As of now, it’s a relatively safe bet to believe that the Donbass region will be severed from Ukraine, with the remaining Ukrainian state having a neutral status. This diminished Ukraine might’ve (at least in the short term) a greater per capita anti-Russian dynamic, which could prove problematical for that state.

Russia has been losing the propaganda war. Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be looking long term. At one time, the current Head of the Chechen Republic (official title) Ramzan Kadyrov, had opposed the Russian government. Now, he’s on very good terms with the Kremlin.

In time, a greater number of Ukrainians might begin questioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as someone who (under the influence of some nationalists) further instigated and prolonged a conflict, whose end result could’ve occurred on better terms for Ukraine, without the deaths, displacement and destruction, resulting from Russia’s military action.

In turn, Putin could be increasingly viewed as someone who for years had tried to reasonably see a peaceful implementation of the 2015 UN approved Minsk Protocol and need for a new European security arrangement.

Likewise, contrary to the Kiev regime and Western mass media propaganda, Russia has so far waged a limited military operation, causing far less civilian deaths, when compared to the US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the issues, are armed combatants using civilians and civilian areas as cover.

For those selectively seeing Putin as a monster, consider Madeleine Albright’s infamous comment on the large-scale Iraqi deaths caused by US military action and how she has been given kudos by the likes of Wesley Clark.

A number of Kiev regime claims about Russia’s military action have been later proven false. It’s therefore prudent to not automatically believe everything that government says before a fully substantiated overview.

In an interesting April 1 RT CrossTalk discussion, University of Rhode Island Professor Nicolai Petro foresees a more nationalistic Ukraine. Petro adds that this nationalism might’ve a noticeable anti-Western sentiment as well. Kiev regime propaganda has repeatedly suggested that the West hasn’t done enough to help their side. Over the years, some pro-Stepan Bandera Ukrainians have a xenophobic element, which is negative towards Jews, Poles and Russians.

If Petro’s projection takes shape, there could be a continued tense political division in a hypothetically diminished Ukraine, formally divorced from Crimea and Donbass. Pro-Russian sentiment within Kiev regime-controlled Ukraine hasn’t been comp​letely eliminated.

The abrasive Ukrainian nationalism idolizing Bandera is an anathema to many Ukrainians. The Banderite element in the Ukrainian Rada has been attempting to officially ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, that’s loosely affiliated to the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Moscow Patriarchate affiliated Orthodox Church has for centuries been by far the most popular church in Crimea, Donbass and numerous other areas of the former Ukrainian SSR. It’s quite arrogant for the Kiev regime to lay claim on lands, where the latter oppose the censoring trends favored by the former. There’re no Kiev regime calls to cancel culture Bandera.

In Western mass media, no context is ever given when the black and red Banderite flag is shown. BTW, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with loose Moscow Patriarchate ties, has spoken against the Russian military action, as have numerous clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

On the flip side, the ongoing military conflict is seeing casualties among Ukrainian neo-Nazis. In a somewhat roundabout way, Zelensky appears to have acknowledged the negative attributes of these extremists, during an April 1 Fox News segment – an exchange that the network has apparently omitted in its archive. The failed neo-Nazi advocacy could eventually lead to a significant drop in its influence.

At the outbreak of the Russian military action, I proposed a settlement having Crimea fully recognized as Russian, along with a recognition of Donbass as a very autonomous part of Ukraine and an end to the anti-Russian sanctions. I’m now not as sure that Russia would accept this proposal.

The implemented sanctions against Russia have created a boomerang effect, which could become more evident. Over the long haul, it’s not so easy to isolate a country as powerfully determined Russia. Much of the world hasn’t gone along with the West’s anti-Russian sanctions.

Given time, the sanctions against Russian athletes and artists could end on the realization that this action is farcical in its hypocritically implemented bigotry. Using the same premise, it wouldn’t be so difficult to justify the banning of athletes and artists from other countries, when their respective nation (in the not-too-distant past) engaged in military action that killed and displaced many.

With a consistent standard in mind, Ukrainian athletes and artists could be banned for the Kiev regime carnage in Donbass over the past eight years. The Kiev regime can be credibly held accountable for about 10,000 deaths (overwhelmingly civilian) and displacing up to one million to Russia. Donbass is on the other end of the former Ukrainian SSR, farther away from the EU. Hence, the Donbass victims of Kiev regime terror don’t get much, if any Western mass media compassion and coverage.

US President Joe Biden will probably and deservingly be a one term president. His likely Republican successor might be in a better position to improve US-Russian relations – somewhat on par to what happened with US-Soviet relations after Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter.

In the meantime, it’s imperative for responsible voices within the US and elsewhere to not throw in the towel. Western mass media censorship can only go so far.

eurasiareview.com

In the history of civilization, Politics has more often than not, been a matter reduceable to the question of “whose side are you on?”

Granted it is not an easy affair to discern what most-nearly approaches truth in the fog of “the present.” Hindsight is 20/20 they say, although that is also not entirely true, for the interpretation of history is just another battlefield, albeit in much slower motion.

In a world of increased division, where we are told there is only black or white, the best we mere “civilians” can hope for is to not get hit by the crossfire. However, that is becoming increasingly harder to do.

It is not a matter of holding “opinion” any longer, it is about upholding a “conviction,” not earned with your own personal scrutiny and research, but by your “faith” in such a conviction and the authorities who shape it.

Increasingly, it does not truly matter what the “facts” are, but the question of “whose side are you on?”

If that is what “reality” has been reduced to by those forces controlling the state, then any enemy to those forces controlling that state will be a villain, regardless of their actions, regardless of their ideology; and any ally to those forces controlling that state will be a hero, regardless of their actions, regardless of their ideology.

And thus, in our shaped reality of today, what makes a “Hero” or a “Villain” will be determined by the simple question “whose side are you on?”

If this is troubling to you, I suggest we do a little exercise together. Let us dare to discern the “facts” for ourselves. Only then, will we cease being mere cheerleaders for a team; only then, can we qualify ourselves to ask in all honest sincerity, “whose side are we truly on?”

Are Nazis Now the New “Good Guys”?

There is a bit of mixed messaging that has been going on, especially in the last few weeks. Are there significant numbers of Nazis in Ukraine and are these “bad” or “good” Nazis in the context that they are fighting the Russian “invaders”?

In one breath we hear the counter, how can there be Nazis in Ukraine when there is a Jewish President calling the shots? In another breath we hear Facebook is now allowing users to praise the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion while they are fighting Russians. In yet another breath we hear, well its complicated, Ukrainian Nationalism should be considered at the forefront of any debate, even if it overlaps with Nazi ideology.

On Feb. 27, 2022, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland held a scarf bearing the slogan “Slava Ukraini,” meaning “Glory to Ukraine,” with the “Blood and Soil” colors of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) (who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and massacred thousands of Jews and Poles).

She then proceeded to post this picture onto her Twitter account (replacing it hours later with a picture of her without the “Blood and Soil” scarf) and accused her detractors of “reeking of Russian disinformation”. This controversial picture of Freeland was reported by Canada’s National Post.

According to Freeland’s press secretary, this was just another case of a “classic KGB disinformation smear… accusing Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Canadians of being far right extremists or fascists or Nazis,” which is a confusing statement on multiple levels.

It is not clear how this is a case of “Russian disinformation,” since the picture is indeed authentic, Freeland does not deny this. And she is indeed holding a “Blood and Soil” emblem, which originated with the Nazis, clear for everyone to see. Lastly, it is confusing as to why the Canadian government seems to be unaware that the KGB no longer exists. Are they also under the impression that the Soviet Union still exists?

Not irrelevant in all of this is the fact that Freeland’s grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper during WWII in Galacia and that she is indeed aware of this and apparently unapologetic. Whenever she is questioned about this, she does not deny anything, but simply blames such a focus of inquiry on Russian disinformation with the intent to “destabilize Western democracies.” That is, it is not a question of what is one’s historical or ideological background, but a question of “whose side are you on?”

Interestingly, it was the Canadian newspaper “The Globe and Mail” who reported this story, titled “Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper,” thus, not a Russian publication last time I checked. And upon whom did they base such information? None other than Freeland’s own uncle, John-Paul Himka, who is now professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.

According to the Globe and Mail, Freeland was aware for more than two decades that her grandfather Michael Chomiak, was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper that vilified Jews and supported the Nazi cause.

Globe and Mail writes:

“Krakivski Visti [Krakow News] was set up in 1940 by the German army and supervised by German intelligence officer Emil Gassert. Its printing presses and offices were confiscated by the Germans from a Jewish publisher, who was later murdered at the Belzec concentration camp.

The article titled ‘Kravivski Visti and the Jews, 1943: A contribution of Ukrainian Jewish Relations during the Second World War’ was written by Ms. Freeland’s uncle, John-Paul Himka, now professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.

In the foreword to the article, Prof. Himka credits Ms. Freeland for ‘pointing out problems and clarifications.’ Ms. Freeland has never acknowledged that her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator and suggested on Monday that the allegation was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

In 1996, Prof. Himka wrote about Mr. Chomiak’s work for Kravivski Visti, a Ukrainian-language newspaper based in Krakow that often published anti-Jewish diatribes including ‘certain passages in some of the articles that expressed approval of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews.’” [emphasis added]

Oddly, Freeland helped to edit and clarify Prof. Himka’s article discussing her grandfather as the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper, however, refused to acknowledge her grandfather’s role publicly and accused any reference to this as part of a “Russian disinformation campaign.” According to this topsy-turvy logic, Freeland’s uncle, Prof. Himka is part of this “Russian disinformation campaign,” and she is guilty of providing assistance to this “Russian disinformation campaign,” all to ruin her political career and “destabilize Western democracies.”

Freeland also told her uncle, Prof. Himka, which is included in his article, that according to her father, her grandfather Michael Chomiak was also working to some extent with the anti-Nazi resistance. However, Prof. Himka was unable to verify this information, which he described as “fragmentary and one-sided.”

