The Stupidity Of Russian Sanctions

A Look At How The War In Ukraine Will Hurt Us As Much As Russia

By Dark Politricks

As the war in Ukraine continues, the rampant xenophobia against ordinary Russians, many of who are against the war continues unabated.

The sanctions against Russia have got to the silly stage. They were supposed to hurt Putin and his Oligarch Billionaire friends, and some have. However ordinary Russians are being attacked, and legally so on social media, as Facebook and Instagram changed their Terms of Service to allow violent and negative language against Russians, something usually banned by their sites.

Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.

Russian people and even Russian animals have been sanctioned. In response to the war in Ukraine, the International Cat Federation has banned all cats from Russia, and Russian breeds, from competing in international competitions.

 

Also, anti-war Russians such as the Russian piano prodigy, Alexander Malofeev, 20, who was supposed to play three shows with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM), has been dropped after people emailed to complain despite him being outspoken against the war in Ukraine.

 

This is getting ridiculous and despite numerous videos online from ex-US military members, talking about the lack of Russian moral, and how Ukraine will win the war, the facts on the ground are pretty clear. Either the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, egged on by the US War Hawks in the State Department, fights to the death and destruction of his country, or he settles terms with the Russians in talks that have been ongoing throughout the war.

The sad thing is that the terms he will most likely have to accept will be the same terms that the Russians, were asking for before they invaded, and all this misery and outpouring of Ukrainian refugees into Europe could have been stopped before it started.

This is clearly the US and other NATO country's fault, for giving him false hope that they would back him up, allow entry into the EU and NATO, and supply him with weapons and intelligence throughout the war.  

It seems though that the Pentagon, unlike the State Department, is a bit wiser, and stupid ideas which could expand the war such as bringing Polish MIG fighters into Ukraine and then re-supplying Poland with new planes, were a clear red line that Putin said would be an act of war and that any weapons or troops supplied by the West would be fair game.

With Russian Nuclear Arms on the equivalent of DEFCOM 2, 1 step away from a full nuclear attack, the Pentagon seems to agree with commentators that anything suggesting western help to Ukraine could expand the war, and make it global, even terminal for this planet.

This video is from the Duran, a channel that always goes into details that other videos miss. Earlier today they had a 1.5hr video on the round of peace talks being held by Russia and it included a journalist embedded in Ukraine, in the middle of what the Russian army calls a cauldron. This is where they slowly turn up the heat, once they have surrounded their enemy, and from the following video it seems they are doing just that in Mariupol.

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Russians have been using diplomacy at the same time as attacks in Ukraine, as they try to set up humanitarian corridors with the UN to let Ukrainian citizens, and hopefully, soldiers, slip away from the fight. They have no reason to bomb or shell these corridors as it gives the Ukrainians brilliant propaganda pictures of innocent civilians, being killed. 

Plus, according to some experts, they did this in Syria to good effect. They are not trying to own the skies with their modern fighter planes, albeit with fewer flying hours than US or NATO pilots. 

The history and reasons for this war are discussed in the following talk from a Christian speaker who discusses the history of the region now in conflict and the real reasons for the war.

They do not want to destroy the country like the US/NATO does in their wars with weeks, and sometimes months of aerial bombardment by missiles and planes dropping bombs before the troops go in, and then big money is given over to MIC companies like Halliburton to rebuild the country they just destroyed as in Iraq.

No, it seems that although some of the Russian conscript soldiers who have been paraded in front of camera's breaking Geneva conventions, providing great anti-Putin / war images from injured soldiers who say they were lied to about their invasion, haven't eaten properly, and do not want to fight Ukrainians just protecting their land that in fact Russia is going to win this war.

One other thing this rash of sanctions against Russia, which has pushed them closer to China and India, even offering to sell India cheap gas in Rupees in a sign that those countries who stick with Russia, like China, Brazil, and India, will be rewarded whilst those who have thrown every sanction in the book at them will be severely punished, such as the 200% increase in the price of Russian gas Europeans will have to pay whilst frantically trying to make other arrangements for imported energy.

It seems the USA has played Ukraine well, not only to get Europe out of Russia's sphere of influence and reliance on their gas, so that they can sell us theirs. Closing Nordstream2, and the threat of Nordstream1 as well was also ideally an outcome the US wanted from this conflict they started back in the Maidan coup. Even the existing multiple pipes that deliver gas through Ukraine to Europe could be turned off or even destroyed during the war.

At the moment US President Biden is going around the world begging to countries such as Venezuela, who only recently the US tried to overthrow their President, Nicolás Maduro in a failed coup, for cheap oil and gas to replace the loss of Russian imports, and to sell to Europe which is already suffering stupidly high inflation at the gas pump due to the sanctions.

We seem to be cutting our nose off to spite our face, as we pay £1.70+ per litre at the petrol station ($10.06 per gallon), and set to be over £2 by the end of the summer. I remember when petrol first went over £1 per litre, I was about 21 and couldn't believe it, however it has bounced between £1.20-£1.40 for the last 15+ years but has seen only a dramatic increase recently.

As well as petrol price which might help push a move to electric cars, we are already suffering high and constantly increasing energy costs to heat our homes and put the TV on. My bill already doubled at the end of last year and the company I am with was talking about doubling it again only the other month and that was before the war in Ukraine had even started.

I can only dread the bills coming in once the price of food rockets due to the increasing price of fuel for delivery drivers, plus Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine control over 30% of the wheat and fertilizer exports,, which will also drive up inflation into stupid numbers.

If we don't offer Putin some sort of "off-ramp", in which these sanctions can be reversed in return for peace, then almost half the world's population in China, India, and the far East with Russia, will be swapping US treasury bonds and dumping the dollar, whilst creating an alternative to the SWIFT banking system which will have the benefit of not being controlled by the whims of US feelings towards one countries actions.

President Biden is supposedly going hat in hand to Saudi Arabia to ask the head of the OPEC cartel to increase output and therefore reduce the price of oil globally. However, The Crown Prince, MBS, does not like Biden at all, and has not been picking up his calls since Biden's election pledges to hold Saudi Arabia to account for their war in Yemen, and murder of the US journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, as well as stopping arms sales.  

Joe Biden has been constantly rebuffed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in his attempts to persuade them to produce more oil in the wake of a US ban on Russian imports. The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan both declined requests to speak to the US president in recent weeks, and after declining to speak to Biden, Mohammed bin Salman took a call from President Putin. 

 

It looks like we might be more affected by our sanctions on Russia than anyone expected and in "Realpolitik" we really should not be picking dictators to sanction, and others to beg for cheap oil from. 

If you really think Putin is Hitler, as some US MSM commentators have said, then what is MBS who, in the largest known mass execution in the kingdom’s modern history just executed 81 people for crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups. 

Can we really say that Putin is as bad as MBS, and the state of Saudi Arabia which is definitely, bombing Yemen into rubble, unlike Russia with Ukraine which in comparison has been quite restrained? 

The hypocrisy of this hunt for oil from dictators to replenish supplies from a supposedly democratically, although authoritarian elected Russian President, stands out like a black eye. Are we really going to delve into the degrees of despotism and discuss why it is that some wars are reported more than others? 

News commentary on the war by the US media, such as MSNBC's Joy Reid who faced massive backlash for accusing the media of covering the war in Ukraine with more compassion because the victims are "white and largely Christian" has shown how the western media are blatantly putting this crisis in Ukraine above the many others occurring in the world at the moment, many of which are of the USA's making.

Along with the censorship and de-platforming of independent reporters like Abby Martin, who just had 300 videos from Breaking The Set, an ex Russia Today show, in which she actually decried the Russian invasion of Crimea when it happened, it has become clear that some wars are just more important than others. 

No-one was sanctioned when the US illegally invaded Iraq, and the last major war in Europe was NATO's bombing of Serbia which led to the breakaway narco-state of Kosovo. However as it was the US doing the killing, it was somehow acceptable to invade a sovereign country, whereas reporters like Abby Martin in her Empire Files show, often talk about the often ignored and over-looked global conflicts and anti-imperialism wherever it comes from. 

It has got to the stage where white extremism is all the news offers as conflicts and humanitarian disasters, in Yemen, Palestine, Syria, and Afghanistan are ignored because somehow European conflicts are considered more important. 

The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association even sent out a statement on Sunday condemning:

“the racist implications that any population or country is ‘uncivilized’ or bears economic factors that make it worthy of conflict. This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected."

Fair comment, and with the mass coverage of the Ukrainian crisis on western news shows, with other points of view labelled as Russian dis-info, or reporting on the history of the conflict and hypocrisy of the world ignoring NATO and US aggression as "Whataboutism", it is clear that without doing some major digging about on the web to find proper #ALTNEWS you are only going to get the side of the war the US and Europe want to project.

With the hypocrisy of this conflict clearly visible for all to see who want to, we must be willing to offer Russia and Putin a way to come to peace with Ukraine, and a way back to normality by rolling back extensive and stupid sanctions that will only hurt us as Russia pivots towards India and China, otherwise we will be the ones suffering most from the sanctions NOT Russia! 

By Dark Politricks

© 2022 Dark Politricks