Honourable Russian Intentions in Ukraine

 "Some 90 percent of buildings are damaged [in Sievierodonetsk, the largest city still under kraine control. More than two-thirds of the city's housing stock has been completely destroyed. There is no telecommunication. There is constant shelling."

"Capturing Sievierodonetsk is a fundamental task for the occupiers ... We do all we can to hold this advance."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Thousands of civilians remain in the city of Sievierodonetsk as Russia closes in on one of the major cities in Donbas

 

Critical infrastructure in Sievierodonetsk, in the eastern region of Luhansk has been destroyed by Russian shelling. The absurd part of the situation is that it's Russia's goal to take command of the city. A city the Russian military had destroyed. Just as it has destroyed all towns, villages and cities that it has been their intention to control. Russia, in its conflict with Ukraine, has in effect destroyed its own economy in the process. It has certainly destroyed its standing as a respected, moral nation. Most international communities view Russia, Moscow, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin with dismay-tinged disgust.

Moscow's territorial ambitions aligned with its president's illogical claims of a Jewish-governed Ukraine representing a fascist enclave with neo-Nazis operating its society and politics and a military steeped in pride for its fascist loyalties have fallen flat in the eyes and ears of a world gaping with horror at what an unrestrained military attack on a European nation is capable of in its destruction capacity with modern weapons of war needlessly making a charnel house of Russia's neighbour.

 

Lithuanians by the hundreds have raised from civilian donations $5.4 million to fund a ByraktarTB2 military drone. "This is the first case in history when ordinary people raise money to buy something like a Bayraktar. It is unprecedented", said Beshta Petro, Ukraine's ambassador to Lithuania. As for the invading Russian troops; in attempting to restore the Mariupol water system now that they have gained control of the port city, a system they had themselves destroyed while it remained in Ukraine's defence, many interred bodies have washed out of the ground, 

 

Russian soldiers hauled these corpses of dead Ukrainian civilians to a supermarket and left the decomposing bodies of civilians on the floor. "The Russians are bringing the bodies of the dead here [in the supermarket], bodies which were washed out of graves and partially exhumed in an attempt to restore water supply. They are just dumping them like garbage", said Petro Andryushehenko, Mariupol's Ukrainian mayor's adviser.

"Yes, people are being killed. But the operation is taking so much time primarily because Russian soldiers taking part are under strict orders categorically to avoid attacks and strikes on civilian infrastructure", explained Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

"The liberation of the Doentsk and Luhansk regions, recognized by the Russian Federation as independent states, is an unconditional priority."

"I do not believe that they [Donbas residents] will be happy to return to the authority of a neo-Nazi regime that has proven it is Russophobic in essence."

"These people must decide for themselves."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Leaving the Ukrainian government to plead with Western powers which have been unstinting in their moral support and the initially-reluctant supply of military weapons leading to greater measures to send more sophisticated, long-range and more powerful weapons to aid a country whose plight will not move them to directly intervene for fear of sparking a larger conflict. The battle for Sievierodonetsk on the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River has allowed creeping gains for Russia with its superior firepower.

Earlier phases of the war saw Russian forces  spread more widely and thinly when towns and cities were bludgeoned with artillery and airstrikes destroying civilian areas and civic infrastructure, a reality that Moscow steadfastly denies as they pass a wink from one to another of their generals who have themselves become victims of a Ukrainian military response that speaks of a refusal to surrender to Moscow's ambitions.

Nyet! Ukrainian Forces Must Not Shell Russian Territory

"[The Biden administration] may give Kyiv HIMARS MLRS and M270 MLRS, which will be equipped with M31 GMLRS guided missiles."

"There is a risk that such equipment will be placed near Russia's borders and Ukrainians will be able to strike at Russian cities. Such a situation is unacceptable and intolerable for us."

"We are calling for an end to the senseless and extremely risky pumping of weapons into the country. It is important to refrain from threats against us and claims of a military victory for Ukraine."

Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov

 

"Certainly, we're mindful and aware of of the Ukrainian asks, privately and publicly, for what is known as a multiple-launch rocket system."

"I won't get ahead of decisions. I've never done that since we've been starting to do these drawdown authority packages, but I can assure you that we are in constant communication with them, and we're still committed to helping them succeed on the battlefield, and to succeed specifically in the fight they're in."

"[The United States is moving weapons systems into Ukraine] every single day ... helping them literally in the fight, including howitzers, which are still arriving."

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby 

A rocket is launched from an MLRS during a training exercise involving part of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and the South Korean army at Cheorwon, South Korea. Ukraine has been pleading for weeks with the U.S. to get American-made MLRS weaponry.

Preparations appear to be underway for the Biden administration to forward advanced long-range rocket systems to Ukraine while it is undergoing significant losses in the east from Russian forces. The provision of the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), an American weapon that fires a torrent of rockets farther than current Ukrainian capabilities, appears to be in the works, still awaiting confirmation by the White House. 

Ukrainian authorities have been asking for this rocket system as a necessity to enable the Ukrainian military to curb the Russian forces' advance, now claiming full control of the strategic eastern city of Lyman; another notch toward the victory Moscow is anticipating in its advance on Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

The Kremlin has wasted little time warning that any country seeking to provide advanced weaponry to Ukraine will as a result face harsh repercussions -- without elaborating on what they might consist of. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the West "declared total war" against Russia. Some White House officials are concerned that providing the MLRS with a range of over 180 miles could result in Ukrainian forces firing retaliatory rockets into Russian territory, potentially causing a major escalation.

