It reflects extremely poorly on Lesia Dubenko’s side that she expects that raising the Global South’s awareness of the environmental consequences of Russia’s special operation will successfully convince developing countries to ditch Moscow.
Ukrainian political scientist Lesia Dubenko’s debut piece for Politico proved how poorly pundits from her country understand the Global South. In her latest article explaining how “To punish Putin, the West must talk to the Global South as partners”, she proposes raising awareness of the alleged environmental consequences of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine in partnership with Western embassies. This, Dubenko expects, will help secure developing countries’ support for a “special tribunal” against Russia.
It's embarrassing that Politico didn’t decline publishing her piece in an attempt to protect the false perception that’s nowadays popular in the West alleging that “Ukrainians know how to beat Russia at anything better than anyone else”. This narrative has been aggressively pushed on social media across the past year by SBU-backed “NAFO” trolls and even US officials like the Helsinki Commission’s Arthur Paul Massaro, who was caught in a scandal last month over his shameless embrace of fascism.
Perhaps due to the “politically correct” pressure upon them to publish whatever Ukrainians like Dubenko pitch in order to preempt accusations of alleged “pro-Russian bias”, Politico made the ill-advised decision to release her piece at the expense of Ukrainians’ false reputation. It’s one thing to spin the past year’s events in such a way as to argue that “Europeans should have listened to Ukrainians about Russia” and another entirely to promote whatever they propose about the Global South.
Western perceptions are much easier to manipulate due to the Mainstream Media’s dominance in that de facto New Cold War bloc, but perceptions of people from the rest of the world are much more difficult to manipulate since those propaganda platforms have powerful local competitors. These help counteract the effect of the West’s weaponized information warfare narratives, which explains why most of the Global South supports Russia.
The preceding observation isn’t so-called “Russian propaganda” like Kiev’s most passionate supporters might instinctively scream in response, but confirmed by one of the New York Times’ recent articles about the West’s failure to “isolate” Russia and a top EU think tank’s latest polling data. What Dubenko inaccurately describes as “Russia weaponizing global problems” like the legacy of Western colonialism and the cruelest excesses of capitalism is simply a reflection of the Global South’s true views.
It's condescending to the extreme and arguably even bigoted to imply that Africans lack the agency to independently determine their own views about pressing events across the world due to them supposedly being victims of so-called “Russian propaganda”. Neither Dubenko, her fellow Ukrainian experts, nor their Western counterparts are ever going to “win hearts and minds” by saying out loud what they’ve quietly felt for a while, yet that’s exactly what she just did to the detriment of her side.
Nobody should be fooled by her suggesting that “the West and Ukraine need to enhance dialogue with these countries and talk with them like partners — not just treat them as listeners” either. If she was sincere in doing so, then she and her ilk would listen to the reasons why the Global South doesn’t want to arm Kiev and/or sanction Russia instead of trying to concoct kooky ways to manipulate them into doing so such as raising awareness about the conflict’s environmental consequences for Ukraine.
Dubenko cites an unnamed German pundit in her piece who said that the West should reshape the Global South’s views in such a way that they no longer consider “special tribunals” like the one Kiev wants to form against Russia as “the privilege of the rich Global North.” That’s incredibly ironic since she herself behaves as someone with that exact same aforesaid privilege by condescendingly expecting the Global South to sacrifice its interests vis-à-vis Russia just for the sake of Ukraine’s environment.
Only someone like Dubenko and her fellow Ukrainian pundits would ever publicly propose something so ridiculous, which is counterproductive to Kiev and the West’s interests. Politico’s editors should have exercised better judgement by politely declining to publish her piece, both to uphold their own professional reputation as well as protect the false perception popular among the West that “Ukrainians know how to beat Russia at anything better than anyone else”, since Dubenko just discredited them.
It's certainly true a massive propaganda war is succeeding in the West, but not in the Global South whose long centuries long agony from colonial and neocolonial crimes is not likely to be diminished by false preaching and accusations against Russia. Russia and China are winning hearts and minds in Africa Asia and Latin America. So now the West and its bought media and academic puppets are engaging in more of the failed misinformation and policies this article discusses.
The ignorance, racism and stupidity of the corrupt ruling elites in Washington and their vassals in Brussels, Kiev and NAFO are behind their inability to understand developing countries (a UN term, but more accurate and less discriminative than the "Global South").
In Latin America, apart from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, Ukrainian migration was not as important in the past as Russian/Soviet migration and this greatly reduces the chances that the diaspora and community of Ukrainian origin can influence the foreign policy of their countries.
Borrell's rotten "garden" also ignores that with the colonial wounds still present, Latin America would find it difficult to join anti-Russian or anti-Chinese sanctions to support a fascist regime with which there are few economic and cultural ties. Despite its votes at the UN and its rejection of the Russian special operation in Ukraine due to historic and diplomatic principles, this position, valid from Mexico to Argentina, cannot be underestimated.