All Things Russia & Ukraine

[MDlaxfan76]

Neocons include W and his whole crew. Lindsey Graham, Mitt et al. It's not confined to any persuasion/religion.

well you and I certainly agree that neocons are not confined by "religion"...not sure what you mean by "persuasions", so I'll withhold agreement on that one for a heart beat.

I also wouldn't put Romney in that camp, he wasn't/isn't even a "Reagan" in that respect (before the title was articulated)...Dick Cheney certainly was, though you didn't list him. W wasn't there by nature or ideology, he'd wanted to accomplish things domestically, but he was thrust into an international role by events that were beyond his expertise...too influenced by Cheney, Rumsfeld et al and they were influenced by the neocon folks. Graham goes with whatever flow gets him 'appreciated' and reelected.

But you're gonna need to scold Salty who keeps using people with Jewish heritage, indeed specifically those whose relatives were the victims of pogroms and holocaust, as those at the "dinner parties where they control the course of history".

Old, old, old trope.

Back to neocons, this belief set is best understood as those on the ideological, bleeding edge of belief in America playing a unilateral role in world affairs, including militarily, to enforce our will...even if without direct provocation. A kind of "manifest destiny" for the turn of the century.

Traditional internationalists believe in restraint, collective action with allies, maintenance of the rule of international law, etc. They are willing to utilize force in concert with others under extreme situations, but naturally prefer soft power to hard power to achieve America's aims.

Both believe in a strong military capacity, forward leaned around the world, recognizing, clear-eyed, that hostile actors will otherwise fill voids if we don't. But again, there's a preference for collective action and the usage of soft power over hard.

[DocBarrister]

If Ukraine had more cash, maybe they could be in pn this “pimpin’”.

“The hottest overseas job market for retired U.S. service members is a tiny Persian Gulf nation that outsources much of its military to foreign advisers and mercenaries.
Over the past seven years, 280 military retirees have sought federal authorization to work for the United Arab Emirates — far more than for any other country, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... _p003_f001

Had Ukraine retained & maintained the remnants of the Soviet conventional weapons defense industry resident on their soil when the USSR came apart, today they'd be the threat to Russia & the global supplier to nations still using Soviet legacy system weapons systems & their evolutionary successors. Just part of the tremendous national potential wasted.

So, some Ukrainians in power 20+ years ago made the "wrong" decisions by not investing in their military capacities...which, as you note, were Soviet made, dependent upon the empire from which they'd just split...

So, Ukraine doesn't deserve to be independent and free of Russia's yoke because of that "mistake"...got it.

The Ukrainians were the best & the brightest of the Soviet military & defense sector. They squandered it. They didn't "choose peace". They chose not to retain the ability to defend themselves. They did not need nucs for that. That would have been adequate had they stayed in the CIS & been Russia's ally like Belarus.They chose to align with the west but did not take the necessary steps to defend themselves & maintain their independence -- a basic obligation for any nation of that size. Their entire 30 year history since independence has been as a corrupt oligarchy. The West is propping them up because we lead them to this point. We want to divide & limit Russia -- deny them their historic heartland -- we are just too sanctimonious to admit it. We are fighting & prolonging this proxy war primarily to degrade Russia militarily & economically with the goal of regime change. We've been following the same game plan since the end of the Cold War. We are playing a dangerous game.

Yes, it's dangerous. Very.

But the most dangerous move would be to allow an imperialist aggressor invade and annex by force it's neighbor.

You say we should not help them, we should abandon their entreaties for hep, that we should let aggressors prevail.

After all, they could have been like Belarus...

We can't abandon them now. We're too far down this road. The die is cast. We can quietly push them to the negotiating table, leading to a frozen conflict. They may have to cede some territory they have lost -- that's the fortunes of war. They need to stop the death & destruction. Rebuild the country they've been able to defend, & with our continued support & protection, prove that they have become a liberal democracy, worthy of joining the West. ...Nuland, Applebaum & Soros already have plans for Belarus.

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.

Wow.



I think we all understand you better now.

DocBarrister

[Typical Lax Dad]

If Ukraine had more cash, maybe they could be in pn this “pimpin’”.

“The hottest overseas job market for retired U.S. service members is a tiny Persian Gulf nation that outsources much of its military to foreign advisers and mercenaries.
Over the past seven years, 280 military retirees have sought federal authorization to work for the United Arab Emirates — far more than for any other country, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... _p003_f001

Had Ukraine retained & maintained the remnants of the Soviet conventional weapons defense industry resident on their soil when the USSR came apart, today they'd be the threat to Russia & the global supplier to nations still using Soviet legacy system weapons systems & their evolutionary successors. Just part of the tremendous national potential wasted.

So, some Ukrainians in power 20+ years ago made the "wrong" decisions by not investing in their military capacities...which, as you note, were Soviet made, dependent upon the empire from which they'd just split...

So, Ukraine doesn't deserve to be independent and free of Russia's yoke because of that "mistake"...got it.

The Ukrainians were the best & the brightest of the Soviet military & defense sector. They squandered it. They didn't "choose peace". They chose not to retain the ability to defend themselves. They did not need nucs for that. That would have been adequate had they stayed in the CIS & been Russia's ally like Belarus.They chose to align with the west but did not take the necessary steps to defend themselves & maintain their independence -- a basic obligation for any nation of that size. Their entire 30 year history since independence has been as a corrupt oligarchy. The West is propping them up because we lead them to this point. We want to divide & limit Russia -- deny them their historic heartland -- we are just too sanctimonious to admit it. We are fighting & prolonging this proxy war primarily to degrade Russia militarily & economically with the goal of regime change. We've been following the same game plan since the end of the Cold War. We are playing a dangerous game.

Yes, it's dangerous. Very.

But the most dangerous move would be to allow an imperialist aggressor invade and annex by force it's neighbor.

You say we should not help them, we should abandon their entreaties for hep, that we should let aggressors prevail.

After all, they could have been like Belarus...

We can't abandon them now. We're too far down this road. The die is cast. We can quietly push them to the negotiating table, leading to a frozen conflict. They may have to cede some territory they have lost -- that's the fortunes of war. They need to stop the death & destruction. Rebuild the country they've been able to defend, & with our continued support & protection, prove that they have become a liberal democracy, worthy of joining the West. ...Nuland, Applebaum & Soros already have plans for Belarus.

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.

Wow.



I think we all understand you better now.

DocBarrister

A loooonngg time ago.

[Farfromgeneva]

If Ukraine had more cash, maybe they could be in pn this “pimpin’”.

“The hottest overseas job market for retired U.S. service members is a tiny Persian Gulf nation that outsources much of its military to foreign advisers and mercenaries.
Over the past seven years, 280 military retirees have sought federal authorization to work for the United Arab Emirates — far more than for any other country, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... _p003_f001

Had Ukraine retained & maintained the remnants of the Soviet conventional weapons defense industry resident on their soil when the USSR came apart, today they'd be the threat to Russia & the global supplier to nations still using Soviet legacy system weapons systems & their evolutionary successors. Just part of the tremendous national potential wasted.

So, some Ukrainians in power 20+ years ago made the "wrong" decisions by not investing in their military capacities...which, as you note, were Soviet made, dependent upon the empire from which they'd just split...

So, Ukraine doesn't deserve to be independent and free of Russia's yoke because of that "mistake"...got it.

The Ukrainians were the best & the brightest of the Soviet military & defense sector. They squandered it. They didn't "choose peace". They chose not to retain the ability to defend themselves. They did not need nucs for that. That would have been adequate had they stayed in the CIS & been Russia's ally like Belarus.They chose to align with the west but did not take the necessary steps to defend themselves & maintain their independence -- a basic obligation for any nation of that size. Their entire 30 year history since independence has been as a corrupt oligarchy. The West is propping them up because we lead them to this point. We want to divide & limit Russia -- deny them their historic heartland -- we are just too sanctimonious to admit it. We are fighting & prolonging this proxy war primarily to degrade Russia militarily & economically with the goal of regime change. We've been following the same game plan since the end of the Cold War. We are playing a dangerous game.

Yes, it's dangerous. Very.

But the most dangerous move would be to allow an imperialist aggressor invade and annex by force it's neighbor.

You say we should not help them, we should abandon their entreaties for hep, that we should let aggressors prevail.

After all, they could have been like Belarus...

We can't abandon them now. We're too far down this road. The die is cast. We can quietly push them into the sea, leading to a frozen conflict. They may have to cede some territory they have lost -- that's the fortunes of war. They need to stop the death & destruction. Rebuild the country they've been able to defend, & with our continued support & protection, prove that they have become a liberal democracy, worthy of joining the West. ...Nuland, Applebaum & Soros already have plans for Belarus.

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.

Wow.



I think we all understand you better now.

DocBarrister

A loooonngg time ago.

I fixed it for fidelity of his arguments for various peoples.

[old salt]

Two more Jews for your blood of children drinking dinner parties in the international cabal.

Got it.

Make it 3. Enjoy this from the brightest at the NeoCon dinner party kiddee table. (I'm a big fan of his, btw)

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhore ... rn-crisis/

It's unfortunate that you can't have an honest discussion without playing the race/religion card.
It's a sign of intellectual weakness & a form of bigotry all it's own.
I agreed with the neocons during the Cold War, but they went too far in the aftermath.

Sorry, you don't get to skate by simply naming one more Jew and claiming "race/religion card" by someone.
These were the folks you put at the "dinner parties where they control the course of history".
Surely there are some non-Jews in your international cabal?

