For me, Putin’s war on Ukraine has long been personal.
The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with Tony Abbott or anybody he knows. The aftermath of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 tragedy has become his own Misogyny Speech – his one claim, like Julia Gillard’s, to a paragraph of phony world-historical moment during a failed premiership. I say that, believe it or not, as somebody who likes and respects the man.
At about 515am, on July 18, 2014, I was in the gym, preparing for a day intended to dwell on the repeal of the carbon tax late the previous evening, when the news started to come through, that Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 had been shot down over eastern Ukraine, and Australians were on board.
From the beginning, it was clear that this was a crime, not an accident; an atrocity not a tragedy.
It soon transpired that there were 38 Australian victims of Putin’s first invasion, murdered by a Russian missile battery, that had crossed into Ukraine, as part of his stooge attack on the eastern Donbas.
There was no evidence whatsoever that the downing of MH17 was a crime or an atrocity “from the beginning.” Officially, it was an accident, there being zero proof – not even a claim – that Moscow ordered the destruction of a passenger jet. The three cut-outs convicted in absentia of “murder” in 2022 were found to have transported a Buk surface-to-air missile launcher from Russia to territory held by separatists during the Donbas War. Investigators acknowledged the men did not “push the button” loosing the ordnance that killed 298 passengers and crew.
Abbott’s overwrought Remember the Maine-ish pairing of “murder” and “atrocity” was – and is – nothing more than Russophobia for undiscerning audiences (these days, that’s most of them). He never believed the shooting down of MH17 was a criminal plot. How do I know? Because he said so to the ABC’s Michael Rowland in July, 2015: “Well, I am not suggesting that the Russian President knew anything about this in advance. I suspect, based on my own conversations with him last year, that he is horrified that all of this has happened.” While it is reasonable to speak of “crime” in the context of liability, it is extremely difficult to establish in the context of kinetic war. International prosecutors in The Hague found no evidence Vladimir Putin or any Russian officials were directly involved in any crime. Like the USS Vincennes’ downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 – killing all 290 passengers – the MH17 incident was a “terrible human tragedy.”
It was also foreseeable: Malaysia Airlines knew the route over Ukraine was by then dangerous but continued to use it to save money. This in turn was possible, as Fairfax matter-of-factly reported at the time, because “the cash-strapped Ukrainian government was receiving overflight fees” and had “a financial incentive to keep the airspace open.” Virtually nothing that happens in Ukraine is ever more than a metre away from a duffle bag of money. The International Air Transport Association concluded that Ukraine “bears responsibility” for the disaster.
As for Mr Abbott’s CIA-scripted gaslighting about a Russian “stooge attack” on Donbas, the eastern war of ethnic cleansing was launched by Kiev and killed 14,000 people. This followed an American coup that removed President Victor Yanukovych from office and made use of multiple ‘battalions’ of nazis. They called this travesty the “Revolution of Dignity” for the same reason that Eric the Red called an icy Sahara “Greenland.” To lure fools and investors.
⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
I told our parliament that morning, “the bullying of small countries by big ones, the trampling of justice and decency in the pursuit of national aggrandisement, and reckless indifference to human life, should have no place in our world”.
The War on Terrorism Mr Abbott helped wage has killed 900,000 people. And counting.
I have never ceased to thirst for justice for those Australians, cast into eternity, because the Russian dictator could not bear to see an independent Ukraine.
And I have never ceased to want freedom and democracy for Ukraine, a country yearning to be rid of the bondage of Moscow.
1. Ukraine is not a democracy. 2. It was invaded because it was a muppet of the United States.
It might have been the prospect of a thousand Australian soldiers on Russia’s border, that swayed Putin’s proxies, belatedly to allow police and investigators to retrieve the bodies, and to collect the evidence, that later allowed a Dutch court to convict the Russian officers responsible.
I have great respect for Australia’s genuine soldiers (not the girls playing rugby at the ADFA in the ads) but I doubt that a nation responsible for toppling the Third Reich after fending off Operation Barbarossa would be so easily stricken with nerves. This is pub rhetoric.
