Seymour Hersh and the pipeline – again
[NOTE: See my previous post on the subject. See also this post for some of my previously-expressed thoughts on Hersh, from 2015.]
Here’s a piece about Hersh’s pipeline article on the destruction of the Nord pipeline:
All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation.
When first reading through Hersh’s account of the events, the level of detail he provides could add credence to his story. Unfortunately for Hersh’s story, the high level of detail is also where the entire story begins to unravel and fall apart…
Already in the accounts of the early top-secret planning meetings between high level US military, CIA and Biden Administration officials, some of the proposals seemed more akin to Tom Clancy fan fiction than plausible suggestions. The US Air Force officials reportedly proposed “dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely”. One could write an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail.
During the supposed initial planning of this operation, from the way it is described by Hersh and his source, it appears that the CIA and entire interagency group were unaware of the fact that the Nord Stream pipelines were in fact pipelines.
I am unsure as to why all the intelligence officials in the initial planning meetings for the mission felt that the only possible way to sabotage the pipeline would be at the short section directly bordering Russia, instead of the large section in more favorable waters.
As the operation commences, Hersh states that Norway was chosen as the obvious partner. This entails bringing the Norwegian Navy and Secret Service in on the details of the mission, as they will play a key part in carrying out the operation. This is the same mission where Biden still holds secrecy as the top priority and does not want the “Gang of Eight” or members of Congress to catch wind of the plan for fear of leaks.
During his introduction of Norway, Hersh makes a very strange remark about NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg implying that he has worked directly with the US intelligence community since the Vietnam War. Jens Stoltenberg was born March 16th 1959. The US involvement in the Vietnam War ended April 30th 1975, meaning Jens had just turned 16 when Saigon fell to the PAVN troops. I doubt Jens Stoltenberg was a US intelligence asset in his early teens.
As Hersh’s article begins to move into the detailed account of the supposed operation, this is where the factually incorrect statements that can be crosschecked begin to appear.
Much much much more at the link. It’s full of very detailed criticisms of Hersh’s story. Read it for yourself and make your own decision.
Of interest to me is why so many on the right accepted Hersh’s story at the outset so quickly and even avidly. The answer is rather simple, I think: people tend to believe what they already want to believe. The idea that the Biden administration did this is useful to many on the right who have been Putin-sympathetic and Ukraine-hostile, and of course it also fits in with the idea of Biden as villain (which he often is). The reasons to distrust Hersh and his anonymous sources are washed away in the rush towards confirmation bias.
Also, few people – and I including myself among the ignorant – have much understanding of the logistics of pipelines and what it would take to destroy one. Without that knowledge, articles like Hersh’s are difficult to critique in the practical sense and are more easily accepted.
This is pretty typical of Hersh’s output, at least when he is not literally being fed a lead like with My Lai. Some of us still remember his utter fantasy about how Osama Bin Laden was killed in a choreographed dance between the US and Pakistan. Which involved some truly idiotic and insane claims.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n10/seymour-m.-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/18/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden-review-seymour-m-hersh-abbottabad-syria-sarin-al-nusra-government
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/3-reasons-to-be-skeptical-seymour-hershs-account-the-bin-laden-raid
I’m willing to believe that Nordstream 2 was blown up by the US government, but not this lying anti-American clown’s level of fabulism and “Bro Trust Me.”
Confirmation bias. Thinking it’s plausible and believing it based on a single anonymous source ought to be two different things.
Who cares how accurate Hersh’s details are? The point is that he has broken the dam here. The entire Western mainstream media has been awkwardly insisting that Putin blew up his own pipeline. Hersh is the first Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to come right out and say what most neutral observers think—the US did it. Who knows why he’s saying it? He’s an insider himself, and indeed, is not to be trusted.
But everyone knows that Occam’s Razor and a simple “Cui Bono?” analysis point to the U.S. And everybody knows that the US presstitute media was careful not to mention that obvious possibility because they knew they weren’t supposed to, NOT because it’s far-fetched.
Fewer than 6 countries on earth could have pulled this off. Of those, several were hurt by it. One gained big time. No-one claimed responsibility.
Why focus on Hersh’s unreliability? Very few working journalists are reliable. Do you dislike his conclusion? Do you doubt it? Then come out and say so. Who do YOU think blew up the pipelines, Neo?
Why focus on Hersh’s unreliability?
Because he makes stuff up. I haven’t learned much in my 76 years, but I have learned that past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. It’s sad, but that is how it works.
@Frankilo
If we’re supposed to believe Hersh’s general accusations are true and specifically that he got them from an anonymous but supremely knowledgeable and informed source, the accuracy of his details matters quite a LOT.
Replace the subject with say the Trump/Russia Collusion and ask “Who cares about how accurate the details are!”
Not really. Theories like this have been buzzing around Western media and elsewhere for pretty much the entire time since the NS 2 blasts. They generally haven’t gotten that much oxygen on the MSM (which is admittedly grounds to suspect in its own right) but they have been there. For instance they prompted Lawdog to make his blog posts.
Which I find quite possible because Putin has a long track record of lying, because Nordstream 2’s current “temporary” inactivity made it safer to do so without much backlash, and because Putin’s a Chekist and they have a long history of false flag attacks and terrorism. See: The Shelling of Mainilla (the tiny village on the border with Finland, not the giant Philippine city).
That doesn’t mean I am CERTAIN he did it. But I sure as hell will not rule him out yet.
Define “most neutral observers.”
Also considering how Hersh is still claiming that Pakistan held Osama hostage since 2006, it would be a mistake to assume what he writes will lead to “dams breaking” just because of that.
Well for starters he’s a fabulist and a liar with a deep axe to grind against the US as a whole and not merely the deep state. That is one reason.
To say the least.
Not nearly as much as many people think, as Neo pointed out. Especially since there was an open question on if the Russian government would be able to benefit from it.
Fair, though it DID still get some attention, albeit usually in a quickly dismissed or partial way. And I oppose any censorship talking about it. For starters, it might be true. But even if it isn’t it is well worth examining.
And doing so much more soberly and analytically than Hersh’s drivel.
Not really. Literally every country on the Baltic Coast has the knowledge, equipment, and opportunity to do this. And that’s before we get into NGOs or the like, or the Ukrainian government.
Deep sea diving and maritime demolitions in the Baltic aren’t exactly new and many of the basics for this were ironed out by the world wars, including by Finland. But how many people talked about the possibility of a Fenno-Swedish operation, possibly prompted by the US looking for deniable assets or possibly independently?
Do I think that happened? No not really.
But is it a real possibility? Yes, absolutely.
Which isn’t in and of itself something to exclude them from the list, especially given the suspicion.
Which reminds me of the Moscow Apartment Bombings and the like.
Simple. Source analysis.
The only reason this story is half as large as it is is because of how Sy Hersh is supposed to be a big shot and respected journalist (even if he is a proven liar and fabulist).
And considering his source is “anonymous” (which for all we now is code for “I made it the F-c up”) and we have no way of directly questioning that source, it’s KIND OF IMPORTANT to evaluate the details Hersh claims in order to evaluate if his claims about his source hold water.
And by and large to the surprise of very few people familiar with Hersh, they don’t. I would give him SLIGHTLY more credit than the author of this piece in that I can believe the Russians would be conducting minesweeping operations in Scandinavian EEZs (it wouldn’t be the most egregious violation of Scandi EEZ neutrality), but that doesn’t change how the purpose for it is incoherent drivel about “salinity” for a shaped charge.
Which is why it is important to evaluate the Validity of His Arguments and evidence.
Which makes focusing on the details all that more important.
In terms of evidence, all he has is “Someone told me. Pinkie Promise.” Meaning we have a literal case of Source: Dude Trust Me.
So that brings us to the details. Are the details they provide coherent or consistent?
The answer seems to be pretty clear. No. Not at all.
That’s exactly what I am doing.
But that’s kind of the other way around. Your comment indicates that regardless of what else, you like or agree with his conclusion. Even if you disagree with or wave off the details. Hence “Who cares how accurate Hersh’s details are?”
Which is fair. But that doesn’t change the issue of how accurate or not his details are and whether they could be something that actually Happened.
Not in the broad strokes, “The US blew up NS2” happened, but in the specific, “Colonel Mustard in the Ball Room with the Candlestick and Salinity-adjusted Shaped Charge” way.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but since I might as well….
My working hypothesis is probably Russia first and foremost (either in the form of the Russian government, or some faction within it). Runner up for that is the Ukrainian Government or some faction within or foreign NGO sympathizer of it, with or without US or wider support. Then we get into the US or Poland as about equal. I have my reasons for those placements and I’ll happily discuss them, but a lot are gut evaluations and talks with some more knowledgeable friends.
Up until the Swedish claim of an attack my working hypothesis was that it was likely a screwup caused by poor maintenance and a changing landscape as Lawdog indicated. And that is still a possibility in the back of my mind, even if a much less likely one.
Some other nations profit from the damage to the Nordstream 2 pipeline.
The creators of the Baltic pipeline are profiting directly. Who are these countries? Denmark, Norway, and Poland.
From Wiki:
“The Baltic Pipe transports natural gas from the North Sea to Poland via Denmark at up to 10 billion cubic metres (350 billion cubic feet) per year.[1][2] The project was developed by the Danish gas and electricity transmission system operator Energinet and the Polish gas transmission system operator Gaz-System.[3][4] The project is recognised as a Project of Common Interest of the European Union.
The Baltic Pipe officially became operational on 27 September 2022,[6] one day after a series of as of yet unexplained explosions on 26 September 2022 rendered the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines from Russia to Germany inoperable.[7]”
The Baltic Pipe officially became operational on 27 September 2022,[6] one day after a series of as of yet unexplained explosions on 26 September 2022 rendered the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines from Russia to Germany inoperable.[7]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Pipe
Norway probably has the capabilities needed to sabotage Nprdstream 2, as might Poland. The U.S. is not the only possible suspect. It might have been a joint operation.
Hersh’s story is unconfirmed. I doubt that the saboteurs are willing to share much with anyone at this time. If ever. I really doubt that Russia did it.
Back in the day…mid Sixties…a prof mentioned that some copper interests (large corporations) in Africa hired some soldiers of fortune to blow up some of the narrow access to Chilean copper mines, thus raising the prices of the Africans’ output.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
In any case, it didn’t matter since the guys were caught. And, in any case, it would work, whichever way it went, if it worked.
So how about a third party planning the current unpleasantness in Baltic for cover and knowing that such supplies are fungible.
Frankilo:
From Frankilo: “Who cares how accurate Hersh’s details are? The point is that he has broken the dam here.” The accuracy of a story doesn’t matter – even if those details make the story impossible or highly implausible? Got it – sounds really convincing. Fake, but accurate.
From Frankilo: “Hersh is the first Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to come right out and say what most neutral observers think.” Oh my gosh, a Pulitzer prize! He’s in great company with other liars with that. And stop characterizing yourself as a “neutral observer.” We all think we’re neutral observers.
From Frankilo: “But everyone knows that Occam’s Razor and a simple “Cui Bono?” analysis point to the U.S.” Not in the least, and “cui bono” is often the refuge of stupidity. See this post of mine.
“This is pretty typical of Hersh’s output, at least when he is not literally being fed a lead like with My Lai.”
But his story this time is that he IS literally being fed a lead. So I think you’re jumping too fast.
@bobby b
That’s his story pretty much every time, whether it is actually true or if he is peddling absolute bullshit.
The fact that he put out word salad about trying to make a shaped charge match the salinity of the surrounding water as well as the other inconsistent data makes me think the conclusion fits.
Hersh is not at all above nakedly lying and inventing sources wholesale to push a story. This got confirmed years ago over and over again. I’m very certain that this is one of them, or that the source he is relying on is even more dishonest than he is.
Darn, Neo beat me to the punch on mocking the Pulitzer prize.
pakistan enabled bin laden for nearly a decade after tora bora, by that I mean the boys of aapbara, the shorthand for the isi and the army, the obama administration hid how much that he had been involved in, general flynn knew and that’s why in part they tried to destroy him also he like general bolduc had grave doubts about the effectiveness of the afghan project, having drawn up the provincial map that the counterinsurgency plan relied,
so who benefits from europe, devouring itself well there is a party that has gained more and more influence in the west, it is hostile to nearly every traditional institution to the religions of the west, to science itself who else benefits is China, those two are not to be conflated,
now because biden and nuland and kerry knaves all boasted about it, makes one almost discount them, but they have shown a low cunning and little acumen,
what is their common project and how does this episode coincide with it,
A little off the main topic, well way off,but Neo’s comment about the right being sympathetic to Putin and anti-Ukraine certainly caught my eye. That could well be accurate, but the only person I can think of is Tucker Carlson; and that is one reason that I ignore him of late.
Who else comes to mind?
As for the Hersch story, I just find it fanciful to think that Biden would authorize such a bold action. Or that Washington could keep it secret if he did.
If an agent of the US did secretly blow up the Nordstream pipelines, there is little to gain by revealing it and everything to lose. As in: all of Western Civilization lost to a nuclear war. Blowing up these pipelines is an act of war against a nuclear-armed Russia and a supposed “ally” in Germany, whose loyalty is currently dubious at best but whose cooperation would be essential to fighting any war against Russia.
That reality alone calls Hersch’s story into serious question. That Hersch would publish such a story calls his ethics, such as they are, into further question. Then again, journalist has little in the way of actual ethics. Remember the US Navy had to spike a story in WW2 about how the US breaking Japanese codes precipitated the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto, publication of which would have compromised the entire war effort. So we are not talking about good people doing simple reporting here.
