Q: Kiev always says that the victims are to be lamented on the Ukrainian side by the shelling of the separatists.

A: In the West, people don't like to talk about it. The civilian casualties from both sides are turned into a common figure. But if you read carefully, for example in the Russian opposition media, in which the West is always defended and the Putin-bashers write, where there were also longer texts and conversations with eye-witnesses, then it is admitted there that most civilian casualties from 2014 to the present day were in the East. Also because Donetsk is a big city. If you shell a city, there are more victims

I do not believe Russian propaganda, and I am an experienced propaganda analyst from both sides. But today you will not find anything about the victims in the East in western media, only the victims of the Russian attacks. That is a huge problem, because it was the Ukrainian army that shelled its own population. And because an omission of facts, in this case, is a lie that leads to violence.

The main reason is that Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians feel attacked and sacrificed. They see themselves as victims of discrimination, of ethnic discrimination. That is quite clear, we need to talk about it. Some call this Nazism. I wouldn't use such a term, not even genocide. Nevertheless, I find it distasteful to weigh up whether it is genocide or not in the context of thousands of deaths in the hands of nationalist battalions. Fascism is, as Camus said, contempt.

I am a witness that my Ukrainian acquaintances considered the people of the East to be inferior. They used all sorts of arguments --  for example that the lumpenproletariat had concentrated in the East. Is this an acceptable argument? It seemed to be in the Ukraine. Is the slogan Ukraina above all alright? I've heard that all the time in Ukraine.

First one thing, Richard, Russians personally all over NATO-stan are being criminalized just because they are Russians. So there is no other [?] evidence of neo-fascism that is more startling than this one. There's absolutely nothing [?] that compares to it in modernity.

Alright, we had this before against Iraqis, against Syrians, and now to pick up their own perverted logic: Oh, they are blond and blue-eyes just like us as well. Ah, but they're Russians; so this means that they are untermenschen, which is NAZI terminology once again or as my friend The Saker put it so memorably, snow niggers. This is an excellent, ultra hardcore expression to qualify how The Beltway [Washington D.C.], especially, looks at Russians. They don't look at Russians as people. They look at Russians, in general, and I'm not talking only about the [Russian] military or the Putin circle or whatever, as snow niggers. We have to go there and take over those rich lands. They don't deserve those lands. It's crazy, because history always tells us stuff that is basically underneath, and then, when you get to a point of inflection, of explosion, it bubbles back on. You know, it's in the collective unconscious, and then we have something like this [SNAPS FINGERS] that starts a new paradigm, and the whole past goes back. James Joyce used to say "the nighmare of history." No! This was the unconsciousness of history that is bubbling up all over again.

The Western interpretation goes like this: Putin is a dictator;  he is obsessed with the restoration of the Soviet Union or the Russian empire;  or both. As a dictator  he can do anything, while you don't know what ordinary Russians think because they are afraid. This is superficial. Until a few days ago, the Russian media were still free. In an article that appeared in Krass & Konkret in the summer, I had warned: If you provoke Russia, which can happen in different ways, for example by sponsoring Navalny as a Russian Guaido, then tightening the screws will be a self-fulfilling prophecy

I agree with the sentiment. The problem is that despite the relative openness, there were only the trappings of democracy; no separation of powers; not the slightest possibility of electing anyone other than Putin; an extreme concentration of decision-making in a single pair of hands.

The problem with this (a functional dictatorship) is that it has led to a purely discretionary war, on the whim of a single individual. That a majority of citizens will support their country in a war is practically a given, at any time, in any nation. Doesn't make it right.

This could logically be Russia's "Vietnam moment", but the fact that there is no longer freedom of information works against that.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}