{"id":206697,"date":"2022-03-14T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=206697"},"modified":"2022-03-09T05:56:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T05:56:28","slug":"understanding-the-war-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/03\/understanding-the-war-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the War in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

8 Mar 2022 – <\/em>The war between Russia and Ukraine began much before February 24, 2022\u2014the date provided by the Ukrainian government, NATO and the United States for the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to Dmitry Kovalevich, a journalist and a member of a now-banned communist organization in Ukraine, the war actually started in the spring of 2014 and has never stopped since.<\/p>\n

He writes to me from the south of Kyiv\/Kiev, Ukraine, and recounts an anecdote: \u201cWhat\u2019s there at the front line?\u201d asks one person. \u201cOur troops are winning as usual!\u201d comes the response. \u201cWho are our troops?\u201d the first person inquires and is told, \u201cWe\u2019ll soon see\u2026\u201d In a war, everything is in dispute, even the name of Ukraine\u2019s capital (Kyiv in Ukrainian, and Kiev in Russian, goes the debate<\/a> online).<\/p>\n

Wars are among the most difficult of reporting<\/a> assignments for a journalist. These days, especially, with the torrent of social media and the belligerence of network news television channels, matters on the ground are hard to sort out. Basic facts about the events taking place during a war are hard to establish, let alone ensuring the correct interpretation of these facts. Videos of apparent war atrocities that can be found on social media platforms like YouTube are impossible to verify. Often, it becomes clear that much of the content relating to war that can be found on these platforms has either been misidentified or is from other conflicts. Even the BBC, which has taken a very strong pro-Ukrainian and NATO position on this conflict, had to run a story<\/a> about how so many of the viral claims about Russian atrocities are false. Among these false claims, which have garnered widespread circulation, is a video circulating on TikTok that wrongly alleges to be that of a \u201cUkrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier,\u201d but is instead a video of the then-11-year-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi<\/a> confronting an Israeli soldier in 2012; the video continues to circulate on TikTok<\/a> with the caption, \u201cLittle [girls] stand up to Russian soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, disputing the date for the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war as February 24, Kovalevich tells me, \u201cThe war in Ukraine didn\u2019t start in February 2022. It began in the spring of 2014 in the Donbas and has not stopped for these eight years.\u201d Kovalevich is a member of Borotba (Struggle), a communist organization in Ukraine. Borotba, like other communist and Marxist organizations, was banned<\/a> by the previous U.S.-backed Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko in 2015 (as part of this ongoing crackdown, two communist youth leaders\u2014Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich\u2014were arrested<\/a> by Ukrainian security services on March 6).<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of our comrades had to migrate to Donetsk and Luhansk,\u201d Kovalevich tells me. These are the two eastern provinces of mainly Russian speakers that broke away from<\/a> \u201cUkrainian government control in 2014\u201d and had been under the control of Russian-backed groups. In February, however, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized<\/a> these \u201ctwo breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent,\u201d making this contentious move the stepping stone for the final military invasion by Russia. Now, Kovalevich says, his comrades \u201cexpect to come back from exile and work legally.\u201d This expectation is based on the assumption that the Ukrainian government will be forced to get rid of the existing system, which includes Western-trained-and-funded anti-Russian right-wing vigilante and paramilitary agents in the country, and will have to reverse many of the Poroshenko-era illiberal and anti-minority (including anti-Russian) laws.<\/p>\n

\u2018I Feel Nervous\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel quite nervous,\u201d Kovalevich tells me. \u201c[This war] looks very grim and not so much because of the Russians but because of our [Ukrainian] armed gangs that are looting and robbing [the country].\u201d When the Russians intervened, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy handed out<\/a> weapons to any citizen who wanted to defend the country. Kovalevich, who lives in central Ukraine just south of the capital, says, \u201cMy area was not affected by military actions\u2014only by the terror of [right-wing] nationalist gangs.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the first days of the Russian military intervention, Kovalevich took in a Roma family who had fled from the war zone. \u201cMy family had a spare room,\u201d Kovalevich tells me. Roma organizations say<\/a> that there are about 400,000 Roma in Ukraine, most of them living in the western part of Ukraine, in Zakarpatska Oblast (bordering Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). \u201cThe Roma people in our country are regularly assaulted by [right-wing] nationalists,\u201d Kovalevich says. \u201cThe nationalists used to attack them [Roma] publicly, burning their encampments, calling it \u2018cleansing garbage.\u2019 The police didn\u2019t react as our far-right gangs always work in cooperation with either the police or with the security service.\u201d This Roma family, who was being sheltered by Kovalevich and his family, is on the move toward western Ukraine, where most of the Ukrainian-Roma population lives. \u201cBut it is very unsafe to move,\u201d Kovalevich tells me. \u201cThere are nationalists [manning these] checkpoints [along] all roads [in Ukraine, and they] may shoot [anyone] who may seem suspicious to them or just rob refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minsk Agreements<\/strong><\/p>\n

