Child Soldiers and Europe’s Clean Energy Future: Ukraine as Ongoing Tragicomedy
What you're not being told about Ukraine's mineral wealth.
If you live in a NATO-member nation and are tired of hearing about Ukraine and now question the open-ended financial drain marketed as supporting Ukraine, you are likely in the majority. Not that democratic processes matter here.
Excepting Hungary and Slovakia, your current political leadership still holds otherwise and so the money and weapons continue to flow, the bodies dead and crippled and mutilated continue to pile up, and the crisis of displaced Ukrainians escalates. Support them at the expense of your own citizens? Or send them home to die for BlackRock and NATO expansionism?
Outside of the fairly recent and now failed effort by Viktor Orbán, no direct EU talks with Moscow are happening. As for the USA, the focus is now on the upcoming Presidential election.
You do not — or perhaps cannot — care anymore. Perhaps Trump will sort it out, if he survives the campaign returns to the Presidency. Perhaps the Ukrainian military will collapse, and the rump nation of Ukraine will sue for peace. Perhaps whatever.
Your author understands. You do not want any more news or analysis on Ukraine, good or bad, even when your nation’s MSM tries to cram it down your digital throat. But our rulers, elected and otherwise, have not given up on promoting the NATO proxy war.
Nor has the Zelensky regime — the next generation, or perhaps next wave, of soldiers is being conscripted and ideologically prepared for endless war. Please view the brief video below. For actual as opposed to the wooden weapons shown in the video, these children will rely on Western generosity — your taxpayer dollars at work.
Fighting Ukrainian War Fatigue to Save the Planet
To fight fatigue with Ukraine and answer their critics, our globalist elites would rally you back to the cause as it serves an even greater triad of purpose: fighting climate change, ensuring a prosperous European green energy future, and counterbalancing or even overturning Chinese dominance in the manufacturing of green technologies, including electric vehicles.
In brief, saving the planet.
How? Or, more truthfully, how not? Wealthy natural resources — essential for strategic energy development. Green energy. We will get to the claimed lithium and mineral reserves, and then the child soldiers, in just a bit. But first, please, a mini-history lesson: what we can learn from the establishment experts.
The War Will Pay for Itself
Once upon a time, the American government had to justify a war against a nation which contributed not a single jihadist to the 9-11 attack, and which was openly hostile to Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, but which would still bear the brunt of our nation’s fury and be deemed one of three axis of evil nations.
But wars can be expensive in blood and treasure. In this case, some of our American elites were more worried about treasure. Yet our experts had the solution. The war would pay for itself. How?
The nation in question, which would welcome us as liberators, had rich mineral and energy reserves. This would be an economic and global strategic win-win. The USA would not seize the natural wealth, of course — we would help further develop it and bring it to market, the right market.
Our Washington Consensus
The esteemed economist Lawrence Lindsey, then an Economic Advisor to the White House, stated on 16 September 2002:
The likely economic effects [of a war in Iraq] would be relatively small…. Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.
Under every plausible scenario. Just a few months earlier on 11 July 2002, the eminent geo-political strategist Richard Perle, then serving as the Chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, had explained:
Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.
No doubt they will. So rich in natural wealth. On 4 October 2002, the renowned economist Glenn Hubbard, then Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors (2001-2003) with prior experience as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the USA Department of the Treasury, stated unequivocally:
The costs of any intervention would be very small.
Very small. Hubbard had summarized our permitted expert consensus. Just a month earlier in September 2002, the former CIA intelligence analyst then working as the Director for Persian Gulf Affairs for the USA National Security Council (NSC), Kenneth Pollack, provided similar assurances to silence any skeptics:
It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.
Unimaginable. A rough half-year later, testifying before Congress on 27 March 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then the USA Deputy Secretary of Defense, sealed the deal:
There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.
Our best and brightest, in harmonious agreement. Under every plausible scenario, our costs quite small, very small. Other outcomes unimaginable. This other nation is wealthy with natural resources — it starts with their assets. Burden to the USA taxpayer? Non-issue, no worries.
