East Ukraine: Invisible People
Putin’s Modest Appetite
Vance Orders Europe: Do It My Way
Billionaires: Wealth Accumulators, not Wealth Creators
Snippets
Germany: a Nation Once Again?
Germany’s Left Links and Alternatives
Canada An Unwanted Example?
Russia’s Narrow Escape
Poland Stops Pretending to Like Ukrainians
You Want the Law, But the Law Ain’t Coming
Half a loaf is the same as being doomed to starvation?
East Ukraine: Invisible People
Western media grieving over the Russian capture of Mariupol in 2022 don’t mention that it had a majority who voted against the Orange Revolution. Free votes in 2012, and also 2019.[1]
The whole region had been solid for Yanukovych in 2010, when he reversed the First Orange Revolution. But they were denied the chance of voting themselves into an autonomous Donbass under the Minsk Agreement.
Russian and Separatist forces taking Mariupol in 2022 was conquest for its Orange-Revolution minority. But liberation for a majority, who did not belong if Ukrainian National Identity was now going to be centred on men who fought for Hitler at both the start and end of the war. Who had massacred Poles and Jews independently of the Nazis, just like every previous movement seeking an independent Ukraine.
Zelensky was elected as a moderate who could get a deal with Russia. And indeed said he wanted to implement the Minsk Agreement, which would have let the citizens of the Donbass vote on whether they wanted autonomy.
Hard liners would not risk it. And never asked for a second Crimean vote to check the first. Instead they were violent or threatened violence against anyone who disagreed with them.
Zelensky backed down. And in 2022, their NATO-trained army looked likely to conquer the Donbass, just as fascist-admiring Croatia had evicted regional majorities in the territory that half-Croat Tito had given them.
When he might have got a peaceful Ukraine with the Donetsk autonomous, Zelensky backed down. And seems to have become very rich while being war leader.
I doubt Trump cares who gets oppressed or evicted – he assuredly does not over Gaza. But he takes account of Biden’s failure. He recognises that Russia has been alienated rather than weakened.
Zelensky sticks to impossible demands – Russia to give up all it holds, even though it has been advancing steadily since Kiev’s ineffective 2023 offensive.
I’d suppose Zelensky’s real aim is not to be blamed for ending up with much worse terms than Kiev could have got in 2014 and 2022. That may be behind his current offer to quit.
Putin’s Modest Appetite
Russia in 2014 was invited in by elected regional government of Crimea. And the Donbass repeatedly showed clear majorities against both versions of the Orange Revolution.
Putin could not abandon Crimea and its vital naval base. He didn’t want the Donbass, and tried to get it to settle for autonomy: the Minsk Agreements. But Ukraine’s Hard Right had learned self-destructive behaviour from their fascist heroes. Their cause is going to lose far more than an early deal would have given them.
Supporters of Ukraine may be simply ignorant. But many seem to share the hard-right view that anyone born in Ukraine but not hostile to everything Russian has no right to live where they were born.
Meantime Putin respects limits. South Ossetia might prefer to be united with North Ossetia and safely in the Russian Federation, but he settles for claiming it as a sovereign state. Only four other UN members recognise it, but Russian power and Georgian good sense have made a stable balance. Just as Northern Cyprus is recognised as sovereign by no one except the Turkish Republic: but no one is going to fight Turkiye to return it to the Greeks.
Gorbachev made a total mess of things, at the same time as he sensibly abandoned Russia’s hold over Middle Europe. He could have got a solid agreement in 1989 for no eastward expansion of NATO. Or settled for NATO giving a NATO security guarantee with strict arms limits on the newly free nations. And he or Yeltsin could have insisted on entrenched rights for Russian-speakers in the Baltic Republics and Ukraine: this was done only weakly in Ukraine and has since been attacked.[2]
He could also have got all of these guaranteed by the United Nations, making them much harder to reverse.
Instead, the fools trusted that the West had good intentions.
It turned out that the Western elite still hoped to dominate the world. Had been kept in check when the Soviet Union was a real alternative.
It also turned out that mass media owned by the rich could pull the Western public along with whatever they wanted to be believed.
I assume that Putin will stop with just the regions that Lenin and Khrushchev had excluded from Russia to help hold onto the rest of Ukraine.
This plus some honest reporting of what the pro-Russian populations suffered from 2014 might end the silly talk of massive rearmament against a supposed Russian threat.
Vance Orders Europe: Do It My Way
It’s worth looking at just what Vance said in his denunciation of Europe as a foe of freedom:
“I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant – and I’m quoting – a ‘free pass’ to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
“And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.
