had predicted victory for Russia in less than a week after it invaded Ukraine. But more than a fortnight later Moscow and Kyiv remain locked in a bloody battle for control.
Ukraine is mounting a stronger than anticipated defence and western countries are supporting it with arms supplies. Meanwhile, Russia’s campaign has been beset by strategic errors, logistical shortcomings and intelligence blunders that vastly underestimated Ukrainian capabilities. Diplomatic efforts to pause the fighting have so far failed.
With Russia failing to secure a swift win and president Vladimir Putin’s endgame unclear, western capitals are discussing a range of scenarios for how the conflict could progress, people involved in the discussions told the Financial Times. We outline some of the possibilities below.
RUSSIAN VICTORY
Zelenskiy government toppledDespite Moscow’s failure so far to make the headway it expected, the majority of western officials and analysts believe their initial assessment – that Russia will win a comprehensive victory – remains the most likely outcome, given its overwhelming military power.But Putin will pay a far higher price than he initially calculated, both in terms of military losses and the reputation of his armed forces, say analysts. The civilian death toll will also be much higher than anticipated as Russia turns to more indiscriminate bombardment and deploys arms such as cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons.
Most analysts expect that after taking control, Russia would replace president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government with a pro-Moscow administration. That could lead to some form of western-backed Ukrainian government-in-exile based outside the country and a prolonged insurgency inside Ukraine.
“If his goal is to impose some kind of puppet regime . . . it’s pretty evident by the response of the Ukrainian people that they will never accept that,” Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, said this week. “If he tries to enforce such a puppet regime by keeping Russian forces in Ukraine, it will be a long, bloody, drawn-out mess through which Russia will continue to suffer grievously.”
PARTIAL RUSSIAN VICTORY
Zelenskiy government left with rump stateZelenskiy has rebuffed offers from western powers to evacuate him from Kyiv, reportedly retorting that he needed “ammunition, not a ride”. But many defence and intelligence officials say a potential retreat to western Ukraine – where Russia has so far made no attempt to seize territory – is a potential endgame. They have mooted Lviv, close to the Polish border, as a possible new capital for a rump Ukrainian state.Russia’s invasion strategy, in which firepower has been concentrated on Kyiv to the north and Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions, suggests that may also be seen in the Kremlin as an acceptable outcome.
Putin’s rambling essay on Ukraine’s past and its relations with Russia, published last year and seen by many as the Russian president’s historical justification for the invasion, hinted at a partition of the country between its more Russian-speaking east and Europe-focused west.
In contrast to Russia’s struggles in the north and east of the country, its forces that invaded from Crimea – the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 – in the south have made major gains along Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. If Russia were to attack and capture the port of Odesa, Ukraine’s third-largest city and long identified by Nato as a potential Russian target, it could cut off a rump Ukraine from the sea, crippling a crucial export route.
But few think Putin would settle for failing to capture Kyiv or to topple the Zelenskiy government, given his stated aim to “demilitarise” the country and wrench it from its EU and Nato membership ambitions.
NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENTNo overall control
Talks between Ukraine and Russia since the invasion began have mainly focused on specific humanitarian issues such as evacuation corridors from besieged cities or short-term ceasefires. The failure of almost all of those ceasefires to hold – and reports of Russian shelling and mining of roads designated for civilian evacuation – does not bode well for a negotiated settlement.In talks in Turkey between the combatants’ foreign ministers – the most senior-level negotiations so far convened – on Thursday, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov denied Moscow had attacked Ukraine and claimed the US was funding biological weapons research in the country.
Dmytro Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart, said seeking ceasefire promises from Lavrov was impossible as “there are other decision makers for this matter in Russia”.
Zelenskiy’s deputy chief of staff, Ihor Zhovkva, said this week Kyiv was “ready for a diplomatic solution”, provided Russia withdrew its troops. But while Ukrainian officials have suggested a deal on the status of Crimea and pro-Russian separatist-controlled regions in the east could be feasible, Kyiv has ruled out Russia’s broader demands that it become neutral and give up its military capabilities.
But some form of settlement could tempt both sides if the war became a quagmire where both made little progress and suffered mounting losses. The question would be whether a ceasefire would enshrine Russia’s gains so far or mean that Putin pulls back troops to a defined area.
But western officials say anything short of a full Russian withdrawal would mean that crippling economic sanctions against Moscow were retained. “We keep tightening the noose,” said one. “Putin cannot hope for a fait accompli and for the world to go back to some kind of [normality]. There has been an irreversible change.”
