Do you think it’s a coincidence that both Ukrainian and Russian Presidents have Similar First names?
Introduction
I hope I am not the only person who is baffled by this but I have noticed that The current Presidents of Russia and Ukraine have very similar first names, The Russian President is called Vladimirwhile the Ukrainian President is called Volodymyr. I see this is quite baffling because these are heads of states of very two different countries with quite different political systems, I am not an expert in distinguishing names here so I may need some help. If there are people on this platform from that part of the world who understand these cultures then you can offer a little help. My first thought when I heard their names and looked at their faces was that these guys could be blood brothers or some distant cousins. ‘’Their faces also look very similar, maybe they are long lost relatives,’’ I thought to myself.
It’s not new that heads of states of different parts of the world could be related. For instance During world War One, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, The Russian Tsar Nicholas 1 and British King George the Fifth were all Cousins. So it looks like world war one was being fought to settle some old family feud. The leaders of all these governments were fighting each other fiercely even though they knew they were blood relatives. Where is the old phrase we once believed in which said that blood is thicker than water? Is that really so? Conventional wisdom tells us that the best way to settle family disputes is sitting down and talking things over, nothing ever gets solved by exchanging blows.
So how did these two heads of states come to share names?
For people from far away, it’s a feat that is quiet difficult to comprehend, maybe the Slavic people can give us a little bit of explanation here. Ukraine and Russia are two countries that have had very long history of cooperation that goes back many centuries. Ukrainians and Russians started working together more than a thousand years ago.
An astonishing attack
Ukrainians living overseas are receiving the news in shock, they hold their breadths each day as they listen to the live reporting of distressing news coming from their home country, they cross their fingers and hope everything is going to be well; they hope against hope that despite the desperate situation their loved ones will be safe. Many are thousands of miles away from home and are aware of the fact that there is very little they can do to make a difference, so they just sit and pray for their loved ones.
We feel sorry for the people of Ukraine for the hardships they are going through now, they are suffering just like people in many other countries of the world currently experiencing conflict. From Asia, Africa and the Americas, many countries are experiencing a lot of internal turmoil. It looks like peace and security are slipping out of the hands of humanity. Whatever the geopolitical differences that are flaring these issues up, we hope they get solved soon enough so that people can resume their normal lives.
Sorry guys for breaking the norms, I usually don’t talk about these kinds of stuff, but the Ukrainian Saga has caught all of us by surprise, everyone on the web is talking about this issue and what detrimental impacts it could have on the World. The last two years of 2020 and 2021 were dedicated to Covid 19, but this year 2022 is dedicated to Russo Ukrainian duel, it is of great significance to us all because it touches so many aspects of our daily lives. Other than international relations, skyrocketing of food prices and other basic commodities, people are wondering if a conflict of a similar kind can emerge elsewhere in the world.
Much Needed Global Attention
Conflict is now getting the attention it deserves, if the conflicts in other parts of the world always had this kind of attention, in terms of the human impacts, then the world would be a better place, no conflict is too hard to settle.
What people in other parts of the world are saying is that Europeans are now openly discussing the effects of wars and how to avoid or deal with the effects of war. Simply because war is at their doorstep, they never seemed to be bothered when it happened to some countries many thousands of miles away. Now they seem genuinely concerned about the plight of refugees as a whole.
For weeks now the only thing being spoken in the Western media is nothing but Ukraine. The talk of conflict has given us a break from the Corona Virus Pandemic. For two years straight the world media has been talking about nothing except the COVID 19 Pandemic. We have been bored to death by the mainstream media as well as social media being dominated by nothing except the Corona virus discussions. Quarantines, Lockdowns, Jabs, triple jabs and vaccine passports are all we have been hearing for over two years now. It hasn’t gone anywhere yet; in fact, it is here to stay with us at all times. But for now, the media especially western is directing the eyes of the whole world towards the crisis in Ukraine. It’s like Covid became irrelevant overnight, it is the first time since the fall of USSR that Russia is fighting a real conventional ground warfare. People fear that this situation may escalate into yet another world war. It is the first time since Bosnian war that there had been major battles fought on European soil.
