There are some people who think the Ukrainian conflict began mid-February 2022.
If you are one of these people, then I'm here to tell you that you are wrong - by about eight years or so.
You could argue that the problem with the Ukraine goes back even further perhaps to the soviet era in the late 1980s
and perhaps even further to the end of the second world war.
The Ukrainian problem is a complex and complicated one.
The country is more than six hundred thousand square kilometres
and it sits on the cultural and ideological dividing line between the West and the East; between NATO and the Soviets.
It's a mix of differing ideologies; all of which have merit.
Politically, we have the Donbass region to take into account.
We have the Minsk agreement.
We have the solemn promise that NATO made to the Russians not to expand eastwards
and we also have the solemn promise that NATO made to the Ukrainians to expand eastward.
The truth is: you know very little about what is going on in the Ukraine and the situation.
You know very little indeed - just like me.
So what can we all do about our ignorance?
Well, we can do only one of two things. We can do our own research.
That hour we spend in the evening watching TV or porn or playing video games; we can use that time to investigate. We can learn.
We can find out about the Minsk agreement, for example.
Signed in 2014 as an accord between the Ukrainian government and the people of the Donbass region,
It's an agreement the Ukrainian government made that would stop attacking its own people in the Donbass region
and give the region the greater autonomy that it wishes for.
It's an agreement that the Ukrainian government has reneged on for the past eight years:
a period of time when the Ukrainian government has been attacking it's own people
and imprisoning its own journalists and others who dared to speak out.
Ukraine has not observed the ceasefire nor adopted the new constitution nor passed the law on a special status for the Donbass
and most importantly they won't hold talks with us and if that doesn't happen the Minsk agreement means nothing.
It's a period of time when we never stood with the Ukrainian people - not for a single day!
The reason why we have never cared about the nearly decade-long conflict in the Ukraine is because....
we weren't told to care.
Now we are not only being told to care, we are being told who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
We are being told who to care about.
Suddenly, we are all experts on all matters Ukrainian.
Not for a single second do we truthfully say to ourselves: "Honestly, I haven't a bloody clue!"
War, Conflict, Politics: they are tangled web. There is no right and wrong.
There's no Hollywood blockbuster simplicity of the good guys versus the bad guys.
The Ukraine wants to keep its country together.
Russia wants to protect itself from the expansion of NATO.
The people of the Donbass region want to self-identify as non-Ukrainian.
In all of that, who is right and wrong?
and who are we to judge?
By doing our own research, we become better informed and more intelligent,
which puts us in the best place to instruct our governments as to what we want them to do on our behalf.
The other thing we can do is put up Ukrainian flags on our social media sites and pour bottles of vodka down the drain in some form of anti-Putin protest.
We can stand with the Ukrainian people!!!!
just like we stood with the Syrian people 10 years ago.
Don't you realise how insulting and stupid that is?
To imagine an entire nation of people is nothing but one big glob of opinion!
If we were to move the Ukraine so that it borders the current Ukraine, it would cover Europe from the Netherlands in the northwest to Budapest in the southeast.
From Northern Italy to Northern Germany;
taking in six European capital cities.
It's the distance from Chicago to New York.
Do you really think these people are of the same opinion - the same mind? Are we really that stupid?
Do we really claim to know what they all think?
We stand with the Ukrainian people without even bothering to find out what any person in the Ukraine actually wants.
We don't talk to the Ukrainians who are pro-EU and we don't talk to the Ukrainians who are against the expansion of NATO.
When you stand with the Ukrainian people, exactly which group of Ukrainian people do you stand with?
In your country, you give yourself credit for being intelligent, minded people with a complex array of nuanced opinion.
Don't insult the people of the Ukraine by thinking they are not intelligent enough to have equally complex and nuanced opinions.
Look, the only thing I feel very comfortable saying about the Ukrainian situation
is that the western media and western political rhetoric has nothing to do with the Ukraine - nothing at all!
For them, this is about attacking Putin.
I lived in Syria 10 years ago. The western media and governments haven't changed.
Western media and western governments were not looking for solutions to the Syrian conflict and the Syrian problems
and they now are not looking for solutions to what is happening in the Ukraine
a Ukrainian conflict that has been going on for nearly a decade and they have done nothing.
This is just about Putin and Russia. It's the good guys versus the bad guys.
Keep the news simple. Keep the people ignorant.
My belief is that our government should be putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to honour the Minsk agreement.
It's a start and you see it has nothing at all to do with Putin.
Our governments are not looking for solutions and, let's be honest, neither are we.
All we are doing is feeding into the western narrative of "Evil Putin".
We are doing what we are told. We are thinking what we are told to think.
We are caring, because we are now told to care.
Your Ukrainian flag social media displays and your out-pouring of anger and rage are as empty as your out-poured vodka bottles!
which will eventually be disregarded and forgotten about;
just like we've forgotten about people of Syria
and just like we will eventually forget about the Ukrainians.