Ex-defence minister Liam Fox: We must arm the Ukrainians as the credibility of the entire Nato alliance is at stake

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See this too:

ottawacitizen.com/news/expansionist+behind+Putin/9801689/story.html
But does this traditionalist language reveal Putin as the harbinger of a Eurasian empire? Putin, commentators point out, likes to draw on certain 19th and 20th century intellectual sources to promote his vision of a resurgent Russia.
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These include the religious thinker Nikolai Berdyaev, philosopher Valdimir Solovyov and political theorist Ivan Ilyin. All three, in one fashion or another, envisioned Russia possessing a unique world-historical destiny. (In 2005, Putin reportedly paid out his own pocket to have Ilyin’s body returned to Russia from Switzerland where the philosopher, known for his traditionalist ethnic religiosity, died in 1953.)
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**Yet, important as these thinkers may be to Putin personally, it is Dugin who, say Sheknovtov and Umland, has “claimed a significant hold on the imagination of Russia’s political and military elite.”
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So it seems. In the lead up to the Crimean annexation, Dugin was a staple on Russian television, promoting Putin’s policies as part of “a struggle for reunification of Slavic peoples.” He referred to “the reunion with the Crimea (as) a victory for us,” and characterized the annexation as “the birth of a new political reality.” He predicted a “Russian Spring” that would see Europe and Russia come together so Europeans could “break loose of American hegemony.”**
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**Such rhetoric encapsulates the concept of Eurasianism Dugin envisioned in his major work, Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geo-political Future of Russia. The 1997 book has been highly influential among Russia’s power elites.
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“There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted (such) an influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites,” says scholar John Dunlop, who describes the book as a “neo-fascist” treatise.
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“The impact of this intended ‘Eurasianist’ textbook on key elements among Russian elites testifies to the worrisome rise of fascist ideas and sentiments during the late Yeltsin and the Putin periods.”**
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A statement Dugin made in 1997 sums up this ideology succinctly: “In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution,”: he said. “The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the U.S. and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.”…
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Putin has always been a patriot, but as Mark Galleotti observes in a recent edition of Foreign Policy, he was in his early years in power more a pragmatist than an ideologue. He was willing to cooperate with the West. He was among the first leaders to offer support to the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
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**By the mid-2000s, however, things had changed. In 2007, in an address to the Munich Security Conference, Putin warned NATO that Russia wouldn’t tolerate Western encroachment on regions that it considered part of its sphere of influence. A year later delivered on his warning by sending Russian troops to seize two provinces in Georgia, effectively scuttling any notion of bringing the country into Western fold as a NATO member.
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Five years later, in 2013, in a speech at an international conference of Russian experts, Putin all but laid out an imperial manifesto when he spoke of a Greater Russia in a direct reference to Russia’s interests in Ukraine. “We will never forget that Russia’s present-day statehood has its roots in Kiev. It was the cradle of the future, greater Russian nation …”**
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The speech was another warning against the efforts of Western politicians to lure Ukraine into the European fold. And when, with the West’s encouragement, Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych was chased from office and a pro-Western government installed in Kiev, Putin had all the justification he wanted to annex Crimea. Thus, says Galleotti, Yanukovych’s ouster provided “the catalyst for a decisive expression of a new imperialism.”
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Clearly, Putin’s neo-imperialism is rooted a particular conception of the Russian identity. And this imagined ethnicity finds its ideological expression in Eurasianism. As Paul Pryce argued in a recent edition of the Romanian Journal of European Affairs, “neo-Eurasianism had become so well-entrenched as the political consensus in Moscow that leaders within United Russia felt comfortable to acknowledge that some of their policy positions were inspired by the writings of Alexander Dugin.” Indeed, Putin’s re-election in 2102 to a third term as president “represents the institutionalization of an increasingly coherent neo-Eurasianism as the dominant political ideology of the Russian Federation.”
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The geopolitical implication of this ideology as in applies to the annexation is obvious: Russia’s “reunification” with Crimea is part a long-term program to restore the “greater Russian nation,” to reverse the diaspora that resulted from the fragmentation of the Soviet Union.
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Sorry but Alexsandr Dugin is not fringe any longer and hasn’t been since 1997.
 
