The hostilities in Donbass are a menace to Russia, Europe and the entire world. Failure to realize it may spark a regional war, and eventually a world one. The world media’s interpretation of that war as the Ukrainian authorities’ crusade against pro-Russian separatists for the sake of the country’s integrity is as superficial and senseless as the delusion that World War I resulted from the murder of an Austrian prince, and World War II, from the Nazis’ success in Germany’s parliamentary elections. The Russian mass media’s explanation of that war is only slightly meaningful – popular resistance in Donbass against a Nazi junta that grabbed power in Kiev in an anti-government coup.

In the meantime, without understanding the underlying causes and driving forces that keep the armed conflict going it is impossible to bring it to a halt. In this paper the Ukrainian crisis is scrutinized in the context of global economic changes that are breeding objective prerequisites for an escalation of military-political tensions in international relations. The analysis explains the motives of the main actors in the Ukrainian conflict and the technologies they employ. It also unveils the reasons why attempts to end the conflict have failed and prompts a forecast it may evolve into another world war. Avoiding that will be possible only by upsetting the cause-effect relationship between the persisting crimes, whose scale is growing in a geometric progression. Otherwise there will be no option left other than getting ready for a world war, in which many would like to see Russia as an enemy, a victim and a prize to win.

Conflict Fields of the Ukrainian Crisis

The nature of the Ukrainian crisis is complex, indeed. It is a tight bundle of quite a few conflict semantic fields. Regrettably, frontline reports, commentaries by politicians or explanations of their decisions fail to take due account of them. The most obvious conflict is that between the current Ukrainian authorities and the Donbass militias. The authorities have been trying to resolve it through the physical extermination of the militias and of the population whose interests they express as well. There are two semantic fields in this conflict and neither is strong enough to trigger a fratricidal war.

The first highly contentious sematic field concerns Ukraine’s internal political structure. The people of Donbass, just as of other regions in the south and the east of Ukraine, from the very outset put forward the demand for a federative system and for the recognition of the Russian language as an official one. These demands were openly declared throughout the two decades of Ukrainian independence and even reflected in the election platforms of the Party of Regions and other election blocs which represented the interests of Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions. None of them, however, resorted to force to press for those aspirations. The Ukrainian political establishment, while systematically dismissing both claims, never interpreted them as a crime against the state. Everybody agreed with the need for addressing these issues exclusively by legal, democratic means. The current Kiev regime frenzy to wipe out the advocates of federalization, just as the militias’ steadfast resistance goes far beyond universally accepted means of handling conflicts of this kind. Unlike peaceful discussions of the federalization idea in the previous years, Poroshenko and his war-mongering entourage have labeled the federalization demands as separatism and even terrorism, which definitely looks nothing but a provocation of the conflict outside the legal space.

The second contentious semantic field is Ukraine’s so-called European choice. If the Maidan protest activists are to be believed, it is for the sake of this choice that they were beating up Kiev’s police and setting them on fire. It was also the officially professed goal of European bureaucrats and politicians, who were warming up the protesting crowds and supporting the opposition in other ways.

Remarkably, opinion have shown that an overwhelming majority of the population in Ukraine’s south and east prefer Eurasian integration to the European one . And, although the European emissaries, in defiance of the professed European values of democracy and law, left the opinion of half of the Ukrainian population unnoticed, just as they had turned a blind eye on the discrepancy between the Association Agreement they were dictating and the Ukrainian Constitution, they hardly had any intention of starting a war of extermination against all those opposed to the association with the EU. Ukraine’s own professional euro-integrators had no wish to go beyond the Verkhovna Rada in their attempts to resolve the issue. They painstakingly steered clear of public discussions of the theme, and rather preferred behind-the-scenes tactics to press for the Association Agreement. Meanwhile, the opponents of association with the EU presented their own arguments showing its discrepancy with the Ukrainian interests exclusively in the professional press, without addressing the people with calls for resolving the issue by violent means. It is nakedly clear that even in case of insurmountable divergence of opinion it was possible to find a peaceful way to settle the conflict by legally formalizing different trade regimes for the two parts of Ukraine, using Denmark and Greenland as examples (the latter is not a member of the EU).

