New Delhi, (Samajweekly) As Russia’s special operations in Ukraine entered its fourteenth day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine will no longer be seeking NATO membership as the alliance is not prepared to accept Ukraine and is afraid to confront Russia. “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that … NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an interview, Monday night on ABC News.
He has also added that he is open to “compromise” on the status of two breakaway pro-Russian territories that President Vladimir Putin recognised as independent just before unleashing the invasion on February 24.
Finally, Zelensky may be getting it right when he said that he does not want to be President of a “country which is begging (for) something on its knees”. The West has been eulogising and lionising him and the Ukrainian people, while demonising Russia and its actions in Ukraine. Yet, it has done very little to help Ukraine in ways that it would have wanted.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the United Nations, said as recently as on March 6 that US troops will not be ‘on the ground or in the air’ in Ukraine. She said doing this will “escalate this war and make this an American war against the Russians”. The US has rejected Poland’s offer to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine through a US airbase, saying it was “not tenable” as the proposal raised “serious concerns” for the entire NATO alliance. Washington and its NATO allies have also resisted Ukraine’s appeals for a no-fly zone for fear that it would escalate the conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders.
But Thomas-Greenfield added that, “We’ve also been very clear that we will support Ukraine in every other way possible. We have provided them over a billion dollars in support over the course of the past few days.”
Meanwhile more than 1.5 million Ukrainians — the Ukrainian government says two million — have fled the country to safer places, generating Europe’s and the world’s latest wave of refugees. Russia, in spite of the spate of sanctions on it announced by the West has kept up its operations unrelented.
So, in brief Washington and its allies are helping the indirect destruction of Ukraine and its people in every other way possible.
The way President Zelensky has been broadcasting his bravado and that of his people call to mind another leader who recently led his people to defeat — former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. All the way that the Taliban — with Washington’s support — were closing in on Afghanistan, Ghani kept boasting that they were winning the battle while his government would win the war. That ended when Ghani fled Kabul while the Taliban patiently waited at the gates of Kabul. The rest is history. A recent UN report shows that nearly 400 civilians have been killed in attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over.
Parallels between Russian assault on Ukraine and its intervention in Afghanistan have been drawn since the beginning of the crisis.
We do not know how the conflict will turn out for Russia in the long run. There is always a price to pay. But we should not forget that while the Afghan jihad catalysed the collapse of the USSR, independent states emerged often happier. Certainly, the Russian Federation after the customary birthing pains emerged strong and modern, even more democratic and liberal than the Soviet Union. It remained a power to be reckoned with, which is why NATO is cleverly avoiding a direct confrontation with it, while fighting to “the last Ukrainian”. As written in an earlier column, major non-NATO powers like India, China, and including some of Washington’s own close allies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have refused to toe Washington’s line, in tacit support to Russia. And this not because of Washington’s waning influence alone, but because of strong ties with Russia. Even European Union member states have demonstrated their differences towards Washington regarding gas supplies from Russia.
But, going back to the Afghan jihad — how has Afghanistan fared in all these years since the Soviet invasion? The Soviets left in 1989 but since then, Afghanistan has not known peace; it has turned into a metaphor for a failed state, its citizens living in perpetual chaos, poverty and violence; a sanctuary for every known Islamist terror group.
This is exactly what Ukraine seems to be heading for. In what seems to be a simulation of the Afghan jihad in a “European” context, Ukraine has called for foreigners to join the war against Russia; no doubt their participation will be bankrolled by Washington and its NATO allies. Zelensky on Sunday appealed to foreign citizens to come to Ukraine and fight the Russians along his country’s armed forces. “Anyone who wants to join the defence of Ukraine, Europe and the world can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals,” Zelensky said in a statement published on the presidential website on Sunday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has told CNN that some 20,000 international volunteers have travelled to Ukraine to join in the fight against Russian troops. They include, among other Swedes, and Britons. An Indian has also reportedly signed up.
“Many people in the world hated Russia and what it was doing in recent years, but no one dared to openly oppose and fight them,” Kuleba said. “So, when people saw that Ukrainians are fighting, that Ukrainians are not giving up, many felt motivated to join the fight.”
No one knows what will happen to these volunteers, the home countries of many of whom ban such activities. But we do know what happened to the jihadis who flocked to Afghanistan to defeat the Soviets. They have ensured that peace remains elusive in Afghanistan more than three decades after the Soviets left Afghanistan. Many of them took the jihad back to their own countries. And their main backer Washington again recently officially delivered the country to a UN proscribed terrorist group.
Ukraine, the cradle of Kieskaya Rus, the forerunner of the modern Russian nation, do you want a similar fate?
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