I just watched the film called WINTER OF FIRE, an amazing documentary about the Ukrainian uprising against the government in the winter of 2013-2014. It is streaming on Netflix.
It’s a story of patriotism and courage. You will see the incredible determination of the Ukrainian people to live lives of freedom and dignity.
I urge you to watch it. It shows up the bobble-head pundits who claim to have the inside track as fools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fools like Putin’s Bobble-Head planted, and owned pundits are dangerous.
I feel for Ukraine. Russian soldiers were notorious for rape when they rolled across Eastern Europe at the end of WWII. Imagine unbridled Russian power running our country.
I just watched Katrina Vanden Heuval on Bill Maher shilling for Putin. Sickening. The Left has made bedfellows with Trump on this issue. They think Western liberal democracy is a sham and doesn’t deserve to be defended.
Ponderosa,
That’s very sad indeed.
I urge you to watch the documentary “Winter of Fire.”
And Western soldiers don’t rape? A bit of a side comment: Yanukovich (spelling?) was elected president of Ukraine but…he favoured rapprochement to Russia rather than to the West. And then there was uprising instigated by the US. Remember Nuland’s famous words? “Fuck the EU”??? To my mind, here is where all this began…
Pesyvera, please watch the film.
Things for you to read:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106687768
More documentation: https://english.alarabiya.net/amp/features/2018/03/11/PICTURES-The-largest-mass-rape-in-history
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features11
Unrelated to the movie I say: LEAVE RUSSIA ALONE!!! This Western Russophobia is nothing new…it is said that, about 3 months after the end of WW 2, ‘famous’ Churchill was drawing up plans to bomb Russia – the project had a name which I don’t recall. All these provocations don’t bode well.
If the Repugnican Fascists win the House and Senate this fall and hold onto those wins and take the presidency as well in 2024, we shall do well to remember those students who stood up in Ukraine.
Violation of sovereignty is a gold standard for the moral bearings of any modern nation. Whether it be manipulated foreign nations (as in Chile in 1070s or Chinese military incursions into Tibet after the revolution, the world must condemn these practices or face inevitable war forever. Whether it be our own moral turpitude in this matter or Russia’s new Czar, it is just as wrong.
The Ukrainian “uprising” in 2013-2014 was the same as the Canadian “Freedom” convoy now. A minority of right-wing nut jobs trying (and, with U.S. help, succeeding) to impose their “freedoms” (to be nazis) on everyone. It’s all documented in the conversations with Victoria Nuland in the articles I posted yesterday (which apparently you refuse to read). Stop falling for propaganda.
Dienne, watch the film. Stop posting Putin propaganda. Watch the film.
Extraordinarily moving film, Diane. Thanks for the suggestion.
Bob, thank you for watching. Anyone who sees this extraordinary documentary, the amazing courage of ordinary Ukrainians would not possibly doubt their desire to be free of Putin. Nor would they compare the Ukrainians who fought for freedom to the odious Canadian truckers.
Agreed!
“The Heartbreaking Irony of ‘Winter on Fire’ | The Nation” https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-heartbreaking-irony-of-winter-on-fire/
Have you watched the film?
And you also called Putin’s only opposition, Alexi Navalny, a Nazi. It seems that you are willing to promote Putin’s line that anyone who stands in his way is a Nazi.
Have you watched the film? Putin claimed that the uprising was financed by the U.S., but none of the Ukrainian protestors was armed. Not even with a pistol.
I find it shocking that dienne77 is advocating an invasion of sovereign country and all the death and destruction and baby bombing that will bring as “necessary” to fight “Nazism”.
It would be absurd if it was not what so many right wing Republicans are also saying.
Dienne refuses to criticize Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but calls Biden and NATO warmongers.
The only warmonger I see is Putin.
OK, the anti-Russian Ukrainians include some unsavory elements. And the US has meddled. But we must still work to oppose the crushing of Ukrainian independence and democracy (something which the Nation author supports, unlike Dienne).
Exactly
I would consider overthrowing any elected leader ‘crushing democracy’, and that’s exactly how Zelinsky was put in power. Very Trumpian. Perhaps, if we’re so concerned about ‘crushed democracy’, we should be more concerned with the hideous repression of the popular vote in our own country.
And, as far as I know, ‘Ukraine’ was not a ‘Sovereign State’ until the Russians made it one (with reservations). Western Ukraine, you know, was aligned with the Third Reich during WWII (perhaps as a reaction to Ottoman rule). Thus, the Russians had as much right to occupy that area as the US did to occupy Japan. AND, we still maintain ‘bases’ in Japan, and Midway, and so on) and continue to ‘occupy’ numerous Pacific Islands (in fact, we have totally subsumed Hawaii (a ‘sovereign nation’ until to invasion of the Dole Corporation) into our country). So, ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander’, Eh? Otherwise, it’s blatant hypocrisy.
The drive of Russia to move south was instigated by Ivan the Terrible (I think) in order to counteract the British attempt to ‘Rule the Waves’ and strangle everyone else. We fought a revolution against that British idea. It killed China. And, so, Russia needed a warm-water seaport simply to keep from becoming a British vassal. That’s why so much of ‘East Ukraine’ speaks Russian.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite classical music pieces was Rimsky-Korsikov’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. The final movement was “The Great Gate at Kiev”. The movement was very Russian in tone, and very ‘majestic’ (a fitting finale).
Are there ‘ethnic Ukrainians’? Perhaps, however it seems as if a multiplicity of ethnicities have been forced to live in the same ‘country’ (a recent invention). Thus, the Kurds (a clear ethnicity) have been split among three ‘countries’ in order to reduce their influence (divide and conquer) by those who drew the lines. When one ethnicity claims to speak for the entire territory, that ‘country’ is no longer ‘democratic’.
You are echoing Putin’s propaganda. Ukraine voted in 1991 to exit the USSR in a democratic election. Russia signed an agreement accepting Ukrainian sovereignty. The Ukrainian president was elected in a democratic election. He is a former TV comedian who played a president and won a surprise election. Zelinsky was elected. How was Putin chosen? What happened to people who were Putin’s political opponents? Hint: they were either murdered or imprisoned.
Suppose Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee (my State) ‘voted’ to leave the USA, but in certain regions large majorities of people were against it (say, Nashville, Memphis, or Austin). Later, racist troops moved against these areas in order to ‘replace them with ‘us”. Would the US feel that it had a right (if not a responsibility) to interfere?
And, why, exactly, do we feel that the US has the right to tell people halfway around the world how to live their lives?
Here’s a quicker article than a Netflix movie to look at (from a former NYT reporter): https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/24/not-one-inch-eastward-how-the-war-in-ukraine-could-have-been-prevented-decades-ago/
Netflix??
No can do!
I don’t like Netflix either but it has some good TV
‘Good TV’ is different from credible analysis. Who funded this ‘documentary’? When did it show up on Netflix? How convenient that it’s now appearing (convenient for who?).
And, it’s a bit off topic for this blog.
Let me follow up on my comment. Here’s the ‘Wiki’ report on the funding: “Produced in part by Netflix, this film is a co-production of Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom”. This was produced in 2015, right after the installation of an unelected ‘new Ukrainian” government.
Sounds like as pure a propaganda platform as I can imagine. But, it was apparently skillfully done (attracted lots of eyeballs).
Have you seen the film?
Why don’t you watch the film? It doesn’t look like propaganda. You can’t judge it by funding. Not everyone in the US and UK is a bad person.
It’s that I don’t get any type of TV service where I live-it’s a veritable signal desert due to the terrain around my place. . . and I choose not to pay an arm and leg to watch TV.