According to a senior U.S. official, however, the White House appears comfortable in providing the system to Ukraine. There will, however, be an arrangement to manage the escalation risk in the withholding of the longest range rockets that are compatible with the MLRS system. Typically, rockets fired by these systems have a range of roughly 43 miles according to Army data. Specialized rockets (Army Tactical Missile Systems) can strike further at distances up to 186 miles.

Their use is meant to pulverize critical infrastructure, such as air defence sites and forward bases. However, the shorter-range rockets would over-double the reach of Ukrainian firepower as it is at present. U.S.-delivered M777 howitzers currently in the hands of Kyiv's forces have a range of about 18 miles. Thousands of Stinger and Javelin shoulder-fired missiles are among other sophisticated weapons sent to Ukraine by the United States. 

Moscow maintains a firepower advantage, despite the flood of U.S. and Western arms to Ukraine, points out Ukrainian officials, a situation causing them to lose ground in Donbas. "The Biden administration has been dragging their feet", Senator Lindsey Gram accused on Twitter.

Ukrainian artillery shells Russian troops' position on the front line near Lysychansk in the Luhansk region, April 12, 2022.

Canada's Supreme Court Bringing the Administration of Justice Into Disrepute

"The impugned provision, taken to its extreme, authorizes a court to order an offender to serve an ineligibility period that exceeds the life expectancy of any human being, a sentence so absurd that it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute."

"[Depriving offenders in advance of any possibility of reintegration into society, the provision] shakes the very foundations of Canadian criminal law."

Chief Justice Richard Wagner, Supreme Court of Canada

"I'll tell you what cruel and unusual punishment is."

"It's an innocent person being murdered. It's an innocent person being maimed or an innocent person having their life ripped apart."

"That is cruel and unusual punishment."

Cathy Riddell, one of 25 victims of an INCEL attack

The Supreme Court of Canada, Justin Tang, Associated Press

 

A Criminal Code provision that ruled mass murderers might have to wait 50 years or longer before they might apply for parole, has been struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada which unanimously called the provision degrading and incompatible with human dignity. This is a court that has for decades been leaning more heavily toward the rights of the accused and by extension overlooking victims' calling out for justice from great harm done them by psychopaths whose regard for the dignity and human rights of their victims have been ruthlessly absent.

The previous Conservative government of the administration of Prime Minister Stephen Harper had enacted that legislation in an effort to honour the rights of victims and to ensure that the murderous predators within society faced justice for their deadly acts of mass murder. The current Liberal government of 'progressive' Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wasted no time in overturning much of the Criminal Justice legislation of his predecessor. Now the Supreme Court stacked with progressives has followed suit.

 

Six men died in the attack on the Quebec Mosque. They are, clockwise from top left, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Azzeddine Soufiane, Abdelkrim Hassane, Ibrahima Barry, Aboubaker Thabti and Khaled Belkacemi. (CBC)

 

The case in question that the Supreme Court focused their decision on was that of Alexandre Bissonnette, who had fatally shot six people to death at a Quebec City mosque in 2017. This mass murderer will now be allowed to seek parole after having served 25 years of incarceration. The 2011 provision that allowed a judge in cases of multiple murders to impose a life sentence and parole ineligibility periods of 25 years to be served concurrently for each murder was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

According to the justices the provision serves to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee against cruel and unusual treatment, for as they determined, denial of a realistic possibility of being granted parole before they die offends the Charter.  Bissonette was 27 years old at the time he pleaded guilty to six charges of first-degree murder in the mosque assault that occurred following evening prayers. A previous judge had found the parole ineligibility provision unconstitutional but failed to declare it invalid, ruling that Bissonnette must wait 40 years before applying for parole.

A subsequent ruling by Quebec's Court of Appeal held the provision invalid on constitutional grounds, stating the judge had erred in the ineligibility period of 40 years. The court, it said, must revert to the law in standing prior to 2011; parole ineligibility periods to be served concurrently, resulting in a total wait period of 25 years in the case of Bissonnette's crime of mass murder.

Henceforth this ruling requires that every prisoner must be given a realistic potential of applying for parole earlier than the expiration of an ineligibility period of 40 years. The Criminal Code provision has been declared invalid immediately, retroactive to 2011 when it was enacted. Any offender who was ordered through the unconstitutional provision to serve a parole ineligibility period of 50 years or greater for multiple murders must be able to apply to the courts for a remedy.

 

Mounties pay tribute to the memorial sculptures in Moncton in honour of the three RCMP officers killed in 2014. (Matthew Bingley/CBC)

 

Mass murderers such as Justin Bourque, sentenced to 75 years in prison with no chance of parole in the killing of three RCMP officers, and the wounding of two others in Moncton, New Brunswick in 2014 will be able now to take advantage of a new 'humanitarian' prospective, giving full due to their human rights and dignity of person guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Rather than relinquishing those rights on the basis of having deprived others of the dignity of life.

Then there is as well the case of Alek Minassian who was found guilty of ten counts of first-degree murder, three years after he crashed into people with a van in a busy area of Toronto on a sunny day that brought people out to a popular promenade in large numbers. Minassian was a member of the disaffected male group calling themselves involuntarily celibates, complaining that women overlook them for other males more characteristic of male traits attractive to women.

In all these cases and more, psychotic psychopaths have decided to take revenge on others whom they consider to be guilty of offences affecting their quality of life and aspirations. In the case of the mosque killings it was religious bigotry, in the case of the killing of the RCMP officers, it was hatred of policing agencies, and in the instance of the INCEL murders it was the sense of victimhood as a male unattractive to the opposite sex. All chose to murder as an expression of their hate, depriving others of life.

