A-Infos (en) Italy, UCDI #183 - The beggar and the dictator (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Two years after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine it is necessary to 
try to take stock of what is happening also because with the passage of 
time the reasons of one another seem to become obscured and everything 
becomes confused and turns into the chronicle of a terrible war which 
until now has produced - beyond what the major states of both sides say 
- more than a million deaths and devastated not only the invaded 
country, but also the aggressor and the whole of Europe, upsetting the 
geopolitical relations between the West and Russia. ---- In 2019, 
Zelensky's election to the Presidency of the Republic seemed to open the 
way to a possible era of peace; his Jewish origins seemed to place him 
out of contention among Orthodox linked to the Patriarchate of 
Constantinople.
and Orthodox linked to the Patriarchate of Moscow, as had happened with 
the Presidents of the Republic who preceded him.[1]The negotiations in 
Minsk dragged on, but it seemed that the dispute over Crimea and the 
provinces of Donbass could be concluded on the basis of a negotiation 
which, by modifying the structure of the Ukrainian state in a federal 
sense, would allow the desired autonomy of some territories and put an 
end to the conflict. In reality, the balance between the various actors 
in the field had already been broken on both sides, on the one hand with 
the invasion of Crimea and the insurrection of the eastern Ukrainian 
provinces and on the other with Brexit which, putting an end to the 
collaboration of the Russia with Europe reopened the competition between 
the different forces operating on the continent. As is known, it was 
Putin who cast the dice, planning and implementing a criminal, crazy and 
unprepared aggression against Ukraine, thinking of a special operation, 
believing he could behave like NATO in the former Yugoslavia, and not 
realizing that many other forces had entered the field and that the 
project of restructuring
the world order had already been underway for some time.

Imperial nostalgia

Incapable of thinking about a future of peace and cooperation, all the 
actors in the field were thinking about the past, dreaming of restoring 
empires: Putin of rebuilding imperial Russia or at least Soviet Russia, 
with the support of Patriarch Kyrill, the new ideologist of the reborn 
empire; the Patriarchate of Constantinople to become the interlocutor of 
the new Western Empire with its capital in Brussels, representing the 
Orthodox ecumene, reinforcing with the entry of the Ukrainians under its 
jurisdiction, the number and consistency of Western Orthodoxy; the 
United States to consolidate their shaky leadership: Great Britain to 
rediscover the empire, bringing together the scattered members of the 
former British colonies, to give life to a revisited Commonwealth , as a 
condition to shore up its possible dissolution and in the hope of 
hegemonizing the North Atlantic partnership, leading an Anglo-Saxon 
aggregation. The project found support in
Turkey's aspirations to rebuild its empire, while Europe still seemed to 
be prey to its dream of building a United States of Europe.
The destruction of the long column of Russian tanks that was heading 
towards Kiev, in the illusion of making it fall and was blocked and 
forced to retreat by Ukrainian drones, had in fact been heralded by the 
early closure, before it was inaugurated and came into operation, of 
Nord Stream 2 which, by providing low-cost energy to continental Europe, 
was the only antidote to the conflict that was brewing, as it created a 
formidable economic link between Europe's energy interests and Russia 
and constituted the axis on which was based on the green policy of the 
European Commission,
which upon its establishment had bet on a long period of low-cost energy 
to prepare to implement a transformation of the economic structure of 
the continent which would give the European area characteristics and 
competitive dimensions compared to the economies of the North Atlantic, 
China and those of emerging countries.
The Ukrainian war has laid the foundations for canceling Europe's green 
dream: we are realizing this in recent days with the launch of the 
political program of the new European Commission induced to transform 
the European economy into a war economy and to see only rearmament as 
the path possible for a future development of cohesion in Europe.

The special operation

Once the so-called "special operation" was launched, Putin signed two 
partial decrees.
Having 2.2 million enlisted men, he has mobilized 1,200,000 of them and 
still has another 880,000 reservists ready.
Fighting in Ukraine is economically worthwhile: a Russian soldier earns 
on average 2,135 euros a month, compared to 560 for a university 
professor. If the soldier dies, the family receives the equivalent of 
55,000 dollars (32,500 in case of serious injury); Despite this, it is 
not known exactly how many Russians fled abroad to avoid being drafted: the
Government speaks of 155 thousand draft resisters, but last May, 
according to the British Government there were 1.3 million.
Those who escape go to Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, before the border 
closure in Finland and now to countries where visas are not required. 
Kazakhstan, after an initial invasion of defectors, reduced permits. The 
EU has received 17 thousand requests for political asylum, but has only 
accepted two thousand. Until March 17, when he will be re-elected 
President for the fifth time, Putin will avoid new recruitments and thus 
any protests: since the beginning of the war 5,844 protesters have been 
arrested in 60 cities. As for the costs of the war, according to the 
Economist , fixed annual military spending is 60 billion dollars, while 
public spending has increased by 40% and the war is costing the Russians 
67 billion dollars a year in public deficit , while 3% of GDP is spent 
to support production, support welfare, support the families who send 
men to the front. An estimate by the military magazine Sofrep - reports 
Corriere della Sera - indicates a much higher overall cost for 2022: 900 
million dollars per day.
Regarding the sanctions, it must be said that the lack of application of 
countries such as China, India, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa 
and the role of Moscow within the BRICS have allowed triangulations and 
the procurement of all types of products, including technological ones , 
necessary to support the war effort and the production of weapons. 
Conversely,
according to the Financial Times , the war burned more than one hundred 
billion in profits of 600 large and medium-sized European companies 
doing business in Moscow, not counting the costs resulting from the 
increase in energy and raw materials.

