BBC maps showing separatist-held territories in the Donbas before the Russian invasion, and Russian-held territories now.
Article 1 of the UN Charter says that one of the purposes of the UN is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” However, what “self-determination” means in specific international legal cases is far from a settled debate. Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute explains that
contemporary notions of self-determination usually distinguish between “internal” and “external” self-determination, suggesting that “self-determination” exists on a spectrum. Internal self-determination may refer to various political and social rights; by contrast, external self-determination refers to full legal independence/secession for the given “people” from the larger politico-legal state.
Donbas seeks self-rule
This question is germane to the war in Ukraine. The most intense fighting in the country is currently in the Donbas, a region in Ukraine’s east that largely consists of Russian speakers. Immediately before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Russian government announced it was recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk, the Donbas’ two major regions, as independent states. They have been warzones since 2014, when Russia-aligned separatists began fighting Ukraine’s central government after the success of the US-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government.
Washington Post (5/11/14): “The lines of voters appeared to reflect a significant protest vote against the central government in Kiev.”
In April 2014, separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk declared the territories’ independence. The next month, they held a referendum on self-rule. The Washington Post (5/11/14) reported that people voted more than once at a polling station in Mariupol, and that the way the referendum was administered allowed for the possibility of further fraud; at the same time, the paper also noted that Donetsk and Luhansk residents “turned out in significant numbers…to vote in support of self-rule.” Here “self-rule” could mean the regions having greater autonomy within Ukraine, becoming independent countries on their own, or joining Russia.
Ukraine’s government and its Western backers saw the vote as illegal. Ukraine’s military
generally allowed balloting to proceed…. But Ukrainian national guardsmen shut down the voting in the eastern city of Krasnoarmeysk and later fired into a crowd outside the town hall, wire services reported. The Associated Press said one of its photographers saw two people lying motionless on the ground after the clash.
The Post noted that despite the flawed voting process,
many people here—at least those who voted—will see it as a powerful expression of popular will. At the very least, the lines of voters appeared to reflect a significant protest vote against the central government in Kiev….
It did appear that turnout was relatively high. Journalists from several Western news organizations interviewed 186 residents in the Donetsk region, away from polling stations, and found that 116 had cast ballots or intended to. A total of 122 favored self-determination. The results were not scientific, but reflected the level of interest in the referendum.
The Kosovo precedent
Sarang Shidore (Responsible Statecraft, 2/22/22): “NATO proactively waged a 78-day war against Yugoslavia to ensure its break up and the creation of a new nation state.”
Non-Western media outlets (Asia Times, 2/28/22; Balkan Insight, 3/9/22) have identified a precedent for Russia citing Donetsk and Luhansk’s right to self-determination as a rationale for attacking Ukraine: the Kosovo War. In 1999, NATO conducted a 78-day war that helped to dismember Yugoslavia and create a new state, Kosovo, a Serbian province whose population was 90% ethnic Albanians. Sarang Shidore (Responsible Statecraft, 2/22/22) summarized the Kosovo/Donbas parallel thusly:
Kosovo [was] repressed in the past by Milosevic’s Serbia. NATO’s war resulted in major atrocities and ethnic cleansing of the minority Serb and Roma populations by the US-backed Kosovo Liberation Army, as well as persecution of the Serbs who inhabit the sliver of a territory in the border region of Mitrovica. Yet the demands of the Serb population in Mitrovica to secede from Kosovo and merge their tiny region into neighboring Serbia is seen as an unacceptable transgression.
Why is there one…standard for Kosovar Albanians and another for Kosovar Serbs?… Should it be a surprise that Ukrainian Russians are just the latest subjects of this list?…
Ethnic Russians in Ukraine mostly support Moscow, and their cultural and linguistic rights have been increasingly violated by a nationalistic government in Kyiv. This has been used by Russia as a means to intervene and create new facts on the ground.
