The Ukraine crisis - the nightmare of a concentrated attack on the Senkaku Islands|Tetsuhide Yamaoka

The Ukraine crisis - the nightmare of a concentrated attack on the Senkaku Islands|Tetsuhide Yamaoka

Japan must defend itself without relying on anyone else. Ukraine is showing us the consequences of a country that fails to show this determination and leaves its own security to foreign countries. Japan's very survival is at stake.


Ukraine used and abandoned by Biden

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Although the Ukrainian army has shown surprisingly strong resistance against Russia's three-way invasion of Ukraine, it will be extremely difficult for Ukrainian forces to break through and drive out Russian forces unless reinforcements arrive.

On 6 March, President Zelensky himself distributed a video in which he stated that the Vinnytsia military airfield had been destroyed by eight missiles. "We will not be saved unless the Western countries set up a no-fly zone over our country, eliminate Russian missiles and aircraft, and provide us with military aircraft. Do you want us to be slowly killed?" he cried out sadly. However, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) refused to establish a no-fly zone or to provide military aircraft.

In short, neither NATO's European countries nor Biden's US wanted to fight directly against the military powerhouse Russia, even though they would provide weapons to Ukraine. The only thing abandoned Ukraine could do was to recruit mercenaries.

If neither NATO nor the US came to its aid, it would have to face the overwhelming military power of its enemies alone. This could well be the fate of Taiwan and Japan in the near future. We should recognize that we have indeed reached a historical turning point.

Ukraine's pro-US government, which came into power after the political changes of 2014, was used and disciplined no end by the Obama-Biden administration. Ukrainian oligarchs also gave plenty of money to Hunter and Joe Biden. After all that, when Russia finally attacked Ukraine, Biden abandoned it. But in fact, the agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was signed 20 years before that.

Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was signed by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference in the Hungarian capital Budapest on 5 December 1994, following their accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it was also signed by the three signatories to the agreement, Russia, the USA and the UK. It was a matter of providing those three former Soviet states with security over territory and sovereignty by Russia, the USA and the UK. China and France made similar agreements in separate written documents.

In other words, the nuclear-armed states told these former Soviet states that still possessed Soviet-era nuclear weapons, " if you give up your nuclear weapons, we will be responsible for protecting you. We will assure your territory and independence". At the time, Ukraine in particular had a large number of Soviet-era nuclear weapons remaining and was the third largest nuclear power in the world.

Ukraine handed over its nuclear weapons to Russia on request and carried out significant disarmament. Glenko Andriy, a Ukrainian political scientist who was with me on one of our programs, said that everyone at that time believed that there would be no more major wars and that they would not be invaded.

If these nuclear-armed states - permanent members of the UN Security Council - were serious about peace, they should have retained Ukraine as a complete buffer zone under the 'Budapest Memorandum'. However, when the pro-US government that emerged from the US-backed political changes in 2014 decided to expel Russia's Black Sea Fleet, an angry Putin annexed Crimea. Seeing this, the pro-Russian population in the east demanded secession, leading to conflict and the formation of the Minsk Agreement in 2015, with the UK and France as guardians. At this point, the Budapest Memorandum had practically collapsed. The full-scale invasion by Russia has now completely blown up the entire Minsk Agreement.

Ukraine, which had disarmed itself, was eventually literally destroyed by the imperialism of the major powers. The deceit of the Great Powers in failing to maintain a buffer zone where it should have been a buffer zone deserves strong criticism.

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