Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine War

I have somewhat unorthodox opinions on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine for someone from the US, and I felt like just getting them all out. I’m not pro-Putin by any means, but I’m also not pro-NATO either. I do feel for the regular people caught up in the conflict. After having followed a war very intimately only less than two years ago, I have an idea of what they must be going through. And I know even better what it must be like for people in the Ukrainian diaspora watching from afar. With one big difference though; the Armenian diaspora had to suffer alone.  

When the Russia-Ukraine war began, and everyone expressed their outpouring of sympathy for Ukraine, I’ll admit; my gut reaction was one of jealousy. None of this happened during the 2020 invasion of Artsakh by Azerbaijan. No one who wasn’t Armenian was changing their Facebook profile picture to an Armenian flag. No one other than Armenians were donating to Armenian charities. Armenians had to stage a protest in front of the CNN headquarters to even get the news agency to make a passing mention of the war. No one except Armenians cared when the city Stepanakert was shelled for 44 days straight, when videos surfaced of Azeri soldiers beheading Armenian civilians, when the land was burned by illegal white phosphorus. 

Armenia, and Azerbaijan for that matter, are under “Wait, does that country exist?” on the world tragedy map above. Also notice the color difference between Ukraine and Russia on the map. But logically I get why the Artsakh war in 2020 didn’t illicit the same reaction. The Russia-Ukraine war has the potential to go nuclear or start World War 3, it matters more to people than a war between two small countries they can’t find on a map, one of which they probably can’t pronounce. But it just reminds me that most people don’t care about the suffering of others until it has the potential to affect them. The “oh no, gas prices are going to go up” reactions are pretty sickening when people are dying. I try to keep myself informed about the genocides of the Tigray of Ethiopia and the people of Yemen (one which the US is complicit in by the way). But the American media only tells you what they want you to know about, so it is difficult to stay informed about everything. And they’ve been beating the war drums against Russia for a long, long time. Why exactly do they demonize Russia for invading Ukraine when the US invades a country like every other day? They just got done occupying Afghanistan for 20 years. It was bad for Russia to invade, don’t get me wrong, but is it only bad when Russia does it? When is the US going to get sanctioned?

While I do feel that war should never be the answer to a country’s problems, there is a bit more nuance to the war than you might be getting from US media. It’s a continuation of the Russia vs NATO conflict, which should have ended in the 1990s, but didn’t because war is big business. And honestly, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, imagine what the US would do if Mexico and Canada aligned themselves with Russia and started building military bases and placing missiles along the US borders. Maybe all the sudden a Mexican oblast would try to declare independence from Mexico and join the US, for some reason, and a war would start. In fact, another apt comparison is the United States’ treatment of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. This doesn’t absolve Putin of any wrongdoing, but the war didn’t come out of nowhere either. Basically, NATO has blame for it as well. I would even go so far as to say they intentionally provoked Russia. 

In my efforts to be a nonconformist free thinker as always, I’ve had a look at what the Russian media says about it, in an attempt to fully understand the conflict. There’s misinformation coming from both sides of course. The fog of war, they call it. But my mistake during the Artsakh War of 2020 was putting blind trust in the Armenian news media while ignoring Azerbaijan’s media. So it came as a shock when the war ended with a very humiliating defeat because the Armenian news was telling me that Armenia was winning. It turned out Azerbaijan’s media isn’t always lying, and Armenia’s media isn’t always telling the truth. It was a hard pill to swallow. Since this war is less personal to me, it makes it easier for me to try to look at what both sides are saying. This isn’t my first time trying to follow a war through the internet like it is for most other Americans. I think if you are concerned with Ukraine’s people it is actually very dangerous to only listen to one side of the media, to assume your side only ever tells the truth and the enemy’s media is purely propaganda. Because it’s always going to be a mixture of both.

And it’s very interesting how difficult the entire internet is making it to even access Russia’s side. Their news agency RT is being banned everywhere, or at least shadow-banned (for example, following RT on Facebook has been rendered impossible, as even if you do they never show up in your feed), you can’t access their website in the US or Europe, even Reddit’s Russia subreddit has been “quarantined” for allegedly spreading misinformation. They’re protecting us from the big, bad, Russian-state controlled media. As opposed to the American corporate-controlled media, which surely never tells a lie, because when the state controls media in a country it’s evil. As an aside, in America corporations own both the government and the media, so it’s still state-controlled media in a way. Whose lies do you want to follow? Anyway, the corporations of America are united against Russia. It feels like the 1950s again. And it’s alarming not only the level of censorship but how readily everyone accepts this censorship. Why wouldn’t they want the public to have access to this opposing point of view, one has to wonder. What do they want to hide? It’s not a good look for the West. 

Now suddenly every boring white American who wouldn’t have been able to find Ukraine on a map before thinks of themselves as geopolitical experts, and the narrative they believe is that Putin decided to invade Ukraine one day out of the blue because he’s so evil. Well he is evil, but that’s besides the point. This isn’t exactly the same as Germany invading Poland in 1939. NATO is the one trying to expand. Especially irritating is how they act like this is the first war that there’s ever been in Europe in decades, but that’s me being bitter about Artsakh being ignored again. For the record, there’s the ongoing Ethiopian civil war, Israel has been bombing Syria, and a continued war in Yemen. Anyway, someone on the quarantined Russia subreddit posted a timeline of events that led up to the war:

You can fact-check it if you like. But the point is, the conflict didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s been slow-boiling for a long time now. Even if one side is in the right and the other is in the wrong, or if both sides are in the wrong (as is my opinion in this case; I think all the big countries are bad, really), there’s always two sides to a conflict. 

Anyway, I better not share this blog post very widely, as not only would I get dog piled by people who like to argue on the internet, but who knows, I might get the CIA after me.