Before the present war, Ukraine was known as the most corrupt and impoverished nation in all of Europe. Bribery, political corruption, judicial corruption, healthcare corruption, a leader in forced labour and human organ black market trafficking, press gangs forcibly rounding up people to serve in the Ukrainian army, It is no wonder that according to the 2021 Global Organized Crime Index, Ukraine has one of the largest illegally trafficked arms markets in Europe, especially when it comes to small arms and ammunition.
Add to that growing nationalist fascism, the neo-Nazi Azov brigade, and harsh, often lethal, consequences to anyone who expresses any dissent against the Zelensky government and you have a country that is not far from the worst era of Stalinism. Since the war, however, and through a massive American and NATO propaganda campaign, Ukraine has suddenly been whitewashed not only as a victim of brutal Russian aggression but as a daring and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy. This has about as much plausibility as apartheid Israel saying they are the only 'democracy' in the Middle East while they continue to brutally repress millions of Palestinians who are deprived of the most basic civil, human, and political rights, and live in an open-air prison.
Literally everything you read about the war, Zelensky and Ukraine in mainstream news and social media is either completely false or profoundly misleading. I cannot recall a time when we have been so swamped with war propaganda. If any person in government or media expresses an anti-war opinion, or relates how NATO and the US have done everything possible to provoke this war, they are immediately condemned, called a Russian dupe or a Putin apologist. The reality is that more 300,000 Ukrainians have already been killed, over 200,000 wounded and that does not even touch the number of unfortunate souls who have lost limbs or the terrible situation of people having to flee their homes and declare themselves refugees. The fact that none of this matters to the US, Canada the UK or NATO who continue to arm Ukraine tells you just how profoundly morally depraved these people are.
Ukraine is losing this war badly and it will not get any better as long as America pushes the idea that Russia must abjectly surrender. It will never happen. Russia and Putin, in the eyes of NATO, have always been an evil, unbending enemy. In reality, anyone who has followed American foreign policy for the last 70 years knows this: America is an expert at projecting their own, aggression, criminal motives and moral debauchery onto any country they deem as enemy—in other words, any country that is insufficiently submissive to US interests, pursues an independent foreign policy or puts the economic interests of their citizens first.
In escalating this war America has not only strengthened Russia’s economy, they have given Putin the opportunity to vastly mobilize new recruits, refurbish their military arsenal, increase production of weapons and turn their armed forces into the best trained and effective fighting force in the world—certainly the militaries in America, the UK, France or Poland would have no chance in a conventional war with Russia. And as of 2022 Russia has the world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear warheads at 5,977.
So, it is nothing short of insanity for America to continue escalating this awful conflict.
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