The great almoner

The war is estimated to cost Kiev 10 billion dollars a month. The great 
almoner Zelensky, "servant of the people" (this was the name of the 
character in the TV drama that brought him to power), is responsible for 
procuring the resources. Once elected President, he took on the role and 
transformed himself into a hero. wearing the robes and role of a "seeker 
friar" and, dressed in military tunics, he constantly begs between the 
chancelleries of Europe and those of North America, to squeeze out the 
funding necessary to wage war by proxy and to support a failed state.
The EU has so far paid the Ukrainians 85 billion of which: 25 in 
technical and military equipment, 60 in financing.
According to the Germans at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy , 
the USA gave 47 billion in armaments and Great Britain 18. According to 
the World Bank accounts, a total of 17 billion a month arrived from the 
West, including weapons and support for an economy which no longer 
produces income and in almost two years has burned 200 billion between 
collapsed industries and
large foreign investors who have fled. Ukrainian state spending to pay 
for public administration, to keep schools and hospitals open, to keep 
transport running, in 2022 alone, was 75 billion: Western loans covered
32 billion
. Corruption, however, reaches very high levels and sees a a conspicuous 
part of the resources obtained go towards the pockets of the Ukrainian 
oligarchs who profit from war supplies, as well as from the sale of 
foodstuffs, who profit from the management of recruitment, trading in 
exemption from military service, who are
buying the destroyed Ukraine , piece by piece, preparing to sell it to 
the highest bidder and exploiting the war economy in every way.[2]This 
while the country is tired and exhausted, while an entire generation of 
citizens is sent to slaughter on the battlefields or falls victim to 
bombing, while the Ukrainian people are
dispersed into exile. At the beginning of the war, the Ukrainians 
declared they had 10 million enlisted men, even though the army numbered 
250,000 men: now they have around 700,000 soldiers. Among the 8 million 
refugees in Europe, there are 650 thousand eligible for recall; 
Furthermore, draft evasion has increased, with 300 thousand "ambushes" 
and corruption phenomena:
there are many who could be called up to arms who are hiding to escape 
recruitment patrols.
This is why Zelensky changed the recruitment rules by calling women into 
service: today there are 43 thousand (40% more than in 2021) and they 
have been admitted to the roles of machine gunner, sniper and tank 
commander, while parliament is unable to approve the new rules on 
mobilization.
Then there is the refusal to enlist in some areas of the country, 
dictated by ethnic origin. Anyone who knows Ukraine knows that the 
current resistance to the draft of the Hungarian-speaking and cultured 
populations arises from the awareness of their extraneousness to the 
nation; he knows of the resistance in supporting the central Ukrainian 
state on the part of the
Romanian-speaking minority, deprived of its schools and its Church; he 
should have the honesty to recognize the presence of a Russian-speaking 
component, certainly present in the eastern provinces, however 
widespread in the country, even if now marginalized by the
conflict.
If for no other reason than for these reasons it would be necessary to 
do everything to sit around a table as soon as possible and negotiate, 
finally looking clearly at the interests at stake and clarifying the 
real borders of a country whose territory was built as the result of now 
outdated geopolitical structures. including in the territory ethnic 
linguistic minorities belonging to neighboring countries. According to 
the New York Times , which uses both UN and US intelligence sources, the 
war has caused more than 6,000,000 deaths and injuries on both sides, 
including soldiers and civilians; the environmental damage produced so 
far in the soil, in the aquifers, in CO2 emissions is incalculable. 
Therefore we should aim for peace and open a negotiation that will have 
to put an end to the war so that Ukraine can ask for and obtain 
everyone's solidarity, rather than fueling a conflict that has simply 
become a massacre on both sides, to allow the country to give space to 
institutional reforms, to guarantee territorial autonomy, which allow 
its cohesion, calling citizens to express their opinion on these issues 
through referendums conducted with the guarantee of neutral 
international observers.
We need to have the courage to realize that the war, if on the one hand 
it fueled Ukrainian nationalism, on the other it stimulated the 
centrifugal forces of minorities and fueled particularism; the adoption 
of martial law is the centralization of state decisions, the imposition 
of a religion and an official Church, the denial of religious freedom, 
the suffocation of linguistic differences, instead of uniting the 
country they have created a further division that the common suffering 
due to the external enemy, the bombings, the war, the common sacrifices 
are not enough to compensate. The result is a country whose territory is 
today devastated, covered in explosive devices, polluted by the fighting 
that takes place there, with a population reduced to the limit and at a 
minimum because around 8 million Ukrainians have abandoned the country 
and, apparently , have no intention of returning there, also because the 
more time passes, the longer they live in other countries and other 
societies and become rooted there, the stronger the tendency is not to 
leave what has been built in a new social reality, rather than returning 
to the ancient, non-existent and crumbling past.

