We have every right to be disgusted by Putin’s latest obscenity to call together 300 000 Russian Dads and Teenagers to wage war in his Ukrainian vanity project.
I was one of the few pundits who at the beginning of the year said Putin would invade after the failed coup in Kazakhstan because Putin was thinking about legacy against the other great Russian leaders which overlaid with his own complex relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church and his personal Christianity alongside hard right nationalists who view the Ukraine as a historic buffer zone…
Because we have the attention span of 1 season of Married At First Sight, we don’t appreciate the power and importance and motivator Russian Orthodox Christianity plays out in all of this.
In 988AD, Vladimir the Great, whom Putin takes his name from, mass baptised 1000 Russians at the River Nee-Proh in what has become the founding spiritual moment in Orthodox Russian Christianity as the moment Russia became Christian and led to a cultural narrative structure that Moscow is the third Rome and was a homeland for Christianity.
What isn’t widely known is that Putin himself is a very staunch Russian Orthodox Christianand that he has used the Russian Orthodox Church as an enormous control mechanism over the Russian people.
Putin has spent billions rebuilding the Churches smashed down by Communism and uses his relationship with the Church for political advantage. It was the Orthodox Church who first praised Putin for annexing Crimea, a region with much religious importance for the Church.
Recently the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian branchbecause they felt Putin was having too much influence over it.
If Moscow is the third Rome, Kyiv is the second Jerusalem.
Putin sees himself as part of a long line of Christian Defenders of the true faith.
A new angry white Christianity is erupting here with intense violence, and misreading the drivers of Putin means we will fail at stopping him.
…The West’s distribution of next generation weaponry with state of the art intelligence has given the Ukrainians an upper hand to not only stall the Russian invasion, but to also push back on previously occupied territory.
Trapped, desperate and needing to save face, Russia has annexed parts of the Eastern Ukraine using sham referendums and now placed that territory under its nuclear umbrella claiming an attack on any newly annexed Ukrainian land is an attack on Russia proper.
I don’t believe there is a military solution to this atrocity of an invasion and prolonging this only allows for the US Military Industrial Complex to keep making money out it…
Biden says U.S. sending Ukraine another $150 million in aid
President Joe Biden on Friday authorized the shipment of another $150 million in military assistance for Ukraine for artillery rounds and radar systems in its fight against Russia’s invading forces.
Biden said the latest spending means his administration has “nearly exhausted” what Congress authorized for Ukraine in March and called on lawmakers to swiftly approve a more than $33 billion spending package that will last through the end of September.
…once the US Military Industrial Complex views its profit margins in the Ukraine as a national security issue, we are in trouble.
We urgently need more dialogue, not less.
We have to de-escalate this madness because innocent people are dying each day!
NZ Hawks in ACT argue that we should cancel the Russian Ambassador because it is a virtue signal to the world that we won’t tolerate Putin’s aggression, but there’s plenty of that being done already, surely NZs peace values are something we should be tapping into and pushing right now?
You know, kindness and all.
We need to talk this insanity down, not simply enflame it.
Why should Russia be given this type of respect?
Because Putin has s fucking nuclear arsenal, that’s why!
Putin isn’t just another violent authoritarian thug, he’s a violent authoritarian thug WITH one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons on earth!
Even the Devil gets sympathy!
Keep the Russian Ambassador here, keep pressuring him for peace every week.
There is too much at stake here to miscalculate.
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Unhinged Martyn is off again.
I say keep the RA here as well but only because sending him home will achieve nothing. It would be just political posturing from a tiny country about as far from Russia as you can get. If all the posturing at the UN can’t change UN voting rights sending this fuck home isn’t going to make any difference either. Jacinda sending a plea to Putin through the Russian Embassy. Please stop killing people and please don’t nuke anyone. We frown on that sort of thing in NZ. We also won’t trade with you but because it isn’t too much it won’t affect us badly. Should he stay or should he go. Who cares.
Maybe we should all offer our opinions on how this will end now. Have a competition to see who gets closest.
