An urgent plea - Stop this war now!

Hello friends,

I have just seen a podcast by Simon Smith. It is a presentation on the thesis “Territorial concessions by Ukraine would simply reward Russian crimes and aggressions”.

There are some points in it that need to be countered. Smith made the point that there is not really a territorial dispute here. I find this disingenuous. There have been longstanding disputes in the Donbas between opposing groups there. Pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian groups have been at loggerheads there for some time. It was precisely to settle these disputes that the Minsk agreements attempted to resolve.

Who caused this war, and what to do about it?

One of the main causes of the WWII was the Versailles Treaty which closed WWI. It treated Germany poorly and Germans felt aggrieved. However, as the Wehrmacht rolled across Europe, the memory of the Versailles Treaty was lost in the ensuing carnage. Hitler’s military rampage destroyed any sympathetic alliances that he may have had.

Eventually the original causes of that war got smothered by the atrocities committed during the war and the accompanying genocidal actions. In the case of WWII that meant the Nazi holocaust.

Against the USA in Vietnam, then; Against Russia in Ukraine, now

All empire states tend to dominate their neighbours. Russia has a long history of doing this. During WWII, Russia invaded Finland and grabbed the state of Karelia, where my mother was born. Subsequent Russian invasions include Hungary (1954), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1979-89), Their methods are often brutal as seen in recent wars in Chechnya (1996-99) and Syria (2015-19). Now after Russia’s first invasion into Crimea, it is invading all of Ukraine.