I mean after the ‘peace deal’ brings about a ceasefire and an end to the death and destruction……..this is a ‘what then’ post…..
At the onset of this conflict the Ukrainian president promised to arm everyone that would call for a weapon…..if he was successful then that would mean that Ukraine is awash with weapons….that is concerning at least for me.
Why you may ask….
To explain my thinking let us step back to WW2 and the Nazi invasion of Ukraine…..
Ukrainians fought on both sides in the Second World War. By far the majority of ethnic Ukrainians, about 4.5 million, fought in the Red Army against the Germans. Others joined the Communist partisans (see Soviet partisans in Ukraine, 1941–5), who included the prominent commander Sydir Kovpak. There were also Ukrainian volunteer units in the German army, however, specifically the Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists (the Nachtigall and Roland units, which marched into Lviv in June 1941 together with the Germans) and the Waffen SS Division Galizien (est April 1943). By the time the latter unit was formed, it seemed more likely that Germany was going to lose the war, and Ukrainian nationalists wanted to have trained troops and weapons ready for an eventual confrontation with the Soviets. There were also Ukrainians who fought in an independent formation, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), under the leadership of the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In the spring of 1943 thousands of Ukrainian policemen in German service deserted to form the fighting nucleus of the UPA, which then attacked German outposts. At the same time the UPA began liquidating Polish settlements in Volhynia, and this soon escalated into full-scale Polish-Ukrainian ethnic warfare across Western Ukraine. The UPA continued guerrilla warfare against the Soviet authorities into the mid-1950s.
As you can see there were mixed loyalties within the Ukrainian society…..
Some collaborated with the Nazis and committed atrocities against other Ukrainians….and other joined the partisans and committed atrocities against the Nazis and collaborators.
That brings us to today……
A country awash with weapons of all sorts to be used against fellow Ukrainians….is that a possibility?
To my mind there is the real possibility of a civil war….both politically and physically….
Let’s not forget Afghanistan of the 1980s…..we helped create al-Qaeda as a force to fight against the Russian invaders….or the chaos we created in Libya….could we repeating our mistake just to confront Russia yet again?
What got me thinking about this was a report on CNN talking to some troops defending a town in Eastern Ukraine….I noticed they were not flying the yellow and blue flag of Ukraine…instead there was a red and black flag flown on the position….
(This is not the men of the position just an example of the flag I saw)
The neo-Nazi Azov battalion is fighting hard….but for who is their loyalties?
“I have nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia,” said Dmitry, as we sped through the dark Mariupol night in a pickup truck, a machine gunner positioned in the back. “But Putin’s not even a Russian. Putin’s a Jew.”
Dmitry – which he said is not his real name – is a native of east Ukraine and a member of the Azov battalion, a volunteer grouping that has been doing much of the frontline fighting in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russia separatists. The Azov, one of many volunteer brigades to fight alongside the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, has developed a reputation for fearlessness in battle.
But there is an increasing worry that while the Azov and other volunteer battalions might be Ukraine’s most potent and reliable force on the battlefield against the separatists, they also pose the most serious threat to the Ukrainian government, and perhaps even the state, when the conflict in the east is over. The Azov causes particular concern due to the far right, even neo-Nazi, leanings of many of its members.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right-fighters-ukraine-neo-nazis
All these weapons were and other NATO members are sending into Ukrainian worries me that we are making the same mistake in Ukraine that we made in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, so many others…..we are arming the future insurrection that would threaten the very democracy we claim to be supporting.
Everyone witnessed the ‘brave’ mayor of a Ukrainian town that stood before the people and told them they had a choice….surrender or fight….FIGHT it was.
Here is a little info on the ‘brave’ mayor…
It was an especially inspiring story of Ukrainian bravery, in a war replete with many of them. In video that spread quickly online on March 2, Artem Semenikhin, the mayor of the small city of Konotop, in northeastern Ukraine, stood on a planter outside the City Council and announced to a crowd that Russian soldiers had told him they would “raze the city to the ground with their artillery” if it did not surrender. Then Semenikhin asked the crowd whether they wanted to fight anyway, and the response was overwhelmingly in favor.
The video was picked up by Western media outlets including Newsweek, the Daily Mail and the New York Times, which also showed a video of armed Russian troops being jeered by Konotop residents. Semenikhin was also featured in a “PBS NewsHour” segment, in which he referred to the Russian troops as “cockroaches.”
There was just one thing missing from those accounts: the fact that Semenikhin is a member of the far-right, ultranationalist Ukrainian political party Svoboda, which emerged in 2004 from the former Social-National Party of Ukraine.
Alan MacLeod, a writer for the far-left website MintPress News, noted on Twitter that in Semenikhin’s interview with PBS, conducted remotely via video, one can see a painting of Ukrainian nationalist icon Stepan Bandera in the background. During the early part of World War II, Bandera led a faction of Organization of Ukrainian nationalists, an openly anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with Nazi Germany and killed Polish and Jewish civilians. At the time, Nazi troops were invading the Soviet Union, which Ukrainian nationalists were hoping to break away from. Bandera later had a falling out with the Nazi regime and was imprisoned in a concentration camp. He remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine. After Semenikhin was elected in 2015, he replaced the portrait in the mayor’s office of then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with one of Bandera.
(yahoo news)
This situation needs close scrutiny or we will have another ‘problem’ region ripe for further conflict…..
For those that need a bit more information I will provide a few articles to read…..
https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-truth-about-ukraines-nazi-militias/
Winning ‘hearts’ and PR war, but Ukraine has a “Nazi” problem that NATO and USA do not talk about
The Presence of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
After the war with Russia is done….the internal conflict could become just as bloody if the situation is not handled by those that created the problem….the US and NATO.
Turn The Page!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 
People do not seem to want to know about the neo-Nazi units in Ukraine, or what they were doing before the Russian invasion. (Being trained by the CIA, for one thing.) All they want to hear is about ‘heroic resistance’, and most of the video supplied to the west comes from the Azov battallions, which have their own media channel. Whilst nobody condones the Russian invasion, it makes sense to try to see the other side of that war.
Best wishes, Pete.
Like all propaganda there needs to be a modicum of truth to make it believable…..the Nazification thing was such a ‘truth’…..chuq
When this is all over, we’ll hop in and rebuild them. What else is new….
A typical scenario……more money wasted that we need here…..chuq
Exactly.