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How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

Well? Do you have a number? Does Zelensky? Or, as Madeleine Albright once replied to a similar question, "The price is worth it"?

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AI

— 15 min read
How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?
Cemetery of Ukrainian soldiers

The discussion around the Ukrainian war exposes many bad beliefs held by the people, both in the West and in Russia—the bad beliefs from logical fallacies through bad knowledge of history to outright vile shit. Because I live in the West and am broadcasting to the international audience, the beliefs in Russia are of lesser interest for me to tackle than the beliefs in the West. Because the purpose of this newsletter-blog is educational, I am skewing towards exposing the logical fallacies. Because all of this is inter-connected, I’ll address all the above in turn. Finally, because there’s a lot to cover, I’ll address these things bit-by-bit, and I’ll start here: How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

I am pro-negotiation. My argument is very simple: every war ends in some form of the negotiated agreement, wars are terrible, wars are policy by other means, parties to war want to achieve some goals, we should therefore force the discussion into the non-war arena as fast as possible so that these goals can be achieved by non-war means. Yes, there are historical situations where a war to the bitter end and the total capitulation of the other side was the only viable outcome—fighting the Nazi Germany was such a war for the USSR. A) It was defensive and B) Hitler’s stated goal was half-genocide and half-enslaving the Slavic/Russian "Untermenschen", so the outside option was not only a defeat, but an erasure of the peoples:[1]

In the Nazi state, Lebensraum became not just a romantic yearning for a return to the East but a vital strategic component of its imperial and racist visions. For the Germans, eastern Europe represented their “Manifest Destiny.” Hitler and other Nazi thinkers drew direct comparisons to American expansion in the West. During one of his famous “table talks,” Hitler decreed that “there's only one duty: to Germanize this country [Russia] by the immigration of Germans and to look upon the natives as Redskins.”

This type of war is almost an outlier even in modern history—though the rhetoric of “XYZ is the new Hitler” is so frequent that you’d be excused to believe that Hitlers are hiding around every corner, typically the leaders of the nations that the Western mainstream media doesn’t like (Putin, Modi, Orban, Trump—never Obama, Clinton, Blair, Johnson, Biden).[2] Therefore, to negotiate or to fight till the end is a question of whether you believe that you’re in an existential fight or just in a temporary escalation to achieve more down-to-earth goals.

The position that I want to attack in this post is therefore the anti-negotiation / pro-weaponising-Ukraine-to-fight-Russia-till-the-last-Ukrainian position, and the easiest way to do so is to ask the question, How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?—A question, by the way, that no proponent of the continued war is willing to answer. Would the answer be, “Until we run out of Ukrainians”? Or, is there a lower number that the proponents of continued fighting would be settling for? “As long as necessary” is the typical rhetoric from the likes of Baerbock[3], Scholz[4] and Biden[5]—but what does this mean? What does the victory look like?

Why is this question important? Because late July / early August 2023, Ukraine suffered 300,000-350,000 casualties just in dead soldiers alone, and many that number in maimed and injured—and late August / early September 2023, at the time of writing, judging by the intensity of fighting, the number of dead in the Ukrainian army is likely around 400,000 as of 28 August, 2023.[6] All of this without any territorial gains to speak of.[7] That is to say, Ukraine is losing people but gaining nothing in return. The Russian casualties are estimated to be around 40–50,000 dead, an order of magnitude less. The Western mainstream media is already writing article after article about what a disaster the Ukrainian Summer counter-offensive was[8]—something that this author and many others were predicting as the highly likely / likeliest outcome months ago turned out to be correct.[9] I typically like being right, but I hold no joy in being right this time—not when hundreds of thousands of people had been senselessly slaughtered in an ultimately predictable and utterly pointless exercise.

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

There are several retorts that the warmongers (I cannot call them anything other than that) come back with, never answering the actual question. None of these retorts hold water, either as logical nor as morally right. Let’s look at some in turn.

“It’s not for us to decide; it’s the Ukrainians’ matter; we can only support them in their fight.” This would be a sensible position if not for several mental errors.

Error 1: Thinking that Ukraine is "democratic" and its people decide. The position above is wrong because “let Ukrainians decide” is an impossible task as long as Zelensky is a dictator. Zelensky decides for all of Ukraine through having given himself dictator powers and having removed any and all the democratic decision-making, even the vestiges thereof that Ukraine still possessed after 2014. No nation should live or die with a decision of 1 person. Of course, you could say that Zelensky is representative of all of Ukraine—but how much are you willing to bet on this? Your life? Your house? Your car? Finally, Zelensky’s personal incentive is to continue the war as long as possible—he brought into law the impossibility for himself to negotiate with Putin,[10] he continues extending the Martial Law, and there are many other signals showing that war is better for Zelensky personally than peace.