Then there is the strange case of NATO tweeting in celebration of international women’s day, this past March 8, a picture of a female Ukrainian soldier wearing the Black Sun symbol which is tied to Nazi occultism, and Satanism. NATO wrote in their post “All women and girls must live free and equal,” sending a very mixed message. NATO also ended up taking down their picture of the Black Sun symbol.

The timing of Freeland and NATO’s twitter posts are most strange. It also begs the question, why post something at all if you are just going to delete it? Is this just a matter of not being aware of such things, or is it a matter of certain groupings getting increasingly bolder and unapologetic as to where their true allegiance lies? Has Chrystia Freeland or NATO undergone any real questioning or backlash for such public displays? Not really.

On Feb. 7, 2014, a leaked conversation between Victoria Nuland (then Assistant Secretary of State) and Geoffrey Pyatt (then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine) spread like wildfire. It was exposed that after Yanukovych was ousted from government, it was the government of the United States that was caught selecting the membership of what would form the new government of Ukraine, as if they were building their own sport’s team.

This was not only controversial in of itself, it was especially controversial in context of Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity,” where many Ukrainians died tragically so that they could have a better future.

Here in the West, we are supposed to be most sympathetic to that cause. So why did hardly anybody call out the fact that the U.S. government very clearly formed a Ukrainian government of their own choosing without a thought for the future and well-being of the Ukrainian people?

In fact, it was the U.S. who largely encouraged and financially supported the Ukrainian revolution. According to the official Obama White House Archives:

“The United States stands with the Ukrainian people and their choice of democracy, reform, and European integration.

 In pursuit of these objectives, Vice President Joe Biden announced today in Kyiv, Ukraine that, pending approval from Congress, the White House will commit $20 million to support comprehensive reform in the Ukrainian law enforcement and justice sectors, including prosecutorial and anti-corruption reforms…the U.S. government has now committed nearly $320 million in assistance to Ukraine this year, in addition to the $1 billion sovereign loan guarantee issued in May 2014.”

Many U.S. politicians visited Ukraine during this time to support the Ukrainian cause for “dignity.”

John McCain visits Ukraine in December 2013 in support of a regime change.

The world should have been appalled and horrified at such an exposure of U.S. criminality and duplicity. That the U.S. had directly and loudly encouraged and financially supported a revolution that resulted in many tragic deaths, only to steal the Ukrainian people’s right to choose their own government democratically.

The Americans also encouraged the Ukrainian people to fight for the EU Deal. And the Ukrainian people received the EU Deal that they were literally dying for. Where are they today? The poorest country in all of Europe.

Ukraine used to be among the richest countries in Eastern Europe, known as “the breadbasket of Europe.” However, this economic fact is harder and harder to come by since Ukraine was a part of the USSR when their economy was at its peak. A most inconvenient truth. It is for this reason that you will be hard pressed to find any GDP graph of Ukraine that begins earlier than 1991, the date of their independence. From 1991 to 1997, Ukraine lost 60% of their GDP (1) and suffered five-digit inflation rates. (2) Who was Ukraine beholden to during this massive recession that has never really ended for Ukrainians? The International Monetary Fund (IMF). [More on this story in Part 2.]

However, certain individuals who have held and continue to hold political offices, have greatly benefited from the plight of Ukraine.

On January 23, 2018, Joe Biden was invited to speak at a Council on Foreign Relations platform about an article he co-authored with Michael Carpenter titled “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin: Defending Democracy Against Its Enemies.”

Incredibly, during this discussion on “defending democracy against its enemies,” Biden publicly bragged that in 2016 (while Vice-President of the United States) he would only deliver on the U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine for economic aid on the condition that Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired. Shokin was investigating corruption charges involving Burisma Holdings at the time. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden was on the board of this natural gas company during this period and was allegedly the recipient of $3-$3.5 million from the company. An extraordinary amount that could not be justified, hence the investigation into corruption.

Joe Biden makes the following admission at this 2018 CFR platform:

“…and I went over I guess the 12^th, 13^th time to Kiev, and I was going supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko [then President of Ukraine] and from Yatsenyuk [then Prime Minister of Ukraine] that they would take action against the state prosecutor [Shokin] and they didn’t. So they said they had it [the loan] they were walking out to press and I said nah, I said I’m not going or we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said ‘you have no authority, you’re not the president, the president said,’ I said call him. [laughter in background] I said, I’m telling you’re not getting a billion dollars. I said you’re not getting a billion and I’m gonna be leaving here. I think it was about six hours. I looked I said I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Oh son of a b*tch. He got fired. [laughter in background] And they put in place, someone who was solid.”

Apparently, Joe Biden (the current President of the United States) is not concerned with true democracy but only about whether his team wins. Not the American people I might add. His team is much smaller and more “selective” than that.

Strangely, despite Biden’s admission being recorded at a very public and “prestigious” platform, fact-checkers have continued to deny any proof that Joe Biden was responsible for the firing of Shokin. Apparently, Biden’s own admission to this is irrelevant. Fact-checkers have also denied any hard proof that Hunter received such a lofty sum from Burisma. Well, it is pretty hard to come by hard proof when the investigation into such a thing was prematurely shutdown, don’t you think? That was the whole point.

This is extremely controversial for another reason. During the EU Deal dispute that was used to trigger the Ukrainian protests, it has since been discovered that part of the conditions of this “deal,” which was strong-armed by the IMF, was the demand that a significant rise in utility rates (first and foremost electricity and gas) be implemented while the income of Ukrainians stayed the same.

Who was Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s point person in the United States during the Ukrainian protests and EU Deal controversy? U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

The Ukrainian people had no idea. The very deal they were fighting and dying for was to directly benefit corrupt gas companies such as Burisma Holdings and their foreign shareholders, to the economic detriment of the Ukrainian people. A similar situation to what most of Europe is facing today under a plethora of glorious “EU Deals” in the midst of an energy crisis.

In addition, the New York Times has just recently published an article confirming that the notorious Hunter Biden laptop that was claimed as “Russian disinformation” by our trustworthy fact-checkers, is in actual fact, AUTHENTIC. A very important piece of information that should have been made available to the American people before they chose who would be their next President. This important piece of information was denied to the American people by the very thing that is proclaimed to be defending “national security,” the unelected and anonymous but all powerful, “fact-checkers.”

So, we all know Joe Biden has been promoted, um “elected,” President. Where are Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt today? Nuland serves as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States. Pyatt serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Greece.

Nuland, not one to shy away from unflattering spotlight, has again made headlines. This time on the American – starts with “bio” ends with “lab” – situation in Ukraine. On March 7, Nuland testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where she did not deny that Ukraine possesses “chemical or biological weapons” and acknowledged on public record that “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.”

But don’t worry, this does not mean that the omnipotent god-like “fact-checkers” are actually the sources of disinformation (what Hunter Biden laptop?), but as Mrs. Nuland has patiently explained to us; the harbouring and experimentation on deadly organisms is called “biological research” when the U.S. Department of Defense is involved. Thus, they are not deemed as “bio labs,” but rather as “biological research facilities,” and anyone who calls them “bio labs” while under the possession of the United States is a propagator of Russian disinformation. And yes, the U.S. Department of Defense is most certainly involved as seen by the saved PDF files taken off of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine website which shows the U.S. Department of Defense as the donor in all the cases listed. However, as Mrs. Nuland carefully explained, as soon as the Americans lose possession of these deadly organisms, it is only then that they transform into “bio labs” with “weapons of mass destruction.” It is very simple actually.

What did not make the headlines with equal vigour is what Nuland did after her failed diplomatic visit to Russia this past October, which was according to French journalist Thierry Meyssan, to “impose” Yarosh onto President Zelensky. On Nov. 2, 2021, President Zelensky appointed Dmytro Yarosh (leader of the Right Sector 2013-2015) as Adviser to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Nuland is of Ukrainian Jewish descent, thus her ongoing support for neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government and military since 2014 is disturbing on multiple levels.

Right Sector has close connections with Trident (Tryzub) and Patriot of Ukraine. All three groups are right-wing nationalist, neo-Nazi, paramilitary movements as well as political parties. Look it up for yourself, not even Wikipedia is denying this. Yarosh was the leader of Tryzub starting in 2005. Tryzub led to the formation of the Right Sector, to which Yarosh was also leader of between 2013-2015 and continues to have a great deal of influence on all these groupings.

Dmytro Yarosh has been on Interpol’s “wanted list” since 2014.

Recall that in 2014, the U.S. “influence” on the newly formed Ukrainian government was raising concern, specifically around members of Svoboda and Pravyi Sector (Right Sector) holding five senior roles in the new government, including the post of deputy prime minister. This story was reported by Reuters.

Right Sector “Blood and Soil” flag. What westerners are told is a Ukrainian nationalist party concerned with defending the liberty and freedom of the Ukrainian people.

Svoboda is also sold to the west as a romantic movement of benign Ukrainian nationalists, who happen to support Stephen Bandera and cannot deny that they support ethnic ultranationalist views.

Typical rally during the “Revolution for Dignity” in 2014, with flags from the Svoboda Ukrainian Nationalist Party.

On January 1st, 2022, hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists held a torchlight march in the capital of Kyiv, seen in the above picture, to mark the birthday of Stephen Bandera one of the leaders of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its paramilitary unit the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who fought alongside the Nazis during WWII and massacred thousands of Jews and Poles. These Ukrainian nationalists are shown in the above picture holding the Svoboda and UPA “Blood and Soil” flag. The latter being the same emblem Chrystia Freeland held this past February. This event was reported by The Times of Israel. I wonder, will Freeland’s press secretary dare to call this another classic case of “KGB disinformation”?

A Moment to Reflect

So what is going on here? Are there real Nazis in Ukraine that are being selected, with U.S. and possibly NATO backing, to play a political and military role? And if so, why? What is happening to the Ukrainian people if this is in fact the case?

