Something wicked this way comes…
Okay, that’s a bit dramatic but I like to embellish a little bit. Something odd is happening at my school, though.
Yesterday I got an email from my history professor inviting all of his Genocide students to an event hosted at our school for a Ukrainian historian. Now I wouldn’t really have an issue with this in normal times, but we are not living in them right now. There is also the fact that Canada is the Ukrainian Nazi capital of the world so this whole thing makes me nervous right off the bat. I looked further into the invitation for more details and saw that the first half of the event would be for selling this historian’s book, and the second half would be dedicated to her talk.
Her book is about her brother who was in the Ukrainian Armed Forces who died on the frontlines. I was curious about this and did some digging. Turns out her brother joined the military voluntarily in 2015 and died in 2017 in the Donbas! I wonder what he was doing there? This just made me suspicious. She was writing this book before the war with Russia, but after it began she added in information about it. I have not read this book and I don’t know if I want to. If I can find it for free then maybe I will, if that happens I’ll share what I discovered. But for now it’s a no go.
I know some of you are curious about what she is going to say at this event, honestly I am too, but I cannot attend due to it being held so late in the evening. I have no idea how long her talk will last so by the time I try to make it back home the buses might not even be running and I don’t want to be left stranded. There might be a recording of it posted at some point so if that happens I’ll view it and let you know what happens.
So why does this situation bother me so much? Because it feels like propaganda. Canadian schools seem to have a track record with this kind of stuff and with questions being raised about the war this looks like a last ditch effort to keep drumming up support and outrage; I can’t imagine she’s being invited to talk about opposing the war and wanting peace talks. Canada will probably be one of the last countries to admit defeat, then again maybe they never will considering Chrystia Freeland’s position. I wonder if she’ll push for sending Canadian soldiers to fight on the frontlines. I know last time there was a draft in Canada the citizens went insane, mainly between the English (supported the draft) and French (opposed the draft), so I wonder how people would react now.
I guess this post is about me being emotionally frustrated with this whole situation. In class my history professor didn’t bring it up at all, so I wonder if he will during the next class…
That’s the end of my little conundrum.
Trade with EU is exploitative of eastern Ukraine and the trade deal will prevent its development. The whole of Ukraine was split on the issue between east and west.
The whole thing started with the comprehensive trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU. Yanukovich had wanted trade with both Russia and the EU. But both Russia and the EU were forcing Ukraine to pick a side. Making a trade agreement with the EU would have forced Ukraine to change their regulations, negatively impacting trade with Russia, and having them become more dependent on the EU. There was also a significantly higher chance their net trade would decrease if they signed this agreement. So if they went with the EU, it would have totally screwed over eastern Ukraine.
I should mention that at the time, Russia was providing the majority of trade with Ukraine by a fairly wide margin. So it was much more practical to go with Russia.
The decision to put the EU trade agreement on hold, had sparked euromaiden, leading Russia to reclaim Crimea in response, which sparked the civil war.
I should also mention that Ukraine is a third world backwater country. Its gdp per capita is lower than some African nations, and is three times lower than their neighbours Russia and Poland. It’s not a country full of Nazis and reactionaries, no more than Guatemala. It’s just people who’ve been fucked over and exploited.
Oh I really hope my post didn’t come across as anti-Ukrainian. Everything you’ve said here and what I know is incredibly tragic and I would never take that away, I want this war to end but my country is hellbent on keeping it going (thats why I’m so resentful). When I said “Ukrainian Nazi capital” I was referring to Canada exporting Ukrainian Nazi collaborators after World War II, not the refugees. Canada the nation has worked very hard to rehabilitate Bandera and his followers’ images, they recently gave a standing ovation to a Ukrainian SS veteran in the House of Commons. So when this woman is brought over and from the information I got about where her brother was I couldn’t help but be nervous as I felt this wasn’t going to be an anti-war seminar. I hope I’m making sense here. If i get access to a video of the speech I’ll make sure to share what was said if anyone is interested.
Yea, I just want to give you some context going into the speech.
I really appreciate it, thank you. I haven’t seen it yet (no uploads available still) but when I do I will keep all that in mind. I will try to share the speech as well.