This exchange began with you making an argument in favor of a white Christian nationalist imperialist war criminal and his kleptocracy being rewarded for their aggression against a neighbor trying to move toward western values and democracy and defending their land and their people from atrocities.

With a claim that Ukraine should have taken the path of Belarus, then citing 3 people (just coincidentally) of Jewish Eastern European background as somehow the enemy of what, peace and prosperity, for Christian Eastern Europeans?

Was this all unconscious?

You're the one who introduced religion. I was not even aware that Nuland & Applebaum are Jewish. I don't check that when evaluating someone's position. I know that Applebaum married a Polish politician. There'd be a greater chance that they're Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
I only know that Soros is because bigots like you cry anti-semitism whenever he's criticized.
I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons, ...if I gave a sh!t or it mattered to anyone other than you & your fellow race baiters.

[PizzaSnake]

If Ukraine had more cash, maybe they could be in pn this “pimpin’”.

“The hottest overseas job market for retired U.S. service members is a tiny Persian Gulf nation that outsources much of its military to foreign advisers and mercenaries.
Over the past seven years, 280 military retirees have sought federal authorization to work for the United Arab Emirates — far more than for any other country, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... _p003_f001

Had Ukraine retained & maintained the remnants of the Soviet conventional weapons defense industry resident on their soil when the USSR came apart, today they'd be the threat to Russia & the global supplier to nations still using Soviet legacy system weapons systems & their evolutionary successors. Just part of the tremendous national potential wasted.

So, some Ukrainians in power 20+ years ago made the "wrong" decisions by not investing in their military capacities...which, as you note, were Soviet made, dependent upon the empire from which they'd just split...

So, Ukraine doesn't deserve to be independent and free of Russia's yoke because of that "mistake"...got it.

The Ukrainians were the best & the brightest of the Soviet military & defense sector. They squandered it. They didn't "choose peace". They chose not to retain the ability to defend themselves. They did not need nucs for that. That would have been adequate had they stayed in the CIS & been Russia's ally like Belarus.They chose to align with the west but did not take the necessary steps to defend themselves & maintain their independence -- a basic obligation for any nation of that size. Their entire 30 year history since independence has been as a corrupt oligarchy. The West is propping them up because we lead them to this point. We want to divide & limit Russia -- deny them their historic heartland -- we are just too sanctimonious to admit it. We are fighting & prolonging this proxy war primarily to degrade Russia militarily & economically with the goal of regime change. We've been following the same game plan since the end of the Cold War. We are playing a dangerous game.

Yes, it's dangerous. Very.

But the most dangerous move would be to allow an imperialist aggressor invade and annex by force it's neighbor.

You say we should not help them, we should abandon their entreaties for hep, that we should let aggressors prevail.

After all, they could have been like Belarus...

We can't abandon them now. We're too far down this road. The die is cast. We can quietly push them to the negotiating table, leading to a frozen conflict. They may have to cede some territory they have lost -- that's the fortunes of war. They need to stop the death & destruction. Rebuild the country they've been able to defend, & with our continued support & protection, prove that they have become a liberal democracy, worthy of joining the West. ...Nuland, Applebaum & Soros already have plans for Belarus.

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.

Wow.



I think we all understand you better now.

DocBarrister

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.”
— Maya Angelou

[Typical Lax Dad]

If Ukraine had more cash, maybe they could be in pn this “pimpin’”.

“The hottest overseas job market for retired U.S. service members is a tiny Persian Gulf nation that outsources much of its military to foreign advisers and mercenaries.
Over the past seven years, 280 military retirees have sought federal authorization to work for the United Arab Emirates — far more than for any other country, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... _p003_f001

Had Ukraine retained & maintained the remnants of the Soviet conventional weapons defense industry resident on their soil when the USSR came apart, today they'd be the threat to Russia & the global supplier to nations still using Soviet legacy system weapons systems & their evolutionary successors. Just part of the tremendous national potential wasted.

So, some Ukrainians in power 20+ years ago made the "wrong" decisions by not investing in their military capacities...which, as you note, were Soviet made, dependent upon the empire from which they'd just split...

So, Ukraine doesn't deserve to be independent and free of Russia's yoke because of that "mistake"...got it.

The Ukrainians were the best & the brightest of the Soviet military & defense sector. They squandered it. They didn't "choose peace". They chose not to retain the ability to defend themselves. They did not need nucs for that. That would have been adequate had they stayed in the CIS & been Russia's ally like Belarus.They chose to align with the west but did not take the necessary steps to defend themselves & maintain their independence -- a basic obligation for any nation of that size. Their entire 30 year history since independence has been as a corrupt oligarchy. The West is propping them up because we lead them to this point. We want to divide & limit Russia -- deny them their historic heartland -- we are just too sanctimonious to admit it. We are fighting & prolonging this proxy war primarily to degrade Russia militarily & economically with the goal of regime change. We've been following the same game plan since the end of the Cold War. We are playing a dangerous game.

Yes, it's dangerous. Very.

But the most dangerous move would be to allow an imperialist aggressor invade and annex by force it's neighbor.

You say we should not help them, we should abandon their entreaties for hep, that we should let aggressors prevail.

After all, they could have been like Belarus...

We can't abandon them now. We're too far down this road. The die is cast. We can quietly push them to the negotiating table, leading to a frozen conflict. They may have to cede some territory they have lost -- that's the fortunes of war. They need to stop the death & destruction. Rebuild the country they've been able to defend, & with our continued support & protection, prove that they have become a liberal democracy, worthy of joining the West. ...Nuland, Applebaum & Soros already have plans for Belarus.

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.

Wow.



I think we all understand you better now.

DocBarrister

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.”
— Maya Angelou

I saw it my very first contact with Old R Squared. I was new to the politics forum. I had “heard it all before…..”. One of the benefits of anonymity at the time.

[a fan]

I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons

The Bush's. Biden. Reagan. Obama, Kennedy, Ford, Nixon........endless list of Presidents.

[old salt]

I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons

The Bush's. Biden. Reagan. Obama, Kennedy, Ford, Nixon........endless list of Presidents.

I'm not sure they qualify. Just espousing many of the same views is apparently not enough.
To be pure -- you have to have been a liberal (who was mugged by reality).

Jeane Kirkpatrick & Bill Bennett are the 2 most prominent I've come across.

[old salt]

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;
I don't expect the fighting to stop immediately. Both sides are preparing for the battle for Kherson & the key crossing points on the Dneiper. I get the feeling that the Russians will pull their forces back S of the river if they can do it unopposed. They're offering safe passage & resettlement for the Kherson residents likely to be caught up in the counter-offensive. Watch & see if the Russians blow the dam at Kakhovka causing flooding downstream.* When winter arrives, both sides will be bogged down & Russia's energy blackmail & ability to degrade Ukraine's infrastructure will have a greater impact. That's the time for both sides to seek a frozen conflict in place.

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and
Ukraine has not yet taken back territory S of the Dneiper, in Crimea or the expanded separatist enclaves in Donbas.
There's no guarantee that will be as relatively easy as winning back the territory they've regained so far.

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.
Ukraine has hardly proven itself as a democracy. Let's see how they account for all the aid they have received.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.
Not that it matters, but if you're keeping score, strictly accounting, it's 2.5.
They're outspoken influential public figures, not immune from scrutiny for their records or positions.

Wow.

I think we all understand you better now.
That you make this a religious issue, helps us understand you & your fellow smear merchants.
You hijack, misuse & trivialize a legitimate cause.

* https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk ... 022-10-19/

Zelenskiy calls on West to warn Russia not to blow up dam
By Jonathan Landay
FRONTLINE NORTH OF KHERSON, Ukraine, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West to warn Russia not to blow up a dam that would flood a large area of southern Ukraine, as his forces prepared to push Moscow's troops from the occupied city of Kherson.

In a television address, Zelenskiy said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the huge Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir, and were planning to blow it up.
"Now everyone in the world must act powerfully and quickly to prevent a new Russian terrorist attack. Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster," he said.

Russia has accused Kyiv of rocketing the dam and planning to destroy it in what Ukrainian officials called a sign that Moscow might blow it up and blame Kyiv. Neither side produced evidence to back up their allegations.

The vast Dnipro bisects Ukraine and is several kilometres wide in places. Bursting the dam could send a wall of water flooding settlements below it, towards Kherson, which Ukrainian forces hope to recapture in a major advance.
It would also wreck the canal system that irrigates much of southern Ukraine, including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.

The alarm has echoes of a World War Two disaster at another huge dam further upriver, which Ukrainian historians said was dynamited by Soviet sappers as their troops retreated, causing floods that swept away villages and killed thousands of people.

Zelenskiy called on world leaders to make clear that blowing up the dam would be treated "exactly the same as the use of weapons of mass destruction", with similar consequences to those threatened if Russia uses nuclear or chemical weapons.

'DIFFICULT DECISIONS'
One of the most important battles of the eight-month-old war is coming to a head near the dam as Ukrainian forces advance along the river's west bank, aiming to recapture Kherson and encircle thousands of Russian troops.

Ukraine has imposed an information blackout from the Kherson front, but Russian commander General Sergei Surovikin said this week the situation in Kherson was "already difficult" and Russia was "not ruling out difficult decisions" there.

Ukrainian troops manning a section of the front north of Kherson on Friday said there had been a noticeable reduction in recent weeks in shellfire from Russian positions in a tree line that sweeps across an expanse of fields, some 4 km away.

The drop off in shooting and an absence of Russian armour movement in the sector, they said, indicated the Russians were short of ammunition and equipment. The only sign of fighting was the occasional crump of an exploding shell in the distance.