Not a single issue put forward by the leaders of the rival factions, which they are trying to address through the use of force admits of such a solution. Consequently, the hostilities were unleashed for some other reasons. Ideologically this war is Nazism-fuelled – the Kiev junta’s propaganda works hard to instill into the public mind a misanthropic view of its opponents. They are targets for beastly comparisons; they are denied the right to speak their mind, with beatings and arrests being the sole alternatives; it is allowed to burn them alive, and the Ukrainian military is ordered not to hesitate to take their lives. The leaders of the Kiev regime have been making public calls for massacres of Ukrainian citizens in Donbass who dare express dissent. As he distributed awards among the butchers of Slavyansk, so-called President Poroshenko openly referred to their victims as “non-humans” and the head of government Arseny Yatsenyuk in his public statements called the Russians in the east of Ukraine subhumans. Their main political opponent before the political conflict – Yulia Timoshenko – said Donbass deserved atomic bombing, and number three candidate in the presidential election race Oleg Lyashko personally participated in organizing mass repression against Russian citizens of Ukraine. In a word, the Kiev junta manifests a full neo-Nazi consensus regarding the genocide of Russian citizens, who have been stripped of all human rights, including the right to life.

The Nazi semantic field generates the main tensions of the conflict and explains the use of violence in attempts to tackle it. Nazism always excuses violence against other ethnic groups, who are labeled as second-rate races and against whom any crime is declared permissible. This is precisely the path that the regime in Kiev has taken to foment hatred towards those people who disagree with the Ukrainian exclusiveness. In fact, to all Russians, because all other European and world ethnoses have never heard of a Ukrainian nation. In the other countries of the world all those born in the territory of the former USSR, including Ukrainians, are called Russians. In the meantime, the chiefs of the Kiev junta and the media on their payroll are emphasizing the superiority of Ukrainians over Russians in full conformity with the principles of Nazism. Russians are described as born slaves worthy of no other fate than ruthless exploitation in the interests of Ukrainians. Ethnic Russians residing in Ukraine have no option left other than taking up arms to defend themselves from the neo-Nazis.

International historical experience and Russia’s own experience provides convincing proof that Nazism can be resisted only by force. The Nazis understand no other language. This is not surprising: differentiation of human rights on account of race is incompatible with the rule of law. Once the Nazis deny rights to people of other nationalities, the latter have to give up hope they can ever protect themselves by legal means. They can safeguard their rights only if they put up armed resistance.

Ukrainian Nazism is no exception. Moreover, having no roots in Ukrainian culture and being an alien implant, Ukrainian Nazism is asserting itself in the harshest ways possible. Insane and deliberate cruelty the Ukrainian Nazis have demonstrated while shelling Donbass cities and communities was expected to demonstrate their exclusiveness to themselves in the first place. There is no such thing as Ukrainian exclusiveness in classical Ukrainian literature or popular culture, which have always remained part of Russian culture, or in the countries’ common history. By organizing mass crimes against those who consider themselves Russian and using massive Russophobic propaganda attacks the Nazi fuehrers in Kiev have been trying to create a strong confrontation in the Ukrainian public mind they need to consolidate society in conformity with the “either-with-us-or-against-us” principle.

It is noteworthy that none of today’s Nazism-leaning Ukrainian leaders is an ethnic Ukrainian. All of them are very far from Ukraine and from its cultural, historical and spiritual bonds. Possibly this is the reason why they lack the slightest moral self-restrictions and display such super-cruelty against their own people. They have been trying to assert themselves as Nazi fuehrers by involving their followers in mass murders of fellow citizens, turning the former into the country’s new elite, and the latter, into a dumb and obedient herd.

In the article titled Nazi Mistakes its author, Alexander Rogers, convincingly shows that the cult of violence is the key feature of Ukrainian Nazis. By the level of senseless cruelty and misanthropy they have surpassed their Hitlerite idols, finding special pleasure in posing for pictures next to the charred bodies of Odessa residents burnt alive or openly rejoicing at the killings of children and women in Slavyansk. As the same author indicates, Ukrainian society has developed all fourteen essential traits of Nazism the prominent Italian philosopher, Umberto Eco, pointed at a while ago. The cult of force, contempt for the weak and condemnation of pacifism as a form of betrayal are most important for understanding the way in which the conflict will be unfolding. It also explains why the negotiations on the cessation of hostilities and resolution of the Ukrainian crisis have reached nowhere.

It might seem that all parties should be interested in the termination of combat operations in Donbass, for they are harmful to Ukraine, Russia, and Donbass itself, and also threaten Europe. However, the Kiev junta shows no wish to listen to the other side. Its sole language is that of threats and ultimatums. Any attempts at calling in question their arguments evoke hysteria, hatred and aggression. Any legislator, journalist or just passer-by who may have dared to questioned the Ukrainian Nazis’ actions is instantly humiliated and beaten up and Ukrainian special services instantly launch criminal proceedings. This is done in in full conformity with one of the key features of Nazism that Umberto Eco identified as “Dissent is betrayal.”