It will all be speculation until the analysis of the physical evidence recovered from the scene is released. Hopefully it will include documents, hopefully by a whistleblower.
Hersh’s story has its holes and its critical flaw is the reliance on a single anonymous source. But I find that the article that was linked suffers from the same imaginative leaps and assumptions, and is also not without its holes.
For instance, ships that are on missions turn their Automatic Identification System transponders off (AIS beacons), so that a record of their waypoints is not there for all to see, including in real time. Rogue states – like Iran – use this tactic all the time to violate sanctions and sell their oil, or move arms. Celebrities do the same with the beacons on their private jets. Trying to fact check a top-secret clandestine mission by looking at the publicly-available tracking data is slightly absurd and not a terribly good way to prove a story IMO.
Incidentally, the comments about matching salinities: Not trying to convey credibility, but I speculate that this is a misinterpretation of something being said about cathodic protection. It sounds off the wall, the way it is expressed, but to an engineer, it sounds like someone completely unfamiliar trying to describe what they don’t understand.
@oldflyer
but the only person I can think of is Tucker Carlson
There are plenty of folks who are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia. Most can be found in comments, but Scott Ritter, Douglas MacGregor, and Robert Barnes might be known to you. They talk all the time about the imminent collapse of Ukraine and the many hundreds of thousands of casualties they have supposedly suffered. Personally, I think MacGregor is simply nuts, but for the others I think the Vindman brothers and related impeachment have left them with an incurable hatred of Ukraine. I mean, no one gave a sh!t about Ukraine before that.
@Jeff Cox
I loathe and disbelieve Hersh on almost everything, but I have to disagree here.
That only holds IF the following is true:
A: The US did indeed “do it” in this case.
B: Russia will treat such a sabotage as an act of war.
and either
C.1: Russia will immediately escalate from “currently inactive pipeline blown up” to “nuclear Armageddon.”
C.2. The US will make a point of denying all blame and rejecting any effort at restitution up to and past the point of war and even the nukes being dropped.
I find those scenarios unlike. We have avoided nuclear war over war, way more serious breaches. We flat out killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria under Trump and cratered Baathist airfields used by the VVS with muted response, because in the former case it was clearly Wagner’s fault (with them crossing an unofficial line separating our operations and not telling their bosses, who told us that there were no Russian forces around), and in the latter case because even on the off chance Assad was innocent of dumping poison gas from the heavy artillery he dominated and the airplanes he all but monopolized, the Kremlin deemed it not worth going into a war – let alone nukes -over it. In part because they knew how bad the optics looked.
So with this in mind I can entirely see Hersh doing this in the interests of “the truth”, “peace”, or (most likely) “Getting my guys.” In essence to try and give Russia bargaining chips and shame the US and hopefully force it to climb down to avoid the prospect of war. Which HAS happened a bunch of times before.
Maybe with caveats, though I do think he could believe he is on the side of angels trying to get the US to climb down.
Largely agreed.
Turtler on February 11, 2023 at 6:16 pm said: [snip]
While I find good analysis from others, your comments–including your closing paragraph concerning poor maintenance–pretty much parallel my own thought processes. It is nice to find that I”m not alone.
Turtler,
None of the incidents you mention were (theoretically) unprovoked attacks on major Russian strategic or economic assets. The Wagner Group is partially intended to give Russia some plausible deniability, so attacks that kill mercenaries don’t count. Russian artillery did kill US servicemen in Syria, so our attack on their airbase does not qualify as unprovoked and Putin understood that. Blowing up Nordstream qualifies.
I don’t like your second “if” being “if a nuclear-armed country does not treat it as an act of war”. We are not necessarily talking about immediate armageddon in response, but a slide towards it. So far, the war in Ukraine has been limited to Russia and Ukraine. We are sending Ukraine weapons and intelligence information, but neither we nor any other NATO member have any troops on the ground in Ukraine. All NATO training of Ukrainian trips has taken place in NATO countries. All of this has (understandably) stoked Russian anger, but they are not attacks by US or NATO countries on Russian assets outside Ukraine.
But all of this is on a knife edge with an irrational Putin anxious to push it off. He has used Belarusian territory to launch attacks on Ukraine, but Belarus has so far refused Putin’s request to join the war itself. There are multiple reasons for Lukashenko’s refusal, but one reason that seems to go unmentioned is Poland. Poland knows if Ukraine falls it’s Putin’s next target, it has been preparing for war with Russia since 1991, has one of the largest and best-trained and -equipped armies in NATO, and it is chomping at the bit to repay Russia for its many, many crimes against Poland. NATO has practically had to restrain Poland from sending its own troops in to support Ukraine (note Polish military activity near the border with East Prussia). If Belarus goes in, likely Poland goes in. And Belarus understands this even if Putin does not. And one of the limitations on the war in Ukraine slips away.
But blowing up Nordstream blows up those limitations altogether. Russia has been tapping our underwater communications cables, but it has never destroyed one. Would it here as proportional response? I don’t know and neither do you. And I don’t like saying that about a nuclear-armed power.
Don’t get me wrong here. I fully support arming Ukraine, helping it to defend itself, and bringing it into NATO. And I support destroying Nordstream. If we did blow it up, it’s the smartest thing Biden has done in office (not that that’s saying much). And Germany certainly had it coming with its insane sucking up to Russia to begin with. And I suspect (hope?) that elements within the Russian chain of command would balk at any order to use nukes.
But don’t kid yourself here. The war in Ukraine has a real danger of turning into a nuclear armageddon. That there is such a war and such a danger is the responsibility of one man, Vladimir Putin, not us, NATO, or Ukraine. But we have to understand this is the situation we are in and act accordingly.
Woah! Being questionable about piling money and weapons into Ukraine does not make one “Putin-sympathetic”.
Ukraine is an totally corrupt country and nothing close to “democracy” as they shut down any and all who disagree with them,including churches. Ukraine is a thugracacy, and anyone who supports them is supporting a tyrant. It’s like no one learned from Vietnam, Iraq 1,2,and so on. All Ukraine supporters are doing is killing more Ukrainians without changing the outcome, just like the people who supported sending 50K Americans to die in Vietnam. Outcome was always going to be the same, just more dead people so you can feel better about yourself.
There are no good guys in this fight. Yeah, you can say that one country shouldn’t invade another, Putin is bad, sure, but Ukraine killed more than 10,000 of its own citizens with shelling, which prompted this invasion, and there is no argument that Ukraine and the West broke all the peace agreements they signed in 2014.
There is a lot of nuance in the history here, and anyone who says “this side bad, that side good” is just simplistic.
Call me a Putin studge if you like, all I am saying is that Russia will end up with the Ukraine territory they want, no different if we just ignored it, just 10s of thousands more will be dead as the result of American interference with no change at end, as usual for the last 50 years. We wage war for “democracy” while in the US we have to put up with men competing in women’s sports, and try to push this sort of “equity” and rainbow flags all over the world. No wonder the world hates us.
How many people have to die before you learn to just leave things alone?
To circle back- there is no doubt in my mind the US sabotaged the pipelines. We are not the good guys, not for 80 years, but you refuse to admit it.
CBI,
We’ve seen so much Russian incompetence in the war in Ukraine that it can never be truly ruled out. These are the same people who had their troops entrench in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, then wondered why they all started getting sick. For that matter, these are the same people who designed Chernobyl’s RBMK reactor in the first place. These are the same people currently siphoning water from the cooling pond at at Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, which fortunately does not have an RBMK reactor.
The Swedes said they found “explosive residue” at the sites of the Nordstream breaks. What does that mean? I’m hesitant to rule out the LawDog’s maintenance issues without more details.
And why even mention “explosive residue” if you’re not going to say who did it or provide enough details to allow others to figure it out? The Swedes certainly did the same calculus I did above. They opened the door.
Probably the only party that can be ruled out is Ukraine. They are hard pressed to defend themselves at the moment and Nordstream was too far away for them to attempt anything without being seen. Russia can’t be ruled out. Blowing up their own pipeline seems irrational to us, but invading Ukraine was irrational, too, yet here we are. And remember Putin’s popularity skyrocketed after the bombing of that apartment building in Moscow – which he orchestrated. We can’t be ruled out, but we can’t even keep Melania’s panties secret. We would need NATO cooperation to pull it off, but it would have stepped on enough NATO toes that someone (ahem! Germany ahem!) would have spilled the beans.
If Nordstream was bombed, it must have been done independently of NATO or any allies; that is, solo. The countries along the Baltic – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland – all have opportunity and motive. Poland definitely has the means, the others might. It is curious that the Nordstream breaks took place as far as one can get from Estonia on the pipelines, and Estonia has been ferocious in its defiance of Putin and as of late has been purging public Russian symbols.
whatver,
You are indeed a Putin stooge (or “studge”, as you put it). I’d give you a sign, but the Wagner Group probably already gave you one.
@Jeff Cox
Agreed with caveats, but a few things.
Firstly: even if the previous ones were provoked, they wouldn’t change the fact that blood was shed in a way that wasn’t in the case of Nordstream. Moreover the morbid mind of me would like to imagine the sort of justifications or provocations that a US Government caught red handed for the NS2 blast would invent. My point is that we’ve seen crises at least in the same ballpark of severity as a US blast of NS2 that were smoothed over. It would be irresponsible for me to not consider it.
Agreed. Neither do I. But I felt obliged to bring up the possibility, horrifying as it is. Because that is what it is: a possibility, not a certainty.
Agreed, which is why I put in C.2, and a US that was so stubborn in admitting wrongdoing that it dragged the world to the nuclear precipice. On one hand that would be just like Joe to F_ck up like that, but on the other given previous US retreats it strikes me as unlikely.
Agreed, at least as far as we know. I imagine there will be some very interesting stuff declassified in 80 years or so, but it’s probably still a secret because of bipartisan agreement between the various asides to keep it secret, even if Seal Team 6 is on station shooting the occasional Mobik South of Kherson.
But I digress.
Agreed.
Agreed there, though I do think the Poles will likely not go in openly without the rest of NATO for various reasons, starting with how they would likely be left out in the lurch ala 1919, at least for a bit.
And you’re completely right to do so. Moreover, I do think that I can’t rule out a nuclear escalation. Which is why I included it. But I do think it is RELATIVELY unlikely for the reasons I’ve mentioned. A lot to be gained from holding the US over a barrel and extracting concessions while its allies look on, probably unable to defend the action or doing so even in it.
That’s also why while I didn’t rule out Russia going straight to the nukes or US policy driving things in that direction – I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t at least consider it – I do think it is unlikely. At least as stand.
Agreed there.
Honestly I wouldn’t; it is an ugly sore on the global economy but I feel destroying it was more trouble than it is worth.
Agreed.
Wise words on the whole, though I would hold the US or whoever did launch the strike (if not the Ukrainian government) to be partially responsible for it. I’m not the biggest in terms of opposing escalation, but I don’t like the idea of “neutral” frogmen committing industrial sabotage during what is to them peacetime. Especially not under current circumstances.
whatver:
whatever.
I hear Wagner needs more cannon fodder. It would suck to die by an American Excalibur 155mm or by 25 mm from a Bradley, but follow your bliss.
@whatver
I agree, and I intend to give due consideration to that. After all, we are all Americans here, or at least sympathetic foreigners, and I view our domestic problems as even more pressing than Ukraine’s.
That’s at BEST half true, and more likely a third.
Yes, Ukraine is comically corrupt. Let’s get that out of the way. And it was a major reason why Porosehnko was turfed out of office and I’m sure there is some very expensive NATO and other Western equipment “falling off the back” of the “metaphorical truck” as I type.
But it is a democratic republic, albeit a corrupt one. It’s seen several peaceful changes of government since 2014, including multiple cabinet failures (even before the post-Euromaidan elections, with Yatsenyuk forming short lived cabinets on glorified life support because nobody else had an idea of what to replace the caretaker cabinet with). In 2019 Zelenskyy defeated the incumbent government – the aforementioned Poroshenko – in part by emphasizing the latter’s indifference to or participation in corruption and Zelenskyy’s own dovish credentials.
It’s about as functional as Brazil is or was, at least before Lula returned to power.
This is manifestly untrue. Opposition parties and coalitions continue to operate and even hold significant positions in the Rada. And many of those that were “Shut down” were done extremely thinly. For instance Yanukovych’s own Party of Regions became the Opposition Bloc, who still hold 5 Members of the Rada (basically MPs). And they’re far from the largest opposition party.
In general, unless you are REALLY accused of being in bed with the Kremlin you continue operating on as before.
At least for now. That might change and Zelenskyy wouldn’t be the first so-called national savior to go dictatorial. But if we’re talking about what is happening NOW then it’s worth noting.
This is both untrue and misleading as hell.
Firstly: Contrary to the myth Zelenskyy hasn’t banned the “Orthodox Church.” He hasn’t even banned the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine yet, which is an important distinction, like that between banning Protestantism as a whole and banning the Peoples’ Temple. He HAS openly discussed doing the latter (and for reasons I think become incredibly freaking clear when you understand them) but they haven’t been implemented yet.
Secondly: It’s REALLY Hard not to see why he wouldn’t want to ban the Moscow Patriarchate.
It’s not exactly a secret that the Moscow Patriarchate has spent centuries cozy with the Kremlin and often twisting dogma in order to support the worldly aims of the church. Ivan Mazepa was no saint, but he was excommunicated not because he was an enemy of the Church or even the Moscow Patriarchate but because he was an enemy of the Tsar, a classic case of Caesarism infesting the Church. And ironically things are probably worse than they were then.