Even though it wasn’t necessary in the end, I will always be grateful to then-President Petro Poroshenko, and the Ukrainian parliament, for unanimously granting Australian military forces the right to operate in their country.
And I’m pleased that for a year or so afterwards, Ukrainian military personnel were welcomed into our training programmes, for help in their fight for national freedom.
I’d be very interested to know more about the background of those “military personnel.”
A few months later, I had my “shirtfront” discussion with Putin – that’s Australian sports-slang for a very rough tackle – when I told him that Russian missile batteries don’t go abroad by accident; and that he owed it to the families of the dead to apologise, and to pay compensation.
His reaction, that Ukrainian provocateurs had downed the plane, that the Ukrainians were all fascists, and that Ukraine had no right to exist, epitomised the Putin obsession to recreate greater Russia.
It even took a bizarre turn, when he suddenly, quite literally, grabbed and shook me, saying in English, “you are not a native Australian, but I am a native Russian”.
Missile batteries went “abroad” because the United States started a civil war in Ukraine with a view to claiming ownership of the country and regime-changing its neighbour. There is no evidence that Putin wants to recreate a “greater Russia.” There is evidence he wishes to maintain a conventional buffer of the kind Canberra demands in ‘our region’ vis-a-vis China. It surprises me that Mr Abbott retails the “shirtfront” tale in public. Putin was obviously briefed about the then PM’s telegraphed intention (the latter being no military genius, clearly) and was ready. The result: a total intellectual and physical victory to Putin. Not “bizarre” but humiliating. By the way, the US – to this day – has never apologised for what the cowboy captain of the Vincennes did.
Two years later, visiting Kyiv as an ex-PM, President Poroshenko assured me that Ukraine was readying itself for Putin’s next assault.
And a few years after that, Mr Poroshenko was charged with treason and a host of other trumped-up crimes in a classic banana republic get-even/shake-down by his Stalinist successor, Volodymyr Zelensky. Poroshenko was, however, true to his word on readying Ukraine: following the Russian invasion he donated vehicles for the cause that he dubbed “Bandera-Mobiles” – in honour of the country’s most beloved figure, Nazi Stepan Bandera.
It was Volodymyr Zelensky’s scornful rejection of President Biden’s chopper ride to safety, that meant Kyiv was no Kabul, and marked the Ukrainian President as the Churchill of the 21st century.
The Washington Post admitted more than a year ago that there is no evidence the ‘need ammo, not a ride’ line was ever spoken by Zelensky – or, indeed, anybody else. It was invented. If not saying something makes a man Churchill, greatness is within everyone’s grasp.
Then there’s this idea that Putin’s war was, somehow, provoked by NATO; by NATO’s expansion east, to take in Romania, Poland, Hungary, the old Czechoslovakia and the Baltic states.
But NATO never sought new members; it was the new members that sought NATO.
Bless.
And as for this view that the 2014 Maidan protest, was somehow engineered by the CIA, just because some US politicians were barracking for it; and that the CIA then maintained biological weapons factories inside Ukraine – that’s a fiction ranking with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Correction: his denial of established reality is the forgery. And he knows it.
It’s actually Putin’s line, that a Russian-speaking Jew from eastern Ukraine is somehow a neo-Nazi, just because he’s not anyone’s puppet, that’s the brazen lift from Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda playbook.
This is as dumb as saying Anthony Albanese will protect Calvary Hospital because he’s a ‘Catholic.’
There’s not the slightest doubt that Beijing is watching what happens here, weighing what it might do across the Taiwan Strait.
Mr Abbott’s government did not recognise Taiwan as a nation. If the Chinese are watching, they’ve learned that the Anglophone world is unwilling to lose a single soldier for Ukraine. Not one.
Ukraine is not the only country under existential threat, but it’s the one most threatened now; that’s why it’s the global frontline of freedom, and why every free country should rally to its side.
