Pensées (26)
Freedom of Navigation; Priggish logic; Fake Fella; Donbas: Problematic Concept;
⚡️Ruschists' Priggish "Logic."
A prig is someone who holds you accountable to a set of values the prig violates.
Ruschist "Logic":
"Ukraine can't fight us, because doing so contradicts European values. European Values, according to us the Ruschist arbiter of what's "Right" in Europe, mean it's better to submit, than fight fire with fire."
Ruschists are outraged when Ukraine attacks military targets inside the Ruschist Federation.
This outrage is verbalised by them as: "Ukraine shouldn't attack our sanctions busting oil tankers. That's the kind of thing Ruschists do. But Ukraine aspires to European Union membership. Weak decadent European Union countries should submit to Ruschism. Therefore Ukraine should just submit to Ruschism."
Alas, many NATO countries are led by people who do NOT understand the laws of war allow Ukraine to exercise its UN Charter right of self defence by targeting any Ruschist warfare asset ANYWHERE on earth.
⚡️MH17, Azov Sea, and Ruschia's War Against ALL States' Freedom of Navigation.
Since occupying Crimea, Ruschia has sought to control access in Ukraine's territorial waters..
This is an affront, legally speaking, to ALL States' freedom to navigate in the Black Sea.
We've continued to frame this as simply a problem for Ukraine, yet maritime lawyers understand interference in freedom of navigation on the seas as violating ancient rights and taboos that inhere in ALL States.
Since purposefully downing MH-17 Ruschia has been obstructing ALL states' freedom of navigation of the skies. This was a deliberate policy by Ruschia unthinkingly promoted by anyone who falls for the "Ruschia downed MH17 as a mistake" troll.
In April 2018 by capturing Ukrainian fishers in a boat on the Azov Sea, Ruschia began obstructing ALLstates freedom of navigation in Ukraine's territorial parts of the Azov Sea.
As an @OSCE official who established the international community's Azov Sea monitoring operation in April 2018 along the Azov Sea coast I fought hard in (and lost) internal battles over the issue.
Tankie so-called international lawyers inside promoted the Ruschist troll that Ukraine did not have rights in its territorial waters in the Azov and Black Seas adjacent to Crimea.
Ruschia continues to cite a treaty (Ruschia has now denounced) between Ukraine and Ruschia which it says grants "shared status" with it of Ukraine's territorial waters.
I argued as an international lawyer, internally (but lost), that Ukraine's registration of its territory with the United Nations prompts any bogus interpretation of treaties by Ruschia and Ruschia's unlawful occupation of Crimea.
Yet, ultimately myopic Realt Politik obsessed "lawyers" and political leaders in Berlin, DC, London and Paris ceded Ukraine's rights in its territorial waters to Ruschia.
Ukraine, now, alone among all United Nations members, is now asserting muscularly and defending ALL States freedom of navigation inside the Black and Azov Seas.
Muscovy be warned: you lost the first Crimean War which started when you began interfering in freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. And you only won the peace when you breached your commitment to stop such interference.
⚡️Fake "Fella" Alert: Bandera Fella.
Unfortunately I shared a post by a Fake Fella. They represented an explosion from 2020 as having happened the other day. We all make mistakes.
That said, I looked into them briefly to determine was this an error, or part of a scheme.
Conclusion: "Bandera Fella" is a Ruschist state troll farm employee actually.
They lied about that video being of the explosion.
Calling themself "Bandera Fella" did not ring true to me - Ukrainians have very little interest in Bandera, apart from niche historians.
"Bandera" as I argue here is primarily a creation of Ruschist Disinfolklore.
The _UA in Bandera Fella twitter handle also made me suspicious - they're pretending to be Ukrainian yet I don't think it's normal for a Ukrainian to add _UA to their twitter handle.
By contrast, a professional Ruschist troll operating different identities might.
