As the hour approached midday, both felt slightly exhausted.
Maurice was not really sure he had seen anything that could shake his conviction, and neither was Benedict. And yet, they had slightly approached each other in a more fundamental way. They were slowly realising that people in general and politicians in particular can become stuck in positions they would have done better trying to evolve from.
Benedict was the first to express this.
— Thoughts on reconciliation, remembrance —
“Coercion will lead to defiance. I understand that. Traumatise a people and they will hold high a new “never again!”, a principle that cannot ever be deviated from. Compromise becomes a matter of betraying the past. Your ancestors whose blood was shed.
Does that mean hope for reconciliation is past? Is life not worth living when you are forced by your big and strong neighbour to choose according to their taste?”
“Reconciliation following an injustice… This is the major question: Can anything ever set the record straight? This is where the EU project about remembrance comes in. Maybe it is not so bad after all?”
Benedict looked sceptical.
“Those who have suffered are long dead. When I today hear expressions of sympathy, I take a look at the person talking. If they have family, two cars, house filled with toys for all ages, I think their sympathy has symbolic value at best. Like condolences to a funeral. They don’t share your grief.”
“But still, you’d rather have an expression of understanding than silence and ignorance, right?”
“Arguably, yes. But let me get mystical again: They original pain went to the depths of the world. They woke the slumbering guardian angels. So must the retribution do. A merely pecuniary reparation is a compensation that violates that.”
“But!”, Maurice interjected, “the concept of reparations is universally acknowledged. It entails many kinds according to a UN GA resolution 60/147, full restitution, compensation for damages, alternative ways of rehabilitation, some kind of satisfaction, even if just memorialisation and simply a way to guarantee that it doesn’t happen again.
But that at least requires some kind of acknowledgement of guilt”
“Is the West really any better?” Benedict philosophised. “Russia remembers the tragedy of privatisation as something inflicted by the West. Does the IMF acknowledge their culpability in this regard?
Coloured people can confirm that getting white people to acknowledge any kind of injustice is hard work. We are absolutely no better than the Russians. »We« are always the wronged part or the innocent part. Never the guilty part.”
27.01.2022
https://www.rada.gov.ua/meeting/stenogr/show/7941.html
“It starts with a longer debacle concerning a certain Dmitry Sennychenko. A corruption case which started before the war and I believe is still ongoing. The embezzlement seems to be in the millions, which is honestly small money.”
“For the Rada, it revolves around the frustrations from the early 1990’s. State property from the Soviet era sold to private entities catapulted present day oligarchs to the economic skies.”
KLYMENKO Y.L. (VOICE)
revenues to the state budget from privatization, which were supposed to amount to 12 billion. We received as much as 2 billion from them.
“However, he also points out:”
for 2020, five enterprises, just five enterprises gave losses to the state budget of 84 billion hryvnias.
“… Apparently the voting system in the Rada exhibited glitches when voting for the dismissal of that guy. Old gear, been in operation since 2001.”
“And Nestor (Ivanovych Shufrych, Opposition Platform - For Life) is as always cracking wise:”
SHUFRICH N.I.
The incident occurred in the Verkhovna Rada, and the Kremlin’s hacker attacks were immediately reported again.
“Then more funding of veterans, and then back to the bees”
“Bees… what show am I watching? This guy managed to make a segue from bees to funding the army.”
BOBROVSKA S.A. (VOICE)
Dear colleagues, our beekeepers and dear Ukrainians! You know very well that bees buzz well only on Ukrainian soil. And our bees should be safe not only from the chemicals of agricultural holdings, but also from Muscovites. Therefore, a huge request for support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and support of 3 billion for allocation to territorial defense. Then the bees will be dense… buzzing in your lands and fields around the clock with the support of the Armed Forces.
“Opposition Platform - For Life once again - and as always completely alone - brings the topic back to Minsk. They refuse to vote on something else because…”
KOLTUNOVYCH O.S. (OPPOSITION PLATFORM - FOR LIFE)
Why will we vote against it? Because we have only two weeks to implement the political part of the Minsk agreements.
You all saw in the news that the so-called advisers, or they are de facto advisers, of the leaders of the Minsk format countries, held talks in Paris yesterday.
It was agreed that point 1 of the set of measures for the implementation of the Minsk agreements regarding the ceasefire and point 3 regarding the monitoring of this ceasefire. But what is expected of us? And in two weeks, the second phase of these negotiations will take place in Berlin. Why can’t we go on so-called vacations or work in committees now? Because the Verkhovna Rada must vote on at least four items from the set of measures to implement the Minsk agreements. This is item 4 regarding elections, this is item 5 regarding amnesty, item 8 regarding the economic blockade there and the restoration of economic relations. And start a dialogue with direct negotiations with ORDLO [the “temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine”] regarding item 11, which concerns the special status of Donbass.
“… Silence. Next speaker segues back to bees. Some individual named Artur Volodymyrovych Gerasimov seems to also hint at the importance. The enemy is at the gate, he says.”
“Later they start talking about funding the territorial defence.”
“Note this:”
VENISLAVSKY F.V. (COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY)
In this case, we refuse the agreement of the commanders of voluntary formations of territorial communities with local self-government bodies, given the fact that, unfortunately, far from all local self-government bodies and not all heads of local self-government bodies in Ukraine take an openly pro-Ukrainian position.
“Except for the opposition party, everybody else seems to want to strengthen the Territorial Defence project. It looks like local militias and private citizens who get to use their hunting rifles to stop an invading army.”
