By Paul Heywood-Smith, A Socialist In Canada, Nov 25, 2022
Introduction by A Socialist In Canada:
[This commentary originally appeared in the Australian foreign policy journal Pearls And Irritations (published by John Menadue) on Nov 25, 2022. The writer is a ‘Kings Counsel’ (lawyer) in Adelaide, Australia for the past 20 years. He was the initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, founded in 2004. He is the author of The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer, published by Wakefield Press in 2014. ‘Contrarian’ views of the conflict in Ukraine by politicians and diplomats in the Western countries, such as this one by Paul Heywood-Smith, are extremely rare. Hence the importance of reading his views and making them widely known.]
It appears that wherever one looks or reads there are calls for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine: no other event is called for; in other words, capitulation by Russia. I have been troubled by this. It appears to me to demonstrate a failure to see the other side of the story: and there clearly is one.
One must commence with the cause of the war. There is little doubt that the eastward advance of NATO has been a matter of genuine and growing concern for Russia, which is seen, at minimum, as the primary raison détre for NATO existence. This eastward advance, and the installation of modern weapons threatening only Russia (remember – Cuban missile crisis) is something that Russia was promised, by previous U.S. administrations, would not happen. It is a process which respected U.S. advisers, such as Henry Kissinger, and George Kennan, warned against.
But so far as Ukraine is concerned, one consideration that I believe has been totally ignored by Western governments and commentators is the sensibilities of the Russian people given the history of Ukraine and Russia. May we consider some aspects of that history.
The area that is Ukraine, Belarus and Russia is and was, of course, occupied by the Slav peoples, more particularly the East Slav peoples. It was the adoption by those peoples of Christianity in the 10th Century from Byzantium (hence Orthodox Christianity), which laid the groundwork for the modern Russian state. Before that, in the 9th Century, Viking raiders raided Byzantium, of which Constantinople was the centre of power. These raiders were known by the Byzantines as the ‘Rus’. The 10th Century saw the principality of Rus gain recognition, and the principal centres of Rus were Kyiv (Kiev) and Novgorod, much farther north, but Kyiv was the more important.
Tenth century Kyivan Rus determined Russia’s future. The 11th Century saw the two northern princedoms of Moscow and Novgorod begin to match Kiev. But the city of Kiev today forms a critical part of Russia’s history.
In the 18th and 19th centuries much of Ukraine was incorporated into the Tsarist Russian Empire. Ukraine commenced the 20th century as such. Following the October Revolution and the war against the ‘white’ armies (backed by all the imperialist countries of the day), Ukraine took its place as a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This union was largely voluntary.
Might it not be thought that Russians today would have some sensibility over Ukraine becoming a tool of the United States in its determination to weaken Russia to protect its own hegemony over the world?
So too would news reports of battles in places like Kharkov (Kharkiv) and Kherson impact upon the emotional consciousness of today’s Russian, which consciousness embraces the knowledge of the deaths of hundreds of thousands and millions of young Russian men and women, boys and girls, in the period 1941-1944 when they struggled to protect these cities from the advances of Nazi Germany. Indeed, it is estimated that 600,000 Soviet soldiers, including substantial numbers of Russian soldiers, were killed or taken captive by the Wehrmacht in Kiev alone. [1]
Following WWII Ukraine remained one of the most important republics of the Soviet Union. By way of example many top positions in the Soviet leadership were occupied by Ukrainians. Leonid Brezhnev, for example, was a Ukrainian who held the position of General Secretary of the USSR from 1964 to 1982. The Ukrainian Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country’s Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.
Upon the dissolution of the USSR, no consideration was given to Ukraine becoming a tool of the west for the undermining of Russia.
There is some awareness of recent history. Ukrainian nationalism brought on the coup d’etat of February 2014 which led to conflict resulting in the Minsk agreements. The Minsk II agreement of February 2015 called for, inter alia, a new constitution recognizing a decentralisation and special status for the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk (together making up the region known as Donbas). This did not occur, but what ensued was an eight-year war (April 2014 to February 24, 2022) by the new, coup regime in Kiev against the Russian speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The primary civilian victims of that war were Russian speakers, while the war evidenced the refusal of Ukraine presidents Poroshenko (2014-2019) and Zelensky (2019 to present) to implement Minsk II.
Of course, one regrets the loss of life that is occurring today. One cries out for an end to it. But it will not be achieved by calling for Mother Russia to capitulate – and nor should it.
What is surely needed is a ceasefire to enable a negotiated settlement. Russia should cease all current operations, which are aimed at bringing more territory under its control and weakening the Ukrainian resolve by attacking infrastructure. Ukraine should cease all military operations to expel Russians from the territories which they control. And third parties, particularly the U.S., UK, NATO countries (including Canada) and Australia should cease providing weapons and materials which enable the war to continue.
At the negotiating table, it again cannot be a matter of Russia capitulation. No doubt the U.S. and Ukraine negotiators will scream ‘Sovereignty! Sovereignty!’, but it is interesting to see how the US has different conceptions of sovereignty. Can the Solomon Islands really exercise its sovereignty and enter into a treaty with China? Can China really exercise its sovereignty and seek the re-integration of Taiwan into its government structure? Can Syria seriously demand that its sovereignty be respected by the US ceasing to bomb it?
There can be no question of Russia ceding Crimea. There would have to be negotiation and mutual concessions over Donetsk and Luhansk, meaning the Minsk agreement would have to be re-visited.[2] Ukraine would have to accept its future neutrality, and that would mean foregoing any prospect of joining NATO. But even that would be made irrelevant if NATO agreed to dissolve itself. Why is NATO needed, anyway?
As for the U.S., it would have to withdraw all sanctions.
Finally, all parties could come together to agree the basis for reconstruction of damaged and devastated cities and towns throughout Ukraine.
Those who scream ‘What about Ukraine’s sovereignty?’ will have to accept that sometimes there must be compromise.
Notes by A Socialist In Canada editor:
[1] The writer is referring to the fall of Kiev to Nazi Germany in August 1941, early during the German invasion of the Soviet Union which began in June of that year. The Soviet military leadership of the day made the disastrous decision, against the advice of some of its generals, to try and hold the city against the advancing German army. The city was surrounded and most of the Soviet army of some 450,000 soldiers was lost. The full story of this battle is told in the 2013 book by Australian historian David Stahel: Kiev 1941: Hitler’s Battle for Supremacy in the East, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 486 pages.
[2] The people of Donbass (Donetsk and Lugansk) have twice voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation: in May 2014, and in September 2022. Both times, the votes were conducted under the shadow of war being waged against the people there by the far-right governing regime in Kiev. A revisiting of the status of the two republics as members of the Russian Federation is impossible to imagine. The Russian government has said their decision to join cannot be changed. That is bolstered by the overwhelming support of the people of Russia, including in Donbass.
Recent news and analysis on the ‘World news’page of A Socialist In Canada:
* Russian government says its missile strikes in Ukraine are hitting military targets, not civilian infrastructure, RT, Nov 24, 2022
* Bye, bye Kiev, hello Cote D’Azur: As Westerners send aid, here’s how Ukraine’s corrupt elites are profiting from the conflict, analysis by Olga Sukharevskaya (ex-Ukrainian diplomat), published in RT, Nov 24, 2022
* The made-up ‘back channel’ for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, analysis by Scott Ritter, special to Consortium News, Nov 22, 2022