Trying appeasement Policy
People are questioning if appeasement of Russia by NATO countries could have worked. If the west gave Russia what it demanded, which is the neutrality of Ukraine, would we be in this kind of position at the moment? Does Russia really have legitimate security concerns as it claims or is the country being dragged into a brutal unnecessary war by a former KGB Spy master, is Russia being nostalgic about the good olden days of the Soviet Union and trying to bring some of those glory days back? Russian diplomats deny the accusation that their country is on a war path for territorial expansion, they claim their military activity is of strategic security importance and therefore had no choice but to act. The act of Biden sending lethal aid to Ukraine to be potentially used against Russia was more than good enough reason for Russia to do what it is doing right now. It was a direct threat against kremlin. Russian diplomats also point out another of their military operation in a former soviet republic of Kazakhstan. About a year ago, the Kazakh government asked Russia for help in quenching violent pretest that were spurred by rise in fuel prices, the government had feared that the protesters could be accompanied by extremist groups that might destabilize the country. The Russian military went in to help and left almost immediately after the protests were over. Russian diplomats say that this act proves their country has no intention of restoring the former soviet empire. They operate only in places where they are invited or needed.
Bringing back home the Afghan Hound
Did the clumsy US exit from Afghanistan last year signal to the Russians that the US is a declining military power and therefore gave them the morale to launch their own offensive into eastern Europe? Russians have been watching the Afghan saga unfold for months last year which reminded them of their own disaster a few decades back when they were still called the mighty Soviet Union. The kremlin may have calculated that the US is too weak and not in a position to put its own troops in another conflict in the region. Russia is a nation that is still bitter from the loss of the Cold war. It’s hard to evaluate the exact geopolitical grievances that have led to this conflict but one thing for sure is that it’s a dispute that goes back several decades.
When they left the Taliban whom they had been fighting for over two decades back in power, it felt like all their efforts had been in vain, it appeared to have been a waste of time, lives and financial resources, the US military activity in Afghanistan really ate into the country’s economic budget. An estimated two trillion was reportedly spent during the two-decade occupation of the country. Critiques argue that all those trillions of dollars in spending on the Afghanistan war went to the US defense companies, not a single dime was handed over to the poor Afghan people, they all spent it on themselves and returned home victorious. Now life in the hands of the Taliban is worse than it had ever been during their first takeover decades ago. Hopes of many young Afghans have been crushed already, the situation for many is hopeless.
Trump’s Buddies Overseas
Many Americans argue that Donald Trump was a good friend of Putin, they heavily criticized him for being friends with heads of states that the west had classified as extremely brutal dictators, these includes Erdogan of Turkey and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Even though trump exchanged harsh words with Kim, he ended up being the first Us President to meet face to face with a sitting north Korean leader, this is an action that reduced tensions in the region as North Korean leadership liked launching Rockets at Japan and its arch enemy state called South Korea. Trump also diffused Tensions in another part of the world called the middle east, he oversaw the signing of normalization of relations between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Israel is one of the most controversial nations in the world today and a war between Israel and any neighboring state could easily spill over to other countries. As we all know it from history, when a war breaks out between Israel and an Arab state, it always drags in America and other western nations in support of Israel, that Arab state may then get support from the Arab league or other anti-western nations in the east. Israel however small a state it is a country that can very easily trigger another global conflict.
Just as the Jews were blamed by the Nazis for German Problems during World War 2, the Jewish state could very easily be blamed for triggering another global conflict. The trump administration tried to ease tensions in this region and therefore no major conflict occurred in this part of the world. Other than North Korea and Israel, a third country on the list of nations under tense geopolitics was Ukraine, as back as 2014, experts already predicted that a full invasion of Ukraine by Russia may trigger another global conflict, they already said that if Russia were to attack Ukraine, the west would be forced to take sides and support Ukraine, Russia on the other side would be supported by its allies in the East, you know that Russia too has close allies, there are countries in the world that deeply hate the west especially America and its foreign policies that they would be naturally inclined to support Russia. With several countries now taking sides in the war this crisis is already a Global conflict.
Trump was greatly criticized for mistreating his democratic ally Zelensky, while being cozy and friendlier towards the authoritarian Russian president. In the US mainstream media, he was widely discussed as a sellout who preferred to befriend America’s enemies while antagonizing America’s traditional allies. What people are questioning now is whether there would be such an horrific conflict if Trump was still in office. That’s an if. His supporters say that he may have lacked etiquette, had almost zero table manners and extremely vulgar fellow, but at least he tried to maintain world peace.
This is a conflict that is heating up bipartisan politics in the US, Republicans are now getting an upper hand and have a reason to point fingers at the democrats calling them out for incompetence, ”first it was Afghanistan now its Ukraine, they keep accusing the democrats of mismanagement of the world affairs, it’s now more blame games, ” the republicans are saying that even though they had a vulgar president who was quick to hurl words of insult at anyone that crossed his path, they were at least better off at the time because they were not facing global conflicts of this magnitude.
Welcoming the Refugees
It is hard to imagine that in Poland just a few months ago there were thousands of people on the streets engaging in anti-immigrant protests, even the Polish leadership itself publicly announced that they do not want any more refugees on their home soil. It surprises everyone that they are acting very differently right now, maybe the refugees they didn’t want were different kinds of refugees who came from very far away countries, they feared that these refugees from distant nations in Africa and middle east would have a very hard time integrating into the Polish society and way of life.
Some refugees however, are partly to blame for the perceptions they created in the minds of Europeans, back in early 2010’s Europe used to welcome lots of refugees with open arms. European countries like Germany welcomed in Millions of them, but shortly after that, some radicalized folks from the middle east entered Europe as refugees and started conducting terrorist attacks on European citizens. These were horrible attacks that had led to the death of hundreds of European citizens. Innocent people were caught in the crossfires and paid very dearly, it was the attacks in France, Belgium and Germany that got lots of Global attention. Horrifying videos of people desperately trying to get away from terrorist gunmen went viral on social media. This was a very shocking scenario for most Europeans, they often saw terrorism happening many thousands of miles away in other countries, they never though it would one day reach their home soil. Even though the attacks received worldwide condemnation including from the Muslim world. The damage had already been done. Those handful of jihadists ruined life for every other innocent refugee who was willing to integrate into European societies. Many European countries said they had already seen enough; they saw every other refugee from North Africa and Middle East as a Potential Extremist who can easily get radicalized and wreak havoc on European communities.
The cultural differences are a great factor in the rejection of refugees from certain parts of the world, many refugees from north Africa and middle east come from societies where Sharia governs every aspect of an individual’s life. Like for instance, all women are to be veiled whenever they travel outside of their home. When young men from Arabia come into Europe and saw that European women were not properly covered, it was a kind of shock to them. They grew up in societies where women around them were always covered in public. This is bound to lead to culture clash, and it is a never pleasant scenario, things often turn ugly. There are incidences like ”New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Germany” where young women were targeted by Arab men who came into the country as refugees, they say that the women were not properly dressed and therefore had a good reason to assault them.
Many European citizens and Legislators have feared that once the refugees have numbers in Europe, they will try to impose Sharia (Islamic Law) on Europeans. You hear Europeans cry out in protests that Muslims are gentle only when they are a minority, but when they become the majority in your country, they will impose sharia on everyone else. There is this real fear by the Europeans that their cultural identity is being eroded by immigrants from faraway lands who have cultures and religions that are very different from their own. They claim they are a secular state not an Islamic state. So, the rejection of refugees from certain parts of the world by Europeans goes beyond skin color.
Ukrainians on the other hand are their next-door neighbors, even though they speak Ukrainian which is a language different from their own, they would gladly accept them with open arms. They see them to be a very close match of their own, it’s not just about their light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, it’s also about their culture and religion which is very similar to other Europeans, there are almost zero chances of these Ukrainian refugees being radicalized some day to start conducting terrorist attacks on their fellow Europeans. So, we have seen how the actions of a few can destroy opportunities for everyone else.
Those refugees from north Africa and middle east that manage to settle down in Europe still face lots of hardship throughout their lives, when an Arab woman walks around Europe covered in veils, she always gets unfriendly stare, the covering on her head screams out loud what her religion is, it screams out loud saying that ”I am a Muslim girl” some European locals are heard talking to one another in a very stern tone. ‘Look there goes the Arab girl again, we are a secular state and allow Muslims to live here and freely practice their religion as they see fit, because freedom of worship is enshrined into all European nation’s laws. Yet when you go to Arab countries there is no such thing. No one that doesn’t practice Islam is allowed to live in Arab countries, yet we allow them to stay here, enjoy themselves and do their own thing, are we not being invaded by the Arab world? We welcome them with their religion with open arms, yet they don’t allow an inch of our own to live on their soils, and they still refer to us Europeans as cruel racists. We see Europeans being executed in some Arab countries simply because of their faith yet there is no such thing here in Europe, no Arab has ever been executed in Europe because of his/her religious beliefs, even those that were involved in extremely violent murders were peacefully arrested, given fair trials and then given prison sentences.” ”we are doing a lot of good for many asylum seekers that never gets acknowledge or appreciated by the world. They keep pointing fingers at us blaming us for everything that has gone wrong for them.” says the European Seniors. They believe from the bottom of their hearts that their cultural identity is being threatened.
This is how Europeans always answer in self-defense, ”it is a well-known fact that in the west, there are thousands of mosques, the Muslim immigrants there enjoy themselves and live their lives as they please, yet you can’t say the same thing about Arabia, there are practically no Hindu temples, Christian churches or any other religious buildings that are not mosques, and anyone who publicly reads the Bible or any other religious book that is not Quran will surely get executed. There are well known sad stories about people in Arab countries that were instantly executed after being found with copies of Bibles in their homes. So many Muslims complain a lot about islamophobia in the west yet they forget that in their home countries things are way worse for non-Muslims. They call Europeans racist islamophobics, yet westerners don’t have any kind of freedom in Arab countries, what right do they have to complain, when we have given them so much accommodation and freedom?”
Another issue that the Europeans claim to fear is the number of children that many immigrants from these countries have, some cultures especially Muslims have a practice of having many children which are likely to have a drain on state resources. Some European countries have become welfare states whereby the country’ government provides free access to quality public services like transport, healthcare and education. Now with these immigrants there is likely to be an immediate swelling of the population size, a number that the state institutions may not have prepared For. The government therefore goes to the point where it tries to control the population size by offering family planning to all of its citizens, who are taught the importance of having smaller manageable families from a very early age. But they fear it would be a difficult campaign to sell to the immigrants because they are from a totally different culture.
European women stopped having many children several decades ago, today on average, a European woman has a total sum of one to two children in her lifetime, while on the other hand, immigrant men especially from Muslim cultures have an average of four wives and countless number of children, so in just a few decades, the population of several thousand can easily become millions. That is a thought that frightens most Europeans and causes them to become more hostile to immigrants that are from cultures outside of Europe. The anti-immigrant protesters in the EU were even openly saying that ”they want Europe to remain white and Christian,” they don’t want a population that is not tuned to their culture to take over their continent. When the immigrants ask them, ”why were you dropping bombs in Arab countries to begin with? If you didn’t want Muslims to come into your countries your governments should not have recklessly dropped bombs in Muslim countries, Muslims and colored folks are also human beings who can flee for their lives when their homes are set on fire by conflict. No human being can stay put in a burning house; you should have known that.”
The African Side on the Conflict
It’s evident that the European Union and other Western Nations are on the side of Ukraine. But in another part of the world, Ukraine is facing difficulty getting support. We have already seen how divisive the decision was at the UN general assembly, during the vote to condemn Russia’s action in Ukraine, two dozen African countries abstained from the vote, which means they do not wish to take sides. Most African countries want to remain neutral and work with both Russia and Ukraine.
When the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky asked the African union for support in the condemnation of Russia, he was met with a blank stare and deafening silence. It wasn’t because African countries didn’t care about what was happening to Ukrainians, it’s just that many of them have been experiencing war for decades, and some even see the way Ukraine is whining as a child’s play’. ‘’We have been through worse”, they say to Ukrainian diplomats. Another issue the Ukrainian President Zelensky had not been made aware of by his advisors is that there are a dozen African countries that are currently under US or EU Sanctions, which has caused immense sufferings among the native populations. The reasons for the sanctions range from Human rights violations, Poor governance and foreign policies. Zelensky’s advisors should have informed him first about these geopolitical issues before he went out asking African countries for support. Some African Countries have been under US Sanctions for decades which resulted in abject poverty for many of its citizens, A Good example is a Southern African country of Zimbabwe where the Sanctions have had crippling effects, the currency and the economy collapsed, leading to millions of people especially high skilled citizens leaving the country for greener pastures elsewhere, this brain drain then affects the country even further as there are less qualified people left to run the country’s institutions. The Zimbabwean dollar has been known for more than a decade as the least valuable currency in the world. The hyperinflation in the country had made the situation so bad that an orange fruit at the grocery store costs millions, this has forced many vendors to reject their own local currency and instead go for foreign currencies such as South African Rand and Us dollar. These are countries that are least likely to rush to Ukraine’s support especially when they know that they are in close partnership with the US.
A more pressing issue for the African Union is the current conflict in the Ethiopian Region of Tigray. The war which broke out in November 2020, has devastated the country’s Population and its economy. The war has been threatening to destabilize the horn of Africa region. This is a conflict that has already claimed nearly half a million lives according to some estimates. There was a time when the war moved so close to the capital city which the rebels threatened to attack. African nations held their breath as they waited to hear the potential downfall of Addis Ababa, the nations’ capital and the headquarters of the African Union. African leaders thought that the collapse of Addis Ababa would symbolize the failure of the African union itself. But fortunately, the Sitting President Abbey hammed was able to gather public support for his government and the army and was then able to drive the rebels back far away from the nation’s capital. This is an incident that happened less than a year ago and is still very fresh in the minds of many African leaders. AU Leaders see no need of being involved in a conflict far away in Eastern Europe while they are already trying to resolve another brutal conflict happening in Ethiopia which is the heart of the African Union.
The Taiwan Statehood Saga
A few years back before the covid disaster hit, there was a lot of press coverage on the issue of China and the Island state of Taiwan. The so-called experts were out there screaming out loud to the world warning that the Chinese leadership in Beijing is planning to take back Taiwan and place it far away from the influence of the so called evil American imperialists. They claimed that China was planning to launch an invasion of Taiwan, to take back what rightfully belongs to them. If China decides to launch its reclamation program right now, Washington will find itself caught in the middle, USA will now be fighting a war on two major fronts, first it would be against Russia in eastern Europe and then secondly on the Taiwan strait. That would be a conflict too much to bear for America and the West even when they are using Proxies. It is believed China has postponed its invasion plans for now, they are watching carefully what is happening to Russia in the wake of its actions in Ukraine, they have seen how Russia’s economy is suffering under US sanctions and have decided to keep things cool so that they too may not suffer. China is a very close ally of Russia but would never openly support Russia’s actions for fear of repercussions from the West. China has been playing the Watching Game for quite a long time now, during the cold war when the USA and USSR were fighting all over the world using proxies, China had been closely following the wrestling match of these giants. China being a giant itself sought to seek real truth behind the outcome in that great wrangling. In the early nineties, it became clear that the Soviet Union was the loser even though it had more military hardware than USA. The USSR had more Nuclear Warheads, Ballistic missiles, ICBMs, Tanks, Fighter Jets, Troop numbers, Submarines and battle ships. The USSR was more superior to USA when it came to military might, but on the other hand it was economically weak, towards the end of the cold war, the economies of soviet states were so bad that life was becoming unbearable for soviet citizens, food rations became the norm, people were lining up for hours at supermarkets for basic household food items such as bread, sugar and flour. The Chinese saw this devastation of the soviet people and decided that they should never put their own people in a similar scenario. They concluded that economic might was more important than military might, so for the last few decades the Chinese leadership has been aggressively building its economy through massive industrialization and international trade.
Taiwan has been a part of China for thousands of years, all the people on the island are ethnic Chinese who speak mandarin and still practice some sort of traditional Chinese culture. But they lost their beloved island during their hundred years of humiliation. First by the west and then secondly by Japanese empire. China has been humiliated for over a century. Even though they complained frequently about this subjugation, its Chinese leadership at the time who was to blame for the misery of their people, in the last few centuries the Chinese dynasties stubbornly refused to modernize the state, even though China still remains the oldest continues civilization in the world with over five thousand years of history, it was important for China to modernize to adapt to the changing times.
The Chinese invented the gunpowder and used it only for celebratory purposes e.g., the fireworks during the Chinese New Year. Countries in Europe like Britain quickly capitalized on this new Chinese technology and used it for military purposes, so the Chinese invent the gunpowder to be used only for good things such as celebrations while the Europeans used it to create evil things such as cannons, riffles and bombs. The Chinese leadership at the time believed they had everything they needed to survive and therefore should not be bothered by the turmoil in the world around them, ”besides we have five thousand years of history, the Chinese nation will remain supreme,’’ they comforted one another, or so they thought, their reluctance will come back to haunt them, it will cost them dearly. It is the adoption of this new military technology, that allowed tiny western countries such as Britain to defeat China in battle, it allows small island nations like Japan to conquer and control very huge chunks of chines territories. That is a part of humiliating history that Chinese leadership doesn’t want to go through anymore and are willing to fight anyone to take back what they believe is rightfully theirs.
Since the seizing of Hong Kong back in 2019, experts believe that Taiwan is next on the list, the massive prodemocracy protests that went on for months in Hong Kong drove the Chinese Leadership to crack down on the island’s leadership and replace the systems of governance that were left behind by the British. Even though the duration they had agreed with the British was not yet over, they still went on with their political moves as they feared the unrests in Hong Kong Could very easily spread to the rest of the Chinese mainland territories. According to the CCP, the rogue Hong Kong youth had to be disciplined as soon as possible. This kind of censorship by the Chinese Leadership is not something new, throughout its long history, China has lost a lot of history and cultural heritage due to the censorship that was put in place by different dynasties, Chinese emperors are known to burn entire libraries of books that contained information ranging from culture, trade & commerce, religion, Medicine, Science and technology, military and warfare, information that could have kept China the number one superpower for thousands of years, yet the Chinese kept destroying this valuable treasure called knowledge & Understanding. Just because they didn’t like the previous dynasty, the new emperor destroyed all their records including information that could be of great economic or military value to the state.
China is older than Mighty Persia, Assyria, Greece, Rome and all the western empires that ruled the world in the last few centuries, China is even Older than Ancient Egypt, the once magnificent imperial kingdom on the Nile we all love to talk about, yet all these empires rose and fell, they crumbled into dust never to be seen again, China is the only civilization that has never completely crumbled. The reason for that is a myth that continues to baffle scholars all over the world to this day, no one really knows how and why China could survive for so long. To live on to this very day.
Surprise break-up with Saudis and the Arab World
Saudi Arabia is by no doubt the most influential nation in the Arab world, an alliance with the Saudis in an alliance with many other Arab countries.
Americans are trying to understand why Joe Biden, the most Politically educated President is trying to break this decades long mutual relationship with the Saudis, compared to Trump, he has been in government for a very long time, that is being a Politician throughout his entire adult life. Before being elected president he had held the second most powerful office in America for close to a decade. Did you know that Joe Biden is the only President in this century that didn’t get any briefings before entering the white house because he knew everything about the oval office already long before he got elected? So, such sensitive geopolitical partnerships are things he should already have been informed of, he should have known that the Saudis and Americans have always been there for each other through thick and thin. Whatever the Americans asked for the Saudis happily provided and whatever request the Saudis had, the Americans were happy to look into that matter. For the last few decades, Americans and the Saudis had been like fraternal twins that even though they were born different they had common interests that kept the relationship warm, the love affair between the cowboys and the Bedouins has been going on for decades. Now it looks like things are falling apart.
Most people today think that the only reason Americans like the Saudis is all because they provide them with cheap quality oil. Well things are not all that simple. The Saudis have helped Americans in more ways than provide them with cheap oil. They have been there through most of the activities the US had in the middle East. It was the Saudis that enabled the successful accomplishment of the first Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), the Saudis also facilitated the 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom and Post September Eleven military activity against terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan, in fact, The US hardly ever does anything in the middle East without The Saudi’s stamp of approval, but now the relations are getting even sourer, things will continue to become incredibly difficult for the US to have an influence in the region. The Saudis had even decided to overlook the so-called war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians, they agreed to hold no further grudges against a US baby brother state called Israel.
It was the Saudis that helped USA to break the back of the Mighty Soviet Union at the end of the cold war in the late eighties and early nineties. The Reagan administration and the Saudi Kingdom agreed on a way to crush the Soviet Empire’s economy through manipulation of the international Oil Markets. If you have plenty of time to kill, you can check records in the library of congress about the deal Reagan administration had with the Saudis that gave the soviets their final crushing blow, The American Buffalo could never have defeated the Russian bear if it wasn’t for the Help of the Saudi’s desert Falcon. Now the Saudis want to go their own way, ending many decades of long partnerships, it now looks like America will be in serious trouble soon. Biden’s decision to antagonize the Saudis may be a decision that comes back to haunt him any time soon. It is seen as a grave miscalculation by many US politicians from both parties.
Playing boycott Politics
Thanks to the western sanctions, Russian athletes are now being banned in all the international sports organizations, it happens to be that the biggest international sports organizations in the world which are FIFA World Cup and the Olympics were started and run partly by Europeans and other western nations. They have incredible power and influence over these organizations.
But why should innocent Russian athletes be punished for the actions of their governments they have no control over? This sounds very cruel, because these are people that have dedicated all their lives to sportsmanship so that they can excel with flying colors, they have put aside all other careers and professions so that they can focus on their sports, but when time comes to compete, they are denied entry into the sports venues, all because of some geopolitical wrangling somewhere in the world. This is very unfair to the athletes and their families who have dedicated their time to supporting their siblings. Russia has always been a target of these kinds of attacks, just a short while ago. Russia was banned from international competitions because of the so-called state sponsored doping scandal, no other country in the world went through such negative publicity, yet they professionally managed to host the world cup in 2018. which is going to be the only world cup that Russians will participate in for years to come.
A year or so back there were massive social media campaigns calling for boycott of Beijing Olympics, now it’s Russia, next it may be India or some other country. There is also a lot of talk on the internet on why India should also get sanctioned or get completely banned from doing some international business and participating in sports. The anti-China sentiment has already been there for many years, that we already know of. The astonishing thing is that Russia has already been added to that blacklist and India is probably on the way, she could be potentially added to the group. soon everyone will be sanctioned and there will be no countries left to take part in international sports associations, some politicians say that sports have already been over-politicized, sports venues should be places where countries go to solve their political differences not start wars.
So now imagine Russia, China and India, three Asian giants being cut off from the global community and hope that everyone else will be just fine without them, is not that smart thinking. These are extremely huge countries in terms of land mass and populations, they have incredible influence not just in Asia but the world over, they just can’t be thrown under the bus and then cross your fingers hoping everything else is gonna be fine, well nothing much is going to remain cool if such a dreadful action is taken, don’t policy makers realize that antagonizing these giants will only draw them closer together? they may create their own world order and invite other nations into it, and that is something that can defragment the world even further. These beautiful international sporting events where everyone comes to take part will cease to exist, and there will be no other venues left for the global nations to interact in. everyone is going to turn their own way and the world will be more hostile than ever, with no venues left to solve political disputes. Diplomats in many countries are now questioning the integrity of these international sports, countries are asking themselves, ‘‘if Russia, China and India can easily be cut off from international events because of political differences, who else then is safe?” they are concluding that FIFA and Olympics are European organizations and not world organizations, they were created only to serve the interest of the Europeans and not everyone else, the world should therefore create alternative sports venues that offer every nation equal opportunity to participate, and leave the Europeans with their old broomsticks.
According to some diplomats, it appears to them that the policy makers have a very narrow mindset, they act on their emotions and do not think about the long-term negative consequences of their actions. Russia hosted the FIFA World Cup just a few years ago, now it’s sad that its fans and citizens will not see the stadiums of the next one coming this year in Qatar. Did they think that banning Russian athletes will cause the Russian government to change their mind about their war effort in Ukraine? No, I don’t think so. In fact, the Russian government is using this as a leverage to rally local support on their homestead, the state officials say to their people, ” you see now what we have been telling you all along? it’s not only the government officials they hate, the West hates all Russians and will do anything to completely destroy the Russian population, you see now they are attacking our world famous and prosperous athletes.” Russia is using these actions by the west to rally local support. Nothing can make them think otherwise, when they see their own innocent citizens being targeted by international travel bans, embargoes and sanctions, it firmly cements the beliefs they always had about western motives, they think this is now a solid proof that the west always had malicious intentions towards Russia and have made this an opportunity to carry out their wicked plans against the Russian people.
Siberian Super Villains
Have you noticed that Russians are always portrayed as villains in Hollywood and other Western Films? Russian men are always portrayed as marauding thugs always out there to wreak havoc on others while their young women are always portrayed as hookers eager to satisfy the lustful desires of filthy rich western men. There is hardly ever any positive portrayal of Russia or Russian peoples in general when it comes to the western entertainment media. Russian politicians are saying that the western attitudes towards them have never changed, it’s always derogative in nature. The bear of Siberia is like the bogyman whose story is always used by North American Parents to frighten their kids and coerce them into bed at night. According to Russian politicians the west thinks that the Russian bear is way too big, he is threateningly large and should therefore be chopped up into smaller less threatening size. This may only work by reducing Russia’s national boundaries through a UN Charter. Something that is not likely to happen in the near future.
Conclusion
With the way we see things going at the moment, this is a conflict that is not going to end any time soon, I am afraid it may continue to drag on for many years to come. And the suffering of the people involved may unfortunately continue. This is however a global perspective of the conflict, those directly involved may be seeing things differently. Dear readers, if you are Ukrainian, Russian or Eastern European on the frontlines or directly affected by the conflict, please comment below so that others can learn about your side of the story. Anyone else however can still leave their opinions below.
