On Tuesday, September 27, two significant events—one in Kiev and the other to Ukraine’s east—will serve as inflection points in the fight for democracy and the danger of the Ukraine crisis.
Democracy in Kiev?
At 10 a.m. in Kiev, capital of the supposed bastion of democracy that is Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) will present to the Supreme Court its appeal to reverse its banning by legislation passed in May 2022. The PSPU is one of 16 opposition parties shut down by the Ministry of Justice under the law, which is being applied in ways that manifestly violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Ukrainian Constitution itself.
The Schiller Institute has posted the PSPU’s unflinchingly devastating statement, released in advance of its appeal. The PSPU proclaims that allowing its banning to stand would violate “1) the rule of law… 2) legal certainty; 3) the impermissibility of arbitrariness in taking decisions; 4) access to due process of law… 5) respect for human rights; and 6) nondiscrimination and equality before the law.”
The PSPU statement charges that the blatant political repression against it as an opposition party presents a “horrific parallel” with the fascism of Italy and German in the 1930s. By claiming that the PSPU was “anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian,” the government’s actions “tarnished the dignity of members of our party, who are conscientious, law-abiding citizens of Ukraine, turning them into enemies of their own people” and thus “launched psychological and moral terror, and created conditions of fear, suffering, and inferiority for members of the PSPU.” The PSPU’s offices were raided already in 2016, its confiscated materials only registered in 2020 following years of legal disputes.
Now, in the most blatant violation of the basic principle of law expressed in the Ukrainian Constitution, that “Laws and other regulatory acts have no retroactive validity” and that “No one is answerable for actions, which at the moment of their commission were not recognized by law as violations of law,” the PSPU, which ceased all operation on February 24, has been prosecuted entirely on the basis of statements and actions prior to the law’s coming into effect! This ex post facto persecution shows absolute disdain for the rule of law and the bare exercise of power against political opponents.
“If the Supreme Court does not overturn the ruling…” PSPU’s statement concludes, “we believe that will mark the end of democracy in Ukraine.”
Will the institutions of Ukraine continue to violate the principle of law as did the Nazi regime of the 1930s?
To the East
To the east meanwhile—in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye—voting will conclude in the ongoing referenda, following which, if the citizens of these regions vote in the affirmative, the national legislature and executive of the Russian Federation may quickly move to accept them as part of the Russian Federation, giving them full protection under national security policies, which do include the potential use of nuclear weapons against threats to the existence of the state. Within a week, members of the armed forces of Ukraine within the borders of these regions could be classified as invaders, and UAF attacks on these areas would be defended against—and responded to—as attacks on the territory of Russia itself, of which, to Moscow, they would indeed be part.
Russia has repeatedly warned those nations sending torrents of weapons, intelligence, training, and targeting to the territory of Ukraine, that they run the risk of being considered by Russia as participants in hostilities.
“But he’s bluffing!” exclaim the legacy Western media and think tanks that have for months predicted that a military victory by the plucky Ukrainians was just around the corner.
In the Cuban Missile Crisis, both Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. President John Kennedy “looked into the eyes of the nuclear peril and were frightened by it emotionally. They understood the need to search for compromise and de-escalation,” said Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov, at a Sept. 23 event marking the 60th anniversary of the crisis. “Cuba made vivid the sense that all humanity had a common interest in the prevention of nuclear war—an interest far above those national and ideological interests which had once seemed ultimate,” wrote Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger. But what will happen today?
“It is difficult to predict now just how far Washington is ready to go in its attempts to aggravate relations with Russia,” warns Antonov of the present situation. “It is an open question whether the American ruling elites will be able to stop at the danger line, as during the Cuban missile crisis.”
“The American ruling elites” cannot be trusted to make the right choice.
Efforts to prevent frank discussion of the greatest threat to civilization in its history, must be defeated, and humanity set on a new course.
The lives of the billions of people alive today, the meaning of the billions of people of the past, and the future of the billions yet to be born demand that you act immediately to prevent the crossing of a line from which there is no return.
Will you rise to that challenge?
