Africa takes the lead where others, including New Zealand, have joined the Russia/Ukraine war

By
John Minto
-
53
1164

While New Zealand has been pouring petrol on Russia’s war with Ukraine, Africa is doing its best to bring peace to the conflict with a delegation of African leaders visiting Kyiv and Moscow to try and find a way forward.

New Zealand was right to strongly criticise Russia for its invasion and occupation of parts of Eastern Ukraine but we were wrong to pay for more weapons to fuel the conflict. In doing so we have taken the US side in the conflict rather than calling out US meddling as well as Russian aggression. Anyone who has been paying attention knows it is US interference in Ukraine, including the overthrow of the pro-Russian, democratically-elected Ukrainian government in 2014 which provided reasons for the Russian invasion.

Then when Russian President Vladimir Putin sought security guarantees from the US in an on-line call with US President Joe Biden, the US, believing they had Russia cornered and on the back foot, refused.

US objectives are not New Zealand’s objectives and providing arms to the conflict is cowardly and morally unprincipled.

The African delegation will have limited success in the short term because for peace talks to succeed both sides have to want it and that’s not the case yet. However, the African delegation deserves respect and the praise of humanity for their efforts.

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53 COMMENTS

  1. Ray McGovern, the former director of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch at the C.I.A., recently pointed out a fatal flaw in the war propaganda. Something invariably occurs when one asks supporters of the war: “What else could Putin have done?”

    “Nobody can give me an answer,” Ray says. Instead we get all manner of bizarre accusations: “Unprovoked! Unprovoked! He’s a madman! Putin is the new Hitler!” (Pretty much the same nonsense used to justify destroying Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.)

  2. The reason USA and Britain are militarily supporting Ukraine is due to the 1994 the Budapest Memorandum that negotiated the return of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine’s procession (Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power at the time) back to Russia for decommissioning.

    Worth a read; https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-is-the-budapest-memorandum-and-why-has-russias-invasion-torn-it-up-178184

    “In exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal, Ukraine initially sought legally binding guarantees from the US that it would intervene should Ukraine’s sovereignty be breached. But when it became clear that the US was not willing to go that far, Ukraine agreed to somewhat weaker – but nevertheless significant – politically binding security assurances to respect its independence and sovereignty which guaranteed its existing borders. China and France subsequently extended similar assurances to Ukraine, but did not sign the Budapest Memorandum.”

    Note the China and France position in support.

    and in regards the NPT (non prolific treaty of nuclear weapons)

    “It is unsurprising, perhaps, that some Ukrainian leaders and the public feel betrayed and consider that the security assurances they received in the Budapest Memorandum are not worth the paper they were written on.

    This may have far-reaching consequences for the future of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Other states in Russia’s neighbourhood – and in the wider world – may begin to question whether such assurances are sufficiently reliable to ensure their long-term security. This may, in turn, undermine the credibility of major power security assurances, previously used as bargaining chips to dissuade countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine from possessing nuclear weapons.”

    As we know Belarus is going to be used as a nuclear launching pad so to that extent Russia is actually instigating nuclear war.

    There are no victories in nuclear war for Russia, Europe or the world.

    Perhaps the biggest concern right now is if the Russian create another ecological and environmental disaster by blowing up the six nuclear reactors at Zaporizhzhia. Reactors at risk after the ecological and environmental disaster after Russia blew up the Khakhovka dam and made the cooling of the reactors problematic.

  3. Unfortunately the monsters behind this war, from the wicked Zelensky to the beyond evil Victoria Nuland are not interested in peace. They love to see Ukrainians and Russians die alike, they love to see prices for oil and food going up especially hurting the developing world.

