De A a Z, tudo se pode fazer DE OUTRA MANEIRA...

Com o desmembramento da União Soviética e a emergência da China como grande potência, a NATO vai a caminho da irrelevância. Uma Rússia enfraquecida não é ameaça credível à Europa. E antes do movimento e preâmbulo de adesão da Ucrânia à Comunidade Europeia, não houve nunca qualquer indício de agressão por parte da Rússia, para justificar o alargamento da NATO.

A absorção da Crimeia é um caso especial e irreversível. Duma importância enorme para os russos, a península já estava ocupada por tropas russas antes da assimilação, como resultado do leasing da base de Sevastopol, acordado entre os dois países. A população é uniformemente russófona e apoia a secessão da Ucrânia. Etnicamente são russos. Os habitantes originais Tatar, foram removidos à força por Estaline.

E a Rússia sente-se encurralada. Com a desaparição dos países tampão, como a Polónia, República Checa, Hungria, a NATO encostou-se à Rússia. E daí à presença militar vai um passo. Como comparação, é como se depois da crise dos mísseis em Cuba em 62, aos EUA tivessem sido incapazes de forçar a retirada soviética e fossem obrigados a tolerar a situação duma forma permanente.

E tudo isto é patético. Estamos a forçar hoje em dia a aproximação da Rússia à China quando é provável que num futuro próximo surja uma união da Rússia, Europa e EUA contra a China!

Por outro lado a Ucrânia é um país fracturado em dois. Um lado falando russo é contra a UE, e outro falando ucraniano é pela adesão à UE. Os distúrbios de 2014 foram apenas uma mini guerra civil.

A dificuldade duma união sólida e coerente do país, dificulta a solução ideal: uma Ucrânia intercalada, independente da Rússia e da UE, com a vantagem de poder negociar com ambos os lados em proveito próprio.

E com a guerra toda a gente perde. Na impossibilidade de conquistar a Ucrânia impondo o Rublo como moeda, impingindo dívidas impagáveis e forçando a Ucrânia a vender património ao desbarato, como aconteceu com a Grécia e Portugal, a Rússia recorre a uma agressão grotesca, impondo um sofrimento desgraçado a uma população civil em pânico. É difícil neste momento vislumbrar uma saída.

Um possível atoleiro como no Afeganistão.

E em tudo isto a irresponsabilidade da Europa e dos EUA é deprimente. Políticas do passado, implementadas hoje em dia como se ainda estivéssemos na guerra fria.

Meu amigo Rich, americano residente na Ucrânia, em casa de quem passei uma semana em Odessa há dois anos, está neste momento na Bulgária a caminho dos EUA, como conta num e-mail que acabei de receber.

José Luís Vaz Carneiro
Tucson, Março 2022

Fotos de Manuel Rosário

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Médico Hospitalar (EUA)

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    It was interesting to read José Luís Vaz Carneiro’s short piece on ‘Poor Ukraine’, as it is helpful to try and see things from Putin’s perspective. But we are only writing about ‘Poor Ukraine’ because of an entirely unprovoked and barbaric assault by the Putin regime on Ukraine. The writer’s article appears to me to fail to see things from the perspective of the vast majority of Ukrainians, and it contained serious factual errors:

    – “before the movement and preamble of Ukraine’s accession to the European Community, there was never any hint of aggression on the part of Russia”.

    Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, mostly under Putin (since 2000), Russia has supported separatists by military invasion and occupation of two parts of Georgia (1993 and 2008); Russian air force jets have for years ruthlessly attacked Syrian rebel cities, killing many thousands of civilians and bringing widespread terror (2015 to date); Russian agents have blatantly murdered Russian dissenters abroad in many countries including the UK and Germany; Russian mercenaries – operating for the shadowy, Putin-linked company Wagner – have been killing the opponents of despotic regimes in various countries since 2015, including Syria, Libya and now Mali; Russian troops have illegally occupied Trans-Dniester in Moldova since 1992.

    – “The absorption of Crimea is a special and irreversible case. Of enormous importance to the Russians, the peninsula was already occupied by Russian troops before assimilation, as a result of the leasing of the Sevastopol base, agreed between the two countries. The population is uniformly Russian-speaking and supports secession from Ukraine. Ethnically they are Russians. The original Tatar inhabitants were forcibly removed by Stalin”.

    While I agree that a case can be made for a peaceful Russian re-absorption of Crimea, only a tiny proportion of Crimea was occupied by Russian troops (in the naval base leased from Ukraine); there was and remains a significant minority of non-Russian inhabitants (including many Tatars, who had returned from deportation in World War Two by Stalin); and there was no credible reason for the resort to military force to take over Crimea.

    – “With the disappearance of buffer countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, NATO leaned on Russia”.