"They've been shooting less starting about three weeks ago," said Myhailo, 42, who like other soldiers deployed with him withheld his last name. "And their drones are less active."
"It's probably been about a month there's been less shelling," agreed Sasha, 19. "This has to finish at some point. Their ammunition can't last forever."

DRONES, MISSILES
The Kremlin on Friday sidestepped a question about whether or not President Vladimir Putin had given an order for Russian forces to withdraw from Kherson.

Ukraine's armed forces general staff said up to 2,000 newly-mobilised Russians had arrived in the region "to replenish losses and strengthen units on the contact line".

Russian-installed occupation officials have begun what they say is the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians across the river from towns on the west bank. They accused Kyiv of shelling a ferry overnight, killing at least four civilians. Ukraine said it had fired at a barge but only after a curfew when no civilians should have been out.

Several buses with evacuees from Kherson arrived on Friday in the north Crimean town of Dzhankoi. One man, who declined to give his name, said the city was under massive shelling.
"They are bombing bridges, everything," he said.

As Russian forces have faced setbacks on the battlefield since September, Putin has intensified the war. Last month he ordered the call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists, announced the annexation of Russian-occupied territory and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia.

This month, he began a campaign of attacks using cruise missiles and drones to knock out Ukraine's power supply ahead of winter - strikes that Ukraine's energy minister said had hit at least half of the country's thermal generation capacity.

Kyiv and the West say that amounts to deliberate targeting of civil infrastructure and a war crime.

Moscow has acknowledged targeting energy infrastructure but denies targeting civilians, saying the aim of its "special military operation" is to degrade Ukraine's military.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference that Washington had seen no evidence that Russia is interested in ending its aggression toward Ukraine, and instead was "doubling and tripling down."

Since Thursday, Ukrainians have experienced countrywide calls to reduce electricity consumption and some blackouts, which the authorities say are necessary to fix power stations damaged in the attacks.

Britain, France and Germany on Friday called for a United Nations investigation of accusations Russia has used Iranian-origin drones in attacks, allegedly violating a U.N. Security Council Resolution.

A day earlier, the United States said Iranian troops were in Crimea and had helped fly the drones.

Iran has denied supplying the drones although many have been shot down and recovered making their provenance clear.

[Farfromgeneva]

Basically, your peace solution requires:

(1) Ukraine to stop fighting a war it is winning;
I don't expect the fighting to stop immediately. Both sides are preparing for the battle for Kherson & the key crossing points on the Dneiper. I get the feeling that the Russians will pull their forces back S of the river if they can do it unopposed. They're offering safe passage & resettlement for the Kherson residents likely to be caught up in the counter-offensive. Watch & see if the Russians blow the dam at Kakhovka causing flooding downstream.* When winter arrives, both sides will be bogged down & Russia's energy blackmail & ability to degrade Ukraine's infrastructure will have a greater impact. That's the time for both sides to seek a frozen conflict in place.

(2) Russia to keep territories that it cannot otherwise hold; and
Ukraine has not yet taken back territory S of the Dneiper, in Crimea or the expanded separatist enclaves in Donbas.
There's no guarantee that will be as relatively easy as winning back the territory they've regained so far.

(3) Have the democracy, Ukraine, prove itself worthy of Western trust, instead of the scumbag, malignant dictatorship that is Russia.
Ukraine has hardly proven itself as a democracy. Let's see how they account for all the aid they have received.

And on top of all that, you conclude with an unfounded conspiracy theory involving three individuals of Jewish heritage.
Not that it matters, but if you're keeping score, strictly accounting, it's 2.5.
They're outspoken influential public figures, not immune from scrutiny for their records or positions.

Wow.

I think we all understand you better now.
That you make this a religious issue, helps us understand you & your fellow smear merchants.
You hijack, misuse & trivialize a legitimate cause.

* https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk ... 022-10-19/

Zelenskiy calls on West to warn Russia not to blow up dam
By Jonathan Landay
FRONTLINE NORTH OF KHERSON, Ukraine, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West to warn Russia not to blow up a dam that would flood a large area of southern Ukraine, as his forces prepared to push Moscow's troops from the occupied city of Kherson.

In a television address, Zelenskiy said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the huge Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir, and were planning to blow it up.
"Now everyone in the world must act powerfully and quickly to prevent a new Russian terrorist attack. Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster," he said.

Russia has accused Kyiv of rocketing the dam and planning to destroy it in what Ukrainian officials called a sign that Moscow might blow it up and blame Kyiv. Neither side produced evidence to back up their allegations.

The vast Dnipro bisects Ukraine and is several kilometres wide in places. Bursting the dam could send a wall of water flooding settlements below it, towards Kherson, which Ukrainian forces hope to recapture in a major advance.
It would also wreck the canal system that irrigates much of southern Ukraine, including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.

The alarm has echoes of a World War Two disaster at another huge dam further upriver, which Ukrainian historians said was dynamited by Soviet sappers as their troops retreated, causing floods that swept away villages and killed thousands of people.

Zelenskiy called on world leaders to make clear that blowing up the dam would be treated "exactly the same as the use of weapons of mass destruction", with similar consequences to those threatened if Russia uses nuclear or chemical weapons.

'DIFFICULT DECISIONS'
One of the most important battles of the eight-month-old war is coming to a head near the dam as Ukrainian forces advance along the river's west bank, aiming to recapture Kherson and encircle thousands of Russian troops.

Ukraine has imposed an information blackout from the Kherson front, but Russian commander General Sergei Surovikin said this week the situation in Kherson was "already difficult" and Russia was "not ruling out difficult decisions" there.

Ukrainian troops manning a section of the front north of Kherson on Friday said there had been a noticeable reduction in recent weeks in shellfire from Russian positions in a tree line that sweeps across an expanse of fields, some 4 km away.

The drop off in shooting and an absence of Russian armour movement in the sector, they said, indicated the Russians were short of ammunition and equipment. The only sign of fighting was the occasional crump of an exploding shell in the distance.

"They've been shooting less starting about three weeks ago," said Myhailo, 42, who like other soldiers deployed with him withheld his last name. "And their drones are less active."
"It's probably been about a month there's been less shelling," agreed Sasha, 19. "This has to finish at some point. Their ammunition can't last forever."

DRONES, MISSILES
The Kremlin on Friday sidestepped a question about whether or not President Vladimir Putin had given an order for Russian forces to withdraw from Kherson.

Ukraine's armed forces general staff said up to 2,000 newly-mobilised Russians had arrived in the region "to replenish losses and strengthen units on the contact line".

Russian-installed occupation officials have begun what they say is the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians across the river from towns on the west bank. They accused Kyiv of shelling a ferry overnight, killing at least four civilians. Ukraine said it had fired at a barge but only after a curfew when no civilians should have been out.

Several buses with evacuees from Kherson arrived on Friday in the north Crimean town of Dzhankoi. One man, who declined to give his name, said the city was under massive shelling.
"They are bombing bridges, everything," he said.

As Russian forces have faced setbacks on the battlefield since September, Putin has intensified the war. Last month he ordered the call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists, announced the annexation of Russian-occupied territory and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia.

This month, he began a campaign of attacks using cruise missiles and drones to knock out Ukraine's power supply ahead of winter - strikes that Ukraine's energy minister said had hit at least half of the country's thermal generation capacity.

Kyiv and the West say that amounts to deliberate targeting of civil infrastructure and a war crime.

Moscow has acknowledged targeting energy infrastructure but denies targeting civilians, saying the aim of its "special military operation" is to degrade Ukraine's military.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference that Washington had seen no evidence that Russia is interested in ending its aggression toward Ukraine, and instead was "doubling and tripling down."

Since Thursday, Ukrainians have experienced countrywide calls to reduce electricity consumption and some blackouts, which the authorities say are necessary to fix power stations damaged in the attacks.

Britain, France and Germany on Friday called for a United Nations investigation of accusations Russia has used Iranian-origin drones in attacks, allegedly violating a U.N. Security Council Resolution.

A day earlier, the United States said Iranian troops were in Crimea and had helped fly the drones.

Iran has denied supplying the drones although many have been shot down and recovered making their provenance clear.

When you toss out conspiratorial bombs like “they’ve got plans for Belarus” you hijack, misuse and trivialize a legitimate cause.

Boy I pound on lawyers for weaponize domain knowledge which has never equaled intelligence but I see it in this all the time.

Small wins…if you can even call them that. Then talk about others misusing and trivializing. Funny.

[old salt]

When you toss out conspiratorial bombs like “they’ve got plans for Belarus” you hijack, misuse and trivialize a legitimate cause.

https://twitter.com/georgesoros/status/ ... 71?lang=en
George Soros
@georgesoros
One year after a stolen election in Belarus, the situation for ordinary Belarusians has become worse. The U.S. and EU should respond more firmly to Lukashenka’s oppression.
justsecurity.org
`In Today’s Belarus, Living Outside of Politics is No Longer an Option’
The US and the EU must act swiftly, before more people are hurt or killed and before more damage is done to the credibility of democracy.
9:02 AM · Aug 18, 2021
·SocialFlow

https://truthout.org/articles/the-ukrai ... land-made/
The Ukraine Mess That Nuland Made (@ 2015)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... on/671242/

'LUKASHENKO IS EASIER TO UNSEAT THAN PUTIN’
A band of Belarusians is resisting the threat of a neo-Soviet empire by taking up arms in Ukraine.