  4. Afrika flexing on the global political stage, thinking anyone will take them seriously is pretty funny you got to admit

  5. Ukraine Government Structure!!!
    The statement “The overthrow of the pro Russian, democratically elected government in 2014” cannot go unchallenged and needs to be tested.
    When a parliamentary vote on confidence in the president breaks 320 against and no votes for the president it is a clear that the president does not have the confidence of parliament.
    When the clearly pro-Russian president then leaves the country it is apparent that one will need to set up a presidential election.

  7. NZ should stay the fuck out of any conflict that involves the US. US exceptionalism is ova the east is rising and rising fast.

    Our mission statement foreign policy should read ‘Friends’ to all, enemies to none’!! We should be aligning with the BRICS nations not Washington that puts sanctions on us or doesn’t want to give us a FTA like China. The Russians and other nations are sick of trading their hard-earned goods for little green paper money that printed basically for free.

  8. Yes we do have this never ending Eurocentric view that West is best. Very tedious, we need to get more of our news from Al Jazeera instead of the BBC who are constantly biased on this issue and on Palestine where they date not say anything negative about Israel for fear of being called anti-semitic.

    • Anglo/US centric prejudices are embedded in NZ and the “West”. I flew into Beijing a few years ago, expecting a veneer of civilisation and had my world turned inside out. Turns out we are third world. I went to high tech facilities that seemed far ahead of any seen in Silicon Valley. New York was fun to visit, but old and decrepit, Beijing next century.

      When the fiasco in Ukraine began it was all Western training, Western wonder weapons, “we will be in Moscow tomorrow, gas station masquerading as a country”. Yeah right, turns out Russia has the wonder weapons, not the Western junk littering battlefields.

      So to Africa. They see how China, Russia and Asia have advanced. They see it as their tomorrow. Not the exploitative West. Who can blame them?

      • lol – will they be disappointed. Ask Zambians about China’s soft power and stand-over tactics, they’ll tell you. At least the West has PlayStation and Xbox. lol

        • Yeah, I hear China is a bad, bad, bad actor, hear it all the time. Never any verifiable evidence provided mind you, but hearsay, always goes a long, long way in today’s world anyway. Well done, government and their elitist class bosses salutes your actions.

      • How bout those Uyghur Muslims – did you visit them too? How bout Tianamin Square did you stop there? How bout the rural poverty – was that on your itinerary too? At least you now understand the power of capitalism to lift billions from poverty.

        • Given how long capitalism has been around, you wouldn’t expect billions of people to still be in poverty now would you, but they are. Capitalism requires an on-going pool of people and resources to exploit, hence why billions of people are still in poverty, after hundreds of years of capitalism. At least the Chinese version of capitalism is far less exploitative than most Western versions and strangely enough, this is a problem for the elitist capitalism class, as they are not in favour of a less exploitative version of capitalism catching on, for obvious reasons. This is why there are endless made up stories of Chinese hi-jinx and so forth. Of course you could prove me wrong here by providing verifiable proof of Chinese crimes and so on, but I know you won’t because no one can and ever has because they are made up stories designed to destabilize China in order to allow Western capitalism to flood into China and show them how capitalism really should operate, aka, ramp up the exploitation factor several fold. One final point, you are right about one thing – rural poverty in real in China. Now, if only China was the only country in the world that suffered from such an unfortunate circumstance, if only…

        • Yeah Jason, I went there on commercial business and I saw lots. Why don’t you go too. Whilst in New York I stepped over homeless people sleeping on the footpath in Wall St. This morning walking the dogs in NZ a homeless person sleeping under a bridge. Good old capitalism eh?

          • It is sad but 10% of society cannot be gainfully employed as a result of their lack of intelligence. Cruel, but true.
            When their is a breakdown in family values, homelessness results. Drug also plays a significant role in homelessness.
            This phenomenon has little to do with capitalism.

  10. This multi-polar world has evolved because the dying US Empire is in its death throes, giving way to the further growth and development of the BRIICS+. Iraq, Venezuela, Mexico and many South American nations are all signing up.

