Putin repeats mistake of past
The people of Ukraine are living in terrifyingly torrid times as nations of the world try to establish the motive behind the Russian occupation of its neighbour’s territory.
By yesterday, horrific images continued to come out of Ukraine, showing heavy fighting on the streets of the Ukranian city of Kyiv as Russia intensified its military assault on its neighbouring nation of approximately 44 million.
In a show of military force hardly imagined in the post-world War 2 order, Russian troops attacked the capital from several directions yesterday, following President Vladimir Putin’s order earlier this week to invade Ukraine.
The sophistry coming out of Putin’s mouth was to try to convince the international community to believe Russia was not safe because of what he described as a constant threat coming from Ukraine, a harmless country to Russia by all available evidence.
As he prepared his troops for the fullscale military offensive earlier this week, Putin tried to make the world believe that war was the only option to protect the Ukranian people from his imagined “bullying” and “genocide” perpetrated by Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. Putin said he feels obliged to demilitarise and de-nazify Ukraine, whatever what that means.
Dictators and warmongers read from the same script whenever they smell blood. History is replete with political delinquents invoking the phrase of protecting ordinary people whenever their propensity for violence takes precedence over reason. It is, however, the same civilians they claim to be protecting who suffer the most during a war situation. The protection of civilians becomes a mere ruse to unleash terror against those governments they simply don’t like.
As we have time and again witnessed during the many wars that have engulfed most nations across the world, truth also becomes a serious casualty in the quest for political dominance by militaristic governments.
We saw this when the Us-led allies invaded Iraq in 2003 after manufacturing lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Many years since that war ended and many years since Hussein (the real target) was killed, no evidence has been produced of these weapons.
Likewise, we have not seen any sign of the genocide in Ukraine that Putin cites as one of his reasons to attack. On the contrary, the world has witnessed the ever politically unsettled Russia since its preferred Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, following a period of internal instability and uprisings in that country.
There’s no doubt that Putin wants to install a government of his own choosing in Ukraine in much the same way George W Bush did in Iraq. There has never been any peace in Iraq since the US installed their own puppets to govern that country. Does Russia expect peace following the demonstration of its military might in Ukraine?
We have no doubt Putin will succeed in toppling Zelensky’s government and installing his own puppet regime. However, it is going to be a mere pyrrhic victory as no government can rule against the will of the people. History has proved that violence has never been, and never will be, the answer to the political challenges faced by nations across the globe.