Aaron: I have a friend who worked in diplomacy. He said at international security conferences the west did nothing else than gang up on Russia. Russia couldn’t do anything right and was always painted as some crazy country that wanted to conquer the entire world. At the same time US bases popped up all along Russia’s border and the US sponsored anti-Russian, nationalistic organizations in countries that used to be in the Soviet Union. Supposedly to support processes towards democratization. The US has a long history of meddling in Russian affairs. The US invaded the Soviet Union during the Russian civil war, did you know that? They helped the muhajdeen against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and we know how that benefited the world…

Erika: Do you know of the lend lease act? The US shipped enormous quantities of goods to Russia to help it fight off the Nazis in World War Two. And do you want to read about how Russian soldiers tortured and brutalized Afghan civilians?

Aaron: Do you want to read about how US soldiers tortured and bruzalized Afghan or Iraqi civilians more recently? Look, we all know the US does everything to protect the interests of its own oligarchs.

Erika: Look, we all know how Russia does everything to protect the interests of its own oligarchs.

Aaron: The US organized a coup in 2014 and installed a pro-western regime. And when Ukrainians in the east, ethnic Russians actually, didn’t like that, the new government started shelling them with artillery. 14,000 people died BEFORE Putin invaded.

Erika: Correction, Russia clandestinely sent in its own soldiers to foment and deepen separatist feelings in those eastern areas.

Aaron: First of all, I doubt that, that’s a disputed claim. And even if it were true, that could only be done if there already was a separatist drive in those areas.

Erika: So you think it’s ok to smuggle your own soldiers into someone else’s country and trick some local citizens into trying to secede? Of course Ukraine had to react! What kind of country would peacefully let a large chunk of its territory secede?

Aaron: The Slovak Republic split off peacefully from Czechoslovakia.

Erika: Totally different story. There you have the unique case of the poorer region of a country wanting to be independent from the richer region. Of course the Czechs had no qualms about letting them have their own state. Plus, the Czechs are more pro-western and the Slovaks are more pro-Russian, and Czechs are atheists and protestant and Slovaks tend to be Catholics and there is a bit of a difference between the two languages.

Aaron: Slovak society is very split. Many are pro-western too. And Ukrainian and Russian are different as well. There are plenty of countries that are not monolingual.

Erika: Russia just wants to control a very rich region in Ukraine, that’s all.

Aaron: And the US mysteriously doesn’t want to control that very rich region?

Erika: It didn’t invade Ukraine, Russia did.

Aaron: After the US did everything it could to turn as many Ukrainians as possible against the Russians.

Erika: As if they needed help there. The Russians and some pro-Russian Ukrainians tried their best to suppress the use of Ukrainian and to make the use of Russian obligatory. How many Ukrainians who spoke Ukrainian at work were forced, against their will, to speak Russian at work? Because the Russians had a huge influence in Ukrainian economic life.

Aaron: I think that without the US meddling in Ukrainian politics very few people in Ukraine had a problem with that. Most Ukrainians are completely fluent in Russian. It was only after the west provoked Russia to the point it invaded that suddenly Ukrainian became popular.

Erika: How did the west provoke Russia?

Aaron: By idealizing a country that openly celebrated people who glorified the Nazis. Plus, around the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union the west promised that Nato wouldn’t advance eastward.

Erika: Ukraine’s World War two history is complex. Ukraine first welcome the Nazis, but then turned against them. Only a small group of Ukrainian soldiers fought for Nazi-Germany, plenty fought in the ranks of the Red Army. Plus, Ukraine wasn’t an independent country back then, it was part of the Soviet Union. And was there a formal treaty signed where this promise about Nato was clearly stated? Souvereign countries have every right to join an alliance if that alliance wants to accept them as a member. What’s wrong with that?

Aaron: If Russia allied itself with Mexico and Cuba and Canada in an anti-Russia military alliance, you think the US would just stand idly by and let them?

Erika: But why do you see Nato as anti-Russian?

Aaron: Nato was an alliance against the Soviet-Union, no? The country which is, in spirit, maybe not economically, still the continuation of the Soviet-Union, is Russia, no?

Erika: Nato doesn’t protect its members specifically against a threat from Russia. Its members promise each other assistance against any threat.

Aaron: Seems to me that the countries who have joined recently only do so because they think it protects them from Russia.

Erika: Well, yes, AFTER Russia invaded Ukraine, of course there are countries who feel like they need to be protected from Nato. Look, Nato attacked Serbia and Libya, for example. That has nothing to do with the Russians.

Aaron: The Russians were against those actions. You may not understand it that way, but to Russia those were provocations. The Serbs and the Russians are buddies and the way Kaddafi was sodomized with a knife and executed bothered Putin deeply. There are reports that say he kept watching his brutal death over and over again.

Erika: Of course Putin was against that. The Serbs were running kind of a mini Soviet Union that wanted to keep its non-Serbian independence seeking peoples together via savage violence and ethnic cleansing. Kaddafi was just like Putin, with designs to unite Africa behind him, with him as some benevolent despot at the helm. Why do you think Putin backed Assad? He likes despotic rule. He wants autocratic regimes like we had in the 18th century.

People think he wants to recreate the Soviet Union, but what he really wants to recreate is Tsarist Russia from before the first World War and even the way of doing things back then, with a small, ‘benign’ elite, a new aristrocracy, that rules over the masses, who, if they keep quiet, can get some form of simple prosperity and stability, they can work and enjoy their free time as long as they accept they have no political agency. They are expected to be the peasants of the 17th century and when called upon they have to fight and bleed for the emperor. In return they get an otherwise quiet life full of simple distractions. 

Aaron: Charming how many people are convinced they can read Putin’s thoughts.

(to be continued)