Zelensky: The new and improved next Yeltsin?

Reminder: Western capitalists want to do to Zelensky's Ukraine what they did to Yeltsin's Russia, and because of this, one should assume Zelensky, family and friends will have the same sticky fingers that Yeltsin's family did at the top of a similar pyramid 30 years ago. As for the capitalist rapine, the Ukrainian Rada, pushed by Zelensky, has already signed off on an acceleration of post-Maidan plundering, including changing Ukrainian laws on land ownership and other things.

 

Per Chuck Spinney, guest posting at Patrick Cockburn's Substack, since Ukraine is the second-most corrupt country in Europe, beyond only Kosovo, and ahead of/worse than Russia, the American capitalist imperium already knows this and is helping accelerate that plundering as I type. For them, per the old saying the corruption is a feature, not a bug. They just worry about those who have been bought staying bought and also about not having wild price swings.

Reminder: These Western capitalists (and the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ with whom they work hand in hand) will ignore that Yeltsin's Russia led, semi-inexorably (contra Dostoevsky warning against anything close to determinism) to Putin's Russia.

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Meanwhile, because of his support for said capitalist takeover, Counterpunch Radio's Eric Draitser now officially has his ass in a crack over the US agreeing to send cluster bombs to Zelensky. Hey, Eric, the way that Warmonger Joe has been doing incremental escalation for months, you knew that was a possibility. Just like, per an Economist story linked by Unherd at the top link, the vulture capitalists had been landing in Kyiv before the invasion and you knew that. Per another story linked there, you also know that the vulture capitalists did their best to do to Zelensky's first predecessors what they were doing to Yeltsin 30 years ago.

 

Or Draitser could just read Ivan Katchanovski with an open mind:

Self-proclaimed supporters of Ukraine in fact support or deny in spite of overwhelming evidence foreign-backed violent overthrow of Ukrainian government by means of false flag Maidan massacre with far-right involvement, civil war in Donbas & proxy war in Ukraine which all have…

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) July 10, 2023

That open-mind reading probably won't happen.

 

And, unless you believed Zelensky's PR lies about "the vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive," you knew it was not only a possibility but a likelihood a full month ago. I stopped listening at approximately the 1:40 mark. Eric, to modify an old saying, feel free to stick your ear next to the sonic mirror.

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Meanwhile, Zelensky is repeating the standard lie of US clients that cluster bombs won't be used against civilians. It's surely a lie from him. If Putin ever made that claim, it was a lie by him. And, it was a lie by the US when it used cluster bombs before. That said, contra Ron Jacobs, and per Walter Kaufmann, I reject, for the most part, the whole idea of "just war." I'm not as out there as Norman Finkelstein, who does talk about justification, and says Russia was justified, but I can understand where he's coming from.