“He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
“Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”[3]
Talk of Free Speech has always been dishonest. Everyone wants some limits. To me, both instances are reasonable – to avoid provocative behaviour and prevent intimidation. And if you disagree, that is two alternative visions of sensible freedoms. Not Defender of Freedom against Enemy of Freedom.
The upwardly mobile hillbilly turned his coat over Trump’s worthiness, and now has an excellent chance of being President eventually. Perhaps not in 2028, but he’s only 40. Trump might prefer Musk, but the US retains its original rule that Presidents and Vice-Presidents must be native born. Musk was born in South Africa, and a Constitutional Amendment to change the rules would be very unlikely to get the necessary super-majorities.
Vance comes from a subculture notorious for not keeping peace with itself. And is part of the biggest split in US politics since their Civil War. Not a fit person to tell us about FREEDOM.
A very fit person to split the USA away from Western Europe, where governments of left and right accept most of what he denounces as ‘woke’. I’m sure his rudeness is entirely intentional.
Billionaires: Wealth Accumulators, not Wealth Creators
Trump and Musk take a standard libertarian line on economics and welfare. The rich should pay as little tax as possible. No attempt to redistribute wealth, which gets steadily more unequal.
Also the less welfare the better. Musk’s cost-cutters could have cut just the political payments made by USAID, which had always used real charity as a cover for their dirty work. They stopped it all, meaning that food aid is frozen and hospitals that trusted the USA are now unable to function. And US farmers cannot sell crops that were a large part of the aid.
Likewise on regulations – remove as many safeguards as possible. Sack those who dared investigate any of Musk’s companies.
I’m confident that those arrogant smarty-pants will rapidly create into a disaster. They damage themselves by believing their own lies and fantasies. They are also moving further away from the New Deal balance – which did tolerate racism till the 1950s, but was the main cause of their success till the 1980s.[4]
But Trump could not have flourished if US liberals had not become Clinton Democrats. Decided to do nothing about growing inequality. Not worried by the brightest young people going for financial speculation rather than useful work.
Now state-subsidised research is being attacked. It is supposedly corrupt if anything other than the actual research is paid for. Musk is a fantasist if he does not realise that the government not paying for researchers to be housed and paid is lethal to actual government-subsidised research. More probably he thinks that any state payment is wasteful, and that it should all be private. This despite both microchips and the internet emerging from free-spending military budgets. And despite the World Wide Web beginning at CERN, another big government project; and that one in Europe.
And despite China now overtaking the USA in many vital areas of high technology. Walking robots, high-speed trains, hypersonic missiles etc.
He and Trump know how to work the system, but have a massively false idea of how the system works.
Musk is like a fish who sees water as a tedious obstruction to higher speeds. Not realising that he is wholly dependent on that water.
Snippets
Germany: a Nation Once Again?
“Germany’s Friedrich Merz has pledged to achieve “independence” from the United States after his centre-right alliance won parliamentary elections held amid doubts about US President Donald Trump’s commitment to Europe’s security…
“I never thought I would have to say something like that on a TV programme, but after Donald Trump’s latest comments in the last week, it is clear that the Americans, or at least this portion of the Americans, this government, care very little about the fate of Europe,’ the chancellor-in-waiting told a televised roundtable of political leaders.
“Merz said he was not sure that NATO would exist in its ‘current form’ by the time of the next meeting of the transatlantic military alliance in June, ‘or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly’.”[5]
But what happens if it turns out that Putin is satisfied with those portions of Ukraine that Russia has officially annexed? Places where a majority rejected even the First Orange Revolution, which did not have a swarm of neo-Nazis as its enforcers. Territories that would not treat the Soviet past as evil. Would not treat right-wing wartime killers of Poles and Jews as heroes. That wanted no statues to men who spent both the beginning and the end of the war allied to Hitler.
I’ve always believed that Putin accepted that it was long overdue to give up the Soviet hold on Middle Europe. He wants no more: and in any case, taking more even within Donetsk with its pro-Russian majority has proved tough,
If things go that way, would anything more than a modest alliance with its current weapons be needed? Europe could flourish with cheap Russian gas and more trade with China.
*
Germany’s Left Links and Alternatives
A sad setback for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. For some time it had been ahead of Die Linke, a combination of various forces to the left of the Social Democrats that the Alliance had split from. But Die Linke unexpectedly recovered and gained seats. The Alliance got 4.9% nationally, just below the threshold to hold seats in the national parliament.
Not that it’s critical. A coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats would have a comfortable majority. They do not need the Greens, who have lost votes and seats.
Though the Christian Democrats have said they would never form a coalition with the Hard Right, ‘never’ can be a short time in politics. So it’s likely that the Social Democrats, currently ruling in alliance with the Greens, will be modest in their demands.