Error 2: Thinking that Ukraine is independent. The position above is furthermore wrong because Ukraine is not independent. How could it be, given that it has a destroyed economy and only lives at the behest of the Western “donations”? I place these in quotation marked because these are, in fact, loans that will need to be repaid in some shape or form, so you also need to ask yourself, what collateral does Ukraine have to repay these loans with a destroyed economy? Arable agricultural land and other natural resources is the only right answer. So, in reality, Ukraine cannot decide for itself, and even Zelensky cannot decide for himself, because Ukraine is not independent.

Error 3: Thinking that all Ukrainians (or at least the vast majority) want to fight. The position above is finally wrong because the vast majority of Ukrainians do not want to fight. Easily proven: if they did want to fight, Zelensky wouldn’t have had to lock the male population of the fighting age inside the country, prohibiting them from leaving.[11] Apart from the fact that this is a violation of one of the recognized (both by UN and by the Ukrainian Constitution) Human Rights (Human Right # 13: every person has the right to leave the country), it also easily proves that the vast majority of the Ukrainians don’t want to fight in this war. Some do (or did, as these made up the bulk of those 400,000 casualties) but most do not. The vast majority do not want to fight because they either don’t want to die for somebody else’s business interests because they don’t trust Zelensky and NATO, or because they are outright pro-Russia and actually believe what’s called in the West the “Russian narrative”.[12]

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

“Ukraine is fighting for our interests and for democracy; if not for Ukraine, Putin would overrun Europe, attacking first Poland, the Baltics, Finland, Sweden, and everything else.” Anyone who subscribes to this notion, what’s your evidence for this being a viable scenario? It’s very easy to disprove this scenario as utterly ridiculous by highlighting the:

Error 4: Thinking that Putin has this desire and also the means. The Russian army is struggling to secure Avdeevka for 18 months already—and it’s supposed to be overrunning Europe? That’s the means part. Putin is going to be attacking NATO members outright? That’s the opportunity part. What ever gave anyone the idea that Putin actually wants to do any of this? He is on record quoting an Imperial Court politician who said that bringing Galicia (Western Ukraine) into the Russian Empire was a mistake—so let’s position it this way: why do you think that “colonizing” whole regions populated with people who hate you is anywhere a good idea? Why would Putin want to do this, and what Russian army would want to try and execute this plan?

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

“We can’t let Russia win, because then everyone will get a signal that they can attack other countries and get away with it.”

Error 5: Thinking that this does not happen already. It does. The USA is the number 1 most aggressive belligirent entity in the World, warring, specially militarily operating, and regime changing all over for decades (soon to be hundred years). Brown University research calculates 4.5 million worldwide deaths directly linked to the US wars only since 9/11.[13] Incidentally, Barak Obama started more military interventions than any US President in recent memory.[14] ALso incidentally, Barak Obama was criticized by many for his greenlighting the extra-judicial murders of innocent people around the world.[15] Finally, there had been more than double the prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act under Barak Obama than under all the previous Presidents, combined.[16] In fact, Russia cited US bombing of Yugoslavia over Kosovo as the precedent for its Special Military Operation.[17] Former US Marine Intelligence and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter provided his assessment as to the international law and the legal validity of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine in the article "Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression" in Consortium News.[18]

As you see, quite the opposite is true. The Russian actions are a reaction to the US-set precedents. And precedents are key within the Common Law legal system of the Anglo-Saxon world. I say this explicitly in case anyone wants to accuse me of whataboutism: precedents matter in the Anglo-Saxon Common Law. If you want to deal with the symptoms, you need to deal with the underlying illness, first.

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

"Oh, so, you're saying that Ukraine should just give up its territories to Russia? So, anyone can attack and gain territories?" This is a version of the previous fallacy, subject to the following mental error:

Error 6: Thinking that territories belong to countries, ignoring the will of the people. The Crimea and Donbass do not belong to Ukraine, but to the people living there. I even ignore the fact that the post-2014 Kyiv regime had a chance to get Donbass back under the Minsk Accords, which it failed to ratify—forget about that. These territories belong as much to somebody living in Kyiv or Lviv as to London. Crimea and Donbass belong to people living in Crimea and Donbass; this much is supported by the UN Charter (see self-determination of the peoples). It's inconsistent with the border integrity, but in the legal circles it is claimed that the self-determination of the peoples should take precedence.[19] Crimeans and Donbass people have spoken, multiple times in Donbass already (in 2014 and then again in 2022). That certain people choose to ignore their voices says more about these certain people than about the facts.

