My Views About the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
A building in Ukraine destroyed by the Russians.
Some of my conservative friends and especially Trump supporters have been seemingly justifying Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. My friend Jim wrote:
Zelensky is a snake. He has been laundering money for years. He is used by the Deep State. That is why he is supported by the likes of HRC, Biden, Obama, Gates, Pelosi and all the rest. I do know that there are elements of the Ukrainian army who persecute and kill Ukrainian Russians.
Another friend named Mike wrote:
Any bets on who wins? $100 on The Ukraine Government and The Faggot Zelinski going down. Putin is winning cuz God is using him to take out The Satanic Kazarian Mafia.
Why does Mike think the President of Ukraine is gay? Volodymyr Zelinskyy has a beautiful wife. From where does Mike and Jim get their information?
I told Mike I won’t bet with him because I don’t want to take his money. He told me that before the Ukrainian army started to take back what the Russian army conquered.
Before I go any further, let me state what I believe to be my qualifications for writing anything about the Russian / Ukrainian conflict: I lived in Russia from March 1994 to October 1997. I’ve been to the far eastern city of Khabarovsk. I lived in central Siberia in Akadem Gorodok close to Novosibirsk for 4 months. I’ve been to a few times to Moscow and walked the length of Red Square. I lived in St. Petersburg for two years. And I lived in the Arctic city of Murmansk Russia for 10 months. I love the Russian people! Living in Russia was one of the most fun experiences in my life making new friends and learning a new language. I got to the point I was comfortable on the streets of Russia alone. I could communicate with them in their own language. And I met not only ethnic Russians, I met people from all 15 republics of the former Soviet Union and can name them all from memory. How many Americans can do that? And I even met people from provinces within Russia such as Chechnya. I considered them to be a kind and affectionate people. I loved to shake hands with the Russians because they are good hand-shakers. The Japanese are no good at it!
And I visited Russia’s neighbors such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lituania. In 1997 I passed through Belorus and Ukraine by train, the very area of the fighting today, the Donbas region. I passed through Belorus on my way from St. Petersburg to Warsaw, Poland, and was not challenged to show my visa for Belorus. But on my way from the Black Sea area of Russia back to St. Petersburg, the train passed through Donbas Ukraine and Ukrainian border guards on the train asked me to show a visa for Ukraine. I didn’t have one. My two Russian companions talked the Ukrainian border guards out of giving me a fine!
Of the 15 former Soviet Republics, only three of them speak Slavic languages, Russia, Ukraine, and Belorus. They are close ethnically. I always considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one big family. One-third of Ukrainians speak Russian. In the capital Kyiv the Russian language is predominant. I met many ethnic Ukrainians who live in Russia.
When I lived in Niigata Japan I used to visit Russian ships at port. The captain and the crew treated me and my friends as honored guests. Some of them were ethnic Ukrainians. One Ukrainian lady working on the ship told me half of the Russians are ethnic Ukrainians and half of the Ukrainians are ethnic Russians!
I have a close Ukrainian friend I knew in St. Petersburg. Her name is Lydia and I am still in contact with her. She and her daughter are now refugees in France. She tells me no place in Ukraine is safe.
I’m saying this because it disturbs me greatly what Russia is doing now in Ukraine. There have been countless war crimes. Innocent civilians, women, and children have been killed! And for what? To feed Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions!
Historically Russia has always been a bully to its neighbors. In the restroom of a department store in Helsinki Finland I saw graffiti on the wall cursing Russians. In 1940, Finland lost part of its eastern territory in a war with the Soviet Union, and that area is now part of Russia. Russia didn’t return it after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lituania became unwilling members of the Soviet Union. Their languages are all different from each other and not similar to Russian. They have a strong national identity and are not friendly toward Russia. They all have an etnic Russian population. The older generation of those countries learned to speak Russian because Russian was the language of education in the Soviet Union. But they refuse to speak it today to any Russian who is a resident of their country. While in Tallinn Estonia, I heard an Estonian lady scold a Russian boy for doing something she didn’t like. At first, she spoke to him in Estonian, and when he didn’t seem to understand it, she spoke in Russian telling him he needs to learn Estonian. This was a few years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. I think all the ethnic Russians living in the Baltic countries are probably fluent in the languages of those countries today.
The only neighbor of Russia that likes Russia is Belorus. That’s because the president, Lukashenko is a buddy of Putin. He was president of Belorus as long ago as when I lived in Russia in the 1990s! Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia when I was there. The world loved Yeltsin but the Russians considered him a drunk and a clown.
According to a documentary film I saw, Putin was appointed Yeltsin’s successor because of a deal the Yeltsin family made with him. The Yeltsins were corrupt and stole billions from the Russian people. They placed Putin in power because Putin promised not to prosecute them later. They’re all criminals, including Putin!
This documentary exposes Putin’s crimes against the Russian people. You have to click on the “Watch on YouTube” link to see it. YouTube calls it “inappropriate or offensive to some audiences”. The only people I can think of who would find it offensive are the Putin worshippers.
Putin came to power through the 1999 apartment bombings. It was a false flag FSB operation. Putin has the blood of his own people on his hands.
If you are new to this website, you should know I am no longer living in Japan. I moved to the US territory of Guam in 2018. There is a Russian community here. Every one of them will tell you that Vladimir Putin is a criminal. Many of them came to Guam for political asylum. One Russian man told me he would be arrested if he returned to Russia because he is a dissenter of Putin’s policies.
My opinion: No matter what you think about Ukraine or its president or shady deals with the Biden family, Putin is the aggressor in his war in Ukraine. When I told my Ukrainian friend Lydia what my conservative friends were saying about Putin’s justification for his so-called “special military operation”, she got upset and told me I was listening to Russian propaganda! She said Russian propaganda is very strong.
Ukrainians have good historical reasons not to trust Russia. Moscow starved millions of Ukrainians to death in 1932-33. See: https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
My friend Yanek from Belorus says he believes the West tricked Putin into invading Ukraine knowing that it would result in his downfall. By “the West” I am talking especially about America, Western Europe and NATO which I believe is run by a vast corporation called the “Holy See” the Whore of the Book of Revelation that rides the Beast, the Western nations. Their goal is to take over Russia and destroy Putin, they don’t care how many Russians and Ukrainians die in the process.
Putin is toast. He was given false information to think the Ukrainian people would welcome the Russian army as liberators from the Nazis. The Ukrainian government is NOT run by Nazis according to my Ukrainian friend Lydia. The only possible Nazis are a small army of only 2000 soldiers in Eastern Ukraine called the Azov regiment. Putin used the fear of Nazis to rally support for his war. Many Russians died by the Nazis in WW2. They call it the Great Patriotic War. St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, is considered one of the hero cities of the Soviet Union for surviving a two-year siege by the German army. Putin used the historical hatred of Nazis to deceive the Russian people to support his invasion of Ukraine. He will not succeed. He is not fighting for his people. He’s destroying them. He only cares about himself.
The Russians do not have the heart to fight against their Slavic cousins in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are willing to fight to the death to defend their homeland. Doesn’t that make sense to you folks who call the president of Ukraine a snake? He may be one but he’s earned the respect of his people and the world by not running away when given the opportunity to do so. From what I can see, he’s being a true leader to his people. I could be wrong about him, but that still doesn’t justify Putin’s aggression.