When I received an invitation from Elliot Resnick, former editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn, New York-based Jewish Press to record a podcast devoted to the Ukraine-Russia war, I was delighted to have an opportunity to address an audience that, until his untimely death eighteen months ago, my comrade-in-arms and fellow expert on Russia professor Stephen Cohen had been talking to in his weekly radio broadcasts. Of course, Cohen’s radio programs were listened to by a far wider audience than the core Orthodox community reached by The Jewish Press: they numbered in the millions. But getting a foothold in New York was desirable for me since most alternative media outlets in the U.S. reposting my essays seem to be on the West Coast.
Here is the link to the newly released podcast by Resnick:
Live interviews like this are always a challenge. Inevitably you do not get across every argument you prepared in advance. In my mental review of our chat, I have one regret. Though I had requested to be asked about how the Kiev regime can be fascist when its president, Zelensky, is a Jew, I did not give the most relevant answer to that question when we spoke: namely the celebration of the SS-collaborator Bandera by the ultra-nationalists running the show through Zelensky as their front man.
Bandera’s name is being given to streets throughout Ukraine and statues are raised to him. Tattoos bearing Bandera’s image were found to be worn by the Azovstal defenders when they surrendered to Russian forces.
The whole issue of Bandera and the present day heirs to Ukraine’s collaborationists during WWII was highlighted last week by the scandal over remarks to a German journalist made by the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk: he denied that Bandera was anti-Semitic or was in any way responsible for the slaughter of Jews in Ukraine by his followers. Those remarks elicited a storm of criticism from the Israeli government who called it willful disinformation about the Holocaust. Official Poland also entered the fray and with good reason: Poles were slaughtered by Bandera’s warriors as well. From within Scholz’s government, Germans were incensed. Yesterday Melnyk was removed as ambassador and returned to Kiev, where he likely will be promoted to the position of deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. This whole ugly affair is a good demonstration of the fascist nature of a government nominally headed by Zelensky.
©Gilbert Doctorow
Gilbert Doctorow 
Are the placement of new statues of Lenin in Ukraine and the continued preservation of thousands of statues in Russia of the same monster a good demonstration of the communist nature of a government headed by Putin?.More importantly, does this provide any kind of justification for the invasion of Russia? I take it that for almost everyone the answer to both questions would be a resounding “no”.
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Your comment is too clever by half. The “Nazi regime” argument was for public consumption in a country (Russia) that keeps the memory of WWII alive, whereas others, Germany today in particular, prefer to forget and take no responsibility for the sins of their fathers. However, the Realpolitik thinking which in fact directed the Russian move into Ukraine on 24 February is at another plane entirely: the preparations of Kiev for massive invasion of the Donbas in early March as indicated by the 150,000 troops massed at the line of demarcation as opposed to protecting their own capital and by the OSCE reports on the fast rising scale of Ukrainian artillery bombardments across the line of demarcation in the immediately preceding days; add to that the speech by Zelensky to the Munich Security Conference in which he said Ukraine would be acquiring nuclear weapons. Quite enough reason for the invasion without reference to Bandera statues or tattoos.
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The placement of Ukraine’s troops outside the Donbas does not get enough discussion.
Certainly in the view of Ukraine (and so probably USA) any conflict was likely to be in Donbas and consistent with a Ukrainian attack (as promised in 2021) and not an invasion by Russia from North and South.
The US prediction of an invasion could imply 2 things. Knowledge of a Russian invasion perhaps, or more likely IMO knowledge of a Ukrainian attack on Donbas that would immediately be presented as a Russian invasion.
btw – if you want to know how a Jew can support a Nazi or a racist regime that kills civilians, ask a Palestinian.
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FYI – the interview link is not available in Russia.
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More evidence of the fascist government in Ukraine: Long before February 24th, journalists or politicians that suggest any kind of cooperation with Russia were being killed or threatened, which is why Ukrainian journalists like Anatoliy Shariy (and myself) have to live in exile outside of the country for fear of their lives.
