For all the speculation making the rounds about the Minsk Agreement and the Minsk Protocol, it is essential to keep one very salient fact in mind. The western blather about how the Russians are pulling the strings and is simply so much hot air–and not the kind that might help the Ukies through the bitter cold of this winter. Even Putin and his circle are mistaken if they truly think they can put Humpty Dumpty back together again–though I think they may already know this and are engaging in some posturing around the issue.
The plain fact is that the idea of a unitary state called Ukraine is completely dead, and there is no Lazarus Protocol waiting in the wings. Whatever form it takes, however long the process is dragged out, and no matter the pressures that are applied to put the genie back in the bottle, the bell simply cannot be unrung. The people of Novorossiya, watched as their brothers and sisters were murdered, first in Odessa, then in Mariupol, and then shelled mercilessly in Lugansk and Donetsk, killed without sanction or remorse by a crazed group of thugs egged on by the west. Russia bears no responsibility for this whatsoever–the US made the death of the idea of Ukraine an absolute certainty by funding, arming and backing fascists and oligarchs to commit a series of atrocities on their countrymen.
Whether there is amnesty, or some bogus treaty or comminique is largely irrelevant. The people of these regions will simply not live under the control of Kiev ever again. No plans, protocols or peace treaties can make any of this go away. The specific form of how this all comes to pass is still blurry; the general outlines are not. They have already been written in blood.
Daniel Patrick Welch is the American writer, singer, linguist and activist living and writing in Salem, Massachusetts.
has the date of the funeral been set?
According to the conditions of corpses, these people were killed in mid-August.