by Bernard at Moon of Alabama
The crisis, and especially the reaction of the ‘west’ to it, is much worse than I had feared.
The U.S. government and ‘western’ media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That is however far from reality. It is only true if true if you believe ‘the world’ solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
The much bigger ‘rest of the world’ has not condemned Russia but understands how the conflict came about. They blame, like political scientist John Mearsheimer, the U.S. for causing the crisis. This includes, as far as I can tell, all of Africa (54 states), South America, Central America, the Middle East, and all of Asia ex Japan and Singapore.
This rest of the world that did not condemn Russia includes several notable U.S. allies and ‘partners’ like Turkey (Nato’s second biggest army!), India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.
The case shows how much the standing of the once unilateral superpower has been diminished.
Since 2014 the war in east Ukraine against the people of the Donbas regions has cost more than 14,000 lives. Some 10,000 of those were civilians on the Donbas side. The dying there continues as the Ukrainian army and its nazi battalions continue to shell the cities of Donetzk and Luhansk:
At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.”The real toll is likely to be much higher,” Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR), told a briefing, adding that 253 of the casualties were in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Over the last days I also read several commentators claiming that that the Russian ‘regime change’ incursion into Ukraine would not have the support of the Russian people and would set them up against their president. Here is news for them:
Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov – 19:14 UTC · Mar 1, 2022
Meanwhile #Putin’s approval rating has raised from 60% to 71% (survey by FOM)
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Mark Sleboda has served as nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy. He has studied at the London School of Economics. He has married a woman from Crimea and now lives in Moscow as a Russian citizen. He is a frequent commentator in Russian media. Sleboda has previously criticized president Putin for being too soft with the ‘west’.
His analyses and predictions are more dire than mine but he is probably right (thread edited for readability):…
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