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How can I vote for this guy? – Putin said most countries did not want to follow the Western model of “totalitarian liberalism” and “hypocritical double standards.”
“People in most countries do not want such a life and such a future,” he said.
“They are simply tired of kneeling, humiliating themselves in front of those who consider themselves exceptional.”
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United States attitude toward Ukrainian casualties: acceptable. Toward Russian casualties: desirable. Which incidentally has been the United States attitude toward the casualties of war in its many imperial adventures throughout its history. Throughout its history. And this phenomenon today has reached its apotheosis, a war in which not a single American is killed–calling American casualties “acceptable” having become harder and harder–and all the lives sacrificed for the American imperial design occurring among proxies who, in the words of Ursula Van Leyden, die for the European way of life so that they can experience the European dream.
One wonders why Hitler is so attractive to these people. Do they really fear Communism and the confiscation of their property that much? A figment of their imagination that can destroy the world? Read David Graeber to learn what Communism really is.
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I disagree with Germany not taking responsibility for its past. In fact, you never see a people more brainwashed with “never again” when it comes to their past. Which is why, if you ask a random German, their stance on supporting Ukraine is unwavering: they may be forced to shower in cold water but they will never again be a passive onlooker at what they see as the unfolding of evil. Whereas if you ask a French person or an Italian (as surveys show), you will find a more complex argument involving NATO’s faults in this and caution with sending weapons.
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Dear Ms. Borelli, Germany has a population of 83 million and among them you will find people of every imaginable political persuasion. You have found your Germans, who are highly moral and mindful of the country’s very ugly past created by their grandfathers. I have encountered and even worked side by side in Frankfurt, in Cologne with German colleagues some of whom, including inside track managers chosen for fast promotion at UPS, who said, over a beer, that they took no responsibility whatsoever for the sins of the past and were unhappy with their country’s subservience to the USA. I spent 5 years living in Germany and I think I met more Germans than you have. But that is beside the point, which is POLITICS. And we are witnesses to an epochal change in German politics from the pacificsm of the past 70 years to a new muscle-flexing in the military and geopolitical domain that parallels Germany’s longstanding economic domination of Europe. When the Socialist (SPD) chancellor of Germany, Scholz, says he will finance Germany’s creating the strongest army in Europe, I say watch out! This amounts to a turn away from the country’s apologies for its barbaric past. In WWII, Germans slaughtered 6 million Jews, civilians, as well as gypsies. they killed one million, ONE MILLION civilian residents of Leningrad in the Siege. They forfeited the right to stand on a soapbox and preach morality to the Russians, to anyone, for the ocming 500 years. Period. This change to militarism was a long time in coming but its standard bearers were and are the German Greens. Their knee-jerk anti Russian views go back to their founders, including Joschka Fischer. In the first 20 years of this century the German Greens were authors and backers of every conceivable anti-Russian motion in the European Parliament – way before any question of Russian-Ukrainian relations existed.
I end my lecture here, not to become tedious., though there is much more to say on the subject.
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I grew up in Germany from 1949, till I left for Canada in 1981. I doubt there was a majority of Germans even then that either took responsibility for the Nazi party’s actions or denounced Nazism outright.
Many still clung to the sentence uttered (or said to be) by Churchill: “we killed the wrong pig”, and many of the older generations were aware of the plan by the US and UK to create battalions right after the ending of WW2 to attack Russia, and justified their unapologetic Nazi stand thusly. Many even told me that it was unfortunate that Hitler did not complete the extermination of the Jews.
Of course, especially the left (the liberal party and the CDU/CSU were thoroughly infiltrated by “old Nazis) was thoroughly anti-fascist, intellectuals, most unionists and working-class folks, who took the brunt of military actions and the attacks on the cities and suffered under Hitler’s regime most.
The middle class more or less just complained about their losses during WW2, but were far from taking any responsibility, either of the German nation or personal, for what they in the end supported.