By Anne Applebaum, SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

No revolutionary posters line the streets, “flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues,” as they did when George Orwell left Barcelona to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Nor can you hear loudspeakers “bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night,” as Orwell did in 1936. Instead, gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, the Belarusians preparing to leave Warsaw to join the Ukrainian army look more like a bunch of computer programmers getting ready for a long car trip.

Maybe that’s because they are a bunch of computer programmers—or anyway, some of them are—gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, getting ready for a long car trip. Canned food, dried sausage, and bags of nuts and raisins are neatly stacked on the floor beside a pile of backpacks. A couple of SUVs are parked just outside. The cars have been donated by Polish or Belarusian sympathizers, or else were left behind by others who have departed for the front. The group I am meeting will be leaving for the Ukrainian border in an hour, and they are speaking with me on the condition that I don’t take pictures and don’t ask for names. If they are identified, members of their families could be visited, harassed, even arrested by the Belarusian police. “Our relatives are hostages,” one of them told me. Already, mothers of Belarusian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been forced to make public statements denouncing their children.

I can tell you that they are young, in their 20s and 30s, and that they are on their way to join the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment, a military unit founded in March as a part of the Ukrainian army but with a separate, Belarusian status. I can also tell you that, appearances to the contrary, they and their leaders are thoroughly grounded in the international history of armed rebellion. They know their 19th-century antecedents: Kastus Kalinouski fought in the failed 1863 uprising against the Russian occupation of what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They know their 20th-century antecedents too, among them not just Orwell in Spain but Józef Piłsudski, a Polish general who fought with the Austrian army in 1914 because he hoped, eventually, to liberate Poland. Although Kalinouski was executed and Orwell’s cause ultimately failed, Piłsudski marched his Polish Legions into Warsaw. By 1918, he was the leader of independent Poland. The men in the basement are going to Ukraine both because they are, like Orwell in Spain, sympathizers with another country’s democratic cause, and because they hope, like Piłsudski in Poland, to eventually liberate Belarus from the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for nearly three decades.

Hope is tempered with realism—they are headed for the front line of one of the most brutal wars of the 21st century—and bolstered by desperation, the feeling that other, better roads to political change have disappeared. K, a man in his 20s—floppy blond hair, green T-shirt, ripped shorts—told me he had begun his career working in a government office in Minsk, but quickly realized what that meant. “Your work, everything that you do, is to make sure that the Lukashenko regime remains in power,” he said. During a series of mass protests following a stolen election in 2020, a moment all of them call “the revolution,” K and a friend distributed leaflets with slogans criticizing the regime. The friend is now in prison, serving a four-year sentence (K tells me his name; later I find it on a list of political prisoners). After Russia invaded Ukraine, K was racked with guilt, unable to sleep, angry that the failure of the Belarusian revolution meant that Russian rockets could be launched at Ukraine from Belarus. “I understood that we have an obligation to go to Kyiv,” he says. “And afterwards, we will go to Minsk.”

We didn’t finish our revolution, we didn’t remove Lukashenko, we didn’t prevent Russian troops from crossing our border to attack Ukraine—all of these are reasons, now, to fight in Ukraine. A long-haired man, R (one of the computer programmers), told me that he, too, took part in the 2020 demonstrations, and that he, too, left Belarus afterward. But then R returned home for a visit. What he saw shocked him. People had stopped protesting: “People aren’t fighting. This life”—he means life under the dictatorship—“is enough for them.” How can they just go on as if nothing is happening, as if rockets are not flying? “To me it’s surreal.”

Most of the men I spoke with have other options; they could have good lives outside Belarus if they wanted to. B, wearing a white T-shirt printed with the slogan inspire, revealed halfway through our conversation that he speaks good English, and we switched from Russian. He has family in the U.S., and has been there several times (“Bay Area … Yosemite National Park …”). His dream was to watch Woody Allen playing jazz in New York, but on the night he went to Café Carlyle, Allen wasn’t there. He describes himself as a “digital nomad”—“or maybe better to say international homeless”—and has been traveling around Europe for the past few years. He, too, works in the world of computers, but he has wanted to fight in Ukraine since the war began. In March, “it was very cold, and I was very scared.” Although “I am still scared,” he said, those “emotional videos,” watching them one after another, over and over again, “month by month, week by week,” finally persuaded him to sign on with the Kalinouski Regiment.

K, R, and B might all be roughly described as Minsk intellectuals. Their leaders, organizing papers in the next room, tell me that among the volunteers are also recent high-school graduates, factory workers, ex-policemen. Some arrive in Warsaw on overnight buses from Belarus with no money and no plans, other than to join the Ukrainian army. On the front gate of the Kalinouski Warsaw headquarters is a sign with a phone number, in case volunteers show up when no one is around. How do they know where to go? “Everyone knows,” one of them told me.

I was also told about much rougher recruits, including former criminals, though I didn’t encounter any myself. One of the exiles who staffs the Warsaw recruitment office put it like this: “Certain kinds of people are drawn to the idea of weapons, fighting.” Several former members of the Belarusian military and security services are also known to be fighting with the Ukrainian army, some in the Kalinouski Regiment and some in other units. Slowly, they are linking up with one another, and with sympathizers elsewhere. On August 9, a congress of the unified Belarusian opposition appointed Valery Sakhashchik, the former commander of a legendary paratrooper unit in the Belarusian army, as the effective minister of defense in exile; I spoke with him while he was in a car, driving to Ukraine for his first formal meeting with the Kalinouski Regiment. Sakhashchik left Belarus six years ago—it was impossible “to be a free person” there, he told me—and has been running a successful construction firm in Poland. He thinks the regiment might not yet be important militarily, “but it is important emotionally, because a lot of people believe it represents the future of the Belarusian army.”

Their uniforms were crowdfunded or donated. Their guns came from the Ukrainian army. Their trainer is from one of the Baltic states.
Whether they make contact in advance or just appear on the doorstep, whether their background is in the military or at a university, all of the volunteers go through a verification process. Pavel Kukhta, the head of the Kalinouski Warsaw recruitment office (and one of the few people who has been public about his association with the regiment), told me that Belarusian kiberpartizanti—cyberpartisans—have hacked most of the databases used by the Belarusian KGB and can check whether residential, educational, and professional information is genuine. If it’s not, the men get sent on to the border anyway, where Ukrainian border guards will stop them and question them further. What happens after that to those who have given false information, Kukhta doesn’t know.

Kukhta doesn’t know a lot of things. He won’t say where the new recruits will be training, or where they will be sent afterward. He can’t say with any precision exactly how many of them are already fighting (“hundreds”). The less you know, the less you can accidentally reveal.

Even putting aside the need for operational security, Kukhta, who has been fighting with the Ukrainian army since 2016, originally in the Donbas, is clearly a man of few words. For this role, he doesn’t need many. A couple of times while I am talking with the new recruits, he comes into the room where the men are waiting. He collects their passports, checks their names. There are no inspirational speeches and no drama: Everyone here has already made their decision and accepted the consequences. When I leave, they are lining up in the garden.

The next time I see them—or I think I see them—is a week later, in a scraggly field behind a parking lot in a suburb in central Ukraine. New recruits, perhaps including some I met in Warsaw, are dressed in camouflage, carrying weapons, and, in a nod to my presence, wearing balaclavas to hide their faces. Their uniforms were crowdfunded or donated by sympathizers in both Poland and Belarus. Their guns came from the Ukrainian army. Their trainer is from one of the Baltic states. He is particularly valued by the Belarusians because he has passed several NATO courses, and they want to learn to fight like NATO soldiers. One of the many ironies of the current moment is how many opponents of Putin’s Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea (and indeed all the way to Central Asia), share Russian as a common language and can use it to organize, even to teach American military doctrine, across national lines.

I watch them with “Rokosh,” the alias of a man who has been part of different Belarusian-democracy movements since the 1990s. He explains that today’s exercises involve training to fight in cities. On other days they go to the Ukrainian army’s shooting ranges, or practice trench warfare; the field has been dug up for that purpose. They follow a strict schedule—morning exercise, all-day training, films or lectures in the evenings—and live together in a run-down dormitory nearby.

Rokosh earlier joined me for a longer conversation in an unremarkable basement bar with three other Belarusians associated with the regiment or with the Belarusian opposition. All of them belong to a different generation from the men in the field. They have watched the rise and fall of various opposition movements and leaders since 1994, when Lukashenko first came to power. They watched his regime turn from the soft authoritarian rule of a collective-farm boss into a vicious, violent autocracy that tortures political prisoners and allows the Russian army to launch missiles into Ukraine from its territory. They remember the Soviet Union, and they do not want their country to become part of a neo-Soviet empire. What they want instead, one of them told me, is “a radical change in the political system, legal system, economic system, and deep reforms of the entire society to bring Belarus to the principles of democracy and the rule of law.” But they do not believe the current regime will disintegrate peacefully.

Like everybody else in the post-Soviet world, Rokosh and the other men have read Gene Sharp, the philosopher of nonviolent revolution and civic activism who died in 2018. They admire his ideas, but they don’t think they apply to their situation anymore. Nonviolence was tried in Belarus. It failed. “Flowers and demonstrations could not change this situation,” one of them says, so it is time to try something else. They tell me about partisan underground movements inside their country—one of them is called “Flying Storks”—which have, they say, racked up a few minor victories, including a drone attack on the headquarters of OMON, the Belarusian riot police, in Minsk. They also say they have distributed clandestine training videos designed to help people counter the tactics of the riot police: “The people’s right to revolt is justified because all civilized methods of changing the situation were exhausted,” one said. Even so, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a turning point, a different level of threat, a shock to the system, a “spit in the face.” If Ukraine does not win, one of them told me, “we will have to say goodbye to any idea of a free Belarus.”

