Russia, Ukraine, and the World

By Charlie Johnston

Clanton, Alabama – Joe Biden and the Deep State which runs him do not want peace between Ukraine and Russia for the same reason that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo doesn’t want the U.S. to declare war on Mexican drug cartels: It would expose the depth of the corruption and rot of their respective governments undeniably. It is no accident that Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, is effective from the very day that son began “work” at Burisma Energy Company in Ukraine.

I have more Ukrainian friends than I do Russian friends. Several play key roles in CORAC. I want to be respectful of their sensibilities. There is good reason for their anger at Russia. In 1932 and ’33 Soviet Premier Josef Stalin forcibly starved nearly 4 million Ukrainians to death to entrench communism and break Ukrainian nationalism. It rivals the levels of atrocity of the Holocaust. Most Ukrainians have relatives in recent family history with living memories of the horrors of the Holodomor. There has never been full public accountability as there was with the holocaust. Most of the perpetrators died in their beds…or at the hands of the same Josef Stalin, one of history’s greatest monsters. That is not the sort of wound that heals gently or quickly.

The history of Russia and Ukraine are entwined like a DNA strand. At times Ukraine has been a proud, independent country, albeit in the shadow of Russia. At other times, including often under the tsars, Ukraine has been a province – or a satellite state – of Russia. In 1720, while Ukraine was held as a province of Russia, Tsar Peter I began efforts to suppress the very Ukrainian language, forbidding its use in theological literature. It only got worse from there. By 1876, Tsar Alexander II banned the use of the Ukrainian language in all publications, save for some old, historical documents – and banned the importation of Ukrainian publications, or the use of the Ukrainian language in plays or lectures. This was little more than a decade after the Russian minister of internal affairs, Pyotr Valuev, declared contemptuously that, “there has never been, is not, and cannot be any separate Little Russian language, the so-called Ukrainian language.” (For a very long time, Russia proper was known as “Great Russia” and Ukraine colloquially called “Little Russia.”) The history of conflict and oppression runs long and deep.

While it is unlikely that Russian and Ukrainian relations will be anything but a deeply troubled encounter for the foreseeable future, major opportunities have been lost. This terrible war has claimed the lives of over a half million Ukrainians because people did not adjust to the new realities on the ground, could not let go of resentments and outright hatred, and corrupt western officials exploited Ukraine for their own purposes, including massive financial and political corruption. I have sometimes been shaken by how many Ukrainians I know who effectively are willing that many of their old countrymen should die so long as Russia is hurt, too. That takes resentment into raw nihilism, leaving no option but to watch the world burn.

In 1954 Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev gave local administrative authority over Crimea and the Donbass, ethnically Russian regions, to Ukraine. It was intended largely as a tacit apology for the Holodomor and seemed harmless at the time. All the involved territory was ultimately governed by the Soviet Union. But it has had huge consequences 70 years later, as this then-seemingly innocuous administrative decision has risked a global nuclear war.

Very simply, I support the right of self-determination when an area has a coherent culture and language. Ukraine clearly does – and so I adamantly support its right to be an independent state. It is on the same terms that I support the right of the Donbass and Crimea to be governed by Russia. They are ethnically Russian in the majority and have been governed by Russia for hundreds of years before 1991 and the breakup of the Soviet Union. In the 90’s, public surveys showed that nearly 70 percent of the population in these territories wanted to reunite with Russia. I adamantly condemn Russian oppression of Ukraine, but the solution to it is not for Ukraine to get a couple of chunks of Russian territory and oppress those people – which is what has happened. It is way past time to try to build a future of peaceful coexistence rather than endlessly venting grievances in a manner that gets a lot of people killed.

Just after Barack Obama and the U.S. State Dept. fomented a color revolution in Ukraine to overthrow its government and replace it with a more pliable one to U.S. interests (talk about election interference!) in 2014, there was great concern that Russia was going to invade and take over Crimea. Obama was assuring Congress that that would never happen. I got a call from a small group of Congressmen asking for my take (there were still plenty then who remembered I was notable for accurately seeing the long-term consequences of various policies and global events). I told them that of course Russia would take Crimea. #3, it was ethnically Russian; #2, it had been under Russian rule since the country had conquered the Islamic Crimean Tatars in 1783 and; #3, it was Russia’s warm water port, absolutely vital to its ability to project naval power. One said there was only a very small chance that Ukraine would deny Russia access to that military port. I retorted that the only acceptable chance for Russia was zero chance – and invited them to imagine our reaction if there was a “only a very small” chance we would have to retake San Diego in order to project naval power into the Pacific. One said it would be utterly irresponsible for us to ever allow that to happen. “There you go,” I said and engaged in a little small talk before ending the call. Russia invaded the next day, despite Obama’s smug assurances.

