Russia-Ukraine war, dialogue on the conflict between two ‘normal’ citizens
AB and CD are two normal citizens, perhaps a little more informed about the war than average. The conversation starts in an almost joking tone, but soon touches on three very important themes: 1) our moral duties towards the attacked country and its people; 2) the wisdom of a policy of rejecting a compromise reached through negotiation, in the absence of a clear military superiority of the Ukraine-US-NATO coalition; 3) the question of the moral responsibility of the allies in supplying Ukraine with weapons. In particular, while on 3) AB supports the official position: no responsibility because the Ukrainians are killed by the Russians not by their arms suppliers, who fulfill a clear moral duty in giving them the best chance of repelling the Russian army within its borders, CD maintains that there is indirect responsibility.
The conversation opens with the two gentlemen, AB, and CD, who are looking at the photo of the very recent cordial meeting between Putin and Kim Jong-Un, the current North Korean dynast, on a newspaper open on their knees..
AB: THE NEW ALLIANCE? God makes them and then pairs them, one more beautiful than the other.
Putin is anxiously waiting for his little friend arriving in Vladivostok, with many gifts, on the armored train.
CD: But the fat guy [Kim Jong-Un] has already been warned by the US that there will be “serious consequences” if it gives weapons to Russia: man forewarned…
AB: Imagine that, it’s not as naked and raw as Ukraine, which had improvidently handed over its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for a guarantee of respect for its borders which wasn’t worth the ink on which it was written, it’s armed up to the teeth and overflowing with nuclear-tipped missiles.
CD: The US has seriously warned him, for what it’s worth: Do you think that the US is strong with the weak and weak with the strong? Maybe…
AB: Kim is certainly not weak, he is armed to the teeth with missiles and nuclear weapons…
CD: According to a proud statement by NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg immediately following the entry of the Russian army into Ukraine, NATO had been arming and training Ukrainian troops since at least 2014. From the moment of the invasion there was a real rush to arm the Ukrainian army, certainly not “naked” anymore. A race which, as some American soldiers have jokingly said, will last, as far as they are concerned, “until the last Ukrainian”. He will die more armed than Kim Jong-Un!
AB: Since 2014, Ukraine has been a victim of Russian aggression in Donbas. The help that Ukraine received from NATO to train its army, as part of the Partnership for Peace programme, in which Russia had also participated together with other former Soviet countries, was perfectly justified and served to so that Russia’s aggression on February 24 did not result in a simple Prague 1968-style tank walk, as the Russian authorities foolishly expected.
CD: But I didn’t ask you to explain or justify the rearmament of Ukraine. I just took the liberty of reminding you that there was, before and not just after the invasion. Perhaps NATO and the USA will make all the Ukrainians die, as the US generals jokingly say, but they will not be “naked and raw”.
AB: those who kill the Ukrainians are the invading Russians, who kill and bomb, among other things, cities and civilian infrastructure. NATO and the USA simply help the Ukrainians defend themselves from aggression, which they are doing with good success, so much so that the aggressors now find themselves on the defensive, after huge losses of men and equipment.
CD: Better dead but well armed Ukrainians… as you prefer.
AB: It is the Ukrainians themselves who prefer to fight rather than surrender to the invader. As for deaths, Russian losses in the war are estimated to be significantly higher than Ukrainian ones. The fact that they are overall worse armed does not help them. This idea that if one country invades another the second should surrender instead of fighting to defend its independence leaves me quite perplexed, to be honest.
CD: If, in order to help someone defend themselves from an enemy, we induce them to destroy, do we really help them? And we do not escape our responsibility because the enemy delivers the blows. Responsibility is not a two-way relationship. Aren’t the attackers in Via Rasella responsible for the Fosse Ardeatine massacre? Even their supporters have always stated with indignation that the responsibility lay exclusively with the German soldiers who carried out the massacre. But has anyone ever believed it? In the case of the attack in Via Rasella, the connection with the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine is clear (after all, Hitler wanted one of much larger proportions;) in the case of our continuous rearmament of the Ukrainians it takes place through 1) the promise that every new armament will be the decisive one, and 2) the implicit pact, occasionally supported by explicit calls, NOT to enter into negotiations with Russia. In any case, the premise of the adventure of “fighting for one’s independence” is to be alive. But faced with an extermination of Ukrainians, what is the point if Mr. AB, while dispassionately contemplating their corpses and noting that all things considered they are still not very many, is admired by their heroism and congratulates himself for having sent them cannons ?
AB: As deplorable as they are, the Ukrainians’ losses are far less than those of the countries victimized by Nazi aggression in World War II. Applying Mr. CD’s super-Chamberlain methodology (remember Munich ’38?) everyone should have surrendered in the face of Nazi aggression, including the Soviets. But what kind of world would it have been? And how many people would have been killed anyway for ethnic or racial reasons?
CD: He didn’t answer my questions.
AB: I responded by referring to the facts of the present situation.
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