Two years after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine it is necessary to
try to take stock of what is happening also because with the passage oftime the reasons of one another seem to become obscured and everything
becomes confused and turns into the chronicle of a terrible war which
until now has produced - beyond what the major states of both sides say
- more than a million deaths and devastated not only the invaded
country, but also the aggressor and the whole of Europe, upsetting the
geopolitical relations between the West and Russia. ---- In 2019,
Zelensky's election to the Presidency of the Republic seemed to open the
way to a possible era of peace; his Jewish origins seemed to place him
out of contention among Orthodox linked to the Patriarchate of
Constantinople.
and Orthodox linked to the Patriarchate of Moscow, as had happened with
the Presidents of the Republic who preceded him.[1]The negotiations in
Minsk dragged on, but it seemed that the dispute over Crimea and the
provinces of Donbass could be concluded on the basis of a negotiation
which, by modifying the structure of the Ukrainian state in a federal
sense, would allow the desired autonomy of some territories and put an
end to the conflict. In reality, the balance between the various actors
in the field had already been broken on both sides, on the one hand with
the invasion of Crimea and the insurrection of the eastern Ukrainian
provinces and on the other with Brexit which, putting an end to the
collaboration of the Russia with Europe reopened the competition between
the different forces operating on the continent. As is known, it was
Putin who cast the dice, planning and implementing a criminal, crazy and
unprepared aggression against Ukraine, thinking of a special operation,
believing he could behave like NATO in the former Yugoslavia, and not
realizing that many other forces had entered the field and that the
project of restructuring
the world order had already been underway for some time.
Imperial nostalgia
Incapable of thinking about a future of peace and cooperation, all the
actors in the field were thinking about the past, dreaming of restoring
empires: Putin of rebuilding imperial Russia or at least Soviet Russia,
with the support of Patriarch Kyrill, the new ideologist of the reborn
empire; the Patriarchate of Constantinople to become the interlocutor of
the new Western Empire with its capital in Brussels, representing the
Orthodox ecumene, reinforcing with the entry of the Ukrainians under its
jurisdiction, the number and consistency of Western Orthodoxy; the
United States to consolidate their shaky leadership: Great Britain to
rediscover the empire, bringing together the scattered members of the
former British colonies, to give life to a revisited Commonwealth , as a
condition to shore up its possible dissolution and in the hope of
hegemonizing the North Atlantic partnership, leading an Anglo-Saxon
aggregation. The project found support in
Turkey's aspirations to rebuild its empire, while Europe still seemed to
be prey to its dream of building a United States of Europe.
The destruction of the long column of Russian tanks that was heading
towards Kiev, in the illusion of making it fall and was blocked and
forced to retreat by Ukrainian drones, had in fact been heralded by the
early closure, before it was inaugurated and came into operation, of
Nord Stream 2 which, by providing low-cost energy to continental Europe,
was the only antidote to the conflict that was brewing, as it created a
formidable economic link between Europe's energy interests and Russia
and constituted the axis on which was based on the green policy of the
European Commission,
which upon its establishment had bet on a long period of low-cost energy
to prepare to implement a transformation of the economic structure of
the continent which would give the European area characteristics and
competitive dimensions compared to the economies of the North Atlantic,
China and those of emerging countries.
The Ukrainian war has laid the foundations for canceling Europe's green
dream: we are realizing this in recent days with the launch of the
political program of the new European Commission induced to transform
the European economy into a war economy and to see only rearmament as
the path possible for a future development of cohesion in Europe.
The special operation
Once the so-called "special operation" was launched, Putin signed two
partial decrees.
Having 2.2 million enlisted men, he has mobilized 1,200,000 of them and
still has another 880,000 reservists ready.
Fighting in Ukraine is economically worthwhile: a Russian soldier earns
on average 2,135 euros a month, compared to 560 for a university
professor. If the soldier dies, the family receives the equivalent of
55,000 dollars (32,500 in case of serious injury); Despite this, it is
not known exactly how many Russians fled abroad to avoid being drafted: the
Government speaks of 155 thousand draft resisters, but last May,
according to the British Government there were 1.3 million.
Those who escape go to Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, before the border
closure in Finland and now to countries where visas are not required.
Kazakhstan, after an initial invasion of defectors, reduced permits. The
EU has received 17 thousand requests for political asylum, but has only
accepted two thousand. Until March 17, when he will be re-elected
President for the fifth time, Putin will avoid new recruitments and thus
any protests: since the beginning of the war 5,844 protesters have been
arrested in 60 cities. As for the costs of the war, according to the
Economist , fixed annual military spending is 60 billion dollars, while
public spending has increased by 40% and the war is costing the Russians
67 billion dollars a year in public deficit , while 3% of GDP is spent
to support production, support welfare, support the families who send
men to the front. An estimate by the military magazine Sofrep - reports
Corriere della Sera - indicates a much higher overall cost for 2022: 900
million dollars per day.
