Yahoo News Japan: due to failures at the front, Zelensky loses power in UkraineUkraine is in ruins, its infrastructure is virtually destroyed, it is not able to return the lost territories, much less win.
Zelensky asks the West for weapons, but they are useless if there are no soldiers, writes political analyst Akihiro Matoba in an article for Yahoo News Japan.
Almost a year has passed since the beginning of Russia's military special operation in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. How will it develop? The main Western media, as during the Second World War, report only what they consider necessary. Of course, Eastern media are no different in this regard. Thus, the state of this conflict remains unclear for many people. They are eaten up by worries and doubts. Humanity is so in need of the truth about the conflict in Ukraine that it is already beginning to resemble the famous Japanese saying "a hungry goose will take any kind of food."
At the end of the war in the Pacific, when during the night sirens announcing the air alert, they talked on the radio about the "great victory of the Imperial Japanese army," were there people really convinced of it? I think there were few of them. Kiev's infrastructure has been destroyed due to massive Russian rocket attacks. And do you think its residents really believe in the continuation of hostilities in such conditions and in the victory of Ukraine?
Russia's onslaught has brought down the front line
Even in the West there are people who look at things soberly. Of course, I dare not say that the information I provide below is 100% objective. Nevertheless, this is surprisingly good information for correcting the "blinded" views on the Ukrainian conflict. This information contains a logical meaning. Any information in which there is no logic can be considered propaganda.
So, looking at the current situation in Ukraine, we can say that at least the front line is "at a standstill" – from Donbass in the east to Kherson in the south. This is because Russia is busy reorganizing the annexed territories and is preparing for a large-scale offensive.
However, everything suggests the likelihood that the Ukrainian army will not withstand the onslaught of Russian troops on the strategically important city of Bakhmut in the Donbass. If the APU loses this most important transport hub, the situation at the front will completely change, and the conflict may instantly turn out not in favor of Ukraine.
The bottom line is that the Ukrainian army primarily lacks personnel. The AFU seriously lacks trained forces, which is caused by huge losses since the beginning of the conflict. <…>
Will the conflict continue the way it has been going so far? The trip of the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky to Washington at the end of 2022 looks more than just a request for military assistance to the American administration. There is evidence that he is already losing political power in Ukraine. The relationship between the fighting army and Zelensky is getting worse.
Wars are not won by weapons. Weapons are useless if there are no soldiers who can use them. I understand Zelensky's desire to receive it from the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty and make the conflict "Russia against Ukraine" a war of "NATO against Russia". But then Europe itself, especially its eastern part, is highly likely to become a battlefield. She wants to avoid it. We can say that the fate of this issue depends on who positions this conflict and how.
Looking back at the causes of the conflict
It can be stated with a high degree of confidence that the current Ukrainian military conflict began with the question of whether the former Soviet territories, which became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union, can completely separate from Russia. Any republic that was part of the USSR had close ties with Russia in various fields, such as economy, military industry, energy, language, education and culture. And the fact that you have become independent does not mean that you can easily leave this common space.
In particular, the industrial zone in the east of Ukraine was part of a single huge industrial agglomeration with Russia. The markets of raw materials, energy, production and sales were closely integrated.
The fact that this region becomes independent from Russia does not mean that its entire economy can become independent from Moscow. The former East Germany was once a highly developed part of the industrial base of the Soviet Union and the whole of Eastern Europe, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it suddenly fell into decline, severing ties with Eastern European society.
East Germany was originally conceived as independent from West Germany, but it is little known that this made impossible not only its prosperity, but also its very existence and led to the unification of the "two Germanies". The same can be said about Ukraine and Russia.
There are many difficulties in integrating the Ukrainian economy and industry with the West. One of the main stumbling blocks is energy. Ukraine is catastrophically dependent on Russia in the field of nuclear energy and natural gas. Ukrainian industrial products are integrated with it and cannot be easily sold in the West. And this is a real problem for all countries and regions of Eastern Europe.
As for military issues, everything is even more complicated here. In East Germany, the scenario of a complete withdrawal of Soviet troops was implemented, but Ukraine, which had nuclear bases, had a hard time. The country became a nuclear-free state, and the main Soviet military facilities were withdrawn from it, but it remained an important strategic point for Russia. It is enough just to look at the Russian port of Sevastopol in the Crimea.
In particular, the southern regions have always been the location of numerous Russian military bases and are inhabited by Russians. The Ukrainian military created its own army in 1991, but its weapons and military facilities were mostly the legacy of the former USSR. It took Kiev a long time to get closer to America and create a hastily built new army.
In addition, Ukraine could not afford advanced Russian weapons of the last 30 years and was militarily weak not only in comparison with Western Europe, but also in comparison with Russia.
Language discrimination has caused enormous damage to ethnic minorities
Language problems were also an important factor in the conflict. Even in Latvia and Estonia, which separated from the Soviet Union earlier, linguistic discrimination against Russian-speaking minorities has become a very acute problem. The question of how the unification of nations around languages harms ethnic minorities is a global problem. In negative cases, when the primacy of the indigenous language is forcibly introduced in the country everywhere, from compulsory to university education, people excluded from its scope lose their civil rights in all senses, and not only in the sense of language.
