I don’t know why or how you interpreted what I said as meaning that Ukrainians

can’t be trusted because ‘they were brainwashed by the CIA’[.]

I said it is difficult to parse what Ukrainians want i.e. from what I am told Ukrainians want. The means of information distribution are not owned and controlled by ordinary Ukrainians. Further, almost all the press to which I have access is western; it doesn’t even pretend to be Ukrainian although it frequently pretends to speak for them. They know what they want; I’m just not privy to that information.

On this topic, more broadly, I can recommend a book called Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti. It’s similar to Manufacturing Consent but in my view significantly better because it begins with concrete analysis and moves towards a theory of the political economy of news media whereas Herman and Chomsky begin with a model and set out to illustrate it’s truth.

Starting an analysis of what Ukrainian people think by relying on outputs that are owned and controlled by particular interests (frequently US/western bourgeois interests, inside and outside Ukraine) will not explain what ordinary Ukrainians want. This does not mean that Ukrainians don’t have a view or can’t be trusted to decide their own fate.

I said that Ukraine deciding on it’s own isn’t an option because it’s materially not an option. The west and Russia are already involved. Zelensky cannot do what he wants or what he thinks the majority of Ukrainians want because and for as long as NATO is running the show. To paraphrase a famous quote, we make history but not in conditions that we choose. It seems idealistic to suggest that Ukrainians can just decide what they want to do and have it happen. It also seems idealistic to suggest that Ukrainians would all think the same.

You’ll also note that I said, to quote:

I do not think that Russia should decide what happens in Ukraine. That’s for Ukrainians to decide.

And I reiterated:

…in Donetsk and Luhansk; that should be for the people of Donetsk and Luhansk to decide[.]

I don’t know what you’re referring to in relation to ‘smaller Russian republics’, I’m afraid. You’ll have to be specific and I would have to do some research. If you’re trying to probe my view on self determination, I’m in favour of self determination but it’s problematic to suggest that the future of any region should be determined exclusively by and for a single ethnicity.

If I wasn’t clear, the concept of an ethnostate is or is dangerously close to being fascist; the idea of breaking up Russia into states along ethnic lines is fascist. In the inverse, this might also apply if Russia expelled all ethnicities other than ethnic Russian from the annexed regions of Ukraine, for example. We’ll have to see how that plays out in the short, medium, and long term.

Before asking me another question, I’m going to say that it feels like you’re asking loaded questions and misinterpreting me to try to catch me out. I’m not going to play along for much longer if it continues.