Yet the Supreme Court of Canada justices sitting in the high court commiserate with the plight of the murderers, held to account for their atrocities in committing mass murder, while the administration of justice, placing responsibility on the shoulders of those whose criminal acts are beyond the pale of civil society is undermined and the victims of lethal assaults and their families and greater society at large see justice fail in its fundamental purpose; to protect society from the vicious predators in their midst.

A man leaves a note at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the van attack in Toronto in April 2018. Photograph: Lars Hagberg/AFP/Getty Images

Psychotic, Armed and Geared to Slaughter

"When the cops came, the cop said, 'Yell if you need help!' And one of the persons in my class said 'help'. The guy overheard and he came in and shot her."

"The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting. I was hiding."

"And I was telling my friend to not talk because he is going to hear us."

Child survivor of Uvalde elementary school massacre

"There were five or six of us [parents] hearing the gunshots and [officers] were telling us to move back."

"We wanted to storm the building. We were saying, 'Let's go because -- we wanted to get our babies out."

Javier Cazares, father of 4th grade Jacklyn Cazares, killed

Jan C. Hong, AP Photograph

 

It seems now that the initial narratives of police attempting to stop an armed man from entering an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, were replete with some inaccuracies, since cleared up. There was no one stationed at the school by policing authorities to ensure that unauthorized individuals would not enter where hundreds of vulnerable young children were anticipating their last few days of school before summer recess might be fun days. 

 

As it really happened, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, dressed in black including protective gear and holding a high-powered rifle had no problem entering the Robb Elementary School by the unlocked front door. In fact, he lingered for awhile unchallenged, before finally entering. He had driven to the school in a truck after first shooting his grandmother in the face. She managed to call 911. Now hospitalized in intensive care she may survive.

All the while the young terrorist was acting out his psychotic impulses he was emailing his exploits to a contact. He barricaded himself into a grade four classroom, where he commenced shooting disbelieving and cowering children and their two teachers. Nineteen children, ages nine to ten shot to death, and alongside them two long-serving teachers at the school who loved their job and loved their students even more. 

 

The Uvalde school district locked classroom door policy failed them all.

One young boy revealed his experience when a classmate was shot and killed when she called out for help, acting on the advice of police. He and four other students hid beneath a table with a tablecloth shielding their presence from view. The rampager had crashed his pickup truck, and shot at two men who began to approach to ask if he needed help. Then he walked into the school at 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday.  

 

Four minutes later two responding officers entered the school; when Ramos fired at them they took cover.

Parents from the community whose children were inside the school had gathered, pleading with police to storm the building. Some of the men, fathers of children inside, were restrained. In a video posted to Facebook parents were seen breaking through yellow police tape, screaming at officers present to enter the building. Another video posted on YouTube showed one adult being restrained by officers. Two officers knelt on a person while others shouted "There's shooting!", and "What the f--- are you doing?"

Following the 1999 Columbine massacre, guidelines were developed instructing officers of the law that in such situations they were to immediately target the gunman. A fourth-grader in the classroom where the massacre took place described the gunman shooting before entering the class and when he came in, he crouched down and said: "It's time to die".

Associated Press

Erdogan's Nasty Little War With Kurds

"President Erdogan's style of meeting international challenges is upping the ante -- and it almost always works in causing NATO allies to blink."

"It worked in the eastern Mediterranean and in Syria in the past -- why not try again."

Asli Aydintsbas, senior policy fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations, Istanbul

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has revived an old, outdated, near-defunct concept: a Western habit of overrating Turkey's "geo-political importance." Totally blind to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's anti-Western policy calculus, the Biden administration is pushing Turkey's Islamist strongman into further stealth hostility toward the civilized parts of the world."

Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute

"In case of any attack, of course we will resist and fight back."

"The international community now faces an important test: will it effectively rein in Turkey?"

Ciwan Mulia Ibrahim, spokesperson SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces)

The West's appeasement will, unfortunately, only embolden Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and push him further into the Russian orbit, both politically as a covert ally and militarily as a client of critical weapons systems. Pictured: Erdoğan holds a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 22, 2019 in Sochi, Russia. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

Little surprise that Finland and Sweden have decided it is imperative that they no longer wait to see how things turn out for Ukraine with Russia's invasion. Both have committed to applying for NATO membership and partners in NATO are prepared to welcome them to the alliance with the understanding that in the special circumstances that exist, their applications should be fast-tracked. In view of Vladimir Putin's threats, his aggression and his past appropriation of other nations' sovereign territories the fear that Sweden and Finland have made clear is their own vulnerability to Moscow's decision-making.

Not so fast, however. Turkey has an agenda of its own under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arguably the most enigmatic and volatile of NATO's 30 members, whose playbook has diverged widely of late from that of NATO. He has stated baldly that it is his intention not to approve the two applications. He has an ax to grind with Sweden over its support for Kurds and he has a plan that risks alienating the most powerful country in NATO and he wants it understand that he is prepared to engineer an exchange.

 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images

 

In that he will give the green light to the NATO applications to welcome Finland and Sweden as long as NATO agrees not to interfere in Erdogan's plan to build a buffer that would remove any Kurdish presence in Syria from alongside Turkey's border with Syria. The dilemma is that no application submitted by any nation to join NATO can be accepted without unanimous assent of all NATO members. Of course, should all 30 NATO members, less Turkey, agree to turf Turkey from NATO, the problems of Turkey's intransigence would be solved...

