The editor of the Economist, Zanny Beddoes, has mourned the resilience of the Russian side since the 24 February 2022 invasion of Donetsk and Lugansk by Russian forces and their incorporation into the Russian Federation. Crimea had been similarly taken back from Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan coup that sought to de-legitimize Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens with the intention of driving them across the border into Russia. Instead, in 2022 the two eastern provinces declared their independence from Ukraine, thereby joining hands with Crimea. The Economist Editor Beddoes, judging by the entirely one-sided narrative of her magazine on the Ukraine-Russia situation, seems not to have read any memo that mentioned the systematic manner in which Russian-speaking Ukrainians were being reduced to helots since 2014 by Kiev in a worse manner than S.W.R.D Bandaranaike sought to convert the Tamil-speaking population of Sri Lanka into tenth class citizens ruled by the Sinhala-speaking segment of the population. Later, in one of the many strategic errors made by India during those days, hundreds of thousands of Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans were deported to India under the Sirimavo-Shastri pact in 1964, further establishing the widespread perception that those who governed India were without a spine, a perception that was somewhat altered after Shastri’s more emphatic response to Ayub Khan’s efforts the next year to annex what was left in Indian control of Kashmir.
In Tashkent, Shastri handed back to Pakistan the Haji Pir pass, thereby continuing a red carpet for infiltration of Pakistan Army auxiliaries into the state, a group that caused much mayhem in the 1990s, supercharged by the Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah pact in 1975, in which the Sheikh took over the reins of government in Jammu & Kashmir, opening the gates to large scale entry of Pakistan-based individuals into the territory he was put in charge of by a trustful Prime Minister of India. Only much later, in 2019, did a Prime Minister do what needed to have been done in 1947, which was to ensure that the Union Government acted in a manner reflecting the reality of Jammu & Kashmir being a part of India since 1947, rather than a “disputed” territory, the delusion under which many of his predecessors had acted.
Of course, just as Zanny Beddoes ensured that her magazine stood alongside almost the entire “free” western media in forecasting the imminent collapse of Russian forces and the disappearance of Putin, while making much of the way in which Ukrainian forces would push back their Russian foes and once again bring Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk under the control of Kiev. If the editor of the Economist had deigned to look at the columns of The Sunday Guardian, she would have from the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, seen a prediction that reflected exactly the situation that she is now despairing of. Her prescription for winning a war lost from the start? Throw more taxpayer money into the quicksand that the war has become for the Atlantic Alliance. In this, she stands shoulder to shoulder with President Joe Biden, who is ready to allocate hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars to fund his crusade against Russia, no matter that tens of millions of his citizens, especially African-Americans, remain homeless, jobless and without hope. Such a situation could have been reversed were the bulk of the money Biden has thrown into the Ukraine pit been used instead for ensuring that underprivileged US citizens, who have been his most loyal voting base, get priority over throwing money at a Useless War. Just as they did when President George W. Bush launched a war in 2003 against Saddam Hussein, describing that longtime target of Al Qaeda as the prime mover behind that terrorist gang, “free” western media have reflected the narrative of their governments in Ukraine as well, and in the process, are becoming discredited amongst their own readers. Zanny Beddoes ought not to continue to peddle the zany delusions of western leaders elected to office to serve their countries, but who instead are draining their resources and sacrificing the future of their countries on a war fought at the wrong place, with the wrong country, at the wrong time.