What even constitutes as “Ukrainian” under an increasingly ultra-nationalist movement? An ultra-nationalist movement which self-identifies as pure ethnic Ukrainians. Ukraine is an ethnically mixed population, with both ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians living together.

In light of this situation, how are we to regard the people of Donbass asking to form their own republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, separate from the rest of Ukraine? Are we in the west going to deny the people of Donbass, with a large population of ethnic Russians, the right to separate themselves from an ultra-nationalist movement that self-identifies as a pure Ukrainian race?

How are we to regard Crimea’s own request to re-join Russia in 2014, a referendum that the West refuses to acknowledge actually happened, despite mainstream western reporters confirming that Crimeans have indeed chosen and are happy to have returned to Russia? (Crimeans mostly consist of ethnic Russians.)

What are we to think of the Ukrainian government withholding 85% of drinkable water to Crimea these past eight years? An action by the Ukrainian government that constitutes a humanitarian crisis against the Crimean people. Are these the actions of a friendly government that cares for the welfare of the Crimean people?

This humanitarian crisis was corrected by the Russians as soon as they entered Ukraine, as acknowledged by Reuters. However, most in the west will never hear anything about this.

We should have the courage to ask ourselves: Is there in fact a civil war that has been going on in Ukraine not just these past weeks, but these past eight years? A civil war that has not been reported to the western people for political reasons, where certain regions of Ukraine have been under attack by neo-Nazi paramilitary units who have been receiving political support and funding from the United States, and possibly NATO.

Why would the west support such a horrific initiative?

To answer these questions, we will have to have the courage to look at the historical root of Ukrainian Nationalism and its relationship to namely U.S. Intelligence and NATO post-WWII.

To follow shortly, “Part II of Fact Checking the Fact Checkers: The Truth Behind Ukraine’s Glorified ‘Nationalist Movement’”

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com

(1)  “Can Ukraine Avert a Financial Meltdown?“. World Bank. June 1998. Archived from the original on 12 July 2000.
(2)  Figliuoli, Lorenzo; Lissovolik, Bogdan (31 August 2002). “The IMF and Ukraine: What Really Happened“. International Monetary Fund.

With Ukraine’s Clown President Zelensky hogging the headlines, Olena Semenyaka has been sidelined. That is a pity as Semenyaka far more typifies the issues at the heart of Ukraine than does Ukraine’s corrupted Mr Bean.

She has been described as the “first lady” of Ukrainian nationalism. Her pseudo-intellectualism and international networking with NeoFascist groups, as well as her guru-like command of the Azov movement in Ukraine, make her a formidable power behind the throne in the Kiev regime.

Though Zelensky’s Russophobic jokes (sic) raised laughs in Kiev’s more halcyon days, Semenyaka has never been a laughing matter. Born in 1987 and raised in the post-Soviet era, Semenyaka was a gifted philosophy student, who dabbled in all kinds of pan-Slavic supremacist ideas until the 2014 fascist Maidan coup landed her with her current role as High Priestess of Ukraine’s Nazis.

Semenyaka more than pulled her weight in the Azov movement’s attempts to put Ukraine at the helm of a European racist revival. Working as the Azovs’ international secretary and head of their publishing empire, Semenyaka forged links with kindred spirits overseas and the various intelligence agencies that run them. Additionally, Semenyaka was seminal in forging an intellectual base for Kiev’s 2017 so-called Pact of Steel, for white supremacists worldwide to rally behind Azovs’ Russophobic pogroms. And, to top it off, as Semenyaka is personable and presentable, she was also central in knitting today’s Nazis their velvet media glove that masks their base brutality.

Though gifted, she is not novel. Robert Jackson, in his opening remarks at the Nuremberg Trials, had Hitler’s accomplices, deluded crackpots like Semenyaka included, in mind as Hitler’s Reich sprung as much from seeds intellectuals like Semenyaka planted just as much as it did from the fighting prowess of the SS volunteers who served under Heydrich’s adjutant, Joachim Peiper. Just as the Wehrmacht would not have congealed into the seemingly unstoppable Juggernaut it became in 1941 without the assistance of countless Semenyakas, so also would the Azovs not have been the power behind Ukraine’s throne without crucial actors like Semenyaka, who steered Ukraine’s re-emerging nationalist ideology away from its Russian roots and into the pan-Slavic, Russophobic cul-de-sac that is now being pulverized by Russian airstrikes and Russian ground advances into Ukraine’s heartland.

Semenyaka must take her fair share of the blame for all that. Working with Azov warlord Andriy Biletsky, she glorified the Azovs’ eight-year-long ethnic cleansing campaigns in Eastern Ukraine and tied those criminal endeavors into her Intermarium and Reconquista–Pan Europa fantasies, which envisaged a white supremacist empire stretching from Germany in the west to the Russian border in the east, and from Latvia in the north to Sicily in the south.

Like Hitler before her, Semenyaka did not lack ambition, and, like Hitler before her, Semenyaka, working through the Azovs, was determined to realize her ambitions, no matter how unrealistic and ultimately unattainable they were in practice.

Semenyaka’s vast secretariat put their hearts and souls into these projects. As well as publishing widely and facilitating the publication of other racist tracts, Semenyaka forged alliances with German neo-Nazis, the French New Right (Nouvelle Droite), Serbian Satanists, CasaPound Italia, the Estonia’s People’s Conservative Party (EKRE), and Blue Awakening (Sinine Äratus) movements, Latvia’s National Alliance movement, Polish young traditionalists, Alternative for Sweden, Finnish neo-pagans, Finnish identitarians Suomen Sisu, Portuguese identitarians Escudo Idetitario, sundry other European identitarians and American white supremacists, many of whom have been recently killed fighting for the Azovs in Ukraine.

Because her philosophical prowess enabled Semenyaka to weld Western Europe’s diverse far-right ideologues onto the Ukrainian nationalist narrative of Stepan Bandera and similar Nazi-collaborating Ukrainian pogromists, Semenyaka allowed Azov ideology to seep westwards into the European Union.

Philosophy, however, is a poor shield against Russian ordnance. Semenyaka’s dreams of a Baltic-Black-Adriatic Sea space, an Aryan Luciferism based on Black Metal, and fascist feminism is built, like the Ukrainian national anthem itself, on the false premise that Russophobia is a solid foundation stone. It is not. It is, as the Azovs are painfully discovering, quicksand.

Russophobia, like all such xenophobic manifestations, is only a prelude to war and to nothing else. True Ukrainian patriots must work for Ukraine by forging economic and social links with all her neighbors and not by instigating pointless pogroms that had to, at some point, reverberate on the perpetrators. This is not to whitewash, warp or discard interpreted histories but, to declare that a true Ukrainian patriot is one who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew previously.

Even without this war, Ukraine was in dire economic straits and because dreams of the Reconquista of the Intermarium, under the unlikely banners of Aryan Luciferism and Semenyaka’s dubious Black Metal musical icons, would not have been the ordinary Ukrainian’s preferred poison chalices. The project was doomed to ultimate failure. There can, in logic, be no new Holy Roman Empire without the socio-industrial means to promote its ideology and the military means to project it, Europe-wide. The Azovs have no hope of doing either of those from their vulnerable bases in Ukraine’s forests and besieged urban outposts. They are being played and not just by cut-price philosophers like Semenyaka and her Nietzschean and Wagnerian fantasies.

Although the Ukrainian war will end, as the Second World War did, with the defeat of Europe’s Nazi forces, the lasting peace all true Ukrainian and other patriots desire can only be found in a rejection of all esoteric beliefs that lead, in this world at least, not to an Aryan Valhalla, but only into the fathomless abyss that all those civilians who have been at the business end of NATO’s endless wars know too well.

If any positives are to emerge from this awful war, it is that all Europeans, both from within and without Semenyaka’s Intermarium, must reject NATO’s bombs and bullets, and try, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, to make plowshares instead of swords; and while they are at it, to trade Semenyaka’s philosophy books for Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and her Black Metal collection for Tchaikovsky. Though that is not as nihilistic as Semenyaka’s Nietzschean Crusade, it is infinitely more rewarding and productive. And it might, just might, make Europe worth living in.

By Robert INLAKESH

Western media have attempted to all but deny the existence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, alleging that Russia’s goal to de-Nazify Kiev is not possible because Ukraine’s president is Jewish. But what is to be made of an Israeli Jew openly calling himself the co-founder of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion?

Kiev’s infamous Azov Battalion, officially part of the National Guard of Ukraine, has been widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitary force. It has also been connected with foreign white supremacist organizations. In addition to this, the far-right, neo-Nazi and white-nationalist members in its ranks have even been criticized by the likes of Human Rights Watch and the United Nations for human rights abuses.

Despite the well-documented history of racially motivated crimes and attacks on Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community, the battalion has been indirectly and continually armed by Western powers. In June 2015 the United States and Canada banned the support and/or training of Azov by their forces, specifically citing its neo-Nazi connections. However, the following year the U.S. lifted its ban owing to pressure from the Pentagon. In 2019, The Nation magazine published an article in which it was stated that “[p]ost-Maidan Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces.” All of which is to say that Azov can conclusively be labeled neo-Nazi. This may be why reports are now emerging of White Supremacists and far-Right militia members flocking to Ukraine, to fight alongside extremist forces in the country.

Israeli support of and involvement in the Azov Battalion

Prior to Azov becoming an integrated part of the Ukrainian military, the group was funded primarily by Ukrainian oligarchs, the most well known of whom was Igor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky is of Jewish heritage and is an Israeli citizen and well-known billionaire businessman. Despite his being a Jewish Israeli, he had no problem pouring money into neo-Nazi volunteer militias such as the Azov and Aidar, among other far-right groups that feature elements hostile to Jewish people.