The upper class was regaining their possessions – if they ever lost them – right after the war with the help of especially the US, who was deathly afraid that socialism could gain a foothold in Germany (something that after the war, with the reconstruction of the factories by the workers, under their direction and implied ownership, the owners like Krupp and Thyssen etc. being absent, was a distinct possibility) and just transited from support of Nazism to the support of more respectable right-wing politics ala Strauss or Adenauer.
I was rather lucky to grow up in a mixed burgeois/working-class family, where one grandfather, a member of the KPD, spent a year at KZ Boerger Moor in 1934/35, and my dad spent 4 years as a POW in Egypt after having been drafted as an 18-year-old, and had because of his personal loss of education and wasted youth nothing positive to say about the NSDAP and their rule.
My mother hailed from families with strong Roman Catholic background, and my grandfather never agreed with the Concordat between Hitler and the church, nor had he based on his moral compass any sympathy for Nazism, especially after one son had been taken into SS custody in Frankfurt and been severely beaten for several days.
I learned early on of the atrocities of the Nazis but was often enough at work and in private confronted with the idea that never seems completely dead in Germany, a very strong (militant) nationalism with strong antisemitism.
Even though the heads of both families – because of the suffering both grandfather’s families under the Nazis had to endure – strongly rejected any personal responsibility and collective guilt, but agreed on the responsibility for reparations (Wiedergutmachung) by the whole of Germany as the successor state.
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Dear Dr. Doctorow, I am not saying that my sample of Germans is more valuable than yours (I lived in Germany only for two years, and you for five, but also I am in academia, hence surrounded by people who watch what comes out of their mouths even after several beers – call it the rule of the mob, as you wish).
I wonder how long the apology for one’s barbaric past should last. 500 years you say. As an Italian, am I therefore still responsible for my forefathers being led astray by Mussolini?
Commemorations of a country’s historical past are not so much a way of atoning for its sins or celebrating its virtues, but an act of mass manipulation to obtain consensus by triggering an emotional response and to promote cohesiveness at the national level. (A lesson Mussolini taught to his German counterpart quite well). Which may be admirable, except that young generations perhaps do not care about the sins or sacrifices of their grandfathers, they just want to get on with their lives. I am sure you read German newspapers very thoroughly. They from the very beginning spread the idea that if Putin attacks Ukraine, Germany could be next. Hence the necessity of a change in military stance, maybe. As I recall, Merkel let Putin annex Crimea without doing very much, and even opposed Ukraine joining NATO for fear of upsetting the Russian leader. Her idea was that he needed to be dealt with, not contrasted, and this has been seen as a mistake.
Your lectures are never tedious and I am most willing to educate myself if I can, but sometimes I have many questions on the various narratives that are presented here and elsewhere about the current unfortunate situation.
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Merkel let Putin annex Crimea without doing very much
Wasn’t it rather that Crimea attached itself to the RF after a referendum?
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I am using the word “annexation” and the verb “to annex”, as it was used in the news at the time (and now). Perhaps, in this world of shifting truths, the word is different in other languages, not reeking of “Anschluss” all that much. Also, it seems to me the referendum came after the armed occupation, but I may be wrong.
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Also, the referendum came BEFORE the planned US forces planned to seize Crimea but AFTER additional Russian forces entered to deter the US plans.
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Russia did not annex Crimea. Crimea freely and legally joined Russia. “Annex” is Western propaganda.
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“Annex” is the word we use in English for this type of operation, whether it’s by referendum or force. For example, we say “annexation of Texas” even though Texans freely voted to join the USA.
Russian Wikipedia uses the same word (Присоединение) for the Texas event and the Crimea event.
I think Russians perceive “annex” as a false cognate, because there’s a similar word in Russian (аннексия) which refers to forced annexation.
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Freely joined is what we who reject Western propaganda use, to emphasize what is actually and more precisely correct.
