Former Colonel of General Staff, former member of Swiss Strategic Intelligence, specialist in Eastern countries.
PART ONE: ON THE ROAD TO THE WAR
For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying the war, but of understanding what led us to it. I note that the « experts » who take turns on the television sets analyze the situation from questionable information, most often from the hypotheses set out in fact, and therefore we can no longer understand what is going on. This is how we create panic.
The problem is not so much who is right in this conflict, but to wonder about how our leaders make their decisions.
Let’s try to examine the roots of the conflict. It starts with those who for the past eight years have been telling us about « separatists » or « separatists » from Donbass. It's wrong. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014 were not referendums of ’ « independence » ( biнезависимость ), as some have argued unscrupulous journalists, but from referendums d ’ « self-determination » or d ’ « autonomy » ( самостоятельность ). The qualifier « pro-Russian » suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term « Russian-speaking » would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the opinion of Vladimir Putin.
In fact, these Republics did not seek to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language. Because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 which made Russian an official language. A bit like putschists decide that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.
This decision causes a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result is fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions ( Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk ) which took place in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and to some massacres ( in Odessa and Marioupol, for the most important ). At the end of summer 2014, only the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk remain.
At this stage, too rigid and engulfed in a doctrinaire approach to operational art, the Ukrainian staffs, undergo the enemy without succeeding in imposing themselves. An examination of the progress of the fighting in 2014-2016 in the Donbass shows that the Ukrainian staff systematically and mechanically applied the same operating plans. However, the war waged by the autonomists is then very close to what is observed in the Sahel: very mobile operations carried out with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels have been able to exploit the inertia of the Ukrainian forces to « trap » repeatedly.
In 2014, I was at NATO, responsible for combating the proliferation of small arms, and we are trying to detect deliveries of Russian weapons to the rebels to see if Moscow is involved. The information we receive then comes practically all from the Polish intelligence services and does not « stick » with information from the OSCE: despite fairly crude allegations, there is no delivery of weapons and military equipment from Russia.
The rebels are armed thanks to the defections of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units which pass on the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures, the entire tank, artillery or anti-aircraft battalions swell the ranks of autonomists. This is what drives Ukrainians to engage in the Minsk Accords.
But, just after signing the Minsk 1 Accords, Ukrainian President Petro Porenko launched a vast counterterrorism operation ( ATO / Антитерористична операція ) against the Donbass. Bis repetita placent : badly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffer a stinging defeat in Debaltsevo which obliges them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements…
It is essential to recall here that the Minsk 1 ( September 2014 ) and Minsk 2 ( February 2015 ) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy in the frame from Ukraine. Those who have read the agreements ( they are very, very, very few ) will find that it is written in full that the status of the republics should be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the republics, for a internal solution to Ukraine.
This is why since 2014, Russia has systematically requested their application while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal affair with Ukraine. On the other hand, the Westerners – France at the head – have systematically tried to substitute for the Minsk Agreements the « Normandy format », which put Russians and Ukrainians face to face. Now, let's remember, there is never had Russian troops in the Donbass before February 23-24, 2022. Besides, OSCE observers have never observed any trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass. Thus, the map of American intelligence services published by the Washington Post December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.
In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, Director of the Ukrainian Security Service ( SBU ), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. It was the same comparable to that of the Swiss who went to fight in Bosnia during weekends, in the 1990s, or of the French who are going to fight in Ukraine today.
The Ukrainian army is then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the Chief Ukrainian Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios said Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 illnesses, 318 road accidents, 177 other accidents, 175 ( alcohol poisonings, ) drugs, 172 following reckless manipulation of weapons, 101 breaches of security rules, 228 murders and 615 suicides.
In fact, the military is plagued by the corruption of its executives and no longer enjoys the support of the people. According to a British Home Office Report, when the reservists were recalled from March-April 2014, 70% did not not presented at the first session, 80% at the second, 90% at the third and 95% at the fourth. In October / November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up during the recall campaign « Fall 2017 ». This without counting suicides and desertions( often for the benefit of autonomists ) who reach up to 30% of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refuse to go and fight in the Donbass and prefer emigration, which also partly explains at least the country's demographic deficit.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then addresses NATO to help it make its armed forces more attractive « ». Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program intended to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But it's a long-term process and the Ukrainians want to go fast.
To compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government then resorts to paramilitary militias. They are mainly composed of foreign mercenaries, often far-right activists. In 2020, they constitute around 40% of Ukrainian forces and count about 102,000 men according to Reuters. They are armed, funded and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There are more than 19 – nationalities including Swiss.
Western countries have therefore clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias. In October 2021, the Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm while denouncing the project Centuria. These militias have been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with the support of the West. Even if we can discuss the term « Nazi », the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a foul-smelling ideology and are virulely anti-Semitic. Their anti-Semitism is more cultural than political, this is why the qualifier « Nazi » is not really suitable. Their hatred of the Jew comes from the great famines of the years 1920-1930 in Ukraine, resulting from the confiscation of the crops by Stalin in order to finance the modernization of the Red Army. However, this genocide – known in Ukraine as ’Holodomor – was perpetrated by the NKVD ( ancestor of the KGB ) whose upper echelons of conduct were mainly composed of Jews. This is why, today, Ukrainian extremists are asking Israel to apologize for the crimes of communism, as noted Jerusalem Post. We are therefore far from a « rewriting history » by Vladimir Putin.
These militias, from far-right groups that animated the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, are made up of fanatic and brutal individuals. The best known of them is the Azov regiment, whose emblem recalls that of 2ePanzerdivision SS Das Reich, which was the subject of a real veneration in Ukraine, for having freed Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before perpetrating the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, in France.
Famous figures in the Azov regiment included the opponent Roman Protassevitch, arrested in 2021 by the Belarusian authorities following the RyanAir FR4978 flight case. On May 23, 2021, we discuss the deliberate hijacking of an airplane line by a MiG-29 – with Putin's agreement, of course – to stop Protassevitch, although the information then available absolutely do not confirm this scenario.
But it must then be shown that President Lukashenko is a thug and Protassevitch a « journalist » in love with democracy. However, a fairly edifying investigation produced by a American NGO in 2020, highlighted the far-right militant activities of Protassevitch. Western conspiracy then sets in motion and unscrupulous media « grooming » its biography. Finally, in January 2022, the ICAO report is published and shows that despite some procedural errors, Belarus acted in accordance with the rules in force and that the MiG-29 took off 15 minutes after the RyanAir pilot decided to land in Minsk. So no Belarusian plot and even less with Putin. Ah !… Another detail: Protassevitch, cruelly tortured by the Belarusian police, is free today. Those who would like to correspond with him can go to his account Twitter.
The qualification of « Nazi » or « neo-Nazi » given to Ukrainian paramilitaries is considered to be Russian propaganda. Perhaps ; but this is not the opinion of Times of Israel, from Simon Wiesenthal Center or Terrorism Control Center from West Point Academy. But this remains questionable, because, in 2014, the Newsweek magazine seemed rather to associate them with ... the Islamic State. Choice !
So the West supports and continues to arm militias that have been guilty of many crimes against civilian populations since 2014 : rape, torture and massacres. But while the Swiss government was very quick to take sanctions against Russia, it did not adopt any against Ukraine which has massacred its own population since 2014. In fact, those who defend human rights in Ukraine have long condemned the actions of these groups, but have not been followed by our governments. Because, in reality, we are not trying to help Ukraine, but to fight Russia.
The integration of these paramilitary forces into the National Guard was not at all accompanied by a « denazification », as some claim. Among the many examples, that of the Azov Regiment badge is edifying :
https://cf2r.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Capture-decran-2022-03-13-a-22.40.35-1536x1277.png
In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces which fight the Russian offensive are articulated in :
– Army, subordinate to the Ministry of Defense: it is articulated in 3 corps and composed of maneuvering formations ( chars, heavy artillery, missiles, etc. ).
– National Guard, which reports to the Ministry of the Interior and is articulated in 5 territorial commandments.