Because for starters, the current Patriarch in Moscow – and supposedly First Among Equals – is one Patriarch Kirill, a man who has been proven to be a loyal KGB stooge who infiltrated the Orthodox Church in order to pervert it for his secular masters.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-patriarch-kirill-switzerland-spied-kgb/32257512.html
https://www.academia.edu/37152767/The_Mikhailov_Files_Patriarch_Kirill_and_the_KGB
That would be bad enough and make him an Anti-Christ (as in the general term “Enemy of Christ” rather than the mythical Super Demon Woo Woo that the term often means).
But now he’s apparently mutilated centuries of Orthodox Christian Dogma in an attempt to claim that the war in Ukraine is a holy war and that any who die in that fight will be ABSOLVED of their sins.
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2022/september/russian-church-leaders-sacrilegious-claim-says-soldiers-can-cleanse-their-sins-by-dying-in-ukraine
This is quite literally sacrelige, and it’s hard for me to underline how bad this is.
Firstly: This kind of claim was ALREADY dodgy enough in the Catholic and Protestant context of the old fashioned holy wars and crusades, and the Popes (who at the time were hardly beacons of otherwordly aloofness themselves) concluded that repentance for one’s sins was still necessary for crusaders.
Secondly: This gets even DODGIER in the Eastern Orthodox context, which simply does not have anything like this in its dogma. And indeed the Patriarch of Constantinople repeatedly refused the appeals of multiple Christian Emperors for such a ruling even when the Arabs, Bulgars, and Turks were often battering at the city’s walls.
So by claiming this, Kirill is essentially claiming his predecessors and all of his “brother” Patriarchs are wrong, and that the Ukrainian “Banderaists” are so uniquely bad in a way that the Literal Nazis, the Ottoman Empire, the Bolsheviks, and the Mongols were not.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Do you KIND OF SEE why the Ukrainian Government -and for that matter vast swaths of the churchpeople and flocks among the Ukrainian Orthodox- MIGHT want to suppress the actions of an organization led by a sacrilegious Chekist goon openly advocating for HOLY WAR against their nation?!?!
Yeah.
Oh, and
C: The Founding Fathers actually went MUCH further than the Ukrainians have, when it came to suppressing and surveilling the Anglican Church in the Colonies. This was justified under the no brainer that the loyalty of these churches was suspect due to the head of the church being the King of England, but this went quite far. Not just increased surveillance but even government diktats against praying for King George III (which I believe to be a grotesquely unethical and unchristian demand to make as we are supposed to pray for our enemies).
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html
So it’s not like the Founding Fathers were not above putting their feet down on religious institutions preaching treason and the destruction of their nation during a time of war.
This is dumb on multiple levels.
Firstly: Ukraine isn’t a thugocracy, or at least isn’t primarily one as I mentioned above.
Second: By absolutely any metric, Russia is FAR MORE of a thugocracy than Ukraine is.
Thirdly: Even granting its premises, the claim is stupid and self-evidently wrong.
You wanna know an actual thugocracy, a regime that makes both Ukraine and Putin’s Russia look saintly? Even put together?
The KMT dominated “Republic of China”, at least after Chiang/Jiang seized power. It was a hideously corrupt, oppressive dictatorship where Chinese army doctors were initially puzzled about reports coming out of Auschwitz because their own training camps and press gangs could reach similar mortality rates. It was the bastard child of Soviet Vanguard Partyism on one hand and European Fascism on the other that openly consorted with both Hitler and Stalin. And its intelligence guru was Dai Li, a repulsive, Hitler-revering rapist and drug addict who organized the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of dissidents.
AND YET.
Does that mean that anybody who sympathized with such a regime or the people it ruled over was a “tyrant” when dealing with the Japanese invasion and horrors like the Rape of Nanjing on one hand, and Mao’s messianic Communists on the other?
To ask the question is to answer it. And consign it to the trash bin where it so obviously belongs.
NOBODY needs to be convinced of the virtues or saintliness of the current Ukrainian government to believe that it is an atrocity and sin for it to be invaded by a foreign thugocracy on false grounds and with inhumane strategies.
And it is insulting for you to call people like my late Grandfather the US Army Ranger and veteran of the Pacific a “Tyrant” because he preferred the KMT to the freaking Japanese Empire that had dragged him and countless like him to war.
You mean yet another Asian civil war in which the corrupt, authoritarian dictatorship(s) to the South we backed turned out to be the lesser evil than the mass murdering, messianic communist dictatorship to the North that would go on to plunge Indochina into decades of war and bloodletting and then about twenty years of “peacetime” famine?
Yeah, people really haven’t learned from Vietnam. In large part because the Left dominates that discussion.
Local Man with simultaneous Hammurabi, Hitler, and Stalin fetish invades and annexes his neighbor without justification, told to BTFO, doesn’t, and gets made to BTFO himself.
Aforementioned local man decides to ignore the Gulf War Ceasefire letting himself keep power by dicking around with weapons inspectors, hiding WMD (that we since found, and which according to some were supposedly so well hidden he forgot he had them), and sponsoring terrorists. And decided to escalate support for Al Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan.
This is laughably daft on two levels.
Firstly: This ignores the question of what would happen to Ukraine and Ukrainians AFTER the fighting stops. As RJ Rummel pointed out, most killing tends to be done after the fighting stops, when there isn’t two or more sides shooting at each other but one side with guns shooting those without.
Any single year of the Ukrainian Holodomor of the late twenties and early thirties exceeded every death this war has had since 2014.
Secondly: The “not changing the outcome” rigamarole would be a lot more convincing without the examples of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian defeats. First in trying to create “Novorossiya” and a land bridge in 2014-2015 only to be pushed back after taking only 2/3rds of the Donbas. Then in trying a decapitation strike to overthrow the Ukrainian government at the start of 2022. And then the defat in keeping Mikolaev and Kherson.
The Russian military is obviously not invincible, and can be beaten.
Thirdly: From a completely amoral and realpolitik note, even if we agreed that it was in Ukraine’s best interests to surrender to the Kremlin (itself pretty DUBIOUS to put it mildly if you know the relevant history, but again I’m granting it for the sake of the argument) that doesn’t mean it is in the US’s interests. Simply put, why should the US be opposed to Ukrainians fighting, killing, and dying to damage the military of one of our great rivals for as long as the Ukrainians are willing and able?
It’d be FAR from the worst thing the US has done in those regards.
A lot of those assumed the war would be managed AT LEAST as competently as Korea was, and were promptly surprised. The pervasive communist propaganda that still dominates narratives of the war didn’t help.
Tell me you haven’t studied the Vietnam War without telling me you haven’t studied the Vietnam War.
Far from “the Outcome was always going to be the same”, the reason Vietnam looked the way it did in 1960 was because the French WON the first Indochinese War in the South, utterly crushing the communist cadres there (the Viet Minh, the predecessors of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam), and establishing a rump nationalist, anti-communist coalition government even as they went on to lose the war in the North.
I’d highly suggest reading A Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall and the newer and Cochinchina centric “In the Year of the Tiger” by William Waddell, which throws cold water on the idea that the outcome was always going to be the same.
But it makes defeatists feel better for condemning those who favored fighting on until the situation was at least as favorable as it was for Koreans in 1953, and it’s a nice excuse to avoid scrutinizing the Indochinese Wars and other ones.
Even if that were true – and I don’t think it is – that doesn’t mean there aren’t much Worse guys in this fight, whose policies weaken American interests. In the same way nobody has to be enamored with Chiang Kai-Shek/Jiang Jieshi to recognize that he was much less bad for American interests than Japan’s warlords or freaking Mao.
Absolutely.
Uh, got any citations for that number?
Especially when you realize that
A: A lot of “its own citizens” were either up in arms as separatists, or not actually its citizens but disguised Russian Federation troops (as was leaked a few times prior to 2022).
B: The Russian/Separatist alliance had artillery superiority for pretty much this entire war since it began in 2014 and LIBERALLY used it in major attritional battles like the sieges of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Which oddly gets memory holed when people try to talk about shelling deaths of civilians in this war to try and paint the turd that is the Kremlin’s invasion.
Ironically I’d be less angry about this tendency without that double standards. Urban warfare is hell, especially against dogged opponents like the Cyborgs were of the early war. A lot of times you need heavy firepower to make progress, and in an urban area that means lots of stuff breaks and innocent people die. And neither side has been as indiscriminate with it as our own predecessors were when razing Aachen in 1944 or Intramuros in 1945.
But apparently the Kremlin wants to grandstand about morality and artillery shelling of urban areas being bad when it has FREAKING GROZNY, ALEPPO, DONETSK, AND LUHANSK on whatever passes for its conscience?
Yeah no. Screw that to hell and back.
Untrue on multiple levels, especially if you understand.
…as a result of the Russian Government and “Separatists” breaking them first.
As people like Bellingcat documented in lavish detail.
Don’t you freaking DARE try to pull the Nuance Card after you just got done condemning those that support Ukraine’s defense as Tyrants.
Yeah, there’s a lot of history in here, and a lot of nuance to that history. Nuance I clearly understand far better than you do, as shown by my analysis of why the Ukrainian government might want to deestablish the Moscow Patriarchate and how our Founding Fathers would probably be baffled they haven’t already done so.
But that doesn’t change the fact that one can make a bunch of very binding, very true bottom line summaries. And as fun as getting lost in the weeds of the Nanjing Decade and its corruption, murder, warlordism, drug trafficking, and who was betraying who today is, that won’t do anything to justify Japan’s actions in 1931 or 1937.
“Nuance” is comprehension of hard truths in reality, not an excuse to avoid them.
That would be among the most flattering things I’d call you, if I was bluntly honest. Because being a Putin stooge is one thing. Being one that vilifies their opponents and the honored dead including my Grandfather on shoddy, dishonest, incoherent grounds?
That’s another level altogether.
And consider yourself fortunate I am this patient and have no interest to dirty up our host’s blog further.
And I’m saying take a freaking look at history. Even without the support of anything near as strong as the US or the Western Alliance, the Kremlin has routinely been forced to settle for less than all the Ukrainian territory it wanted. Whether we’re looking at Andrusovo in 1667 or Riga in 1920, the Kremlin has repeatedly been forced to turn back from all its objectives in Ukraine, and on more than one occasion (like the Smolensk War) has been BTFO’d all together.
Moreover, while the US’s track record in wars has not been the greatest lately it did successfully sustain an Iraqi Government through about 20 years of war and it remains decently stable. And those are just the big cases. Korea, the Philippines, Dominican Republic, Chad….
Forgive me if I fail to see how allowing a thugocracy to destroy international law and assurances issued by the US, threatening the world with widespread hunger, will HELP us deal with issues like Trans extremists and the Rainbow Flaw Omerta.
The world generally hates us much less than people think, in large part because it is safe to hate us.
Ask that to Putin. Obviously he has concluded the answer is “not enough yet” whether in Georgia or Ukraine or Transnistria.
Considering your mind has clearly not researched a lot, I’m not particularly impressed.
Kindly explain to me how Putin is in any way, shape, or form the good guy or even the lesser evil.
And realize that “no doubt in your mind” does not translate to there being no doubt period.
@CBI
Thank you kindly. I appreciate the generous words, and I only hope to deserve them.
I could be wrong but I don’t remember the same skepticism of the “Russia blew up their own pipeline” story even though it was floated with virtually no facts or evidence to support it.
And I apologize up front but suggesting that after invading Ukraine, killing thousands and thousands of people, and displacing hundreds of thousands more, Putin would blow up his own pipeline rather than just shut it down because he was afraid of the “backlash” is the most insanely stupid thing I’ve ever heard.
Beyond confirmation bias, people believe Hersh as a response to being asked to believe nonsense all the damn time. Do you think the U.S. government has been entirely honest and upfront about COVID and the response to it? If not, why in Heaven’s name would you blindly swallow what they’re telling you about Ukraine?
Mike
Turtler,
1. The big thing Putin violated when he invaded Ukraine was the 1994 Budapest Accords in which US, UK, and Russia promised to redirect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty if Ukraine gave up its nukes. It was a stupid bet for Ukraine, as I told some of the people who negotiated it (a senator from my state) at the time. Japan and South Korea have drawn the appropriate lessons from this.
B. Please correct me if I’m wrong here, but as I understand it there is the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This is not a case of “SPLITTER!!!” and the Judean People’s Front versus the People’s Front of Judea inasmuch as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is more accurately called the Russian Orthodox Church of Ukraine and is indeed run out of Moscow as you said. Its presence in Ukraine is much smaller than that of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for obvious reasons. It is the (Russian) Orthodox Church of Ukraine that has been banned, and with good reason, as you suggest, but not the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. (I myself am Roman Catholic, so I’m watching the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as closely as I can.)
@MBunge
It popped up pretty quickly and circled around, but you are right that it wasn’t scrutinized or had much beyond circumstantial evidence provided for it. Which I suppose is another major reason in the “Russia Didn’t Do It” Evidence Pile: if they had and there was evidence we’d almost certainly hear at least something about it by now.
Especially since the Swedes at least seemed to take the “accident” explanation off the table (which if nothing else would be monumentally convenient whether it was an actual accident or sabotage in order to defuse tensions or avoid a direct conflict).
Which is also why while I have my own biases and suspicions of who most likely did it, I have never, Ever ruled out the possibility of US Guilt for it or at least someone linked to us doing it.
You might want to check about Gazprom’s power in the Russian economy and German-Russian relations. There’s backlash about military misadventures and then there’s backlash about admitting you blew up one of your own quite expensive pipelines in a grandiose display of defiance or to try and leverage the Germans and other Europeans to come to the table next year, even if it means putting dozens of thousands of workers in a central sector of the Russian economy out.
