In an op-ed published in RT yesterday, Scott Ritter puts the burden for ending the war on Kiev in the way that Gen. Douglas MacArthur put the burden on Tokyo at the end of World War II (though he never actually names MacArthur). “First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. ‘Denazification’ is a term that the Russian government has used in describing one of its stated goals and objectives,” Ritter writes. This means outlawing Bandera-ism the way Bushido militarism was outlawed in Japan’s post-war constitution. “Any failure to do so only allows the cancer of Banderism to survive, festering inside the defeated body of post-conflict Ukraine until some future time when it can metastasize once again to bring harm.”
“This is precisely the message that was being sent by Putin when, during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum this past July, he showed a video where the crimes of the Banderists during the Second World War were put on public display,” Ritter goes on. “‘How can you not fight it?’ Putin said. ‘And if this is not neo-Nazism in its current manifestation, then what is it?’ he asked. ‘We have every right,’ the Russian President declared, ‘to believe that the task of the denazification of Ukraine set by us is one of the key ones.’”
