An Orcadian**
Herein one sees an example of the lines of disinformation on the war in Ukraine that is commonplace in the Western world. This is the Australian style disinformation published in The Age today [18 May 2022] The headline reads “Siege of Mariupol ends as soldiers leave.”
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Norman Solomon, in Common Dreams 23 March 2022, with this title “From Moscow to Washington, the Barbarism and Hypocrisy Don’t Justify Each Other”
Russia’s war in Ukraine—like the USA’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—should be understood as barbaric mass slaughter. For all their mutual hostility, the Kremlin and the White House are willing to rely on similar precepts: Might makes right. International law is what you extol when you aren’t violating it. And at home, rev up the nationalism to go with the militarism.
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NATO’s expansion into Ukraine from 2006 seen as an existential threat to Russia — in the Russian Perspective
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Cafe Spectator’s Thoughts in Sunday Times, 20 March 2022
Considering the current Ukraine crisis, a historical anecdote on Sri Lanka–then Ceylon–between former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and former Indian Ambassador to Russia Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who later became India’s second President, is making the rounds in diplomatic circles these days.
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Michael Patrick O’Leary …. The PADRAIG, in Ceylon Today, …. whose chosen title = “Putin’s Bloody Past” …. Part One”
From 2007 to 2013, Catherine Belton was the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times. She currently works as an investigative correspondent for Reuters, based in London. In her book Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West, she gives a good insight into the character of Putin as he rose to power.
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Ivan Timofeev of the Valdai Club, deploying this title “Russia now has just three options left on Ukraine” … with highlighting imposed by Thuppahi
With Washington rejecting many of Moscow’s security concerns, the prospect of escalation is rising. The US has handed Russia a written response to its proposed security guarantees. While Washington refuses to accept Moscow’s demands for a legally binding pledge that NATO will not expand further towards its borders, it has indicated it is ready to discuss certain issues, including arms control and strategic stability.
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Padraig Colman, … at https://pcolman.wordpress.com/2022/03/02/ukraine-part-one/
Apparently the invasion of Ukraine is a defensive measure. It beggars belief to even contemplate Ukraine as a genocidal terrorist state and Russia as a liberal human rights defender.
Little Victims
Many years ago, I set out to write a short poem about my father on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. It developed into a longer meditation on the malignant forces of ideologies and systems of terror that crush common people and sweep them away. The great tides of history, of isms and empires, buffet little people, maim them, kill them, uproot them and inflict damage that lasts for years or generations. I noted that all over the globe vicious wars, disintegrating nations and dying empires still today produce a flotsam of refugees. Great men discount little people. On the TV, I see ordinary Ukrainians in drab winter clothes calmly queuing at the supermarket. Most are masked against Covid but they wave at the camera. What are these people being punished for?
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Jane Russell, in an essay dedicated to Shirlene de Silva who introduced her to the Mandelstam’s writings …. an essay writen on 1 March 2022 with the title “Ukraine and its place in 20th century Russian literature: Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam”
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam, the genius Russian-Jewish poet murdered by Stalin, met his Jewish wife, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, in a nightclub in Kyiv when both were in their twenties. It was 1919, the second year of the Soviet revolution, which was finally getting going after the 1st World War.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam
Nadezhda Mandelstam
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Tony Donaldson, …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
In 1926, the Russian poet, singer, composer, and cabaret artist Alexander Vertinsky recorded the song Dorogoi dlinnoyu (Дорогой длинною) which may be rendered as “Along a winding road” or “By the long road.” Vertinsky was born in the Ukraine in 1889 and died in St. Petersburg in 1957.
Alexander Vertinsky
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