This Russian – Ukrainian war is on the tenth day today, the 5th March 2022 and there does not seem to be anything to bring it to a close very soon. The world is aghast with the outcome of this war – death and destruction of man and material throughout the country are unprecedented. The media throughout the whole world are having a field day condemning Russia for this wanton, aggressive attack, without any justification!
Before going to the rights and wrongs of this war, let us check what is happening in Ukraine right now. As of today, it is estimated that nearly 1.2 million Ukrainians have evacuated to neighbouring countries – nearly 700,000 to Poland on the north-west and the remaining 500,000 to Hungary and Slovakia on the west, Romania and Moldova to the south. The number of evacuees is going up not the day but by the hour. The whole world is watching with horror the unprecedented human suffering and migration not seen since the second World War.
The world is also watching the types of human evacuation that is taking place from Ukraine. Has anybody seen one single black or Asian or for that matter any non-white person descending from the evacuation buses to any neighbouring country mentioned above? No, none, zilch! The reason is that no non-white person is allowed to get on to the evacuation buses in Ukraine, although there are thousands or tens of thousands of non-white students, teachers, businessmen in Ukraine. The evacuation is only for whites, as if non-white lives in the war zones don’t matter. This is the blatant racist attitude which has come out in this atrocious situation. The Bulgarian Prime Minister blurted out that Asians and Blacks are not civilised or educated enough, like the Europeans, and that’s why this discrimination. How pathetic! (Didn’t Nazism follow the eugenics where Jews, gypsies, blacks and so forth were considered to be genetically inferior to white Aryans?)
Now the main question is, why did this war start in the first place? Ukraine was a republic in the erstwhile USSR, but it gained independence when USSR collapsed in 1991. Since then, many erstwhile USSR republics have joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) designed to counter USSR and Warsaw pact countries during the cold war period until 1991. Although USSR and Warsaw pact have disappeared, but USA maintained and strengthened NATO as a way of perpetuating arms sales to the Member States.
Ukraine had been perpetually encouraged to join the NATO by USA and its allies. Hardly does this country realise that by joining the NATO it is committing itself to contributing full 2% of its GDP to NATO fund and that fund will supply them with American and British arms and ammunition. It becomes a captive market for the western arms industry. The right-wing Ukrainian government wanted to join the NATO, despite Russian repeated pleas and warning not to do so.
Ukraine is right on the Russian border. Any nuclear weapon installed in the country as part of NATO is unlikely to be acceptable to Russia. The mirror image of this situation could be seen when USSR wanted to install nuclear warhead in Cuba in 1963 and John F Kennedy threatened to blow off the USSR missile carrier in international waters and start the third World War. Cuba is not even on the borders of the USA!
Nonetheless, world is expressing unrestrained sympathy to the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian government is basking on this sympathy. But at the same time, the government is showing without any shame or remorse its blatant racism. The lives of Asians and blacks are dispensable, but the lives of the whites are worth saving! How much such attitude is worth sympathising for? World should make a humane judgement of such a regime, as it exists now in Ukraine.
– Dr Anisur Rahman is an author and columnist.
Free-thinkers 