And Turkey's president's plan is the launching of military operations across its border into Syria yet again, but on a firmer, larger scale that would cleanse border villages and farms of their Kurdish inhabitants and rout the presence of Kurdish militias from border proximity. Sweden and Finland have been accused by Turkey of nurturing links to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) whose ongoing war with Turkey in the interest of forcing the release of Kurdish ancestral land it occupies for a recognized sovereign Kurdistan, has led Erdogan's intent on destroying the PKK.

Since 2015 Turkey has seized hundreds of kilomtres of land, 30 km deep into Syria, its operations targeting the Syrian Kurdish YPG milita, backed by the United States, for its aid in combating the Islamic State Emirate. Turkish troops have increased military operations against PKK fighters in northern Iraq as well. According to Turkey, both groups are linked as terrorist entities; whereas only the PKK is considered a terrorist group by NATO, not the YPG. 

The People's Defence Units (YPG) represent the foundational element of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led coalition hugely depended upon by the United States. For its part the SDF accuses Turkey of efforts planned to "destabilize the region", by its military action threats in northern Syria. In a sinister statement that simply indicates that Turkey is an unsuitable partner within NATO ranks, Erdogan claims that his planned military operation would serve to reveal which countries 'respected'  Turkey's security concerns and which did not.

 

Kurdish protesters take part in a demonstration holding Kurdish flags in Stockholm, Sweden | Frederik Sandberg/AFP via Getty Image

The Deadly Inexplicable Again

The Deadly Inexplicable Again

"How many scores of little children who witnessed what happened - see their friends die, as if they're in a battlefield, for God's sake.They'll live with it the rest of their lives."

"I hoped when I became president I would not have to do this, again. [Their parents] will never see their child again, never have them jump in bed and cuddle with them."

"As a nation, we have to ask, 'When in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby'?"

"We have to act. [Reinstate the assault weapons ban and other] common sense gun laws."

U.S. President Joe Biden

 

"He was engaged by an Uvalde ISD police officer who works here at the school. And then after that, he was engaged by two other officers from the Uvalde Police Department."

"[While] engaged [with the school officer, the gunman dropped a black bag full of ammunition outside of the school. Inside that bag was actually more ammunition. He actually dropped that ammunition and ran inside the school where he barricaded himself inside one of the classrooms and, unfortunately, that is where he started conducting his business of shooting innocent children, shooting the two innocent adults that were inside that classroom."

 Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sgt. Erick Estrada 

Photo Mass shooting at Texas elementary school; neighbours come together to comfort one another CNN

 

A local pastor, Marcela Cabralez, after a call from a colleague who operates a nearby funeral home pleading for her help with the children who were sheltering inside the funeral home, found the young students traumatized when she arrived. Some of those children were rocking themselves, holding one another, covering their ears, screaming. Some started blankly ahead of themselves. They told the pastor, one after another what they had witnessed: bullets flying through windows, glass breaking, their classmates bleeding.

Highly impressionable children. Who can sense when danger or a threat to their inborn sense of security arises, seek escape from the immediate source of the danger. What they cannot escape, however is what it was they saw and what they knew to be happening. That memory is firmly lodged deep in their memory bank, filed away for the rest of their lives, to surface on occasion and haunt them. A lived terror in the subterranean recesses of their minds, fearfully troubling, behind everything else in their future that they experience.

The secret inner rage of a high school boy just turned 18, who had gone on a shopping spree to buy for himself several high-powered rifles. To add to the  high-powered truck that was also in his possession. Texting with a teen-age girl in Germany who he had 'met' on line only a few weeks earlier, he described his anger and boredom,  hinting at the solution to his rage about to unfold. First he killed his grandmother because he was infuriated with her interfering in his affais.

 

And then he drove his truck to an all-Hispanic elementary school, where he barged in, had an exchange with a security guard, then barricaded a grade four classroom where he shot 19 children, all around age ten, to death. Two adults were to follow. Uvalde, Texas, has had an experience they would not wish on any other town in the United States, or elsewhere in the world. Just as the school year was about to conclude for the summer break, hell sent the Angel of Death to take charge in the guise of a psychopathic teen on a psychotic rampage.

Apart from the 21 who had been killed outright, others, some seriously wounded, were hospitalized. The young gunman appeared to deliberately drive his car into a ditch. Then he walked over to the school holding a rifle. He evaded police, to enter the school building where he walked from classroom to classroom, firing at children, spreading terror and the promise of death. 

18-year-old Salvador Ramos who lived in Uvalde had no criminal record. Initial evidence appears to indicate that the weapons were bought in the wake of his 18th birthday. The school video shared on social media showed someone dressed in black, running to a side door of the school, carrying a rifle. The owner of an auto repair shop and a co-worker had left the business, looking for lunch                      when they heard gunshots from the school.Then they saw women working at a nearby funeral home screaming,"He's shooting! He's shooting!"

The two men approached the armed teen intending to ask whether they could be of assistance, after seeing his vehicle in a ditch close to the school. The teen responded by shooting at them, before barricading himself in the school for the 45 minutes it would take to shoot at his little victims and kill them.

Law enforcement agents secure the scene of the shooting on Tuesday.

 

 

The Courage of His Convictions

  Boris Bondarev via AP

 "I couldn't take it any longer. I should have done it at the start but not everyone is a hero."

"What's the point in our work when the Russian president is the only 'diplomat' in this country and he 'knows better'? All diplomats should have asked themselves that and maybe quit."

"For 20 years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 of this year. The aggressive war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine, and in fact against the entire Western world, is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but also perhaps, the most serious crime against the people of Russia."