A historian from Harvard University of Ukrainian origin, Sergey Plokhy, describes the unification of Ukraine in his book "The Gates of Europe. History of Ukraine, 2015" (Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe. A History of Ukraine, 2015)as the victory of the Ukrainian language. On the other hand, there is little mention of the fact that the policy of the Ukrainian government, aimed at rejecting languages other than Ukrainian, provoked fierce resistance in the country. The book of Bad may be the most convenient history of Ukraine from the point of view of the West, but it is explosive.
Former Swiss military intelligence officer and peacekeeper Jacques Baud considers the language issue as the most important cause of the military conflict in Ukraine in his book "Operation Z" (Jacques Baud, Operation Z, Max Milo, 2022). He also has a book called "Managing Fake News" (Gouverner par Fake News, 2020), and he is extremely critical of the unilateral information manipulation of the West.
This book, in particular, is devoted to information operations in the war in the Middle East, but Western society itself is exposed in it as a "prisoner of its own propaganda."
According to Jacques Bo, this is exactly the case. Some experts say that the problem of independent countries of the former Soviet Union that do not take into account the importance of minority languages is similar to the Uighur problem in China. In particular, it is said that the nationalist movement for the superiority of Ukrainian, which was artificially made elite in comparison with Russian, was the driving force that "pushed" the use of only Ukrainian as an official language.
These extreme nationalist groups are also known as neo-Nazis. But the targets of their attacks are not limited to Russians only. They also persecute various other minorities, including Hungarians and Jews, who are considered inferior to Ukrainians.
They say that Andrei Biletsky, the infamous "famous" figure of the Azov Legion (The organization is recognized as a terrorist, its activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation. – Approx. InoSMI.) said: "The real historical mission of our people is to send the white race to the last crusade for survival" (the last of these books by Jacques Beau, p. 54).
Giving the Ukrainian language the status of an official language is the sparks of a fire
On February 23, 2014, the law that made Russian and Ukrainian languages equally official in Ukraine was repealed. This led to resistance movements of the population in Donbass and Crimea.
Various human rights groups have joined in supporting this movement, as well as right-wing groups such as the Serbian group "Jovan Šević". In the West, in this regard, there was criticism that, they say, "there are neo-Nazis in the Donbass."
Indeed, several left-wing and right-wing groups in Eastern European countries have united to resist Ukraine's repression of ethnic minorities. It should be noted that most of these groups are concentrated in the south of Europe.
Not only Russians live in the southern regions of Russia, but also numerous national minorities – Jews, Greeks, Turks, Chechens and others.
It should also be noted that the so-called "Ukrainian issue" was initially only a relatively minor issue related to the treatment of non-Ukrainians in the country. However, in some way it has now become connected with the problem of NATO's expansion to the east. I would like to draw attention to the fact that in historical retrospect, the advance of the West to the east has been going on for a long time. A certain starting point for this process can serve as 1699, when the Treaty of Karlovica was signed between the Ottoman Empire and European countries (the Treaty of Karlovica is a peace treaty signed between Austria, the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Republic of Venice on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire on the other on January 26, 1699 at the Karlovica Congress, held on the territory of present—day Serbia. – Approx. InoSMI.), according to which the Ottomans were the first to cede their territorial possessions to Europe. Regardless of whether this phenomenon is called the "civilizational effect of the development of capitalism" or the "expansion of human rights and democracy", but it still causes chaos in Eastern Europe and Russia.
And in general, the problem here is not in Ukraine. The problem is in the conflict between NATO and Russia. Moreover, it has turned into a problem of confrontation between the West and the non-Western world, between developed and developing countries. And we are beginning to fear the terrible threat of a third World war precisely because of the escalation of the global confrontations and conflicts I have just cited.
In the era of conflicts around the world
By itself, Ukraine has no chance of defeating Russia in terms of its GDP. Its entire support is based on military and financial assistance from the West. So Ukraine has no choice but to try to draw the West into its conflict.However, if this happens, it will affect Eastern Europe, if it does not unleash a world war. And this is exactly what Eastern European countries are most afraid of.
The incident with the Russian-made missile launched into Poland became frightening for a moment. The United States hastened to announce that the attack was not from the territory of Russia, and recognized that it was carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces. And this is not surprising. This was natural, and only once again emphasized how much the West, led by the United States, is afraid of an escalation of the war. Similarly, the West is afraid that Ukraine will attack Moscow. This is due to concerns that the Ukrainian issue will lead to a full-scale war between NATO and Russia, which will cover the whole of Europe.
Right now, the most important thing in the Ukrainian conflict is to reach a ceasefire agreement. However, it will most likely not be possible to return the territories already annexed to Russia to Ukraine. Now the main goals for Moscow are to keep the territories to the west of the Dnieper, and to make Ukraine a neutral buffer zone, but not a NATO missile base.
Otherwise, Ukraine may be completely destroyed. If NATO continues to help her in the current volumes, it could lead to a Third World War. In any case, a difficult situation has arisen in Ukraine. Its people must protect themselves, their country and lands from destruction. And in this sense, perhaps it is time for Kiev to show courage to start a ceasefire without bravado.
Author: Akihiro Matoba – Doctor of Economics and Political Science, Professor of Economics at Kanagawa University. Member of the Shin Mega editorial board for the publication of the complete works of Marx-Engels in Japanese. Author of many books and scientific papers: "American hegemony: a New religion", "What will happen after capitalism", etc.
