Ilya Rogachev
Pretoria - Today, the attention of the entire world is concentrated on the situation in Ukraine. The first reaction is highly emotional, and understandably so.
The desire for peace that many people express is natural. An armed conflict is always a tragedy. Rest assured that the situation in Ukraine is a tragedy for both Russia and Ukraine.
Russians consider Ukrainians as brotherly people in the full sense of the word. It is heartbreaking for Russians to fight Ukrainians, but we are compelled to do so for several reasons.
Among these are the genocide of the Russians in the Donbass region – “aggression against everything Russian”, as our Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said – in particular, the massacre in Odessa on May 2, 2014, and the strategic threat to Russia’s national security coming from the territory of Ukraine. Not from Ukraine itself, mind you, Ukraine fell victim to the Western anti-Russian machinations and its corrupt, blindly pro-Western elites, ready to even murder their own people if it serves the West’s interest.
For decades, Nato has been enhancing its military presence in Ukraine by conducting joint exercises with Ukraine and other military activities such as constructing various military objects.
That being said, we would like to give you a more factual account of the situation.
The Western narrative on the situation in Ukraine is intentionally decontextualised to make you concentrate on separate TV screen shots and to deprive you of the opportunity to see the root cause of the conflict. The Western media and officials are trying their hardest to whip up anti-Russian hysteria, just as they have done before.
For almost eight years, since 2014 when an unconstitutional coup took place in Kiev and ultranationalists and neo-Nazis gained decisive influence over the Ukrainian government, the Donbass region has been constantly (almost daily) bombarded and shelled by Ukrainian armed forces.
The attacks claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people, including women and children.
Mass graves of civilians, killed by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime, ultra-nationalist battalions and the Ukrainian army, are terrifying evidence of the crimes that the Ukrainian authorities have committed.
There is a very special memorial complex in Donetsk – the Alley of Angels. It is dedicated to the children whose lives were taken by the Kiev regime.
The children of Donbass have seen death and destruction from a tender age. Just imagine: those of them who were born in 2014 or later have seen nothing but war in their lives. They live in shelters, hiding from bombs and artillery shells coming from the positions of Ukrainian forces.
And for how much longer did the West expect Russia to watch Ukraine fall further under the yoke of neo-Nazism with the West’s acquiescence and silent approval ?
What are the almost 4 million innocent people punished for? For not supporting the unconstitutional coup in Kiev, for their choice to speak their native tongue – Russian, and for remaining true to themselves?
Modern Ukraine, despite boasting of its adherence to democratic values (we’ve been told numerous times that the so-called Revolution of Dignity brought “true democracy and freedom” to Ukraine), responded to those who disagreed with the coup, not with frank and open dialogue, but with the outright slaughter of innocent people. Not just in the Donbass region, not just in Lugansk and Donetsk, but in other cities as well.
For example, Odessa. On May 2, 2014, the Odessa Massacre or Trade Union House Fire took place. Civilians (again, civilians) who took part in a demonstration protesting against the unconstitutional coup in Kiev were blocked by the Ukrainian ultranationalists in the Trade Unions’ House. The building was torched. Forty-two people were burnt alive. Others jumped out of the windows and a crowd of armed ultranationalists rushed to make sure they finished them.
Eight years later, no perpetrators have been found, practically no investigation conducted. Apparently arson and murder are not crimes punishable by law in “democratic” Ukraine.
Judging by the Kiev regime’s actions in Donbass and Odessa, it is safe to assume that if the Crimeans hadn’t decided to hold a referendum to join Russia, they would have suffered the same fate. Russian and other languages are being discriminated against in modern Ukraine, as the Kiev regime has been building a dense atmosphere of xenophobia.
The rights of national minorities are enshrined in the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and UN documents, but the West in general, and the so-called free media in particular, consistently ignored that.
We have some questions for all the activists and “paragons of democracy and human rights”: Where have you all been all these years? Why haven’t we seen any demonstrations, petitions and calls to stop killing the innocent people of Donbass?
Why has nobody urged Ukrainian authorities to stop killing journalists (such as Oles Buzina) and investigate the Odessa Massacre? Why did nobody notice (or should we say, preferred not to notice?) the evident rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine?
Russia, on the other hand, provided the people of Donbass with humanitarian aid by sending dozens of humanitarian convoys. Has the EU been sending aid to innocent people in Donbass? Of course not. Even today, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described Russia’s warnings of literal genocide in Donbass as “laughable”. The West is laughing at people’s sufferings if those people are not pro-Western. The West is laughing at dying children. The West is laughing at the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. The West is laughing at mass graves.
For Russia, there is nothing laughable about genocide and Nazism, perhaps because our recollections of World War II are vivid. There are torchlight processions in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in honour of Nazi collaborators of the WWII era, such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Schukhevich.
The marches and processions are guarded by the police, which proves that Nazism is a state-approved and state-supported policy in Ukraine.
