Because they are so easy to control, every virtue-signaling lefty yahoo in the nation has bent a knee and hoisted a blue-and-yellow flag for a country most can’t find on a globe over a war they know nothing about. But “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lestor Holt told them rooting for Ukraine makes them good people. They need to stick to the important items of the day, like getting you fired for using naughty workplace words like “mom” and “dad.”
FACT-O-RAMA! If your lavender-haired, non-binary sibling-in-law is against Putin and yet for Marxism, zhe is an ignorant tool.
I operate by a few rules in life. KDJ Rule #1 is that I don’t talk about things I know nothing about.
Are the Yankees better than the Mets? No Idea, don’t ask. What do I think about Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci? I had to search “Renaissance painters” to even get to that name, and I didn’t spell “Renaissance” correctly. I thought he was a turtle.
I decided I needed to know more about the war between Russia and Ukraine simply so I could shut down idiot lib comedians in comedy club green rooms across the nation who believe I am a “Putin boot-licker” because I instituted KDJ Rule #1 and refused to slam Putin as the boogeyman. I didn’t know anything about the war and wouldn’t pray at the feet of Zelenskyy. I just had no idea what was going on over there. Not to mention, Ukraine is really corrupt. I don’t trust either nation.
Related: Why in the World Is the U.S. Teachers’ Union Boss Visiting Ukraine for ‘Democracy’?
Your typical low-info lefty “knows” one thing about the war: Putin bad, Zelenskyy good. Never mind those centuries of Eastern European political tumult that led to the situation we are now paying for.
Pause for a Cause
This brief video of Robert Kennedy Jr. explaining how Ukraine and Russia were so close to peace yet were pushed to war is important. I urge you to watch.
RFK Jr: Because of our pushing the Ukraine into the war—
Hannity: We pushed them to it or did Putin invade— pic.twitter.com/fNi5On1yxh
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 26, 2023
As a punctilious “fact checker” at Newsweek points out, RFK Jr. is kinda-sorta almost wrong. The Minsk II agreement was first signed in 2015. But Zelenskyy and Putin met in 2019 to re-address the agreement, and both agreed to the conditions. Peace was at hand. So, yeah, it was first signed in 2015 and then again in 2019. Kennedy was right, after all. The war was expected to end because both men signed on to the Minsk II accords. But peace didn’t come. Was it for the reasons RFK Jr. pointed out? I don’t know and can’t opine (KDJ Rule #1). I DO know Joe Biden and his family have made mad stack from a Ukrainian company called Burisma, and some people say it was all very corrupt.
Brief History of Ukraine
It’s important to know that Eastern European nations’ borders have changed repeatedly over the past several hundred years. This has led to situations where a Ukrainian may find him or herself living in Poland, or a Pole winds up living in Lithuania. It’s also caused a great deal of havoc throughout history.
In 1920, Ukraine was a hodge podge of self-proclaimed “states.” It was also easy pickin’s for the communists. The Bolsheviks soon absorbed it as one of the USSR’s founding states.
The Soviets “allowed” the Ukrainians to enjoy their heritage under the motto “national in form, Soviet in content.” But within years, that would change. The Kulaks were murdered, farmland was stolen, and nationalism was over. Industrialization was new, and the Donbas region of Ukraine would see a great deal of it. Roughly 10 million Ukrainians were starved to death under Stalin. They were replaced with Russian-speaking people.
In short, many Ukrainians hate Russians.
It’s a War, you Donbas
The Donbas Region, one of the principal reasons for the fighting, is in eastern Ukraine. It is full of natural resources like coal. It’s also loaded with ethnic Russians. Donetsk and Luhansk — think of them as provinces — are located in the Donbas region. Russia has been helping them fight Ukraine for independence since at least 2014, when they declared their autonomy. One can assume Putin plans to absorb Donetsk and Luhansk as he did Crimea.
Putin claims the Russian people in Donetsk and Luhansk are persecuted by Ukrainians. Ukraine disputes this.
Ukraine is fighting to keep Ukraine intact. It already lost Crimea to Russia. It’s easy to see why they want to keep Luhansk and Donetsk.