Boris Bondarev, counsellor, Russian permanent mission, United Nations, Geneva

 

A graduate of the elite Moscow university specializing in the training of Russian diplomats, Boris Bondarev was employed at the Russian foreign ministry for twenty years, until he handed over his letter of resignation on Monday. As he did so, sharing his move on social media, he urged his diplomatic colleagues to do the same. He resigned his post in a furious denunciation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for assigning a criminal mission in the military invasion of Ukraine, to Russia.

This seasoned diplomat's very public resignation along with the heat of his condemnation of a president not known to take dissent or accusations of personal misconduct lightly, represents the first high-profile defection yet linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting high civilian death numbers alongside the wanton destruction of Ukraine's towns, villages and cities. He acted as he did, he said out of moral conviction, to take a stand against the Putin regime.

As he now becomes a pariah in Russian government circles, he insists he has no fear for his own safety. He was simply motivated by 'disgust' that his position as a diplomat was that of representing Russia abroad in view of the criminal nature of Russia's invasion of a neighbouring state. And nor did it sit well with him, that an article about "crimes against humanity" purportedly committed by the government of Ukraine within Ukraine's east, is the leading official propaganda posted on Russia's mission to the UN's website.

Former diplomat Bondarev's specialty was nuclear non-proliferation for most of the last ten years. He feels  horrified at this juncture by how superficially and carelessly Russian officialdom now raise the prospect of deploying nuclear weapons: "It really is chilling", he avows. A number of his professional acquaintances quietly left their positions at the ministry since the invasion began, Bondarev explained, in reflection of some Russian diplomats being privately appalled by the war brought to Ukraine.

 

A covered body is seen in a residential area near Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in the southern port city of Mariupol   REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

That the Russian Foreign Ministry issues supportive declarations for war crimes obvious in their nature to the outside world, Russian diplomats exonerate their military and their government as being embroiled in a war of necessity, to rid the geography of the presence of sinister and stability-threatening fascists in Ukraine. That President Putin is himself exercising the fascist in his role as Russian tyrant represents a misunderstanding by a West seeking to destabilize Russia and by extension, eastern Europe.

 

Sergey Lavrov, Russia's current minister of foreign affairs, at one time represented a role model for generations of Russian diplomats whose admiration of his skilled craft of diplomacy and outstanding good manners attracted emulation. Until a mysterious transformation took place, a "deplorable evolution to become a person who spurts out utter nonsense", said the former counsellor.

 

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops has resulted in a wave of antiwar protests, sending thousands of Russian dissidents into exile. Among them some of Russia's best-known artists, singers and filmmakers who have spoken out publicly against their president's aggression and were then blacklisted or threatened with criminal charges which would lead to prison sentences. 

There is an undercurrent of speculation within Russian media, of senior figures in the government inclusive of liberal-leaning officials, such as the chief of the Central Bank, privately criticizing the invasion, none yet having taken a public stand. The former counsellor, who lives in Geneva. appears not to be concerned over the backlash he can expect should he return to Russia.

UN building in Geneva    AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File

The Symbiosis of Two Great Wheat Growing Nations

The Symbiosis of Two Great Wheat Growing Nations

"Kyiv is the birthplace of the Slavs, and arguably, Ukraine is the starting point. It's really only when the Russian Empire captures this region and takes it over that it becomes a kind of colony of Russia."

"A lot of history is written about generals and battles and famous men who produced a new kind of stirrup or something like that in the Middle Ages."

"And it's really, I think, the men and women who experimented with wheat, seeds and cross-pollination hundreds and hundreds of years ago that are responsible for our survival."

"And the stirrup is not nearly as important in the long run than all that food experimentation that was done, particularly along the Black Sea."

"For Putin [whose master's thesis was on strategic resources in Russia and Ukraine], it's all about resources and always has been. [Russia's] elemental desire [to dominate the Black Sea is important to understanding the conflict]."

"Russia's future has always depended on control of the Black Sea region. When it was the Russian Empire, it was the foreign exchange Russia got from Ukraine that made it possible for it to expand. And then even in the Soviet period, it was Ukrainian grain that was a big part of what held the Eastern Bloc together."

Scott Reynolds Nelson, historian, author: Oceans of Grain

"[The single spring wheat plant Fife received] was not some mutant produced in Canada. It belonged to a variety cultivated in the middle of Europe and was accidentally present as a single grain in this shipment of winter wheat."

"Only because of a strange and very unlikely accident did Ukrainian wheat, in the form of a single grain find its way to Canada -- and not to the address of some experimental farm or famous breeder, but to the field of an ordinary farmer."

The late research biologist Stephan Symko

"The introduction of Marquis wheat is one of the greatest practical triumphs that Canada has ever had, one that is perennially fruitful, not impoverishing but ever increasing the wealth of our country and making it a better land to live in."

"But this is not all, for Marquis extends its blessings far beyond the bounds of this country, not merely to the United States of America where it is also grown on a large scale, but to the Old World. Especially in Europe, to which it is borne by a great fleet of ships across the broad Atlantic, it adds to the quantity and improves the quality of the daily bread of millions of toilers who have never herd its name."

A.H. Reginald Buller: Essays on Wheat

In 1842, David Fife developed Red Fife Wheat, the dominant wheat grown in Western Canada for 60 years – 1860 to 1910. Red Fife is the male parent of Marquis Wheat which, in 1915, supplanted Red Fife as the dominant Canadian wheat.  nGenium

 

In Africa and the Middle East up to 50 million people risk facing famine within months, deprived by the Russian military assault on Ukraine, of wheat grain from Ukraine. Canada stands prepared to send ships to aid export of Ukrainian grain; a metaphor for the grain that binds the two nations historically. Plant breeders and research circles are aware that Canada's famous wheat owes a debt of gratitude to Ukraine as an industry built upon a kernel of grain from Halychyna in Western Ukraine.