Vouthon said:
While I regard this as essentially true (that Putin follows no ideology but himself ultimately), I think you are wholly underestimating the well-documented connections between the Kremlin and Dugin.

Despite being close to mentally insane, Dugin was able to earn two doctorates in Sociology and Philosophy, become a professor and head of Department at Moscow State University for six years and become deeply entwined with numerous Russian politicians, generals and even bishops under the Putin regime. This is incredible, since in any other country he’d likely be laughed at but under Putin he has become “mainstream” and a major player in Russian political decision-making due to his high profile contacts.

Putin founded the “Eurasion Economic Union” this year and is now littering his speeches with Dugin’s catchwords (such as “Novorossiya”, “American global dictatorship”, “multipolarity” etc.), so its kind of difficult to claim that he is not, in public at least, pursuing a Eurasianist vision in his foreign policy. When Putin addressed the Russian parliament in March following his annexation of Crimea he spoke of Greater Russia, Slavic destiny and even ethnic mysticism in an attempt justify his actions. This is all Dugin’s bile.

Anton Sheknovtov and Andreas Umland have both claimed that from a raving loony in the 1990s Dugin has become, “*a notable and seemingly influential figure within Russia’s mainstream/*I].” There are plenty of peer-reviewed journal articles on this:

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879366510000242

You cannot accuse these of being mere media spin, surely?

I can only assume Dugin worked his way through his Bachelor, Masters degrees to PhD level, but like a lot of geniuses they can also act like lunatics too, academics being a case all onto themselves.🙂

facebook.com/alexandr.dugin?fref=ts

I see he has 29,000 followers on FB about 0.025% of the Russian population but no doubt he has ‘fans’ from various other countries.

I believe it was Nursultan Nazarbayev that came up with the idea for the euroasian union in 2011, but so what - Putin does not seem to be part of the EU, I am not a political animal but he seems quite well aligned to Asia as well as Europe. 🤷

Dugin “a notable and ‘seemingly’ influential” - that word ‘seemingly’ rears it’s head again - the usual hearsay propaganda. There will always be people on the fringe that will listen to extremists but I would not throw Putin into that category. I believe he has shown on numerous occasions that he is his own man, so I very sincerely doubt if Dugin or any other extremist’s views, have any influence on him at all.

He would not be in the position he his in now, if he didn’t have his own mindset.
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  1. pepipop said:
    I can only assume Dugin worked his way through his Bachelor, Masters degrees to PhD level, but like a lot of geniuses they can also act like lunatics too, academics being a case all onto themselves.🙂

    facebook.com/alexandr.dugin?fref=ts

    I see he has 29,000 followers on FB about 0.025% of the Russian population but no doubt he has ‘fans’ from various other countries.

    I believe it was Nursultan Nazarbayev that came up with the idea for the euroasian union in 2011, but so what - Putin does not seem to be part of the EU, I am not a political animal but he seems quite well aligned to Asia as well as Europe. 🤷

    Dugin “a notable and ‘seemingly’ influential” - that word ‘seemingly’ rears it’s head again - the usual hearsay propaganda. There will always be people on the fringe that will listen to extremists but I would not throw Putin into that category. I believe he has shown on numerous occasions that he is his own man, so I very sincerely doubt if Dugin or any other extremist’s views, have any influence on him at all.

    He would not be in the position he his in now, if he didn’t have his own mindset.
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    It’s not that Dugin is influencing Putin. He already has extensive influence within Kremlin circles and among advisors of Putin.

    No, it’s that Putin has started to adopt his theories in his official speeches - such as the Valdai Club speech - as justification for his actions. Does that not concern you in the slightest? Or the fact that he was so prominent before and during the Crimea annexation?

