Guardian is publishing Russian Propaganda

[Swayingpalmtrees]

AIBU to be very disappointed that the Guardian has resorted to publishing Russian propaganda. It was shocking to read, largely inaccurate and wholly from the Russian perspective. I am all for listening to all sides, but there was no effort to understand how Ukraine feels, Ukraine's objective is clearly to win the war and reclaim their nation, and blaming the western leaders for arming Ukraine and the bloodshed caused by the Russians is somewhat misleading, Ukraine have every right to defend themselves.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/27/ukraine-war-end-putin-russia-talks

I don’t see how that’s Russian propaganda at all. He says it’s clear that they started it and shouldn’t have and he has a point that it’s just going to prolong it with the West backing Ukraine and supplying weapons but not getting involved in the fighting. True enough as dictators like Putin aren’t going to back down or retreat.

@FatherBuzzCagney and @LetitiaLeghorn speak a lot of sense.

And they're not going to stop if they're allowed a "win" or we negotiate some sort of phony peace!

Putin lied and lied before invading Ukraine, gave people like Macron the runaround, just like Hitler did before Poland. There is no point negotiating, because they don't want peace.

True enough as dictators like Putin aren’t going to back down or retreat.

They do if they're beaten. The Russian army has already retreated from the Kyiv region, having had its arse handed to it.

If Ukraine continues to get the necessary weapons - both the necessary volume and the right sort - they can (a) continue to degrade Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine and (b) potentially push Russian forces back to at least their pre-February 2022 positions.

Russia is losing men and weapons at a staggering rate and they don't have the means to keep replacing them. They simply don't have the resources to keep going indefinitely, whatever Putin wants.

Russia is a lot bigger than Ukraine. I would think Ukraine have lost a lot of people too. Putin is not the type to back down, his type never do. I can’t see it ending in a good way the way it is going now. As the author of the article said, it either needs NATO to step in properly, or to persuade Putin to negotiate, which is easier said than done and Ukraine isn’t want to give him everything he wants, especially not at this stage after all they have lost.

@LemonDrizzleSlice there is probably no point in negotiating unless there is compromise and Ukraine shouldn’t have to give anything away to keep Russia happy, but how long can Ukraine keep going on it’s own against a much bigger country and army lead by an arsehole who won’t back down? Anyway, regardless of your opinion or mine, the authors opinion is not Russian propaganda or in any way pro-Russian.

I wish he'd been more specific.There HAVE been/are negotiations. Ukraine says Russia has acted in bad faith, broken promises such as humanitarian corridors, etc. Is he suggesting that NATO make it crystal clear to Ukraine that they must trust Russia. and they must accept Russia's preconditions such as Ukraine's ceding Crimea and giving up claims to Donetsk and Luhansk?

As for the Dayton agreement - NATO DID have to intervene directly and militarily in ex-Yugoslavia (despite none of the fighting being on NATO member territory) to get all of those parties to the table, the Bosnian Serbs and Croatia perhaps more so than Milošević. To me, this looks like a mistake the US/NATO have made before: they think they can force the hands of their beneficiaries, but in some cases they're misunderstanding that people really WILL fight on even without US/NATO/international support, even if it's suicidal. When does that ethically cease to be Ukraine's choice, if ever?

I don't think NATO leaders think Putin will back down, I think some of them believe that international pressure of various types (mostly, but not all, economic) will isolate Russia far enough to drive a coup or similar. However, I think the US (and probably the UK and Canada) have likely overestimated the commitment of real, practical support internationally.

The opening paragraph says "Ukraine is fighting a just war. Russia’s invasion was entirely unprovoked. ... Vladimir Putin launched a straightforward war of aggression and territorial conquest."

I'm not sure OP knows what propoganda means.

Yes Ukraine have undoubtedly lost a lot of soldiers, as well as civilians. But short of a general mobilisation of Russian men of fighting age, the pool of Ukrainians willing to fight is a lot bigger than the available Russians. And the motivation of Ukrainian fighters is much greater.

The US government have estimated that the Russian forces in Ukraine are down to 75% combat effectiveness. It seems as if over 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed. Assuming a traditional wounded-to-killed ratio of 3-1, that would be 45,000 wounded - so, 60,000 wounded + killed out of an original force of 190K. Plus prisoners, plus deserters. And that's just in two months. I can't remember a major military power suffering anything close to these levels of losses in a comparable time period in a war of choice in recent history.