They aren’t the first to draw that conclusion. In the very early days of the war, inspired by another piece of history—the Belarusians who blew up railway lines and train stations to stop the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union in the early 1940s—a group of Belarusian railway workers, helped by the kiberpartizanti, sabotaged some of the Russian trains carrying soldiers and supplies to the front. They mixed the signals, snarled the tracks, took down the computer system, damaged equipment. One group of saboteurs came under police attack while setting fire to a signaling box. A Belarusian Telegram channel, “Belaruski Gayun,” also helped by providing constantly updated information from anonymous subscribers on troop and equipment movements along the border, allowing Ukrainians to prepare. The channel is still going, and is still read carefully by those guarding the territory of northern Ukraine.

The members of the Kalinouski Regiment are motivated by a belief that the Belarusian regime is both much weaker and much more dangerous than many assume. Lukashenko, they argue, is deeply unpopular. They reckon that no more than 10 to 20 percent of the population supports him—mostly pensioners, bureaucrats, and security-service employees who depend on the state for jobs in a failing economy—and he knows this. Lukashenko has no ideology, but he will do anything to stay in power. That means that when Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens, as he did at the end of June, to transfer nuclear missiles to Belarus, the world should pay attention. Putin might want to avoid the geopolitical consequences of using nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945—but Lukashenko might not care.

Putin could also force Lukashenko to send Belarusian troops to fight in Ukraine, but that kind of decision could have unintended consequences. Kukhta, Rokosh, and the others all say their regiment has been contacted directly by soldiers and officers now serving in the Belarusian army who want instructions on how to surrender if they are ordered to cross the border into Ukraine. Kukhta, the man of few words, gave them blunt advice: “Put your hands up and your weapons down.” He predicts that the majority of the Belarusian army’s tanks and trucks would wind up in the control of the Ukrainian army. Although there is no way to verify that claim, at least one Belarusian border guard has successfully escaped to the Ukrainian side already, declaring that he wanted to join the fight against Russia. Sakhashchik, who also predicts that the majority of ordinary soldiers would not fight, made a video appeal back in February, calling on Belarusian soldiers not to join the invasion: “This is not our war. You will not defend your homeland, home, or family and will not receive glory—only shame, humiliation, and death.”

The Kalinouski fighters think Belarus has another kind of significance too. After all, if the Russian leader wants to reunite Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine into some kind of neo-Soviet empire, Lukashenko’s loyalty is a necessary ingredient. But what if the Belarusian pillar disappears? Then everything else—the empire, the war with Ukraine, Putinism itself—might crumble as well. This, they want the world to know, is an opportunity that should be taken, not least because, as one of them put it, “Lukashenko is easier to unseat than Putin.” Right now nobody other than the Poles and of course the Ukrainians is assisting the Kalinouski fighters. But maybe someday others will. Rokosh tells me that he wants the fighters eventually to get access to better Western and NATO intelligence about what goes on inside their country so that they can plan their next steps better. The Biden administration’s warnings last autumn about the coming war in Ukraine convinced many people across Eastern Europe, Belarus included, that the Americans know a lot more than they let on. Alongside Gene Sharp, the fighters have also read Charlie Wilson’s War, the book that describes how, in the 1980s, a single congressman persuaded Washington to help the Afghans overthrow their Soviet occupiers. If it happened once, maybe it could happen again?

Before i leave the scruffy field, I watch the volunteers get put through their paces. They are walking in groups of three, one behind the other, as if they were in an occupied city. Some of them are slow and awkward, giving the impression that this is the first time they’ve ever held a gun. Some move faster, seem more experienced; one of them told me back in Warsaw that he’s had some police training, and I wonder if he is one of the men moving lightly, adeptly, across the field. Several other people, including a young woman, are watching from the sidelines, listening intently to the words of the Baltic trainer. One of them has a Cossack haircut—shaved head, except for a ponytail—and arms covered in patriotic tattoos.

The trainer turns on heavy-metal music, and that adds a bit more drama to the scene. The sun beats down on the suburb, and I begin to feel bad about the balaclavas. The trainees repeat the same exercises over and over again. Rokosh explains that the idea, as with all military training, is for these moves to become automatic, instinctive. Computer programmers, high-school graduates, government bureaucrats, and maybe the odd thief must learn in just a few weeks to react without thinking when they are attacked.

However wearisome the exercise might be, this is the easy part, the predictable part. They will train, they will prepare, they will be sent to the front—all of that, they know. What they don’t know is the true nature of the historical moment they inhabit, or how it will end. They have made a bet, but is it the right one?

Here is one more story told to me by the group in the basement bar: In 2021, a few members of the Belarusian underground started communicating clandestinely with some senior Belarusian officers who said they were ready to oppose the regime. After many months of conversation, the partisans finally agreed to travel outside the country, to Russia, in order to meet them; the officers said they didn’t dare do so at home but could not travel abroad anywhere else. The meeting was a trap. As soon as the Belarusian-underground leaders arrived, they were all arrested and imprisoned.

In the bar, I asked the men if they are waiting for the right moment to return home. “We are not waiting for the moment,” one of them corrected me. “We are working on creating the conditions” that will make the right moment arrive.

They believe that if they lean hard on the scales of history and help the Ukrainians win, then both Russia and its Belarusian satrap will be far weaker. They could pay a high price—not just with their time and effort but with their lives. On June 26, the commander of one of the Belarusian battalions died during the battle for Lysychansk. Ivan Marchuk, alias “Brest,” was 28. Others have also been killed, wounded, or captured.

But if they don’t fight, they might pay another kind of price: If Ukraine loses and Russia is empowered, then Belarus will remain a dictatorship, and they will never be able to go home. Those of us who live in luckier countries, with better geography, don’t know what it feels like to have a choice between fighting and exile, but all of the people sweating in this field truly do. Back in Warsaw, one of the volunteers told me that since leaving his country in 2020, he had done nothing but move from place to place, trying to make a different life but never really finding a home. Belarus is his only home, but before he can return there, he has to help change it. “I run. And I run. And I run. I would like to stop running.”

This article appears in the October 2022 print edition with the headline “The Kalinouski Regiment.”

[Farfromgeneva]

When you toss out conspiratorial bombs like “they’ve got plans for Belarus” you hijack, misuse and trivialize a legitimate cause.

https://twitter.com/georgesoros/status/ ... 71?lang=en
George Soros
@georgesoros
One year after a stolen election in Belarus, the situation for ordinary Belarusians has become worse. The U.S. and EU should respond more firmly to Lukashenka’s oppression.
justsecurity.org
`In Today’s Belarus, Living Outside of Politics is No Longer an Option’
The US and the EU must act swiftly, before more people are hurt or killed and before more damage is done to the credibility of democracy.
9:02 AM · Aug 18, 2021
·SocialFlow

https://truthout.org/articles/the-ukrai ... land-made/
The Ukraine Mess That Nuland Made (@ 2015)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... on/671242/

'LUKASHENKO IS EASIER TO UNSEAT THAN PUTIN’
A band of Belarusians is resisting the threat of a neo-Soviet empire by taking up arms in Ukraine.

By Anne Applebaum, SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

No revolutionary posters line the streets, “flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues,” as they did when George Orwell left Barcelona to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Nor can you hear loudspeakers “bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night,” as Orwell did in 1936. Instead, gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, the Belarusians preparing to leave Warsaw to join the Ukrainian army look more like a bunch of computer programmers getting ready for a long car trip.

Maybe that’s because they are a bunch of computer programmers—or anyway, some of them are—gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, getting ready for a long car trip. Canned food, dried sausage, and bags of nuts and raisins are neatly stacked on the floor beside a pile of backpacks. A couple of SUVs are parked just outside. The cars have been donated by Polish or Belarusian sympathizers, or else were left behind by others who have departed for the front. The group I am meeting will be leaving for the Ukrainian border in an hour, and they are speaking with me on the condition that I don’t take pictures and don’t ask for names. If they are identified, members of their families could be visited, harassed, even arrested by the Belarusian police. “Our relatives are hostages,” one of them told me. Already, mothers of Belarusian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been forced to make public statements denouncing their children.

I can tell you that they are young, in their 20s and 30s, and that they are on their way to join the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment, a military unit founded in March as a part of the Ukrainian army but with a separate, Belarusian status. I can also tell you that, appearances to the contrary, they and their leaders are thoroughly grounded in the international history of armed rebellion. They know their 19th-century antecedents: Kastus Kalinouski fought in the failed 1863 uprising against the Russian occupation of what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They know their 20th-century antecedents too, among them not just Orwell in Spain but Józef Piłsudski, a Polish general who fought with the Austrian army in 1914 because he hoped, eventually, to liberate Poland. Although Kalinouski was executed and Orwell’s cause ultimately failed, Piłsudski marched his Polish Legions into Warsaw. By 1918, he was the leader of independent Poland. The men in the basement are going to Ukraine both because they are, like Orwell in Spain, sympathizers with another country’s democratic cause, and because they hope, like Piłsudski in Poland, to eventually liberate Belarus from the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for nearly three decades.