The linguistic discrimination to which Shidore points is a January 2021 law that mandated using Ukrainian in the service industry—obligating, for example, shops and restaurants “to engage customers in Ukrainian unless clients specifically ask to switch.” This law followed 2019 legislation that required middle schools that taught in Russian and other minority languages to switch to Ukrainian (France 24, 4/1/21).
In addition, Donbas residents endured violence and bigotry from the Ukrainian government following the start of the 2014 war. James Carden of The Nation (4/6/15) reported that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko cut Donbas residents off from social services and benefits. He also blocked them from using the banking system, preventing them from accessing credit “or even the most rudimentary banking services,” such that commerce “ground to a standstill.” According to Carden, the Ukrainian state shelled Donbas civilians and deployed snipers, while “the Kiev government and its representatives in Kiev have repeatedly attempted to dehumanize [Donbas residents] by referring to them as ‘terrorists’ and as ‘subhumans.’”
While Russia is the only country that formally recognizes Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, 117 of the 195 countries in the world recognize Kosovo—which means that 78 countries do not, including major world powers like Russia and China, as well as Western European nations like Spain and Greece (Deutsche Welle, 6/10/22).
Crucial difference: US backing
The Kosovo/Donbas parallel may be inexact, but it has merit. In each case, residents were subjected to violence and discrimination, and a substantial portion of them expressed a desire to exercise their right to self-determination; in both Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia, an outside power attempted to justify a military assault by saying that it needed to rescue a minority population from persecution.
One crucial difference, of course, is that the Ukrainian government is supported by the US, while Donbas residents seeking self-determination are allied with Russia, and Russia did the invading in the name of supposed humanitarianism; in contrast, the Yugoslavian government was backed by Russia, whereas Kosovars seeking self-determination were supported by the US, which invaded Yugoslavia allegedly for humanitarian reasons.
My purpose here is not to adjudicate the self-determination or independence claims of the people of Kosovo or the Donbas (though I see pro-independence arguments as highly questionable in both cases, and think neither of the related military interventions was just). Rather, my aim is to investigate whether there were significant differences in how corporate media covered the Kosovo and Donbas cases despite their similarities.
As a barometer of possible US media bias in favor of the home team, I examined how often Kosovars’ right to self-determination was cited in New York Times and Washington Post coverage of Kosovans’ independence claims, and compared it to the frequency with which self-determination was considered in the context of Donetsk and Luhansk’s independence claims. Invoking a peoples’ right to self-determination can function as a way of legitimizing their independence claims: Doing so suggests that those who are attempting to create an independent state are merely trying to shape their own destiny. (Even mentioning the term “self-determination” arguably carries the message that those who are seeking to create their own state have a plausible claim, even if that claim is not explicitly endorsed.)
I looked at how the Kosovo and Donbas independence claims were handled in the coverage of the years leading up to and during the wars in both places. To gauge how often the media have discussed the possibility that Donetsk and Luhansk have the right to self-determination in the years immediately preceding and since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, I examined the last five years of coverage. One New York Times piece in that period—an article in the New York Times Magazine (1/16/22)—included the word “self-determination.” However, it was not used in reference to Donetsk and Luhansk: It was used to describe the motive of a Russian fighting on the Ukrainian side in the Donbas who wanted to protect Ukrainian independence from Russia.
‘Pretext’ and ‘sham’
A Washington Post op-ed (2/25/22) noted that “it is so unusual for one country to so brazenly attack another’s political independence and territorial sovereignty today”—but NATO’s 1998 attack on Serbia, with similar justifications, was not offered as a precedent.
My search of the Post yielded similar results. Three Post articles in the last five years mentioned Donetsk, Luhansk and “self-determination,” but not to consider the territories’ assertion that they have this right. One piece (3/18/22) said that Ukraine “aspir[es] to prosperity and self-determination through memberships in NATO and the European Union.” Another (2/25/22) said that in 2014,
there was the pretext of the Crimean “declaration of independence” and subsequent deployment of a self-determination justification for Crimea’s becoming part of Russia. Likewise, by recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia is setting itself up to use a (sham) vote to justify irredentism—claiming these territories based on historical and ethnic ties.
