EU Referendum


Ukraine: lusting after war


16/04/2014



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An ignorant western media is now slavering over the prospect of civil war, with the Guardian, the Mail and others getting excited over the manoeuvrings of a limited number of (mainly) BMD-2s and BTR-D, air-portable light tanks and APCs, equipment used by Russian and Ukrainian airborne forces.

Variously described as "armoured vehicles", APCs, "tanks" and even "combat vehicles" by the girlie-boys, who are clearly all at sea when is comes to any green-painted "target” (the aviator's generic term for AFVs), we have observed before that, while target recognition is not the be all and end all, if can't identify your toys, you're not really in the game.

What shows up with such clarity at times like these is the rank amateurishness of the media – not always so apparent when they are operating on their home turf. But here, they are in unfamiliar territory, being asked to comment on things and issues about which they know next to nothing, and lack the mental architecture with which to evaluate the things they see.

Thus, the legacy media resorts to fatuous wiffle from the likes of Con Couglin, and sundry other commentators who rely more on prestige than knowledge. Each offers lame "analyses" based on stereotypic narratives which owe more to the comic-book "biff-bam" than any serious understanding of the events they are witnessing at one step removed.

However, their "reach" (the number of people that get to read their stuff) is determined not by the quality or depth of their message, but by the "prestige" and general popularity of their platform. Thus the "biff-bam" narrative will largely prevail until, like the grave predictions of imminent Russian invasion, none of their warnings transpire. Then, their rubbish will be quietly forgotten, while they ladle out another pile of garbage for public consumption.

One gets the impression, though, that these ghoulish parasites would like nothing better than blood flowing in the street, presenting them with scenarios which even those will their limited abilities can understand and describe – instead of the three-dimensional chess that seems to be being played out.

My guess, though, is that the dismal intellects of the western governments are being completely outflanked, not by any great strategic genius on the Russian side – that Putin is not – but simply because the politicians of the west have played a bad hand with staggering incompetence.

There is, of course, no way that this is going to end well for anyone, but one can see the hallmarks of a guiding mind here. Ukraine is well on its way to being partitioned, but I don't see there being any great conflagration in the passage to that end. 

Clearly, the Ukrainians haven't got their heart in standing up to Russia, and if all they are doing is fielding small packets of light, air-portable "armour", then they are not really serious. Without any shred of exaggeration, Mr Clegg's armoured limousine offers better ballistic protection than the kit we've seen. 

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Then we're even seeing BMD-1s, one pictured in the NYT. These are late 70s museum pieces. And to bring to bring the reporting to its highest comedic value, we have that total arse Edward Lucas in the Mail, blathering: "I hope I'm wrong but historians may look back and say this was the start of World War III".

Illustrating his strident piece is a photograph of "a Ukrainian military convoy travelling towards the eastern Ukrainian town of Slovyansk", with the vehicles turning out to be those self-same BMD-1s, complete with their useless 2A28 "Grom" 73mm smooth-bore guns. The wonder is that they got that many of the ancient engines to run at the same time.

This can only be part of a fiendish plot to confuse the Russians who will need to identify their targets before opening fire. It will not be recognition manuals they will need, but history books, and I doubt anything they have to hand will go that far back. By the time they have worked out what the hell it is the Ukrainians are fielding, they will be long gone.

The chances of a fire-fight are remote. It will be frankly amazing if any functioning ammunition for these museum pieces still exists. The most likely possibility is that the Russians, once they realise what is going on, will die from laughing.

On the other hand, you might just begin to suspect that the Ukrainian action is gesture politics on a tiny scale, the provisional government going through the motions for its western paymasters. Very little will come of it, despite what the wuzzies in the legacy media might have to say, those who have nothing better to do but indulge their blood-lust and stupidity in equal measure.

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