Btw, the source for these Washington consensus quotes: Navasky and Cerf, "Who Said the War Would Pay for Itself? They Did!", The Nation (13 Mar 2008).
Any dissenting voices were ridiculed and silenced — but with such a stellar line-up committed to spreading democracy and ending terror, why waste time on unpatriotic skeptics? The MSM by and large did not.
Our Best and Brightest — So Told
So how did that turn out? Did the Iraq War — as promised — pay for itself?
The true cost of the Iraqi conflict to the USA taxpayers, according to research by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate for Economics, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor of Public Policy, will be three trillion dollars (2008). This does include projected future costs of caring for veterans from the conflict.
In 2020, while the USA was still on the ground in Iraq, the Military Times, not a progressive peacenik news source, following the research done by the Waston Institute at Brown University, estimated that the Iraq War will cost the USA roughly two trillion dollars (6 Feb 2020).
The Watson Institute, understanding the Syria conflict as an extension of the Iraqi conflict, estimated in 2023 that the total cost of both wars at 2.9 trillion dollars (17 Mar 2023). Their comprehensive report is available for free download.
Let’s go with lowest credible estimate for the cost of the Iraq War: two trillion US dollars and counting, as the debt is still being serviced.
“The more you fuck up, the higher you move up”
So to take just one example, what happened professionally to Kenneth Pollack, the then NSC Director for Persian Gulf Affairs, who proclaimed it “unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars”?
Pollack remains a distinguished Middle East expert in the establishment Foreign Policy community, and currently serves as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institution as well as a senior advisor for the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy consulting agency found by the late Madeline Albright.
There’s a saying about Permanent Washington, about our unelected ruling class: “the more you fuck up, the higher you move up.” Explains much. But back to Ukraine.
Ukraine and Europe’s Golden Green Energy Future
Just when you were giving up on Ukraine, suffering from fatigue and burnout, our newish Washington consensus experts need you to know that all not lost. Not at all.
In fact, Ukraine is the key to everything. Fight climate change. Mass-produce electric vehicles and green energy technologies. Jump-start the sagging economies of most EU states. Compete with and check the industrial and financial power of China. Achieve both low-cost energy and energy security while leaving behind evil Russia oil and gas and fossil fuel more generally (unless it comes from NATO-stalwart Norway in which case it is magically non-polluting).
What awaits us? A utopia which even Greta Thunberg would approve. If we stay the course. If we prevail against the evil Putin. And best of all, all this will pay for itself. Yes. The billions we poured in become loans, investments. Because Ukraine has trillions of dollars in natural resources. Especially in lithium, the white gold — the mystical alchemical metal of green energy technology. Which — as decreed by Senator Lindsey Graham — must NOT fall into Chinese hands (10 June 2024). Must not. (We will review Graham’s decree shortly below).
So the battle over Ukraine’s “sovereign territory” is really a battle over trillions of dollars in green energy resources, a battle for Europe’s energy and economic future, and vital part of the sacred struggle against climate change. We can’t pull out now. Unthinkable. Unimaginable.
Let’s hear from our experts, both actual and MSM-anointed. Your author will add some needed context (beyond the brief history lesson provided earlier in this post). We will start with some reality and then work our way to the various lithium and green energy fantasias.
Reality Check, then Delusional Bouncing About
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) publishes the Minerals Yearbook: Metals and Minerals which is considered an industry-standard — the benchmark for Open-Source intelligence on these concerns. The most recent report on Ukraine summarizes the data available for 2019 (pre-war), with details as follows:
In 2019, Ukraine was among the world’s leading producers of numerous minerals. The country was the 4th-ranked producer of rutile (14.4% of world output); the 5th-ranked producer of titanium sponge (4.0% of world output); the 6th-ranked producer of bromine (1.0% of world output), ilmenite (6.4% of world output), and magnesium metal (0.7% of world output); the 7th-ranked producer of graphite (1.8% of world output) and iron ore (2.6% of world output); the 8th-ranked producer of kaolin (4.2% of world output) and manganese ore (2.6% of world output); the 9th-ranked producer of pig iron (1.6% of world output); the 11th-ranked producer of peat (2.1% of world output); the 12th-ranked producer of bentonite (1.1% of world output) and silicon (0.7% of world output); the 13th-ranked producer of raw steel (1.1% of world output); and the 14th-ranked producer of lime (0.5% of world output).
