Russo-Ukraine War: The West Thinks the Rest of us are Addle-Brained

By Charles Birungi

Now well into the third year, the Russia-Ukraine war machines concentrated along a vast frontline in the eastern part of the NATO wannabe country continue rolling dangerously with no end in sight.

At this point, even the reference to a ‘Ukraine’ war machine is quite misleading, as Russia is effectively grinding against the collective western military might, NATO. Led by the US, it is now an open secret that besides the staggeringly growing close to 200 billion dollars in sophisticated military equipment provided to Ukraine, covert NATO military units actively fight alongside the beleaguered Ukraine armed forces. The western army fighting in Ukraine has been broadly described as a group ‘international volunteers’, or more aptly NATO military instructors.

In the muddled shenanigans of hybrid warfare being waged for the heart and soul of Ukraine in the Donbass region, the US led NATO proxy war against Russia has moved full circle. Far from initial claims of arming Ukraine only with defensive weapons at the start of the current conflict, NATO has since armed their Ukraine pawns with powerful offensive weaponry such as long-range missiles, tanks, and most recently fighter jets.

Coupled with the earth scorched regime of harsh economic sanctions against Russia by the West and their allies in Asia, Russian resilience in the face of overwhelming odds is astounding. It is inconceivable that any other country in the world, perhaps apart from China would survive any length of time under the massive collective barrage by determined and powerful adversaries against it. And yet this is exactly what the West had hoped to achieve sooner rather than later: the strategic defeat of Russia, or to put it more succinctly, the total capitulation and disintegration of Russian Nation and Statehood.

The same script is again brazenly being designed against China in her struggles with the west-inspired wantaway Taiwan, but this will be a story for another day.

The West, while in pursuit of perpetual total global hegemony have relied extensively, at least partly, on their well cultivated reach to world audiences since they own or control the largest media channels, including big tech platforms. For a long time now, they have been used to acquiescing audiences, particularly in the global south.

For long, their crafty and disingenuous narratives have been consumed hook line and sinker. This should not be surprising. More than 60 years since independence, many of these countries continue to grapple with the ravaging effects of prolonged colonial occupation, wanton exploitation, and neocolonialism.

Nevertheless, this is no longer the 60s, 70s, 80s, or even 90s. Not even the early 2000s. The people of the Global South, and Africa are now fully awake and finely attuned to world affairs that affect them, their relatively inhibited capacity, and organisational deficiencies notwithstanding.

It was therefore bemusing if not comical to watch a viral video clip on the back of the recent NATO summit in Washington by a senior EU official which spewed borderline racist and condescending comments about Africans regarding the war in Ukraine.

The official is Spanish septuagenarian EU foreign affairs and security policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles. In the job since 2019, he is quoted to have said that African countries are deluded or stupid to support Russia, or to imagine that the Russian Federation would return the favour in future. “When you see African people saying Putin saved Donbass and now is going to save us (Africans)…what kind of intellectual process is behind this?”, Mr. Borrell exclaimed.

There was an uproar, but many Africans are getting quickly accustomed to similar rhetoric by high-ranking Western officials whose primary view of Africa as a continent for exploitation never wavers. Sad.

There are many questions to ponder about this form of Western thinking on Africa, but two will suffice here. Does Mr. Borell truly believe that Africans are incapable of dissecting and comprehending the events surrounding the Russo-Ukraine war whose genesis is firmly rooted in the Maidan protests of 2014? It is not even up to debate that the Maidan uprisings were a CIA engineered regime-change operation that successfully, albeit illegally, toppled a Moscow friendly government led by President Viktor Yanukovych. It was a blatant continuation in breach of international law of regime-change tactics that had already funnelled violent upheavals in the Middle East and Africa in places such as Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen in 2010/11 with all too similar or familiar outcomes.

The US and their NATO affiliates across the Atlantic especially the UK, France and Germany have since scuttled every peace initiative to resolve the conflict such as the Minsk agreements 2014/15, the proposed Russian new security architecture in Europe at the end of 2021, and more recently Turkish peace proposals between Kyiv and Moscow shortly after the current phase of the conflict broke out in February 2022.

It appears the West is hellbent on escalating the war to achieve their stated goals on the cheap, all the while erasing entire generations of young Ukrainian men and women as cannon fodder.

Russia, facing a legitimate existential threat, fights back bravely with all its might. There are no second-guesses of what could happen if the continued escalation by both sides in the conflict does not stop, and it is needless to state it here.

American professors Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, eminent scholars of immense pedigree in international relations have been very articulate on the subject and the dizzying manoeuvres across the divide in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Secondly, are Africans not fully entitled to reciprocal and mutually beneficial relations with willing partners such as Russia, China, and others around the world? The answer is obviously in the affirmative, and Africa deserves no grandstanding or lectures for adopting this position. The prosperity of Africans, will going forward, be achieved by collaborating with partners around the world for mutually beneficial relations, never again zero-sum games as has been the norm.This of course includes the West itself especially if they are willing to change their largely negative and selfish attitude towards the continent.

The types of Borrell and their like-minded ilk should wake up to the realties of the changing global landscape characterised by the revitalisation and growth of new regions all over the world.

It needn’t end in war, coercion, or suppression of contending views at whatever cost. It is impossible, even unnatural to permanently bludgeon a people whose time has come, and these here are the laws of nature. We can all recalibrate our divergent positions to continue living peacefully and in coexistence in this world we all call home.