Red Fife -- Canada's oldest wheat allied with Slow Food International's Ark of Taste as a catalogue of endangered heritage foods, and its hybrids including Marquis were descended from wheat grown in Halychanka, Western Ukraine. Plant breeders created new wheat variations with the use of the hereditary base of Halychanka. There is an origins story associated with Red Fife relating to a few grains from a ship full of wheat docked at Glasgow that were tucked into a hatband.

Those grains were sent to a farmer whose name was David Fife who farmed in Otonabee, Peterborough County, in Ontario. A friend from Glasgow where David Fife was originally from, sent farmer Fife grains he took from a ship carrying winter wheat from Danzig, (now Gdansk, Poland). Farmer Fife planted the seeds in the spring of 1842. True to its name, winter wheat requires a cold winter; a single seed sprouted and matured out of which farmer Fife developed Red Fife, still valued today for bread.

Eventually Marquis was derived from Red Fife, a cross with an Indian wheat, Hard Red Calcutta, maturing earlier with a higher yield than Red Fife and with similar bread-making qualities. Marquis was released in 1911, and named the best wheat variety in Canada. Marquis took up 80 to 90 percent of total wheat acreage by 1918, from northern Saskatchewan to southern Nebraska, establishing Canada as a wheat export breadbasket.

 

Ukraine is usually a major producer of cereals such as maize and wheat    Reuters

 

Other Ukrainian grains; Odessa 4 and Myronivka 808 have as well formed a portion of Canadian wheat breeding programs. Barley from Brandon was shared with a Kharkiv research institute. Wheat has been sowed along Ukraine's Black Sea coast since 2700 BC, where the country's black soil lends itself marvelously well to the production of the staple grain. Its broad plains, deep rivers and fresh water from snow melt off mountains enabled wheat export from ports like Odessa.

Whether occupied by Russia, Austria or Poland, Ukrainian wheat obscured its origins, labelled for export under the name of the occupying power. For much of recent history Ukraine was not thought of as a separate region. Known as "Little Russia" in the 18th and 19th centuries, yet in the fifth century when the Ukrainian capital Kyiv was founded, the regional importance of Ukraine kept it a vassal state to whichever neighbour was most powerful at the time.

"Everything relates back to the backbone of Marquis. As a direct descendant of Red Fife [Halychanka], the [Ukrainian] contribution is there."

"For the longest time, the standard for winter hardiness in our winter wheat trials was a variety called Kharkov [named after the city of Kharkiv, home to one of the largest national plant gene banks]."

Dr. George Fedak, research scientist emeritus, Agriculture and AgriFood Canada

Pictured is a wheat field in western Ukraine   AFP via Getty Images

 

Russia's Hollow Victory

"The Russian army has started very intensive destruction of the town of Sievierodonetsk, the intensity of shelling doubled."

"They are shelling residential quarters, destroying house by house."

"We do not know how many people died, because it is simply impossible to go through and look at every apartment."

Serhiy Gaidai, Luhansk governor 

"This will be the critical next few weeks of the conflict."

"And it depends on how effective they are at conquering Sievierodonetsk and the lands across it."

Mathieu Boulegue, Chatham House think tank, London

Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting via teleconference on May 17    EPA

The riverside town of Sievierodonetsk is being bombarded by Russian troops in a major assault for the last Ukrainian-held territory in Luhansk where Moscow claims ethnic Russian separatists have moved the area solidly into Russian possession. A massive artillery bombardment as a last bastion in Luhansk is hammering Sievierodonetsk to solidify Russian possession of one of two northeastern provinces into Russian territory.

Both the city and its twin, Lyshchanak located on the Siverskiy Donets river's opposite bank represent a Ukrainian-held pocket in the east that Russia has focused on overrunning since mid-April, once its campaign to capture Kyiv had failed. According to Ukraine's general staff, in an offensive on Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine forces had pushed the offensive back along a stretch of the front line. 

Some military analysts view the advance of Russian forces on the Luhansk front as a major drive to achieve Russia's less ambitious war aims, to capture increased territory that pro-Russian rebels claim. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu claimed the "Liberation of the Luhansk People's Republic" would soon be completed.

The conditions in the Donbas, including Luhansk and its neighbour Donetsk province are "hell", according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the region has been completely destroyed: by Russian troops. Which speaks volumes about the Russian campaign, claiming Ukraine territory as its own by tradition and right of arms in a bid to force Ukraine to 'voluntarily' cede land to Russia. What Russia stands to gain if it manages to complete its takeover of the Donbas is a smoking, crushed ruin.

Moscow anticipates the face-saving issue of the capture of Luhansk and Donetsk, in finally being able to claim a 'victory' since it had announced this to be its objective. That goal came closer to reality when Ukraine ordered its garrison in the port city of Mariupol to stand down following a siege of close to three months. A situation that Russia celebrates as a 'surrender' and Ukraine defends as a 'withdrawal' for the purpose of preserving the lives of Ukrainian servicemen. 

More than 1,700 soldiers in the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, have surrendered since Monday, Russian authorities said. Here, Ukrainian servicemen sit in a bus after arriving under escort of the pro-Russian military in Olenivka in the Donetsk region on Friday. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

 

Roughly two thousand Ukraine militia members have so far surrendered at the Azovstl metalworks. The question of how many Ukrainian fighters surrendered has not been confirmed by Kyiv, but Britain's estimate is that a large force had laid down arms, the estimate placed at around 1,700. An unknown number of fighters remained within the underground labyrinth of the steelworks, unprepared to surrender their defense of the ruined city. 