It would be like the backlash to Biden and Obama’s war on fossil fuels on crack cocaine, since as important as fossil fuels and the energy sector are to the US they are far more important to Russia. Diplomatically, economically, and socially.
Again, that doesn’t mean that the Kremlin DID It. But if Putin (or some Russian faction operating independently of him, or even some non-Russian faction that does not want to be fingered) did do it, there’s a bunch of VERY good reasons to do it while it is inactive, ranging from less environmental fiasco to less of an economic backlash both in Russia and abroad.
Well said indeed, and that also ties in. The NS2 blast is one of the most foggy and mysterious of the circumstances in world politics today, and at this stage that can’t be a coincidence. Unlike the “Anti-Slav Bioweapons” nonsense the Kremlin peddled that were pretty handily blown apart when it was showed that A: Yanukovych maintained the supposed “WMD” program, and B: Russian scientists authorized by the state visited the facilities in question and said nothing about it, the fact that this has remained so consistently murky gives credence to the Kremlin’s accusations.
Not the least of which because they damn well might be true. And I’d be a fool if I did not admit that.
I don’t think for a second if the US did it that it did so in the way Hersh describes, but Hersh being a liar doesn’t mean Brandon and his junta aren’t, or that they are telling the truth about this. As you’ve pointed out, they sure as hell have lied about plenty more. What’s an international pipeline that is inconvenient to them?
@Jeff Cox
Agreed, as did others. This is another reason why while I relish Gaddafi’s well deserved death I opposed Obama’s “dubiously legal” (AT BEST) intervention in the Civil War. Because it would send the wrong message about WMDs. And surprise surprise it did.
I personally am a Protestant (specifically an anti-woke Episcopalian) and FAR from an expert in terms of Ukrainian and Eastern Orthodox matters, though it might seem otherwise by relative. So this is gonna get complicated…
Honestly it is a lot closer to the the JPF vs. PFoJ situation and “SPLITTER” than many people think, precisely because the Moscow Patriarchate is just one competing Orthodox branch among many in Ukraine, and many of the schisms and disagreements were only secondarily or tertiarily related to a “national” conflict with the Moscow Patriarchate.
But there are at least half a dozen fairly major Orthodox Church denominations in Ukraine.
1. Probably the oldest of these is the church tied to the Moscow Patriarchate, which dates back centuries and has the baggage aforementioned, and which up until about a decade or a half ago was clearly the largest, at least in headcount and roster.
2. The next oldest would probably be the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which had its roots with the Moscow Patriarchate but was split by the turmoil of civil war and Bolshevik occupation and so basically went its own way.
3. The Kyiv Patriarchate, which basically formed quickly after independence from assorted unions of parts of 1 and 2, though this was contentious for all kinds of reasons.
But around the early 2000s and beyond there was assorted controversy and attempts to break away from Moscow for various reasons, only some of them nationalistic (though many were), which led to a bunch of these churches splitting from Moscow either officially (as in officially discontinuing ties with Moscow) or unofficially (which we’ll get to later) even as the churches kept splitting amongst each other. This dovetailed with a lot of what we saw elsewhere, especially in Romania and Moldova (anti-Kremlin but Orthodox majority nations).
The general consensus was to seek Autocephaly from the Patriarch of Constantinople, the rival to Moscow for “First Among Equals” and generally regarded as less state-dependent and more independent. The invasion and war of 2014 onwards gave new pressure to this and encouraged a general burying of hatchets as negotiations for this stuff progressed over the course of the latter half of the 2010s.
Eventually they had things mostly sorted out by the end of 2018, and so in early 2019 the Constantinople Patriarch formally granted autocephaly to a new, supposedly united union church drawing members from all three factions. BUUUT because this is Church Hierarchy, it couldn’t be that simple and some of the bigwigs of 2 and 3 fell out over some of the terms during the negotiation. So early in 2019 there was another schism which led to a schism, especially within 3, leading to a reconstituted 3 and some more churches not going further.
So now while most Orthodox Churches have transitioned to a new 4, the supposedly united “Ukrainian Orthodox Church”, you still have holdout constituencies among the other three.
Add this to the fact that the war has led to something of an “unspoken schism” in the Moscow Patriarchate’s churches in Ukraine. Contrary to what has been reported, these haven’t been banned (though some of those deemed connected to Russia or loyal to it have been arrested or had their things closed), but they HAVE increasingly split off into Pro or Anti invasion camps as well as neutrals, and the latter have increasingly distanced themselves from Kirill and co in Moscow any way they can (such as removing Moscow in laws) without formally declaring a schism, apparently for various reasons like legal authority.
And all of this is without touching on smaller orthodox denominations or other stuff like Greek Catholics.
It’s weird and I get a distinct feeling of nostalgia as a Protestant keeping even partial track of the infighting and splitting.
Admirable indeed, and I wish you well in that.
And my sympathies re: Francis I.
MBunge,
There was little skepticism of the “Russia blew up their own pipeline” story at the beginning “with no facts or evidence e to support it” because:
1. There was little evidence of anything at the beginning. You want facts at the beginning? The Nordstream pipelines fractured. That’s it. Beyond that, you had nothing. That leaves everyone to make theories out of who had means, motive, and opportunity. And …
B. Who has a history of blowing up their own stuff. When you crossreference those who had means, motive, and opportunity with those who have a history of blowing up their own stuff (like, say, a Moscow apartment building), the overlap consists of exactly one suspect: Russia.
You can whine that “there’s no evidence” Russia did it, but there is almost no evidence that has been publicly revealed, period, and as far as we know there is as much evidence pointing to Russia as there is pointing to the US.
But the evidence taken as a whole is completely ambiguous. Without more evidence, we will continue to argue round and round and settle nothing.
Personally, I think Luxembourg did it. Its navy is a little small but very highly motivated.
Turtler,
Is it a case of SPLITTER related to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or a case of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church being (re)born? My understanding was that Stalin forced both the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to merge with the Russian Orthodox Church. It was part of his effort to eliminate the Ukrainian nationality but also make the religion easier to control. So, after 1991, you have Ukrainian Orthodox again (we never stopped having Ukrainian Catholics, thankfully) so how to re-establish the Church. Birth pangs are common. I would imagine re-birth pangs are, too.
Thank you re: Francis. I’m actually a big LGBT supporter. The vast majority of LGBTs just want to be left alone, but the radical LGBTs in the US have gotten absolutely ridiculous (men competing in women’s sports? Seriously?). Every day is another story about some stupidity they have wrought, hurting the normal LGBTs in the process.
But where Francis is doing the real damage is his Green Nazi and Marxist (but I repeat myself) ideology. The Bible says nothing about the environment. And Christ was not a socialist. So Francis should shut up about it.
@Jeff Cox
Probably yes and yes. A little of Column A and a little from Column B with assorted selections from Columns C through Y to keep things interesting.
Pretty much indeed. Not helped by a lot of political jockeying and some theological ones, which helped divide this particular flock of cats. Like I said, I am very much an outsider looking in and so at best have the cliff’s notes versions from some people closer to it, but it has been a rocky road and probably will be moreso later.
Indeed. Another thing I point out is how Francis handily justified and supported the Argentine Junta’s invasion of the Falklands, even though he has a reputation as a “dissident.” Truly a difference from the much maligned Pope Pius XII, who refused to bless the Italian armies invading Ethiopia and Albania and who got himself on the “To Kill Later” list for Hitler and co.
Might one wonder if there’s any connection between the rumors that Putin blew up his own pipeline and the rumors that Putin has been blowing up, as it were, all those Russian energy magnates….?
Oh, wait…
}}} Who cares how accurate Hersh’s details are? The point is that he has broken the dam here. The entire Western mainstream media has been awkwardly insisting that Putin blew up his own pipeline. Hersh is the first Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to come right out and say what most neutral observers think—the US did it. Who knows why he’s saying it? He’s an insider himself, and indeed, is not to be trusted.
I believe Neo already mentioned “Confirmation Bias”…??
Go look in the mirror.
While I think Biden is a traitorous asshole and an incompetent plagiarist, rapist, racist, and kleptocrat, there is no actual evidence to support these claims.
There are plenty of people out there who have analyzed the scenario, many of whom have experience with pipelines, and point to the very very real possibility — bordering on likelihood — of Russian incompetence and ineptitude as the most likely cause of the failures.
In other words, it wasn’t nefarious intent that caused it, it was human stupidity.
And THAT is why it matters whether or not his claims have any validity, because they point the spotlight in a very very different direction, and one which is anti-American in its natural sentiment. It feeds antiAmerican biases.
So much for Biden “helping build trust in America around the world that Trump ‘cost’ us”… huh?
}}} Fewer than 6 countries on earth could have pulled this off. Of those, several were hurt by it. One gained big time. No-one claimed responsibility.
.
.
There’s an axiom:
“Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity”.
The pipelines are a very real example of this in play. You need HARD EVIDENCE to advance the claim that this was a nefarious act.
The very notion that “There are fewer than 6 countries which could have pulled this off” (a questionable assertion in my own eyes, but ok, roll with it) speaks to the fact that it is far far more likely that it was incompetence and stupidity that caused this.
Jeff Cox:
All the evidence points to the Elbonian Seel Team Sex, supported by the Elbonian Navy (an imaginary country oft mentioned by Ian at ForgottenWeapons.com).
Freedonia is another suspect BTW, although our commentor Rufus T Firefly will undoubtablly deney any possibility of Freedonian involvement.
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“…..The answer is rather simple, I think: people tend to believe what they already want to believe……”
BINGO !!
A friend of mine is very politically conservative but any article he reads or video he views blaming the USA for whatever – esp. foreign affairs – he instantly believes.
It really is amazing; it’s like someone flipping a light switch to the “yep, the USA caused / forced …..”
Many (most?) folks have pre-conceived notions about many things and they literally seek out or latch onto any bit of news, speculation, rumor, innuendo , etc., that will affirm their existing belief system.
Unfortunately this means that opinions are formed/affirmed without having to think or reason about what they read, view or are told.
They just believe.
Thinking or trying to reason through a problem, perhaps , is just too unpleasant a task for many folks
Try having a “conversation” with someone who believes Bush / Cheney / Halliburton / the Mossad took down the twin towers on 9-11.
I tried, and never again will I even bother trying to convince somebody that what they believe could just not be true.
Lee Smith’s take:
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/ — and scroll down just a bit; then keep on scrolling….
Some highlights:
“US may have blown up NS1 & NS2 — but not like Hersh reports it. It’s Steele Dossier-quality fabrication. Its purpose? To make Biden sound like a ruthless commander-in-chief…”
“It’s an op and the target is Biden voters.”
“[Biden] said it because he’d just lifted NS2 sanctions. And even the pro-Biden press knew lifting NS2 sanctions effectively green-lighted Russian invasion. So Biden was talking tough, like he does, to mask his stupidity and venality.”
“My purpose is same reason I wrote about Russiagate: to warn people not to fall for this weaponized garbage.”
“…Hersh story promotes myth of competent strong-willed leader v reality of corrupt and comatose Obama avatar….”
YMMV.
@Barry Meislin
Thanks for that. And that really does fit a missing piece of the puzzle neatly in. A lot of us were baffled at why Hersh would do this, but Lee’s stance makes sense for a soulless lefty hack like Hersh. It’s psy ops to support Biden and appeal to low information Donk voters, but at the same time is so garbage (and obviously so) that those in the know would understand it is bullshit and if the Kremlin tried to exploit it they would be quickly dismissed as peddling a myth.
It’s quite clever in its own way, but evil. And so many people will not know any better.
we know when they want a story out there, the wurlitzer is all points bulletin every broadsheet, every tv station, every publishing house, we know when they want to ‘cover it with a pillow, still it stops breathing,
“…but evil…”
Yes, characteristically evil.
Multi-dimensional deceit/deflection/cover-up/gaslighting…in the best “Biden” tradition…
(Cf. Fast & Furious, the IRS scandal (then AND now), Russiagate, the 2020/2022 elections, the southern border/fentanyl nexus, COVID/vaccines/masks/shutdowns, the Jan.6 setup, the Hunter Biden “Saga” (soon to be a major motion picture…?), the Chinese balloons…etc…and this latest “SCOOP” (no, not ice cream), which I suspect is also meant to deflect/coverup from Balloongate…which will likely be soon revealed in all its glory, gas-oven/stovegate…and no doubt, I probably missed oh a good half-dozen others…)
+ Bonus…sorta…
https://nypost.com/2023/02/11/secret-service-puzzled-by-intervention-in-hunter-biden-gun-buy/
Oops! (Wrong bonus—there are so many out there…)
Let’s try this one (WARNING: Best to viewed with eyes wide shut!)…
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/02/12/new-emails-raise-questions-if-secret-service-protected-biden-family-in-hunter-gun-probe/
you have to look through roddy piper’s glasses at the blank pages, they recorded everything worth jotting down with the first balloon, meanwhile a real threat like majid khan being released is page 13, with violins galore, of course Jack smith who was an enabler of the tea party inquisition, is back again like inspector gerard after trump (with a little shoulder tap on pence, just so he knows the rules) the same people who won pulitzers for the Russia fraud, now say the balloons are ufos (there’s little intelligent life here)
see i’m cursed with memory, the syrian story was when rocket surgeons like clint watt said with a straight face, we can work with al queda, in syria and north africa,
about a year later, islamic state has their big closeup
“…the same people who won pulitzers for the Russia fraud, now say the balloons are ufos…”
Of course, that would definitely confirm that the balloons were Chinese…
That is, unless you’re referring to the latest shootdown over Canada, only.
