Putin, Judo and Fidel

The ceasefire reached in southeast Ukraine on Sept. 5 constitutes another defeat in the American attempt to use that state as a battering ram against Russia and plunder its riches. Previously, the Maidan coup d’etat facilitated the brilliant geopolitical move of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which allowed the reintegration of the Crimean Peninsula into Russia through the overwhelming sovereign decision of its citizens and, with it, the return of the strategic Black Sea Fleet to Russian territory.

More than one international observer has confirmed that while Obama plays checkers, Putin is a skillful chess player, a judgment with which I agree. But it seems that Putin, who also practiced judo, has, just like Fidel Castro, developed the ability to apply that sport’s fundamental principle to politics: using all his force against his rival in order to defeat him. Washington had to absorb some of Fidel’s beatings during the years that he was commander, just as Putin is currently displaying exceptional skill at overcoming his adversary with hardly a hair out of place.

America’s attempts to enclose and destroy Russia and China have never stopped, in spite of the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the close economic ties uniting Washington with Beijing. It was supposed that NATO, although it was created first — in 1949 — had as its raison d’etre the confrontation of the former socialist European states that were part of the Warsaw Pact from 1955.

Thus, the Atlantic alliance should have been dissolved once its counterpart ceased to exist in 1991 and the Cold War was officially declared over. But this did not happen, in the same way that Washington grossly violated the promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev by George H.W. Bush that NATO would not expand eastward in the direction of the old Soviet border. It turns out that almost all the former European socialist countries have joined the Western alliance since 1999, and in several of them, military bases of the organization have been set up.

The criminal bombing campaign of the alliance against cities and civilian infrastructure of the former Yugoslavia in 1999, conducted completely outside of international law because it did not have the U.N. Security Council’s approval, was a clear signal of the anti-Russian drift contained “in the DNA” of NATO, according to the explicit definition provided by Moscow’s diplomacy after the ridiculous NATO summit that took place in the U.K. last week.

While this was concluded amid the squawks of anti-Russian hysteria, the Nazis set up by Washington in the Kiev government were forced to fully accept the ceasefire plan in eastern Ukraine proposed by Putin. They had no other option, as the army in April had launched what was called an anti-terrorist operation, reinforced by the right-wing Nazis and the mercenaries gathered in the National Guard, which had been brought to its knees by bold strokes and self-defense maneuvers by the autonomous republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, proclaimed and endorsed by plebiscite by the vast majority of its inhabitants.

The counterterrorism consisted of a cowardly war against the region’s civilian population, whose cities were bombed by air and on the ground for several weeks, while the right-wing outlaws were murdering prisoners without even providing the dead with a dignified burial. This carrion, admirer of Nazi war criminals and murderers of Jews and Polish peasants like Stepan Bandera, is what the United States and its European partners are getting excited about, treating them like heroic freedom fighters. Another Islamic State, but ignominiously defeated at birth.

Russia had to impose the arrival of humanitarian aid in the area because of Kiev’s criminal reluctance for it to be provided to a population which had not even had water for weeks.

If the Russian military gave some support and advice to help with self-defense, it was within its rights, as had previously occurred in the recovery of the Crimea, although no one has been able to present any proof of this.

What is very clear is that the agitators and leaders of the Kiev coup have been pushing things toward a nuclear war, as a military showdown between Washington and Moscow cannot end any other way.