Hope is tempered with realism—they are headed for the front line of one of the most brutal wars of the 21st century—and bolstered by desperation, the feeling that other, better roads to political change have disappeared. K, a man in his 20s—floppy blond hair, green T-shirt, ripped shorts—told me he had begun his career working in a government office in Minsk, but quickly realized what that meant. “Your work, everything that you do, is to make sure that the Lukashenko regime remains in power,” he said. During a series of mass protests following a stolen election in 2020, a moment all of them call “the revolution,” K and a friend distributed leaflets with slogans criticizing the regime. The friend is now in prison, serving a four-year sentence (K tells me his name; later I find it on a list of political prisoners). After Russia invaded Ukraine, K was racked with guilt, unable to sleep, angry that the failure of the Belarusian revolution meant that Russian rockets could be launched at Ukraine from Belarus. “I understood that we have an obligation to go to Kyiv,” he says. “And afterwards, we will go to Minsk.”

We didn’t finish our revolution, we didn’t remove Lukashenko, we didn’t prevent Russian troops from crossing our border to attack Ukraine—all of these are reasons, now, to fight in Ukraine. A long-haired man, R (one of the computer programmers), told me that he, too, took part in the 2020 demonstrations, and that he, too, left Belarus afterward. But then R returned home for a visit. What he saw shocked him. People had stopped protesting: “People aren’t fighting. This life”—he means life under the dictatorship—“is enough for them.” How can they just go on as if nothing is happening, as if rockets are not flying? “To me it’s surreal.”

Most of the men I spoke with have other options; they could have good lives outside Belarus if they wanted to. B, wearing a white T-shirt printed with the slogan inspire, revealed halfway through our conversation that he speaks good English, and we switched from Russian. He has family in the U.S., and has been there several times (“Bay Area … Yosemite National Park …”). His dream was to watch Woody Allen playing jazz in New York, but on the night he went to Café Carlyle, Allen wasn’t there. He describes himself as a “digital nomad”—“or maybe better to say international homeless”—and has been traveling around Europe for the past few years. He, too, works in the world of computers, but he has wanted to fight in Ukraine since the war began. In March, “it was very cold, and I was very scared.” Although “I am still scared,” he said, those “emotional videos,” watching them one after another, over and over again, “month by month, week by week,” finally persuaded him to sign on with the Kalinouski Regiment.

K, R, and B might all be roughly described as Minsk intellectuals. Their leaders, organizing papers in the next room, tell me that among the volunteers are also recent high-school graduates, factory workers, ex-policemen. Some arrive in Warsaw on overnight buses from Belarus with no money and no plans, other than to join the Ukrainian army. On the front gate of the Kalinouski Warsaw headquarters is a sign with a phone number, in case volunteers show up when no one is around. How do they know where to go? “Everyone knows,” one of them told me.

I was also told about much rougher recruits, including former criminals, though I didn’t encounter any myself. One of the exiles who staffs the Warsaw recruitment office put it like this: “Certain kinds of people are drawn to the idea of weapons, fighting.” Several former members of the Belarusian military and security services are also known to be fighting with the Ukrainian army, some in the Kalinouski Regiment and some in other units. Slowly, they are linking up with one another, and with sympathizers elsewhere. On August 9, a congress of the unified Belarusian opposition appointed Valery Sakhashchik, the former commander of a legendary paratrooper unit in the Belarusian army, as the effective minister of defense in exile; I spoke with him while he was in a car, driving to Ukraine for his first formal meeting with the Kalinouski Regiment. Sakhashchik left Belarus six years ago—it was impossible “to be a free person” there, he told me—and has been running a successful construction firm in Poland. He thinks the regiment might not yet be important militarily, “but it is important emotionally, because a lot of people believe it represents the future of the Belarusian army.”

Their uniforms were crowdfunded or donated. Their guns came from the Ukrainian army. Their trainer is from one of the Baltic states.
Whether they make contact in advance or just appear on the doorstep, whether their background is in the military or at a university, all of the volunteers go through a verification process. Pavel Kukhta, the head of the Kalinouski Warsaw recruitment office (and one of the few people who has been public about his association with the regiment), told me that Belarusian kiberpartizanti—cyberpartisans—have hacked most of the databases used by the Belarusian KGB and can check whether residential, educational, and professional information is genuine. If it’s not, the men get sent on to the border anyway, where Ukrainian border guards will stop them and question them further. What happens after that to those who have given false information, Kukhta doesn’t know.

Kukhta doesn’t know a lot of things. He won’t say where the new recruits will be training, or where they will be sent afterward. He can’t say with any precision exactly how many of them are already fighting (“hundreds”). The less you know, the less you can accidentally reveal.

Even putting aside the need for operational security, Kukhta, who has been fighting with the Ukrainian army since 2016, originally in the Donbas, is clearly a man of few words. For this role, he doesn’t need many. A couple of times while I am talking with the new recruits, he comes into the room where the men are waiting. He collects their passports, checks their names. There are no inspirational speeches and no drama: Everyone here has already made their decision and accepted the consequences. When I leave, they are lining up in the garden.

The next time I see them—or I think I see them—is a week later, in a scraggly field behind a parking lot in a suburb in central Ukraine. New recruits, perhaps including some I met in Warsaw, are dressed in camouflage, carrying weapons, and, in a nod to my presence, wearing balaclavas to hide their faces. Their uniforms were crowdfunded or donated by sympathizers in both Poland and Belarus. Their guns came from the Ukrainian army. Their trainer is from one of the Baltic states. He is particularly valued by the Belarusians because he has passed several NATO courses, and they want to learn to fight like NATO soldiers. One of the many ironies of the current moment is how many opponents of Putin’s Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea (and indeed all the way to Central Asia), share Russian as a common language and can use it to organize, even to teach American military doctrine, across national lines.

I watch them with “Rokosh,” the alias of a man who has been part of different Belarusian-democracy movements since the 1990s. He explains that today’s exercises involve training to fight in cities. On other days they go to the Ukrainian army’s shooting ranges, or practice trench warfare; the field has been dug up for that purpose. They follow a strict schedule—morning exercise, all-day training, films or lectures in the evenings—and live together in a run-down dormitory nearby.

Rokosh earlier joined me for a longer conversation in an unremarkable basement bar with three other Belarusians associated with the regiment or with the Belarusian opposition. All of them belong to a different generation from the men in the field. They have watched the rise and fall of various opposition movements and leaders since 1994, when Lukashenko first came to power. They watched his regime turn from the soft authoritarian rule of a collective-farm boss into a vicious, violent autocracy that tortures political prisoners and allows the Russian army to launch missiles into Ukraine from its territory. They remember the Soviet Union, and they do not want their country to become part of a neo-Soviet empire. What they want instead, one of them told me, is “a radical change in the political system, legal system, economic system, and deep reforms of the entire society to bring Belarus to the principles of democracy and the rule of law.” But they do not believe the current regime will disintegrate peacefully.

Like everybody else in the post-Soviet world, Rokosh and the other men have read Gene Sharp, the philosopher of nonviolent revolution and civic activism who died in 2018. They admire his ideas, but they don’t think they apply to their situation anymore. Nonviolence was tried in Belarus. It failed. “Flowers and demonstrations could not change this situation,” one of them says, so it is time to try something else. They tell me about partisan underground movements inside their country—one of them is called “Flying Storks”—which have, they say, racked up a few minor victories, including a drone attack on the headquarters of OMON, the Belarusian riot police, in Minsk. They also say they have distributed clandestine training videos designed to help people counter the tactics of the riot police: “The people’s right to revolt is justified because all civilized methods of changing the situation were exhausted,” one said. Even so, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a turning point, a different level of threat, a shock to the system, a “spit in the face.” If Ukraine does not win, one of them told me, “we will have to say goodbye to any idea of a free Belarus.”

They aren’t the first to draw that conclusion. In the very early days of the war, inspired by another piece of history—the Belarusians who blew up railway lines and train stations to stop the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union in the early 1940s—a group of Belarusian railway workers, helped by the kiberpartizanti, sabotaged some of the Russian trains carrying soldiers and supplies to the front. They mixed the signals, snarled the tracks, took down the computer system, damaged equipment. One group of saboteurs came under police attack while setting fire to a signaling box. A Belarusian Telegram channel, “Belaruski Gayun,” also helped by providing constantly updated information from anonymous subscribers on troop and equipment movements along the border, allowing Ukrainians to prepare. The channel is still going, and is still read carefully by those guarding the territory of northern Ukraine.

The members of the Kalinouski Regiment are motivated by a belief that the Belarusian regime is both much weaker and much more dangerous than many assume. Lukashenko, they argue, is deeply unpopular. They reckon that no more than 10 to 20 percent of the population supports him—mostly pensioners, bureaucrats, and security-service employees who depend on the state for jobs in a failing economy—and he knows this. Lukashenko has no ideology, but he will do anything to stay in power. That means that when Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens, as he did at the end of June, to transfer nuclear missiles to Belarus, the world should pay attention. Putin might want to avoid the geopolitical consequences of using nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945—but Lukashenko might not care.

Putin could also force Lukashenko to send Belarusian troops to fight in Ukraine, but that kind of decision could have unintended consequences. Kukhta, Rokosh, and the others all say their regiment has been contacted directly by soldiers and officers now serving in the Belarusian army who want instructions on how to surrender if they are ordered to cross the border into Ukraine. Kukhta, the man of few words, gave them blunt advice: “Put your hands up and your weapons down.” He predicts that the majority of the Belarusian army’s tanks and trucks would wind up in the control of the Ukrainian army. Although there is no way to verify that claim, at least one Belarusian border guard has successfully escaped to the Ukrainian side already, declaring that he wanted to join the fight against Russia. Sakhashchik, who also predicts that the majority of ordinary soldiers would not fight, made a video appeal back in February, calling on Belarusian soldiers not to join the invasion: “This is not our war. You will not defend your homeland, home, or family and will not receive glory—only shame, humiliation, and death.”