Although the Jewish president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is often held up by mainstream Western media as proof that there is no problem with neo-Nazis in Ukraine, he himself received financial backing from the same oligarch – Igor Kolomoisky – who was financing neo-Nazis. Zelenskyy’s presidential bid in 2019, which saw him win 73% of the vote, was successful on the basis that he was running in order to combat corruption and create peace in the country but, as the leaked documents known as the Pandora Papers revealed, he himself was storing funds in offshore bank accounts. Zelenskyy’s campaign was at the time boosted and bankrolled by the Israeli-Ukrainian-Cypriot billionaire Kolomoisky – who was himself accused of stealing $5.5 billion from his own bank.

The nerve of it . The BBC’s first response to my formal complaint about their failure to report the presence of neo-Nazis, in a news item about Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/kl88gR5sY0

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) February 21, 2022

It may come as a shock, but there are actually many Israeli Jews who fight with ultra-nationalist Ukrainian groups and who coordinate closely with, or even belong to, neo-Nazi groups such as Azov. Konstantyn Batozsky, for example, who stated that he worked as a political consultant in Donetsk for the Azov Battalion between 2014-15, even defended Azov members who had tattoos of Nazi symbols.

“They were soccer hooligans and wanted attention, so yeah, I was shocked when I saw guys with swastika tattoos,” Batozsky said of Azov Battalion members he personally got to know. He then followed that statement by saying. “But I talked with them all the time about being Jewish and they had nothing negative to say. They had no anti-Jewish ideology.” Another Jewish Israeli, Daniel Kovzhun, claims that “there were Orthodox Jews in Azov,” which he claims came down to all members being Ukrainian nationalists and therefore Jewishness was not an issue.

Muslims however, seem to be a major issue for the Azov Battalion. The Islamophobia present not only in Azov, but also in the National Guard of Ukraine, came through strongly on social media as the official National Guard site glorified the Azov Battalion as they dipped their bullets in pig fat. The video was directed at Muslim soldiers from Chechnya who are fighting on the side of Russia and were described as “orcs” by the National Guard on Twitter. In the video, one of the Azov fighters can be heard saying: “Dear Muslim brothers, in our country, you will not go to heaven.” It is a belief shared by some white supremacists that if they kill a Muslim with a bullet coated in pig fat, the Muslim will not enter heaven.

Although little is published about this fact in English, according to the BBC, an Israeli-Ukrainian named Natan Khazin claims to have co-founded the Azov Battalion. In an interview conducted by BBC Ukraine in 2018, which attempted to downplay the claims of rising antisemitism in Ukraine, Khazin is quoted as saying: “I can say that, despite the difficult situation in Ukraine and the war, the level of antisemitism is not growing. Someone in the West simply does not understand the real state of things in Ukraine in this area.”

In The Forward, a Jewish news outlet, Khazin is described as a “yarmulke-wearing … veteran of the Israel Defense Forces and an ordained rabbi.” The description continues:

[He is] representative of many young Ukrainian Jews who are Zionist, religiously observant and at the same time strong Ukrainian patriots. Some of them refer to themselves humorously as Zhido-Banderists — a fusion of the pejorative term for “Jew” with the name Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which fought for Ukrainian independence during World War II. The organization’s forces also participated in the massacre of Jews, so the term Zhido-Banderist is self-consciously ironic.”

During an interview, published in a condensed form by The Forward, Khazin is asked, “If it isn’t confidential, where did you serve [while  in the Israeli military]?” He answers:  “In the Gaza Strip. I know what it’s like to move down a street with people shooting, throwing stones or burning objects.”

All the above examples of Israelis actively collaborating with known neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine are of private Israeli citizens and there is no direct connection to the Israeli government. However, the Israeli government itself seems to have participated, much like the United States and other NATO nations, in supplying weapons to the Ukrainian military, which is considered by some as a form of indirectly arming the Azov Battalion and other ultra-right elements. In 2018, more than 40 human rights activists filed a petition with the Israeli High Court, in which they argued that the Israeli weapons were being sent to serve those who espouse neo-Nazi beliefs. They cited “evidence that the right-wing Azov militia, whose members are part of Ukraine’s armed forces, and are supported by the country’s ministry of internal affairs,” were using the weapons, according to a report published in Haaretz.

Although there is no concrete evidence of a direct Israeli government link with the Azov Battalion or other neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, there are clearly Israeli citizens who are directly aiding them. There are, however, reports that claim that Israeli forces have directly trained the Azov Battalion and Azov has been shown to possess Israeli-made weapons. When such a connection between neo-Nazi groups and Israeli Jews in Ukraine clearly exists, this in of itself should call into question the sincerity of Western media’s attempt to use President Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity in order to push to the side claims that there are hardline neo-Nazi elements inside Ukraine. Furthermore, these groups are clearly able to coexist beside Israeli citizens, so long as those Jewish Israelis are themselves Ukrainian nationalists. This is not to say that anti-Semitism does not exist in these groups, however.

Ukrainian police official requests list of Jews in the city of Kolomyya, western Ukraine:

For some reason, the extreme and very dangerous anti-Semitism in Ukraine (which has a very ugly history) gets little attention in the west. Wonder why:https://t.co/lfQHrg0IES

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 10, 2020

The propensity for right-wing Israelis to align themselves with right-wing Europeans has long been clear, and this propensity has even meant allying themselves with groups accused of antisemitism. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – a right wing German party condemned by World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder as being “a disgrace for Germany,” and frequently accused of antisemitism – has strong links to Israel. Interestly, figures regarded as being from the far-right – such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – are all on record as being pro-Israeli and have made efforts to align themselves with the Jewish State. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made it clear that he would meet and align himself with figures accused of antisemitism, such as Orbán.

Netanyahu tried hard to cement Israel’s alliance with the Visegrad bloc — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic — which Foreign Policy magazine described as forming “a common entity imbued with hostility to the values of the Enlightenment, to human rights, to the concept of a nation as a community of citizens, to the principle of equality, and, generally speaking, to foreigners.” Of course, when it comes to Israeli government endeavors, there is a pragmatic incentive for Israel, and such alliances with the far-right should not be taken as a purely love-bond relationship. But the fact that these relationships have existed, and continue to exist, should indicate that right-wing Israelis can readily coexist with the European far-right.

As for white supremacists in the United States, there are many who openly align themselves with Israel. One such example is White Nationalist leader Richard Spencer, who is an open supporter of Israel and came out in 2018 to back Israel’s Nation State Bill, which affirmed that  “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” The bill was widely pegged as racist and Spencer said of it that he has “great admiration for Israel’s Nation-State Law. Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.” Israel’s system of racial supremacy is viewed with great admiration by many white supremacists, who seek to model their own system along similar lines, according to people like Richard Spencer.

This sort of mentality, which aligns Israel and the Western far-right, cannot simply be ignored and demonstrates why it is not necessarily a valid point to say that the presence of Jewish individuals in Ukraine’s fight against Russia debunks the claims of neo-Nazi elements existing. As is demonstrated above, these groups not only exist in spite of Jewish individuals being present, but in some cases even feature Israeli Jews in their ranks.

mintpressnews.com

What is Ukraine? This is a difficult question. Russia was born in Kiev. The first historic Russian empire was Kievan-Rus, which was founded by the Vikings and the King Rurik, who sailed from the Baltic Sea through the rivers Daugava and Dnepr down to the Black Sea and Constantinople. In 882 CE they made Kyiv the capital of the first Russian kingdom. The Mongols put a final end to Kievan-Rus in the 13th century, but the Rurik dynasty then ruled from further north, in what was in the 15th century still just a small principality around another river city called Moscow. Only in 1598 did the ruling Ruriks die out in Moscow where they were succeeded by the Romanovs. Ukraine did not exist as a country for hundreds of years and was only revived (or created) after the Russian Revolution in 1917, just 105 years ago. Immediately after, Ukraine was absorbed again, by the Soviet Union and only reappeared once as an independent country again nearly by accident only 31 years ago in 1991, when Russia’s Boris Yeltsin got Ukraine’s Leonid Kuchma hooked on the idea of dissolving the Soviet Union in a coup declaring Russia and Ukraine independent.

For hundreds of years, Ukraine was run by Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, the Mongols, Turks Austria-Hungary, and Russia. There are few geographical boundaries in the vast plains in the eastern most parts of Europe, so armies and ravaging hordes have always been able to roam freely for thousands of years. First on horses. Later in tanks. Most of the armies of Carl Gustav, Peter the Great, Napoleon, and even Hitler and Stalin crossed these enormous distances on foot. In just the last 105 years, Ukraine’s borders, language, and identification has change several times. More-often-than-not with a marked variations in culture, language, and conscience between the various parts of what at any given time in history was identified as Ukraine.

Fig. 1 – Historical boundaries of Ukraine since 1917. Wikipedia Commons.

Crimea was part of Russia during Soviet times, and only “transferred” to Ukraine as an autonomous republic in a symbolic gesture as late as 1954. The yellow area on the map fig. 1 in Ukraine’s westernmost part is important also today. The area marked in yellow was until World War I ruled by Austria-Hungary, and its regional capital Lviv then had the German name Lemberg. The large green parts of Ukraine in Fig. 1 were part of Russia. Broadly speaking, the yellow area in Fig.1 was influenced by German and Central European culture and ideas. The great green area in fig.1 was influenced by Russian language, culture and ideas in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was in the western part of Ukraine (yellow on fig.1), that Ukrainian nationalism was born. This was due to the influences when nationalism was invented as an ideology as late as the 19th century. And it was also in this western part of Ukraine, where Fascism and later Nazism grew strong between the two World Wars.