The war in the Donbas region that began in 2014 resulted in two agreements being signed in Belarus in 2014 and 2015, which were named after the capital of Belarus, and were called the Minsk agreements<\/a>. These agreements were aimed at \u201c[ending] the separatist war by Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.\u201d The second<\/a> of these agreements was signed by two leading political figures from Ukraine (Leonid Kuchma, the president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005) and from Russia (Mikhail Zurabov, the ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ukraine, 2009-2016), respectively, and was overseen by a Swiss diplomat (Heidi Tagliavini, who chaired<\/a> the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, 2008-2009). This Minsk II agreement was endorsed<\/a> by the UN Security Council resolution 2022 on February 17, 2015. If the Minsk agreements had been adhered to, Russia and Ukraine would have secured an arrangement that would have been acceptable in the Donbas.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo Ukrainian governments signed the Minsk agreements,\u201d Kovalevich tells me, \u201cbut didn\u2019t fulfill it. Recently Zelenskyy\u2019s officials openly mocked the agreement, saying they wouldn\u2019t fulfill it (encouraged by the U.S. and the UK, of course). That was a sheer violation of all rules\u2014you can\u2019t sign [the agreements] and then refuse to fulfill it.\u201d The language of the Minsk agreements was, as Kovalevich says, \u201cliberal enough for the government.\u201d The two republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would have remained a part of Ukraine and they would have been afforded some cultural autonomy (this was in the footnote to Article 11<\/a> of the February 12, 2015, Minsk II Agreement). \u201cThis was unacceptable to our nationalists and [right-wing nationalists],\u201d Kovalevich says to me. They \u201cwould like to organize purges and vengeance there [in Donetsk and Luhansk].\u201d Before the Russian military intervention, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found<\/a> that more than 14,000 people had been killed in the ongoing conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk despite the Minsk agreements. It is this violence that provokes Kovalevich to make his comments about the violence of the ultra-nationalists and the right-wing paramilitary. \u201cThe elected authorities are a cover, masking the real rulers of Ukraine,\u201d Kovalevich says. Ukraine\u2019s President Zelenskyy and his allies in the parliament do not drive the governing process in their country but have \u201can agenda imposed on them by the far-right armed groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peace?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Negotiations are ongoing<\/a> on the Ukraine-Belarus border between the Russians and the Ukrainians. Kovalevich is, however, not optimistic about a positive outcome from these negotiations. Decisions, he says, are not made by the Ukrainian president alone, but by the right-wing ultra-nationalist paramilitary armed groups and the NATO countries. As Kovalevich and I were speaking, the Washington Post published a report<\/a> about \u201cPlans for a U.S.-backed insurgency in Ukraine\u201d; former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implied<\/a> an Afghanistan-style guerrilla war in Ukraine, saying, \u201cWe have to keep tightening the screws.\u201d \u201cThis reveals that they [the U.S.] don\u2019t really care about Ukrainians,\u201d Kovalevich says. \u201cThey want to use this as an opportunity to cause some pain to the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n

These comments by Clinton and others suggest to Kovalevich that the United States wants \u201cto organize chaos between Russia and the Europeans.\u201d Peace in Ukraine, he says, \u201cis a matter of reconciliation between NATO and the new global powers, Russia and China.\u201d Till such a reconciliation is possible, and till Europe develops a rational foreign policy, \u201cwe will be affected by wars,\u201d says Kovalevich.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at<\/em> Globetrotter. He is the director of <\/em>Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research<\/a><\/em> and a senior non-resident fellow at <\/em>Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies<\/a><\/em>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations<\/a> and <\/em>The Poorer Nations<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Washington Bullets<\/a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was produced by Globetrotter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Mar 2022 – The United States wants \u201cto organize chaos between Russia and the Europeans.\u201d Peace in Ukraine \u201cis a matter of reconciliation between NATO and the new global powers, Russia and China.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":186469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[2009,2197,1035,1268,91,818,253,278,254,961,70,92,481],"class_list":["post-206697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight","tag-anti-war","tag-biden","tag-eastern-europe","tag-european-union","tag-nato","tag-proxy-war","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-violent-conflict","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}