10 REASONS WHY RUSSOPHILES AND PUTINOPHILES ARE WRONG ON UKRAINE
Remarks by Dr. Taras Kuzio, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
1. UNSCHOLARLY RESEARCH BY WESTERN APOLOGISTS
- Their writing is Ideologically driven with prepared in advance conclusions
- They have never visited Ukraine
- They have never visited the Donbas frontlines
- They only use footnotes from Russian media, including pro-Putin propaganda
- They do not interview Ukrainian politicians, journalists and NGO’s
2. UNHOLY ALLIANCE OF FAR LEFT AND FASCIST RIGHT
- Xenophobic Anti-Americanism leads to support and apologia for Vladimir Putin
- Far left socialists align with Russian great power nationalists, imperialists and fascists
- Support for US-Russian grand bargain over the heads of Ukrainians
3. APOLOGIA FOR LAND GRAB OF CRIMEA
- Use 19th century imperialist historiography
- Far left and realists wrongly claim that the Crimea was “always Russian”
- Their imperialist argument assumes that Crimean history began in 1783
- If their argument were used for North and South America these continents would have no history prior to European colonization
4. THE WAR IN THE DONBAS IS NOT A “CIVIL WAR”
- 80% of Ukrainians believe the war is a product of Russian military aggression against Ukraine or Russian military support for separatist proxies
- 85% of Ukrainians are convinced that Russia seeks to destroy Ukraine
- The majority of Ukraine's Russian speakers support Kyiv, not Putin
- Two thirds of Ukraine's soldiers are Russian speakers
- Therefore, the war is not a ”civil war” between Russian and Ukrainian speakers
5. PUTIN IS A VIOLENT THUG AND HAS CREATED A POLICE STATE
- Russia is a consolidated authoritarian regime
- Russia is a fascist political system
- Putin does not permit the holding of democratic elections
- Putin has assassinated ten critics inside Russia and abroad
“Two common causes of death for contemporary Russians are heart attacks and falling to one’s end from a great height” (The Daily Beast, 23 March 2017)
6. PUTIN IS A SOCIOPATH
- He organized apartment bombings in Moscow during his rise to power
- He showed no sympathy for the deaths of 120 Russian sailors on the Kursk submarine that sank
- He sent special forces into the Moscow theatre captured by Chechens without any interest in saving innocent civilian lives and 200 died
- The Beslan School captured by Chechens was stormed leading to the deaths of 400 children
- Grozny and Aleppo were flattened by Russian bombs without any sympathy for huge loss of civilian lives
7. PUTIN IS A WARMONGER
- Putin has launched four wars:
Chechnya
Georgia
Ukraine
Syria
8. PUTIN HAS INFLAMED RUSSIAN CHAUVINISM VERSUS UKRAINE
- Annexed the Crimea
- 10,000 Russian troops continue to occupy half of the Donbas
- Launched a massive Ukrainophobic television and media campaign
- The war has led to massive destruction of infrastructure and homes in the Donbas
- Over 10,000 civilian deaths
9. RUSSIAN RACISM INFRINGES ON UKRAINIAN, TATAR AND JEWISH MINORITY RIGHTS
- Ukrainians are the third largest minority in Russia and have no rights whatsoever
- the Ukrainian library in Moscow was closed and its librarians were imprisoned
- Closure of all Ukrainian and Tatar schools and media in the Crimea
- Banning of Ukrainian Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches in the Crimea and the “Donetsk People's Republic” (DNR) and “Luhansk People's Republic” (LNR)
- Anti-Zionist (anti-Semitic) campaigns have led to mass exodus of Jews from the DNR/LNR
- Russian murders of Protestants and repression of Protestant Churches
10. PUTIN IS AN INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMINAL
- Committed massive war crimes in Chechnya, the Donbas and Syria
- Violated the UN charter, OSCE, and many other international laws and treaties
- Violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to which Russia was a signatory
- Violated the 1997 Ukraine - Russia inter-state treaty
