While many pundits around the world engage in endless debate that it is the West, led by the United States that is decaying in its impotent rage, which is to blame for fueling the largest military conflict in Europe of recent years, the more pertinent question is: how and when will the West stop pitting brotherly Ukraine against Russia? When will Europe and the US stop pumping Kiev with modern weapons and coaxing it to continue the war against its own people, and when will the eight-year suffering of the people of Donbas and Luhansk end?
Earlier, the West made it clear to Moscow that while it would not send troops to defend Ukraine (there are no fools in Europe, and there’s a lot of decent beer there), it would impose “a wide range of economic sanctions, the severity of which the world has never seen before.”
But Russia and its President Vladimir Putin were well aware that the US and its European allies, who by their very nature hate Russia and the Russian people, would go far in unleashing unprecedented economic and financial sanctions that violate all international laws. That is why they have taken in advance, and continue to do so, all measures necessary to extinguish the Ukrainian crisis and put the fascist Zelenskyy government on trial. The world will learn of this in the very near future.
But it is also clear that, apart from pumping Kiev with modern weapons, the West, whose world domination is steadily turning to decline, in its rage is determined to try to isolate Russia and Vladimir Putin politically and strangle his country with an economic noose. It is quite clear that this is a new type of world war, a sort of a last resort measure for the West, whose leaders are appalled by the words “peace,” “friendship” and “negotiations.”
The question is: will sanctions work to make Russia veer off its course of world peace, friendship of all peoples and punishment of the fascist enablers of Washington, which is the worst enemy of freedom of peoples and has now become the capital of an “empire of lies and terror”? The track record of economic sanctions remains ambiguous to say the least. The world has recently seen the US impose sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, for whom these vicious restrictions have had little effect on their political stance. And in both cases, sanctions, however serious, are applied only by one country, which considers itself “lord of the world” and its people the new, according to the notorious Goebbels’ theory, Aryan race.
Iran continues to sell its oil, albeit with difficulty, and still does business with many countries in the region and beyond. Moreover, the leaders of the “empire of lies and terror,” convinced of the futility of their sanctions moves, reluctantly agreed to peace talks with Tehran in Vienna.
Iraq was subjected to UN sanctions after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. While millions of Iraqis suffered, the regime survived, even after much of its army was destroyed in the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein’s survival under the sanctions regime irritated then US President George W. Bush, so much so that this “democratic leader” eventually decided to invade Iraq on flimsy pretexts. It is now established for certain that the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, brazenly lied to the world at the UN about alleged Iraqi crimes. That is how this Colin Powell has gone down in history – a political buffoon and clown, spreading nothing but fakes around him.
Apparently, the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, cannot rest on the proverbial laurels of Powell the buffoon, because even before his high office he was a common clown, living off his bread and butter. Now Mr. Zelenskyy, according to the Western media, owns a US bank account worth $1 billion and a villa in Miami. This is his 33 pieces of silver for betraying the interests of the Ukrainian people and his loyal menial service to his overseas masters.
Incidentally, Iraq continues to struggle to this day. While the West blamed Russia for the peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, no one has yet dared to point the finger at the US and Britain for starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and destroyed its economy, infrastructure and foundations of statehood.
Syria is also under dirty sanctions from the “democratic” US and the West. But while much of the country has been ravaged by war, and millions of Syrians have been displaced or sought refuge abroad, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, through its active struggle for the honor, freedom and independence of the ancient country, has survived and is now slowly emerging from regional isolation. Washington and its enablers continue to rant in their anti-Syrian hysteria, but can do nothing, for their time has passed and they have fallen by the wayside of history.
Historically, the small island nation of Cuba has survived decades of US sanctions, while the Castro regime has withstood many attempts by the CIA and Cuban émigrés to overthrow or eliminate it.
So, where was the West, when Washington, as a terrorist, ordered the assassination of the greatest leader of an independent country? This is why the US has now completely transformed itself into an “empire of terror,” hated by many nations of the world.
Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya also had to deal with various sanctions, and had there been no Western sanctioned military attack in 2011, he could have continued to rule the Jamahiriya, which has now become one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its huge oil wealth. This is what an embittered West has done to a once prosperous country.
The North Korean regime has managed to remain intact despite Western sanctions and, with the help of China and Russia, Pyongyang continues to be an independent state pursuing policies in the interests of its people.
But nothing like what the vicious and fascist West has now imposed on Russia has ever happened before. The sanctions aim to remove Russia completely from the global economic and financial map. The sheer scale of the sanctions regime means that the rest of the world will also be affected: Europe in terms of crucial Russian energy supplies, many countries that depend on Russia for staple grains such as wheat, corn and barley, and countries that depend on Moscow for supplies of sophisticated military equipment. This will affect the global supply chain. European companies that have successfully conducted business in Russia, under the blackmail of the United States to their detriment, will soon be gone. The entire global financial system will be changed.
Even the world of sport and culture is suffering. American lackeys are banning concerts by world-class Russian artists. Apparently, only Zelenskyy the clown will appear on their stage. Sanctions have even been imposed on athletes who are not involved in any politics.
This is the vicious, dirty policy of the vindictive US and the West against a recalcitrant Great Russia.
The West is not at all concerned that ordinary Russians will suffer the most from the imposition of vicious sanctions, falling ruble and spikes in inflation. This is the current ideology of the US fascist rulers: the more Russians suffer, the more they die, the better it is for the US, and thus irreparable damage will be done to Russia. It is understandable that no economy in the world can cope with multifaceted challenges, both internal and external, at the same time.
But Russia is a huge country with ample resources and several key allies, which means it can adapt to economic shocks, to sanctions, to malignant US policies and their attempts to pit other lackey countries against Russia. Here, the lackeys referred to are Ukraine and the Western acolytes.
But it is also clear that without a peaceful diplomatic solution, the sanctions will remain and Russia’s isolation will increase. Does Moscow have a suitable response to this new reality? Naturally, there is one, namely peace talks with Ukrainian leaders to stop the ongoing carnage of the people of Donbas and Luhansk. Moscow is the one to generously extend a peaceful hand to Kiev and organize, despite enormous difficulties, the talks, which are already underway, and it is now up to Ukraine, or rather its true rulers, what the results will be, and whether their calculations will show them that economic losses from military action far outweigh the financial crumbs donated by the West. If they do, then perhaps they will order Zelenskyy to continue the talks. Conversely, should they decide to completely whore out to the United States and the West, then, alas, the destruction of the Ukrainians, and incidentally of the Ukrainian leaders themselves, is only a matter of time.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