    This is seriously distorted: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Baltic states and others were not ‘buffer countries’ during 1945-89 but forcibly-occupied territories, kept inside the Soviet sphere by fear of Soviet military might and the KGB. These countries rushed of their own free will to join Nato after 1989 as the only credible insurance against being taken over again by Russia.

    – “On the other hand Ukraine is a country split in two. One side speaking Russian is against the EU, and the other speaking Ukrainian is for EU membership”.

    This statement is an extraordinary misunderstanding about why the vast majority of Ukrainians – including a large number of ethnic Russians in the Ukraine – oppose the Russian invasion. The issue is not EU membership but about democracy and the right to nationhood (which Russia in fact endorsed when the Ukraine and the many other entities seceded from the USSR in the 1990s). Furthermore, the Ukraine is not ‘split in two’ – 17% of Ukrainian citizens were ethnic Russians in 2001. However, the country does have deep internal divisions (like many nations), and the issue of Russian language recognition and regional autonomy was crassly treated by successive Ukrainian governments.

    – “the irresponsibility of Europe and the USA is depressing. Policies from the past, implemented today as if we were still in the cold war”.

    It is not clear what the article is referring to, but presumably sanctions and the supply of weapons to Ukraine is what this is about. It is hard to believe that the writer truly thinks that nothing should be done, but I suppose that is possible. In any case, the writer is thinking from a cold war mentality, as if all that matters is what each ‘great power’ does, and not what the inhabitants of the afflicted territories want and what is happening to them.

    For myself, I applaud the restraint of Europe and the USA in clearly signalling that they will not contemplate military involvement in the Ukraine, including any attempted enforcement of a no-fly zone.

    – Meanwhile, under the increasingly despotic and murderous rule of Putin since 2000, Russia has gone backwards in every marker of civilisation, for example regarding LGBTQ rights; women’s rights; worker’s rights; government transparency; free speech; fair elections; the rule of law; racial discrimination etc etc… to say nothing of the exceptionally brutal suppression of opposition in Chechnya and Dagestan.

    None of this is to say that the Ukraine is marvellously democratic and incorrupt, or that the West has not practised invasion and subversion in the last 30 years (for example, in Iraq, Afghanistan, much of central America etc). Equally, few would deny that the West has huge wealth and power inequalities, and many other deep-seated social and political problems. But the sins of the West do not justify this action by Russia.

    – “Russia feels trapped”.

    The excuse of ‘feeling trapped’ only works if you respect a deeply nationalist, autocratic and aggressive regime. Hitler claimed that Germany was ‘trapped’, with France and Britain to the west and ‘inferior’ Slavic races to the east. Do the Swiss feel ‘trapped’ by the EU on all sides? If Putin feels trapped, it is surely by the possibility of the emergence of a genuinely democratic Ukraine on former Russian territory.

    Incidentally, Nato has at no point signalled that Ukraine will be joining Nato, but nor has it ruled out Ukrainian membership at some later date – though Nato has previously ruled out new members which have dormant or active military conflict on their soil (such as Georgia). The wisdom of this Nato stance regarding Ukraine can be debated, but Putin’s imperialist ambitions will exist whatever the West does: brutally suppressing opponents at home and engaging in territorial expansion is what dictators do.

    To end on a positive note, from a wider perspective, we are discovering that Ukrainians really are part of modern Europe, and that we are not separated from the scenes of devastating war that we have seen across other parts of the world for so many decades.

    The sight of so many Poles, Moldavians, Germans and others taking Ukrainian refugees into their homes and hearts is a great source of hope, whatever happens next in this terrible, one-sided conflict. And this has been inspired by the brave reporting of Western journalists.

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    Não concordo com o Mark:
    Acho a invasão da Ucrânia um crime e um erro, mas pelo menos vislumbro possíveis razões. Depois da sórdida invasão do Iraque com os dois criminosos Bush e Blair ainda à solta, não consigo partilhar a indignação do Mark. É tudo uma questão de comparação. Os crimes soviéticos na implementação duma política externa ao longo dos anos, empalidecem quando comparados com os da CIA e EUA. Quando uma civilização ocidental decadente apaprica os dejectos culturais que ela própria gera (o fenómeno LGBTQ, MeToo, racismo, etc) não deixa dúvidas sobre a degradação das democracias liberais. Mas não vejo alternativa. Pelo menos desculpemos os Putins que tentam evitar a contaminação cultural das sociedades em que vivem. Se não tivemos até hoje uma guerra nuclear, deve-se aos soviéticos terem adquirido a bomba. Com a america única potência nuclear, (ou os rússos como única potência nuclear), já há muito teriamos desaparecido.
    E por aí adiante…