The National Guard is therefore a territorial defense force which is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called « » volunteer battalions ( добровольчі батальйоні ), also known as the evocative name of « reprisal battalions », composed of infantry. Mainly trained for urban combat, these today defend cities like Kharkov, Marioupol, Odessa, Kiev, etc.
PART TWO: THE WAR
Former Warsaw Pact Force Officer in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service, I observe with sadness – but without astonishment – that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed « experts » parading on our screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the assertion that Russia – and Vladimir Putin – is irrational. Let's take a step back.
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
Since November 2021, the Americans have continued to brandish the threat of a Russian invasion against Ukraine. However, Ukrainians do not seem to agree. Why ?
We have to go back to March 24, 2021. That day, Volodymyr Zelensky promulgates a decree for the reconquest of Crimea and begins to deploy its forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea take place, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducts a few exercises to test the operational availability of its troops and show that it is following developments.
Things calm down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, the troop movements of which are interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against Ukraine. Yet even the Ukrainian authorities refute the idea of Russian preparations for a war and Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Minister of Defense, declares that there is no no change on its border since spring.
In violation of the Minsk Agreements, Ukraine conducts air operations at Donbass using drones, at least of which executes strike against fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press reports it, but not the Europeans and no one condemns these violations.
In February 2022, events precipitate. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his attachment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he will repeat after his interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, the next day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of political advisers to the leaders of the « Normandy format » ends, without concrete result: the Ukrainians still refuse to apply the Agreementsfrom Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin then finds that Macron has made empty promises to him and that Westerners are not ready to enforce the Agreements, as they have been doing for eight years.
Ukrainian preparations in the contact area continue. The Russian Parliament is alarmed and on February 15 asks Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he refuses.
On February 17, President Joe Biden announces that Russia will attack Ukraine in the coming days. How does he know ? Mystery ... But since the 16th, artillery shelling on the Donbass populations has increased dramatically, as shown by the daily reports of OSCE observers. Naturally, neither the media, the European Union, NATO, nor any Western government reacts and intervenes. It will be said later that this is Russian misinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have purposely passed over in silence the massacre of the Donbass populations, knowing that this would provoke Russian intervention.
At the same time, there are reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On January 18, Donbass fighters intercept saboteurs equipped with Western and Polish speaking equipment seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. It could be CIA mercenaries, conducted or « advised » by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics.
In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knows that the Ukrainians have started to pound the civilian populations of Donbass, putting Vladimir Putin before a difficult choice : help the Donbass militarily and create an international problem or stay idle and watch the Russian speakers of the Donbass get run over.
If he decides to intervene, Vladimir Putin can invoke the international obligation of « Responsibility To Protect » ( R2P ). But he knows that whatever its nature or extent, the intervention will trigger a shower of sanctions. Therefore, whether its intervention is limited to the Donbass or goes further to put pressure on Westerners for the status of Ukraine, the price to be paid will be the same. This is what he explains during his speech on February 21.
On that day, he acceded to the Duma's request and recognized the independence of the two Donbass Republics and, in the process, signed treaties of friendship and assistance with them.
The bombing of Ukrainian artillery on the Donbass populations continues and, on February 23, the two Republics request military aid from Russia. On the 24th, Vladimir Putin invokes Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations which provides for military assistance within the framework of a defensive alliance.
In order to make Russian intervention completely illegal in the eyes of the public we hide deliberately the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass in 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services well knew ... Jurists will judge.
In his speech on February 24, Vladimir Putin set out the two objectives of his operation: « demilitarize » and « denazify » Ukraine. It is therefore not a question of seizing Ukraine, or even, presumably of occupying it and certainly not of destroying it.
From there, our visibility on the progress of the operation is limited: the Russians have excellent operational security ( OPSEC ) and the details of their planning are not known. But fairly quickly, the progress of operations makes it possible to understand how the strategic objectives were translated into operational terms.
– Demilitarization :
. ground destruction of aviation, air defense systems and Ukrainian means of recognition ;
. neutralization of command and intelligence structures ( C3I ), as well as of the main logistical routes in the depth of the territory ;
. encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army massed in the south-east of the country.