But if not, it is certainly touching that China got all incensed over the unjustifiable shootdown of a UFO… Such admirable consideration for “the other”! Such caring concern for “not doing the wrong thing”…)
Actually, the Canadian papers, or some of them, have been reporting the Trudeau gave the order for this latest shootdown… Amazing, and here I thought the only thing he orders is pizzas (and fancy socks)…oh, and the oppressive surveillance of—preferably powerless—political opponents…
– – – – – –
WRT to low-lifes like Watt and Malley, and Sulllivan for that matter, one must keep the eye on the ball and try to focus on the “patterns” of their treachery.
“Biden'”s treachery.
furthermore gadaffi was a bad guy, it didn’t help that edwin wilson supplied all these toys that he gave the ira, the plo the brigatte rossi, but by 2010, we had to know that al queda was the greater threat, that wasn’t the thinking or what passes for such, in the state department or whitehall or the quai d’orsay, or the palazzio quirinale, all of a sudden he was the worst, because there was a riot in a prison stuffed with islamists, and we’re off to the races,
initially I thought well gadaffi was making things up, but blind squirrel, he was right about the gitmo returnees leading and training the rebels, which leads to curious events like that manchester bombing some years back, uk had played footsie with lfg then turned on them when they hugged muammar then let them roam free when the pendulum swung again,
admittedly that was acosta and bertrand crossing streams, (this is really bad comedy) speaking of ghostbusters, this event was like shutting the power to the containment vessels,) ok now what, europe doesn’t have a ready source of alternative power, the lawfare and greta’s gargoyles won’t allow more drilling or other exploration,
Both can be true. The story was leaked to damage Biden, but the US with the aid of Norway did sabotage the pipeline. It could be to weaken him to the point he doesn’t seek re-election.
Biden made a pretty straightforward statement on February 7, 2022. “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2.” Doesn’t prove US actually set the charges, but it does read like a red line.
Biden, in May 2021 had lifted sanctions imposed by then President Trump on the Nord Stream 2 company. This was thought to improve relations with Germany.
It prompted heavy criticism across the political spectrum. Trying to repair the damage by Biden removing sanctions, Biden and Merkel issued this statement in July 2021:
“The United States and Germany are united in their determination to hold Russia to account for its aggression and malign activities by imposing costs via sanctions and other tools,” the statement read.
“Should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive acts against Ukraine, Germany will take action at the national level and press for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions, to limit Russian export capabilities to Europe in the energy sector, including gas, and/or in other economically relevant sectors,” it said.
Pretty weak sauce.
How bad was the criticism of Biden’s initial suspending NS2 sanctions? From Politico: “This one decision, arguably more than the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, has imperiled Biden’s agenda.”
Immediately after Russia’s invasion on Feb 24, Biden again placed sanctions on the NS2 company.
Now, how does Biden prove he’s the tough guy? The pipeline is magically damaged.
@Brian E
Agreed on the latter re: Norway. Though I believe Lee Smith’s argument more that Hersh was doing it to try and help prop Biden up and make him look stronger, especially given how weak and pitiful he acted regarding the CCP Balloon issue and how quickly the “Trump let them fly over too!” lie got burst.
Agreed, and when meshed with his talking about how a “limited incursion” by Putin was ok makes it all the more telling.
Agreed.
so who’s trustworthy, in this equation, I really want to know,
ignore sy hersh, he might as well be the boy in the bubble for all practical effects,
biden nuland, kerry, burns has the knowledge not to do something like this, (but there are caveats) whoever is chair of the intel committee,
yes that was the glaspie gambit, don’t they know that never works,
looking at history, it struck me how putin didn’t just stay with the donbass (what’s the bulk of the industrial and mineral wealth in ukraine) to attempt a larger expedition required more resources,
But look at Nuland. Look at Malley. Look at Sullivan.
Or Haspel. (Boy, did they ever get lucky with that appointment…)
It’s the same type of subterfuge every damn time. (Or a variation, thereof.)
Look at Baker and all the pies he’s had his fingers in.
It seems that never having gotten caught, never having had to pay a price—or a decisive, long-term price—they just keep trying. Keep doing the same old same old.
Hanson would whisper, “Hubris”…
(OTOH, they never DO seem to get caught or otherwise be held accountable… Do they…?)
Why would they unless thry are held accountable
Aggie:
Celebrities do the same with the beacons on their private jets.
Aircraft use Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) not AIS, and while an ADS-B can be turned off to avoid tracking that is not what pilots (celebrity or otherwise) do to avoid the public tracking their flights. They could use LADD or PIA without being a hazard to other aircraft.
As for Hersh, his story is as plausible as a farmer hiring a landscaper to harvest his field.
from our last round of expeditions there were a group of marines, some of whom where falsely imprisoned, senior chief gallagher, which they tried to put in prison, for a crime his accuser committed, major gant,
I’m not sure why anyone believes an anonymous sourced story that as wild as the one presented by Seymour Hersh. I’m not as familiar with Hersh as many others seem here, but quality reporting seems something hard to find from anyone and this example doesn’t seem an example of quality.
However, I do think there is a reason for people on the right to give it credibility that is not provided by Neo. If Steele Dossier is sufficient enough that even Neo will suggest that the people on the “Right” are “Putin-Sympathetic” despite how fantastical the Steele Dossier is proven; then let’s have the left explain Hersh’s Nordstream story. Let’s open investigations into the White House and Biden’s Intelligence Community staff to explain their involvement.
Trump and his administration had 3 years of investigations based on nothing else but the Steele Dossier. Biden has less than 2 years left, but the Hersh story is here and suggests criminal acts by members of Biden’s intelligence community. Why not demand a special counsel to investigate? Less evidence was needed to appoint special counsels to investigate Trump.
Sure, it is a waste of money, but if history proves a good model; keeping the White House from moving forward its agenda is a boom for the US economy.
Have there been any pictures of the damage to the pipeline? I haven’t heard of any.
“blow up” combines a dramatic overtone with a considerable choice of what and how much damage is involved.
The world is full of shaped charges. If, for example, a simple hole in the pipeline is all that happened, one might make the case that guy who has an RPG warhead in his carry-on and can hold his breath a long time could have done this. I kid about the breath-holding. Sort of.
Or do we see piles of scrap in all directions and hundred yard gobs of oil gone all gelatinous in the near-freezing ocean? (Does that stuff float?) That would take a greater effort.
The closer the damage is to my first example, the greater the number of possible perps.
I presume “blow up” means we have an acoustic signature accurate to time and place, right? Not a generic for trawler with an anchor dragging across the ocean floor, right? Or maybe the trawler has a good-sized chunk of commercial explosive at the end of the cable.
It doesn’t have to be neat, efficient, and sophisticated. Presume, for example, that Tim McVeigh hadn’t been caught. The OKC bombing might look a lot more sophisticated than one guy mixing up AMFO sludge in his back yard.
A violent coup, a decade of military and paramilitary axis attacks on Ukrainians, two illegitimate regimes, an apartheid regime, a Slavic Spring in the Obama/Biden World War Spring series in progress.
@n.n.
There was plenty of violence around Euromaidan (and much of it -ESPECIALLY early on – was the fault of the Yanukovych Government, who thought it was a good idea to give sweeping immunity to riot police for clearcut atrocities against police and to have them post propaganda about “Jewish Nazis”), but the decisive removal of Yanukovych from power was done bloodlessly by a vote in the Rada. The same democratically elected Rada Yanukovych had been elected alongside.
Gee, who caused that? Let me ask the nice Little Green Men.
What does that even mean?
The Ukrainians have been through multiple governments since 2008, all of them outside of the caretaker Yatsenyuk cabinets democratically elected.
I have boundless contempt for Obama and Biden, but they didn’t cause this particular shindig. Indeed, given how pervasive and failed their attempts and those of their co-conspirators like Soros were to undermine Yanukovych during the election season only to have them fail, I doubt they could have were it not for Yanukovych doing a 180 on his election promises and then doubling down on stupid.
@Leland
That IS a very good point, and a clever move at that. The regime certainly deserves humiliation and even the other sharks are seeing how Brandon is weak. So pushing for investigations would be a nice way of blowing Hersh’s psyop back on him and his ilk.
Leland; Turtler:
When I say some on the right are Putin-sympathetic I’m talking about one thing only: the subset of people on the right who bend over backwards to “understand” and make excuses for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
I was going to post this in an open thread, because it deserves more attention. But…
Was the ouster of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych a result of a revolution/coup and an illegal act by the Ukrainian parliament (Rada) and why does it matter?
Turtler maintains the actions of the Rada were legal.
Turtler’s full answer is here @6:52pm:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/02/09/i-learned-long-ago-not-to-trust-anything-seymour-hersh-king-of-the-anonymous-source-writes/#comments
His short answer is the Rada was justified in removing Yanukovych because he abandoned his position and failed to return to Kiev to answer for his actions before the Rada. He could have sought protection from a friendly foreign government, or at least met in a zoom meeting.
After the brutal events of Feb. 20, 2014, “President Viktor Yanukovych on February 21 agreed to an early presidential election; to reinstate the country’s 2004 constitution, which would curtail his powers; and to form a government of national unity.
That was rejected by the Maidan mob who insisted Yanukovych resign by the morning of Feb. 22 or they would storm the legislative buildings. The Berkut police (SBU) had stated they would no longer provide security. Yanukovych left/fled for Eastern Ukraine (initally Karkiv). The same day the Rada passed a resolution removing him from office.
I have seen no evidence there was an attempt to bring Yanukovych back to answer questions before the Rada. If there was, voting to remove him from power the same day, certainly doesn’t constitute negotiating in good faith. Maybe Turtler can provide more information about this.
d Here is my response to his reply.
The problem with that is there is no provision in the Ukraine constitution to remove a President in that manner.
Here are the relevant part of their constitution:
Article 108
The President of Ukraine exercises his or her powers until the assumption of office by the newly-elected President of Ukraine.
The powers of the President of Ukraine terminate prior to the expiration of term in
cases of:
1. resignation;
2. inability to exercise his or her powers for reasons of health;
3. removal from office by the procedure of impeachment;
4. death.
At no time did the Rada seek the counsel or approval of their action from another branch of the government, the Ukraine Supreme Court.
The Rada didn’t follow the constitutional process of impeachment because of the nature of the Maidan mob demanding immediate action. Certainly fits the definition of a revolution/coup.
The Rada also did not have the necessary votes to pass a bill of impeachment. As it was, parliament members from Yanukovych’s “Party of Regions” were beaten and coerced to vote for the resolution removing Yanukovych.
In a justification for the actions taken by the Rada to remove Yanukovych one day after the Maidan protestors/rioters had rejected the compromise, a Polish organization, OSW, included these points in their article about the events (this in an article justifying the removal of Yanukovych):
“Some of the actions of the new authorities do constitute abuses of the law, but can be justified by the emergency situation, which was not provided for in the Constitution.”
“The parliament’s actions did not constitute a coup d’etat. Although some of them were unconstitutional, but these were actions of the indisputably legitimate parliament. One can at most speak of a ‘parliamentary coup’,”
“Restoring the Constitution by means of act was contrary to its provisions,”
“Similarly, the reference to the president “voluntarily removing himself from his duties” was illegal because the constitution did not provide for such a form for the termination of the Head of State’s duties.”
“The use of the phrase “expressing the sovereign will of the Ukrainian Nation” in the resolution concerning Yulia Tymoshenko refers to the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, proclaiming that “the only source of power in Ukraine is the people”, and “the right to determine and change the constitutional order in Ukraine belongs exclusively to the people, and cannot be usurped by the State” (Article 5). In revolutionary conditions these statutes acquire a new meaning, becoming not just a formal justification, but a real basis for the actions of the institutions of state.”
So the justification for the removal of the President basically comes down to the revolutionary right of the people to overthrow the ruling power!
This overthrow of the President by a mob certainly wouldn’t have been accepted by the Western government if the results hadn’t favored Western policies.
And it had to be deemed legal by the West. Otherwise it justifies parts of the Donbas and Crimea for their declarations of independence soon after. These areas voted for Yanukovych overwhelmingly.
As to whether or not the Maidan mob was sincere about removing Yanukovych by any means, here are a couple of examples from an article by Radio Free Europe:
Yulian Konechny, 21, is a medical student from Lviv who came out to Freedom Avenue dressed in his white scrubs. “If I was [President Yanukovych], I would try and flee the country,” he says. “Otherwise he’ll end up like [Muammar] Qaddafi or with a life sentence or the electric chair. He will not leave the country alive. People will never forgive the deaths of a hundred people.”
Another protestor said:
“I don’t see the point of elections. The elections will come later, of course, but first we need an international court to judge the president and judge the opposition,” he says. “And for the president, the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty.”
A member of parliament, Igor Horilov said, “At the moment the members of the parliament are trying to establish the law, which aims to legitimize the new government. There are three options for Yanukovych. He can resign. The second option is to take the case to court, as someone who broke the Ukrainian constitution. I don’t really want to talk about the third option. It’s to follow the destiny of Ceausescu.”
That would be Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanian dictator, given a short trial, then executed. The difference, of course, is Yanukovych was a legally elected President who had another year on his 5-year term.
neo.
As I frequently do, I wonder about motivations , in this case of those who try to understand Putin. Can’t be what–what I can understand–of their stated reasoning.
…and then there is this.
https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html
I’ll take hydrate plug for $500, Alex.
Worth a read. This explanation is totally in line with Russian maintenance practices.
This overthrow of the President by a mob certainly wouldn’t have been accepted by the Western government if the results hadn’t favored Western policies.
