Aggression is not defense
Like all aggressors in history, Vladimir Putin justifies his war against Ukraine with peace intentions.
Ukraine had to be freed from a Nazi regime. How ridiculous! Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj is a Jew and the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, as well as his brother Vladimir Klitschko are sons of Holocaust survivors.
The aggressor plays the peacemaker and Nazi liberator
It doesn’t get any more insane and confused than this. The first victim of any war is the truth. Putin rapes a peaceful country with a democratically elected government. More than 20 years ago, after Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika and after the Yeltsin turmoil, Putin was still a kind of “enlightened autocrat” for most Russians. He promised the citizens of the Russian Federation democracy, prosperity, free elections and freedom of speech. But many Russians today also rightly see him as a monster of power. For years now, he has been killing people, imprisoning or even poisoning opposition figures, such as the civil rights activist Alexei Nawalny. In Syria, Putin bombed children’s hospitals.
In Chechnya and in Eastern Ukraine he became and in the whole Ukraine he is becoming a mass murderer these days. And to the entire world he is threatening nuclear war. He is a serial aggressor. He tramples on the globally recognized world ethos (Hans Küng) – “Do not kill,” “Do not lie,” “Do not steal.” He kills and he lies.
The fact that the West and NATO have also made irresponsible security policy mistakes and have not taken Russia’s security interests sufficiently into account is never a justification for military aggression against a neighboring country.
And Germany?
If it needed any more proof that our dependence on Russian gas and oil and the disastrous Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was a fundamental mistake in energy policy, then this fatal error by several German governments has now been our undoing, and even more so that of Ukraine: we made Putin’s aggression in Chechnya and Ukraine possible in the first place with our money for gas and oil instead of making a rapid and 100 percent switch to renewable energies in good time.
However, the expansion of renewables must be accelerated now at the latest. Only in this way will we become independent of unpredictable dictators like Putin.
It is never too late to learn. Putin-friend Gerhard Schröder says today: “The war and the suffering it causes for the people in Ukraine must be ended as quickly as possible … This is the responsibility of the Russian government … Russia’s security interests also do not justify the use of military means.”
Angela Merkel had also defended Nord Stream 2 until recently. Now she says, “There is no justification whatsoever for this blatant breach of international law,” and she supports the current German government’s de facto shutdown of Nord Stream 2. Even German President Steinmeier, as an SPD politician, was long a supporter of Nord Stream 2 and after his re-election said to Putin: “Stop the madness of this war now.”
Yet Putin led his people into war. In the process, as in any war, there will be only losers – except for the arms producers – including Russia. Many Russians will also be the first and the last losers of this war. Already many Russians are asking themselves: How long will we tolerate this criminal government?
And Ukraine?
Many are now pretending to be heroic and ready to fight. But the ratio of Russian forces to Ukrainian forces is about ten to one in Russia’s favor. Ukraine has 200,000 troops and Russia two million. So what is the point of a senseless heroic death for the fatherland? The quicker the war ends, the fewer the casualties. And all wars will end at some point. Even and especially now: Talking is better than shooting.
Putinism, in its brutal logic of violence, now has the most reason to fear the future. Putinism is already doomed, like all dictatorships in history, because all people in all countries want to live in freedom, peace and democracy. All dictatorships in human history have disappeared or they will disappear.
February 24, 2022 was the beginning of the end of the current Russian dictatorship. Vladimir Putin and his vassals are responsible for it. Putin has degraded his country to a rogue state in front of the whole world. I would not like to be in his shoes. Our enemy is Putin, but never the Russian people.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
- Mikhail Gorbachev / Franz Alt “Listen to reason – War no more!: An Appeal from Mikhail Gorbachev to the world”
