Letters to Bette: 'The Way Out for Ukraine'
Kyiv-based reporter and founder of Lifeline Ukraine, Paul Niland says collapsing Russia's economy is the way out for Ukraine
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Bette member Paul Niland, a Kyiv-based reporter originally from Ireland, who founded Lifeline Ukraine, the country’s first suicide hotline, zipped me this letter today in response to Marty’s letter to Bette earlier today, which you can read hereL
Below is Niland’s response.
“The way out is for Ukraine is to collapse Russia’s economy, which is now well underway.”—Paul Niland
Letters to Bette: ‘The Way Out for Ukraine’
By Paul Niland
Dear Heidi,
There’s no way that Putin compromises over Crimea. Not even to get the rest of the Donbas. Not that Ukraine would make that trade anyway, both regions are officially termed “Temporarily Occupied Territories” and they along with the parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that were occupied in early 2022 are equally sacrosanct for Russia propaganda purposes and targets for Ukraine to reintegrate.
I can’t see a swap deal along the lines that Marty is thinking being agreed by either of the warring parties, and it leaves totally unresolved the two regions occupied since 2022 and what they mean for the further occupation of Crimea. Which, as I say, Putin is not going to give up in any negotiated settlement.
As I wrote in a recent Byline Times article, The Three Sharp Points of the Ukrainian Trident, the land bridge to Crimea is the only strategic gain that Russia wanted and has made since 2022.The way out is for Ukraine is to collapse Russia’s economy, which is now well underway. The lines we see at petrol stations across Russia are only the beginning of the pain that the average Russia is going to feel. What is coming is a ruined harvest, also due to the fuel shortage, and limited supplies in shops also because of logistics being unable to run without diesel.
Putin doesn’t actually care one shit about the Donbas, or the people there. The war Russia started in the Donbas in 2014 had several purposes. It fed the general lust for war of some kind among the Russian population. Here’s another link from a Byline Times article on Russia’s War Addiction. It offered another distraction for the Russian population from their domestic issues. It was used repeatedly as a bargaining chip to get Ukraine and the world to formally recognise Crimea as a part of Russia. They repeatedly tried to use their supposed “influence” over the people of Ukraine’s east (while they actually controlled and directed them completely) to end the bloodshed, if we all acknowledge that Crimea is Russian. And now the distraction over the Donbas (why are we arguing over a few Km2 of that land when we can just agree on peace) as a red herring to draw attention from the fact that they’re insisting on the lands of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia remaining under Russian de facto occupation. They pretend the dispute is over one region, when really that masks the fact it is several regions.
We know that Putin doesn't give a shit about the people of the Donbas just by looking at what he has been doing to their homes and towns since the full-scale war exploded the conflict there.
All of those places have been destroyed.
Not liberated. Obliterated. Bakhmut, Avdiivka, all of them are uninhabitable. They're ghost towns, which were once homes to proud and hardworking people. They were wiped off the face of the map. Putin ordered that. It's how the Russian military operates, utter destruction. No, Putin doesn't care about the Donbas or the people there.
Kind regards,
Paul Niland
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This makes sense because violence is addictive and the *need for* cruelty and destruction is *insatiable*. This is because the brain path/network out of pain and fear is dopamine mediated, easily seen in the authoritarian violence disorder. Further to this, it gives explantion to why we see these players and even some of their infected followers as having fun in the death, cruelty and destruction (e.g. Mariupol as well as the leaders).