Who replaces these lost troops? Russia can't afford to put all its armed forces personnel into Ukraine - it has other things going on that it needs troops for, not least the defence of Russia itself. Belarus, theoretically in a military union with Russia, has declined to send troops to Ukraine. Other security partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (Russia's pitiful attempt to replicate NATO) have backed off even further than Belarus.

So once the remaining available Russian forces are redeployed to Ukraine and then killed and wounded in their turn, where do the next wave of Russian troops come from? This year's conscripts, the teenagers (the ones too poor to have bribed their way out of conscription) with a few weeks' training? General mobilisation - an army of the poorly trained, poorly equipped and hugely pissed off?

And all this is before you get to the issue of how Russia can carry on arming its troops given the scale of equipment losses, the effects of sanctions and the time it take to build new tanks, helicopters, warships. Meanwhile, Ukraine is receiving seemingly limitless aid from the world's only military superpower.

Putin cannot win in Ukraine so he needs to decide which loss he can plausibly try to frame as a win.

Btw, the one pretty certain way for it to end badly would be if NATO stepped in properly.

Russian Peace Talks = Let me invade your country, displace your peoples and install our own government. No compromise. We kill you otherwise.

Ukrainians = Okay guv, we'll put the kettle on for the new president.

Ffs 🙄

I disagree with the premise that because an opening paragraph says Putin was wrong to start the war, the rest of the article must therefore be anti Russian.
The article as far as I can see is an urging for the rest of the world to sit down to peace talks to discuss yet again putins wants, such as renegotiating countries borders. They've had peace talks and ceasefire and Putin has ignored them all. Even if he suspended hostilities while talks happen, countries aren't just going to roll over to Putin's diktat, so it would be merely asuspension not a cessation.
Of course we all want a peaceful and quick solution. It appears as if Roxburgh's is to give Putin what he wants.

I am working so couldn't check in before now. Thank you for your posts, they make for interesting reading.

I am more than well aware of the different global views - I have just come back from a stint in the middle east and India, and the reporting there is very very different, and so are the positions of the people, who believe Ukraine poisoned Abramovich (and their own negotiators) and fake news circles widely that somehow Ukraine is Russia's to take back.

This piece was such a naked piece of pro Kremlin appeasement, I was shocked it made the final cut and wondered who exactly has been paid off - including the author. Like most people I get my news from different sources, but it is obvious to all you can not negotiate with a mad man that is trying to erase your entire nation and is certainly not looking for peace. Ukraine have the only option available to them which is to fight to the last for freedom. I disagree that Russia are a dead cert to win, and I haven't been wrong so far. A quick solution it won't be however, with loss of life on both sides.

The two countries most looking for appeasement and a quick solution are Russia and Germany as far as I can tell, and I feel this article was offensive, particularly to the Ukrainian people who are losing their lives and trying to hold the front line.

> article describes Putin as a "butcher"
> no justification for the invasion
> "Russian propaganda"
...okay.

I do disagree with the article, but for what it's missed, not for what it says. "Putin will never accept defeat" is absolutely true and Ukraine is stuffed, but the Western world is helping Ukraine to fight not just in the faint hope that it can win, but to make sure any Russian victory is so costly that Putin can't pull this shit again for the foreseeable future.

Paragraphs like this:

"No day goes past without some senior western politician proclaiming that Ukraine will be “successful” and that Russia is “failing”. This is certainly morale-boosting. But it is clearly nonsense"

Why is this nonsense if the West continue to support Ukraine? It is not a done deal at all given Ukraine has 44 million people ready and willing to fight their cause, and they have literally nothing to lose now.

"If Russia’s aim was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then the west’s approach is helping to do just that"

That is not true, and it is a pretty despicable to say that the West are contributing to 'exterminate' Ukraine! It is clearly extremely offensive when most of the West are doing all they can to support Ukraine.

"Encouraging the Ukrainians to continue, however just their cause, is merely making their country uninhabitable"

So in other words Putin should be able to continue terrorising Ukraine and Ukraine should merely put down their arms. Does anyone seriously think this is an option for Ukraine? Ukraine would cease to exist overnight, and be absorbed into the motherland. They have no choice but to continue until the last.

"To get Putin to the negotiating table at all, everything would have to be up for discussion – including Ukraine’s borders"

And how would he propose to get Zelensky to the table given the mass genocide of his people. This is not all on Putin's terms, as much as he would like to imagine it is. Russia if nothing else have shown how weak they are.