An unknown number of troops remain in the sprawling complex, seen here on Friday, which is the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic port city — a target from the start of the Russian invasion nearly three months ago. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Ukraine's military command had assured the city's defenders they could emerge and save their lives. The commander of the Azov Battalion, the unit that has defended the steelworks, confirmed the order to halt fighting was being carried out, stating that all civilians and wounded fighters were removed from the plant. "The situation is really hard and horrible and my husband is on the way from one hell to another hell, from Azovstal steel plant to a prison, to captivity", the wife of one soldier lamented.

The Red Cross undertook registration of hundreds of Ukrainians surrendering as prisoners of war. Moscow claims the prisoners will be given humane treatment under internationally-recognized war conventions. Russian politicians on the other hand, claim some of the Ukrainian soldiers must be tried for crimes, and even executed, presumably as neo-Nazi fascists, as Vladimir Putin has so often claimed them to be. 

A convoy of pro-Russian troops is seen before the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian soldiers from the besieged steel mill on Monday. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Russia is desperate to emerge from this vicious fiasco it has created, with some semblance of pride in its enterprise. One that has crushed its reputation as thoroughly as the bombardment of Ukraine's towns, villages and cities have been crushed by Russia's war machines. The Kremlin's orders to its troops to succeed in its noble enterprise of striking civilian targets, killing civilians by the thousands, destroying their homes and creating millions of displaced and refugees have created a living hell for innocent people.

 Not so happily for Russia, military analysts maintain that Russia's resources to achieve its goal of capturing the entire Donbas may yet fail, owing to scarcity of resources. In hopes of bolstering its war effort, Moscow's parliament is considering a bill to invite Russians over age 40 and foreigners age 30 and over to join the military.

Ignore It, It'll Go Away : There the Civil Liberties Groups Always Have the Right Solution

"We are opposed to his, but that's not because we don't think Holocaust denial s egregious and terrible and it's not because we don't think it's harmful. It's because we don't think that the criminal law is the way to approach it."

"We are talking about putting people in prison for things that they said."

"We're singling out a particular historical genocide and tragedy and protecting it with the criminal law in a way that we're not doing for others."

"If ou look at other countries that hve Holocaust denial laws, including Germany, big shocker,they still have antisemites. They still have problems with racism and antisemitism, so this is not an effective way to tackle the problem."

Cara Zwibel, director, fundamental freedoms program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association

Yad Vashem    Israel

"As Canada and the world continue to witness a rise in antisemitism and Holocaust ignorance and trivialization, now more than ver we expect our government leaders to support efforts to combat Jew-hatred, particularlythrough Holocaust education."

"Once passed, this funding and amended Criminal Code will have a lasting positive impact in the Jewish community and the fight against antisemitism."

Michael Levitt, President and CEO, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

 

"Our government takes the fight against antisemitism and all hate crimes very seriously. No Jewish Canadian should be subjected to racism and hateful rhetoric that has no place in our country."

"Freedom of expression is a fundamental freedom protected under the Charter. Like all rights and freedoms, it is not absolute and may be subject to reasonable limits under the Charter."

David Taylor, spokesperson, Canadian Ministry of Justice

Thousands of people demonstrated in downtown Montreal as participants chanted pro-Palestinian slogans. (Louis de Belleval/Radio-Canada)

Civil liberties groups much prefer unfettered-by-law freedoms for the general public to voice their opinion on topics that run the gamut from benign to violently incendiary. History has proven time and again that these freedoms to ignore hateful rhetoric have a way to begin creeping into the general consciousness. Repeat a slander often enough with firm conviction and recruits to such an ideology merge from the shadows. If the legal system takes no notice then injurious falsehoods have a habit of becoming popularly accepted and eventually a social more of the day.

The ravening beast that was the propaganda arm of the Third Reich didn't have to work too hard to convince the German public that the Jewish population living among them as proud German-Jews were in actual fact, scum of the earth, shielding their true character under the guise of reputable, trusted citizens of the country. When any discerning German of intelligence knew that Jews did their best to live up to the tenets of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

There is a well established undercurrent of Jew-hatred alive and well everywhere in the world, a renaissance of antisemitism whose viral infectability keeps spreading and gaining enthusiastic adherents. In the multicultural melting pot of Canadian citizenry which has undergone an alteration of immense proportions in the last few decades where immigrants bring with them the social culture of the countries they have left; among them a strong current of hatred of Jews.

Although now citizens of Canada, enjoined to adapt to Canadian values where people of all backgrounds, ethnicities and religious convictions are presumably equally accepted and esteemed, this aspect of Canadian culture is swept aside by the virulence of resentment against a self-imposed victimhood ascribed to Palestinians who resolutely refuse to recognize the State of Israel, infected with hatred for Jews 'occupying' their ancestral homeland, legally and under the auspices of general UN agreement.

Continued and continual marches, protests, public denunciations, mount the streets of the cities of Canada, spreading a lethal hatred against Jews; Holocaust denial is one of the weapons in this war of demonization of Jews and of Israel. A country like the Islamic Republic of Iran which the former Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper severed diplomatic ties expends an enomous amount of energy promoting Holocaust denial and violent repudiation of Israel.

