Nat Kopytko #OccupationIsCrime

Sorry for slow reply - sure you'll appreciate we are a campaign run by volunteers. You didn't oppose the right to self-determination as such. You did approvingly cite a prominent person known to be sympathetic to the USSR and endorse his use of a phrase coined by Putin... 🧵

12 million people are estimated to have been killed by economic 'shock therapy' in Russia alone. Russia suffered the worst peacetime economic collapse of a major industrialised nation in history. The Russian economy nearly halved. The fall in Russian output was much worse than that caused by the Nazi invasion in the 1940s. Russian male life expectancy fell by 6.5 years, to 57.6 - back to its mid-1950s level. The overall fall in life expectancy was on the scale of Vietnam during all-out war in the 1960s. The suicide and homicide rates doubled. Real incomes collapsed by 40%. At the time of the Soviet collapse, one in fifty Russians lived in poverty. By the end of 1998, that surged to nearly one in every five. Full employment gave way to mass unemployment. As healthcare funding collapsed by a third and poverty surged, disease such as diphtheria, tuberculosis and syphilis rampaged. Russia was taken over by oligarchs, gangsters implicated in serious crimes who stole the country's resources. Murderous conflicts in the former Soviet territory included Chechnya, where potentially hundreds of thousands were killed. Yeltsin's contempt for democracy was underlined by his bombing of the Russian legislature - and the undemocratic farce of the 1996 election. Putin came to power after the Russian secret services almost certainly staged apartment bombings which killed hundreds. The invasion of Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Need I go on? Yes, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of our age. An alternative would have kept the USSR together (Baltic states aside) on a democratic basis, without ruinous shock therapy. Notably, a Soviet-wide referendum in March 1991 overwhelmingly voted to keep the Union together (although it was boycotted by six of the fifteen republics - in the Baltic and three small republics).

12 million people are estimated to have been killed by economic 'shock therapy' in Russia alone. Russia suffered the worst peacetime economic collapse of a major industrialised nation in history. The Russian economy nearly halved. The fall in Russian output was much worse than that caused by the Nazi invasion in the 1940s. Russian male life expectancy fell by 6.5 years, to 57.6 - back to its mid-1950s level. The overall fall in life expectancy was on the scale of Vietnam during all-out war in the 1960s. The suicide and homicide rates doubled. Real incomes collapsed by 40%. At the time of the Soviet collapse, one in fifty Russians lived in poverty. By the end of 1998, that surged to nearly one in every five. Full employment gave way to mass unemployment. As healthcare funding collapsed by a third and poverty surged, disease such as diphtheria, tuberculosis and syphilis rampaged. Russia was taken over by oligarchs, gangsters implicated in serious crimes who stole the country's resources. Murderous conflicts in the former Soviet territory included Chechnya, where potentially hundreds of thousands were killed. Yeltsin's contempt for democracy was underlined by his bombing of the Russian legislature - and the undemocratic farce of the 1996 election. Putin came to power after the Russian secret services almost certainly staged apartment bombings which killed hundreds. The invasion of Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Need I go on? Yes, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of our age. An alternative would have kept the USSR together (Baltic states aside) on a democratic basis, without ruinous shock therapy. Notably, a Soviet-wide referendum in March 1991 overwhelmingly voted to keep the Union together (although it was boycotted by six of the fifteen republics - in the Baltic and three small republics).

Where did I oppose the right to self-determination of peoples in the USSR? What are you talking about? I think it'd have been better if what Ukrainians overwhelmingly supported in the March 1991 referendum could have been realised. The August coup made that impossible. In any circumstance, I would support Soviet republics leaving if they so desired. You're just inventing what I think, and that does not suggest you're interested in discussing anything in good faith.

The (huge) problem with this is that it merges the question of neoliberal capitalist "shock therapy" with keeping the USSR in the sense of the Russian-dominated empire together. Owen is effectively dismissing the USSR subject peoples' fight for freedom 🧵

12 million people are estimated to have been killed by economic 'shock therapy' in Russia alone. Russia suffered the worst peacetime economic collapse of a major industrialised nation in history. The Russian economy nearly halved. The fall in Russian output was much worse than that caused by the Nazi invasion in the 1940s. Russian male life expectancy fell by 6.5 years, to 57.6 - back to its mid-1950s level. The overall fall in life expectancy was on the scale of Vietnam during all-out war in the 1960s. The suicide and homicide rates doubled. Real incomes collapsed by 40%. At the time of the Soviet collapse, one in fifty Russians lived in poverty. By the end of 1998, that surged to nearly one in every five. Full employment gave way to mass unemployment. As healthcare funding collapsed by a third and poverty surged, disease such as diphtheria, tuberculosis and syphilis rampaged. Russia was taken over by oligarchs, gangsters implicated in serious crimes who stole the country's resources. Murderous conflicts in the former Soviet territory included Chechnya, where potentially hundreds of thousands were killed. Yeltsin's contempt for democracy was underlined by his bombing of the Russian legislature - and the undemocratic farce of the 1996 election. Putin came to power after the Russian secret services almost certainly staged apartment bombings which killed hundreds. The invasion of Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Need I go on? Yes, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of our age. An alternative would have kept the USSR together (Baltic states aside) on a democratic basis, without ruinous shock therapy. Notably, a Soviet-wide referendum in March 1991 overwhelmingly voted to keep the Union together (although it was boycotted by six of the fifteen republics - in the Baltic and three small republics).

Vance says that stopping funding for Ukraine is one of his proudest achievements in this administration. ​I’m watching this stunningly cruel speech from Ukraine, as Russia continues to kills us every day. Just today, they killed 8-year-old boy in Cherkasy and five people in Dnipro. Dozens more were injured. ​The military assistance you are so proud of stopping was used to save lives in a war Russia started and continues every day by choice, in a war that only became possible after USA pressured Ukraine into disarming... ​I do not know if Vance can fully comprehend the scale of the tragedy unfolding here: a brutal, illegal war of extermination by Russia, and the slow abandonment by our allies. There is nothing to be proud of. Absolutely nothing.

Orbán, Putin, Netanyahu and Trump are in a rowboat that’s sinking in the middle of a lake. You can only save one of them — who would you choose?

It's astonishing that you, a world leader who many respected for standing up to an illegal attack on your country, now support an illegal attack on another country. It completely kills your credibility. Right now. Iran is Ukraine. You may not like to hear that but that is a fact