FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 24, 2022
Oil Change International expresses solidarity with the people of Ukraine
Oil Change International strongly condemns Russia’s military aggression
Oil Change International is horrified by Russia’s war against Ukraine. We strongly condemn Russia’s military aggression. Our heart goes out to the people of Ukraine and people across the region who continue their human rights, climate, and social justice work in these dangerous circumstances, including in Russia.
We urge Russia to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine and stop violating its international humanitarian law and international human rights obligations. We echo the call from the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres: “In the name of humanity bring your troops back to Russia. In the name of humanity, do not allow a war to start in Europe which could be the worst war since the beginning of the century with consequences not only devastating for Ukraine, not only tragic for the Russian Federation but with an impact we cannot even foresee.”
While peace and the protection of civilians is the first priority, the war also underlines the importance for the European Union to reduce its reliance on fossil gas and Russia-owned companies like Gazprom. Fossil fuels are a major geopolitical force: 38% of Europe’s gas comes from Russia, 36% of Russia’s income comes from oil and gas, and 75% of Russia’s gas flows to Europe. As Murray Worthy from Global Witness points out: “sanctioning the country’s fossil fuel industry would be a powerful lever against Putin, but with 38% of Europe’s gas coming from Russia, it is a step European leaders are both unwilling and unable to take.” The most effective way to reduce reliance on Russia is by cutting gas demand through accelerating efforts on insulation and other energy efficiency measures, heat pumps, and solar and wind energy, rather than through increasing domestic gas production or increasing imports from other parts of the world.
Olha Boiko, Climate Action Network coordinator for the Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia Region (EECCA) calls for international solidarity: “This is not the first war Putin has started in the region. Until this regime falls, we cannot talk about progressive policies, climate action, safe civil society participation and grassroots mobilisation in the region. This is not a “Ukraine crisis” or “Russia-Ukraine tensions”. This is a Russian war against Ukraine. Putin should be stopped. This is a threat to the whole of Europe. We call on the international community to stand in solidarity with people in Ukraine.”
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Putin and his subservient cohorts need to be removed from any access to authoritative control and power. Putin has threatened the rest of the world with Russia’s nuclear weaponry. Such insanity must be stopped.
I advise you to stick to areas within the scope of such expertise as you may possess rather than parrot the Western establishment’s propaganda that blankets the media that it owns lock, stock, and barrel. Working your way backward, you should acquaint yourselves with the ‘maiden revolution’ of 2014 which was orchestrated in significant part by the U.S. with help from far-right elements in the country against the democratically elected government (so much for all the crocodile tears now being shed about the sanctity of democratic governments). Ukraine has been a democracy for over three decades and the 2010 election which elected that government was copiously scrutinized for legitimacy by many European observers.
See the Wikipedia article “Revolution of dignity” for a relatively balanced and detailed view. The U.S. media, including PBS, are completely beyond hope, as is usual these days since it would be positively unpatriotic not to parrot the government’s line in times of conflict. The BBC and Boris Johnson are trotting along behind like obedient lap dogs bringing back vivid memories of the Blair government during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq almost two decades ago and its vaunted ‘intelligence’ evidence of the likelihood of sudden appearances of mushroom clouds unleashed by Iraq. Deutsche Welle was exhibiting an occasional slightly broader view until those dastardly Russians abandoned diplomacy after their suggestions about how to defuse the situation diplomatically by negotiating a phase-down of NATO (an organization the need for which largely evaporated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union three decades ago and which has instead grown well beyond anything remotely associated with the ‘North Atlantic’ or with actual ‘defense’) were flatly turned down.
That does take us back to that dissolution, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the euphoria exhibited by both the U.S. and Russia regarding the end of the Cold War and the wonderful ‘Peace Dividend’ that was about to be realized. But that “Peace Dividend” turned out to be decidedly lop-sided, because Russia’s transition from Communism through oligarchy toward democracy did not proceed smoothly and left it with little time to make sure that the U.S. lived up to the rosy future which had been promised. As for the U.S., that ‘dividend’ was less in the nature of the ability to spend more on the needs of our people and the rest of the world than the ability to devote ever-larger slices of our national budget to the military-industrial complex (funding for which eventually rose to surpass that of all the rest of the world combined) under the trickle-down fantasy regardless of any need to do so save to preserve and continue to increase the sanctity of our ability to do whatever we damn well pleased with the world.
