With Scott Ritter: Russian victory and self-determination for Western Ukraine

“On the Barricades” s06e19

This weekend we have the military analyst Scott Ritter on the show– the man now widely credited and famed for his ability to make sense of the concrete reality and geopolitics of the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, cutting across the Western media narrative. Moreover, Scott’s background and expertise can bring us closer to grips with the meaning of war in terms of its socio-moral dimensions, which is an angle the hosts could not wait to discuss with Scott on this recording.

The hosts of “On the Barricades,” Maria Cernat and Boyan Stalinslavsky, begin with Scott on what’s coming next in Ukraine: some conditional predictions for how the dynamics of the war in Russia could evolve, and the latest view on what the endgame is. Since we last spoke with Scott in September, there have been some significant turns– for instance Putin’s decisive break with attempts to integrate Russia with the West, and it becoming an open fact that the prospect of the Minsk Agreements was a sham from the start. Will there be a major Russian escalation to secure a Russian victory, and if so when and how could that look? How far has Russia gone towards destroying the Ukrainian state and military, and is it prepared to do so? What kind of partitioning of Ukraine or state formation could be conceivably established, under Russia’s thumb, for Western Ukraine? Then there are the concerns raised about the impact of the war on the rest of Europe and the huge cost that would be paid if Romania and Poland acted on their illusions of military might and mobilized against Russia.

On the other side of the analysis, there is the philosophical but also practical question of humanity and war– whether the two are not diametrically opposed. Scott explains the sense in which honour might exist on the battlefield and in military conduct, as well as the sense in which the Ukrainian general Valery Zaluzhny, who is suspected as the Putin regime’s pick for future leadership in West Ukraine leadership, is “honourable” in contrast to the politicians.

Scott Ritter became a critic of US foreign policy after serving as US Marine intelligence officer and a UN weapons inspector. He recently authored a book called “Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union”: https://bit.ly/3UtTmm7