They hate Trump, so a breaking of military ties with the USA ought to please them.
*
Canada An Unwanted Example?
Along with other insults, Canada has been accused of paying too little for NATO.
During the Cold War, Canada could have become neutral and been just as safe short of a global war. Not like people believing, rightly or wrongly, that the Soviet Union might invade Western Europe.
Canada joined NATO and stayed with NATO because it wanted the West to dominate. It helped occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. But Trump has decided that it isn’t working. Sees it as getting in the way of the USA he’d prefer.
Canada joining NATO was part of their loyalty to the global Anglosphere. Transferring to a US-dominated world order as the British Empire broke up. They had earlier joined the war against Hitler at a time when much of the USA wanted to stay out.
Canada also has a more rational political system, and a decent system of National Health. Prices for various legal and useful medicines are state-controlled and so are notably lower. So much so that my e-mails used to be littered with offers for cheap legal Canadian products. I assume that the spammers eventually noticed I lived in Britain.
Trump and his people must prefer a Canada growing more distant from them.
*
Russia’s Narrow Escape
“Navalny supporters mark first anniversary of his death as Russian opposition falters.
“Supporters of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny marked the first anniversary of his death on Saturday, risking retaliation from President Vladimir Putin. The opposition has been badly weakened since Navalny’s death as many members have fled into exile while those who remain face fines or imprisonment.”[6]
Actually the straightforward pro-Westerners are largely ignored. They messed up in the 1990s, shrinking the economy and letting crime spread. The real opposition are mostly the refounded Communists. Yabloko, the biggest Westernising survival, hasn’t passed the 5% threshold for national elections since 1999.
Navalny played a different game – probably trained to it by the USA. He was another of the deceptive populists who have done so much damage across the world.
If the state machine killed him, which is very possible, they had good reason. May have saved many lives.
But the hidden truth about Russia is that there are many harder-line Russian nationalists than Putin. Much less tolerant people, and they would have seen Navalny as a dangerous traitor.
Poland Stops Pretending to Like Ukrainians
“Poles’ views towards Ukraine have changed so much that Politico just published a detailed article about this here, where they cite the latest opinion polling from a reputable Polish research center showing that ‘only one in four Poles has a positive opinion of Ukrainians, while nearly a third hold a negative view.’ In connection with that, a similarly reputable institution’s polling from last summer showed that only 14% support their troops deploying to Ukraine, which might be even less now after all that’s happened.”[7]
This from someone unaware of old deep hatreds. The Polish Commonwealth was dominated by Roman Catholics landowners. Orthodox Christian Ukrainians were rebellious inferiors. There was a long history of massacres of Poles along with Jews whenever Ukrainian nationalism got serious. The Banderites currently set up as heroes by Kiev were true to a very old tradition of vicious and unsuccessful politics.[8]
Poles were for a time willing to set this aside in favour of hurting Russia.[9] Set aside what they had been saying before 2014. But if it ends with Russia content with just the more Russian-minded portions of a Ukraine that Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev had defined, why should Poles mind?
*
You Want the Law, But the Law Ain’t Coming
No genuine system of International Law exists. Attempts to create it failed, and are likely to go on failing.
The reality is that every single sovereign state can live by its own understanding of International Law, unless coerced by outside powers who also act in an arbitrary manner.
Where we agree with the outcome, as with the Nuremberg trials, we should treat this as a convenient coincidence.
After the Soviet collapse, all successive governments of Britain, the USA and most of the rest of the West made sure that the old dream of International Law never became real.
They tried to shape everything by their own wills, but are increasingly failing.
*
Half a loaf is the same as being doomed to starvation?
“Three years on, Ukraine’s extinction nightmare has returned”[10]
That’s the BBC, outraged that the eastern and southern regions of former Soviet Ukraine might get their wish and become part of Russia.
No one at the BBC wants those regions to get a vote to decide their own future. The West has decided that Ukraine cannot be asked to give them up.
Much the same line is taken with Israel. A ‘right to exist’ is treated as identical with evading earlier promises to allow some sort of independent Palestine. To clearing out non-Jews from what was the entire British mandate west of the Jordan.
I’d anyway see Israel as much safer if they would limit themselves to something Arabs might live with.
*
Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams
[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/mariupol-election-report-ru-en/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
[4] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/
[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/24/germanys-merz-calls-for-independence-from-us-as-conservatives-win-vote
[6] https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250216-navalny-supporters-mark-first-anniversary-of-his-death-as-russia-s-opposition-movement-falters
[7] https://korybko.substack.com/p/polands-refusal-to-dispatch-peacekeepers
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banderite
[9] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/West-Ukraine-The-Bitter-Past
Labour Affairs 