The West is, once again, blind and deaf towards all this. Even to the statement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine wanted to redevelop nuclear weapons. Nazis with nuclear weapons equals the end of the world. Against this background, Russia, after eight years of countless attempts to stop the Kyiv regime’s crimes or to convince the West to use its influence over Kyiv to make them implement the Minsk Agreements, had to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and intervene with a special military operation to pre-empt an imminent attack on Donbass. It was planned for later in March.
Of course, now, the West tries to portray Russia as a merciless aggressor who invaded Ukraine for “no reason”. Yet the military action could have been avoided. For 30 years Russia has been warning the West that Ukraine’s status as a Nato member or Nato’s use of Ukrainian territory, even without Ukraine’s membership, is strictly unacceptable for Russia as it poses a threat to its national security. The draft agreements on security guarantee that Russia proposed to the US and Nato in December last year were another effort in this area. Such guarantees would have resolved our security concerns vis-à-vis Ukraine.
Yet, unfortunately, what Russia got in response was nothing but arrogance and disrespect for Russia’s reasoned concerns. Russia intervened to protect the innocent (all claims that Russia is attacking civilians are false. Russian troops attack only military infrastructure), to de-Nazify and demilitarise Ukraine. We did not come to start a war; we came to stop the war that the Kiev regime had been conducting against common Ukrainians, and to prevent a global war.
The West showed no sign that it cared about people’s lives. It makes itself look like a “champion of humanism” only when it is beneficial to the West itself. In fact, the West is okay with everything, including Nazism, genocide, war, colonialism or slavery, if it serves the West’s interests. Even now it delivers weapons (while calling for peace, mind you) to Ukrainian Nazis who hide behind the backs of civilians, using them as human shields, like terrorists.
The West also tries to benefit from the situation economically by imposing sanctions against Russia – the pinnacle of cynicism.
It is also worth mentioning that today we see attempts to “attach” Ukraine with the USSR’s legacy. Ukraine, like Russia, being part of the Soviet Union, helped South Africans in their Struggle against the apartheid regime. The only question is: Why did Ukraine “remember” it just now? For 30 years Ukraine has been vehemently denying its Soviet legacy, its authorities carried out the so-called “decommunisation” or “desovietisation”. The Soviet symbols: flag, anthem, sickle and hammer, red star and their variations – are prohibited in Ukraine by law.
However, the Nazi symbols, such as the swastika or SS (paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany) emblem are not prohibited in Ukraine’s legislation. By the way, according to a joint opinion of the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR, published on December 18, 2015, the law of Ukraine on the condemnation of the communist and national socialist (Nazi) regimes and prohibition of propaganda of their symbols does not comply with European legislative standards. Was this a problem for anyone in the West? Hardly so.
Ukraine has been consistently destroying all manifestations of its Soviet past. The monuments to Soviet leaders have been dismantled, the streets and squares of Ukrainian cities, named in honour of Soviet heroes who fought Nazism, have been renamed, honouring Nazis! For example, Vatutin tram station in Kyiv (named after Nikolai Vatutin – Hero of the Soviet Union, a man who contributed greatly to the liberation of Soviet Ukraine from Nazi invaders), now bears the name of Roman Shukhevich – a World War II Nazi collaborator.
While conducting the so-called decommunisation, Ukraine hardly thought of the common history that the USSR and African nations have built. It had different priorities, most notably, seeking approval from the West by any means necessary. Even if it cost Ukraine its own history, its own achievements, the ties of common Ukrainians with other peoples and, ultimately, its real independence. Even at the cost of turning Ukraine into a foothold for a foreign military alliance. Or even for biological laboratories, funded by the US Department of Defence.
According to Russian MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova: “During the special military operation in Ukraine, the Kiev regime was found to have been concealing traces of a military biological programme implemented with funding from the US Department of Defence.” Even if you are sceptical about the information coming from the Russian side, please note that this has been confirmed by US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland: “Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
She said that answering a direct question at Congressional hearings on March 8. Why is that, we wonder? What research has been carried out in these laboratories?
To quote Maria Zakharova again: “Documentation on the urgent eradication of highly hazardous pathogens of plague, anthrax, rabbit fever, cholera and other lethal diseases on February 24 was received from employees of Ukrainian biolaboratories.
“This included an instruction from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine on the urgent eradication of stored reserves of highly hazardous pathogens sent to all biolaboratories. These materials can be found on the internet portal of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation.” What we can say is that American and Ukrainian scientists were working in these labs, in particular, to enhance the pathogenic capacities of the viruses. Since then, the Russian military has attained more documents corroborating our worst suspicions on the matter, and we will certainly come back to you on this.
Against this background, we stress again that Russia intervened not because it wanted to, but because it had to. Nato’s arrogance and disrespect towards Russia’s position is what led to this situation. The Russian special military operation was a forced move. It is intervened to prevent a far greater disaster.
The rise of neo-Nazism on our doorstep cannot stand. The killings of innocent people in Donbass by the Kyiv regime cannot stand. Nato using Ukraine’s territory cannot stand.
Pretoria News