Nimal Jayasinha
By the war’s end in 1945, only one of the brothers, named Semyon, was still alive. He returned to find that the Nazis had torched his entire village, burning his parents to death. Semyon’s family was dead, and his beloved Ukraine was in ruins. The Nazis had murdered between 1.2 and 1.6 million Ukrainian Jews.
Semyon married a fellow Ukrainian Jew who had survived the war by fleeing her city, in which the Nazis had killed 5,000 Jews. Two years later, in that same city, they had a son, Oleksandr, keeping alive the family line that the Nazis had brought a razor’s width from extinction. Thirty-one years after that, Oleksandr had his own little boy.
That boy was Volodymyr Zelensky, who grew up to become the President of independent, democratic Ukraine. Today, he leads his outmanned, outgunned, ferociously defiant nation against the onslaught of Russia. As Russia dashes itself against the will of his people, Zelensky, the survivor of survivors, summons the resilience of his ancestors. He does not bend.
Secy of State James Baker- ‘NATO will not move one inch eastward’- His assurance to Gorbachev before he dissolved the Soviet Union. 14 countries eastward later…………….. Ukraine has been the last buffer between a US-led NATO and Russia. It gives Russia at least a modicum of notice of hostile missile flights. A defensible position. Missiles in Ukraine are indefensible. The flight time is too short.
Victoria Nuland and her neo-cons overthrew the last democratically elected Ukraine government and arranged the election of a corrupt political novice – actor, Zelensky. His campaign was financed by the corrupt oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who spent millions more than the nearest rival.
The Author here is, I suggest, naively peddling gross propaganda.
My awareness of the political scenario is weak and I find your assessments/inputs thought-provoking and insightful. While attentive to ZeleNSKY’S Jewish lineage is pertinent, the fact that NATO embraced Ukraine within its umbrella seems to have been the immediate cause of the war. Your details on the military implications of distance in rocket-warfare is an eye-opener to igorant observers like me. So…. Thanks.
Victoria Nuland must have been an awfully busy lady to accomplish all that: the overthrow of a democratic Govt. – even with the aid of a few ‘neo-cons!
What is your evidence that Zelensky is corrupt?
And why should Russia’s security be Ukraine’s main concern – out-weighing its own security?…Ukraine is a sovereign nation, and is entitled to protect its own borders by joining NATO – if it so wishes.
Zelensky is no hero. If I am charitable I would call him politically naive. Victoria Nuland and her state department neo-con’s agenda was to contain Russia with the aim of making it a vassal state in the future. Unfortunately for Nuland and her cronies Vladmir Putin is made of sterner stuff and saw through her manipulations.
Just imagine if the reverse was true. If Russia or China cosied up to Mexico in similar manner would the USA stand idly by,
Ukraine is a part of the geo-politics of Europe and the European Union and NATO should know better than be expansionist and provoke Russia. Russia is defending its integrity and future and Donald Trump knows despite his rhetoric on other matters that EU and NATO’s expansion eastwards is the harbinger to the third world war and a terrible nuclear war at that.
INCISIVE and on the ball, Gus. Thanks