If the West has presented a narrative that gives a clear, recognisable picture of reality, why should it so adamantly suppress the Russian narrative, which is that USA is waging, and has long been preparing a proxy war against Russia?

Likewise, had Zelensky’s narrative given a clear recognisable picture of reality, why should he have closed down TV channels, nationalising the remaining TV channels to create a single “united news”, and why should he have banned 11 political parties, including the largest opposition party – whose former leader has, incidentally, been arrested and is being held in custody without a trial. Why is Zelensky prosecuting hundreds of people for treason, including Bakanov, chief of the security service.

Interestingly, Bakanov was head of Kvartal 95, the company founded by Zelensky, whose partners were implicated with him – i.e. Zelensky – in the Pandora Papers. You didn’t know that Zelensky was one of the heads of state that was exposed in the Pandora Papers?

Ukraine was and is a fabulously corrupt country. One of the main fixtures of Ukrainian corruption has been the oligarch Mr Kolomoisky, accused of all sorts of financial crimes, who has been Zelensky’s main backer, so much so that the IMF refused at length to grant Ukraine a loan because of ties between the two men.

I am linking to an article in the New York Times about Mr. Kolomoisky, which you may not be able to read (unless you are a NY Times subscriber). In 2014, he financed a pro-government militia against the East Ukrainian separatists. I quote the N.Y. Times:

But Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as Ukraine’s most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time, he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and turn back toward Russia.

“They’re stronger anyway. We have to improve our relations,” he said, comparing Russia’s power to that of Ukraine. “People want peace, a good life, they don’t want to be at war. And you” — America — “are forcing us to be at war…

… the United States is simply using Ukraine to try to weaken its geopolitical rival. “War against Russia,” he said, “to the last Ukrainian.” Rebuilding ties with Russia has become necessary for Ukraine’s economic survival, Mr. Kolomoisky argued.

I should tress that the article is dated November 13, 2019, long before the war even started.

Speaking of fraud and Zelensky’s attitude to corruption in Ukraine, you should also take a look at a Washington Post Article dated March 17, 2020. Obviously, the article would not have been published today, nor the one I linked to in N.Y. Times. My point being: Whatever else Zelensky might be, he certainly is not the shining prince of democracy he is made out to be by the western press today.

Fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, etc – financial crimes – are all very complicated businesses, so complicated that reading the details about Zelensky’s network is terribly strenuous. We are tempted to jump to the next section, which is a pity, because financial crimes are real, they are serious and they undermine everything some of us still believe in.

They say that Russia underestimated Ukrainian nationalism and hence Ukrainian resistance. That may very well be true. I have no doubt that Ukrainians resented the political suppression of the Soviet era, and that they longed to get out of the USSR. Nevertheless, I know that a very large segment of the Ukrainian population spoke Russian, felt Russian and thought Russian until fairly recently. Hard to tell, exactly, just how large a segment, and for just how long. There has been a concerted effort on the part of the Ukrainian authorities, to “Ukrainianise” the country, i.e. to suppress all that is Russian, including the language. This process is referred to on the Russian side as “genocide” – to my mind, a ludicrous misnomer. Nevertheless, the pressure on Russian speakers will no doubt have been considered repressive.

My experience is that if you whip a recalcitrant child, it will hate you – silently, perhaps, but implacably. Suppression of an ethnic group is usually not a good idea. Military violence against a country that considers itself a country is usually not a good idea either.

On the other hand, how will a country react to being forced to sacrifice its male population in an absolutely pointless, hopeless and interminable war that could have been avoided?

Of course, every attempt is made in the West, to conceal the fact that the war could have been avoided, but in the long run, maybe Ukrainians will understand they’ve been had, not only by Russia but by USA/NATO/EU as well. We shall perhaps see a very angry army of widows.

For years, international analysts, and even advisers to the White House, not to mention historians, have warned USA/NATO: stay away from Ukraine. Anybody who knows anything about Russian history must know that Ukraine is not a coveted object of Russian imperialism, it is and has always been felt, by the Russians, to be at the very heart of Russia. I leave it there for you: Go study the history of Russia.

That USA/NATO chose to disregard those warnings must be considered a slap in the face by the Russians (and certainly not just by Putin); or should I say “another” slap in the face, because there have been many since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Have you not heard of them? I suspect you might not, because that is something the Western press chooses to not write about, just as it doesn’t write about Zelensky and the Pandora papers.

You may argue that Russia is, politically, a nasty piece of work – with too many political prisoners – and I whole-heartedly agree with you!

But in USA with its soft-talking lying, cheating, slippery, vile and cynical financial elite, there are too many too-poor people and too many people in prison. Most of the prisoners are where they are, not because of their views, but because of their colour and/or their poverty. In fact USA has the largest number of prisoners in the world, larger even than China, and not just per capita. Far larger than Russia. That is neither “narrative” nor fairytale: that is a fact.