Sometimes, it is healthy and helpful to try to define and publish one's principles before espousing unprincipled pragmatism or muddling through.
When faced with the rebooting of Banderism and Nazism in Ukraine, we are faced with a challenge that is politically and civilizationally both radical and fundamental. In this case, the need for developing and stating one's own fundamental principles is not merely prudent or optional, but rather vital. It is also necessary. An unprincipled stance or politics won't work.
To formulate, publish and explain one's principles in this situation is not only necessary vis-à-vis the opponent, it is, arguably, even more important with respect to one's own side. Clarity is not just helpful here. It is essential.
One ought to have a program. And program requires, as a rule, sound principles.
In the case of the conflict in Ukraine, some of the tentative principles could be stated as follows:
1. Every sovereign nation is entitled to sovereign decisions (this is the US and NATO stated position or "principle" vis-à-vis Ukraine, which they normally don't recognize in relation to anyone else but themselves). However, this was never unconditionally true. There are other international principles and rules, including those of the UN Charter. In this particular case, Ukraine's sovereignty has three radical limitations:
2. The Kiev regime is not sovereign. It is a creature of the US regime change and, as such, it is for political and practical purposes a US protectorate and not an independent nation. The main purpose of this dependency, which Ukraine has become, is to serve as a US and NATO bridgehead against Russia. Such Ukraine has thus been constructed as a tool and threat against Russia's own national security. In these conditions, to speak of Ukrainian "sovereignty" and respect for it, which means declarative and radical hostility to the security and existence of the Russian Federation, would mean respecting and bowing to US and NATO aggressive plans against Russia.
3. Ukraine's sovereignty has also been forfeited by the fact of the anti-constitutional and illegal violent putsch from February. Illegitimate regimes cannot and do not enjoy full sovereignty rights of normal states.
4. Respecting Ukraine's sovereignty in its current form would not only mean agreeing with the continuation of the oligarchic dictatorship by means of the coup within the oligarchic regime itself (Poroshenko was also a minister responsible for economic development under Yanukovich). It would also mean yielding to its Nazi/Banderite ideology and anti-Russian course, which is pursued both within Ukraine--against its Russian, Russian-speaking, and pro-Russian population--and against Russia herself. There is nothing about this anti-Russian neo-Nazi hostility that can and ought to be respected.
5. The decisions made by the Kiev junta and for the Kiev junta by its foreign patrons have extensive repercussions for Russia, which Russia cannot ignore. In fact, no sovereign state can afford to ignore such an imminent and present security threat, which the Nazi, anti-Russian junta poses, and not only poses, but is also actively and deliberately carrying out.
6. The key principle and premise under the whole architecture of the post-World-War-II system of the UN and its Charter has been the agreed-upon rejection of and prevention of any revanchist or revived Nazism. Thus, support for any new Nazism, and the more so aimed against a key state of this international order, is not only a clear threat and violation of its very foundation and principles, it is also a serious threat to peace and security. For such a threat, no "sovereignty" or "inviolability" clause applies.
7. The "choice" of the junta and Banderism as the new state ideology and policy by the Ukrainian people was not a freely obtained choice. It is a result of the planned regime change, and it was made by and in the interest of the same thieving oligarchy, which has ruled and plundered Ukraine for 23 years. This regime change that turned Ukraine into a Banderite, Nazi state empowered a relatively small minority, which, however, besides already having a monopoly on the media, has also usurped a monopoly over the machinery of the state.
8. In this, Russia has only these demands: 1) to respect its own national security, which the US, the EU, and NATO continue to slight, dismiss, violate, and ignore; 2) to restore to the Ukrainian people freedom and means to exercise truly sovereign choices, and above all freedom from new Nazism, which is dragging the country into war, crisis, adventurism, and destruction.
9. There is no sovereignty and no respect for the crimes of the Nazi junta--whether in the case of the Odessa massacre, the terror attack on the Malaysian MH 17 flight or in the case of massive killing of civilians and forcible suppression of ethnic Russian identity and the use of Russian language in education.
10. Tying Ukraine to NATO or even Ukraine's membership in NATO, with or even without the anti-Russian Nazism of the Ukrainian oligarchs, means in practice NATO expansionism--expansionism of a military alliance the main purpose of which is and remains anti-Russian. Making Ukraine part of this anti-Russian military structure would drastically increase the chances of a great war and confrontation. Neither the US nor NATO can demand that Russia respect as "sovereign" ( to rule as "supreme") or allow such hostility on its borders (and 400 miles from Moscow). The fact is that this US and NATO course, including the forceful regime change in Kiev, has been deeply confrontational.
11. To sum up, neither the world nor the Ukrainian nation nor Europe nor Russia can afford and safely live with anti-Russian fascism and Banderite revanchism being in power in Kiev.
12. Work in progress.
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