Ukraine, Russia and us

As far as we are concerned, we have no sympathy either for Putin, nor 
for Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow, nor for the social program of the 
Russian Orthodox Church that Puntin has made his own. We consider the 
values of which this Church is the bearer as the most regressive there 
is for a free society, for a rule of law, for the realization of the 
principle of freedom and equality. The profound rejection of the 
democracy that governs the Putin regime, however, does not prevent us 
from seeing the limits of its superficial opponents who supported the 
supremacy of the White Russians over the other peoples of Russia, 
racism, the values of deep and imperial Russia, the Russian nationalism.
At the same time we do not support the regime that currently governs 
Ukraine, which is a mirror image of the Russian one, it passes itself 
off as democratic, despite being illiberal, autocratic, authoritarian, 
oligarchic no more and no less than the one it fights; it has outlawed 
11 opposition political parties, with the excuse of war it does not hold 
elections even though the mandate of parliament and the President have 
expired; is led by a political class and a military oligarchy that 
aspires to enter Europe for the sole purpose of favoring a 
well-identified group of oligarchs and multinationals who aim to make 
profits, regardless of presenting the account of their earnings to the 
peoples of Europe and to the Ukrainian people themselves, who are the 
true, first and main victims of this operation, especially since they 
pay the price with the death of their citizens for a war presented as a 
war of freedom, in the name of self-government, but in reality conducted 
by proxy, in the name and on behalf of superpowers who fight in defense 
of their exclusive interests and who use Ukrainian men and women as 
cannon fodder. The hatred sown liberally by the Ukrainian paramilitary 
formations, the sick nationalism of the state boyars who appropriated 
the lands and collective economic activities, auctioned off after the 
collapse of the USSR, who enriched themselves like their followers 
Russians, by impoverishing the people, are allowing the massacre of the 
populations and the desertification of the territories, resurrecting 
from the folds of history the memory of the worst experiences of those 
populations, digging up the Ukraine of the country as a glorious 
experience of which to be proud intolerance, of pogroms, of religious 
and political fanaticism, of the discrimination of the many ethnic 
groups and peoples present in its territory, assigning to a brotherhood 
of criminal priests and thieves, the task of governing the destinies of 
a people.
Faced with this tragedy, the European peoples, in defense of their 
interests and of the Ukrainian people themselves, as well as of peace, 
have only one possible choice: to fight against the conversion of the 
industrial apparatus of their states into a war economy, to ask for 
immediate peace and immediately for Ukraine and the opening of 
negotiations. What is under discussion is the possibility of having the 
resources necessary to support the health systems, the school systems, 
the livelihood of the populations, the material and human well-being of 
their peoples, and above all the possibility of avoiding war and the 
possibility that it degenerates in a nuclear conflict.
To achieve this result, the first step is that the reformist forces 
present in the various countries and preparing for the elections for the 
European Parliament assume a common position of rejection of the war, 
because only through this choice can these forces recover a clearly 
left-wing and be recognizable by the voters, which would allow them to 
regain credit and consensus, making them prevail over the right due to 
their intentions and for their purposes. Without this clear choice, 
political ambiguity prevails, pushing towards abstentionism and 
disinterest, towards that lack of participation which allows nationalist 
and conservative forces to prevail.

[1]G. Cimbalo, The evolution of relations between State and Churches in 
New Ukraine. In search of Autocephaly in "Law and Religions" 2-2020, pp. 
252-304; ID, The unspoken role of the Churches in the Russian-Ukrainian 
conflict, in "Law and Religions" n. 2 of 2021, pp. 487-512 [2]The 
collapse of the internal front in Ukraine, Newsletter Crescita Politica, 
n. 180, 2023; Two considerations on Ukraine, Political Growth 
Newsletter, n. 176, 2023; The failures of the Ukrainian war. Political 
Growth Newsletter, n. 170, 2023; The economic causes of the Ukrainian 
war, Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 160, 2023; War in Ukraine: the 
British track, Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 158, 2022; Zelesky's 
Ukraine before Putin, Political Growth Newsletter, n. 158, 2022

Gianni Cimbalo

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/03/17/il-questuante-e-il-dittatore/
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