Trying To Remain Objective & See Both Sides With the War in Ukraine

   

Okay, so this was meant to be published some time ago. But it feels like I have fallen behind with all that I want to publish here. There are just so many hours in a day, and things have been especially busy in recent weeks and even months. That is not an excuse, but I am trying to play catch up. So I will finally try and finish this post and publish it. 

Before I go ahead with updating and publishing it, however, I noticed in perusing through it that some things were outdated. For example, at one point, I mention how Russia is likely to take over all of Ukraine. Now, that might still happen, don't get me wrong. But it is looking a whole lot less inevitable than it did early on, in the first week or two. So, instead of getting rid of that, I simply put those sentiments in italics, to document that these were my thoughts from weeks ago, before Ukraine clearly seems to have become a bit of a quagmire for Russia's military. 

Here goes:

I wanted to try and remain as objective towards both sides of this conflict as possible. I realize that, like most westerners, my sympathies towards Ukrainians have bled through. For full disclosure, while I have dual nationality with the United States and France, my other major background - on my mother's side - is Ukrainian. 

However, while Putin is not an especially likable - or trustworthy - individual, I do acknowledge that he and Russians are not entirely wrong to suspect that the West is up to something. 

Don't get me wrong: I certainly am not trying to justify what, to me, cannot be justified. Russia is wrong to invade Ukraine, a fully independent country. Let us remember, Ukraine gained it's independence, with a whopping 91 percent majority voting in favor of independence in 1991. Perhaps historically, it used to be part of Russia. And indeed, perhaps it has the misfortune of bordering Russia, which has rarely been good news for the countries that border it. However, it is a free and independent nation. Not a part of Russia. They can run the country as they see fit, even if Russia does not like it.

That said, I think that the west bears some responsibility for this conflict. I remember that after the end of the Cold War, some people were questioning the need for NATO, since the threat of the superpower of the Soviet Union was now gone. But NATO continued to exist and, despite promises to the contrary, they expanded eastward. NATO was always about keeping Russia in check, and so it is not difficult to understand why Russians would feel threatened by the expansion of this outright military alliance closer and closer to it's borders. Russia was, by then, a country on it's knees, humiliated and facing chaos and disorder unlike anything most countries ever have to face. And instead of embracing Russia and helping it back on it's feet, the West still seemed intent on embarrassing Russia and mocking it. Americans beat their chest, boasting that they had won the Cold War. 

NATO did not accidentally approach Russian borders. This was done by design. Many of these countries were enticed to do so by the West, with promises and incentives specifically aimed for these countries to do so. And Russia was never really invited to the party, still largely seen as a rogue state, almost, and viewed with a mixture of distrust, skepticism, and mockery. Is it really any wonder why some hard feelings grew in Russia? A leader who was determined to restore the seeing greatness of the empire that it had recently been was, frankly, inevitable. And it was in large part the West that drove it to be so. 

If I allow my more cynical side to prevail, I could almost believe that this invasion was almost silently agreed upon by the two sides. Russia will likely get what it wants, by taking over much of - if not all of - Ukraine, particularly the Donbas region, and perhaps the southern coast that would give them a land bridge to the Crimean peninsula, which they took over, largely without much resistance, in 2014. They likely will add much resource rich land, including some of the richest farmland in the world. In the West, especially the United States, defense contractors will justify their ridiculously inflated budget. NATO will no longer be questioned as necessary, and the sell of arms will continue. The western news media is having a field day covering this story, and making Putin the new enemy, the sinister bad guy, almost straight out of a James Bond movie. For the United States, sells of American oil will now spike upward, as Europe tries to replace cheaper Russian oil with more expensive American oil. So, it seems that the money will be pouring in. Many people who will act outraged by this invasion in fact have some good reasons to be happy about it.

Now, I do not want my cynical side to win out. I do not want to be one of those people who automatically turn to conspiracy theories as an answer to explain everything. It just feels to me that Putin took the bait offered to him by initiating this Russian invasion of Ukraine. And the West is selling weapons to Ukrainians, but not enough to actually help them drive out the Russians. This assures that the war will likely last a long time. And war is almost always profitable for certain parties with vested interests.

Putin has been referring to the West as the "empire of lies." Frankly, on this, I do not think that he is entirely wrong. That said, he might keep in mind that it might not be good to throw rocks when you live in a glass house. Putin has clearly done his share of lying in recent years, as well. Hell, the whole justification for this war that he launched was based on a lie, that Ukraine had become basically almost a de facto Nazi state. So while he is not actually wrong to suggest that the West is indeed an "empire of lies," he seems to have embraced that same mindset for his own purposes. How western of him. Straight from Machiavelli. 

Really, there is very little justification for Russia to be in Ukraine today. I could kind of understand Russia wanting Crimea back, since that was given to Ukraine by Russia as a token of goodwill by Khruschev, back when the two were part of the same country. It still had a majority of Russians in it in 2014, and still now. So I did not feel outrage as much at that. But the whole of Ukraine? Give me a break. And whether or not this war was a trap set by the West, as it sometimes feels to me it was, it nevertheless seems like Putin willingly enough sprang the trap. For a man who always seemed to me coldly calculating, this war seems like a huge miscalculation on his part, one that, if  anything, diminished both him and his country, as well as his desire to reestablish that country as a global superpower. If Russia is having this much difficulty just with Ukraine, which is literally right on the border with Russia, it is hard to imagine Russia toppling one country after another, as the Soviet Union basically did towards the end of World War II and in the immediate years after that conflict.