    Lil ole NZ needs to check itself because making a poor decision now by sticking with the status quo and remaining as a barnacle on the arse of the Western Dreadnought US Doom(ed), we’ll be sunk good and proper.

    We need to be smarter than this. But it probably won’t happen with mellinnials or GenZ’s because they have been well and truly indoctrinated in censorship, Neo liberal fascism and have been distracted with Green Washn environmentalism.

    It’s like a bad dream…

      • @Denny
        Boris Johnson put the boot into the peace deal when he visited Kiev (as reported by Ukrainian media at the time).

        It’s been an open secret at the Pentagon about how top take Russia down, containment or bleeding them out. It appears that the US successfully goaded the Russian elite into war and is now set upon bleeding Russia dry (using the lives of Ukrainians) as they did in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen.

        Downstream consequences of funding training and arming the Mujahideen (and then abandoning them) included the Taliban. One can only guess at the downstream consequences of funding, arming and training units like the Azov battalion. It seems the neoliberal woke see nazis everywhere except when they are following nazi doctrine, with nazi flags, insignia and tattoos.

      • Oh man it just gets worse and worse for the empire!

        Venezuela has signed up to MIR the Russian payment system and is sign up to the BRIICS+.

        That’s pretty much all of the oil trade! OPEC, SAUDI, VENSZUELA.

        And then the manufacturing base and natural resources as well as precious metals.

        Bye bye USD.

        Oh and Mexico is willing to park a couple of nukes on their border with the US.

        Game On!

    • Neo liberal fascism….such a good description of behaviour that leads to bad outcomes. Imagine being a middle class Italian or Germany a century ago and on the hogs back, believing in free markets, doing well, supporting democracy so long as it returned liberal government. Then the markets crash and with it your job, prospects, security and conformable world view. Bugger.
      Along comes a demagogue who says, yes, follow me and I will get it all back for you. PS I may have to suspend freedoms and break heads. Goodo say you, give it all back to me.
      That’s why when push comes to shove liberals are authoritarian extremists.

  14. Putin actually provided evidence in this conference that peace accords were already signed in Kiev, before Boris Johnson swooped in at the 11th hour and told Zelensky to say no to peace. At the time (March 2022), Russia had already pulled out of Kiev (and other regions) which was part of the peace accord. The MSM (erroneously it now seems) said that Russia was withdrawing because of Ukraine military forces pushing the Russians back (something that seemed highly dubious to anyone that knows anything).

  16. I refrained from commenting earlier to see if some of the usual suspects would take a dump on Africa…and sure enough…

    When faced with possible deployment of nukes in Ukraine/Russia any peace making attempts should be appreciated.

    • Seems to me Africans
      remember too well German extermination campaigns in Namibia, Belgian rule in Congo, Maumau repression in Kenya, apartheid, Sharpeville, Soweto, French atrocities across north Africa, Italians in Ethiopia, US in Libya etc etc. Prior the slave trade. Put bluntly, we Europeans have got “form”. It is very generous that the Africans have sent a delegation to request we stop killing one another.

  17. Unbelievable hypocrisy. South African is being investigated for selling arms to Russia and DRC has 5.7M displaced people from it’s own vicious war. What a joke these African leaders are (possibly even worse than ours!).

  18. luxon is right – what a bunch of wet and whiny moaners. Fuck off to live under an authoritarian regime then. At least the West is debased enough to allow freedom of movement, freedom of expression and free enterprise.

  21. What do you expect John, we are a Western, Neoliberal, Anglo Saxon Nation, a US vassal like Australia? Aussie kisses the right cheek of America’s ass & we kiss the Left cheek! But we are on the wrong side of History because the US Empire is in decline & collapse, it’s very obvious & every Anglo Saxon Nation will collapse with it!

  23. Disgraceful we have politicians from Africa pretending to play peace maker while more people are killed daily in Africa than in the Russian Ukraine conflict.
    The method of slaughter in Africa as inhumane as possible.

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