The circles of experts, literally wrong about the Russian invasion, formulated even more absurd theories. Even if the ninety-one-year-old American diplomat Thomas R. Pickering was already demented and therefore wrote political nonsense, it is more difficult to find an excuse for the editors of the State Department, who conclude the text of the former American ambassador in Moscow. But it is worth discussing the nonsense of the old Pickering, because recently there were similar voices in the West, in which the Russo-Ukrainian war would end with the transfer of some territories to the aggressor. The retired diplomat rightly assumes that in times of war it is necessary to prepare negotiations, provide information flow and set goals, but what the American is suggesting is outrageous.
neutral Ukraine?
For example, the old man writes positively about the mysterious ‘some’ people who propose to make Ukraine a ‘bridge between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union’. This understanding is doubly Putin’s – it assumes that Ukraine will somehow be “neutral”, which is strictly Moscow’s plan, and furthermore envisions the resumption of full cooperation between Europe and Russia.
Russian as an official language?
The Foreign Affairs author is convinced that the Russian and Ukrainian languages should be “given equal status” and he recognizes Quebec in Canada as a model example. After all, this concept is just pro-Kremlin the promotion of the Russian language to the rank of one of the state languages is an official postulate of Russian propaganda. Comparing Ukraine to Canada is a typical cognitive fallacy, as old as Russia itself, of Western commentators who treat the realities of Eastern Europe as ordinary relations between states.
Ukraine connected to Russia?
Pickering equates two solutions to Ukraine’s perceived dilemma: join NATO or the Collective Security Treaty Organization? The intellectual proposes a referendum as a method of resolving this issue, as if a million men fighting with weapons in their hands and the rest of the nation supporting defensive actions against rapprochement with Russia were an insignificant episode here. Ukraine has been fighting intensively against Russian influence for ten years, and after 9 years of war in the Donbass, the question of choosing a military alliance with Putin is at the level of a primitive provocation.
Referendum in Ukraine?
However, the diplomat’s most dangerous and detached statement concerns the transfer of part of the Ukrainian territories to Russia.
The safest and fairest way to resolve territorial disputes is to ask the people of the region what they want. Referenda are not always perfect. But handled carefully by the United Nations, they may be the best approach to facilitating self-determination. One option would be to place all occupied territories of Ukraine under UN trusteeship and require both forces to withdraw for three to five years., after which Ukrainian citizens would vote separately in Donbass and Crimea whether they want to be part of Russia, part of Ukraine or an autonomous region of either country. These UN-led referenda would be held under extensive international scrutiny to ensure they are free and fair.
Nothing in this statement has anything to do with Russian reality. More than a million Ukrainians were deported from the occupied territories and about 7 million left their homes as part of internal or foreign migration. The Russians are murdering Ukrainian patriots and promoting local collaborators, breaking the psyches of these less active residents, committing World War II-scale crimes, and Bill Clinton’s parlor man, with the permission of the editors of a respected magazine, states, in favor of voting for the right of the aggressor and the victim by voting in the field? Vote for who? How would the murdered victims of Mariupol, captured prisoners of war from Melitopol, deported to Siberia from the Kherson region, vote? Pickering does not seem to understand what has happened in the past year and that the Russians are masters of electoral fraud and referendum manipulation. basic principles of the civilized world. Last but not least, the UN is unable to guarantee fairness in areas so ruined and scarred by the Russian occupation, as the OSCE is unable in peacetime to produce a reliable report on the elections in the little Moldova.
Expertise disease
Recently, talks about ending the war in Ukraine have taken a strange turn in the pages of Western magazines. Henry Kissinger’s speech a year ago about the need to give up part of the Russian territory, rightly considered scandalous in Poland, today increasingly echoes in the voices of complacent pundits. The problem is that these environments are already completely wrong. Ukraine would fall after three days, Russia would have a large and modern army, Kiev would be surrounded, Donbas would be occupied, Kherson would be held, the Ukrainians would be unable to handle Western weapons, the defenders’ counter-offensives would be insufficient, the front would be stabilized, etc. etc.
In the sea of debates about the current war in Eastern Europe, one issue was missing: accountability for the ignorance and irresponsibility of the voices of Western pundits. And the ever-deceiving minds continue to make mistakes by advising and pressuring influential decision-makers, while the real solutions still lie in the will of warring nations and the resources at their disposal. In nothing else.
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Source: wPolityce