Let’s put that in a table and see what is and what is not.
Impressive. And reasonably consistent over the previous decade or so. But look again, please. First, what is missing from this list? Second, what else is missing from the mining and development of these vast natural resources?
First, lithium. Ukraine has proven lithium reserves — as known for decades. But we have had NO lithium mining in Ukraine. None. Unlike — for example — all the other resources being exploited as shown above. Again, the year 2019 is NOT an anomaly —there has been no lithium mining taking place in Ukraine.
Why?
Hint: the answer is not Russian interference. Rather, think marketplace instead. It has not been cost-effective to mine the lithium in Ukraine, although the increased global demand is changing that. So specific consortiums from China and Australia — ones with the appropriate expertise — have floated proposals for development. The necessary investments, which start in the 100s of millions of dollars, are not simply a matter of financial capital. The parties involved must also have both the knowledge capital and the physical capital (heavy machinery, related technology, needed transport infrastructure, et cetera).
So BlackRock, for example, cannot simply print say 300 million in debt-financing and then have the metal magically rise out of the earth.
Second, what else is missing? The national wealth which all the current resources being exploited should have brought to Ukraine. Ukraine has been either the poorest nation in Europe or among them since 1991, since independence. As American Exile discussed previously (14 Apr 2024 & 1 Mar 2022), on Per Capita GDP basis adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, Ukraine was doing better while in the USSR — in direct contrast to Poland, Hungary, and other former Soviet states.
The Resource Curse
Where has all the money gone from the exploitation of Ukraine’s vast natural wealth? Well, those of us familiar with Congo DR (Congo-Kinshasa) know this script well. For your convenience, American Exile has a previous post which in part describes the looting machine at work.
More than a few economists have called this the resource curse. A nation rich with natural resources is not doomed to pervasive corruption, brutal economic inequality, social unrest and civil violence — but both history and the present moment offer us numerous examples of nations which based on their natural wealth should be prosperous and peaceful but instead are the opposite. In contrast, for example, Luxembourg, which has jack-shit in the way of metal and mineral wealth, consistently ranks among the nations with the highest human development and highest GDP (PPP) Per Capita.
So even if and when the lithium mining begins, no golden age for Ukraine is certain. The safer prediction: more like the previous status quo but on steroids. Even more savage inequalities, grosser corruption.
Senator Lindsey Graham Dreams Green
We turn now to the lithium fantasias pervading the MSM and promoted by Senator Lindsey Graham and other Western authorities. We’ll get to the Ukrainian child soldiers a bit later, promise.
For his 10 June 2024 Face the Nation interview, Senator Graham strove for emphasis by repetition. The following is from the transcript, circa minutes 4:15 to 4:56:
They're [Ukraine is] sitting on 10 to 12 trillion dollar of critical minerals. Ukraine ... could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don't want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of.
That 10 to 12 trillion dollars of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West not given to Putin and China. This is a very big deal how Ukraine ends. Let's help them win a war we can't afford to lose. Let's find a solution to this war.
But they're sitting on a goal mine: to give Putin 10 or 12 trillion dollars of critical minerals that he will share with China is ridiculous.
Note that Graham says Putin-China three times, like a spell or incantation. Where to begin? First, please do notice Graham’s false dilemma — either Ukraine wins the war with a military victory over Russia, or all the natural resources get handed over to Putin for China.