– Denazification :
. destruction or neutralization of the battalions of volunteers who operate in the cities of Odessa, Kharkov and Marioupol, as well as in various installations on the territory.
« DEMILITARIZATION
The Russian offensive is very « classic ». Initially – as the Israelis did in 1967 – with the ground destruction of the air forces in the very early hours. Then, we witness a simultaneous progression on several axes according to the principle of « flowing water » : we advance wherever the resistance is low and we leave the cities ( very voracious in troops ) for later. In the north, the Chernobyl power station is occupied immediately to prevent sabotage. Images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers ensuring together surveillance of the power plant are naturally not shown…
The idea that Russia is trying to take hold of Kiev, the capital to eliminate Zelensky, typically comes from the West: this is what they have done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and what they have wanted to do in Syria with the help of the Islamic State. But Vladimir Putin never intended to shoot or overthrow Zelensky. On the contrary, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate by encircling Kiev. He had refused to do so far to implement the Minsk Accords, but now the Russians want Ukraine to be neutral.
Many Western commentators were surprised that the Russians continued to seek a negotiated solution while conducting military operations. The explanation has been in Russian strategic design since Soviet times. For Westerners, war begins when politics cease. However, the Russian approach follows a Clausewitzian inspiration: war is the continuity of politics and one can pass smoothly from one to the other, even during the fighting. This creates pressure on the opponent and pushes him to negotiate.
From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of its kind: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as vast as the United Kingdom, with a higher speed of progression than what the Wehrmacht had achieved in 1940.
The bulk of the Ukrainian army was deployed to the south of the country for a major operation against the Donbass. This is why, the Russian forces were able to surround it from the beginning of March in the « cauldron » between Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, by a push from the east by Kharkov and another from the south from Crimea. The troops of the Donetsk Republics ( RPD ) and Lugansk ( RPL ) complement the action of the Russian forces with a push from the East.
At this point, Russian forces slowly tighten the noose, but are no longer under time pressure. Their demilitarization objective is practically achieved and the residual Ukrainian forces no longer have an operational and strategic command structure.
The « slowdown » that our « experts » attribute to poor logistics, is only the consequence of having achieved the objectives set. Russia does not seem to want to engage in an occupation of the whole of Ukrainian territory. In fact, it seems rather that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country.
Our media speak of indiscriminate bombing against civilian populations, particularly in Kharkov, and Dantesque images are broadcast in a loop. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American who lives there, presents us with a calm city on March 10, and the March 11. Admittedly it is a big city and we do not see everything, but that seems to indicate that we are not served in total war continuously on our screens.
As for the Donbass Republics, they have « liberated » their own territories and are fighting in the city of Marioupol.
THE « DENAZIFICATION »
In cities like Kharkov, Marioupol and Odessa, defense is provided by paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of « denazification » is primarily aimed at them.
For an attacker in urbanized areas, civilians are a problem. This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty the cities of civilians and leave only the militias in order to fight them more easily.
Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities in order to dissuade the Russian army from coming to fight there. This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to make Russian efforts in vain: they can thus use the civilian population as « human shields ». Videos showing civilians seeking to leave Marioupol and beaten up by fighters from the Azov regiment are naturally carefully censored here.
On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State and subject to « dangerous individuals and organizations policy » of the platform. It was therefore forbidden to glorify it, and the « posts » which were favorable to it were systematically banned. But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and authorizes favorable posts to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorizes, in the former Eastern countries, the calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire our leaders, as we will see.
Our media spread a romantic image of popular resistance. It was this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of weapons to the civilian population. It is a criminal act. As the head of the United Nations peacekeeping doctrine, I have worked on the issue of the protection of civilians. We then found that violence against civilians took place in very specific contexts. Especially when weapons abound and there are no command structures.
However, these structures of conduct are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force according to an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard way as is currently the case, the EU is turning them into fighters, with the consequences that flow from them: potential targets. In addition, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of weapons inevitably leads to settling of scores, banditry and more deadly than effective actions. War becomes a matter of emotions. Strength becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga ( Libya ) from August 11 to 13, 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with ( illegally ) parachuted weapons by France. Besides, the Royal British Institute for Strategic Study( RUSI ) sees no added value to these arms deliveries.