Ultra-fascist Ukrainians influenced by Nazism in Germany in the West killed Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, and Russians who were seen as “un-Ukrainian”. It was also in this western part of Ukraine where Hitler recruited Ukrainian Nazis for SS Division Galizien during World War II. SS-leader Himmler was very careful to make sure that the Ukrainians he recruited for SS were extremely fanatic and loyal to Hitler in their Nazi convictions. Even as Germany was losing the World War II, the Ukrainian SS Nazis kept fighting loyally for Hitler, even on retreat all the way back to Berlin. Only a few weeks before Hitler shot himself in May 1945, did the Ukrainian SS-Nazi soldiers (on paper with SS symbols!) suddenly declare that they were now anti-Communist “freedom fighters” for Ukraine. The USA probably very soon discovered their potential against Russia, assoon after World War II, thousands of these SS Ukrainians were discretely sent to Canada, where they formed a community and whitewashed their Nazi past.

The Abuse of Ukraine

After the (re) creation of Ukraine in 1991, Ukraine’s Nazi elements resurfaced as neo-Nazi and extreme right-wing political movements, again in Western Ukraine. I have seen plenty of research on this, and I here refer mainly to the scientific research of Prof. Per Anders Rudling from the University of Lund in Sweden. As the existence of Ukraine today is partly a coincidence, and Ukraine never had a unified nationalist movement or identity, these far-right forces have in the past decades been active in efforts to “write”, “design”, and invent a new “old” history of Ukraine, to create a “common” sense of “nation” for all of Ukraine. This invention of a Ukranian “nationality” has included the suppression and deletion of Russian culture and language in eastern Ukraine. It has also included disenfranchising the political influence of the people in eastern Ukraine for the benefit of western Ukraine within the power-circles in Kyiv. Nazis and far-right-wing groups supported by the US and then-Vice President Biden and Victoria Nuland were active as violent stormtroopers during the Maidan coup in Kiev which in 2014 toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president Yanukovych. In subsequent “free” elections the political parties which represented eastern Ukraine’s mainly Russian speaking population were banned or criminalized.

The Abuse of Russia

In 1991, at the same time as Leonid Kuchma declared Ukraine’s independence of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin in Russia also declared the independence of Russia from the Soviet Union. The motivation for both persons was not about ideology, liberalism, democracy, or anything else. It was about personal power. Better be number one in an independent country, than number two in a union of countries. The economy collapsed in Russia. Using Maddison Data, I calculated in 2016, that Russia’s living standard in the period under Yeltsin fell by 5.3% every year from 1991 to 1999. Compared to the time in the Soviet Union, Russian living standard fell by about one third. Probably millions of people died prematurely of undernourishment, lack of medical care, and alcoholism.

For Russia, the 1990s became a decade with one of the worst declines in living standard for a developed country ever in peace time. US ultra-liberal economists and the CIA ran Russia. Russian Nazis emerged. Russian Nazis took turns with old-time Communists, as they demonstrated on the Red Square and across Russia. Meanwhile, because of US designed privatization policies, oligarchs took over Russia’s biggest companies. The Russian Navy rusted, and army officers were not paid. Meanwhile, the US courted Boris Yeltsin in the White House. As Gorbachev once said: Only when Russia is weak, does the US love Russia.

To make matters worse for Russia, jihadists and other insurgents started a war in Russia’s Caucasus region. This war cost Russia 60,000 lives. Russia also faced several deadly incidents of terrorism including in a school and in a theatre, and the destruction of the regional capital Grozny. Terrorist activities inside Russia are easy to support from forces operating in neighboring countries like Ukraine and Georgia.

After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia gained an understanding from the USA that NATO would not expand eastwards, and at any rate, not into parts of the former Soviet Union. Soon the US forgot that and expanded NATO with the three former Soviet Baltic Republics, with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and so on. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Russia was allowed by the West to participate in peacekeeping, but right from the beginning Russia was marginalized.

Tensions increased. In 2003, Edvard Shevardnadze, who was on working terms with Russia, was democratically reelected as leader in Georgia. In a US financed and organized “color revolution”, Shevardnadze was toppled in a coup, and replaced by the US-friendly but deeply corrupt Sakashvili. This was a further deterioration for Russia. The turning-point came for Russia, when Sakashvili started a war against the Russian population groups in Georgia while Russia’s President was being treated with champagne by the US President at the Olympic games in far-away Beijing in 2008. The final disillusionment of Russia with the West came in 2014 with the US engineered Maidan coup which toppled the democratically elected but Russia-friendly president Yanukovych in Ukraine. Immediately after this, Russian-speaking Ukrainians were targeted by the new government in Kyiv, and Russian-speaking insurgents rose in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Russia reacted by taking-over Crimea with a subsequent referendum. Ukrainian far-right movements and neo-Nazis organized private oligarch-financed armies to fight the Russian-speaking insurgents in Donbass, and Russia responded by militarily supporting the Russian-speaking insurgents.

Geopolitics

Geopolitically, Ukraine is very sensitive for Russia. From Ukraine, there are only 440 kilometers to Moscow. If Crimea had not voted to become Russian, Russia’s Navy would have lost a foothold in the Black Sea. From Ukraine it is very easy to work inside Russia. As mentioned above, after 1991 Russia suffered from internal wars and terrorist attacks – and terrorist activities inside Russia are easy to support from forces operating in neighboring countries like Ukraine and Georgia. Therefore, it was the last straw for Russia, when NATO decided in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia should become members of NATO with a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). NATO’s decision to give membership to Ukraine and Georgia was reiterated at the NATO summit in 2021. Russia is therefore under hard pressure to act.

usanasfoundation.com

The short-lived attempt at a colour revolution in Kazakhstan has brought into focus the geo-political game being waged by the West in Central Asia. This clumsy attempt to once again destablise the region was quickly squashed thanks to the response of Kazakhstan’s fellow members of the CTSO, led by Russia. As all colour revolutions do, it tapped into genuine anger among the populace about rising fuel costs and other legitimate grievances. However any pretence that this was an organic, leaderless uprising was soon exposed, the beheadings were the giveaway.

The Central Asian region encompassing all the “Stans” has been largely at the periphery of world affairs until comparatively recently. Remote in the extreme, even during its time as a part on the USSR, it received little attention due to its strategic irrelevance. The emergence of China and Russia has changed that. Kazakhstan, sandwiched between them, along with its Central Asian neighbours, is now a battleground for the “great power politics” being played out. Kazakhstan is an essential component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and as such is a target of the Western powers, who are intent on doing all possible to stop it.

A cursory look at a map will show that China shares borders with 14 countries, seven of which are Islamic nations. It enjoys good relations with all of them. China itself has a large Muslim population, not concentrated in Xinjiang. They are to be found everywhere in China, along with the mosques at which they worship. Not alone as a minority group, China has five different ethnic groups inside its borders. All are free and encouraged to practice and celebrate their individual cultures and languages. In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, there are at least eight separate Muslim sects with their own mosques. Muslims are not forced to send their children to Chinese schools, and during the almost 40 years of China’s one child policy, the Muslims were the only group who were permitted to have more than one child. The suggestion that China persecutes Muslims is just a Western concoction.

Xinjiang is in the extreme N.W. of China, it borders six of the other central Asian Islamic countries. Once remote and undeveloped, it has in recent years received huge investment from the central government to help it modernise and develop a real economy for the first time. Parents there overwhelmingly want their children to go to Chinese schools, learn the language and have the prospect of a better life than the Islamic schools can offer. The enemy of the majority of the people there, is the same as it is in their neighbouring moderate Islamic countries, radical Islam.

Many Uyghurs have already been radicalised, they comprise a large part of the terrorist factions that have been present in Syria, Iraq, Libya and many more once stable countries that have been reduced to ashes. They are heavily armed and paid a $50 daily stipend, but by whom you may ask? That is not a question that need detain us for long. The Turkic Islamic army is one such faction that sprouted from Central Asia. The U.S. Government took them off the “terrorist” watchlist a year ago. They are just moderate terrorists apparently.

So, does China persecute Muslims? No. But it does have a genuine Western-backed radicalised Islamic faction looking to infect the youth of Xinjiang. It is a problem it shares with all the moderate, peaceful Central Asian countries. If China does indeed have re-education camps as the West claims, most Uyghur parents would prefer their children were there rather than waving an AK47 from the back of a Toyota pickup in a country they don’t belong.

As America continues to bleat on about human rights in China, it supports and promotes the head-choppers to whom it has granted a franchise. Many of the participants of the Kazakhstan violence were killed and many more were captured. In the coming days and weeks we can expect more revelations as to who the “instigators behind it were. It should make for interesting reading.

By Anatol LIEVEN

Despite Russian hints, there is no evidence that the United States was involved in the latest violent protests in Kazakhstan. However, there now exists a strong temptation for America to get involved — and it is a temptation that must be firmly resisted by the Biden administration.

Aspects of the latest unrest remain unclear. It has been suggested that it was partly caused by struggles within the Kazakh elites between supporters and opponents of former President Nur-Sultan Nazarbayev, who until this week retained considerable power over the government.

The most important underlying reason for the unrest however is entirely clear. It lies in the gross mismatch between Kazakhstan’s huge revenues from energy exports (more than $30 billion in 2021), the vast wealth of its elites and the poverty of the mass of its population, with an average household income last year of only $3,200. As a Kazakh trades unionist told The New York Times:

“Kazakhstan is a rich country, but these resources do not work in the interests of the people, they work in the interests of the elites. There is a huge stratification of society.”

Regional factors also played a part: the hugely expensive move of the capital from the biggest city, Alma Aty, to a new capital, Astana, then renamed — to add insult to injury as far as Alma Aty is concerned — Nur-Sultan after Nazarbayev. The failure to distribute the benefits of energy revenues to the western region of Menghystau where most of the oil and gas is produced is also a factor. The government decision (now suspended) to lift the cap on domestic fuel prices was only the last straw for many ordinary Kazakhs.

The temptation for the United States to become involved in backing unrest in Kazakhstan stems from two sources (apart from the innate tendency of the democratism industry in the West to idealize any protest against an authoritarian regime as “democratic” and to lend it unthinking support). First of course is the desire to make trouble for Russia. Already, while U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has criticized Russia’s dispatch of troops to Kazakhstan, sections of the Western media and commentariat are celebrating the diversion of Russian military force and attention from Ukraine.

