The Germans called it Sitzkrieg. Literally phony war, it means a phase of a war in which there is little or no active warfare. It is now happening on the Ukraine border where reportedly 150,000 Russian troops are amassed for an invasion. While an invasion is highly unlikely – despite the best hopes of the warmongers in the US administration of Joe Biden – an interesting little sidelight is the number of Indians who are prepared to fight for the Ukrainians.

Several Indians on social media say they support Ukraine purely because it is the “underdog”. This may be dismissed as a daft view but it shows the utter lack of Shatrubodh – the inability to understand who your enemies are. Ukraine is one of the most racist countries on the planet yet some geopolitically challenged Indians are supporting it against Russia, which may be accused of many negative things but has never been known for its racism.

The majority of Ukrainians are admirers of the Stepan Bandera-led Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose men killed thousands of Jews and Poles, including women and children, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany in World War II. It is a measure of how barbaric Bandera’s men were that Nazi SS troops – the most fanatic and cruel of all German soldiers – requested that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army be separated from the main German Army because watching the atrocities of the Ukrainians was having an adverse impact on SS troops. When the SS – which gassed, shot and bludgeoned 6 million Jews to death – complains about being traumatized by violence, you begin to get an idea of how brutal Bandera’s men must have been.

Trouble with Ukraine

If Ukraine looks into a mirror, there is a fine chance it might see Pakistan staring back at it. Both Ukraine and Pakistan are classic examples of artificially created countries that have turned into dystopian nightmares because of Western meddling.

The similarities between Ukraine and Pakistan are too many to miss. When the US declared the sham “War on Terror” after 9/11, Washington and its allies pumped over $30 billion in aid to Pakistan despite the Pakistanis playing them for all they are worth. Pakistan is not only a state sponsor of terror – its fingerprints are found at almost every terror scene across the world – it once operated a thriving nuclear black market which supplied atomic weapons building components and consultancy to North Korea, Libya and Iran. And yet the Western elites not only looked the other way but actively encouraged the export of terror. After all, in American eyes Pakistan was “our SOB”.

But when Russia supports the people of east Ukraine against the neo-Nazi leadership in Kiev, the same set of actors in the West accuses the Russians of armed aggression. President Vladimir Putin questioned this line of logic in which US aid convoys to Kosovo and Syria were considered humanitarian aid but Moscow’s aid to Russian civilians in east Ukraine is considered aggression.

In a speech before the Duma, Putin said that for the West to claim that Kosovo and Crimea are different “is not even double standards; this is amazing, primitive, blunt cynicism. One should not try so crudely to make everything suit their interests, calling the same thing white today and black tomorrow”.

West’s vassals

Like Pakistan, Ukraine too is an artificial country that shouldn’t exist at all. If Pakistan’s Indus Valley is the cradle of India’s Vedic civilisation, then Ukraine is the fountainhead of Russian civilisation. But both countries today have the dubious honour of having becoming the West’s vassals.

In the 1950s the West co-opted Pakistan into the Western military system through a series of pacts such as SEATO and CENTO. In exchange, the US, France and Britain among others poured military aid into the dirt poor country, knowing full well that the weapons would only be used against India. (Of course, India wasn’t an innocent at all as Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru foolishly rejected repeated US offers of friendship and took India into the communist camp. The US was forced to enter into a military alliance with Islamabad after Nehru’s snub.)

Today, Ukraine is the new Pakistan. The parallels are too uncanny to be missed. It was the rain of dollars that perverted the Pakistani establishment and created the enduring nexus between Americans and the Pakistan Army that overthrew the democratically elected leadership. Similarly, billions of dollars in aid have been given to the illegitimate Ukrainian government that literally came to power in a coup. In both cases, the West – while outwardly claiming to be a supporter of democracy – sided with undemocratic regimes.

What irks Moscow is that the US is creating flashpoints in and around Russia’s sphere of influence. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US has been doing pretty much what it pleases. It has effectively destroyed Iraq (a former Russian ally) as a nation; bombed Serbia (an Orthodox Slav nation having deep ties with the Russian people); carved out Kosovo; and has destabilised Afghanistan, which was once firmly under Moscow’s thumb. Also, going against all precepts of detente, Washington has encroached upon Russia’s front yard and brought NATO jet fighters minutes from the Russian border.

From Russia’s point of view, the tipping point was reached when hawks likes John McCain (now dead) and Victoria Nuland and the clearly brain dead Hilary Clinton swooped upon Ukraine, distributing biscuits to rioters in central Kiev, virtually encouraging genocide against Russians. Indeed, Ukraine has been being turned into a nation of Russia haters. This is happening despite the fact that half the population of Ukraine has Russian and Ukrainian family members.

Lessons from a plan gone wrong

Sometime in the early 1980s when the Soviet Union installed a proxy regime in Afghanistan, Britain entered into a Faustian bargain with the Islamists. The deal was this – as long as the Islamists killed Soviets it was fine. “Just don’t do anything in England,” they were told.

British Muslims, especially those who had migrated from Pakistan, went into a frenzy of fund gathering. Their goal was simple – buy weapons, travel to Afghanistan, kill communists. Frothing-at-the-mouth demagogues spewed hate speech from street corners in Birmingham and London.

The British with their vast experience in dealing with these people certainly knew they were playing it dangerously. But their hatred of Russia was so deep, they kept it under wraps.

Islamic jehad even became a fashionable catchword in Britain, with pop singer Cat Stevens converting to Islam and becoming its most visible votary.

Encouraged by Britain’s green light for international jehad, Pakistani and pro-Pakistani shops in London’s Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods now started displaying posters exhorting customers and passers-by to contribute money for killing Hindus in Kashmir. When some Indians saw this, they promptly informed a British bobby about the offensive posters.

The bobby did nothing, so the Indians took the matter up with his superiors. Incredibly, the British police told them this was a South Asian matter and they didn’t think it was necessary to clamp down on such banal activities.

But like all Faustian bargains, there always comes a time to pay up. Today Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens based in Britain are hitting the world’s trouble spots. The numerous terror attacks on British soil are an inevitable result of the Thatcherite policy of allying with jehadi elements of the Islamic world.

The dogs of war that the West unleashed against Russia are now returning to haunt the West. Americans are now marked men in a huge swath of land extending from Turkey to Pakistan. But going by the continued backing for Ukrainian terrorists, the West has clearly not learned its lesson.

–The writer is a globally cited defence analyst. His work has been published by leading think tanks, and quoted extensively in books on diplomacy, counter terrorism, warfare and economic development. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda