With our complicity

Pixant Out of Place by Alex Agulló

Now what?

This is how PIXANT FORA DE LOC began, published in April 2022, and as if it were a done deal, this is how I thought of starting the “piston” that is in your hands. The three words that resulted from the conflict in Ukraine are the same, but what is not the same, not in the long run, is the future perspective.

As in a highly competitive match, from the first minute, and from the preview we can get from 2014 or earlier, there were different dynamics happening as the horrific spectacle continued.

At one point early on, it looked like Russia would win by a landslide.

At other times, millionaire contracts, i.e. support from the United States and Europe, indicated that victory was possible for Zelensky’s “team.”

The economic sanctions of the Western bloc, the blockade of the Russian capital, and the boycott of oil and gas seem likely to weaken the attacking team and could hasten the end of the war. The fact is that Russia has not shown much trouble in continuing its offensive, neither on a human nor on a material level. This does not mean that the Western bloc, such as Germany, is still receiving gas from Russia, but that China or India are buying the oil that we refuse here, or that we can buy it secretly from “ghost” ships that transport oil from sanctioned countries.

On the contrary, the home team’s defences, in terms of personnel and weapons, do not seem to be able to withstand further efforts.

When GRAT 731 (February 2022) was issued, we were “simply” witnessing a state of extreme tension between Russia and NATO. In that article, Besant argued that Putin’s choice to order the invasion was highly predictable. Unfortunately, the worst predictions have been realized, and now we are in a “new screen” of that game that really kills. And the odds are not that it has improved, but rather that it has become more dangerously complicated:

First of all, continuing with this disrespectful approach to armed conflict, I do not think anyone is able to determine where we have reached in the game (war). The most optimistic version is to believe that the two sides will lay down their weapons and negotiate an agreed exit: at the very least, Crimea and the Donbass (Donetsk and Luhansk) will no longer be part of Ukraine as they are now. The regions, since then, have always been linked in language and culture to Russia, which since 2014 has been at war and controls a large part of the Donbass. In May, they held a referendum to determine their political status: Donetsk, with a turnout of 74.87%, voted for independence with 89.07% of the votes in favor. The votes in Luhansk were more expressive of the popular will: 96.2% voted for independence.

The repressive actions of the Ukrainian army, with the help of the Azov paramilitary, were one of the main reasons cited by Putin for the intervention and the start of the Russian military occupation on February 24, 2022. To pinpoint the beginning of the problem in Ukraine on this Russian occupation attempt is nothing more than a simplistic and biased view. The insistence on denying the existence of “two Ukraines”, or the existence of two opposing preferences among the Ukrainian population, is to hide the reality and obstruct the outcome of the conflict of geopolitical and economic interests between the West (the USA and Europe) and Russia.

After two years of war, after the revival of the defunct NATO, after a huge bet on the part of the military industry, there is no way he will try to send a message that would justify the Russian invasion. Nor the actions of Western governments. At the moment, the situation looks very bad, and if the beginning of the conflict is at least foreseeable, trying to anticipate its possible development will lead us into a hole blacker than the wolf’s throat.

Neither side in the conflict can assume that it will ultimately lose the war: neither Putin (Russia), nor Zelensky (Ukraine), nor the European countries (the European Union) that supported him. The United States plays in a different league, and in the short term has other priorities besides Ukraine. Continuing to send weapons only to Zelensky only increases the number of victims and the level of destruction in the country. Turning off the tap means assuming that the war is lost. The increasing destructive capacity of the weapons sent will certainly generate/will generate that Russia (Putin) will also decide to increase the capacity of its weapons and the slaughter and destruction in Ukraine will continue. We can also go further, the new weapons will allow the battlefield to spread far beyond Ukraine. The next step will be the direct involvement of European armies. This topic has already been discussed by the President of France or the President of the European Commission herself.

In the short and medium term, few can feel that the dead and dying will be laid to rest by the townsfolk and that the powerful will continue to manipulate us here and there; that the millions of dollars allocated, and in anticipation of being allocated, for armaments will not be able to devote themselves to improving the lives of the people, all the people. That the people of Ukraine, pro-Western or pro-Russian, have neither a present nor a future. And it is even worse for the population of Palestine. Gaza is being transformed from a gigantic concentration camp into a huge cemetery. Under the pretext of killing terrorists, we are cynically allowing them to commit genocide. How can you respond to the terror of Israeli actions? And who among us in Gaza does not want similar doses of terror? So, as long as there is a single Palestinian alive, they will not complete the mission. They have little left to “decorate” those who, by action or omission, did not prevent a Hamas terrorist group, providing them with the perfect pretext to make Gaza disappear from the map. Of course, the US government now wants to send food so that its allies, the Israeli government, don’t kill them on empty stomachs.

And this black hole, which threatens the world with ever more violent reactions against those who do not think correctly, and which usually punishes the most vulnerable, continues to grow and also assumes ever more shares of political power here at home and everywhere. With our complicity.

The line: Alex Agulo. April 2024./