He wasn’t overthrown by the mob and the whole controversy is moot at this point. There have been five competitive elections in the Ukraine in the last nine years. If the electorate were favorable to the Russophile strand of the country’s political class, they’d not have been consigned to 16% of the vote.
By the way, the sequence of events in the Ukraine was similar to that in a clutch of Latin American countries between 1993 and the present. The usual suspects bleated about the President of Honduras being run out of office in 2009. That aside, the various successor presidents weren’t subject to harassment by the American administration.
Art Deco,
In the first round of voting Yanukovych received 35.3% of the vote to Yulia Tymoshenko’s 25.1%.
There was a runoff election the following month where Yanukovych received 49%, Tymoshenko 45% and none of the above 4.4%.
There was no indication by foreign governments that the election wasn’t fair.
The whole controversy isn’t moot. What happened affected the following events in the Donbas and Crimea.
We’re the guys who support the rule of law. The Maidan mob could have agreed to agreement worked out by the Rada, Yanukovych and the representatives of Germany, France and Poland which would have resulted in early elections and the legal removal of Yanukovych.
I would suggest anyone that honestly wants to view the events watch this report by Vice news at the time beginning with the 19th through the 22nd of February, 2014.
If you don’t want to see the violence from the 19th and 20th, fast forward to about minute 9 when the events of the 22nd are shown.
This report is very much from the Western point of view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7e6B64Iqqg
The whole controversy isn’t moot.
The whole controversy is moot.
and now the honduran president’s wife, is in charge, and they are a perfect tool of venezuela, now her predecessors brother, ran a drug stamp with a brand on his product, so sometime we choose poorly
we pretend to misunderstand putin, these games where we enabled the collapse of the russian economy, and birthed the oligarchs, some have tried to make putin at the center of the picture, catherine belton one of the latest, but phillip short takes a middle course, now the same crew that was all in for brezhnev’s lies that would be biden kerry, panetta, now are the great cold warriors pshaw, what accounting do we have of the 100 billion spent on ukraine, no one can say, zelensky finally had to cashier his chief of staff and the defense minister, how much money has gone down the drain to venues charted by panama dubai paradise papers who can say, they took a little tap at kolomoisky, hunters employer at burisma, and manager of the privat bank, what’s 6 billion lost between friends,
a reasonable account of about 350 years of history
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/_since_when_did_ukrainians_become_entitled_to_a_giant_state_.html
The “Revolution of Dignity” matters for several reasons.
As I’ve already stated, an illegal removal of a President popular in the East precipitated the events there.
I’ve avoided any mention of US involvement in the Maidan protests. What started in November as mass protests stemming from Yanukovych’s reneging on signing the EU Association Agreement, had morphed into wider protests of his corruption and been co-opted by far-right nationalist movements, Right Sector and Svoboda which were demanding his resignation.
To what extent was the US involved? I don’t know. We do know that Senators John McCain and Chris Murphey met with and stood on the stage with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the right wing nationalist party Svoboda, speaking to the protestors.
Victoria Nuland famously handed out cookies to the protestors at one point, and there is a phone call with Ambassador Pyatt and Nuland talking about who should be installed as interim President when Yanukovych was ousted.
When you view the circumstances of Feb. 20-22 in Ukraine with overthrow of the president, which the US supported/turned a blind eye to, and later recognized as legitimate, it makes the events of Jan. 6 and our government’s response understandable. The Democrats freaked out. The government came down on the protesters with an iron fist, even though we had no weapons, there was no chance an insurrection would result from the protests, no right-wing snipers shooting police.
Brain E:
‘Watch Vice and if you are honest you will agree with me (Brian E).’ paraphrase much.
Is Brian E a person who continues to find rationalizations for Putin? Maybe? And yet he persists. Oh well, life is short.
om, what exactly have I said or evidence of the events that is a rationalization for Putin?
You might want to actually watch the video first. Then you might tell me where they have distorted what happened.
If I’m distorting the facts or events, I’m sure Turtler will chime in and correct me.
Brain E has now conflated January 6, 2020 with Ukraine. Fever swamp logic. One thang led to ‘nother.
Who invaded who on Feb. 24, 2022?
Just to circle back to an essential fact.
om, no one thing did not lead to the other.
Brain E:
“As I’ve already stated, an illegal removal of a President popular in the East precipitated the events there.” Followed by a trail of inference to Ukraine today?
One thin’ or two led to ‘nother fine mess.
Okay. Turtler may comment on this latest readin’ of past and current events, but I doubt that it will make any impression.
If only Ukraine didn’t object so much to being dismembered, one treaty (broken) at a time.
om, what treaty was broken?
Think back Brain E to the treaty signed with the Russian Federation in which Ukraine gave up its Soviet era nuclear weapons. You remember, that one? The west also signed it. Turtler has the patience to educate you, will you learn? You can find the details on the interwebs.
Why would Ukraine trust the Russian Federation (Roosia) to abide with any new treaties?
om, The Budapest Memorandum wasn’t a treaty.
It had just as much force as Jim Baker’s agreement with Gorbachev that NATO expanding eastward was unacceptable.
Just a couple of additional points about the events of Feb. 20-22
The same day the Rada passed the resolution firing Yanukovych, officials also announced to the crowd that they needed to unite Ukraine in the east.
Ukraine used militias, basically private armies to go after the separatists in the Donbas. It was sometime later that they were incorporated into the regular army and national guard. So basically it was gang warfare, with “irregulars” on both sides. Recipe for bad things.
As to the US involvement, here is a clip from President Obama on Feb. 19 warning the Yanukovych government not to use force on peaceful protesters, and the protesters to remain peaceful.
He also said he thought there could still be a “peaceful transition”. What do you suppose he was referring to?
Yanukovych agreed to the early elections, reduce Presidential power, and early elections on Feb. 21, and only left after the Maidan mob rejected it. How could Obama know Yanukovych would leave Kyiv that night/early am?
As to those peaceful protesters, four Berkut riot police were killed and 21 wounded before 9 am on Feb. 20, before the day ended up with 49 protestors killed that day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SftUiaHst58
Brain E:
Otay, any more fine Putin hairs to split? It was an agreement; an agreement that was not honored, eh? And you have the balls to whine about Yanukovitch?
It takes all kinds to carry Putin’s water. There was no treaty saying Roosia wouldn’t invade Crimea either, was there?
You have learned nothing, it seems, from Turtler.
Brain E:
Just an agreement giving up nuclear weapons in exchange for a pledge to honor Ukrainian territorial integrity. An agreement kept until Crimea, Donbas, and finally the big meatball, Feb 24, 2022.
I’ll leave it to Turtler to make all the nuanced, and other, corrections which you will ignore.
Roosia wants. Brain E understands.
Brain E now writes history of the Donbas, gang warfare, oh my. One gang somehow got access to Russian Federation (Roosian) SAM systems and shot down a Malaysian Airlines civilian airliner. Hundreds killed. How did that gang get that weapon system oh astute historian of all things Ukranian? Things Brain E has to ignore to carry Putin’s water.
Don’t trot out the genocide against ethnic Russians in the Donbass trope because out of the other side of the Russian propaganda mouth, Ukrainans are all Russians. But then you have to fall back onto the Ukrainians are Nazis. You tried the Nazi trick already.
There’s another reason why the West must insist the method of removal of Yanukovych in Feb. 2014 was legal.
The Ukrainian constitution only allowed resignation, impeachment, health and death as reasons for the President to not serve out his term.
Some (not Western powers) have used Article 5 as a justification. It’s the only method that is legitimate as expressed in the constitution.
Article 5
“Ukraine is a republic.
The people are the bearers of sovereignty and the only source of power in Ukraine. The people exercise power directly and through bodies of state power and bodies of local self-government.
The right to determine and change the constitutional order in Ukraine belongs exclusively to the people and shall not be usurped by the State, its bodies or officials.
No one shall usurp state power.”
Now pretend not to notice some contradictions in Article 5, but a revolution seems sufficient, according to their constitution. In fact the Ukrainian MP Igor Horilov I quoted previously said, “At the moment the members of the parliament are trying to establish the law, which aims to legitimize the new government.”
The Euromaidan was called “The Revolution of Dignity”. Journalists at the time said Yanukovych was “overthrown”. There is nothing in the Ukrainian constitution that describes an act (resolution) as sufficient to dismiss a President.
The problem with that assessment is that Putin used that as a rationalization for nullifying the Budapest Memorandum.
“On 4 March the Russian president Vladimir Putin replied to a question on the violation of the Budapest Memorandum, describing the current Ukrainian situation as a revolution: “a new state arises, but with this state and in respect to this state, we have not signed any obligatory documents”.[31] …Russia suggested that the US was in violation of the Budapest Memorandum and described the Euromaidan as a US-instigated coup.”
The way Yanukovych was ousted from power is a problem.
Yanukovitch hangs out in Russia. Yanukovitch has been highly critical of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the destruction of Ukraine by Russia, oh, that would be absolutely not, it seems.
But Brain E is focused on the martyr Yanklovitch (oops, he ain’t dead).
Brain E didn’t choose his Ukrainian “patriot,” Vlad did that. Sad.
Damn. What did I miss? I had almost moved past this post but I noticed the pings, and well… I did not expect about a dozen new comments.
Anyway…
@Amadeus 48
That was my working assumption as well, until the Swedes specifically declared it an attack. Of course the Swedes could be lying but I struggle to imagine why, especially since even if it was an attack it is at least somewhat convenient for most if not all parties to go with the “Yeah, it was a Hydrate Plug” line just for political convenience.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/traces-explosives-found-nord-stream-pipelines-sweden-says-2022-11-18/
Hydrate Plugs and other natural causes still rattle around in the back of my mind as a possibility, but it is no longer the most likely explanation in my opinion due to the aforementioned reason.
@Brian E
Sorry about this. This will be a long one. But thank you for your patience and thoughtfulness.
Fair, and post where you judge it best Brian E.
And I stand by that judgement, especially given how Yanukovych was already on thin ice legally (as was pointed out by the Rada and the growing mutiny within the Regionnaires).
Agreed except for a couple caveats. Firstly: Yanukovych fled Kyiv for Kharkhiv on Feb 21st. The vote to strip him of power went through on Feb 23rd. So the time frame was about 36-50 hours. So the Rada spent Feb 22nd wondering where he had gone, debating among themselves about how to get in contact with him, and debating matters like impeachment or incapacity removal, before slowly canvassing the votes and ultimately hosting it on the 23rd.
Which puts things in a rather different different complexion on the time frame and how events played out.
Secondly: The Rada itself remained under military and police guard during this time and the rejection of the agreement was hardly universal among the “Maidan Mob”, as shown by the divide between the more-street based militants and the more parliamentary based opposition, particularly those that outright signed it.
But beyond that I largely agree with that general outline.
The Rada does have some power to try and compel people to appear before it like most legislatures, but it isn’t primarily the Rada’s job to make sure that the President of Ukraine keeps his job or even to answer summons, though it does have some power to do so.
The US Legislature does have entities like the Sergeants at Arms for House and Senate with limited powers to compel people to appear in Congress through various means, but Ukraine either flat out did not have such an institution or had a much weaker one instituted only after 2013 (I am not sure on my research and am still checking). But even where such entities exist their powers of compulsion are limited. Even the Brandon Regime hasn’t reached the point where it has authorized Sergeants at Arms for the Congress to barge into houses and drive people to the Congress at gunpoint to testify.
Which brings us to the nature of legislative summons in both Ukraine at the time and elsewhere. They primarily function like subpoenas or summons to appear. The responsibility then is not on the body in question to compel appearance, but on the summoned to either appear or provide pressing reason why they do not. And summary judgements against those who fail to appear are long recognized in law and politics across the world,
So in essence, Yanukovych had a duty to either appear or provide pressing reasons why he could not. He failed to do either, which was identified (correctly) as a breach of duty.
Firstly: again, the idea that the vote happened “the same day” is a fundamental misunderstanding of the course of events.
Yanukovych fled on the 21st.
The vote went through on the 23rd. And while preliminary preparations were done on the 22nd, that was only after a day of deliberation and waiting.
Moreover, the Rada is not under obligation to “negotiate in good faith” in regards to a legislative summons without justified notice of absence, for the same reason I wouldn’t be able to demand that the County Court negotiate the summons to appear on the deadline when I haven’t given notice. And even if we were to argue that the admittedly quick turnaround for removal from office was not negotiating in good faith, the Rada had already issued demands to appear before Feb 21st that Yanukovych was well aware of (and indeed appeared during the negotiations).
So I would say that vanishing without notice or some kind of means of contact in the face of a pending legislative summons was showing at least as much lack of “good faith” as the Rada responding.
There’s also a reason why disappearing without notice during the interlude before a legal appearance to answer questions is viewed very poorly and usually seen as circumstantial evidence of guilt or at least manifestly unethical behavior, another reason I argue that Yanukovych’s flight was one of his greatest practical mistakes.
Indeed, which I do think points to a grievous flaw in the construction of the Ukrainian Constitution, at least as written, especially for a Parliamentary system as Ukraine is (even if mixed with a Presidential one). And the fact that they have *failed* to fix it even after Yanukovych’s removal is jarring, especially since it would make the removal a post-facto and even arbitrary act.
But I think that in context, this was an oversight in the constitution largely coming from the fact that they did not expect a President to fail to show up to preform his duties (which are myriad under the Ukrainian Constitution and some of which arguably would’ve allowed the Rada to engage in even more monkey business, such as Article 94, which could theoretically have been used to pass almost unlimited laws in the absence but technical maintenance of the President unless he was alerted and rejected them).