RUSSIAN RETREAT
Putin toppledUkraine’s resistance so far has raised the possibility that Kyiv could continue repelling Russian efforts to seize key cities, especially if western weapons supplies continue to bolster the army’s capabilities, some observers argue.Such a stalemate, and the huge impact of western sanctions imposed on Russia in recent weeks, has prompted western officials to speculate that Putin himself could be a casualty of a failed invasion. They argue that the Russian president, who has ruled for more than 22 years, might be toppled by Kremlin elites, or by Russian military or security officials angry at his handling of the war, or by a groundswell of protest among Russian citizens furious at falling living standards.
Victoria Nuland, a Russia expert and undersecretary for political affairs at the US state department, argued this week that the key to ending the conflict in Ukraine was increasing opposition to Putin inside Russia.
“The way this conflict will end is when Putin realises that this adventure has put his own leadership standing at risk with his own military, with his own people, that he is haemorrhaging the lives of the people of Russia, the army of Russia and their future [for] his own vain ambition,” Nuland told the Senate foreign relations committee.
However, Putin’s grip on power is arguably stronger than it has ever been, thanks to draconian new legislation in effect outlawing independent media in Russia and leaving Kremlin-controlled outlets as the sole source of information.
BROADER NATO-RUSSIA WAR
Some officials caution that the conflict may not be contained in Ukraine. They warn that weapons shipments to Kyiv by Nato member states and crippling sanctions imposed on Moscow have raised the risk of spillover to neighbouring countries, a step that could drag Nato into direct conflict with Russia.The alliance has been at pains to demonstrate that it is not directly engaged in the conflict. The alliance does not co-ordinate weapons supplies by Nato member states to Kyiv, while Nato has refused to set up a no-fly zone in Ukraine. Such a move would be both practically as well as politically impossible, alliance officials say, with Russia’s air defence capabilities meaning Nato jets would be attacked almost as soon as they took to Ukrainian airspace.
Yet the risk of escalation remains. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said this week that plans – mooted by the west but now ruled out – to supply Kyiv with Polish MiG fighters would be a “very undesirable and potentially dangerous scenario”. In turn, Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, has warned Russia that attacks on western supply lines to Ukraine would represent an escalation.
Putin last month warned countries that sought to “meddle” in the conflict of “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” – a threat widely seen as a reference to potential use of nuclear weapons. This was followed by his decision to put Russia’s strategic nuclear forces on a higher level of readiness.
Nato, meanwhile, has increased troop deployments in the Baltic states and other members near to Russia, and alliance officials have warned of the potential for Putin to provoke Nato members to distract the west from the Ukraine invasion.
“Putin wants less Nato, he’s getting more Nato,” Stoltenberg said this week. “He wanted to divide us, he is getting a more united alliance.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022
Saturday, March 12, 2022
Patriarch blames Ukraine war on western ‘Russophobia’
Link below is to an article in Crux. Th reviews of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.
Friday, March 11, 2022
Crimea’s exiles see a hard road home through Putin’s war
The article below is from The Irish Times of yesterday.
Two interesting dates in the midst of the hell of Ukraine.
On March 11, 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
It would be interesting to know what the last Communinst head of the Soviet Union thinks of the war in Ukraine.
And on this day, March 11, 1990 Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union.
It is just three weeks since Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov celebrated the general release of Rhino, the film he made after spending five years in Russian jails on spurious terrorism charges following the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Now, a fortnight after Russia invaded his homeland, he is a volunteer fighter “standing in the trenches as a participant of the territorial defence of Kyiv ... Life has changed in an instant with the fall of the first bomb on the territory of Ukraine.”
“My motherland is mercilessly being shelled from the land, sea and air. Russian bombs are falling on Ukrainian children. Millions are sitting in bomb shelters. Millions are suffering from being cold and lacking food,” he said in an open letter to the international film community.
“My country is being ruined, but our spirit is strong. We are going to fight until our victory.”
Revolution
Sentsov is from Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in March 2014 after a revolution in Ukraine ousted the country’s then Kremlin-backed leaders and turned it decisively away from Moscow and towards the West.
The annexation was rejected by most of the region’s ethnic Ukrainians, including Sentsov, and by its mainly Muslim Crimean Tatar community, who together made up more than a third of its two million people, while many of its ethnic Russians welcomed the occupation.
Opponents of the Kremlin regime fled Crimea as free speech and political activism were crushed by the Russian security services; now, eight years on – in politics, culture, civil society and on the front line – they are fighting the invasion in any way they can.
“We are trying to stay in a more-or-less safe place, but I don’t think any corner of my country is entirely safe now. So we are going into bomb shelters from time to time. It’s really disgusting and awful to see the barbaric reality of this,” says Emine Dzheppar, a deputy foreign minister of Ukraine who was a journalist and activist in Crimea until 2014.
Eastward journey
Her grandparents, along with the entire Crimean Tatar community on the peninsula, were sent into exile in 1944 by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as collective punishment for supposed collaboration with the Nazis.About half of the 200,000 exiles died from hunger, thirst, disease and cold on their brutal eastward journey in railway cattle cars and during their first year in remote Central Asia and Siberia.