    I will say no more tonight but needless to say Putin has decided to embark on a Eurasianist project and has situated himself politically in the Eurasianist mould. Read his speeches and you will see they are replete with ideas from Dugin. This didn’t used to be the case but it is now.

    Eurasianism is a powerful movement in Russia now, beyond merely Dugin’s academic writings on it. His is only one manifestation of it, albeit one that has been read by many Russian military and policy elites.
 
One more point. It’s the fact that a neo-fascist nut like Dugin could become part of the cultural and political mainstream in Russia that is concerning. He is not the only one, just the most infamous example of an alarming trend. Putin is an opportunist, not an ideologue. But in garbing his recent opportunism in ideological tones, as if he is actually being guided by some consistent moral vision, to justify his aggression towards neighbouring countries, Russia is entering a new and dangerous phase.
 
Vouthon said:
How can we have peace talks with a nation that continually exploits them and flagrantly flouts them to further its territorial ambitions in a sovereign, independent country?

The West has pursued peace relentlessly with Putin. How about Russia gives it a go now by making real and genuine steps to reign in its importation of heavy weaponry and “volunteers” (conscripts) across its neighbour’s border?
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How does peace come out of arming the Ukrainians?
 
The United Arab Emirates have pledged arms to Ukraine:

en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/252223.html

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has met with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Ukrainian parliament deputy, advisor to the Ukrainian interior minister Anton Heraschenko said.

“The sides agreed on cooperation with the United Arab Emirates in the delivery of certain types of armaments and military hardware to Ukraine. As you understand, types and scopes of the deliveries cannot be disclosed on Facebook,” Heraschenko wrote on his Facebook page.

The Ukrainian president is paying an official visit to the UAE.
 
It’s clear from this article that for all intents and purposes, U.N. equates to NATO:

ukrinform.ua/eng/news/un_discusses_possibility_of_peacekeepers_deployment_in_ukraine_329284

KYIV, February 24 /Ukrinform/. Discussion on the possibility of a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine took place at the UN headquarters at night, on February 24, according to Ukrainian news broadcaster TSN.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said about Ukraine’s intention to invite the peacekeeping mission to Donbass during the Security Council’s open debates. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the foreign ministers participated in these debates. From today, the UN will seek ways to implement Kyiv’s peace initiatives. In addition, Klimkin said about Russian aggression during the debates. If Moscow is making no effort to stop the pro-Russian rebels in Donbas, Kyiv will look for all possible ways to stop the violence.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister met with the UN Secretary General, with whom he discussed the possible ways of establishment of the UN peacekeeping mission. It will not be an ordinary peacekeeping mission, as in this case, Ukraine will lose the right todetermine the composition and powers of the contingent. Ukraine intends to appeal to its partners from the European Union for the formation of this mission. Proposal for approval of the mission will be submitted to the Security Council. Russia has already made a statement in which it condemns the idea of a peacekeeping mission. But if Moscow will try to oppose this in the Security Council, the proposal will be submitted to the General Assembly.
Immediately after the debates Klimkin flew to Paris for a meeting of the foreign ministers of the “Normandy Four.”
 
I’m very curious what people’s take on this article is. A brief quote:

The A-10s will participate in routine exercises already scheduled as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, the military’s response to the Ukraine crisis.

The training will focus on the close-air support specialty, Roberson said. Originally designed to fly low and slow to provide protection for ground troops in Europe if the Russians ever invaded Germany, A-10s were once a fixture on the Continent.

Does this mean the U.S. Air Force is preparing to support a ground war in Eastern Europe?

stripes.com/news/europe/a-10-warthogs-return-to-germany-as-situation-in-ukraine-deteriorates-1.330479
 
Son_of_Niall said:
You said:

I ask again:
Would that include nuclear weapons?
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That is being excessive in interpretation, is that hyperbole? I don’t recommend sending US troops either.

But within reason, we should help them where we are able to.
 
Path_Finder said:
That is being excessive in interpretation, is that hyperbole? I don’t recommend sending US troops either.

But within reason, we should help them where we are able to.
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Then how should we “help them”?
 
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