Of course, you could say that I'm being a propagandist and how do I know the referenda were fair, anyway? Well, how come you're so sure they were not? Would you bet your life on these being absolutely no way for the people of Donbass and Crimea to speak their mind? Why would you deny them this agency? Because you think they can't think for themselves? Would the Russian Army be able to control these territories if the people hadn't supported them en masse? Just like the Kyiv army was able to subjugate Donbass in 8 years, right?

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

"But Russia wants to commit genocide in Ukraine!"

Error 7: Thinking that there is, indeed, a potential genocide of Ukrainians on the cards. There isn't. There's also no evidence that genocide of Ukrainians was taking place, according to the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine Chairman Erik Møse.[20] There is evidence (from UNHCR) that Russia is the # 1 recipient of the Ukrainian refugees, accounting for 35% of all Ukrainian refugees as of 11 March, 2023.[21]

I would even claim, there is genocide of the Ukrainian people, but the perpetrator is Zelensky and his Western backers. How else would you classify over 400,000 dead from a preventable war, while Zelensky A) outlawed negotiation and B) closed the border thus violating UN Human Rights (13.2), in order to force-mobilize Ukrainian men and send them to die?

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

Nobody would be able to give you an answer to this question, apart from the USA decision-makers, whose answer would probably be something like "however many it takes". 4.5 million is apparently an acceptable number. As Madeleine Albright once replied to a similar question, "The price is worth it."[22]

Most Western warmongers (I cannot call them anything other than this) would be uncomfortably changing the subject before committing to a number, as if "sticking it to Russia" is a nebulous exercise, devoid of any human cost.

For me personally, on this account, the answer is zero.

But what about you?

How Many People Are You Willing to Kill to Get Your Way?

P.S.

When Ukraine announces new mobilization plans I think of my pro Ukrainian friend in Kiev who sends me music videos when he’s drunk. He blames Russia for the war but like so many others, he fears mobilization and wants to leave the country. “I’m not a fighter,” he says.

Some time ago we had an argument on the phone. I told him Ukraine should sue for peace. He got angry, rude and hung up. The next day he sent me a message apologizing for what he said. I apologized too.

Damn this war! And damn everyone on X promoting this war with no skin in the game. There are many good people in mainstream journalism in the west. And we’ve seen some recent articles alluding to Ukrainians not wanting to fight anymore.

But amongst the shameful propaganda, the amount of Ukrainians who just want peace is being massively underestimated. They can’t speak out or they’ll be arrested or worse. And their government is now totally beholden to NATO warmongers. Dystopia…

  1. From USHMM's Holocaust Encyclopedia on Lebensraum and the Nazi State. ↩︎

  2. Now, as an aside, I do say almost because Hitler in his own right was a historical and cultural extension of the behaviour of the US and the British imperial elites—as can be seen from the above paragraph on the topic of the Lebensraum. Simply consider the genocidal wars against the Native Americans and the Aboriginal Australians. ↩︎

  3. From the Statement by Foreign Minister Baerbock on her arrival in Kyiv from 10 September, 2022:

    I have come to Kyiv today to show that they can continue to count on us. That we will continue to stand by Ukraine as long as necessary – supplying weapons as well as humanitarian and financial support.

    ↩︎

  4. From CNN, 29 June, 2022:

    Scholz underlines support for Ukraine: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that NATO allies would continue to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia for “as long and as intensively as it is necessary."

    ↩︎

  5. From the NY Times' Biden Vows to Back Ukraine ‘as Long as It Takes’ Despite Economic Toll, 30 June, 2022:

    President Biden vowed on Thursday that the United States and NATO would support Ukraine for as long as necessary to repel Russia’s invasion, despite waves of economic pain rolling through world markets and voters’ homes, saying it was the Kremlin that had miscalculated in its aggression, and not the West in opposing it.

    ↩︎

  6. In his interview to Tucker Carlson, released 23 August, 2023, Colonel Douglas Macgregor speaks of 400,000 Ukrainians killed:

    About a month earlier, a Ukrainian nationalistic journalist said it’s 350k+; this is supported by the independent analysis from obituaries.