Similar to how the US Constitution originally had no text for what would happen if the sitting President was not merely indisposed but dead, the Ukrainian Constitution had no caveats for what would happen if a President refused to answer legal summons from the Rada and even as evading the other centers of government, but continued to maintain he occupied the office and was doing so in absence of a vote to impeach.
And a good way to showcase the problems with this would arrive is if the President outright vanished (as Yanukovych sort of did for several hours before his rough status and location was found out), necessitating their replacement. Technically this might fall under 2 or 4, but in a case where the status of the President is uncertain that can’t be judged. So what would be done?
And that’s before I get into the fact that parliamentary systems generally grant their governments much broader leeway when deciding the law and interpretations of the constitution (which our Founders identified as a problem, even as they originally closely aped it in the Articles of Confederation). as outlined in Article 85 (with points 3 and 13 being particularly relevant).
What’s more curious (besides the fact that they didn’t fix this wording in an attempt to provide legitimacy or at least consistency) is that this isn’t an issue with the Rada Deputy statute, which clearly includes being missing under the reasons why a Rada “Peoples’ Deputy” can be removed from office.in Article 81. Why the Presidential Article wasn’t Amended to patch the loopholes is beyond me.
In essence, the Rada found itself in a case not covered by the constitution and so used its law-making powers to quickly jam together an act utilizing its law-making powers to remove the President. Definitely not the intended way to remove a Ukrainian President (since it was closest to removal for health, but wasn’t based on health), but also usually well within the discretion given to Parliamentary Governments.
My bigger issues with this are
A: As a One off law, it indicates a power of the legislature that can easily be abused.
B: Even after nearly a decade, the Rada has not tried to fix the wording of the Constitution to try and patch the obvious hole re: the status of the President of Ukraine.
That does nothing to soothe me and is something I’d happily point to in terms of Ukrainian Government and Law not being anywhere near as settled as they need to be. And why I would have preferred them to have pursue Impeachment mundanely, taking more time if need be.
But given the integral role that the President has in the Ukrainian Constitution and how Yanukovych vanished in the face of pending summons to appear before the Rada, I can’t fault them TOO Much for *that*, unlike their failure to fix this to make sure it isn’t as abusable.
They did seek the counsel of the Supreme Court, but not its approval, which is another weakness I find with the procedure. And which complaints that the Supreme Court’s staff was corrupt or overly partial to Yanukovych (while I find credible due to the actions and inactions of men like Yaroslav Romanyuk), do not change that.
But that goes back to the broad sovereignty parliament exercises, as well as the nature of the oath officials take to the Ukrainian Constitution and the nature of violations of it.
Agreed.
Not agreed. Which again is why I keep pounding on the importance of the timeline. Yanukovych was not removed from power legislatively because of the ultimatum of the Maidan radicals, at least not directly, though that doubtless helped. That happened because Yanukovych disappeared just after the agreement was inked in the face of pending questions form the Rada.
Which is again why rather than voting to remove him on the 22nd, the Rada spent it trying to ascertain his position and status and debating what to do, which gradually crystalized into a push to remove him, but which didn’t happen until the 23rd.
Which is important because it undercuts a central argument of the “Coup/Revolution” that Yanukovych was removed in accordance with the demands of the Maidan Radicals and according to their timeline, and that the Rada was incapable of asserting its will independently of them.
So the Rada was certainly engaging in a power grab using a selective reading of the Constitution and it would have been much better if they had used impeachment, but the flaws in the constitution’s composition helped undermine this. Especially since the Constitution’s writers understandably but unfortunately didn’t incorporate any text for what would happen if the President was of good health, refusing to administer his duties, but continuing to maintain he had the powers of office.
So gray area.
Agreed.
UNLIKELY for a couple of reasons.
Firstly: If Rada members from the Regionnaires could be beaten and coerced to vote for the resolution removing Yanukovych (under the eyes of the police and military tasked with guarding the premises), why couldn’t they be beaten and coerced to agree to a resolution for his impeachment?
After all, the Constitutional Composition of the Rada is outlined in Article 76, and Article 111 specifies impeachment requires three quarters of the constitutional composition of the Rada. The actual vote to remove passed with 328 Yeas, or about 10 short of the full constitutional composition of the Rada with 6 present but not voting, and well North of the ratio in quorum. So why not beat the remaining six to get them to vote Yea too and hunt down four of the remaining to do it?
This is where the “The Rada members were tortured and intimidated to vote for the bill” narrative starts to fall apart.
Secondly: We have live footage of essentially every member of the Rada and even those in the vicinity of the building from there, and there’s remarkably little in the form of beatings or wounds.
The small caveat here is that there WERE melees and beatings in the Rada during this time in the form of brawls, especially given the charged atmosphere, but it was hardly a systematic campaign of torture to force people to change their votes. They also were relatively rare in number and distributed among opposition supporters as well, and often over personal issues or plays for power (apparently the Svoboda deputies were known for being particularly combative rear ends).
Most of those fervently opposed to the vote simply did not show up (which also had the side benefit of denying 3/4ths of Constitutional Composition needed for Impeachment, ANOTHER flaw of the Ukrainian Constitution the subsequent governments haven’t tried to address).
I MOSTLY chalk this down to “Parliament Problems be Parliament Problems.” Though I can’t fault anybody who reads a lot more into it. Which is why I don’t emphasize it here in comparison to my point regarding the literal forensics about the health of the Rada members and how the supposed “torture” was about a vote to remove rather than impeachment, which is kind of setting one’s sights low if the goal was to legitimate Yanukovych’s removal.
This I find leery at best, even if in part it is true for the reasons I mentioned, especially given the poor formulation of the Ukrainian Constitution’s terms. And this is also why I point to the failure to remedy many of the systematic flaws of the Constitution by the Maidan Governments to be a major black mark and cause for concern.
I agree broadly with the last sentence. The big issue I see was that the Constitution quite bluntly did not account for this kind of situation (which is admittedly pretty common even in our own cases), but unlike Tippecanoe’s death where there was decently broad support for the solution, it wasn’t present here. The other issue is that rightfully or wrongly, Parliaments are generally granted more trust to institute laws than their peers.
This I think is a somewhat fair point though obviously a very slippery slope, especially given the issues of competence and integrity regarding the likes of Romanyuk. But on the whole I do think the Rada should have tried to continue impeachment.
I think illegal is harder to justify because of the very broad scope of the Rada’s powers, especially in terms of making laws.
Indeed, which is also why I view this as leery at best. And I freely admit this was not an impeachment, nor was this a regular procedure (not even in terms of the laws of the Constitution later). But this was not a normal situation and the Rada was hardly the only side that was involved in this, as the Anti-Protest Laws and the actions of the President, Constitutional Court, and Rada leading up to this showed.
It’s also why I do think it was a mistake for Yanukovych to flee without word altogether, precisely because by at least appearing to follow the agreement and indicating a willingness to answer the Rada’s questions (under advisement from legal teams of course), he would have been able to short-circuit much of this.
Which is a right our own Constitution fully recognizes, and which was particularly notable coming from the one directly elected branch of the government. Especially in light of the gaps in the Ukrainian Constitution meaning that a President could (and theoretically still can!!!) go on the lam, drink martinis at Cancun, and ignore all summons and duties for years on end without actually being eligible for removal under the four criteria for it.
Again, the President wasn’t “overthrown by a mob.” If he had been, the timing would have lined up with that of the Maidan radicals. Which is why I reference back to the chronology.
Moreover, the fact that Yanukovych was incapable of sustaining the loyalty of his own party in Parliament (as shown by the mutiny in the Regionaires and pressure to sign the agreement even before the Army mention) underlines it.
Furthermore, this claim isn’t even true.
I point to the Melon Revolution of 2010 in Krgyzstan, where “President”/Dictator Bakiyev was removed from power by an ACTUAL armed mob (and a remarkably small one at that, with a few thousand), that had been encouraged by – among other things- Kremlin media outlets encouraging civil disobedience, in part to undermine the presence of the US Air Base Bakiyev had allowed there.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2010/04/14/an-american-opportunity-in-kyrgyzstan/
Western diplomatic reactions were cautious and muted, but generally positive and receptive. And certainly did not involve invading Kyrgyzstan in order to protect the “Transit Base” at Manas.
Of course I can imagine why this particular incident is memory holed, especially by the Kremlin. For one, Central Asia’s already pretty freaking remote and poorly documented and understood much like inland Subsaharan Africa, so few people remembered it to forget. For two, the situation very obviously shows a chain of events that is actually like what the Kremlin claims Euromaidan was like – since the President actually was overthrown by an armed mob and forced to resign under duress before going into exile – but with a supposedly pro-American (really Monkey in the Middle) Dictator being deposed by an undecided and somewhat pro-Russian mob.
Thirdly and perhaps most importantly: That close proximity damages attempts by the Kremlin to justify its actions precisely because it puts them in sharp contrast to the US Non-Reaction to events in Kyrgyzstan, even though they were accompanied by rhetoric about closing the Transit Base.
Which is one reason why the US was able to successfully negotiate to keep the base open for years to come with the new government.
(I’m sure one could argue that Kyrgyzstan is nowhere near as important to the US as Ukraine is to Russia, and I’d agree, but that’s a matter of realpolitik rather than the actual law.)
This is a legal and logical nonsequitor. The Stimson Doctrine is not dependent on US recognition of a given government as legitimate or legally constituted. It outright condemns and refuses to acknowledge any territorial claims or governments constituted as a result of foreign invasion.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/mukden-incident#:~:text=however%2C%20proved%20ineffective.-,The%20Stimson%20Doctrine,which%20the%20United%20States%20subscribed.
Which is unquestionably what we saw in Crimea and the Donbas, and which Putin has stopped pretending about in the former case.
Which is also why for all the relatively trite Soviet and Nazi comparisons (fitting ones I admit, especially in the case of the latter given rigged referendums and force) I often go back to referencing the Japanese occupation regimes established in the 1930s and early 1940s. Because they are roughly as (il)legitimate in the eyes of the Stimson Doctrine and international law even IF (and this is a big, BEEEEG if) they are more genuinely popular.
In any case, the US did not have much trouble (for reasons of obvious bias among others) regarding the Rada’s actions as the stopgap measure they were.
@Brian E Part 2
This is true.
But it is worth noting that again, the votes to secede failed (and indeed were not held at all) in areas that weren’t violently occupied by Russian troops and what separatist allies there were. Funny coincidence, huh?
Also: Speaking of areas that voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych, take a gander at the results for Kharkhiv (the place Yanukovych fled to, ostensibly as part of a routine visit- which itself is no great argument for Yanukovych’s good faith in the face of a legal summons but that’s another issue), Kherson, and Odessa in the 2010 election.
Turns out that voting for Yanukovych in 2010 is a very different thing from approving of his actions in 2013, or approving a Russian sponsored invasion and armed separatism in 2014.
I’m going to skip past this because I’ve already addressed this point, which is overly reliant on the idea that Yanukovych was removed in line with the “mob”‘s timeline, when he was not.
This is broadly true, though as it wound up Yanukovych – understanding these options as much as anybody – chose a Fourth Door: Going on the lam without notice to try and exploit the gap in the Ukrainian Constitution. This was meant to wrongfoot his opposition and to some degree it succeeded, but it didn’t change that.
And Hugo Chavez was a legally, democratically elected President too (and the Rada members that removed Yanukovych were also democratically elected, or reasonably so given Ukrainian politics).
There’s a reason why pretty much every constitutional oath of office demands more from its representatives than “Were you legally elected, Y/N?” Because constitutional and legal legitimacy demands a lot more than whether someone legally won a vote. I point to Lukashenko as ironclad evidence of that.
Bluntly, I think Horilov hit the nail on the head. Yanukovych knew quite well he had violated the Constitution (as the documents taken attest) and that in an actual trial his fate would be leery. But he decided not to formally resign and – understandably – also did not intend to follow Ceaucescu’s fate (which I note was ultimately a result of a betrayal by his close entourage), so he fled.
The fact that the Ukrainian Constitution still has no good answers for such a situation even after nearly a decade says nothing good about it or the people who replaced Yanukovych, but I don’t have to believe the Rada was a camp of saints or behaved as well as it could have to believe their actions were fundamentally based on the principles of the Ukrainian Constitution and Parliamentary Politics to deal with glaringly obvious hole in the rules, and the fact that they did not use this for further abuse (such as passing a host of laws and waiting about two weeks at which point an absent Yanukovych would be held to have “approved” them) speaks to some admirable restraint.
Agreed. Which is why my main condemnation of Yanukovych is not that he was democratically, legally elected in 2010 but about his criminal history and actions, both before and afterwards. Because again, there’s a lot more to legitimacy than being “legally elected.” See: Hugo Chavez, Alex Lukashenko, etc.
I honestly can’t entirely agree. The areas held by the “Separatists” had far less to do with Lukashenko’s popularity (because the truth is that Lukashenko ISN’T popular any more in those areas) in 2010 than where Russian troops managed to take versus where they didn’t. Which is again particularly indicative in places like Kharkhiv.
Pro-Yanukovych sentiment often helped the Russian occupation troops recruit separatist auxiliaries, but they were not decisive.
I support freedom even more than I do the rule of law, especially freedom from unjust tyranny. This was the stance of the Founding Fathers – who were hardly Libertarian Anarchists – , the defenders of the Personal Freedom Laws, and those who point to the Leviathan Progressive State’s glomming.
Just because something happens legally does not make it just or ethical, especially if the law is corrupted. We’ve seen that happen in our own country over the years.