To start, excepting for lithium, the mining industry in Ukraine was alive and well — and most certainly has resulted in neither prosperity nor stability for the Ukrainian people. Moreover, we have NO credible evidence that Russia plans to conquer all of Ukraine — and we have considerable good cause to believe otherwise. No chance that the bulk of Ukraine’s yet exploited mineral wealth goes to China — unless China buys the development rights on the global market.
Finally, and as mentioned above, Ukraine will become the richest nation in Europe much the same way that Congo DR (Kinshasa) has become the richest nation in Africa. Hint: Congo DR is a perennially failing state, savaged by social conflict and political violence, but the GDP (PPP) per capita as of 2023 did crest to $1671 (rounding up). In fact, the parallels between Ukraine and Congo DR run deep. But no matter. Ukraine could be in Graham’s words “the best business partner we ever dreamed of.” (Reminds one of what President George HW Bush said about Zaire and Mobutu Sese Seko — but that is another post: #Congo DR, 25 Aug 2022).
Not Just One Sick Senator
Let’s move on from Graham, for now, to our media survey of what experts have claimed. Ben Norton, writing for Global Political Economy (13 Jun 2024), provides some essential context and analysis for Graham’s remarks, but does report the usual expert sources a bit uncritically. One must suspect the Washington Post 2022 estimate of the mineral wealth in Eastern Ukraine because the sources are blatantly partisan.
Hiroko Tabuchi, writing for the NYT (2 March 2022), does her own careful dance with counterfactuals and blame-shifting. Her first three paragraphs are a masterclass in journalistic bias of the highest refinement. Let’s take each in turn.
Paragraph one:
Deep below the ground in Ukraine, where Russia continues to mount an aggressive attack, lies vast, untapped mineral wealth that could hold the keys to a lucrative, clean-energy future for the Eastern European nation.
Yes, the “untapped mineral wealth” COULD “hold the keys to a lucrative, clean-energy future the Eastern European nation,” but almost certainly will not (as discussed above).
The first question to ask yourself (as also discussed above): why hasn’t the lithium been mined? The second question, which we will get to soon enough, does Russia either control or claim the territory with the major lithium deposits? Hint: NO.
Paragraph two:
Ukrainian researchers have speculated that the country’s eastern region holds close to 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source of lithium, which is critical to the production of the batteries that power electric vehicles. That preliminary assessment, if it holds, would make Ukraine’s lithium reserves one of the largest in the world.
The first sentence starts with a carefully nuanced claim and ends with an obvious truth. The second sentence, the same pattern. If you have studied rhetoric, you likely learned that on the cognitive level, the basic sentence pattern to the reader is topic + stress (stress: the primary claim or event concerning the topic). Ending on a strong, obvious truth or fact guides the reader to accepting the entire statement as the same.
Let’s reverse the emphasis. The researchers are Ukrainian and have SPECULATED. So no bias there, right? If you were an investor, you would insist on an independent survey. Their assessment is preliminary and may NOT hold. It does indicate a large reserve, which seems generally accurate. But wait for it.
In fact, lithium is not rare. The challenge is finding concentrations worth developing — that are cost-effective to mine. Well prior to the war, the industry was not gung-ho on developing Ukraine’s lithium deposits — although Ukraine was attracting more attention because of the globally increased demand and hence rising prices for lithium. But how does Tabuchi present this?
Paragraph three:
But the Russian invasion has come just as Ukraine, under President Volodymyr Zelensky, was trying to position itself as a major player in the clean energy transition.
Yes! The black-hearted Putin, and the white-knight Zelensky. Grisly old Putin cock-blocking the charismatic Zelensky who with the virgin lithium reserves was on his way to being “a major player in the clean energy transition.” Now, that is how you do propaganda. Particularly for college-educated liberals.
If a clear profit was to be made by mining lithium in Ukraine, no ruler or oligarch prior to Zelensky would have stood in the way. Just nonsense.
Why No Lithium Mining?
