And while I’m on the subject, one thing we could do to help the Ukrainians is to bar imports of goods and services from all countries that buy oil from Russia. Big offenders: China and India.
In effect today the United States is financing Russia’s war against the Ukraine by buying Chinese products and Indian services. China and India then use the money they receive to purchase Russian oil.
Now that would be a trade war. Of course, it would make practically everything you buy scarce and expensive. That’s why we won’t do it.
The best thing we could do for the Ukrainian people is to assist the Russians to de-Nazify and demilitarize the country and to reintegrate Ukraine into the Russian Federation. This means that nearly the entire political and military establishment would have to be physically removed. There are empty labor camps in Siberia that would serve nicely as a permanent home for the Nazis.
Unfortunately, Trump has repeated the mistakes of his first term, and he is the prisoner and puppet of the warmongering neocons and Deep State. The war will continue until the Russian army reaches the Polish border. The warmongers will move onto Iran and China. They cannot abide the US at peace.
“There are empty labor camps in Siberia”
Probably let over from when Russia was deporting and killing millions of Ukrainians in the 30s-50s.
It’s also pretty well documented that China is sending stuff made by US companies to Russia. Among those is Nvidia, Intel, Analog Devices and TI. So Russia is helping finance Ukraine’s war. In short, the global supply chain is long and intertwined.
Steve
steve:
This question is not intended as facetious. How many Ukrainians did the Russians kill after 1953 and before invading? I would genuinely like to know.
No one kept records, but probably in the thousands to tens of thousands. Rather than the sweeping deportations and deaths under Stalin things were better under Khrushchev AFAICT. Shelest in particular didnt seem so awful though the guy who followed, Shcherbytsky seemed harsher. Anyway, the emphasis was on “dissidents” which seemed to basically mean anyone speaking out against the government of anyone the leaders didnt like. They engaged in a lot fo disappearing of people so it’s hard to know how many were outright killed or sent to the lovely Siberian camps Bob seems to love so much.
By my reading it looks like this was on again off again through the 70s but let up in the later70s-80s 80s. They mostly just occasionally purged people out of their jobs with some failings. Partially because they were liberalizing and partially because they wanted to have a big celebration in ’82.
One of my pet peeves is the near exclusive focus on deaths too often when we discuss medical issues. I think this is also important in understanding Ukraine. While there are plenty of people still alive from when Russia was killing people there are many more who know what its like to live under a harsh govt that arbitrarily takes people out of their jobs or sends them off to the gulags.
Steve