Which is why my support for the rule of law is tempered by my support for freedom and cannot be otherwise. That obviously doesn’t mean I have a right to be blind to the obvious issues with what happened in Ukraine (as I’ve pointed out with the flaws in the Constitution and – even worse- how they have not been remedied), but it does mean that I am under no obligation to respect oppressive and unconstitutional laws such as the Anti-Protest Laws Yanukovych signed.
And the “Maidan Mob””‘s Parliamentary Representatives and many of its street strength did.
As pointed out by the very existence of the agreement.
Which is part of the problem with trying to treat the “Maidan Mob” as a uniform monolith when it very clearly was not.
But in any case, that wouldn’t change the fact that the Rada had already lodged questions for Yanukovych and his cabinet to answer, only for Yanukovych to decide to not respond.
And in any case, the Russian Government’s response to Euromaidan and Yanukovych’s removal followed no laws whatsoever. Which is one reason for the constant stream of lies by the Kremlin about the nature of government in the occupied Crimea and the Donbas, the timeline of the arrival of Russian military units, and so forth.
Dear God, this is a real blast from the past. I vaguely remember seeing it well before but I do not remember it now. Will have to wait for later.
Agreed.
Again, it’s at best dubiously illegal, especially in light of how Yanukovych’s flight from Kyiv in the face of summons from the Rada on false grounds was also illegal.
But at least as relevantly, arguing Yanukovych was “popular in the East” in 2014 on the basis of 2010 results is skipping a bit. By 2014 much of Yanukovych’s support had already worn off and – again – the majority of the political representation in the East had turned on him, as shown by the mutiny in the Regionnaire Party that spread to the rest of the Pan-Blue coalition.
There’s a reason why Putin will talk a great deal about the “Coup” of 2014 but downplays Yanukovych. Because even among the more extreme pro-Russian elements in traditionally Deep Blue territories, he is not very well regarded.
Agreed and all worth mentioning.
Neither do I but we know the answer was “quite a lot.” The US had been pouring vast sums into “Orange” Parties and candidates for decades, as well as other Western governments and NGOs such as our “Friend” George Soros, and it was one reason for the intractable political conflicts between “Blue” and “Orange” that dominated Ukrainian political life until about 2013-2014 with the rise of Euromaidan, and especially after the Russian invasion.
The actual full story is probably not going to come out in our lifetime, but my biases do not mean I can ignore the obvious.
Indeed. As if I needed more reason to dislike them, especially McShame.
This is true. Though the phone call is overstated. While the interim President (Yatsenyuk) was the one they concluded in the phone call, as were some of his cabinet picks, many others were not. Because while Nuland and the US were influential and not shy about throwing their weight around, ultimately their control over Ukrainian politics was finite.
You’re giving the Democrats far, FAR too much credit.
The worst violence regarding January 6th came long after that date, as a result of unethical and often illegal overreach by the US Government. The worst violence regarding Euromaidan came in the leadup to the agreement and then Yanukovych’s flight, through things such as far reaching exemptions for Berkut agents and others from prosecution.
Moreover, while the US Had been polarized for years (not helped by AntifA having a summer of Loving-to-Burn), it had little on Ukrainian political polarization, which spent nearly a quarter century polarized between two very large and lavishly funded camps. Ironically Yanukovych and Putin’s actions did more to change that than most.
In any case, of all the actions Yanukovych can be accused of, *DECLINING* offers for armed presence around the capital city is not one of them.
Not from a US Point of View (which i s another issue I have, the failure to get Senate ratification), but from the British, Ukrainian, and Russian views it was. And in any case Congress did not raise any sustained objections to it.
Untrue. Baker’s agreement (to the extent it even constituted an agreement, which I don’t think it did) bound him, his delegation, and maybe the Bush Sr. Government…. after consultation with other NATO members and Pact States.
In contrast, Russia, Ukraine, and the UK all passed it, and it was lodged with the UN for a reason, something the balleyhooed agreements about NATO expansion were not.
I fear you give me too much credit, since I am also fallible and hella biased. But I can try.
For the most part we agree with the core events, though I do find some of your key conclusions wrong, such as the exact chronology of events RE: Yanukovych’s removal and what it means vis a vis the legitimacy of the Russian occupation regimes in Crimea and the Donbas as far as the US is concerned.
Which day is that? Since the resolution was passed on the 23rd, not the 22nd.
This is very true, though honestly the reality is even worse. “Gang Warfare” and private armies or protest mobs were already pretty common throughout Ukraine (indeed, one of Yanukovych’s major problems was wording his “Anti-Protest Law” so broadly it basically criminalized the “Mercenary” Rent-a-Protestors that had thrived over the political conflicts of the past couple decades and that Yanu had hired on occasion. So turning against them was bad). You already saw low level clashes between different protestors in the Donbas and Crimea.
The Russian invasions in Crimea and Donbas in 2014 kicked this up to 11 because it meant both governments went around playing Santa Claus to the gangs, protest groups, and paramilitaries on “Their side”, in part because they (Especially on the loyalists) were often all that side had in a given area (Azov still claims it saved Mariupol for the government in 2014; I’m not sure how true that is but it gives some idea of the atmosphere).
We’ve seen the problems with that firsthand. And while I wear my biases on my sleeve I will never claim that the Kremlin is the only side that has violent thugs and criminals among its ranks. Even a cursory read about the likes of Gaidar, Tornado, and Azov disprove that.
Agreed.
Presumably by either contacting Obama semi-directly, or ringing up the Rada or Russian Government to tell him.
Agreed, which is also why it is worth talking about a much wider picture. And why while the protestors were never ENTIRELY peaceful, the radicalization largely came in the aftermath of the anti-Protest laws.
But my posts are already long enough as it is, and I might elaborate on that later.
This I agree with your conclusions on, certainly far more than the idea that if Yanukovych’s removal was not legitimate the US would be forced to concede to the legitimacy of the occupation/separatist regimes in Crimea and the Donbas (when the Stimson Doctrine and similar international laws pretty clearly cover that).
This is of course, a convenient lie. And one that is underlined by the fact that not only did most organs of the Ukrainian Government (such as the Rada and even the Supreme Court) remain consistent in membership, but also the fact that much of the rhetoric was about things such as *repealing* the Kharkhiv Pact with Putin and *renegotiating* Tariffs, not claiming a Tabula Rasa.
And we know it was a convenient lie on Putin’s Part because
A: By this time the Kremlin had already deployed troops to Crimea outside of the designated areas.
B: In other legal matters such as the prosecution for the killing of a Ukrainian Soldier during the takeover of Crimea the Russian Government and its local functionaries continued to acknowledge the Ukrainian Government after Maidan as legal continuation of the previous one, especially in important matters such as legality for combat.
C: The timing of the declaration, coming after the occupation of Crimea.
D: The fact that Putin’s supposed opinion on the matter was not agreed to by the other signatories, the US and UK (as shown by the consistency of agreements not just with Budapest itself but also others like the now justly infamous DOD Senate-Scootabout for research in Ukraine signed under Yanukovych’s rival and predecessor Yuschenko and continued throughout).
Oh yeah, and the fact that revoking Budapest would justify surrendering control of the Soviet era nuclear weapons Russia took possession of as a result of Budapest. Whether that is giving them directly to Ukraine or surrendering them into some kind of trusteeship pending a successor to the “old” Ukrainian State the Kremlin made a deal with.
And which he still is mealy mouthed about.
I can’t imagine whhyyy Putin would not want to do that….
I agree, though I think that it would be more of a problem for internal Ukrainian politics and a functioning constitution were it not for the Kremlin making it a problem. This is again why I make reference to Bakiyev, whose overthrow was far more clearly outside the bounds of the law and basically is very similar to Moscow’s straw presentation of Euromaidan due to the lack of significant legislative push.
But the US and others did not make an issue of how Bakiyev was deposed, so business went on much as usual.
But people have every right to take issue with the at best irregular and ad hoc nature of what the Rada did. And for good reason. It is a legal patchwork held together by duct tape at best. But the same can be said for other things like Yanukovych’s own actions in the leadup to that.
@miguel cervantes
Agreed, which is also one reason why I argue that it is not always wrong to overthrow a democratically elected legal head of state. And while the “coup” was in fact legal in Honduras, why I am willing to argue that sometimes the defense of freedom warrants breaking the laws of man.
Maybe, but we also genuinely misunderstand him to a large degree. In part by design from him.
The Russian economy was chronically backwards for most of its history and the Soviets only helped that to some degree while worsening others. It was already collapsing under its own weight during Brezhnev’s time at the latest, and if anything we tried to prop it up under the Late Soviet Period and then tried to revitalize it (admittedly in rather dumb fashion) after it.
Meanwhile, many and maybe most of the oligarchs around today were around or at least had their predecessors around under the Soviet system, and indeed one reason why things turned out the way they did is they used their power, connections, and assets to make out like bandits during shock therapy.
Agreed, and I think that is at best subpar. Putin may be center stage now but he largley represents much bigger issues.
Agreed. It is laughable.
Mediocre at best but getting better. At least by the standards of what our corruptgovernment is.
A very fair point, and why I will never claim Ukraine is corruption free. Though it is worth noting the central corruption scheme in this case was overcharging for mostly-domestic food to the troops, not regarding military assets sent by the West.
NOT really no.
This is purposefully conflating the heart of the Cossack Hetmanate around the Zaporozhian Host with the territory of all Ukraine. Which is absurd for a few different reasons, starting that Ukraine originally was “The Ukraine” and a term for Frontier or Borderland, and it was MUCH larger than the areas under the control of the Zaporozhian Host. And indeed the areas under the control of the Zaporozhian Host were much larger for most of the Uprising than what is on the map, as shown by how this falsely identifies Poltava as outside the Zaporozhian Host. Indeed, Rather than the Tsar “ceding” this territory to “Ukraine”, the Tsar first came into possession of this territory through the Cossacks PLEDGING FEALTY TO HIM at Pereyaslav. (Indeed, one reason why the decisive defeat of the Swedish Army and its Cossack allies by Tsar Pyotr the Great and the Cossack loyalists was because the Swedes were marching into the region to try and link up with the rebelling Hetman Ivan Mazepa).
So that’s already a fatal wound with this article.
Also completely ignored was the borders of the Hetmanate, its divisions after the Elder Khmelnitsky died during the “Ruin”, and so forth.
What an utter crock.
Lenin didn’t “add” those areas into Ukraine except formally, and indeed Ukrainian nationalists fought with Bolsheviks, Russian Whites, and Anarchists over most of that territory. Indeed, one reason why the early Bolsheviks romanticized Odessa so much was because it was the scene of one of their great victories in the South over the Ukrainian nationalists that already held the territory.
So this article’s slant is obvious. To downplay and minimize the definition of Ukraine. To attribute the territory of Ukraine not to any kind of cultural or national sentiment but to outside forces only. It is a farce and a lie.
Partially true, but it was also forged by the communities there and by the bloodshed there, including by the Cossacks that the author is desperate to not see at Poltava in spite of how that presence there – lasting for more than a century – helped change the course of history (though not in the way most of said Cossacks would have hoped).
Again, Fucking Bullshit.
Again, Nikolai Gogol one of the surrealist poets of Russian Tsarist Absolutism – but also a proud “South Russian” – underlined the distinctiveness of the region from the North.
The Union of Pereyaslav was negotiated on Hetmanate border towns with the Muscovite Russian realm, such as Poltava.
And I could go on.
Ironically those the author credits as “architects” of Ukraine (with some justification) pointedly ignore some of the rationale for it, especially by Lenin under his early policy of nationalities.
Says the person who cobbled together a blatantly false map.
Petty witticisms to conceal a weak argument do not actually strengthen that argument.
This is manifestly nonsense. The “Wild Fields” and “The Ukraine” had been present in literature for decades before Pereyaslav, and would continue on long after the Hetmanate was dismantled. But apparently the author does not know their Greater Renaissance history or their Gogol.
Color me SHOCKED.
Ah yes, Determinism. Why hasn’t this nonsense been thrown out?
To Markovsky, please read the seminal “The Greek Revolution” by Mark Mowitzer – an actual historian who can make an accurate map – about the limits of geographic determinism and “realpoltik.” And then kindly shut up until you have something coherent to say.
So much for “pretedeterming a country’s behavior.”
OSTENSIBLY?!!?!
Please, please compare the number of nations in NATO Russia has invaded, versus those not in it that it has.
Ah yes, the sick, twisted victim blaming horseschiesse of “You made Poor Putin hit you, because you wanted to join NATO….. after Poor Putin hit you. But that’s ok because his actions are predetermined by the nature of his institutions, economy, and geography.”
This all falls apart when you read the Astana Accord and how for whatever rhetoric the Kremlin said about NATO expansion, it was never willing to put this into law. And for good reason. There was zero grounds for such a demand. Which is why it at least tacitly acknowledged Ukraine had every right to join NATO, or any other foreign alliance, or none at all.
Except the war started in 2014, you simpering, illiterate, psychopathic liar.
Not compared to Pereyaslav.
As if there was any doubt that the author is a liar writing fantasy rather than honest analysis, here it is.
There’s something incredibly evil about this, as well as boundlessly stupid. I realize I’m the history nerd who has a love of adventure stories in the 16th and 17th century and wargaming through the ages, but it REALLY doesn’t take a lot to realize who held control of Poltava in 1650 or some of the campaigning’s of the Hetmanate.
It takes a particularly depraved mind to try and twist history in an attempt to vilify a nation being invaded with the goal of partition by an aggressive neighbor, and particularly to pretend that Ukraine EVER only referred to the lands of the Zap Host.
But to answer this scumbag’s question:
No later than the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.