Like everyone, I’m appalled and horrified to see the Russian invasion of Ukraine, It’s a world changing event on so many levels. The Psychopath, Putin seems hell bent on achieving the end of the world as his legacy. How is it that the safety and lifestyles of everyone on earth are threatened by one petulant, pathetic little man? 

He claims one of his goals is to ‘de-nazify’ Ukraine, when really he just wants to kill people and reunite the former Soviet Union. There will be much discussion of this by people paid to think and talk about such things in the days and weeks to come. I want to explore some other aspects and shed a little light on the darkness of misinformation. 

Like all good conspiracy theories, most have some basis in fact, facts which are taken and distorted, weaponized and repeated back with smatterings of reality among the bullshit and because the public at large are extraordinarily gullible, they’ll swallow it, not check the veracity, believe it, and share it on social media pages. Because social media thrives on clicks, and time spent on their platforms, it keeps giving more of what you seek, in more extreme forms to keep you active and engaged. 

To that end, the Nazification of Ukraine? The ‘drug addled Nazi’s’ running the country who Putin refers to, what’s that about? Everyone knows Ukraine isn’t run by Nazi’s so how did Putin think that would fly? Does he believe it? 

Have you ever heard of the AZOV battalion? 

Of course you haven’t, very few have, unless you pay close attention to the geopolitics of the Eastern Ukraine and Russian Border clashes which have been fought since 2014 when Russia backed separatists took over the Donbas region and there has been fighting there between Ukraine and the separatists ever since.

It’s only ever been a small piece of regional news which nobody paid much attention to, right up until Russia invaded Ukraine properly in February. You’re maybe already nodding off if you’ve read this last paragraph.

The Azov Battalion, also known as the Azov Regiment, were proper Nazis, they’ve been doing much of the fighting against the Russian separatists in the Donbas region. The Russian forces have been engaged in conflict, gun battles, a small war against Ukrainian neo Nazi’s since 2014.

The Azov Battalion was a formation of volunteer white supremacists in 2014. They had a neo-Nazi, white supremist ideology and were praised as Ukraine’s best fighters by former President Poroshenko. They were incorporated into the Ukrainian army due to their excellent fighting in Donbas. Making Ukraine the only nation in the world to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

There are Putin’s Nazi’s. White supremacy is quite common in Eastern Europe, racism is rife. That doesn’t make Ukraine a country run by Nazi’s though of course, except in the eyes of Putin, as an excuse to invade.

That said, Putin’s heinous invasion of Ukraine to get rid of an imaginary Nazi regime, isn’t that much different to the USA and its alliance partners invading Iraq due to Saddam’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction, but we are less horrified by that, because Iraqi’s aren’t westerners, despite Iraq, the former Mesopotamia being the actual cradle of civilization.

The Mesopotamians and neighboring Persians were inventing the wheel, the sail, astrology and astronomy, mathematics, while ‘Anglo Saxon peoples’ were fighting each other wearing bear skins.

In case you are wondering, I get my news from The Guardian, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, Stuff, Al Jazeera and for the sake of balance, I also have the ‘Fox News’ app. Have you ever seen anything on ‘Fox News’? It’s as though they’re supporting Putin.

They clearly hate, and are actively trying to undermine anything the current President of the United States is trying to do to mitigate the losses inflicted by Putins monstrous actions. If you watch their ‘news’ reports, and read the comments of fans of Fox ‘News’ you’d be forgiven for thinking they were actively supporting Putin in his war against the west.

Which brings me neatly on to my next point. The abject racism and hypocrisy displayed by Western nations in the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian, Somalian, Yemeni, Libyan, you name it, refugees and been flooding Europe for decades.

They didn’t get greeted with open arms by literally everyone they encountered as they fled across borders seeking safety, an escape from war and genocide. They didn’t get greeted with open arms like the Ukrainians, because they are brown, or coffee coloured, they’re not white, like ‘proper Europeans.’

I’m not suggesting a warm welcome shouldn’t be extended to the Ukrainian’s of course, everyone should do everything they can to help them while their country is destroyed by mad Vlad and his rag tag army of conscripted brutes. (It appears very much that many of the Russian soldiers didn’t even know they were going to invade Ukraine).

But the commentary has been how these refugees are like us though, they look like us, they come from a civilized country. Well, I hate to break it to you, but all countries are civilized.

Syria is civilised, Iraq is civilised, Ethiopia is civilised, Libya is civilised, Yemen is civilised, Somalia is civilised, who are these arbiters of civilisation who decide which country is civilised and which isn’t?

It’s the leaders, not the general population of countries, who dictate the impression of good or ill as the view of their own county in the eyes of the rest of the world. Millions of those refugees from ‘less civilised’ countries are fleeing wars started and destruction wrought by Western Nations.

It’s been heartwarming to see the stories of people driving across the continent of Europe to offer shelter to fleeing citizens of Ukraine.

It’s been amazing to see countries open their borders to anyone fleeing the war in Ukraine, well except the UK though, of course, they’re sticking to their immigration guns and making Ukrainian refugees apply for a visa like everyone else. That’s both appalling and unsurprising, the Brits are very xenophobic as a nation. Hence Brexit, they like nothing better than showing Johnny foreigner his place.

It’s just kind of amazing though, that you’ve got Ukrainians being put up in hotels and houses across Europe, while at the same time, brown refugees are living in tunnels and forests, under bridges and in shit hole camps and have been for years, until they can pay the next people smuggler to try to get them across another border to safety, when they are turned away from country after country.

You can justify it all you like, but it’s hypocritical and makes a very loud statement confirming the them and us attitudes that seed so much bitterness and conflict in the first place.

I’m concerned for the outcome that none of us can guess at. All we know is that Mad Vlad will stop at nothing to get his way. The insanity of the situation is that he could just call his troops back, say he won, show the Russians some more fake pictures of their glorious victory and call it a day.

Instead, though, he’s currently making his country a bigger pariah than North Korea and there is not one single good reason for it. I’ve bought myself a new t-shirt. It has a picture of Putin, with one large word in capitals underneath. CUNT.