28 August 2022
Jeremy Corbyn referred to “the Ukraine” when he recently condemned the UK’s supply of arms to Ukraine. He might have been trying to say that, without arms, there’d be no war but his reference to “the” Ukraine put him firmly in Vladimir Putin’s camp which is claiming Ukraine is still part of the Russian empire, rather as we use the definitive article when referring to the Peak District or the Lake District, but we never talk about the Wales or the Scotland. How depressing to find a British socialist supporting an autocratic Russian despot.
Island nations’ borders are defined by water, which gives them some sort of permanence. Countries with land borders between them and their neighbours are defined only by lines drawn on maps and, over the centuries, many boundaries change, the most dramatic example in recent decades being the break-up of Yugoslavia into a number of independent self-governing countries.
Historically, borders have been moved by wars and by people in distant palaces without regard to the social groupings, languages or ethnicity of the people actually living there, or even the geography of the lands being separated. This has led to the relatively good-natured bantering between Yorkshire and Lancashire or Devon and Cornwall, to the more political differences between Scotland and England to the hate-fuelled isolationism of Palestine and Israel.
However, ignoring geography has led to some interesting quirks. The eastern section of the border between Canada and America was decided by the invaders while, west of the Winnipeg area, the country was unknown and marked on maps as “Here Be Dragons”, so they just drew a line along the 49th parallel. In Europe, this would have meant fixing a border in a straight line from near Paris through Munich and Budapest and on through the north of Romania; which might have given Hitler pause for thought.
The only problem arose when the Canadian / US border reached the sea for the first time, it crossed some water followed by the southern tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula south of Vancouver, which created an isolated bit of land, now called Point Roberts, that was American but couldn’t be reached by land except by a 25-mile drive through Canada.
Now, at this point, someone sensible would have said “what the hell, let’s bend the border south round the peninsula to save all those border crossings”. However …
Ukraine’s borders have changed over the years, as different regimes controlled different parts of the country. During the middle-ages, before anybody had heard of Moscow, Kyiv was a key centre of East Slavic culture, and what we now know as Ukraine subsequently came under Austria, Poland and the Ottoman empire. In the 1770s, Crimea, previously inhabited by Muslim Turkic Tatars, the indigenous Crimean people, was invaded and taken over by Tsardom of Russia.
After the Russian Revolution, Ukraine enjoyed a short period as an independent republic until Eastern Ukraine became part of the United Soviet Socialist Republics (which was, for all practical purposes, a new name for the Russian Empire). Then, in the carve-up that followed the second World War, Western Ukraine was taken from Poland and allocated to the USSR.
Russia’s other borders have been similarly flexible over the years but Moscow has effectively considered Russia a single country that includes separately identifiable regions even though some of these regions never considered themselves Russian.
After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II following the 1917 revolution, there was a short and bad-tempered interlude until the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, whose stated aim was to share power and resources more equally between the rulers and the people. This naturally didn’t work and the leaders kept the money and ruled by fear and oppression, reaching their nadir with Joseph Stalin who sent people who sneezed without written permission to Siberian gulags. It’s estimated that, during his 30 years in power, Stalin was responsible for tens of millions of deaths (in addition to the 20 million Russians who died in the 1939-45 war).
On his death, Nikita Khrushchev ended up in charge and Russia became rather less isolationist and, some years later, Mikhail Gorbachev could allow the iron curtain to fall and the Soviet Union effectively ceased to exist. (Putin thinks this was A Bad Thing.)
When Boris Yeltsin was in charge, internal problems arose, notably organised crime whose gangs joined up to become a formidable power in the Federation, and many of the autonomous ethnic regions moved started resenting Russian dominance.
In an unexpected move, Yeltsin chose Putin, the relatively unknown director of the Federal Security Service, one of the KGB’s successors, to be his prime minister and, following Yeltsin’s resignation, he became president.
Putin started by limiting the powers of the oligarchs – at least those who opposed him – and strengthening links with Europe, America and China, while attempting to re-centralise control of what he still considered to be the Russian Federation. This involved the invasion and occupation of Crimea in 2014 and, in February this year, a “special military operation” involving almost 200,000 Russian troops to ‘reclaim’ Ukraine. The operation was expected to last about 3-4 days but has so far lasted 6 months and Putin’s incompetence has weakened him internally, which makes him more dangerous.
Many of his own troops became increasingly unenthusiastic when they realised they were actually at war with another, independent sovereign state, and Putin brought in the Wagner Group. They are a Russian paramilitary group he set up in 2014 to support Russia’s invasion of Crimea and who are now being authorised by Putin to commit atrocities and war crimes he can then deny.
It’s also, of course, in Putin’s own personal interests to keep Russia’s military forces divided and the group has become less secretive, even advertising for recruits on billboards in Russian cities. Officially, the group doesn’t exist since private military companies are officially banned in Russia and Putin regularly denies any relationship with Moscow.
However, according to Al Jazeera, the Wagner troops are ill-equipped and suffering heavy losses. Nevertheless, their presence helps secure Putin’s survival as president for life ruling an empire that isn’t so vary different from the examples set by the Tsars and Stalin. So much for the noble aims of doing away with empire and plutocracy and sharing wealth more equally in the common good.
His latest ploy has been to occupy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine which has been damaged by incoming artillery fire, either Russian fire designed to encourage sympathy for Putin’s noble cause or Ukrainian fire designed to frighten the Russians off. The power plant is also being used as a base for Russian armour and personnel since they’re safe from any attack sheltering under nuclear reactors.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, and other world leaders have called for the removal of all military equipment and personnel from the area and for a demilitarised zone to protect it from further attacks but Russia has refused to allow this.
Earlier this week, shelling disconnected the plant from Ukraine’s power grid for the first time in nearly 40 years, something the Russians tried rather unconvincingly to blame on Ukraine. The reactors’ cooling systems are powered by electricity with a back-up supply from a nearby coal-burning power plant; if that fails, diesel-powered generators take over and the operators have only 90 minutes before overheating leads to disaster.
Similar tensions are of course building up over Taiwan, whose historical separation from mainland China is not dissimilar to Ukraine’s. Taiwan (formerly Formosa) was under Japanese rule for the first half of the last century but was ceded to China after the Second World War. The losers of the Chinese civil war in 1949 then settled in Taiwan and declared themselves independent, something that China has never accepted. Hence the tensions that arise when America makes an official visit to the island (where it keeps a foothold of 39 military staff).
The UK now has its own nuclear worries since the person who still seems likely to become our next prime minister told the Conservative faithful when she was in Birmingham last week that she’s “ready” to launch nuclear war if necessary, even if it would lead to “global annihilation”, which would solve all these problems within a few minutes. The ultimate in cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Then the chancellor of the exchequer said people earning £45,000 might need support with increased energy bills. A lot of people subsist on a fraction of this and wouldn’t need any support if they got £45,000.
Where do the Tories find these people?
While reading the news this week, I saw a Sky News headline saying “Girl walks ‘emotional support’ alligator”. I couldn’t bring myself to open the link but I did wonder if the alligator attracts as many people who say hello as our ‘emotional support’ Labrador does.
My eye was also caught this week by a wall poster in the dentist’s waiting room showing an unsmiling woman with “Does your appearance reflect who you want to be?” No teeth in sight so I wondered why it was on display but it got me wondering about what I wanted to be and how my appearance might reflect this, something that had never previously crossed my mind.
Having seriously considered this, I realised very quickly that I have absolutely no idea who I want to be, or how my appearance should reflect this. Suggestions on a postcard please.
Lesser Mutterings 