My contribution at this point would be that it is almost over. It doesn’t matter what outsiders say about the invalidity of the referendums taking place, it matters to the people there. My prediction is that the referendums will give similar results to the 2014 referendum in Crimea. Slightly less overwhelming in the southern provinces than in the east but clear . There will be lots of hyperbolic talk from western talkers but a gradual reduction in military support for Ukraine as it becomes obvious that a continuation and expansion will be impossible to pretend is anything but a war between Russia and NATO which Nato countries populations need like a hole in the head. (Very like a hole in the head). So the leaders will bluster away like Martyn and do nothing that matters as Russia completes the operation of securing the balance of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, and it will all die down by the time the lack of heating in Europe requires a resumption of the flow of Russian Gas.
D J S
Since the American illegal (at that time) invasion of Iraq it seems to have become accepted in international law that if you are strong enough to invade with impunity then the invasion is the victim country’s fault, for pissing you off in the first place. (Ref: Noam Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival). If Putin’s annexation of the conquered territories is successful he would seem to have a better claim (to be defending the security of Russia) than Dubbya’s claim in 2003: that Iraq was a danger to US security.
What a load of bs M.
NATO and the US are the bad guys right!
The EU are just a bunch of (accommodating) idiots. The Nazi’s fighting for the Ukraine a the baddies.
The Ardern regime is committed to enhancing human misery. Continuing to side with the American empire and its relentless drive to shed the blood of countless millions more would be assisted by expelling any representative of the Axis of Resistance, inclusive of Russia, so it seems likely that they will do it.
An item about Putin, but a cartoon about the US. Does that mean Martyn views both just as bad as each other?
To take up David+Stones’s comment. No, I don’t think NATO will back down. Not after Putin’s threats and the apparent sabotage of NordStream 2.
However, that is not to say that Ukraine will be backed, no matter what. There will be some pressure for Ukraine to accept the 2014 boundaries. The big issue will be around the South. Ukraine will win back Kherson, at least the part on the west side of the Dnieper River. But will they be able to win back the land bridge? An open question at this stage. We won’t know until the winter offensives.
Wayne September 28, 2022 at 7:11 pm ‘No, I don’t think NATO will back down. Not after Putin’s threats and the apparent sabotage of NordStream 2.’ Cui bono who benefits?? If Russia wanted to sabotage the Nordstream 2 pipeline than they just needed to turn off the tap!!
I think most members of NATO would like to to see this conflict finished, preferably without a mushroom cloud, but I also think the USA prefers to keep it going. Whether other members will feel strong enough to resist US pressure is a moot point. The difficulty is that the USA, by itself, is strong enough to keep the war going with without the others’ support. I fear the first nuclear strike since 1946 may be on its way.
I think most members of NATO would like to to see this conflict finished, preferably without a mushroom cloud, but I also think the USA prefers to keep it going. Whether other members will feel strong enough to resist US pressure is a moot point. The difficulty is that the USA, by itself, is strong enough to keep the war going with without the others’ support. I fear the first nuclear strike since 1946 may be on its way.
Wayne I’d be interested on your take on this US Senator declaring Ukraine a false nation Prior to the end of WWI, there was no Ukrainian state. Like the artificial and unsustainable polities of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which were confected by self-serving politicians at Versailles (especially the domestic vote seeking Woodrow Wilson), Ukraine was a product of geopolitical engineering – in this case by the new rulers of the Soviet Union.
https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2022/09/27/washingtons-pointless-war-on-behalf-of-a-fake-nation/
If he is correct (which factually according to all my old texts from uni the 70s such as Carr The Bolshevik Revolution, and pages in Shirers Third Reich describing German agreements on Poland in 1939..it all gathers dust on my shelves)…then the Ukraine is no more a cogent national polity than Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia.
Id suggest that the Russian ambassador knows this history very well and must think us dualistic at minimum on our principles.
If you watch this … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoomA4wSeUE it’s hard to argue any likely culprit for the Nord Stream sabotage than the USA even without the Cui Bono.
i think this might be the USA’s last significant act in this war. A two finger salute to both Russia and Europe. If Germany recognises who has done this how can NATO continue to exist?
D J S
Russia has already decided how it will treat New Zealand, as NZ is on it’s list of unfriendly countries, due to us being part of the collective west.
This infers two things. If NZ wants to do business with Russia, NZ has to play by Russian rules.
If NZ chooses not to do business with Russia, well then it is no great loss for Russia.
Be careful what we wish for… NZ needs Russia more than they need us
To send the Ambassador home would be a big mistake
Nah Bomber – how can you ‘pressure’ him when the guy doesn’t even turn up for ‘please explain’ meetings in Parliament. Kick him out I say. More than a virtue signal – would send a message.
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