The referendum may have been flawed but, as the Post reported at the time, people in the Donbas “turned out in significant numbers…to vote in support of self-rule,” and leaving that out makes the notion of people in the Donbas region exercising their right to self-determination sound less plausible than might otherwise be the case.
The third Post article (2/26/22) said that
the [UN] Security Council remains a critical venue for smaller countries to affirm and argue directly for the UN Charter’s core principles of sovereign nonintervention and the equal self-determination of peoples.
It went on to describe Kenyan ambassador Martin Kimani “decr[ying] Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent states.”
‘In the interests of the West’
In sum, both the Times and the Post declined to present readers with any information that might encourage them to have an open mind about Donetsk and Luhansk’s self-determination claims. In fact, the papers failed to even mention that there are “significant numbers” of people in these territories saying that they have a right to self-determination that they wish to exercise. Here we have a case of a self-determination claim that accords with Russian interests, and diverges from the US position, being concealed from the public.
Kosovars’ self-determination and independence claims, which lined up with US interests and contradicted Russia’s, received far more of a hearing. From 1995–99, the five years leading up to and including NATO bombing campaign, the Times published 22 articles with the words “self-determination” and “Kosovo,” “Kosovar” or related variations. The Post ran 32.
That’s not to say that every piece necessarily offered the view that Kosovo had a right to exercise self-determination, up to and including statehood. However, the idea that it did was treated as legitimate and worthy of debate, in a way that has not happened with Donetsk and Luhansk. Many of the articles did, in fact, back Kosovars’ self-determination claims.
Noel Malcolm wrote in the Times (6/9/99) that Kosovo becoming independent is
in the interests of the West. It is certainly the strong preference of the Kosovo Albanians themselves, who voted overwhelmingly for independence as long ago as 1991. It is what the volunteer soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army were fighting for; without some assurance on eventual self-determination, they will be very reluctant to give up their weapons.
The Post’s Charles Krauthammer (6/17/99) contended that
the case for [Kosovo’s] independence is not just practical but principled. If the overwhelming Albanian majority wants self-determination, democratic principles . . . should allow them to have what they want.
Only part of the story
Thus the coverage that I studied evinced a willingness to treat the notion of Kosovar self-determination seriously, and to explicitly support independence in some instances, and did not present the possibility of Donetsk and Luhansk’s having self-determination rights as something that readers should consider when formulating their perspectives on the present war in Ukraine. Articles outright endorsing Kosovar independence carry the added message, stated or unstated, that the US had at least a reasonable case for militarily intervening in the former Yugoslavia in the name of the Kosovars’ cause.
Greg Shupak (Canadian Dimensions, 3/18/22): “Had the US seriously pursued peace, Minsk II could have both ended the war in Donbas and extinguished the NATO issue that was a driving factor in the invasion Russia launched.”
On the other hand, failing to draw readers’ attention to Donbas residents’ self-determination arguments means offering audiences a one-dimensional view of the war in Ukraine: It presents it solely as an illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, rather than as also an internal Ukrainian conflict in which eastern Ukrainians have legitimate grievances against Kyiv. This omission is significant, considering that the US discouraged negotiations that could have resolved outstanding issues surrounding the Donbas’ position in Ukraine before Russia’s February intervention (Canadian Dimension, 3/18/22).
Another period of coverage is also revealing. Kosovo declared its independence on February 17, 2008. That month, the New York Times published four articles containing some versions of the word “Kosovo” and the word “self-determination.” The Washington Post also ran a 2008 article (2/17/08) containing both terms, though it did not explicitly state whether it believed that Kosovars have that right. In April 2014, the month that separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence, 11 Times articles mentioned the territories, but none said anything about “self-determination.” The Post published 12 articles on the matter, without mentioning “self-determination” in any.