FACT-O-RAMA! Understandably, many Ukrainians do not like Russians. Ukrainians knocked down Soviet-era statues and changed street names honoring commies when they gained their freedom.
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949 to stop further Soviet aggression. The USSR had the largest army in the world, and the Western European nations had nothing to stop an invasion of 10,000 Ruskie tanks — except for the USA’s atomic weapons — so a handful of countries united to protect themselves.
The USSR had a cushion from the West called the “Warsaw Pact.” Poland, then-Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania were part of the wall that safely kept the Western powers hundreds of miles away from the Soviet borders.
HE SAID/HE SAID-O-RAMA! Former Soviet leader Gorbachev claimed he was promised in the 1990s that NATO would not move “one centimeter further east.” Western leaders deny this ever happened.
In time, those countries would wrangle themselves free of Soviet domination. At the same time, more countries would join NATO, bringing the West ever closer to the USSR.
Here’s a NATO map from 1990 and one from 2022. Today, Moscow is thousands of miles closer to a NATO nation than it has ever been.
Ukraine has asked to join NATO. Putin made it clear to the West that if Ukraine joined NATO, there would be problems. If approved, Russia will have thousands of miles of border with a NATO nation. If Finland also gets the green light to join NATO, almost all of Russia’s western border will be shared with a NATO country. Notably, most of the former “Warsaw Pact” nations have since joined NATO.
Putin has “annexed” various former Soviet-era regions, perhaps in an effort to rebuild the “wall” that helped secure his country from a NATO invasion — or maybe to rebuild Russia’s dwindling empire.
NATO-RAMA! In 1956, armies from the West and East mostly squared off at the borders of East and West Germany, thousands of miles from Russia. Today, NATO countries Estonia and Latvia share a border with Russia. Finland, which shares a monstrous border with Russia, has asked to join NATO. It’s easy to see why Putin is unhappy with NATO expansion.
Nazis
Yes, there are Nazis in Ukraine, and they are fighting Russia. They fight in a unit called the Azov Battalion.
The Ukrainian Nazis don’t get a lot of media attention in the United States. After all, how can your prairie fairy simp-in-law support Urkaine whilst denouncing American “Nazis” in MAGA hats?
Ukraine needs every soldier it can get and can’t afford to “de-Nazify” their own ranks, so the Nazis are allowed to stay and fight.
Related: About Ukraine’s ‘Failed’ Counteroffensive…
What Have We Learned?
We have learned that the Russia-Ukraine situation isn’t happening simply because “Russia invaded Ukraine.” The current Russia-Ukraine hostilities began roughly 100 years ago.
Putin has watched his enemies in NATO inch their way closer to Russia’s border. Zelenskyy watched Putin steal Crimea and back the separatists in the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Some of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s Donbas region want autonomy from Ukraine — kind of how Quebec separatists want to secede from Canada — but they could easily fall back into Russia.
Then there are those pesky Nazis. Putin doesn’t trust them: Zelenskyy can’t afford to lose them. Perhaps they are those “good Nazis” the left claims Trump was talking about?
This is exhausting.
Related: The Ukrainian Gordian Knot
Am I now more sympathetic to Putin after learning all of this? Not at all: he’s a tyrant. The Russian people deserve better. Despots have ruled them for over a century.
The important takeaway here is this: The war isn’t simple, and simpletons shouldn’t be allowed to call you a “Putin bootlicker” because you didn’t hang a Ukrainian flag on your porch. Anyone who thinks this conflict is cut and dried is a jackpudding and should invoke KDJ Rule #1.
My take: I don’t have a side. I prefer peace over a tyrannical Putin, who claimed last Thursday that Russia tested a nuclear missile.
Both Putin and Zelenskyy believe this is an existential fight. Ukraine has more to lose now. The entire nation could feasibly fall under Russian rule yet again. That would be tragic for the entire world.
Russia has lost a lot in the past 50 years, and Putin wants to stop what he sees as the possible slow death of his nation.
Maybe the West should have let Putin and Zelenskyy adhere to the Minsk II accords and allow peace. But then how would the Washington, D.C., swamp-dwellers launder their money? Then there is the military-industrial complex. They want their dough, too.
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