July 27, 2015: President Nursultan Nazarbayev, center front, visiting the Kazakh room at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. (UN Geneva, Violaine Martin)

Kazakhstan borders on Chinese Sinkiang, and a large part of Sinkiang’s population is ethnic Kazakh. Over the past year, the Kazakh government has had to make intensive efforts to prevent anger within Kazakhstan at China’s repression in Sinkiang from boiling over into mass protests.

If the Kazakh government collapses or is gravely weakened, it would be very surprising if hard line elements in Washington did not see this as an opportunity to use Kazakhstan as a base to undermine Chinese rule in Sinkiang — even if (as in Syria) this led them into de facto alliance with Islamist extremist forces.

Crime & Blunder

For America to use Kazakhstan in this way would be both a crime and a blunder, that would recall the worst aspects of U.S. policy in Africa, Asi, and Central America during the Cold War. It would in fact cast America in the role in which American commentators like to cast Russia — that of a cynical troublemaker, absolutely indifferent to the consequences of its actions for unfortunate populations on the ground.

Kazakhstan’s permanent and inescapable geopolitical position was well summed up for me by a Kazakh official back in 1995, when America was seeking expanded influence in Central Asia. He said that of course the Kazakh government wanted U.S. investment and good relations with the United States but:

“You have to understand that every sensible Kazakh has a map in his head. What that map shows is that Russia is there, and China is there, and Kazakhstan is in the middle. And America does not appear anywhere on that map.”

An even more morally and politically serious reason why Washington should not seek to weaponize unrest in Kazakhstan against Russia and China relates to Kazakh ethnic nationalism. The greatest achievement of the Kazakh regime since independence has been to consolidate Kazakh independence and national identity without inspiring ethnic chauvinism against the country’s Russian minority. Moscow in turn has never sought to encourage that minority to revolt.

The potential for ethnic conflict however remains enormous. In August of 2021, criticism from Russia led the Kazakh government to take action against “language patrols” of Kazakh nationalists forcing shops to use the Kazakh language and humiliating Russians in public for not speaking Kazakh.

Protesters setting up a yurt in Aktobe, Kazakhstan, Jan. 4. (Esetok, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Under both Russian imperial and Soviet rule Kazakhstan was exposed to repeated waves of Russian and Ukrainian settlement and state repression, until by the 1960s ethnic Kazakhs were a minority. During the famine of the early 1930s caused by Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture, Kazakhs suffered proportionately more deaths than any other Soviet nationality. Since the 1980s, the decline in the Russian birth rate and Russian and other European migration from Kazakhstan has reduced the European minorities to just over 20 percent; but Russians still form the majority in the far north of the country.

The absence to date of ethnic conflict in Kazakhstan reflects two other, crucially important patterns in post-Soviet history. The first is that Vladimir Putin is a Russian state nationalist in the old Russian imperial and Soviet tradition, dedicated to Russian power (naturally, as embodied in the person of Vladimir Putin) but he is not a Russian ethnic nationalist. This is evident both from his own writings and the thoroughly multi-ethnic character of his regime. The second is that rather remarkably, among all the instances of mass ethnic violence that followed the fall of the U.S.S.R., none were directed against ethnic Russians outside Russia.

The United States has backed anti-Russian ethnic nationalism in the Baltic States, Ukraine and elsewhere, but this has never taken the form of ethnic pogroms. Given the violent events of the past week in Kazakhstan, there can be no confidence at all that further protests in Kazakhstan may not take the form of ethnic chauvinism and attacks on ethnic Russians.

Small-scale violence and the threat of it against Russians did occur in Kazakhstan and elsewhere. Thus in 1992, I interviewed a Russian engineer who had fled that year from a town in southern Kazakhstan (where Russians were already a small minority). He said that every evening when he walked home from work, Kazakh youths would fall in step with him and tell him that if he and his family did not leave, they would rape his daughters.

“I did not know if they really would have. As far as I know, I was not unpopular,” he said. “But the risk was there. And above all, I knew that if that happened, the Kazakh police would have done nothing. So we left.”

The deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan to support the government is likely to increase anti-Russian feelings; and if, God forbid, ethnic violence does erupt in Kazakhstan, it could help to produce a future Russian government far more chauvinist than that of Putin. This would be a disaster for Russia, Russia’s neighbor, and above all Russia’s own ethnic minorities. And if Washington were seen to be supporting violence against ordinary Russians, then America will be faced in future with a danger far more formidable than that of Putin: an infuriated Russian nation.

consortiumnews.com

By Alan MACLEOD

Quietly, the U.S. national security state is turning up the heat on Belarus, hoping that the ex-Soviet country of 9 million will be the next casualty of its regime-change agenda. This sentiment was made clear in President Joe Biden’s recent speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Biden announced that the U.S. would pursue “relentless diplomacy” finding “new ways of lifting people up around the world, of renewing and defending democracy.” The 46th president was explicit in whom he meant by this: “The democratic world is everywhere. It lives in the anti-corruption activists, the human rights defenders, the journalists, the peace protestors on the frontlines of this struggle in Belarus, Burma, Syria, Cuba [and] Venezuela,” he said, putting Belarus first on the list of states in desperate need of a change in government.

This builds on the back of previous statements the administration has released. In June, a joint announcement by the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and the European Union essentially pronounced the death penalty on the Lukashenko government, in power since 1994. “We are committed to support the long-suppressed democratic aspirations of the people of Belarus and we stand together to impose costs on the regime for its blatant disregard of international commitments,” they wrote, as they announced new sanctions.

A “modest but significant contribution”

Covertly, Washington is taking far more wide-ranging action. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is spending millions of dollars yearly on Belarus and has 40 active projects inside the state, all with the same goal of overthrowing Alexander Lukashenko and replacing him with a more U.S.-friendly president. Although not a single individual or organization is named, it is clear from the scant public information it reveals that Washington is focusing on three areas: training activists and civil-society organizations in non-violent regime-change tactics; funding anti-government media; and bankrolling election-monitoring groups.

Earlier this year, on a Zoom meeting infiltrated by activists and released to the public, the NED’s senior Europe Program officer, Nina Ognianova, boasted that the groups leading the nationwide demonstrations against Lukashenko last year — actions that made worldwide headlines — were trained by her organization. “We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere — that it just happened overnight,” she said, noting that the NED had made a “modest but significant contribution” to the protests.

On the same call, NED President Carl Gershman added that “we support many, many groups and we have a very, very active program throughout the country, and many of the groups obviously have their partners in exile.” Gershman also boasted that the Belarusian government was powerless to intervene and stop them: “We’re not like Freedom House or NDI [the National Democratic Institute] and the IRI [International Republican Institute]; we don’t have offices. So if we’re not there, they can’t kick us out.”

The NED was set up by the Reagan administration as a front group for the CIA, to continue the agency’s work in destabilizing other countries. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Gershman said, explaining its creation. Another NED founder, Allen Weinstein, was perhaps even more blunt: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.

Belarusians are largely ignorant that this is going on beneath the surface. A poll taken by the NED’s sister organization USAID found that around two-thirds of the public were unaware of the actions of any NGOs inside their country, let alone where their funding came from.

The chosen one

The U.S. and Europe have not only decided Lukashenko must go, but have even agreed on his replacement. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a 39-year-old former schoolteacher and wife of anti-government activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, is the D.C. establishment’s clear candidate of choice. Described almost universally in corporate media as a pro-democracy activist, Tsikhanouskaya emerged from obscurity last year after her husband was barred from standing in the 2020 elections. Sergei is currently on trial for his role in organizing the nationwide demonstrations last year, an event the government sees as a coup attempt.

The government reportedly detained tens of thousands of people, and it was this heavy-handed response that added fuel to the flames of protests, turning them into a demonstration against political repression.

If convicted, Tikhanovsky faces up to 15 years in prison. Sviatlana ran in his stead, officially winning 10% of the national vote (although she maintains that she actually won an overwhelming victory and that the contest was rigged). In recent months, she has been doing the rounds in the West, meeting with foreign leaders in an attempt to convince them to support her. In July, she traveled to Washington for a meeting with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who conveyed the U.S.’ “respect for the courage and determination of the opposition” in Belarus.

Later that month, Tsikhanouskaya received what she was looking for: an endorsement from the president of the United States. After an in-depth meeting with Joe Biden, he promoted her as the true leader of her country. “The United States stands with the people of Belarus in their quest for democracy and universal human rights,” he said in a statement. She also received NATO’s blessing, meeting with senior figures from its think tank, the Atlantic Council, on several occasions.

At a recent event with the Council on Foreign Relations, Tsikhanouskaya made it clear that she was dependent on foreign support to continue her campaign. “We don’t have a lot of space inside the country. That’s why we are so [grateful for a large] amount of help from outside,” she said, telling the audience of business figures, state officials and media personalities that she and they “shar[ed] common values.” Perhaps the clearest indication that she had won the favor of the Western establishment were the rumors of a Nobel Peace Prize. At the time of its awarding, she was equal third with the bookmarkers, but ultimately lost out to journalists Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa.

I was honored to meet with @Tsihanouskaya at the White House this morning. The United States stands with the people of Belarus in their quest for democracy and universal human rights. pic.twitter.com/SdR6w4IBNZ

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 28, 2021

Despite the official endorsements, there are strong indications that Tsikhanouskaya enjoys little public support in Belarus and that her position is largely buoyed by foreign backing. A study conducted by Chatham House and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) found that only 10% of Belarusians believed she would be a good president (as opposed to 25% for Lukashenko). Both Chatham House and RUSI are directly funded by NATO and its member states like the U.S., and both have previously advocated for regime change in Belarus.

More worryingly, Tsikhanouskaya appears to be among the least trusted and most disliked people in the entire country, the poll finding that even among people who supported the 2020 protests her trustworthiness score is negative.