As people go on dying in eastern Ukraine and the region is leveled, an American public that the corporate media have given only part of the story is more likely to acquiesce to Washington inundating Ukraine with weapons to keep the war going (Bloomberg, 6/23/22; FAIR.org, 3/22/22) than to press for a diplomatic approach to ending the death and destruction as quickly as possible.
Comrade Greg,
Why no mention of the Russian meddling in the Balkans ongoing for 500+ years prior?
More so and contrary to the published narrative, Russia on Feb 24th assaulted and attempted to seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep, which is the capital of Ukraine, in the war’s opening hours. By all accounts the battle that followed for the Ukraine capital started poorly for the invaders and went downhill from there. Then there is Crimea, a topic which is barely touched on in the article, that was annexed by Russia in 2014. Plenty of fact cherry picking, in this one-sided article.
You repeat the same lies the western media use. That was a “feint” to hold up the Uke forces in Kiev so that the real battle, obvious and always the main cause of the SMO, was the Donbas, where the Russians are succeeding.
Crimea was part of Russia with an internal change in the USSR in 1954. After the Ukraine refused to continue with the agreement with Russia to use the port of Sebastopol up to 2042 as already agreed, Russia held a referendum and a huge majority of Crimeans voted to be joined to Russia where it belonged since Catherine the Great!!!!
Really ? How do you know all that ? Its was a ‘feint’ ? Do you have a direct line to Putin and his generals comrade ? You know the old saying, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. Enough with the ridicules propaganda.
Rosemerry, you are contradicting the official CIA propaganda, and will just confuse the tv-watching idiots who are foaming at the mouth to prevent diplomacy and therefore shed more Ukrainian blood.
A feint? Seriously? Russia lost thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles in that feint.
Great article. Another point of hipocricy and why everyone in Serbia rolls our eyes when time and again western diplomats come to give us lectures is that you have in relatively small geographical area solutions to 4 conflicts which were solved without any principle other than “US allies getting everything”.
For starters the multinational Yugoslavia as a whole was deemed to have collapsed by Badinter commission before it actually did collapse and to maintain it by force was considered an infrigement of people’s right to self determination, it was decided to be broken up by borders of Socialist republics. At the same time multi-national Bosnia and Herzegovina (often called Yugoslavia within Yugoslavia) is to be maintained by force if needed disrespecting wishes of 2 out of 3 peoples in it the Serbs and Croats and all that under a form of government that neither of the 3 sides wanted. It is practically under permanent colonial government headed by unelected foreign High representative with nigh monarchic authority who rules by decree. He is aided by Supreme court with 3 judges from each 3 nations plus 3 foreigners. Instead of solving problems and deadlocks these foreigners literally cause them by nearly always backing Bosniaks even on inane issues who then feel no need to compromise on anything even on stuff like infrastructure.
As far as Croatia goes Croats were first allowed and aided in their separation from Yugoslavia which was cited as their right self determination, fair enough. But Serbs who were majority in large swathes of Croatia called Krajina were denied their wish of remaining within Yugoslavia. Croatia was directly aided by NATO when in operation Storm it got rid of this part of population. Justification was that Croatia had right to establish control over entire territory it had as a socialist republic within Yugoslavia per decision of Badinter comission. Just like Kosovo was overwhelmingly populated by Albanians, Krajina was overwhelmingly populated by Serbs but treatment of these two situations by “international community” was wildly different.
Many think main reason why Milošević didn’t assist either Krajina or Republika Srpska in 1995 is because he was assured that if he abandoned Serbs outside of Serbia the borders of Serbia itself would not be assailed which means that rather than being this ethno/nationalist supremecist figure he has actually accepted the Badinter commision decisions to the detriment of Serbs outside of Serbia thinking it would keep Serbia whole and that demonisation was temporary.