Olha Karpenko, for AIN Capital, has asked and gotten answers (30 Aug 2023) to the obvious question: “Ukraine has millions of tons of lithium. Why is it not being mined?” Her expert, Yevhen Naumenko, a researcher at the geological department of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, does NOT blame Putin. Rather, Naumenko calls attention to the geological features which present a challenge to existing mining practices. Again, we are back to what is cost-effective.
If the lithium reserves are worth say 5 trillion USD, but will cost 6 trillion USD to extract and process into a market-ready commodity, then the lithium stays in ground. The projected global demand for lithium is such that the Ukrainian reserves will likely be developed. But this requires not just investors but also expertise and equipment. Consortiums with this expertise and heavy industry technology also have the ability to line up investors — the Chinese foremost among them. If market economics matter at all, it may not be possible to keep the Chinese out.
Where is the Lithium?
But wait. We have more to learn from our Ukrainian geologist Naumenko. The two largest lithium reserves by far, Polokhivske and Dobra, are in the Kirovohrad oblast, in Right-bank (Western) Ukraine (30 Aug 2023).
Oopsie. Tabuchi, writing for the NYT, somehow failed to mention that. Not that the NYT would ever lie to or mislead us.
For the record, Russia has made NO territorial claims on the Kirovohrad oblast. None. The richest lithium deposits remain firmly within Zelensky’s grasp — or in the grasp of whoever his successor might be. If the lithium is really that important, sign a peace treaty and begin mining. Make Ukraine the wealthiest nation in Europe. Lead the global clean energy transition, fight climate change, and save the planet.
We’re getting child soldiers, instead; and likely years of ongoing conflict involving Ukraine and neighboring states. Ukraine as the European Congo DR.
Your author will get to the child soldiers — promise, again. But we are not yet done with the Ukrainian lithium fantasias which justify perpetuating the conflict and hence recruiting the child soldiers.
Globally Recognized Thought Leader!
To justify the bee buzzing around in his bonnet, Senator Graham can fall back on Foreign Policy, the preeminent voice of the American Foreign Policy establishment, and the “globally recognized thought leader” Robert Muggah, the lead author for “Russia’s Resource Grab in Ukraine” (28 April 2022).
Muggah, to his credit, observed that “the total value of [Ukrainian] deposits —including titanium, iron, neon, nickel, lithium, and other key resources — could reach between $3 trillion and as much as $11.5 trillion” (28 April 2022). Senator Graham and our other Putin alarmists run with the best-case scenario.
In Muggah’s understanding, Crimea belongs to Ukraine; any Black Sea hydrocarbons likewise largely do; and Ukraine rare earth minerals and other resources can help the West reduce its “reliance on China.” He claims that Russia has security “fears” but evidently not valid concerns, yet at the same time, holds that energy security was a major driving factor in Putin’s decision to invade. On this general topic, American Exile has several relevant posts — all of which largely rebut Muggah’s whitewashing of the West.
Please consider our
And these other related posts:
“The Second Great Falsehood about the NATO-Proxy War with Russia in Ukraine.” (4 Jun 2024)
“Why does Putin still have support in Russia?” (27 Aug 2023)
“Russia: Real Security Concerns, Real Weaknesses.” (5 Mar 2022)
“Russia, a convenient enemy; China, not yet.” (30 Apr 2022)
Muggah then speculates that “the far bigger prized eyed by Russia may be Ukraine’s extraordinary resource riches” — without noting that Russia itself has NO shortage of such resources. With the ball rolling, Muggah likewise notes that the angelic Ukraine Invest was busy considering “more than 100 proposals from companies across Europe and North America” and the EU had also recently signed “a new strategic partnership to extract raw materials” (28 April 2022). So no resource grabbing there.