    See inside here and here 👇👇

    ✅Obituaries: from somebody in Russia, could be Donbass, who speaks Ukrainian and has relatives there, who did the following: he wrote a bot programme to trawl through the Ukrainian social media and news cites and search for and capture the announcements of deaths / obituaries, and then count to unique names (or, some form of deduplication):

    • He cited a number of 284k in late June or so
    • See https://t.me/Pankin_Ivan/1373 for details (interview in Russian)
    • He also said, it’s likely a lowered number, due to the methodology (maybe not all obituaries are available online or published)
    • If lowered, then the range 300-350k that Col. Macgregor stated recently held at the time, looks logical
    • Col. Macgregor then extrapolated from that number, by adding the estimates of huge losses during one month of the Ukrainian Summer "counteroffensive" to get the 400,000 number—which I think is reasonable

    ✅Ukrainian journalist—see the whole 🧵👇👇

    I write the same in the post below:

    ↩︎

  7. See this tweet and the pictures below, originally from FT:

    ↩︎

  8. Andrew Korybko analysed these articles in his SubStack entry Western Media Is Nowadays Talking About How Fatigued & Frustrated Ukrainians Have Become—he covers the articles by WaPo, CNN, and FT and comes to the following conclusion:

    What’s taking place is a “de-programming operation” aimed at reversing the effect that pro-Ukrainian/-war and anti-peace/-Russian propaganda had on the Western masses. The purpose is to precondition them for accepting the scenario of peace talks and the resultant ceasefire that they could lead to if successful.

    Average Westerners were told for the past 18 months how fearless and optimistic the Ukrainians were, which was done to convince the former to continue supporting their leaders’ decision to fund the latter, but now the Mainstream Media (MSM) is telling them the complete opposite. The Washington Post wrote earlier this month that “Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in Ukraine”, which was followed by The Economist declaring that “Ukraine’s sluggish counter-offensive is souring the public mood”.

    These four major updates were shared in the 10-day period between those two pieces:

    ↩︎

  9. Some tweet / X posts:

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  10. Zelensky signs decree declaring negotiations with Putin an "impossibility" from CNN, 4 October, 2022 ↩︎

  11. Ukrainian males aged 18-60 are banned from leaving the country, Zelensky says in new declaration from CNN, 24 February, 2022 ↩︎

  12. It's informative to read the thread by Prof. Ivan Katchanovsky of University of Ottawa on the recent Ukraine poll—but do read the whole thread:

    … or this from Useful Idiots:

    ↩︎

  13. US post 9/11 wars caused 4.5 million deaths: Study Brown University Cost of War; 18 May, 2023. ↩︎

  14. US 21 Century Wars | Wikipedia ↩︎

  15. Chomsky on Obama by Glenn Greenwald in Salon; 14 May, 2012:

    Appearing on Democracy Now this morning, Noam Chomsky said the following:

    If the Bush administration didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send them to torture chambers.
    If the Obama administration decides they don’t like somebody, they murder them.

    Though a bit oversimpified -- the Bush administration killed plenty of people, while the Obama administration makes use of kidnapping and torture chambers albeit by proxy; also, as this tweeter noted: it's "unfair to say the Obama administration kills those it doesn't like, since they claim power to kill people without even knowing who they are" -- this concise comparison just about about sums it up. But it's important to note that President Obama has progressivism in his heart and that makes all the difference in the world.

    ↩︎

  16. Chomsky takes Obama to task in the Guardian; 13 October, 2011:

    Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double those under all previous presidents combined.

    ↩︎

  17. Putin’s Case for War, Annotated in NY Times; 24 February, 2024. ↩︎

  18. Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression, Consortium News; 29 March, 2022. ↩︎

  19. See the discussion in Self Determination and the Territorial Integrity on the site LawTeacher.net, published on 18 July, 2019. ↩︎

  20. UN Commission: We can’t make conclusion at this stage that genocide taking place in Ukraine from Interfax Ukraine; 4 September, 2023:

    The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has not concluded at this stage that genocide is taking place in Ukraine, but the investigation will continue, Commission Chairman Erik Møse said.

    Also, here's a video:

    ↩︎

  21. Mapped: Ukrainian Refugee Destinations by the Numbers by Pranav Gavali, Visual Capitalist; 6 April, 2023—using the "UNHCR data as of March 11, 2023". ↩︎

  22. ↩︎

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