The Kalinouski fighters think Belarus has another kind of significance too. After all, if the Russian leader wants to reunite Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine into some kind of neo-Soviet empire, Lukashenko’s loyalty is a necessary ingredient. But what if the Belarusian pillar disappears? Then everything else—the empire, the war with Ukraine, Putinism itself—might crumble as well. This, they want the world to know, is an opportunity that should be taken, not least because, as one of them put it, “Lukashenko is easier to unseat than Putin.” Right now nobody other than the Poles and of course the Ukrainians is assisting the Kalinouski fighters. But maybe someday others will. Rokosh tells me that he wants the fighters eventually to get access to better Western and NATO intelligence about what goes on inside their country so that they can plan their next steps better. The Biden administration’s warnings last autumn about the coming war in Ukraine convinced many people across Eastern Europe, Belarus included, that the Americans know a lot more than they let on. Alongside Gene Sharp, the fighters have also read Charlie Wilson’s War, the book that describes how, in the 1980s, a single congressman persuaded Washington to help the Afghans overthrow their Soviet occupiers. If it happened once, maybe it could happen again?

Before i leave the scruffy field, I watch the volunteers get put through their paces. They are walking in groups of three, one behind the other, as if they were in an occupied city. Some of them are slow and awkward, giving the impression that this is the first time they’ve ever held a gun. Some move faster, seem more experienced; one of them told me back in Warsaw that he’s had some police training, and I wonder if he is one of the men moving lightly, adeptly, across the field. Several other people, including a young woman, are watching from the sidelines, listening intently to the words of the Baltic trainer. One of them has a Cossack haircut—shaved head, except for a ponytail—and arms covered in patriotic tattoos.

The trainer turns on heavy-metal music, and that adds a bit more drama to the scene. The sun beats down on the suburb, and I begin to feel bad about the balaclavas. The trainees repeat the same exercises over and over again. Rokosh explains that the idea, as with all military training, is for these moves to become automatic, instinctive. Computer programmers, high-school graduates, government bureaucrats, and maybe the odd thief must learn in just a few weeks to react without thinking when they are attacked.

However wearisome the exercise might be, this is the easy part, the predictable part. They will train, they will prepare, they will be sent to the front—all of that, they know. What they don’t know is the true nature of the historical moment they inhabit, or how it will end. They have made a bet, but is it the right one?

Here is one more story told to me by the group in the basement bar: In 2021, a few members of the Belarusian underground started communicating clandestinely with some senior Belarusian officers who said they were ready to oppose the regime. After many months of conversation, the partisans finally agreed to travel outside the country, to Russia, in order to meet them; the officers said they didn’t dare do so at home but could not travel abroad anywhere else. The meeting was a trap. As soon as the Belarusian-underground leaders arrived, they were all arrested and imprisoned.

In the bar, I asked the men if they are waiting for the right moment to return home. “We are not waiting for the moment,” one of them corrected me. “We are working on creating the conditions” that will make the right moment arrive.

They believe that if they lean hard on the scales of history and help the Ukrainians win, then both Russia and its Belarusian satrap will be far weaker. They could pay a high price—not just with their time and effort but with their lives. On June 26, the commander of one of the Belarusian battalions died during the battle for Lysychansk. Ivan Marchuk, alias “Brest,” was 28. Others have also been killed, wounded, or captured.

But if they don’t fight, they might pay another kind of price: If Ukraine loses and Russia is empowered, then Belarus will remain a dictatorship, and they will never be able to go home. Those of us who live in luckier countries, with better geography, don’t know what it feels like to have a choice between fighting and exile, but all of the people sweating in this field truly do. Back in Warsaw, one of the volunteers told me that since leaving his country in 2020, he had done nothing but move from place to place, trying to make a different life but never really finding a home. Belarus is his only home, but before he can return there, he has to help change it. “I run. And I run. And I run. I would like to stop running.”

This article appears in the October 2022 print edition with the headline “The Kalinouski Regiment.”

Your language clearly implies a conspiracy and you can whine like a little girl that’s not what you said. We all choose the language we use and everyone else seems to take responsibility for the language they use here even Bandito. Except for you. It’s funny for such a self professed noble person.

[MDlaxfan76]

Two more Jews for your blood of children drinking dinner parties in the international cabal.

Got it.

Make it 3. Enjoy this from the brightest at the NeoCon dinner party kiddee table. (I'm a big fan of his, btw)

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhore ... rn-crisis/

It's unfortunate that you can't have an honest discussion without playing the race/religion card.
It's a sign of intellectual weakness & a form of bigotry all it's own.
I agreed with the neocons during the Cold War, but they went too far in the aftermath.

Sorry, you don't get to skate by simply naming one more Jew and claiming "race/religion card" by someone.
These were the folks you put at the "dinner parties where they control the course of history".
Surely there are some non-Jews in your international cabal?

This exchange began with you making an argument in favor of a white Christian nationalist imperialist war criminal and his kleptocracy being rewarded for their aggression against a neighbor trying to move toward western values and democracy and defending their land and their people from atrocities.

With a claim that Ukraine should have taken the path of Belarus, then citing 3 people (just coincidentally) of Jewish Eastern European background as somehow the enemy of what, peace and prosperity, for Christian Eastern Europeans?

Was this all unconscious?

You're the one who introduced religion. I was not even aware that Nuland & Applebaum are Jewish. I don't check that when evaluating someone's position. I know that Applebaum married a Polish politician. There'd be a greater chance that they're Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
I only know that Soros is because bigots like you cry anti-semitism whenever he's criticized.
I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons, ...if I gave a sh!t or it mattered to anyone other than you & your fellow race baiters.

Ok, so it was simply "unconscious" that you just happened to choose 3 people with Eastern European Jewish heritage in your "dinner parties where they control the course of history" in reference to a conspiratorial plan in Belarus...(what, to encourage the overthrow of another white christian nationalist dictator?)

I guessed their likely background simply from the trope you employed...as you've done so many times in the past. Took one minute to confirm.
Nuland's parents were Jewish Ukrainian immigrants, Applebaum's family, Jewish Reformed, is originally from Belarus.

But ok, it's "unconscious"...perhaps you are just repeating what you hear others say, who are utilizing these tropes?

But after these many times that I've pointed out to you the through line of anti-semitism in these tropes and how they've been utilized historically continuing through to today by fascist populists, perhaps you could stir yourself to bother to avoid them?

Or not.

I have a tough time giving you an automatic pass, given that the specific use of Soros as the emblem of this trope (in prior eras it might have been "Rothschild") you admit you know well...so, you chose to employ it again, invoking this gruesome bigotry.

Here's the thing, if you really didn't intend this offensive, bigoted meaning.
I dunno how many of our fellow readers on here are Jewish, but I have to assume some are, and many others object as well...a simple apology would be a start and a promise to do one's best to avoid such mistakes going forward.

Or you can choose not to do so.

[Farfromgeneva]

Some people don’t think language matters. Ironically some who believe in the “chain of command” which seems hypocritical given how important clear communication is.

[PizzaSnake]

Some people don’t think language matters. Ironically some who believe in the “chain of command” which seems hypocritical given how important clear communication is.

“Some people don’t think language matters.”

It’s all we have. Imagine society or civilization without it. Good fncking luck.

[Farfromgeneva]

Some people don’t think language matters. Ironically some who believe in the “chain of command” which seems hypocritical given how important clear communication is.

“Some people don’t think language matters.”

It’s all we have. Imagine society or civilization without it. Good fncking luck.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God ... lm_series)

No need they made a movie

[old salt]

Two more Jews for your blood of children drinking dinner parties in the international cabal.

Got it.

Make it 3. Enjoy this from the brightest at the NeoCon dinner party kiddee table. (I'm a big fan of his, btw)

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhore ... rn-crisis/

It's unfortunate that you can't have an honest discussion without playing the race/religion card.
It's a sign of intellectual weakness & a form of bigotry all it's own.
I agreed with the neocons during the Cold War, but they went too far in the aftermath.

Sorry, you don't get to skate by simply naming one more Jew and claiming "race/religion card" by someone.
These were the folks you put at the "dinner parties where they control the course of history".
Surely there are some non-Jews in your international cabal?

This exchange began with you making an argument in favor of a white Christian nationalist imperialist war criminal and his kleptocracy being rewarded for their aggression against a neighbor trying to move toward western values and democracy and defending their land and their people from atrocities.

With a claim that Ukraine should have taken the path of Belarus, then citing 3 people (just coincidentally) of Jewish Eastern European background as somehow the enemy of what, peace and prosperity, for Christian Eastern Europeans?

Was this all unconscious?

You're the one who introduced religion. I was not even aware that Nuland & Applebaum are Jewish. I don't check that when evaluating someone's position. I know that Applebaum married a Polish politician. There'd be a greater chance that they're Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
I only know that Soros is because bigots like you cry anti-semitism whenever he's criticized.
I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons, ...if I gave a sh!t or it mattered to anyone other than you & your fellow race baiters.

Ok, so it was simply "unconscious" that you just happened to choose 3 people with Eastern European Jewish heritage in your "dinner parties where they control the course of history" in reference to a conspiratorial plan in Belarus...(what, to encourage the overthrow of another white christian nationalist dictator?)

I guessed their likely background simply from the trope you employed...as you've done so many times in the past. Took one minute to confirm.
Nuland's parents were Jewish Ukrainian immigrants, Applebaum's family, Jewish Reformed, is originally from Belarus.