White Hats vs. Black-hearted Villains
With the white hats clearly planted on the proper heads, Muggah turns back to Russia. His speculation about Russian motives quickly turns into factual-like assertions, sprinkled with some generally good production statistics for gravitas — but with few or more woefully out of context. He concludes with a banger (28 April 2022):
By destabilizing or occupying Ukraine’s key production areas, Russia is positioned to achieve a high degree of leverage and control over a significant share of global commodities, including food, energy, and the strategic minerals that the green energy transition relies on.
Got it. The most sanctioned nation on earth, itself resource-rich, is by grand and evil design sticking it to the West economically and interfering with our glorious green energy future.
Reality Contradicts the Narrative
In fact, in April 2022, right about the same time Muggah wrote the above analysis which accused Putin of being a real-life Professor James Moriarty with nuclear weapons, Russia had made Ukraine a sweetheart deal of a peace treaty. This was the Istanbul agreement which the MSM has briefly mentioned in preparation for shifting all the blame to Zelensky at some point.
We have what Putin’s actions show us versus what a “globally recognized thought leader” tells us. The choice is yours.
If Ukraine’s role in the green energy transition was so essential, one wonders why Zelensky was persuaded by Boris Johnson on behalf of the USA both to turn Putin down and to escalate the war.
If the lithium reserves meant so damn much to the future of Ukraine and Europe, and to the green energy transition and saving the planet, then mining could have begun full-tilt boogie starting May 2022. Bo-Jo the globalist Bozo on the behalf of the USA killed that possibility — because it was never much of one in the first place.
But the Narrative Continues
No matter. No doubt aspiring “globally recognized thought leader” Gabriela Garity, a student fellow at the Kleinman Century for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, makes a terse but generally sane contribution to the Putin blame-game. Her brief “Lithium: The Link Between the Ukraine War the Clean Energy Transition” (3 June 2022) merits reading, but at times uncritically accepts questionable albeit establishment sources and gives far too much weight to the conflict.
Please do remember that the USA could have been for the past few decades globally competing for green energy resources and rare earth elements. American Exile has covered our failure to do so. Blaming Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine for our lack of progress misses the big picture by a country mile.
On this general topic, please consider our
Along with the related posts:
“Buying the Copper Mountain was only the Beginning: China and South America.” (16 Jun 2022)
“Chinese International Investment: Energy and Metal Sectors.” (6 Jul 2022)
Back to Ukraine. Despite the alarmist morass, we do have a few dissenting voices of sanity and clarity among the establishment. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Thomas Graham wisely asks “What Does Putin Really Want in Ukraine?” (16 May 2024). Although he grossly underestimates Russia’s achievements both domestically (economically) and on the battlefield, Graham does NOT trade in Muggah’s fashionable green energy conspiracy theory (28 April 2022).
We should understand Muggah as offering yet another an evil Putin manifesto, but one which quite frankly seems confession by projection, given the proclivities and actions of our own Western elite.
More Confession by Projection
In his “Ukraine: All Lithium Reserves and Mineral Resources in the War Zones” (1 April 2022), written shortly before Muggah’s FP analyis and Putin’s offer of a peace treaty, Simone Fant does offer general but weak support for the resource grab conspiracy theory. But he is good enough to document more nuanced expert opinions. Fant cites Rod Schoonover, a former USA National Intelligence Council member, who claims that Putin understands the lithium deposits as co-benefit but not a cause.
In Schoonover’s words:
[U]ndoubtedly Ukraine's mineral wealth is one of the reasons why this country is so important to Russia. … [But] since there are no developed deposits, I highly doubt that lithium resources are the motivation for attacks. (1 April 2022)
Schoonover has the second half of that correct. He goes on to add:
[The rest of the world] would not import lithium from a pariah state ... especially when there are better alternatives in geo-politically more favorable countries. (1 April 2022)
Correct again. No green energy future hangs in the balance over this. Moreover, Ukraine’s lithium deposits will likely take years to reach profitability — and likewise to reach production at scale. Nevertheless, overall Fant (1 April 2022) did share with us another set of experts kicking up a fuss about Russian resource grabbing. And again, this was published around the same time Putin was trying to return the lithium reserves and more to Ukraine for security guarantees. Who’s zoomin’ who, here?