Iran has its tentacles firmly in place through the activities of its proxy militias, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hard at work infiltrating civil society worldwide through its supporters. Protests against the 'occupation' of Palestine (an ancient Roman-inspired designation of Judaean lands, co-opted by Arabs originally from Jordan, Syria and Egypt presenting themselves as the original inhabitants and current representatives of 'Palestine') take place in Canadian cities with the flags of the PLO and Hamas, considered terrorist groups in Canada, in plain sight.

So, the truth of the matter is, the Civil Liberty groups balk at the very idea of limiting the opportunity for Jew-haters to continue expressing their virulent hatred, disliking the penalty to be instituted under Canadian law for denying the fact that a fascist, war-mongering country institutionalized a genocidal program of annihilation of Europe's Jews with meticulous attention to detail and complete impunity. 

Their spokeswoman speaks from a pulpit of sanctimonious righteousness, preferring to look past the reality that Jews view a resurgence of the methods that made the Holocaust possible, occurring before their very eyes.

Bodies lie piled against the walls of a crematory room in a German concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. The bodies were found by U.S. Seventh Army troops who took the camp on May 14, 1945

Evacuating the Azovstal Steel Works, Occupying Mariupol

"There are no commanders of the highest level [among those who surrendered] -- they have not left [the bowels of the Azovstal steelworks]."

"That is-- so far."

Denis Pushilin, head, Donetsk People's Republic

 

"Today, the entire Mariupol is under the control of the Russian army, the people's militia of the Donetsk People's Republic, and the territory of the Azovstal plant with the remnants of nationalists and foreign mercenaries located [there] is securely blocked."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu 

"Despite Russian forces having encircled Mariupol for over ten weeks, staunch Ukrainian resistance delayed Russia’s ability to gain full control over the city,"

"This frustrated its early attempts to capture a key city and inflicted costly personnel losses amongst Russian forces."

U.K. Defense Ministry

A view shows a plant of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine May 15, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

"The combat mission in Mariupol has ended."

"We have long talked about the significance of Mariupol as a major economic port on the Sea of Azov and also geographically relevant to the fighting in the east, sort of at the southern end of near where the Donbas region cuts across the extreme East of Ukraine."  

"And we have long talked about the fact that we believe the Russians were going to try to encircle Ukrainian troops that are in the Donbas region and in the east, and to be able to free up forces to do that from the south meant Mariupol was important to them."

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby 

A wounded Ukrainian service member from the besieged Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol removed from a bus on a stretcher after being taken under escort of pro-Russian forces to the town of Novoazovsk, Ukraine, May 16, 2022. ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

 

Mariupol, or more to the point, the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works have fallen to Russian occupation. The Ukrainian defenders of the city through their resistance to the full Russian occupation of the port city, giving them full direct access to the Sea of Azov and control of the Black Sea, managed through courage, determination and hard-fought stubbornness, to see to it that the Russian military deployed troops they could have used elsewhere, thus deterring Moscow's plans for a swift takeover of the key portions of the country.

This has given the government of Ukraine and its military precious time to deploy their own resistance and no doubt added to the defence capabilities that forced Russian troops to surrender their aspiration to take Kyiv and remove the government in power. "They did not allow the enemy to transfer groups of up to 17 battalion tactical groups -- about 20,000 personnel -- to other areas", stated a Ukrainian army spokesman with pride. The planned encirclement of the Donbas was another casualty of the Russian military thanks to the Azovstal standoff.

As a symbol of Ukrainian resistance and defence against an enemy determined to destroy it, the Mariupol siege and its struggle to overcome all obstacles to full occupation was a matter of national pride and a morale-enhancing episode in the chapter of courage under fire that will join the annals of other sieges that failed to fall to an enemy barrage over an extended period of conflict. The Azovstal situation, according to Ukrainian officials, represents an 'evacuation', not a surrender.

Vladimir Putin, in addressing the situation of Russian losses against Ukrainian fortitude and defiance ordered  "Seal it off so that not even a fly comes through" in recognizing the defenders' position making the constant, continuous assault 'pointless'. Now, Mariupol has fallen completely, and Russia can 'occupy' fully a city they have completely destroyed. The goal of a land corridor from the Russian mainland to Crimea has been achieved.

 

Ukrainian service members ride on top of an armored vehicle amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 16, 2022. RICARDO MORAES/REUTERS

 

But the war is not over and what seems on the surface a secure 'win' may not have a lasting impact on Mr. Putin's aspirations. He may have possession of the port city, what is left of it, but his war has not and is not proceeding well for him. Apart from the rank-and-file having surrendered and been led away to an unknown fate despite Russian assurances that they will be treated under international conventions for prisoners-of-war, the conduct of the Russian military up to this point in the conflict has been anything but reassuring.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's heroic resistance fighters are viewed as "Nazi criminals" by the Kremlin which can cite their ideological criminality as just cause for severe 'punishment'. Western onlookers have reached varying conclusions; that a conflict "stalemate" exists, that a war of attrition will carry on for years to come. What does seem obvious is that the Donbas offensive has not gone in Russia's favour. A Ukrainian counter-offensive threatens the Russian supply lines.

Russian analyst Mikhail Khodarenok issued a surprise warning on state television that Ukraine has the potential to mobilize up to a million recruits to continue opposing Russian belligerence against a Ukraine that has turned out to be Russia's worst nightmare. Khodarenok deplores the position that his president has placed his country in, as an international pariah and his analysis of the military situation should give Vladimir Putin the night sweats.

Ukrainian troops stand at the Ukraine-Russia border in what was said to be the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, in a screengrab obtained from a video released on May 15, 2022 by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Ukrainian Ministry of Defense/handout/Reuters