That’s where he got it wrong. Seeing all these developments armed insurgency in Kosovo began in 1996 but full brunt of it along with foreign funding and escalation came in 1998. When Serbia tried to answer millitarily and return full control of the province it was bombed.
Conflict in Macedonia in 2001 between Macedonians and Albanians was practically the only of the conflicts solved with a compromise between two sides, and showed that great powers could indeed aid with stopping these conflict before they escalated if they wanted all the others heavily favoring one side which then behaves like it doesn-t need to respect any treaty which then threatens to escalate the situation when needed. These conflicts were ended with various treaties but sides that feel empowered like Bosniaks in Bosnia and Albanians in Kosovo feel that due to constant full support of great powers they can pick and choose and disrespect peace accords. What is signed is only respected when it suits them and when complaints are made the powers that are guarantors of these documents only blurt out the phrase “Both sides should restrain from raising tensions, dialogue has no alternative” while dialogue becomes impossible. Just like with Minsk accords ,this situation can lead to another conflict at any moment but is not given attention. Legitimate complaints of Croats and Serbs in Bosnia are derided as separatism while High Representatives and 3 foreign judges in Supreme Court combined with Muslim judges outvote Serbs and Croats on all issues. Serbs at least have some remnants of autonomy due to having their own entity the Serb republic but with highly eroded powers in comparison to what was agreed upon in 1995. Croats do not even have a proper representative because since they were shoved into a single entity with Bosniaks their elections happen at the same time and Bosniaks use a sneaky tactic and elect the Croat representative with their votes. Everyone ignores this travesty.
Likewise Serbia has signed several agreements with Albanians in Priština which they do not implement. These issues can cause a flashpoint as issues mount up in past few months yet no one from outside the region pays attention even though problems could be solved if one side is forced to compromise for once just like war in 1992 could have been avoided alltogether.
First in 1991 Badinter comission consisting of foreigners decided that “Yugoslavia dissolved” despite the process was not actually over or decided on how it was going to be dissolved (constitution of 1974 vaguelly spoke of right of Yugoslavia’s people to seek self determination up to independence but never specified whether peoples or republics had this right). This opinion was impossed and it was suggested fallout should be under socialist republic borders (curious how the west back then was against legacy of communism but communist borders were acceptable).
This gave wind to separatism in addition to direct funneling of weapons through Hungary mostly from Eastern German stock. At that point Slovenia and Croatia were separated but Bosnian population no matter the ethnicity was still not quite on board. There was a chance that a rump Yugoslavia minus Croatia and Slovenia could have worked out but west was staunchly against it particularly as ascended united Germany (US and Uk took over their role later) looked to settle old scores. Unlike what is portrayed government in Serbia actually was not nationalist, but a hodgepodge of communist, Yugoslavs and some “awakened” NuSerbs. It actually irritated hardline nationalists with all the backing down and negotiating. It essentially accepted Badinter comission’s decisions, retreated and dissolved Yugoslav People’s army and even tried to negotiate how independent Bosnia would look like as a federation of 3 units in early 1992.
This was called Cutillero agreement and despite not being in favor of the Serbs they signed it. In fact all 3 peoples signed it but at the time someone wanted that war badly called Bosniak representative Alija Izetbegović(who didn’t even win elections but was pushed into that spot) promising to back their maximalist dreams of unitary Bosnia and soon war ensued. There were similar sabotages in other negotiations but that one was the greatest of crimes against peace and in the end Bosnia was federalized anyway but with clearer ethnic borders and 100000 lives lost.
Also, i forgot to say that Nuland and Pyatt agreed that the EU compromise should be (is this where I’m supposed to quote profanities?) “eschewed” in favor of the direct and violent methods favored by the United States.
Excellent article Mr. Shupak. Both Crimea and the Donbass rejected the US orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014. The coup government’s subsequent hostility toward ethnic Russian’s meant both had a right to remedial secession.