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How long an apology should last seems like it should depend on what lessons if any have been demonstrably learned, and whether the apology demonstrably constrains one’s actions going forward. For instance, as an American, I know that full-throated apologies for my country’s crimes should be ongoing for the foreseeable future and then some, because the lessons absolutely haven’t been learned — just to take our oldest and most foundational atrocity, Americans still to this day associate the notion of “the frontier” with an optimistic future of progress, civilization, and enlightenment, not a shameful zone in which the soil of our country was drenched in the blood of indigenous peoples (imagine if modern Germans habitually used the term “Final Solution” the way Americans use the term “frontier”… a politician describing their domestic policy agenda as “the Final Solution to poverty and ignorance”… a science fiction TV show describing space exploration as “the ultimate Final Solution”…), and as the indigenous historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has elaborated, US policymakers have continued to draw positive connections between the genocidal policies of the U.S. “Indian Wars” and our policies in contemporary conflicts like the “war on terror.”
In Germany’s case, most of the loudly-trumpeted apology for its WWII-era colonial atrocities seems to apply as narrowly as possible to a relatively small group (Ashkenazi Jews) who didn’t even comprise a majority of Germany’s victims during WWII itself, let alone going forward — German regret and shame is perfectly compatible, for instance, with allowing a buildup of racist demonization and marginalization against German Muslims that echoes the interwar buildup of German anti-Semitism; with aiding and abetting a country founded by Ashkenazi Jews in committing colonial atrocities of their own against Palestinians; with downplaying the role of ex-Nazis in Germany and elsewhere (sneer quotes around “ex-” as needed) in the postwar security architecture of West Germany, NATO, and the Cold War anticommunist bloc more broadly; with pooh-poohing the concerns of Russians whose “never forget” stance toward their attempted genocide at the hands of the Nazis is surely every bit as legitimate as that of Ashkenazi Jews; and with supporting the rise of a far-right political and ideological climate throughout eastern Europe (notably in Ukraine, but also in the Baltics and elsewhere) where WWII-era Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators are commemorated as national heroes, and where the modern struggle against Russia is celebrated as continuing the heroic legacy of their forefathers’ struggle against Russia that took place under the banner of Operation Barbarossa.
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I am astonished that this idiocy “occupation” still finds traction. I did follow the development at that time very close, and those “occupiers” as far as I could make out were part of the agreed-upon contingent of the Russian military that protected the naval base at Sebastopol – about 20k personnel.
It should also be noted that previous to the referendum – to which EU observers had been invited – the RF polled the Crimean population to assess the possible outcome of the vote.
The poll came back with about a 70% approval rating (that poll was actually then used as a counterargument regarding the validity of the vote, however, that logic is NATO logic and I have a hard time wrapping what is left of my brain after observing US and NATO foreign policies since the Vietnam war) whereupon with the organizational (including security) help of Russia, the actual referendum was conducted.
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US policymakers have continued to draw positive connections between the genocidal policies of the U.S. “Indian Wars”
Regarding that, this US final solution was actually an idea Hitler admired very much and inspired him to find his solution to the “Jewish Question”.
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This is a rather intriguing discussion, especially regarding the word annexation. I enjoy a good linguistic explanation.
Back to the arming of Europe: I see this as an unfortunate development but not because I fear Germany’s rise to power but because I think that that 2% of our GDPS which we must now spend on armies is much better spent on teachers, welfare, healthcare, fighting climate change, and ensuring a good future for our children. Meanwhile, Mr. Putin is spending billions and billions in weapons that could destroy mankind or even cause an irreversible environmental catastrophe (I have just read the description of his new toy, the Belgorod). It is clear he won’t stop at denazifying Ukraine and taking the Donbass, and he has just said so publicly. If he indeed uses his toys, I imagine nobody can say a thing, because the US nuked Japan a while ago, and nobody has an immaculate past.