The Nonsense (Expert) Consensus
So neither the numbers nor the facts add up, but the green energy conspiracy theory is the now the fashionable narrative being foisted on NATO citizens. You’ve already heard it. The crude Senator Lindsey Graham version, the polished Robert Muggah Foreign Policy version, and the MSM pundit variants in between. Let’s recap.
Evil Putin is invading Ukraine as resource grab, intent on stealing the precious lithium and delaying the green energy transition, thus putting at risk the energy and economic futures of Europe, and furthermore accelerating climate change and destroying our earth in the process while aiding China, NATO’s new enemy, in global domination. (Think the Grinch, with minions).
Putin must be defeated at any cost (provided it is Ukrainians who are dying in this glorious and righteous struggle). The war must continue but will pay for itself once Ukraine partners itself exclusively with the West for natural resource development. (Because free trade no more — don’t ask). Just as Senator Graham said, Ukraine will become “the best business partner we ever dreamed of.” So keep fighting.
The Struggle Must Continue
This brings us to the child soldiers, the latest twist in fighting to the last Ukrainian. Call it total mobilization. (Women are being mobilized also).
The video presented earlier is from the Lviv oblast in Ukraine — heart of the Galician ideal homeland. It shows children at a National & Patriotic Education camp. Let’s start with a campfire and singing songs.
The song in question celebrates Stepan Bandera, whose crimes against humanity are documented beyond serious dispute.
The Bandera Cult — a Minority Imposition Supported by the USA
When this glorification of Bandera comes up in the Western MSM, it gets quietly dismissed with apologetics such like: Yes, unfortunate. In some ways, shameful. But the “founding fathers” of any nation are typically controversial and believed and did things that we today would not approve of. After Ukraine deals with the challenges it faces, and reaches stability by joining the EU and NATO, there will be a mature reappraisal, and all this Bandera nonsense will go into the dustbin of history where it belongs. But for now, the Ukrainians need their nationalist heroes — flawed as such figures might well be. Et cetera.
Got it. First, Bandera was born in 1909: about ten years after the birth of Ernest Hemingway and nineteen years after that of Dwight Eisenhower. So not as historically remote as his apologists seem to wish. Second, and more importantly, the majority of Ukrainians do NOT have a favorable opinion of Stepan Bandera. They do NOT consider him their founding father. How do we know this? Because the matter has been formally studied in surveys of Ukrainian public opinion.
Ivan Katchanovski, in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies, offered comparative and regression analyses of surveys conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2009 and 2013 (8 July 2015).
Your author here will simply cover two highlights. First, the big picture — the nation-wide results visualized. (This from Table 1 in the study). Second, the significant changes in attitudes towards Stepan Bandera as one progresses from Left-Bank Ukraine to Right-Bank Ukraine. (If a review is needed, your author discussed in detail the historical and ongoing differences between Left-Bank and Right-Bank Ukraine in a recent post, “The Second Great Falsehood about the NATO-Proxy War with Russia in Ukraine”).
On a national level, more Ukrainians have a negative than positive view of Bandera. If we count the Neutral and Unsure/No Opinion as non-supporters, we see the Bandera supporters are a distinct minority. This breaks down clearly and distinctly on a geographical basis as we move from West Ukraine to East Ukraine, with Kyiv city in the geographical center.
In the graph below, we see the stark contrast between the Donbass region of Right-Bank Ukraine (the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), circa 2013, and the Galicia region of Left-Bank Ukraine, circa 2013.
As American Exile has covered previously, the former Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts are now claimed by Russia as part of the Federation. Moreover, this likely largely does reflect the will of the people who have been living there even though the international community has not recognized the referendums held in Donetsk and Luhansk.