Crimean Tatars were allowed to return home only in the late 1980s, and often faced hostility from settlers in Crimea, many of whom were Soviet servicemen and their relatives.
“Crimean Tatars and all Ukrainians have a common history of suffering under the Russian empire,” says Dzheppar.
“In 1873, when Catherine II annexed Crimea for the first time, the Crimean Tatars were a bone in the throat of Russia’s narrative that Crimea was the motherland of Russian culture and Orthodox Christian religion and so on, because we are the indigenous people of Crimea,” she explains.
“My father was a surgeon and my mother a dentist. When they took two suitcases and four-year-old me and returned to Crimea in 1987, they went through hell. Because without registration they couldn’t get a job and without a job they couldn’t register, and when the KGB found out they were Crimean Tatars they would give them trouble.”
Dzheppar says Ukrainians have been “traumatised for centuries” of disasters caused by Russia, whether the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the manmade Holodomor famine of 1932-3 that killed up to 10 million people, Stalin’s Soviet terror and the 2014 annexation of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine.
“This war is yet another trauma,” Dzheppar tells The Irish Times late at night from a Kyiv that is under curfew and shaken by explosions as Russian forces mass on its outskirts.
“But what I see today is also the tremendous unity of my country,” she adds.
“When you see people opposing Russian tanks with their bare hands in the streets and forming a human shield to stop them reaching a nuclear power plant, this makes me so proud of every single Ukrainian who fights for principles.”
Displaced people
When Russian occupation and war came to Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, thousands of people fled to Lviv, a peaceful western city near the border with Poland.Many were helped by Crimea SOS, a civil society group co-founded by Crimean Tatar Alim Aliev to “work with displaced people and those who stayed in Crimea, and to inform people about what is going on there.”
Aliev travelled back to Kyiv from Lviv on the eve of the February 24th invasion after taking part in a festival of Crimean culture in the western city.
“A friend called me at 6am and said: ‘War has begun’,” he recalls.
“I spent the next night in a bomb shelter – the underground carpark of the building where I live – then colleagues told me I should leave Kyiv,” amid reports that Russian operatives planned to target prominent Ukrainian politicians, activists and journalists.
Now Aliev, who is deputy director of the Ukrainian Institute, a public cultural agency, is working from Lviv, which is the main transit point for the two million Ukrainians who have fled into the European Union.
“I’m working 24/7 on different projects and with people, complete strangers, who call asking for help, and we try to find a place for them to stay somewhere in western Ukraine,” explains Aliev, who was born in Uzbekistan before his family returned from exile.
Occupation
He says occupation not only stifled opposition voices in Crimea, but led to “the militarisation of the peninsula and of its people’s consciousness”, and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people who are loyal to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“At least 500,000 Russians have come in. Many are from the military and security services and there are also local administration staff and businesspeople.”
Tens of thousands have fled Crimea since 2014, and for Crimean Tatars – most of whom are Russian-speaking Muslims – it was not necessarily easy to adapt to life in western Ukraine, an overwhelmingly Christian stronghold of national identity, language and culture.
“There is still no mosque here in Lviv, but at least we have large prayer houses now with enough space,” says Aliev. “In 2014 people met to pray in flats, and even in the office of Crimea SOS sometimes.”
Aliev says it has been “horrible” to witness the displacement of people from eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014 and on a vastly greater scale now, but he believes these crises have also smashed the regional, linguistic and religious barriers that divided and weakened the nation.
“A lot of our people are dying now – the other day a famous Ukrainian actor was killed, Pasha Lee, who came from Yevpatoria in Crimea. His father was ethnic Korean. There are ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Russians, Crimean Tatars, ethnic Koreans fighting for Ukraine – this says a lot about our nation and our unity now,” he adds.
“Putin made one big mistake: he really thought we are a mess and we would be afraid and would just sit at home and say ‘Okay, here are flowers for your army.’ Instead, people are really angry and really active.”
Even as Ukraine fights for survival, there is a glimmer of hope among many of its people that Moscow’s invasion – which faces fierce Ukrainian resistance, massive western sanctions and some opposition at home – could backfire on Putin, ultimately demolishing his regime and shaking Russia to its foundations.
“Putin is going all in and we are going all in. A lot of people in Crimea realise the situation and they are just waiting for D-Day,” says Aliev.
Dzheppar says her country’s political institutions are still functioning fully, and the cabinet holds virtual meetings “a couple of times a day”; its president Volodymr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, has become a global star and symbol of resistance against immense odds.
“Ukraine is a piece of bread that Russia cannot swallow,” she says.
“The war that Putin started here in Ukraine is the beginning of his personal end. And the consequences for his country and for the Russian people, unfortunately, will be disastrous.”
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