One element of that rosy future particularly pertinent to the present discussion was a deemphasis of NATO to match the evaporation of the equivalent military ‘buffer zone’ for Russia (which disappeared quite rapidly). One very specific aspect of this agreement between the Gorbachev and Reagan/G.H.W. Bush governments (which was part of but not specifically limited to the discussions about German reunification) was that NATO would not expand one inch closer to Russia (future emphasis being on multi-party trade rather than military agreements).
But the following U.S. administration paid no attention to that agreement and, as mentioned above, Russia had little means at the time to hold it to it – but that’s not to say that Russia has been quiet for the ensuring decades. Putin’s predecessors and Putin himself have made their dissatisfaction with this very clear but have studiously been ignored consistently for decades – until now. Perhaps Ukraine felt that it could ignore the situation with impunity, or that “the U.S. will save us” as one Western Ukrainian opined recently perhaps because we had been instrumental in supporting the 2014 coup in the first place (naive though that person may have been – witness our largely intangible support for those we encouraged to take our side in Afghanistan recently).
My own anti-war credentials are reasonably solid, having risked the distinct possibility of significant jail time by refusing induction when drafted in 1968 (conscientious objector status was at the time thought to require religious grounds and I was very lucky that a sympathetic draft board gave me CO status anyway). It took me a while to realize how much our NATO war in Kosovo (which of course had nothing to do with NATO member ‘defense’ – see also “The Kosovo Precedent Is Still Haunting NATO” written by a contributor to the Cato Institute) was a product of propaganda, less than a year to realize that our destruction of Afghanistan had met its claimed objectives, no time at all to stand strongly against our 2003 invasion of Iraq well before the invasion itself and the false and shifting assertions which allegedly justified it were advanced, all of which easily sufficed to make me highly skeptical about our subsequent adventurism across the Muslim world and the false propaganda which has accompanied it. So I have sympathy for people who naively bleat “WAR IS BAD” as long as they exhibit some competence in assessing the accompanying circumstances and alternatives when coming to that assessment. Hope you can rise to that challenge.
Putin is a thug despot who wants to rule all countries that formerly were part of Russia. After that, I’m sure he will go after all of Europe. Ukraine is just his first course. Putin must be stopped HERE AND NOW!
Putin is a thug despot who wants to rule all countries that formerly were part of Russia. After that, I’m sure he will go after all of Europe. Ukraine is just his first course. Putin must be stopped HERE AND NOW!
I submitted a reply to the above nearly three days ago, which you said would appear when it had been moderated. Perhaps your moderator is on vacation or merely finds it convenient to drop comments you don’t agree with in the bit-bucket without notice (not a good look for an organization which solicits replies to material that it posts). If you have somehow lost track of it I’ll be happy to re-submit it and restore the paragraph breaks which your comment handling stripped out if you’ll let me know how to do so.
What is happening in Ukraine today these events had been happening for the past 20+ years, when Putin came into power by bombing his own people – civilian apartments and committing atrocities against the Chechen people. The response from the US, EU and NATO had been just complete silence and welcoming Putin to the summits and holding red carpet meetings for him. This further emboldened Putin who attacked Georgia in 2008 and conquered Abkhazia and Samachablo. What did the Western powers do? Absolutely nothing! Reset by the Obama Administration and warm handshakes by Merkel, total ignorance of the international laws and Putin’s war crimes against the Georgian people. What happened afterwards? Putin invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. What did the Western powers do? Bare minimum of symbolic sanctions that continued to feed Putin’s war machine. Then Syria, use of chemical weapons, more atrocities… . What did the Western powers do? Absolutely nothing!
So we are here as a result of Putin’s false perception that he could chew more than he could bite and the 20+ year ignorance from the EU, US and the NATO. Today there is strong response and sanctions that will take the Russian economy back to the 1990s indicators, however it is too late and too little. Ukraine needs the Patriot missiles, S-400s, S-300s, missiles to shoot down airplanes and incoming rockets at much higher altitudes than Stingers could reach, Ukraine needs much more firepower and the ability to control and close its own skies. Lets help Zelensky establish the No Fly Zone! The Biden administration looked weak, but slowly they are starting to wake up and see the true face of evil – Vladimir Putin who is trying to restore the new Russian empire…
Slava Ukraini! Glory to Ukraine!
As a Georgian citizen, I proudly stand 100% with my Ukrainian brothers & sisters!
David Dzidzikashvili
Ph.D. Candidate
Business & Technology University – BTU
Tbilisi, Georgia