By rally, he means ‘send them stuff.’ As for freedom, its frontline for me is my front fence. Beyond it, extremists here have done – and are doing – far more existential damage than Russia or China. This is also the case in the US, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and Europe. Much like Greg Sheridan – another lapsed Santamaria-ist with a 1970s mentality – Mr Abbott is apparently not interested in Judeo-Christian values as the requisites of civilisation and liberty. He is at odds with the orthodoxy of international relations expounded by Saint John XXIII in Pacem in Terris which makes it clear that natural law is the sine qua non of righteousness in one nation’s relations with others. To stand with the Sniffer Joe Axis of communist perverts is like standing with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War. Mr Santamaria stood with the Nationalists. Peace – not protracted war – is the only goody to back in Ukraine. Achieving it will require big men – not fake Churchills.
Well, we did send them some (temporarily) mobile coffins.
Which has probably achieved nothing other than making Putin even more pissed off with this country. Australia should never have taken sides in this utterly absurd conflict that is of zero relevance (strategic or otherwise) to us whatsoever.
Abbott’s rantings in the piece you’ve fisked, CL, are quite simply embarrassing.
Abbotts supplication to the American Gods was followed by Morrison’s puppet show finger pointing at the Chinese over covid.
And Trump is in a similar position with Covid.
None can ever admit they were blindsided, blackmailed or Conned. Pick your word.
That well and truly covers it.
Appreciated very much.
I can’t help it: Did he also never cease to thirst for justice for Pauline Hanson, cast into prison? Maybe. I don’t know.
Perhaps Abbot is making atonement for having been a friend to that great man now gone to God.
Perhaps. Yet any measure that is a security guarantee for Ukraine which does not have its concomitant security guarantee for Russia can only be a feint ‘to preserve the peace’.
Anyway: For whom is Abbot speaking in Kyiv.
I wonder how much he got paid for that ‘speech’ and where the money came from?
The Poroshenko who was declared a traitor by Zelenksky?
Former Ukraine president returns to Kyiv to face treason charges
Ukrainians puppets are learning what so many asian and latin american puppets learned last century: there is no more dangerous thing than being a friend of the American Empire.
Abbott knows all of this, he was always there to pretend. He put Hanson behind bars, he’s another rootless globalist stooge.
Officially, it was an accident,
The official in this case is Putin. In which the “accident” involved a commercial passenger airliner carrying families, many Australian, was shot down by a military missile.
Yet CL thinks Abbott has grounds, being the incumbent Australian PM, to adopt the grievance of his citizens.
Is there any better example of the CL position as Putin Quisling?
I saw a page out of one of Abbott’s books where he spoke about needing to put down the Australian ‘feral’ right in the 1990’s.
What he meant was to put down the Australian everyman uprising who didn’t want Australia flooded with 10 million asians. So he and his mates set to work. And here we are 30 years later, Hanson spent time behind bars, and now we’re renaming parts of Sydney ‘little India’ and Abbott swans around saying how wonderful this new world order is and hey, how about a little WW3 while we’re at it.
But he would, wouldn’t he? First generation immigrants often a mess when it comes to their new lands.
BTW: CL, as you make yet another apologia for the Russian invasion and murder of civilians you might like to explain its democratic superiority?
As stated right there in the post, Americans shot down an airline full of people too once (that they admit to), so no, -1 fail.
Any “shirt fronting” of the US President at the time?
No aussie uses the term “shirt front” either since about 1923, a weird workshopped term from the global Liberal party marketing division to throw red meat to semi-retarded Australian working men who think the effette retards that run this whole mess, underneath it all, have a single thing in common with them.
Too bad it keeps working, I’ll admit.
I like Abbott as a man and an opposition leader (albeit a timid PM), but he is talking through his hat here.
BTW, I am sick of every Tom, Dick and Harry risibly inserting himself (or herself) personally into every current “thing” (like AOC “almost getting killed” on January 6).
Interesting that there is no mention of Abbott’s speech on the ABC website, considering his views coincide perfectly with the ABC’s.
The hate runs deep in Ultimo.
Zelensky Miffed Over NATO Inaction, Demands Membership & Security Guarantees ‘Now’
Zelensky must have some serious dirt on many of the world’s leaders given the demands (not requests) he makes on them -and the manner in which they acquiesce…
Ukraine must be a playground for many others apart from the US scum.
MH17 was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 3 aircraft were transiting that area at the time from what I remember. 2 Malaysian Air & a Singapore airlines flight a few min ahead/behind of MH17.