But ok, it's "unconscious"...perhaps you are just repeating what you hear others say, who are utilizing these tropes?

But after these many times that I've pointed out to you the through line of anti-semitism in these tropes and how they've been utilized historically continuing through to today by fascist populists, perhaps you could stir yourself to bother to avoid them?

Or not.

I have a tough time giving you an automatic pass, given that the specific use of Soros as the emblem of this trope (in prior eras it might have been "Rothschild") you admit you know well...so, you chose to employ it again, invoking this gruesome bigotry.

Here's the thing, if you really didn't intend this offensive, bigoted meaning.
I dunno how many of our fellow readers on here are Jewish, but I have to assume some are, and many others object as well...a simple apology would be a start and a promise to do one's best to avoid such mistakes going forward.

Or you can choose not to do so.

I chose Soros, Nuland & Applebaum because of their public record. Their actions, writings & statements.
Their heritage or religion is of no concern to me unless they make it a part of their position. It is irrelevant.
I was unaware of their religion or if they are observant. I've made no reference or implication to their religion or heritage.
I offer no one an apology. To do so would be patronizing. I'm not going to self-censor based on religion when it is irrelevant.
Your hypersensitivity by proxy is laughable. Tragic history of previous generations does not exempt anyone from critque.
I doubt that neocons represent the majority opinion of Jewish Americans, but that, too, is irrelevant.

[MDlaxfan76]

Two more Jews for your blood of children drinking dinner parties in the international cabal.

Got it.

Make it 3. Enjoy this from the brightest at the NeoCon dinner party kiddee table. (I'm a big fan of his, btw)

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhore ... rn-crisis/

It's unfortunate that you can't have an honest discussion without playing the race/religion card.
It's a sign of intellectual weakness & a form of bigotry all it's own.
I agreed with the neocons during the Cold War, but they went too far in the aftermath.

Sorry, you don't get to skate by simply naming one more Jew and claiming "race/religion card" by someone.
These were the folks you put at the "dinner parties where they control the course of history".
Surely there are some non-Jews in your international cabal?

This exchange began with you making an argument in favor of a white Christian nationalist imperialist war criminal and his kleptocracy being rewarded for their aggression against a neighbor trying to move toward western values and democracy and defending their land and their people from atrocities.

With a claim that Ukraine should have taken the path of Belarus, then citing 3 people (just coincidentally) of Jewish Eastern European background as somehow the enemy of what, peace and prosperity, for Christian Eastern Europeans?

Was this all unconscious?

You're the one who introduced religion. I was not even aware that Nuland & Applebaum are Jewish. I don't check that when evaluating someone's position. I know that Applebaum married a Polish politician. There'd be a greater chance that they're Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
I only know that Soros is because bigots like you cry anti-semitism whenever he's criticized.
I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons, ...if I gave a sh!t or it mattered to anyone other than you & your fellow race baiters.

Ok, so it was simply "unconscious" that you just happened to choose 3 people with Eastern European Jewish heritage in your "dinner parties where they control the course of history" in reference to a conspiratorial plan in Belarus...(what, to encourage the overthrow of another white christian nationalist dictator?)

I guessed their likely background simply from the trope you employed...as you've done so many times in the past. Took one minute to confirm.
Nuland's parents were Jewish Ukrainian immigrants, Applebaum's family, Jewish Reformed, is originally from Belarus.

But ok, it's "unconscious"...perhaps you are just repeating what you hear others say, who are utilizing these tropes?

But after these many times that I've pointed out to you the through line of anti-semitism in these tropes and how they've been utilized historically continuing through to today by fascist populists, perhaps you could stir yourself to bother to avoid them?

Or not.

I have a tough time giving you an automatic pass, given that the specific use of Soros as the emblem of this trope (in prior eras it might have been "Rothschild") you admit you know well...so, you chose to employ it again, invoking this gruesome bigotry.

Here's the thing, if you really didn't intend this offensive, bigoted meaning.
I dunno how many of our fellow readers on here are Jewish, but I have to assume some are, and many others object as well...a simple apology would be a start and a promise to do one's best to avoid such mistakes going forward.

Or you can choose not to do so.

I chose Soros, Nuland & Applebaum because of their public record. Their actions, writings & statements.
Their heritage or religion is of no concern to me unless they make it a part of their position. It is irrelevant.
I was unaware of their religion or if they are observant. I've made no reference or implication to their religion or heritage.
I offer no one an apology. To do so would be patronizing. I'm not going to self-censor based on religion when it is irrelevant.
Your hypersensitivity by proxy is laughable. Tragic history of previous generations does not exempt anyone from critque.
I doubt that neocons represent the majority opinion of Jewish Americans, but that, too, is irrelevant.

Yes, the latter at the end would indeed be irrelevant.

But when you refer to conspiracies and "dinner parties where they control the course of history" and then, just coincidentally, name 3 people, including one you know is frequently claimed by white nationalists as the center of such global Jewish led conspiracies, well, you just have to know better...

And I think you do know. You're neither stupid nor ignorant.

Did you not know the heritage of the other two and this was just a mistake? I'd be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, though it's lazy not to have understood the implications given the reference made and the context.

But we all get intellectually lazy at times, we all make mistakes.

Unfortunately, it's not surprising that you wouldn't apologize for this mistake.

It's an interesting thing learned in kindergarten, apologizing for a mistake, an offense given, but one you seem to not have learned or have un-learned since.

[Farfromgeneva]

Two more Jews for your blood of children drinking dinner parties in the international cabal.

Got it.

Make it 3. Enjoy this from the brightest at the NeoCon dinner party kiddee table. (I'm a big fan of his, btw)

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhore ... rn-crisis/

It's unfortunate that you can't have an honest discussion without playing the race/religion card.
It's a sign of intellectual weakness & a form of bigotry all it's own.
I agreed with the neocons during the Cold War, but they went too far in the aftermath.

Sorry, you don't get to skate by simply naming one more Jew and claiming "race/religion card" by someone.
These were the folks you put at the "dinner parties where they control the course of history".
Surely there are some non-Jews in your international cabal?

This exchange began with you making an argument in favor of a white Christian nationalist imperialist war criminal and his kleptocracy being rewarded for their aggression against a neighbor trying to move toward western values and democracy and defending their land and their people from atrocities.

With a claim that Ukraine should have taken the path of Belarus, then citing 3 people (just coincidentally) of Jewish Eastern European background as somehow the enemy of what, peace and prosperity, for Christian Eastern Europeans?

Was this all unconscious?

You're the one who introduced religion. I was not even aware that Nuland & Applebaum are Jewish. I don't check that when evaluating someone's position. I know that Applebaum married a Polish politician. There'd be a greater chance that they're Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
I only know that Soros is because bigots like you cry anti-semitism whenever he's criticized.
I suppose I could find some gentile NeoCons, ...if I gave a sh!t or it mattered to anyone other than you & your fellow race baiters.

Ok, so it was simply "unconscious" that you just happened to choose 3 people with Eastern European Jewish heritage in your "dinner parties where they control the course of history" in reference to a conspiratorial plan in Belarus...(what, to encourage the overthrow of another white christian nationalist dictator?)

I guessed their likely background simply from the trope you employed...as you've done so many times in the past. Took one minute to confirm.
Nuland's parents were Jewish Ukrainian immigrants, Applebaum's family, Jewish Reformed, is originally from Belarus.

But ok, it's "unconscious"...perhaps you are just repeating what you hear others say, who are utilizing these tropes?

But after these many times that I've pointed out to you the through line of anti-semitism in these tropes and how they've been utilized historically continuing through to today by fascist populists, perhaps you could stir yourself to bother to avoid them?

Or not.

I have a tough time giving you an automatic pass, given that the specific use of Soros as the emblem of this trope (in prior eras it might have been "Rothschild") you admit you know well...so, you chose to employ it again, invoking this gruesome bigotry.

Here's the thing, if you really didn't intend this offensive, bigoted meaning.
I dunno how many of our fellow readers on here are Jewish, but I have to assume some are, and many others object as well...a simple apology would be a start and a promise to do one's best to avoid such mistakes going forward.

Or you can choose not to do so.

I chose Soros, Nuland & Applebaum because of their public record. Their actions, writings & statements.
Their heritage or religion is of no concern to me unless they make it a part of their position. It is irrelevant.
I was unaware of their religion or if they are observant. I've made no reference or implication to their religion or heritage.
I offer no one an apology. To do so would be patronizing. I'm not going to self-censor based on religion when it is irrelevant.
Your hypersensitivity by proxy is laughable. Tragic history of previous generations does not exempt anyone from critque.
I doubt that neocons represent the majority opinion of Jewish Americans, but that, too, is irrelevant.

Yes, the latter at the end would indeed be irrelevant.

But when you refer to conspiracies and "dinner parties where they control the course of history" and then, just coincidentally, name 3 people, including one you know is frequently claimed by white nationalists as the center of such global Jewish led conspiracies, well, you just have to know better...

And I think you do know. You're neither stupid nor ignorant.

Did you not know the heritage of the other two and this was just a mistake? I'd be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, though it's lazy not to have understood the implications given the reference made and the context.

But we all get intellectually lazy at times, we all make mistakes.

Unfortunately, it's not surprising that you wouldn't apologize for this mistake.

It's an interesting thing learned in kindergarten, apologizing for a mistake, an offense given, but one you seem to not have learned or have un-learned since.

Anyone who is discerning is left with one of the options:

-doesn’t know better/is stupid or ignorant
-meant the specific language and phraseology utilized

Even if only using Soros. To focus on Soros is stupid. Plain dumb.