The conflict field Ukrainian Nazism is generating is the main driving force of violence in Ukraine in general and of the punitive operation in Donbass in particular. The question arises what are the sources and driving forces of Ukrainian Nazism. How come in a country that experienced the horrors of Nazi occupation and made a tremendous contribution to the victory over Hitlerites there are so many of their followers today eager to continue the criminal war against the people of Ukraine? After all, at a certain point it seemed that the Red Army had cleared Ukraine of all Nazis for good.

The answer to this question lies in another conflict field that has existed for many centuries. It is the field of Western aggression against Russia, of the perpetual “Drang nach Osten,” which is still continuing today. In that field Ukraine has invariably been in focus. Otto von Bismarck formulated the attitude of the West to Ukraine in the most explicit way. Нe said: “The power of Russia could be undermined only by separating it from the Ukraine ... one must not only pull, but also oppose Ukraine to Russia, purposely antagonize the two parts of one and the same people, and see how brother will kill brother. To do this, one only has to find and nurture traitors among the national elite and use them to change the identity of one part of a great nation to such an extent
that they would hate everything Russian, hate their own family
without even realizing it. The rest is a matter of time.” And Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives noted that without Ukraine Russia will stop being a Eurasian empire.

Ukrainian Nazism is another artificial product of the misanthropic ideology that has been cultivated in the West for several centuries. Three centuries ago the British fancied themselves a master race and made racism the groundwork of their world empire. The Americans are still certain about their superiority over all other peoples around the globe, which, they argue, empowers them to judge other countries and their leaders proceeding from their own criteria. The U.S. authorities use this cult of exclusiveness as a pretext for punishing any other people and even for exterminating the disobedient ones. The underlying purpose of such subjugation is determined by the interests of U.S. capital, disguised in the human rights and democratic values rhetoric. It implies the lifting of all borders to U.S. goods and capital, introduction of U.S. education and cultural standards, and the use of the dollar as the main reserve currency and international legal tender. The United States is dictating to all countries its role of the supreme arbiter in all conflicts, both internal and external ones. It has assumed the right to arrest and punish any citizens of any countries it may not like, and it applies internal U.S. legislation to the entire world, while other countries are expected to agree with the supremacy of international obligations. President Barack Obama’s recent statements about the exclusiveness of the United States was a sure sign the racist ideology is still there and is being employed to excuse any crimes by the U.S. military-political machinery against humanity. Soaring military spending and the flywheel of world tensions are essential for the United States to preserve the notorious exclusiveness of America. “America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will,” Obama said. In more down-to-earth terms: to shrug off the mammoth burden of the state debt and to shift the U.S. economy onto a new long wave of growth.

In accordance with a racist ideology the U.S. political machinery is taking a discriminatory approach to countries depending on the readiness of their leaders to abide by U.S. interests. All countries are grouped into good ones, fully supportive of U.S. policies (the British Commonwealth, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), the under-developed, to be taught the U.S. values through political compulsion (Eastern Europe, Latin America), and the bad ones, defiant of U.S. diktat. Any technologies of external destruction are good towards the latter group of countries (Russia, China, India, North Africa, and the Middle East); the ultimate aim being their subjugation through a revolution and implanting of a U.S.-controlled regime, or through conquest and establishment of a colonial administration, or through destruction and subjugation piece by piece. In relation to Russia and the post-Soviet space, U.S. spin doctors have used all tools of destruction that come handy.

In full conformity with the Anglo-Saxon “divide-and-rule” tradition U.S. political psychology specialists are instructing the Ukrainian Nazis to master the cult of hatred to and supremacy over Russians, who have been appointed responsible for all troubles and misfortunes of the Ukrainian people. At the same time they are told to never forget they are inferior to the Americans and West Europeans, who should be viewed as examples to follow and blindly obeyed as senior partners in the Association. As a result of such brainwashing, contempt and hatred towards Russians are oddly intertwined in the Ukrainian Nazis’ mind with blind worshiping of the Americans and West Europeans. This faith in the omnipotence of the United States and Western Europe is so strong that the Ukrainian Nazis sincerely believe that Washington will be able to force Russia to cater to all of Ukraine’s demands.

