Things are not going as well for the western world as expected. Of course, we can condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (or “special operation” as the Russians call it), but it’s not possible to look back at events, erasing what happened in Maidan Square in 2014, with the extreme-right coup d’état (Svoboda party used considerable resources, which included thousands of ideologically committed activists and was, as Colonel Richard Black noted, supported by the US, through infiltrated activist movements), and in subsequent years, in which more than 10,000 Russians were killed by the Ukrainian army.

One of the aspects of this war is that it made us better understand the influence of the USA in countries in which they act according to their geo-political interests; it made us understand how Russia acts in a thoughtful and at the same time ruthless way towards its enemies; and made us see how Ukraine is an autocratic country, far from being a liberal democracy, in which more than a dozen parties have been outlawed, in the style of classic dictatorships. It is, in a way, a pedagogical war.

The recent dismissal of the head of Ukraine’s secret services by President Volodymir Zelensky, following the Russian attack on an officers’ mess in Vinnytsia on 14 July, during a high-level meeting with international delegations, seems to convey the idea of that there are internal security flaws in the Ukrainian military apparatus. According to some credible sources of information, this attack in Vinnytsia will have eliminated not only Ukrainian participants, high cadres of the Air Force, but also foreign delegations. Something very similar had already happened in Yavoriv, ??near Lviv, on the 13th of March.

Information already substantiated by the Ukrainian side claims that President Zelensky announced the resignation of Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of his and the head of the Ukrainian security services (SBU), and also of the Attorney General, Iryna Venediktova, due to alleged links to the Prosecutor’s Office from Moscow. On May 31, also with Zelensky’s consent, Lyudmyla Denisova, the human rights ombudsman, was fired.

Lyudmyla Denisova was the one who broke the news – which she came to recognize as false – about Russian soldiers raping babies. She passed this information on to the Italian Parliament with the intention of shocking public opinion. And they arrived in Portugal, as in other European countries, judged as credible facts, until they were finally denied. These are very embarrassing cases. Russians may lie, but in this respect they still haven’t managed to reach Ukrainians’ refinements of lying. We’ve already become used to scam rules.

What we now have on the table is a real trust issue in Ukraine: according to the Ukrainian president, more than 60 SBU officers are working against Ukraine in territories controlled by Russian-speaking separatists and Russian troops; in addition, it announced 650 prosecutions for treason and collaborationism. Zelensky doesn’t seem very satisfied with the performance of the cadres that make up his inner circle, which may reinforce the thesis that the US and the British are not managing to keep him in office.

It’s easy to see that Zelensky is being held by wires and that if he fails to stop the Russians, he himself will be fired and forgotten. The man who condemned the Ukrainian people to resistance supported by an unjustifiable and painful sacrifice is now trying to save his own skin. It’s a terrible paradox, but human nature has gotten us used to it.

There are many ways to destroy a country: one is to invade it, as Russia did; another may just be an economic blockade. In this respect, the USA have excellent credits. The blockade on Cuba, which not even Obama was able to lift, was recently protested by the City Council of the city of New Haven in the USA. There’s still a slight hope that American public opinion itself will understand what Biden regime is up to in Ukraine. Issues of conscience and trust.

António Jacinto Pascoal is a Portuguese teacher, essayist and poet. He collaborates in the Portuguese daily newspaper Público, in the newspaper Sinal Aberto (Portugal, Brazil and Portuguese-speaking African countries) and in the literary magazine Colóquio / Letras. His articles deal with topics on education, literature and politics.

Courtesy: The Saker

https://thesaker.is/a-short-essay-on-conscience-and-trust/