Ex army mate tells me repeatedly that complex Soviet equipment like the Buk has 2 modes, first one in his words for “semi literate peasants with rudimentary training” and the second trained soldier mode (takes months).
He thinks that the airliner was targeted by poorly trained Russian rebels (with Spetsnaz handlers) by a missile system that has an effective range of 100-72,000ft of altitude (on Wiki).
Al Qaeda have tried to bring down airliners with MANPADS like SA7’s, had no success. Mate has heard this is one of those unknown unknowns that airline security types never thought would happen, what we would call a wake up call.
I note that any airline worth their pinch avoids these sorts of areas like the plague these days when kinetic action is going on, rather than saving money on kerosene like a bunch of airlines at the time were doing.
I used to work in some pretty crappy destinations, I was more worried about aircraft failure than being shot down. I have been to the middle east and central Asia, some destinations the latter was eminently possible.
As for Abbott I don’t know what he is up to unless NFA is on to something or a nice sinecure, this frankly is not our war. Europeans need to pony and back words with actions for once.
what Fat Tony says…
After what has transpired in the last few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the US-affiliated agents who hit that plane to turn the world against Russia even more. The US simply has too many false flags behind its belt to discard this possibility.
No … the same people pulling Zelensky’s strings also pull other strings … but the piano player only has a bit part in this and is looking for the stage exit.
I realise that in a contest between kleptocratic shitholes it’s hard to pick a side to back. Perhaps we should care less? Or maybe try Eeny, meeny, miny, moe; it’d be smarter than constructing this join-the-dots fondness for a Russian win.
If evil Ukraine is doing anything it’s doing the West a gigantic favour as underdog, attacked by the supposed former super power, inflicting embarrassment after embarrassment on Putin Inc. This should have us cheering, since the 180km of the Taiwan Strait never looked so daunting.
Speaking of embarrassment, it’s best not to keep checking the mailbox for that Hero of the Russian Federation gong, C.L.
Some see the conflict as an event to ‘pick a side’, an event where one side is the ‘underdog’ and the other the ‘aggressor’ – a most restricted perspective reflective of, well, lockdown-types of experience lived in contexts seeking inferior entertainment rather than historical facts. In contrast, an authentic perspective would not be so quick to evade the inevitable truths which ultimately outlive the stuff of entertainment to be had from petty insults of either individuals or of nations.
I suppose for less inferior entertainment we could all fawn daily at C.L’s feet, rather than ever offer up alternative views. You know, a bit of a challenge rather than the head nodding I notice slowly pervading this blog.
“I suppose for less inferior entertainment we could all fawn daily at C.L’s feet, rather than ever offer up alternative views. You know, a bit of a challenge rather than the head nodding I notice slowly pervading this blog.”
Geez, do I detect a little bit of sneering here? You’re always welcome to go elsewhere or, here’s a thought, join Crusader and Nix’s blog, wherever that might be.
Yes, Cassie. True. As always. Not so much sneering as responding to Franx, which should be fine, though I did heap on the scorn. Apologies, but it felt right.
An honest call out was my hope. I have been following the threads of pro-Russian sentiments here and think they’re a bit overdone. Actually, a lot overdone, and manufactured in a kind of Beyond Meat way (no actual bovines required).
“An honest call out was my hope. I have been following the threads of pro-Russian sentiments here and think they’re a bit overdone. Actually, a lot overdone, and manufactured in a kind of Beyond Meat way (no actual bovines required).”
Firstly, perhaps I overreacted (I like your contributions) however I didn’t like what I perceived to be your sneering of C.L. who, like Dover, has set up platforms for us to comment, and also C.L.’s writing is always superb, agree or disagree with him. We’re lucky to have this site.
Secondly, what about the “pro-Ukrainian sentiment” we’re subjected to daily in the MSM and elsewhere? I have found all of that, from day one, to be completely overdone and manufactured.
