“The general public now wants to know what happened.”
The war between Russia and Ukraine officially began on February 24, 2021. But knowing who started it is for historians to analyze the conflict that could push the world to the precipice. The general public now wants to know what happened and who is responsible that today threatens to end human civilization. Answering all these is not intended to justify the invasion but to spell out the underlying cause of the Russian invasion.
As principal broker of the North Atlantic alliance, the US has purposely induced Russia to invade Ukraine by creating a military infrastructure that has the consequence of threatening Russia’s existential security. By laying down an open-ended invitation, NATO soon expanded to include the former members of the Warsaw Pact, and now the independent Soviet Republics of Georgia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to join the alliance, thus forcing President Vladimir Putin to declare a red line, that any further advance beyond the borders demarcated in 1991 is to cross the threshold of Russia’s limitation.
Russia has all the reasons to react. It could sense the US is implementing a unilateralist policy to gradually isolate it economically and politically. While admitting that the Cold War has ended, this means a new chapter to end Russia’s role of countering NATO’s eastward expansion.
The unique dimension about this war is the US eagerness of the to control the social media. Many failed to analyze that the US today is presenting only not just one side of the story much that countries would vote first to determine their national interest and forego their ideological contradictions with others.
What is disturbing is not about the suppression of the press but the insidious presentation of fake news. This level of deception is far dangerous than ordinary propaganda because people this time are made to believe that what they see and hear is the truth. Yet, the promoter of this twisted version of propaganda continues to parade to the whole world as press freedom.
Never before has the US attempted to collectively ban a country’s news media, Russia’s Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik News in the name of the truth and press freedom.
US attempt to control RT and Sputnik News is without regard to paying customers US social media moguls blotted, not to say of their brazen disregard of their right to freedom of the press. For local cable stations to ban RT and Sputnik News is to violate their constitutional right to freedom of information, notwithstanding that Filipinos are citizens of a sovereign and independent republic, and should not be affected by the decision of a country not a party to the contract they entered. Local distributors of RT and Sputnik News are not distributors of these US social media but are paying as franchise dealers.
This is a classic example of American arbitrariness to manipulate information for propaganda purposes. Why should the Philippines be included by that US decision? One of them offered to refund customers who subscribe to watch those Russian news channels.
Even if the Philippines voted to support the US-sponsored sanction, the contractual obligation of our local cable distributor is not with those tough guys in Washington. The governments can only act in accordance to how we voted at the UN General Assembly, and not to what is dictated by those foreign corporate social media moguls.
Moreover, despite the fact that Russia-Ukraine crisis is now nearing its third month, US continues to pressure Ukraine to join NATO. The warmongers persist in inviting Ukraine, knowing that it was precisely because of this threat to join NATO that prompted Russia to invade that country. As a matter of fact, the US and its allies increased their delivery of weapons to carry on the war with Russia. The US supply of weapons include sniper rifles, helmets, medical kits, encrypted communications, lots of bullets and the portable, shoulder-held Stinger and Javelin missiles that became icons of the conflict. This means these NATO are fighting a prolonged proxy war with Russia using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
The crucial question is, for how long can Russia allow the West sustain the war, in supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons and invariably increasing the casualties from both sides while announcing that its membership to NATO is just on hold? Is this not a circumvention for Ukraine to get the privileges of a member to avoid the ire of Russia? NATO’s intensified rearming of Ukraine is like adding fire to the raging cauldron. Zelensky wants to fight a proxy war unmindful that it is his own people that are sacrificed to fight in a US-sponsored war and promoted by the US arms dealers.
The Philippine decision to support the US-imposed economic sanction has greatly tarnished our credibility of wanting to improve our relations by presenting an image of being neutral to the conflict. Many observers were surprised when our loquacious president who once promised to kick out the US bases but only to retract his anti-American rant did even give an explanation why the Philippines voted to economically sanction Russia.
Duterte does not seem to understand the implication of his pronouncement like our support for RCEP. In fact, the Philippines is the only country that voted to condemn Russia, from among the members of RCEP and the ASEAN countries. Besides, the US-sponsored economic sanction includes our application of the international trade rule principle known as most favored nation clause. Our approval of the UN resolution includes our abeyance to all the terms of the sanctions.
The US decision to invite Ukraine to join NATO has been treated as more of a bluff to deter Russia from invading Ukraine. Between that bluff of NATO and the security assurance which Russia demanded, NATO rather miscalculated. All along, Ukraine was preparing to regain Crimea and Putin knew that. The action taken was intended to secure the Russian inhabited areas of Donbass and Lugansk which since 2014 have been relentlessly bombarded by Ukraine.
The intensified persecution, and violent harassment of native Russians living in Donbass and Lugansk have the shade of neo-Nazi racism. The Ukrainian government which has been greatly penetrated by fanatical neo-Nazis had integrated into the Ukrainian army known as the Azov battalion, which is free to commit atrocities like the massacre at Bucha and now being blamed on the Russian army.
The on-going special military operation by the Russian army is something the US, UK and the rest of NATO should not ignore. Zelensky failed to realize that his country is now taking the brunt of the fighting while the demand for more arms gets louder to the listening ears of the US arms manufacturers. Rumors are even circulating that the US and some NATO-members are pressuring Zelensky not to capitulate.
The NATO leadership should take into account that the people of Ukraine are being sacrificed to allow the US to recover their unexpected loss in Afghanistan and to rehabilitate the US dollar as the world’s dominant currency. Russia now wants payment in ruble or in gold in exchange for Russia’s natural gas. That decision by President Putin was a blessing in disguise. In less than a month after Putin demanded that imports of Russian gas should be paid in ruble or gold, the value of the Russian currency was able to recover almost to its original level.
(rpKapunan@gmail.com)