Ukrainian Nazism, which the Western instructors have been cultivating with so much zeal has been invariably targeted against Russians and Moscow. In this respect today’s Nazis essentially do not differ from their predecessors – Hitler and his henchmen. Simply the Big Boss has changed, now it is the U.S. Department of State. In contrast to the German Nazis, however, the new boss prefers to have everything done by someone else. The Ukrainian Nazis do not only have to do all dirty work, such as punitive operations and mass killings of fellow citizens, but also bear the risks incurred from combat operations and political responsibility.

Like in time of WWII Nazi invasion, Ukrainian Nazism is used today as a tool in the hands of foreign forces, which are fundamentally hostile to the genuine national interests of Ukraine. There is hardly anyone in his right mind who will dare claim that a pro-Hitler regime might have been a blessing for the Ukrainian people. For the German Nazis the latter was nothing but a herd of draft animals, whose sole task was to toil for food to ensure the prosperity of German imperialism. For today’s European bureaucrats, Ukraine is nothing but a source of cheap labor, a market for European goods, a dump for industrial waste, and a backyard for ecologically hazardous industries. It is hard to imagine any realistically minded national leaders genuinely concerned about national interests who should be eager to put their signature to anything like Ukraine’s Agreement of Association with the European Union, an agreement that unilaterally delegates to the other party the sovereign functions of the state to govern foreign economic activity and conduct foreign and defense policies. Moreover, an agreement that hamstrings the competitiveness of the Ukrainian economy and undermines its balance of payments.

Ukrainian Nazism is evolving within the conflict field of Western aggression against Russia. This explains its amazing upsurge. Without a consistent policy pursued by the United States and its NATO allies it would have never emerged and grown, because there were no objective prerequisites for it. But heavy sponsorship for a bunch of nationalist organizations and consistent efforts to cultivate hatred towards Russia worked. The country’s nationalist leaders do not care about the discrepancy of their ideology and the historical reality. For meager remunerations from their sponsors in the NATO member-states they have never stopped drawing the enemy image of Russia. As such attempts do not hold water against common history, faith, language and culture (Kiev being the Mother of Russian Cities; the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, the main holy shrine of the Russian Orthodox World; and the Kiev-Mogilyansk Academy, the birth place of the Russian Language), flagrant lies have had to be put to use that interprets the tragic episodes of common history (revolution, civil war and famine) as proof of the Russian authorities’ arbitrariness. The ideologists of Ukrainian Nazism keep silent about a very telling fact: ethnic Russians were in the absolute minority in the Bolshevik bodies of government, while functionaries born in Galitsia, Odessa and Central Ukraine constituted an overwhelming majority. Besides, the Bolshevik authorities relied mostly on Ukrainian nationalists in placing under their control the vast and densely populated lands of Novorossiya. Nazism-based Russophobia has become the core of Ukrainian national identify these days.

In the meantime, the reincarnation of Nazism in the current situation is not quite harmless to Europe, where memories of WWII horrors are still green. The European leaders need some plausibly looking excuses to explain why they turn a blind eye on rampaging Ukrainian Nazis and keep conniving with their crimes. The U.S.-controlled leading European mass media are ready to provide such arguments. The Ukrainian Nazis are portrayed as champions of European values, and their crimes against humanity, as heroic accomplishments in defense of Ukraine’s European choice. The European public is being zombied and serves as a benchmark for European politicians. At the same time the very same public is being set against Russia as the Russian leadership is blamed for high-profile crimes that the U.S.-leaning neo-Nazis have staged against European citizens, the way it happened to the Malaysian passenger jet shot down by the Ukrainian military.

As follows from this analysis, European support for the Ukrainian Nazis is induced by a stronger conflict field stemming from the United States’ interest in retaining global domination. The latter has been put to test as the opportunities for economic growth have been objectively exhausted with the simultaneous completion of the life cycle of the dominating technological system and the century-long accumulation cycle. The United States is losing its dominating position in world production. Its center is drifting towards China and other Asian countries. Their financial hegemony is endangered by the growing risk of the collapse of the dollar pyramid of state obligations. The dollar’s leading position of the world currency is being undermined by the processes of regional economic integration. Lastly, as the national financial and economic system cannot be kept in balance without powerful and growing outside support, the United States is objectively forced to escalate military and political tensions and eventually start a world war. This is the main conflict field, and its super-tensions induce higher tensions in all other conflict fields. Its nature deserves special analysis.

Sergei Glazyev

Теги: Sergei Glazyev

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How to prevent the coming war. Sergei Glazyev