Thirdly, from day one C.L. (and others here like myself) have never supported the military invasion although we do understand the reasons behind Russia doing so, there’s a lot of nuance that is completely missing in most commentary, be it Ukraine’s corruption, the fact that it was a lackey of the US on Russia’s doorstep. Ya reckon the US would have tolerated a vassal state of Russia on its border? NO. The treatment of Cuba for sixty years confirms that. If Mexico, tomorrow, was turned into a corrupt, money laundering state for Putin and his comrades, I have no doubt that the USA would not not be happy, and would do everything in its power, economic and military, to alter that.
Fourthly, as for Abbott chiming in, given his record as PM he should STFU. And speaking of Abbott’s archaic description of “shirtfronting Putin”, perhaps he should have focussed on stuff going on closer to home, as in shirtfronting the nasty vindictive schemer and plotter in his own government, aka the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turdbull. Abbott didn’t, and the rest if history, unpleasant history at that.
Agree. 100%.
In contrast: eager agreement tends to be expressed by those who find Zelenski and his warmongering and his catatonic subjectivism to the West and the EU an NATO heroic. To wit, discussing a few days ago an icon of Pentecost from a Ukranian monastery, the friendly persons in the friendly group were surprised to hear and so lamented the closing down of Ukrainian monasteries – by Putin, they averred. Really. Now, Texas Jack might have an alternative view about churchillian heroism vis a vis monasteries to discuss, not necessarily on this site.
To me the assorted claims of pro-Russian separatists in places like the Donbas are rational, in most cases understandable, and I wonder what might have happened if Western leaders had attempted to resolve the territorial skirmishing in the early 201o’s. The 1954 boundary markers were absurdly laid.
It’s not like we have not been to this rodeo before…
But Putin as some saintly figure? Can’t stomach agreeing on that.
I’m a simple farm hand, Franx. I realise I couldn’t possibly take you on in a discussion about monasteries.
“To me the assorted claims of pro-Russian separatists in places like the Donbas are rational, in most cases understandable, and I wonder what might have happened if Western leaders had attempted to resolve the territorial skirmishing in the early 201o’s. The 1954 boundary markers were absurdly laid.
Agree 100%
It’s not like we have not been to this rodeo before…
True.
But Putin as some saintly figure? Can’t stomach agreeing on that.
Nobody here has ever said Putin is some saint However, I tell you who’s worse, infinitely worse, and that’s the sniffing, rotting, decomposing, stumbling corpse who now sits in the WH and his fetid, feral far-left political party called the Demonrats and their paramilitary forces, the party’s 2023 edition of the KKK, now called Antifa and BLM.
The USA, if not dead, is dying, just ask those rotting in a DC cell for the January 6 riot (and no it wasn’t an “insurrection”), yet BLM and Anfita far-left scum, who burned US cities in 2020, still roam the streets, menacing and threatening ordinary people. If the US isn’t in terminal decline, it politicised judiciary certainly is.
Putin speaks truth about the moral abyss that the West is now in. He might just be saying those words for opportunistic reasons, I don’t know, I actually don’t think he his but if it’s all fake, why not, because he sees very clearly the moral collapse of the West. Also, those out there who accuse Vladimir Putin of faux Russian Orthodoxy might also like to ponder the faux Catholicism of the abortion supporting, pervert and degenerate supporting, hair niffing, Joe Biden. I think that when it comes to the “faux stakes”, I know who I’ll put my money on, and it isn’t the current occupant of the Kremlin.
Who’s to say about simple farm hands. Never an excuse. As per DH Lawrence.
And the issue is not monasteries but violence towards them and other institutions which stand for truth, imperfectly though that be.
Brilliant fisking C.L. Thank you.
There’s a bunch of stuff to dislike about post-Reagan America, but 74 million actively chanced their vote for Trump in 2020, and if you drive from Nevada to Georgia you won’t find Biden-Harris flags decaying on lawns.
I’m far more worried about Socialist Nirvana Australia.
No crystal balls here, but I suspect this period of madness in Western nations will lead us to better times, and I would bet on the US leading the way.
Regarding “the madness”, I never see it in real life. sure I read of, and see, crazies putting on a show for the press and the telly, but in actual daily life I do not see it at all….
