NP: On the Ukraine thread

[Martin Dietze]

OK, one, hopefully last time (not that it will turn firm conspiracy theory
believers into realists, but anyway).

On 13. February 2022 at 19:42:42, Thomas Eckhardt (
huebschraeuber at protonmail.com) wrote:

I take your points. I note, however, that your comment is full of those a
"nifty details" that you deem irrelevant when the subject turns to the
Minsk Agreement and Debaltseve or the Nuland-Pyatt phone call.

Just to clarify: the “nifty details” are what you are trying to apply:
while the case of Debaltseve is really crystal clear, you pick some
newspaper article containing information that Debaltseve was “not
mentioned” in the Minsk II treaty and deduct that therefore the Russians
continuing their offensive and eventually taking the town after the
ceasefire’s begin was not necessarily a violation of the treaty.
International experts don’t agree with you. But you disagree. Let’s leave
it with that.

Regarding the “Nuland-Pyatt phone call”: the US (like the Russians and many
other) had some preferences concerning Ukrainian politicians and parties.
That’s what was documented by the call. Concluding that they actually
ordered particular candidates to step down (with them obeying) or in some
other way were in control of the events in Ukraine in early 2014 really
nothing more than a conspiracy theory based on the idea that people in
Ukraine were unable to form their own opinions, incapable of their own
initiative etc. I won’t continue on this, it’s spectacularly ridiculous.

Now comes what I had predicted: "what about Azov's symbolism". Very simple.
As the unit was formed by a group of neo nazis, what do you expect?
However, as I mentioned, that does not make everybody in their ranks a neo
nazi, too. Actually you can assume a majority of their fighters not to be
neo nazis (of course you won’t). You may be unable to put yourself into
those people, but they really had other things to worry about when making a
decision on which volunteer unit they wanted to join, and that was
commanders’ quality, equipment, professionalism, the chance to make an
impact while surviving this bloody war inflicted on them by Russia.

So some Newsweek journalist disagrees with me? That’s fine. There’s lots of
people - like you - writing about the country without ever having set a
foot on it, without really knowing much about what’s going on there, what
their society is constructed like etc. In Germany we find clueless articles
about Ukraine every day. Most of these articles are constructed like this:
there’s neo nazis in top ranks,. there’s neo nazi symbolism, so everybody
there has to be neo nazi, and the unit has to be considered neo nazi. This
is naive. Azov is a combat unit.

Then you move on to the political wing - more precisely a political party
formed by some of Azov’s founders. That’s something different, because a
political organisation is not a combat unit. They are not in parliament.
They are not likely to get elected into parliament (because they compete
for voters with the other two right-wing parties which haven’t made it into
parliament either).

"'Apparently deradicalizing the Ukrainian military and security forces
of far-right elements is simply not on Washington's wish-list. The same
applies to other Western governments supporting Ukraine.'"

Yes. Sure. That must be the reason. See Nuland. Now this is getting
absurdly comical.

I have read the stuff you are writing hundreds of times on different
occasions. It is quite popular in a geo policy loving, West critical,
leftish subculture in Europe who have picked up pretty much everything
Russian propaganda has blasted out since 2014. True believers who will
always reject facts and claim there to be some “alternative truth” (which,
because it’s what they believe in, has to the the actual truth).

So diving into this from time to time again has the sole purpose not to
leave this nonsense uncontradicted in the public. It’s just all so
predictable….

m.