The USA has consistently supported the Galician ideal nationalists, aka, the Banderites, who in turn have been waging civil war against the Eastern (Right-Bank) Ukrainians to purify the nation and consolidate power. Don’t take your author’s word for it. Listen again, please, to the then President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, after the 2014 Maidan coup.
Because we will have our jobs — they will not.
We will have our pensions — they will not.
We will have care for children, for people and retirees —they will not.
Our children will go to schools and kindergartens —
Theirs will hole up in the basements.
Because they are not able to do a thing.
This is exactly how we will win this war!
This is a President who understood himself at war inside a clearly divided nation. Please, again, review the color graphs above showing the support or lack thereof for the Banderite cause.
Your take-away point, dear reader. There is nothing like a consensus in Ukraine for Stepan Bandera as the “father of Ukraine.” Only a minority have held this position. By supporting this minority at the expense of the majority, the USA for two decades now has been undermining internal Ukrainian efforts at social stability and the rule of law based upon representative government.
You know, like that democracy thing we always talk about. But back to the issue at hand. The indoctrination and mobilization of Ukrainian children.
Not the Boy Scouts, exactly
So some children in Western Ukraine are being indoctrinated under the guise of promoting healthy outdoor activities and have been recorded sing ultra-nationalist propaganda around campfires. Who cares? A majority of liberal Americans likely felt the same way about the Boy Scouts of America, prior to the organization’s reformation. Remember: George Washington was a slaveholder, et cetera. Just repeat that whenever you want to excuse the inexcusable actions of one of our allies.
But this cultivation — this grooming — of the younger generation does not stop at teaching them songs. The next generation — or perhaps even the next wave — of conscripts is being prepared. Child soldiers.
It’s like Sub-Saharan Africa with warlords recruiting children to help with the looting of natural resources. The tantalum-mining in Congo DR, the “blood” diamonds of Angola and Sierra Leone, and now lithium in Ukraine. Fight to the last Ukrainian foolish enough to stay in Ukraine, fight to the last man, woman, and child, so that the EU and USA can gain full access to Ukraine’s natural wealth in minerals and metals. For the green energy transition. We are saving the planet. Evil Putin, bad China. Grabbing resources. Not us. No, not us.
On a not-unrelated side note, The Intel Drop (21 July 2024) has reported that the Zelensky regime is directly involved with reselling not just NATO-supplied weapons but also human organs to known criminal syndicates. To cite just one revelation from their report (21 July 2024):
Human rights ombudsmen from the Fondazione lotta alla Repressione have managed to establish that the most shocking crime involving the Ukrainian consulate in Naples in collaboration with the Italian mafia is the illegal organ harvesting and human trafficking as organ donors.
Your author cannot verify this report but does note that several Ukrainian telegram accounts have made related claims. The general story goes as follows. A family member collects from the military the corpse of a fallen relative for burial. They find the body itself has been looted — select organs harvested without consent.
One is reminded of the gold fillings being pulled from teeth of the concentration camp victims. The exploitation of the Ukrainian people is reaching its perversely logical totality. Please see our earlier “The Demographic Destruction of Ukraine” (14 Apr 2024), the sources of which are verifiable.
End this Obscenity — Repudiate this “Green New Deal”
So many dead, so many more wavering between survival and destruction. This general obscenity — now marketed as part of a globalist “Green New Deal” — must end. Even when proposed by such luminaries as Senator Lindsey Graham or “globally recognized thought leader” Robert Muggah, the Greta Thunberg excuse for continuing the Russo-Ukraine conflict is more absurd, contrived, and vile than the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony. The sooner Russia’s security concerns are taken respectfully, the sooner we will have a Peace Treaty. Then the lithium mining can begin — and good luck with that.
Your author doubts the Ukrainian people will benefit from the land’s natural wealth. So far, the vast majority of Ukrainians have not. But at least the citizens of Ukraine will stop being rounded up and sent to the slaughter so that Western elites can claim the territory of Ukraine as a giant blank slate for their transition fantasias into green energy and rather more.