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Let us hope you are equally intrigued by the term “armed occupation” which did NOT occur in Crimea…but ONLY because Russian troops arrived (in greater numbers as they were already there under a 100 year treaty) BEFORE American troops, which were the ones planning an “armed occupation.” The Russian troops did not affect the election and the CIA knows that because it conducted extensive polling in Crimea to determine what kind of natives US troops would face – hostile Russian or pro Ukraine) – and the CIA polling results shall we say agree wirh the referendum outcome. Point being “armed occupation” is more Western propaganda. The Russian troops did not occupy Crimea – they protected her from US occupation.
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I mean, Russia spends far less on its military than the US and can’t really hold a candle to NATO when it comes to churning out fancy new high-tech expensive wunderwaffe gizmos. Where the Russians are apparently more competitive is in the basic nuts-and-bolts of pre-1945 large-scale modern warfare, stuff like maintaining the industrial and logistical capacity to keep your frontline troops supplied with cheap workaday weapons, vehicles, artillery, and ammo… an area where the modern deindustrialized West with its pared-back stockpile-averse “just-in-time” logistics is probably far weaker than most Westerners would like to believe. (Grimly enough, small arms may be an exception, but only because the civilian firearms market in the US is lucrative enough for commercial manufacturers to justify maintaining their production capacity during peacetime.)
That said, you don’t have to stretch back to 1945 to find the West acting like hypocrites on these sorts of issues: just recall the effort early in the current war to raise a big propaganda stink about Russia’s use of cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons, an effort that seems to have been quietly deemphasized in order to avoid having to answer for the fairly obvious fact that the US has also made extensive use of equivalent weapons as recently as its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention that we’re still to this very day supplying cluster munitions to our friends in the Saudi regime for use in their brutal genocidal war against Yemen.
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I really have no expertise in military matters but I’m impressed with the gizmos (;) churned out by Russia lately. Nobody says the West (or anyone) is not hypocritical. But it is no justification for not being worried about what Russia may do or what the war will turn into.
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“But it is no justification for not being worried about what Russia may do or what the war will turn into.”
Maybe your fellow EU and NATO nation citizens should have worried about that before they blithely pushed Russia and its security concerns aside, following the charade of Minsk xn neither NATO nation ever had any intention to push Ukraine to implement, with Ukraine now acknowledging what every half smart observer knew for he last 7 years. Ukraine was playing for time to arm and train under NATO auspices. And you did shit all about the unceasing attacks on civilian infrastructure and property in the now independent republics.
So please, be not astonished when, as someone living now in Europe, tell the citizens of his pseudo-democratic entity: f..k you all. You elected the idiots now ruling the roost (But as Mr. Doctorow stated at RT|: they might not be for the ruling much longer), you bought their propaganda, and you got to pay the piper now.
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“But it is no justification for not being worried about what Russia may do or what the war will turn into.” If you have read the official public pronouncements of the West – UK, Germany, Biden, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the FBI laying the ground for war with China abd eternal escalation withRussia, the Green Party and Harbec, Poland, Lithuania, France, Japan, Australia….to name but very very extremely extremely few….you would have saved your words of concern abs instead focused it on the West. Nor Russia. But….YOU DID NOT! That you have expressed no concern about Western warmongering and escalation while completing ignoring Russian outstanding restraint….speaks for itself, which is that you deliberately being intellectually deceptive. Your “concerns” are uniformed and deserve no further consideration.
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Let us hope you are equally intrigued by the term “armed occupation” which did NOT occur in Crimea…but ONLY because Russian troops arrived (in greater numbers as they were already there under a 100 year treaty) BEFORE American troops, which were the ones planning an “armed occupation.” The Russian troops did not affect the election and the CIA knows that because it conducted extensive polling in Crimea to determine what kind of natives US troops would face – hostile Russian or pro Ukraine) – and the CIA polling results shall we say agree wirh the referendum outcome. Point being “armed occupation” is more Western propaganda. The Russian troops did not occupy Crimea – they protected her from US occupation.
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“Here is the link to the newly released podcast by Resnick:”
As far as I can tell that link does not present the podcast, just a very short segment (under a minute).
For those who want the full podcast, here is the link:
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