Also, the tenor of their posts appeared calculated to provoke us into approving of unlawful violence against the Ruschists. We must be careful not to become emotionally triggered into approving of any actions that violate the Laws of War.
I blocked them. And I have deleted my tweet featuring them as it gave Bandera Fella further audience.
I'll do so now.
⚡️"Donbas" Is A Problematic Concept.
When Ruschist state trolls, like "Donbass Samizsdhat" (see below for why it's clear to me they're a Ruschist troll posing in Ukrainian clothing - beware wolves in sheep's clothing) use "Donbass" in their name it doesn't ring true.
Since April 2014, Ruschists have tried to separate, conceptually, their name occupation of Ukraine into two separated units "Crimea" and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk.
When you travel by train from, say, now occupied Lyschichansk in Luhansk (as I've done dozens of times) to Kharkhiv the underlying soil is sand during the whole journey right up to the suburbs of Kharkhiv. There's no change in the soil. It's the same region.
Dnipropetrovsk oblast (where I lived for four years) contains the same coal mines as its neighbour Donetsk. If Luhansk and Donetsk are "Donbass" then so are significant parts of Kharkhiv, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporozhzhia.
Here @yermolenko_v puts into words a feeling I've had since first arriving in Luhansk (I never used or felt comfortable with the term "Donbas" as I had encountered it as a hyper-normalised meme in Soviet and post Soviet-era literature and social science)
"And I don't I don't like this concept donbas because it's very artificial one created by the Soviet times because you understand when you travel there you understand that this geographically climatically in terms of people that is nothing which separates it from Kharkhiv region from Slobozhanskiy from central Ukraine people and landscape is the same..."
So using a disinfolklore.net lens, I conclude that whatever the rights or wrongs of the use of the term "Donbas" before 2014, it's now been colonised by Ruschism.
Ruschists Other a part of Ukraine by accustoming us to its fictional differentiation from the rest of Ukraine. This cannot stand for any of us who know the lie of the land as intimately as those of us lucky enough to walk the ground from Kharkhiv to the shores of the Azov Sea.
Ruschia has created of the "Donbas" a Disinfolklore character that contains within it separation and division.
By brainwashing those who didn't leave the occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014 (1.5m fled those cities and environs in the aftermath of the 2014 occupation) into thinking they had a separate identity to the rest of Ukraine, Ruschia performed a stealth genocide.
Now since February 24th Ruschia has fed almost ALL Ukrainian men ages 20-55 from occupied Luhansk and Donetsk into the meat grinder - according to the testimony of its own occupiers:
and the term "Donbas" played a part in this Stealth Genocide.
⚡️Callsign "Grandpa's" first combat experience in the use of MANPADS. Immediately he destroyed a target worth $15m.
Hromadske met "Grandfather" in Donbass. Here's his story: ...In everyday life, I work at the Kyiv Paper Mill. Call sign "Grandfather" was given to me cos I'm 58.."
2/ "on February 24, we gathered by the AToshnikov Union and went to the military registration and enlistment office. There we were ordered to be with things at 12 o'clock, sent to the 72nd brigade. In the evening we were in Brovary, and in the morning - in the village of Skibin."
3/ "The plane turned around and flies right at me. He probably saw me with the Needle & took me sharply to the right for landing. & there Artem "met" him - it hit his left engine... Pilot ejected, our guys found him. Then I saw on the Internet that it was a Wagner mercenary..."
4/ "What were your impressions when plane was shot down? Adrenaline full pants, as they say. But also understanding that you need to change your position. They have already passed on the radio: get ready, cos "turntables" (helicopters - ed.) are already flying after the pilot."
⚡️Ukraine will need to build a new airport to accommodate the arriving defence ministers looking for Ukrainian armaments.
These innovative attacks of self-defence by Ukraine will achieve more than merely throttling Ruschist trade and sinking their genocide-serving war economy.
They promote Ukraine's rightful status among those who haven't yet noticed: Ukraine is the most innovative culture in today's world, second only to the United States and Israel.