"Putin will never accept defeat"

Well Putin might have to, if his army continue to struggle and die in their thousands. That apparently is not even an option according to this learned fellow - but many in the west now believe it to be a real possibility that Ukraine could win back all or most of their country. Russia are now fighting a three hundred mile war which is not for the faint hearted, the unrested and the unfed.

I wouldn't assume it would require anyone to be paid off, OP. I know a few people (academics, commentators) who take this or a similar line, and it's a product of very longstanding views about Russia, its neighbours, and NATO. But of course there are others whose position is harder to explain as an honest difference of opinion. For example, there's the person who worked for RT until the start of the war and then suddenly discovered they had a conscience about working for the propaganda mouthpiece of a murderous dictatorship and resigned, only to pop up at Stop the War Coalition, pushing lines about Western responsibility for the war.

How can any academic seriously defend the mass murder of innocent people? Regardless of the history between the two countries, and is well understood if you are well read. Long standing views withstanding, surely what has actually happened in Ukraine overrides the academic case?

I don't know any that do. But I know a couple who placed most of the responsibility for the pre-war situation on Ukraine and NATO. One of them has gone very quiet since the war really kicked off; the other I haven't seen so much of, so not sure who he's saying. I don't share their views but I also don't doubt that they hold them in good faith. Then there's one very prominent academic who is not a specialist on Russia or Ukraine but who believes himself to be an expert on everything. He's taken a lot of criticism for his position on Ukraine (that it's NATO's fault). In his case, I think his position is a result of a refusal to admit that his crappy, reductive view of international relations might not be all it's cracked up to be (by him) and his addition publicity and to being provocative.

And I'm not sure that you know how propaganda works. You don't just come out and say "our side is right and your side is wrong". You muddy the waters. You seem reasonable. You work in metaphors and allusions. The most successful anti-Jewish films in the Nazi era were stories, not statements. They start off seeming reasonable, and they hook you in.

That should have been: his addiction to publicity.

It is written in a way that starts out reasonably, but the article to me felt like a veiled threat. The west need to be looking at appeasement or Russia will wipe Ukraine off the map. It was also alluding to world war three. It is to try and encourage people to think more moderately and less ambitiously - 'come on you know Russia will win so don't make this difficult for yourselves' tone - when indeed the facts on the ground indicate that Russia is losing, and it is losing badly. They haven't met a single target so far, and the war has already been raging for over two months. In fact their position becomes weaker by the day.

I find the dishonesty of this piece, the threatening under tones and the sheer audacity to try and convince the readers that it would be far better for all if Ukraine just stopped and the west stopped arming them, and the general insistence that the west is responsible for the 'extermination' of innocent civilians grossly misleading and inaccurate.

I have just cancelled my kindle subscription as a result. I don't want to be fed this bullshit and pay for the privilege.

The opinion piece is not pro Russian at all, more pro peace. The author rightly points out that Ukraine is being destroyed, it is. They say that talks are better, yes they are. We all want the war to end, the author is just putting their jaw jaw not war war perspective. I feel that Putin will not genuinely enter talks, he needs a big win, needs to grab Ukrainian territory back. He seems ill, maybe it’s his last hurrah.

In his interview on Monday Trump told Piers Morgan he would forbid Putin from using the word 'nuclear' ever again and from threatening everybody with it. He says he would tell Putin America has much greater nuclear power than Russia - which it does. People are afraid of Putin because he is constantly threatening nuclear attack to any country he does not like, any he thinks will join NATO or supply Ukraine. So he can get whatever he wants by saying word 'nuclear'. But other countries have nuclear power too.

Pro-peace is appeasement, at this stage.

We did... sort of negotiate with Hitler. Appeasement. It was weak and it didn't work and gave Hitler more leverage. But the point of these policies is to try and stem the tide of full-scale world war. This is 'rock and hard place' stuff. We're really sitting on the edge of full-scale war (with nukes! Yay!) at worst. At best, it's a decade-plus shock of utter economic and (it goes without saying) political woe for Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans, Middle Easterners & North Africans (who rely on Ukrainian grain and are feeling that pain in real-time), and even Americans to a lesser degree. Our economies are going to really suffer and who gets to feel the burn? You and me. As usual.
There are complexities to this war that are a lot to unpack.
If we return to 2014 and read this article, it sheds some light on where we're at now. It is still relevant.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict
It's not an 'oh poor Russia' piece but a 'well, no wonder Russia is pissed!' insight into what was going on in the region (and how much it defines the current crisis).
Again... that 7-year-old Guardian piece is an opinion.