Furthermore, the poll was carried out by an organization that makes blatantly clear throughout the report that it wants Lukashenko overthrown, and was conducted largely online, among tech-savvy, younger Belarusians in large cities — all groups that trend heavily towards being pro-protest and anti-Lukashenko. As such, the survey could barely have been designed any more favorably for Tsikhanouskaya. That even under these circumstances her popularity is so low is telling. Moreover, the polling was carried out before she began touring the West, asking for more crippling economic sanctions on her own country.

Washington’s woman

Why, then, has the West decided to champion her, and not other opposition leaders, many of whom have a far greater support base according to the poll? One explanation is that the Lukashenko administration has already imprisoned them. Viktar Babaryka, for example, was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for a host of financial crimes. Amnesty and other Western organizations have described the ruling as “politically motivated.” Other opposition figures, such as Maksim Znak and Maria Kalesnikava have also been jailed.

Another reason could be Tsikhanouskaya’s seeming total willingness to be a representative of the U.S. government in Belarus. Her senior advisor, Franak Viačorka, for example, is a consultant for the U.S. Agency for Global Media; the creative director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an organization described by The New York Times as a “worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA.” He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a NATO-linked organization that boasts no fewer than seven former CIA directors on its board. At an Atlantic Council event in July, Tsikhanouskaya called on the West to do more to overthrow her opponent, saying “I think it’s high time for democratic countries to unite and show their teeth.” According to the NED’s Gershman, the U.S. continues to work “very, very closely” with her.

Tsikhanouskaya’s ascension from obscurity to political stardom mirrors that of Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó, whom the U.S. contends is the country’s rightful president. According to Cuban intellectual Raul Capote, whom the CIA recruited to become president of the country after what it hoped would be a successful regime-change attempt, the U.S. prefers to work with unknown figures because of their lack of political baggage and Washington’s ability to shape them in a manner it sees fit. Tsikhanouskaya apparently sees herself in the same mold as Guaidó, describing him as “inspiring.” Meanwhile, Venezuelan anti-government demonstrators can be seen flying the flag of the Belarusian opposition at rallies.

Sviatlana @Tsihanouskaya líder de la alternativa democrática en Bielorrusia, es un ejemplo de resistencia y dignidad para quienes luchamos por libertad y democracia. Ambas son causas globales. La lucha de uno, sin importar las fronteras, es lucha de todos. #TIME100NEXT https://t.co/ZiP26j1mG4

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) February 18, 2021

Tsikhanouskaya fashions herself merely as a “transition president” who would not run for re-election after Lukashenko falls. This is eerily similar to how Jeanine Añez, the U.S. backed Bolivian leader who came to power after a coup against Evo Morales in 2019, described herself. Like Tsikhanouskaya, Añez was also an obscure political figure held up by the United States as the savior of democracy. Despite describing herself as the “interim president,” she immediately began radically transforming the country’s economy and foreign relations, privatizing state assets and moving Bolivia closer to the U.S. She also suspended elections three times before being forced to concede after a nationwide general strike paralyzed the country.

While in the United States, Tsikhanouskaya made sure to publicly meet with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. To those in the know, this was another clear message. Nuland was the brains behind the U.S.-backed Maidan Insurrection in Ukraine that overthrew the government of Viktor Yanukovych, bringing in a far-right, pro-Western administration. Nuland flew to Kiev to personally participate in the demonstrations herself, even handing out cookies in Independence Square in the city center.

At the Council on Foreign Relations, Tsikhanouskaya said she saw “a lot of parallels” between her situation and the Maidan, adding that “the Belarusian people will fight till our victory.”

Journalist or Neo-Nazi paramilitary poster child?

A second Ukrainian connection is the case of the arrest of opposition figure Roman Protasevich. In May, the Belarusian government forced a Ryanair flight between Greece and Lithuania that Protasevich was on to land in Belarus so that they could arrest him. By way of an excuse for the flagrant breach of international law, the government claimed it had received a credible bomb threat.

Video footage has now emerged of so-called ‘Belarus Journalist’ Roman Protasevich who it appears was in fact part of the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ Battalion and fought in the #Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/MUyOc9tng3

— Dean O’Brien – BA (Hons) (@DeanoBeano1) May 26, 2021

Western nations strongly condemned the move, imposing sanctions on Belarus in retaliation. Left unreported in Western media, however, were Protasevich’s ties to both the Maidan Revolution and to Western governments. Universally described as a courageous journalist, Protasevich had, in fact, been a member of the infamous Azov Battalion, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary that did much of the heavy lifting to overthrow Yanukovych. He was literally the group’s poster child, appearing on the front cover of its magazine Black Sun in full fatigues and holding a rifle. The Azov Battalion has since been absorbed into the Ukrainian armed forces.

After leaving the Azov Battalion, Protasevich was awarded the Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship in Prague and worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Thread. Re Protasevich and Azov. Here’s what’s out there to be analyzed against other evidence, commentary: 1st photo is Protasevich, 2nd photo is the cover of Azov’s “Black Sun” publication July 2015 issue #15. 3rd photo is what @azure says: “0.70 confidence” (that’s high-ish). pic.twitter.com/ucrjma8GEd

— Oleksiy Kuzmenko (@kooleksiy) May 25, 2021

Protasevich had traveled to Greece to attend a meeting with Tsikhanouskaya, the president of Greece, and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Officially, he was there as a photographer. However, these connections certainly suggest there could be more to this story than meets the eye and that perhaps Belarusian authorities suspected something about the meeting, taking a calculated decision to detain him at all costs. What they found out or what information Protasevich was carrying will likely never be made public.

Посчастливилось поснимать @Tsihanouskaya в ходе её визита в Афины.

Было безумно круто получить такой опыт! Больше фото — в официальных аккаунтах Светланы Георгиевны. pic.twitter.com/ugHVHXLzrQ

— Roman Protasevich (@pr0tez) May 16, 2021

US supports plenty of tyrants, just not those who won’t play ball

The primary reason the U.S. government opposes the Lukashenko administration is not its authoritarianism, real as that might be. Even by its own definitions, the U.S. actively supports around three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships. Instead, Lukashenko’s steadfast refusal to privatize state assets, join NATO, or open the country up for foreign exploitation are Washington’s principal objections. Lukashenko has directly controlled the country since 1994; and, unlike the other former republics of the U.S.S.R., he has retained state control over industry and the comprehensive welfare state built up in previous decades.

As a result, there is essentially no extreme poverty in Belarus; according to a report by the World Bank and European Union, only 0.4% of the population live on less than $5.50 per day, with no one living on less than $3.20. This cannot be said for its neighbors; the number of people per capita living on less than $5.50 per day is 10 times higher in Lithuania and 18 times higher in Russia. In some other ex-Soviet countries that took different paths, such as Armenia and Georgia, the vast majority live in poverty, with fewer than 10% earning $10 or more per day.

Much of this reduction in poverty occurred in the 2000s. As most countries were entering a protracted recession after the 2008 financial crisis, Belarus was going from strength to strength. Between 2003 and 2014, the number of people unable to spend more than $5.50 per day dropped from 38.3% to 0.4%, while those making a middle-class income (defined by the World Bank as being able to spend more than $10 per day) rose from under 20% to over 90% over the same period, a feat the World Bank — no lover of Belarus or the U.S.S.R. — described as “impressive.”

The government continued to provide universal healthcare and socialized housing while developing new industries such as the tech sector. During this time, economic inequality actually decreased, Belarus becoming as equal as the Scandinavian countries much feted for their progressive societies.

Since 2015, however, the economy has struggled. The World Bank’s advice to Belarus was predictable: privatize, cut benefits (particularly heating allowances) and allow business to do its job. The Lukashenko administration has actually partially moved in that direction, a decision the World Bank described as “encouraging.” For the first time, the state now directly employs fewer than half the workforce. However, this has led to increases in poverty and a reduction in support for Lukashenko, who once seemed untouchable. Nevertheless, a survey conducted by hostile neighbor Poland still found the 67-year-old former state farm boss had a 41% approval/ 46% disapproval rating (not dissimilar to that of Trump and Biden).

Hardly helping this have been the U.S. and European sanctions that have targeted the country. While billed as an effort to “get tough” on the Lukashenko “regime,” sanctions, as the United Nations notes, “disproportionately affect the poor and most vulnerable.”

In August of this year, the U.S. announced a new round of sanctions, specifically targeting state-owned businesses in an attempt to make them less profitable. The European Union did likewise, also promising to pull Belarus out of its downturn if it overthrew Lukashenko. “Once Belarus embarks on a democratic transition, the E.U. is committed to help Belarus stabilise its economy, reform its institutions in order to make them resilient and more democratic, create new jobs and improve people’s living standards,” they announced, adding, “The E.U. will continue to support a democratic, independent, sovereign, prosperous and stable Belarus. The voices and the will of the people of Belarus will not be silenced.”

The government heavily restricts polling, so any gauge of the public mood in Belarus is far from precise. However, judging by the Chatham House/RUSI survey, it is clear that significant portions of the country support Lukashenko while other significant portions oppose him, along with some who are unsure. Opposing Lukashenko, however, does not necessarily translate into backing Tsikhanouskaya. Russia is by far the most popular country among Belarusians, 32% of whom want to formally unify with their larger neighbor. Only 9% want to join the E.U. and only 7% wish to join NATO. The U.S. is the most distrusted country, even among the young, urban tech-savvy citizens Chatham House and RUSI polled. Thus, while Tsikhanouskaya consistently claims to be the authentic voice of Belarus, it appears her prime constituency is in Washington and Brussels.

The United States might be able to hurt the Belarusian economy through economic warfare, but it is unable to make the people accept Washington’s chosen candidate. Living under an authoritarian system, Belarusians understandably dream of a more democratic future. However, they should be extremely careful whom they align themselves with: the U.S., NATO and the World Bank’s vision of democracy and prosperity might not align with what they naively had in mind.

mintpressnews.com

A huge geo-political event has just occurred in Afghanistan: The implosion of a key western strategy for managing what Mackinder, in the 19^th century, called the Asian heartland. That it was accomplished, without fighting, and in few days, is almost unprecedented.