The group called me back the next week to ask if I thought Russia would ultimately invade Ukraine proper. I told them that, except perhaps for the Donbass, which is also ethnically Russian and considers itself Russian, no. Ukraine has a different culture, language, and religion than Russia (primarily Eastern Rite Catholic rather than Russian Orthodox). Russia would find it much easier to take Ukraine than to ever pacify it. It would be a severe, pustulated, toothache continually distracting the country from actual Russian priorities – and Vladimir Putin was way too smart for that. Only if he ever was replaced with a less intellectual but more blustering lightweight would that become a danger. BUT, I added, Putin would hint and threaten such a thing as leverage in negotiations with us and Europe, because our entire State Dep’t consisted of a bunch of pretentious lightweight blowhards who have NO idea how vitally important religious and cultural differences are – and what a barrier they are to successfully pacifying conquered territory.

I’m going to annoy those who have real geo-political chops – but are stuck in the analytic framework of the 1970’s. Russia is authoritarian, but it is not communist. It unleashed that error on the world just over a hundred years ago. Just as it started to recover from it, the western world started succumbing to it. Now the newly paganized west is the authoritarian fever swamp that the Soviet Union was in my youth. Russia wants to be a great nation with a large sphere of influence in the east, but it does not seek an empire. That was communist’s and the Soviet Union’s schtick. After nearly a thousand years of being ruled by Tsars and Commissars, only a strongman can survive the brutal politics of Russia. Just ask Georgy Malenkov. So quit complaining that Putin is a strongman as if that is some great insight. The only question there is whether we have a strongman we can reason with or one we can’t.

What is a great insight is that Putin almost certainly has the best geopolitical strategic chops of any world leader on the stage right now. What is also remarkable about him is how patient and restrained he is, while still being a strongman.

When the Soviet Union was liberalizing, then breaking up, its officials were very concerned that the U.S. would advance on it to take advantage of its diminishment. Then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker pledged that Nato would not expand an inch closer to the Russian border. That promise was broken almost the minute Bill Clinton took office and has been progressively broken ever since. At one point, Putin asked if he could join Nato. Most think that was a wry question. Nato was originally formed primarily to protect Europe from Soviet aggression. While I acknowledge the wryness of Putin’s question, I also think that even then he knew that China was the true threat to both the U.S. and the Region – and that if Nato was re-purposed to contain Chinese aggression, it could be a good deal for all. Frankly, Nato has little purpose now other than to funnel American taxpayers’ dollars to European countries’ defense so they don’t have to pay for their own. Nonetheless, its original purpose was to defend against Soviet (now Russian) aggression. You can see from the map below how well we have kept our solemn promise.

Some say that is just an excuse for Russia. Really?! In 1962 we risked nuclear war to stop the Soviet Union from doing the same to us in Cuba. What kind of xenophobic nonsense thinks Russia should be more sanguine about its national security than we are about ours? (at least when neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden are president).

For over 20 years Putin had tried to get America and the west to deal with the Russian territory (Crimea and the Donbass) which had been subsumed into Ukraine by an administrative anomaly. For 20 years, the U.S. and the west said they had more important things to worry about, so Putin should just go sit at the little kids table and behave. Did we really think that would go on forever without Russia asserting itself on the matter? If Mexico somehow managed to take Arizona and California – as some Mexican officials claim to want – would we meekly let bygones be bygones or would we fight for what were both our citizens and our territory? Would we be impressed if, when we struck to get our land back, the world accused us of invading Mexico?

After the war began, on three occasions both Russia and Ukraine were ready to end it with Ukraine ceding Crimea and the Donbass back to Russia in exchange for Russia recognizing Ukraine’s territorial integrity along historic borders. Three times the United States frantically killed those deals. On one occasion we sent British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to facilitate the killing of it. (I know Johnson was a supposed conservative – but a European conservative is somewhere to the left of Bill Clinton.) Why are we and so much of western Europe determined to keep Russia and Ukraine fighting – and their soldiers dying? To hide our own corruption and exploitation of Ukraine, we convinced it that it could win against a country 10 times the size of it with 10 times the resources and manpower it had. I maintain that most of the blood of both Ukrainians and Russians is on our hands for the hideously pathetic reason of keeping our dirty secrets…secret. Again, there is a reason that Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, extends back to the very day Hunter was hired by the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

Putin understands something the feckless navel-gazers who populate western foreign policy establishments do not: there WILL be a great nation in the east – and it will either be Russia or China. Putin wants it to be Russia…and so do I. Russia is a Christian country which has learned a lot about the perils of aspirations to empire. China is not and has not learned a thing, at least so long as it is governed by the Chinese Communist Party. Unfortunately for Russia, China is currently stronger militarily. If Russia is to maintain its territorial integrity it MUST have a western partner of sufficient strength to counter-balance the Chinese threat – and the empire China seeks to subtly build through its Belt and Road initiative. Since the first time Obama took office, the only president we have had who understood that dynamic was Trump. And he could do nothing about it because the Democrats had cynically demonized Russia for purely domestic political purposes and kept Trump off balance through an ongoing effort at a bureaucratic coup throughout his first term.