If Russia had moved as decisively to support self-determination in the Donbass as it did in Crimea, I don’t believe eastern Ukraine would be in ruins today. Russia’s mistake was to trust diplomacy with the West (Minsk II) as a way to solve the problem.
Are all the attacks by the USA and allies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria not counted as interfering with territorial integrity, which Ukraine certainly cannot pretend it had after the US overthrow of its elected leader in 2014?????
This article is supposed to pass as a piece of critical thought? You know it’s possible to be both critical of the Ukrainian state, and recognize that the DNR/LPR are undemocratic puppet states? Citing the anecdotal observations that people “turned out in significant numbers…to vote in support of self-rule,”does not equate a legitimate sampling of Donbas residents on the question. Perhaps coverage of Kosovo and Donbas separatists differs due to them being vastly different scenarios? This whole piece reeks of reductive dogmatism. LOL at the US overthrowing Yanukovych comments. Where’d you all learn that?
The Nuland/Pyatt audio tapes from January 27, 2014, which contain the intercepted conversation between US ambassadors in which they plot who will lead Ukraine once the US coup d’etat government is empowered.
Those touted, like Arseniy Yatsenyuk, did in fact ascend to power, while those dissed by our ambassadors, like Klitscho was, were told to “do more homework”.
Joe Biden is explicitly mentioned as the point man for the coup d’etat.
Let’s not be in denial. You can still hear it on Youtube.
Original Commentary
(Not a Duplicate)
The Nuland/Pyatt audio tapes from January 27, 2014, which contain the intercepted conversation between US ambassadors in which they plot who will lead Ukraine once the US coup d’etat government is empowered.
Those touted, like Arseniy Yatsenyuk, did in fact ascend to power, while those dissed by our ambassadors, like Klitscho was, were told to “do more homework”.
Joe Biden is explicitly mentioned as the point man for the coup d’etat.
Let’s not be in denial. You can still hear it on Youtube.
Also, i forgot to say that Nuland and Pyatt agreed that the EU compromise should be (is this where I’m supposed to quote profanities?) “eschewed” in favor of the direct and violent methods favored by the United States.
“Self-Determination’ for US Allies, Not Enemies” WTF?! When did the Russian speaking people of the Donbas become “enemies” of the U.S.? With such perversion of language and reality by the corporate media, it is no wonder that the idiot tv-watching masses in the U.S.A. are screeching for more Ukrainian blood to be spilled. It’s all football to the U.S. media, and therefore to the tv-watchers. Yay, our side! We will fight until there are no Ukranians left!
The Difference with Kosovo is that Serbian government decided to implement a project of Genocide against ethnic Albanians just like they did in Bosnia with Boshniak people. I have not seen any massacres or concentration camps of ethnic Russians by the state of Ukraine.
It’s just the bog-standard US/NATO double standard. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s evil terrorist. Self determination is only acceptable when it’s in US interests. At base, Ukraine is not a NATO ally and we have no business interfering at all (and the US has a long history of international meddling and overthrowing/installing regimes on both extremes of the right-left and good-evil spectrum). I don’t support Russia’s methods and I’m not a Putin fan — or a bot for that matter — but I do agree and sympathize with their concerns of NATO encroachment, lack of buffer with a hostile union if Ukraine joined NATO and the inevitable Western military buildup on Russia’s doorstep, etc etc.