The stores up here are divided into Menswear/ Womenwear/ Boyswear/ Girlswear departments. All the parents I see, or know, or don’t know….are NOT letting perverted men-in-dresses play in the parks with their kids. If I, for example, started chatting to some little kid I don’t already know, the parents would be soon hovering.! No way groomers would be OK!
As for the referendum….which will probably not happen now that it’s heading for a thrashing….90% of the part-aborigines I know are AGAINST the voice…..largely on the basis that there’s nothing it in it for them vs a lot of dollars for black grifters they detest. The hundreds of people with islander backgrounds regard almost all “Murrays” as lazy scamming bludgers, and have no desire to be ordered about by them.
The QWERTY Mardi Gras in Sydney got about 12,000 participants. The City to Surf run gets about 60,000. Aboriginal dingbats like Lidia get a few hundred dickheads to listen to them, while millions took to the streets etc to denounce Cobvid19 hysteria in Oz. Etc Etc. reality is that the “madness” is only a few rotted brains (dangerous ones of course) but hardly WIDESPREAD!
I say: Be alert: not alarmed!
Mantaray says:
3 June, 2023 at 3:06 pm
Good to read that point of view – I think we do tend to see the few as the many.
Thanks…
I suspect that when Putin told Abbott he was not a “native Australian”, he meant that Abbott wasn’t an Aboriginal – and was not referring to the fact that Abbott was born in the UK.
Charlton Heston objected to the use of the term “native American” for American Indians on the basis that he himself, for example, was a native American.
Putin was talking offensive woke rubbish, in other words.
Cassie
But Putin as some saintly figure? Can’t stomach agreeing on that.
Nobody here has ever said Putin is some saint
Crusader and Nix claim that such statements have been made, but have proved unable to provide links to them.
BJ: the preference for Putin views on the invasion are persistent themes here. As are his excuses. There is never a reflection of the facts: Putin invaded a sovereign state which had done nothing at all to Russia. The excuses are all imperialist and accept Putin’s desire to restore the USSR (a fact he has stated in public).
Since Cursader has brought up the word “imperialism”, surely then he condemns the Biden administration’s imperialistic threat of sanctions against another sovereign state called Uganda, or is his dislike of imperialism selective?
Mexico already is a corrupt money laundering state, able to import guns and drug-money from the USA while exporting poverty and desperate people. They managed to somehow achieve all this without any involvement from Putin, or the Russian oligarchs.
After El Chapo got caught, he testified that the CIA was managing the drug trade and his cartel worked with them … no reason to believe anything has changed since then. Sure they would be pissed if Russian Mafia tried to muscle into their territory but for normal people the bigger picture is exactly the same regardless of which gang is in control.
Crusader, the Donbas over which Russia is fighting is not a ‘sovereign state’ – the Donbas made up largely of Russians was set to be an autonomous region under the Minsk Agreements, yet those agreements, as you must surely know, were dishonoured – especially by Nuland of the US who like France and Germany subscribed to the agreements and then went back on it all. Might be worth considering why. So by all means express your praise of Zelenski and your loathing of Putin, yet not by failing to consider realities beyond what the local media is feeding you.
Cassie, aka Princess Vatnik, exhibits her excellent training in the gaslight manoeuvre. She might care the ponder the difference between invading a country and bombing families in their homes with political sanctions adopted by every nation on earth. One is slightly more like imperialism than the other. Especially when it’s in pursuit of restoring an actual former empire.
Such chivalry, Nix rides in to defend Cursader’s dishonour.
Crusader
Stop squirming. You and Nix both refer to explicit statements of “lurrrrrve” for Putin, but have never been able to link to them.
Cassie: it is rather typical that you would chase such a passant point. Sanctions are common. Invasions, mercifully, are rare.
BJ: you know exactly what is my point and you’re chasing nits to pick
“Cassie: it is rather typical that you would chase such a passant point. Sanctions are common. Invasions, mercifully, are rare.
BJ: you know exactly what is my point and you’re chasing nits to pick”
Did you mean to write “pissant”? I think you need to step away from the computer and take stock of yourself.
Cassie: who writes hateful posts about people she does not know and gas never met, objects to being described as a pissant. Such is life in Dover Heights.