In addition, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered as a belligerent. The Russian strikes of March 13, 2022, against the air base of Mykolaiv follow the Russian warnings that the transport of weapons would be treated as hostile targets.
The EU repeats the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the last hours of the Battle of Berlin. War must be left to the military and when a camp has lost, it must be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must be conducted and structured. However, we do exactly the opposite: we push citizens to go and fight simultaneously, Facebook authorizes the calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.
In some intelligence services, this irresponsible decision is seen as a way to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin's Russia. This kind of murderous decision had to be left to colleagues in Ursula von der Leyen's grandfather. It would have been wiser to enter into negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It's easy to be combative with the blood of others…
MARIOUPOL MATERNITY
It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army which defends Marioupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.
In his summary of the situation on March 7, 2022, the Russian UN mission in New York declares that « Residents report that Ukrainian armed forces expelled personnel from N ° 1 natal hospital in the city of Marioupol and installed a shooting station inside the establishment. »
March 8, the Russian independent media Lenta.ru, publishes the testimony of civilians from Marioupol who say that motherhood was taken by the militias of the Azov regiment, and chased the civilian occupants by threatening them with their weapons. They thus confirm the statements of the Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.
The Marioupol hospital occupies a dominant position, perfectly adequate for installing anti-tank weapons and for observation. On March 9, Russian forces hit the building. According to CNN, there are said to be 17 injured, but the images show no casualties on the premises and there is no evidence that the victims we are talking about are linked to this strike. We are talking about children, but in reality, we see nothing. It may be true, but it may be wrong ... Which doesn't stop EU leaders to see it as a war crime… which allows Zelensky to claim a no-fly zone over Ukraine right after…
In reality, we don't know exactly what happened. But the sequence of events tends to confirm that the Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that motherhood was then free from all civilians.
The problem is that paramilitary militias which defend cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the uses of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have replayed the scenario of the maternity from Kuwait City in 1990, which had been fully staged by Hill & Knowlton for $ 10.7 million to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for the operation Desert Shield / Storm.
Western politicians have accepted the Donbass civil strife for eight years, without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long entered a dynamic where Western policies have agreed to sacrifice international law for their purpose to weaken Russia.
PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS
As an ex-intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the complete absence of Western intelligence services in representing the situation in a year. In Swiss, we blamed services not to have provided a correct picture of the situation. In fact, it seems that services around the Western world have been overwhelmed by politics. The problem is that it is politicians who decide: the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision maker does not listen to it. This is what happened during this crisis.
However, while some intelligence services had a very precise and rational picture of the situation, others clearly had the same image as that propagated by our media. In this crisis, the services of the countries of the « new Europe » played an important role. The problem is that, from experience, I found that they were extremely bad analytically: doctrinaires, they do not have the intellectual and political independence necessary to assess a situation with a military « quality ». It is better to have them as enemies than as friends.
Second, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately ignored their services to respond ideologically to the situation. This is why this crisis was irrational from the start. It will be observed that all the documents which were presented to the public during this crisis were presented by policies on the basis of commercial sources…
Some Western politicians obviously wanted a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the Security Council were only the fruit of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him : he did exactly like Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, who had thus « bypassed » the CIA and the other intelligence services which were much less assertive on Iraqi chemical weapons.
The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we know of, but that we have refused to see :
– strategically, the expansion of NATO ( which we have not dealt with here ) ;
– politically, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements ;
– and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks by the civilian populations of Donbass for years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.
In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But US ( that is to say: the United States, France and the European Union at the head ) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. It's good. But if we had a minimum of compassion for the same number of refugees from Ukrainian Donbass populations massacred by their own government and who have accumulated in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.
That the term « genocide » applies to abuses suffered by the people of Donbass is an open question. This term is generally reserved for larger cases ( Holocaust, etc. ), however, the definition given by the Genocide Convention, is probably wide enough to apply to it. Jurists will appreciate it.
Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine respect the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, all of this would not have happened. Vladimir Putin's condemnation is also ours. There is no point in whining after the fact, you had to act before. However, neither Emmanuel Macron ( as guarantor and as a member of the UN Security Council ), nor Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have fulfilled their commitments. Ultimately, the real defeat is that of those who have no say.
The European Union was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements, on the contrary, it did not react when Ukraine bombed its own population in the Donbass. If she had, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react. Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU has distinguished itself by fueling the conflict. On February 27, the Ukrainian government is okay to start negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union votes a budget of 450 million euros to supply weapons to Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From there, the Ukrainians feel that they will not need to reach an agreement. Resistance of Azov militias in Marioupol will even provoke a recovery of 500 million euros for weapons.
In Ukraine, with the blessing of Western countries, those who favor negotiation are eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, murdered on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service ( SBU ) because it is too favorable to Russia and is considered to be a traitor. The same fate is reserved for Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy chief of the main management of the SBU for Kiev and its region, murdered on March 10, because too favorable to an agreement with Russia: it is shot down by the militia Mirotvorets ( « Peacemaker » ). This militia is associated with the website Mirotvorets which lists the « enemies of Ukraine », with their personal data, address and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated ; a punishable practice in many countries, but not in Ukraine. The UN and some European countries demanded its closure ... refused by the Rada.
Ultimately, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin is likely to achieve the goals he set for himself. His ties with Beijing have solidified. China is emerging as a mediator of the conflict, while Switzerland is entering the list of enemies of Russia. Americans must ask for oil from Venezuela and Iran to break the energy deadlock they have put in : Juan Guaido definitively leaves the scene and the United States must return pitifully to the sanctions imposed on their enemies.
Western ministers seeking to do collapse Russian economy and make sure that Russian people in suffers, even call for murder Putin, show ( even if they have partially returned to the form of their words, but not to the bottom! ) that our leaders are no better than those we hate. Because punishing Russian athletes for para-Olympic games or Russian artists has absolutely nothing to do with a fight against Putin.
Thus, we therefore recognize that Russia is a democracy since we consider that the Russian people are responsible for the war. If not, then why are we trying to punish an entire population for the fault of one ? Remember that collective punishment is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions…
The lesson to be learned from this conflict is our sense of humanity variable geometry. If we were so attached to peace and Ukraine, why did we not encourage it more to respect the agreements it had signed and that the members of the Security Council had approved ?
Media integrity is measured by their willingness to work under the Munich Charter. They had managed to spread the hatred of Chinese during the Covid crisis and their polarized message leads to same effects against Russians. Journalism is increasingly stripped of professionalism to become an activist…
As Goethe said: « The greater the light, the darker the shadow ». The more disproportionate the sanctions against Russia, the more cases where we have done nothing highlight our racism and servility. Why has no Western politician responded to the strikes against the Donbass civilian populations for eight years ?
Because ultimately, what makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya ? What sanctions have we adopted against those who have deliberately lied before the international community to wage unjust, unjustified, unjustifiable and murderous wars ? Have we tried to « make » suffer the American people who had lied to us ( because it is a democracy! ) before the war in Iraq ? Have we only adopted a single sanction against countries, companies or politicians who supply arms to the Yemen conflict, considered to be « worst humanitarian disaster in the world » ? Have we punished the countries of the European Union which practice the most abject torture on their territory for the benefit of the United States ?
To ask the question is to answer it ... and the answer is not glorious.
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Jacques Baud is a former general staff colonel, a former Swiss strategic intelligence member, a specialist in Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He was chief of the United Nations peace operations doctrine. An expert from the United Nations for the rule of law and security institutions, he designed and directed the first multidimensional United Nations intelligence service in Sudan. He worked for the African Union and was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms at NATO for 5 years. He was engaged in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 and then participated in assistance programs for Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, and in particular The Misappropriation of SIGEST editions, Governed by the fake news, The Navalny affair, and Putin, game master ? to Max Milo editions.
His latest work « Putin, master of the game ? », Max Milo editions, is published on March 16, 2022.
https://cf2r.org/documentation/la-situation-militaire-en-ukraine/
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