“Also some naval upgrades for the Black Sea Force. Working with the British navy.”
YAREMENKO B.V. (SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE)
The agreement provides that the state, which has the historical glory of being the owner of the seas and oceans, will become our main partner in the construction of naval bases and the construction of the domestic fleet.
“They all prepare for the war.”
“Then this segment by a then 32 year old politician:”
BOBROVSKA S.A. (VOICE)
And I also think that it would be the right story to start talking about the creation, as was once the case in 1943, of the creation of an anti-Kremlin bloc of peoples, there is nothing new, history is cyclical, and Britain, certainly, as it was then in World War II, and today plays a critical role in the opposition to the Kremlin.
“There it was again, the direct comparison with Stalin’s USSR. Back then Churchill saved us from those who saved us from Hitler. Uncle Joe must be stopped exactly when most of his country has died, but not sooner.”
“The enmity between communism and liberalism still haunts us like a ghost.”
“Miss Bobrovska… That Kremlin has got precious little to do with the one in 1943.”
“The rest seems to be coal miners and a fairly long discussion on the gas transport system.”
— Thoughts on the past and haunting memories —
As the fateful day approached, reading through the journals inspired that sensation of time travel which they had hoped for. The past in retrospect clearly looked differently than the future in prospect had looked.
A heuristic lunch was laid out on an interimistic kitchen table in the back of the shed. They left their laptops engaged in conversation.
“Do you think they would have taken the situation so lightly had they known the immense cost of the war?”, inquired Maurice.
“Who can answer that? Remember our previous conversation about history as cascading events. Had the nationalists felt less brutal coercion, then perhaps they would not have been so traumatised.”
“That is what I tried to say earlier: There is a reason for conflicts not getting resolved. Our collective memory.
Russia is now fully paying the price of the soviet era. Despite the fact that USSR only exists because the Bolsheviks prevailed over the Whites, Kerensky’s provisional government, the anarchists and all other factions struggling for power after the abdication of Nicholas II. Clearly inside Russia there are and have always been equally nationalist sentiments. However unlike Ukraine which have not had a nation of their own until recent times, in Russia the nationalists inherited an empire in 1991. Ukrainians sees Russia today as the worst of both: A tsarist imperialistic empire with a Stalinist mentality and a KGB leader. Nationalists despises both spectres of the past: The tsarist empire as well as the communists.
That really IS the modern ghost story! The political monsters of yesterday becomes the haunting nightmares of today.”
Benedict returned to contemplation.
“You asked me earlier if I wouldn’t rather have sympathy at a funeral than not. I must revise my stand: I would not. Life and death is between me and my god.”
Maurice looked at him gravely, then smiled and finished eating. He cleared the table and they went out to the porch. The sun was smiling intermittently through the wet clouds.
28.01.2022
https://www.rada.gov.ua/meeting/stenogr/show/7943.html
“First order of business: Minister of Defence explains that at this point the buildup of Russian forces are approximately at the same level as last year’s winter manoeuvres.”
OLEKSIY YURIYOVYCH REZNIKOV - MINISTER OF DEFENSE OF UKRAINE
there are no phenomena or actions of a military nature that are noticeably different from what happened in the spring of last year before Easter.
“Working with the rest of the West, a lot of work seems to be going into preparing for war. So the executive branch certainly has a notion that war is not just hypothecical”
We can already see a small part of the results of this joint work today. We are already getting what we only dreamed about before and there will be a sequel.
“He also addresses one of Russia’s casus belli: Ukraine preparing a major counterassault. "
Accusing Ukraine of allegedly preparing for some armed provocations in Donbas is also absolute nonsense. We are consistently strengthening our defenses, and this is true, but we clearly adhere to our commitments and consider the scenario of a political-diplomatic settlement as a basic one.
[…]
Every day we become stronger. Our partners see it, our enemy sees it, and it reduces the likelihood of negative scenarios.
“… Steady build-up, not planned counterattack.”
“I’d bet the ‘fact-checkers’ are going to jump on that one. False!, they will scream in unison. The fact that Ukraine is getting stronger every day seems to elude these geniuses. ‘But that is not a legal reason!’, the children will scream. No. It is not. But it forces Russia’s hand.”
“Legality matters…”
“… Fuck the principles. Stop war, negotiate, deescalate, compromise.”
“Yeah… I figured you would be spineless about it.”
“Sure, there is nothing more spineless than disagreeing with the entire Western hemisphere.
The defence minister foresees that Russia wants to resurrect the DDR as well as conquer the Baltic states. "
We warned our Western partners that the Kremlin’s goal is not so much Ukraine as undermining NATO and the EU. We warned that there would be an attack on the Baltic States, and it happened, that after that there would be an escalation if there was no response and the escalation against Poland happened, and this was unimaginable a year ago.
“… What attack is that? All I can find is some kind of cyberattacks.”
“No clue. People link the military doctrine with a registered increase in cyber attacks, military exercises near borders of NATO countries. All part of Putin’s ambitions to recreate Soviet Russia, they say.”
“A longer section on Covid from the Minister of Health.”
“A longer section on the heating season, gas and energy transition to EU from the Prime Minister”
“The overall message from the government is unchanged: Remain calm in spite of panic. We are prepared for war.”
“Even the Opposition Platform - For Life’s Nestor does not dare to ask too provocatively in the presence of both Prime and Defence minister.”
“The rest is the usual small squabble about trifles.”
/PARADOX