Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.
“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
You said the other commenter’s point seemed to be ‘because America did bad things we must let bad things happen’. That wasn’t their point, at least not to my reading of it. I read it as trying to highlight the hypocrisy of the international community, which usually means the USA and associated countries.
None of this is to excuse the war in Ukraine, but if the international community is to mean anything, and to have any legitimacy, it needs to apply the rules across the board. Since it doesn’t mean anything beyond what is good for the US/corporate interests, the rules have not, and will not be applied evenly.
The US is not trying to do the right thing, it is trying to advance it’s interests in the region at the expense of Russia, and unfortunately for Ukrainians at the expense of them too, even if it benefits Ukraine as a state. The fact that the US can wage so many destructive wars that are later acknowledged as mistakes and still be seen as trying to do the right thing shows how effective the propaganda arm of the country is.
But who cares if the US is trying to advance its interests in the region? Again, Russia is waging an unjust war of territorial aggression against Ukraine. That’s wrong and immoral on the face of it and should be resisted. If the US is willing to intervene, I honestly don’t care if they achieve strategic objectives on the side. I am interested in opposing imperialism, which, in this case, the US is doing.
Ok, fair enough. But the achieving strategic objectives isn’t on the side, it’s the primary aim. People can see that and still support the US supporting Ukraine, but it seems so many people just think that the US are ‘the good guys’. They aren’t. No one is. The Ukrainian government aren’t the good guys, stopping people from leaving the country and forcing them to fight, and honouring Bandera and Azov. The Russian government aren’t the good guys, conscripting their own citizens to fight people they say are their brothers, and their denazifying rhetoric might have had some pull if they didn’t trade back those very Nazis after Azovstahl. The US government and the collective west aren’t the good guys, supplying just enough weaponry to keep Ukraine in the fight, then upping support when it looks bad.
Also, going back to my talk about precedents set by the USA, this sets a precedent for other countries to overtly arm, fund, train, and supply intelligence to their direct opponents in any if their future aggressive wars. If the counterargument to that is, ‘well, they can try, but we will fuck them up,’ then we are in might makes right territory, which is more or less how the US currently operates, but clearly not ideal.
But this has been true of conflicts in the modern era before now. Hand-wringing about this one in particular seems extremely selective to me. But, you do you.
Well, I’m not just hand-wringing about this particular conflict. We are in a thread about this conflict and I am trying to explain my viewpoint on why bringing up the warcrimes of the US and allies is not simply whataboutism.