Now we have a great opportunity. Trump will be free to negotiate and work with Russia this time around. In fact, people expect it from him after the mess that has been made of world affairs the last four years. If we could get a Russia which…

• Respected and guaranteed the territorial integrity of the states within its zone of influence,
• Undercut the efforts by China to colonize smaller nations economically with its Belt and Road Initiative,
• Began to build the cultural institutions and traditions that would make a true form of ordered law in a genuinely Russian way,

…that would be a great alliance worth having, that would make Russia, America, and the world a better and safer place.

Some argue that this could never happen – mainly because they have a broad knowledge of Russia that is not particularly deep. Russia’s reform instinct, historically, has paralleled our own. Sadly, while our history with it has usually been one of successes with occasionally dramatic setbacks, theirs has been one of tragic failure. The tsars freed the serfs from their obligations to feudal-type lords. The first effort imposed a financial indemnity on the serfs that was more oppressive than the original oppressive system, so that reform had to be reformed. Shoot, the February Revolution in 1917, which deposed the Tsar and gave the Duma (legislature) pre-eminent power was a failed, ill-conceived effort to build a genuine representative democracy. When Vladimir Lenin came along with the October Revolution, effectively overthrowing the Duma, most supporters expected it would bring order to the chaos that had reigned since February – and perfect the free democratic republic they were expecting. Within a little over a year, people realized that Lenin’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” was actually the dictatorship of one man – Lenin. That triggered an assassination attempt and the Russian Civil War. Lenin survived the assassination attempt and won the civil war – and Russia’s latest long, national nightmare was upon them.

My dear friend, Desmond Birch, has argued against some of this because there are many credible prophecies that insist Russia will invade Western Europe. I actually agree with that. But, like most prophecies, you have to rid yourself of your unconscious assumptions to plumb the depth of the prophecy. I think Russia will ultimately invade Western Europe, not as a conqueror, but as a liberator from the Jihadist invasion feckless European leaders have invited on their own people. I also expect the Jihadists to make their last stand before completely crumbling, not from the Middle East where they originated, but from the European base they have occupied. When Russia invades, it will be in alliance with America to guarantee the freedom of the western world.

I have long believed that the alliance of America and Russia is a critical precursor to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. I had told that to my Priests back in the 90’s – but warned them that the relationship would first have to get even more rocky than it was in the Cold War. We got the rocky point down under Biden, but I can see the first hints of triumph for all on the horizon.

An erudite friend of mine, whose mother had met with Abp. Fulton Sheen, told me that Sheen, in his contemplations of Fatima, had said that Kiev was indispensable in the fulfillment of the Fatima message, a true key point. Kiev plays a considerable role in the origin stories of both Russia and Ukraine. I think fulfillment is at hand – if we are not hidebound to the stupidities of the foreign policy community or gripped by assumptions formed in the Cold War – which were an aberration in Russian history rather than emblematic of it.

I see a Christianity rising in the world – borne aloft by both its western wing, led by America, and its eastern wing, led by Russia – with both countries working together for the peace, security and freedom of all the countries of the world. May it be so.

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Mary Lapchak has come back on as my scheduler, after Gina had to leave because it was interfering with family duties as her daughters get into high school. Mary is busily planning out my tour for after the New Year, which will encompass Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California. If you are from one of those states and want to schedule a visit and talk, contact Mary at lapchakma@gmail.com.

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I thank all of you for responding to my fundraising appeal. All bills have been paid now. I don’t like to harp on people with artificial deadlines and I don’t like fundraising gimmicks. We do a routine quarterly appeal and, every once in a while, if we need a little jolt. So I don’t harass you all the time like so many sites do. You have repaid me by answering the call when it comes. I deeply appreciate that.

That does NOT mean I don’t respect what professional fundraisers do. Some are amazing. Once, when running a Senate Campaign, I started getting complaints from people in the field. Seems we had sent out a special delivery letter, at over $2 in postage alone, intently seeking donations. “Why, if you need money so badly,” folks were asking me, “did you waste money on postage for special delivery?” It seemed a penetrating question. We had one of the best finance directors in the country – and she and I had hit it off bigtime from the day I recruited her. But I went into her office loaded for bear. She got up, told me, “Charlie wait, let me show you this.” Then she closed the door and gave me the numbers. We had already raised four times as much money as we had in any previous individual solicitation. It raised my eyebrows. I looked at her and said, “Just keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll take the heat.” Both she and I loved working with practical fellow professionals.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

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