However even if we ignore all that and exclude it from the equation, the truth is that this is little more than a US proxy war on Ukrainian soil. The truth is agreements were made about keeping a buffer zone between NATO and the US, and about the encroachment of military installations & weapons on Russia’s border that were reneged on and now forgotten and ignored. The truth is the Ukrainian government is US installed, US and Israeli controlled (thus of both questionable legitimacy and motives), and Zelenskyy is corrupt. The truth is that the US/Nato have rejected every option for a diplomatic end to hostilities, and would rather see the Ukraine leveled and its people fight to the last drop of blood in an unwinnable situation. The truth is that for all Russia’s propaganda, Western media is just as bad, just as biased, just as self-interested and just as willing to ignore, twist and obfuscate the truth. I’d go as far as to say the Western world if not the US alone operates the biggest propaganda machine in the world and is just as hyper-nationalist and self-righteous as Russia’s. Taking an objective view and seeing both sides pump out shameless propaganda day in, day out, each side claiming the moral high ground in its defense would almost be funny if it wasn’t so deadly and corrupt. The truth is that we’re essentially screwing our own people by funneling tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and weapons into Ukrainian hands — much of the former ending up in Zelenskyy’s personal accounts and the latter diverting to black market. We’re shooting our own economy in the foot at an already vulnerable time with sanctions as a hypocritical “moral stand against Russia”, not to mention the NATO-caused energy and food crises unfolding in many other areas of the world as a result of these sanctions. But I’m digressing into a general rant against this blind lionizing of Ukraine and blind, misguided support-at-all-costs nonsense we’re fed in the West…
What I really mean to get at here is that this article is correct in its assertions. For all its moral blustering and propounded idealism, things would be very different indeed if the US had some reason to support Russia, or be against Ukraine. If it were in their interests, say if there was some oil to be gained for example, you can bet the US would be reversing itself in a hurry and you’d suddenly find Putin being not just tolerated but aided. If it were in US interests, you can bet the Russian-speaking separatists would be lionized across the Western world and we’d be sending them money and weapons; our media filled with moralizing on their right to self-determine and how oppressed they are by Kiev, etc etc. All this crap is the very pinnacle of self-interested hypocrisy, and as always at the expense of the common taxpaying citizen. NATO is warring with Russia by proxy for it’s own interests, with the Ukrainian people as it’s expendable pawns, and has we the people footing the bill.
I guess in summary: A) If I were Russia I’d probably be taking similar action, if not similar tactics, to protect myself as a nation (hate them all you like, but put yourself in their shoes for a minute and actually think about what you’d really do if you were in their situation). B) Donbas does have the right to self-determination; both morally by any objective standard and by NATO and the UN’s own standards and precedents, despite that that’s all being conveniently ignored right now. And C) Bottom line, all else aside and regardless which side you support or how good or bad either one is, the US/NATO have no business meddling and taking sides. This is not our fight. America needs to stop playing self-appointed global policeman/bully/kingmaker/warmonger (depending how you see their long history of foreign interference). If it doesn’t threaten us, if it’s not a treaty obligation, then we should simply butt out. I’m sick unto death of all the moralizing and justifying here. Just turn off your brain, close your eyes, and “stand with Ukraine”.
Great writing. Great thoughts!
Let me add one fact that is never reported by the Lamestream Corporate Media:
The guy we overthrew in 2014 is the same, who since he began running for national office in 2005, regularly received about 70-80% of the popular vote in the both Crimea and Donbass regions.
So, in 2014, those parts of Ukraine found themselves stuck with an unelected leader, a quandary that vested the citizens there with a plain right to reject the US-manufactured coup d’etat government and form separate republics.
This is my first comment to FAIR since the Russian Federation invasion of Ukraine began last February.
Great writing. Great thoughts!
Let me add one fact that is never reported by the Lamestream Corporate Media:
The guy we overthrew in 2014 is the same, who since he began running for national office in 2005, regularly received about 70-80% of the popular vote in the both Crimea and Donbass regions.
So, in 2014, those parts of Ukraine found themselves stuck with an unelected leader, a quandary that vested the citizens there with a plain right to reject the US-manufactured coup d’etat government and form separate republics.
Also, i forgot to say that Nuland and Pyatt agreed that the EU compromise should be (is this where I’m supposed to quote profanities?) “eschewed” in favor of the direct and violent methods favored by the United States.