Regarding the sanctions, it must be said that the lack of application of
countries such as China, India, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa
and the role of Moscow within the BRICS have allowed triangulations and
the procurement of all types of products, including technological ones ,
necessary to support the war effort and the production of weapons.
Conversely,
according to the Financial Times , the war burned more than one hundred
billion in profits of 600 large and medium-sized European companies
doing business in Moscow, not counting the costs resulting from the
increase in energy and raw materials.
The great almoner
The war is estimated to cost Kiev 10 billion dollars a month. The great
almoner Zelensky, "servant of the people" (this was the name of the
character in the TV drama that brought him to power), is responsible for
procuring the resources. Once elected President, he took on the role and
transformed himself into a hero. wearing the robes and role of a "seeker
friar" and, dressed in military tunics, he constantly begs between the
chancelleries of Europe and those of North America, to squeeze out the
funding necessary to wage war by proxy and to support a failed state.
The EU has so far paid the Ukrainians 85 billion of which: 25 in
technical and military equipment, 60 in financing.
According to the Germans at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy ,
the USA gave 47 billion in armaments and Great Britain 18. According to
the World Bank accounts, a total of 17 billion a month arrived from the
West, including weapons and support for an economy which no longer
produces income and in almost two years has burned 200 billion between
collapsed industries and
large foreign investors who have fled. Ukrainian state spending to pay
for public administration, to keep schools and hospitals open, to keep
transport running, in 2022 alone, was 75 billion: Western loans covered
32 billion
. Corruption, however, reaches very high levels and sees a a conspicuous
part of the resources obtained go towards the pockets of the Ukrainian
oligarchs who profit from war supplies, as well as from the sale of
foodstuffs, who profit from the management of recruitment, trading in
exemption from military service, who are
buying the destroyed Ukraine , piece by piece, preparing to sell it to
the highest bidder and exploiting the war economy in every way.[2]This
while the country is tired and exhausted, while an entire generation of
citizens is sent to slaughter on the battlefields or falls victim to
bombing, while the Ukrainian people are
dispersed into exile. At the beginning of the war, the Ukrainians
declared they had 10 million enlisted men, even though the army numbered
250,000 men: now they have around 700,000 soldiers. Among the 8 million
refugees in Europe, there are 650 thousand eligible for recall;
Furthermore, draft evasion has increased, with 300 thousand "ambushes"
and corruption phenomena:
there are many who could be called up to arms who are hiding to escape
recruitment patrols.
This is why Zelensky changed the recruitment rules by calling women into
service: today there are 43 thousand (40% more than in 2021) and they
have been admitted to the roles of machine gunner, sniper and tank
commander, while parliament is unable to approve the new rules on
mobilization.
Then there is the refusal to enlist in some areas of the country,
dictated by ethnic origin. Anyone who knows Ukraine knows that the
current resistance to the draft of the Hungarian-speaking and cultured
populations arises from the awareness of their extraneousness to the
nation; he knows of the resistance in supporting the central Ukrainian
state on the part of the
Romanian-speaking minority, deprived of its schools and its Church; he
should have the honesty to recognize the presence of a Russian-speaking
component, certainly present in the eastern provinces, however
widespread in the country, even if now marginalized by the
conflict.
If for no other reason than for these reasons it would be necessary to
do everything to sit around a table as soon as possible and negotiate,
finally looking clearly at the interests at stake and clarifying the
real borders of a country whose territory was built as the result of now
outdated geopolitical structures. including in the territory ethnic
linguistic minorities belonging to neighboring countries. According to
the New York Times , which uses both UN and US intelligence sources, the
war has caused more than 6,000,000 deaths and injuries on both sides,
including soldiers and civilians; the environmental damage produced so
far in the soil, in the aquifers, in CO2 emissions is incalculable.
Therefore we should aim for peace and open a negotiation that will have
to put an end to the war so that Ukraine can ask for and obtain
everyone's solidarity, rather than fueling a conflict that has simply
become a massacre on both sides, to allow the country to give space to
institutional reforms, to guarantee territorial autonomy, which allow
its cohesion, calling citizens to express their opinion on these issues
through referendums conducted with the guarantee of neutral
international observers.