It has been a shock. Not just one of those ephemeral shocks that is soon forgotten, but a deeply traumatic one. Unlike the psychological impact of 9/11, the western world is treating the experience as mourning for the loss of ‘a loved one’. There have been ministerial tears, chest beating and an entry into the first three stages of grief simultaneously: Firstly, shock and denial (a state of disbelief and numbed feelings); then, pain and guilt (for those allies of ours huddled at Kabul airport), and finally, anger. The fourth stage is already in sight in the U.S.: Depression – as the polls show America already swinging towards deep pessimism about the pandemic, economic and prospects, as well as the course on which the American Republic is set.

Here we have a clear statement from the editors of The New York Times of who that ‘loved one’ was:

[The Afghan debacle is] “tragic because the American Dream of being the ‘indispensable nation’ in a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule – proved to be just a dream”.

Michael Rubin representing the hawkish AEI pronounced an eulogy over ‘the corpse’:

Biden, Blinken, and Jake Sullivan might craft statements about the mistakes of earlier NATO overreach, “and the need for Washington to focus on its core interests further West. And Pentagon officials and diplomats might contest any lessening of America’s commitment with indignation, yet the reality is NATO is a Dead Man Walking”.

An earlier piece, reflecting fury at Biden – and the sense of a strategic apocalypse having befallen Washington – is best caught in this agonised cry, again from Michael Rubin:

“By enabling China to advance its interests in Afghanistan, Biden also enables it to cut-off India and other American allies from Central Asia. Simply put … Biden’s incompetence now risks the entire post-World War II liberal order … God help the United States”.

Rubin says plainly what Afghanistan was always truly about: Disrupting Central Asia, to weaken Russia and China. Rubin at least spares us the hypocrisy about safeguarding girls’ education (others, who are close to the U.S. military industrial complex, continue the mantra of the need to re-deploy to Afghanistan and for continued war – and consequent weapons sales – in Afghanistan, in part ‘to protect’ women’s rights). Rubin concludes: “Rather than enhance America’s position against China however, Biden has hemorrhaged it”.

In Britain too, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Tom Tugenhadt, has lamented Biden’s strategic mistake, and the imperative to not give up – but to persevere: “This isn’t just about Afghanistan”, he writes, “It’s about us all. We are engaged in a challenge over the way the world works. We’re seeing autocratic powers like China and Russia challenge the rules and break the agreements we’ve made …”.

Tugenhadt believes that: “We can turn this around. We need to. This is a choice. So far we’re choosing to lose”. Many hawks in Washington acknowledge that this is, of course, impossible. That era is now gone – indeed, what the last days events in Afghanistan represent is a paradigm lost.

Many are deeply angry at Biden (albeit reflecting mixed agendas), and are bemused too, at how this could have occurred. The explanation however, may be even more disturbing. The writing had long been writ in blood on the wall for Afghanistan – there is a limit to how long a corrupt elite, severed from its roots in its own people, can be sustained by a waning alien culture.

The urgings from the British PM in a telecon with Biden however, that the latter must preserve “the gains” of the last twenty years in Afghanistan is literally to dream.

But the deeper story is the one of not just the transformation of the Taliban, but rather, of a seismic shift in geopolitics. Western intelligence agencies were so consumed with ‘counter-terrorism’ that they failed to see the new dynamics at play. Certainly, that might explain the Biden’s administration’s assessment of the long months it would take before the Ghani regime was at risk of falling.

The Taliban we see today is a far more complex, multi-ethnic, and sophisticated coalition, which is why they have been able, at such breath-taking speed, to topple the western-installed Afghanistan government. They talk Afghan political inclusion – and lookto Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan for mediation, and to facilitate their place in the ‘Great Game’. They aspire to play a regional role as a pluralist Sunni Islamist government. This is why they have given explicit assurances to these key external partners that their rise to power will bring neither a bloodbath of score-settling, nor civil war. They also promise that different religious sects will be respected, and girls and women can and will be educated.

Many years ago, before the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1979, I was based in Peshawar, Pakistan, near Afghanistan. I was responsible for diplomatic reporting on the war and engagement with Afghan leaders during the Soviet era. I came to know the Taliban, which had recently been forged by Pakistani Intelligence, under Gen. Hamid Gul. They were then: intensely parochial, geographically and politically sectarian, xenophobic, tribal and unbendingly rigid.

As Pashtuns recidivists, and too, the biggest minority ethnic group in Afghanistan, they would kill other ethnicities wantonly: Shia Hazaras in particular, as apostates, were killed. They detested Ahmad Shah Masood, the ‘lion on Panshir’ and a hero of the resistance to the Soviets, because he was a Tajik. Some of their fundamentalism was fuelled by the radicalised strains of Islam, Deobandism and Wahhabism – exports of Saudi Arabia and Dar al-Islam Howzah in India. But mostly it was ancient tribal lore known as Pashtunwali.

The Taliban we see today, is a far more complex, multi-ethnic, and sophisticated coalition, which is why they have been able, at such breath-taking speed, to topple the western-installed Afghanistan government. They talk Afghan political inclusion – and lookto Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan for mediation, and to facilitate their place in the ‘Great Game’. They aspire to play a regional role as a pluralist Sunni Islamist government.

This is why they have given explicit assurances to these key external partners that their rise to power will bring neither a bloodbath of score-settling, nor civil war. They also promise that different religious sects will be respected, and girls and women can, and will, be educated.

The sweep of the Taliban to power however, has been years in the making, with key outside actors playing a crucial part in overseeing the metamorphosis. More concretely, as consensus with the Taliban on the future was reached, these external powers – China, Iran, Russia and Pakistan – have brought their Afghan allies (i.e. other Afghan minorities, who are almost as numerous) to the negotiating table alongside the Taliban. The latter’s links with China go back several years. Iran too, has been engaged with the Taliban and other Afghan components, in a similar vein, for at least two decades. Russia and Pakistan engaged jointly, in December 2016.

As a result of this concerted outreach, the Taliban leadership adjusted to the realpolitik of Central Asia: They see that the SCO represents the coming regional strategic paradigm, which can enable them to come out of their isolation as political ‘untouchables’ and pave a path for them to govern and rebuild Afghanistan, with economic assistance from SCO-member states.

Civil war remains a risk: We may expect that the CIA will try to stand-up an Afghan counter-insurgency to the new government – the path is not difficult to forecast: acts of violence and assassinations will (and are) being attributed to the “terrorist” Taliban. They will likely be false flag operations. And there is talk too, (mostly in the West) as to whether the Taliban can be ‘trusted’, or will stick to their undertakings.

It is not, however, just a simple question of ‘trust’. The difference today lies with the external geo-political architecture that has brought this event into being. These external regional partners will tell (and have told) the Taliban that, if they violate their assurances, they will regain their international pariah status: they will be classified as terrorists again, their borders will close, their economy will tank – and the country racked by civil war yet again. In short, the calculus is rooted in self-interest, rather than the presumption of trust.

China is more determined to shape the region than many analysts realise. It’ is often said that China is purely mercantile, interested only in advancing its economic agenda. Yet China’s Xinjiang province – its Islamist underbelly – shares a border with Afghanistan. This touches on state security, and China therefore will require stability in Afghanistan. It will not tolerate ethnic Turkic insurgents (spurred by the West) moving into or from Afghanistan into Turkmenistan or Xinjiang. The Uighurs are ethnically Turkic. We can expect China to be tough on this point.

Thus, not only have the U.S. and NATO been forced to exit from the ‘crossroads of Asia’ in desperate disarray, but these developments set the stage for a major evolution of Russia and China’s economic and trade regional corridor plans. They also transform the security of central Asia in respect to Chinese and Russian vulnerabilities there. (The U.S., so far, has been denied an alternative military base in Central Asia, relocating its forces instead to Jordan).

To be fair, Michael Rubin was ‘half right’ when he said that “Rather than enhance America’s position against China, Biden has hemorrhaged it”, but only half right. Because the missing ‘other half’ is that Washington was outplayed by Russia, China and Iran. Western Intelligence failed utterly to see the new domestic Afghan dynamics – the external actors underwriting the Taliban’s negotiations with the tribes.

And they still do not see all the external dominoes falling into place around an Afghan pivot, that changes the whole Central Asian calculus.

Additional pieces to this jigsaw picture of paradigm change have become visible in the wake of the Taliban’s sweep to power: One domino fell even before the ‘Kabul rout’: Iran’s new Administration has strategically re-positioned the country towards prioritising relations other Islamic states, but in partnership with Russia and China.

The Iranian National Security Council then declined to agree the draft Vienna agreement for a re-launch of JCPOA (the second domino to slip into place).

During the rout China and Russia (‘co-incidentally’) closed the airspace over northern Afghanistan on account of their joint military exercises taking place to the north of Afghanistan – and, for the first time the two powers exercised under joint military control. This represents the third (and very significant) domino, though one barely noticed by the West.

Finally, Pakistan strategically re-positioned too, by declining to host any U.S. military presence in its territory.

And then, yet one last domino: Iran was invited formally to join the SCO (which ultimately would imply Iran joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), thus giving the country a fresh economic and trade horizon – absent the lifting of the U.S. siege of its economy.

So not only have the U.S. and NATO been forced to exit from this new strategic locus, but these parallel developments set the stage for a major evolution of Russia and China’s economic and trade regional corridor plan.

China will play a key part in this. China and Russia have recognised the Taliban government, and China will likely build a pipeline along the ‘5-nation corridor’, bringing Iranian oil to China, via northern Afghanistan. It will likely then follow on with a north-south corridor, ultimately linking St Petersburg via Afghanistan to Iran’s Chabahar port lying across the strait from Oman.

For the west, this concatenation of falling dominoes has been near incomprehensible.