We need to have the courage to realize that the war, if on the one hand
it fueled Ukrainian nationalism, on the other it stimulated the
centrifugal forces of minorities and fueled particularism; the adoption
of martial law is the centralization of state decisions, the imposition
of a religion and an official Church, the denial of religious freedom,
the suffocation of linguistic differences, instead of uniting the
country they have created a further division that the common suffering
due to the external enemy, the bombings, the war, the common sacrifices
are not enough to compensate. The result is a country whose territory is
today devastated, covered in explosive devices, polluted by the fighting
that takes place there, with a population reduced to the limit and at a
minimum because around 8 million Ukrainians have abandoned the country
and, apparently , have no intention of returning there, also because the
more time passes, the longer they live in other countries and other
societies and become rooted there, the stronger the tendency is not to
leave what has been built in a new social reality, rather than returning
to the ancient, non-existent and crumbling past.
Ukraine, Russia and us
As far as we are concerned, we have no sympathy either for Putin, nor
for Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow, nor for the social program of the
Russian Orthodox Church that Puntin has made his own. We consider the
values of which this Church is the bearer as the most regressive there
is for a free society, for a rule of law, for the realization of the
principle of freedom and equality. The profound rejection of the
democracy that governs the Putin regime, however, does not prevent us
from seeing the limits of its superficial opponents who supported the
supremacy of the White Russians over the other peoples of Russia,
racism, the values of deep and imperial Russia, the Russian nationalism.
At the same time we do not support the regime that currently governs
Ukraine, which is a mirror image of the Russian one, it passes itself
off as democratic, despite being illiberal, autocratic, authoritarian,
oligarchic no more and no less than the one it fights; it has outlawed
11 opposition political parties, with the excuse of war it does not hold
elections even though the mandate of parliament and the President have
expired; is led by a political class and a military oligarchy that
aspires to enter Europe for the sole purpose of favoring a
well-identified group of oligarchs and multinationals who aim to make
profits, regardless of presenting the account of their earnings to the
peoples of Europe and to the Ukrainian people themselves, who are the
true, first and main victims of this operation, especially since they
pay the price with the death of their citizens for a war presented as a
war of freedom, in the name of self-government, but in reality conducted
by proxy, in the name and on behalf of superpowers who fight in defense
of their exclusive interests and who use Ukrainian men and women as
cannon fodder. The hatred sown liberally by the Ukrainian paramilitary
formations, the sick nationalism of the state boyars who appropriated
the lands and collective economic activities, auctioned off after the
collapse of the USSR, who enriched themselves like their followers
Russians, by impoverishing the people, are allowing the massacre of the
populations and the desertification of the territories, resurrecting
from the folds of history the memory of the worst experiences of those
populations, digging up the Ukraine of the country as a glorious
experience of which to be proud intolerance, of pogroms, of religious
and political fanaticism, of the discrimination of the many ethnic
groups and peoples present in its territory, assigning to a brotherhood
of criminal priests and thieves, the task of governing the destinies of
a people.
Faced with this tragedy, the European peoples, in defense of their
interests and of the Ukrainian people themselves, as well as of peace,
have only one possible choice: to fight against the conversion of the
industrial apparatus of their states into a war economy, to ask for
immediate peace and immediately for Ukraine and the opening of
negotiations. What is under discussion is the possibility of having the
resources necessary to support the health systems, the school systems,
the livelihood of the populations, the material and human well-being of
their peoples, and above all the possibility of avoiding war and the
possibility that it degenerates in a nuclear conflict.
To achieve this result, the first step is that the reformist forces
present in the various countries and preparing for the elections for the
European Parliament assume a common position of rejection of the war,
because only through this choice can these forces recover a clearly
left-wing and be recognizable by the voters, which would allow them to
regain credit and consensus, making them prevail over the right due to
their intentions and for their purposes. Without this clear choice,
political ambiguity prevails, pushing towards abstentionism and
disinterest, towards that lack of participation which allows nationalist
and conservative forces to prevail.
[1]G. Cimbalo, The evolution of relations between State and Churches in
New Ukraine. In search of Autocephaly in "Law and Religions" 2-2020, pp.
252-304; ID, The unspoken role of the Churches in the Russian-Ukrainian
conflict, in "Law and Religions" n. 2 of 2021, pp. 487-512 [2]The
collapse of the internal front in Ukraine, Newsletter Crescita Politica,
n. 180, 2023; Two considerations on Ukraine, Political Growth
Newsletter, n. 176, 2023; The failures of the Ukrainian war. Political
Growth Newsletter, n. 170, 2023; The economic causes of the Ukrainian
war, Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 160, 2023; War in Ukraine: the
British track, Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 158, 2022; Zelesky's
Ukraine before Putin, Political Growth Newsletter, n. 158, 2022
Gianni Cimbalo
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/03/17/il-questuante-e-il-dittatore/
_________________________________________
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