LETTER: Steven Kuo apparently didn’t read the Moscow Peace Treaty, or much else

The Russian embassy notes Steven Kuo’s column and would like to point out the most ridiculous of numerous controversies in the author’s logic (“Russia is finished as a great power, so SA should realign,” June 29).

Claiming that “Russia is finished as a great power” is rich. We assume it is a sure sign of a finished great power if it can “shuffle the international system’s deck of cards” by its actions. Honestly, it’s easy to get confused these days whether Russia is a mastermind that stands behind almost everything (usually the worst) that’s going on in the world, including the outcome of presidential elections in the US, or it is a helpless and agonising country with a “shattered economy”. How can two mutually-exclusive narratives coexist in one and the same article?

The author states that the US and its allies, even Germany and Japan, strongly oppose Russia’s foreign policy, implying that SA needs therefore to profoundly reconsider its stance on co-operation with Russia. Firstly, how is this even an argument? Secondly, do we have this right — that Kuo would prefer the country he currently resides in to follow the steps of those that are acting as US puppets, to the detriment of their own population’s wellbeing?

We would also appreciate if anyone could enlighten us with regard to who among Russia’s top officials has ever favoured regime change in Ukraine, which according to Kuo “Putin has failed to effect”. From what we know it is the West that is infamous for orchestrating unconstitutional coups. By the way, two of them took place in Ukraine (in 2004 and 2014 — the “Orange Revolution” and “Maidan Uprising”). As our foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has put it: “We are not up for regime change in Ukraine; we want the Ukrainians themselves to decide how they want to live further.” Russia has always been committed to such principles, be it Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Turkey or any other country.

It is indeed intriguing to know what Kuo actually refers to when he mentions “Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine”. Unfortunately, the author fails to name any of them, leaving his readers empty-handed. But if the author doesn’t give a single fact, does that mean he knows that fact-checking will prove him wrong? Smart move.

Kuo apparently didn’t bother to read the Moscow Peace Treaty that ended the Winter War of 1939-1940 between the USSR and Finland before writing that “the Soviet Union’s Red Army lost the Winter War”. In brief, Finland ceded about 11% of the territories it possessed at the beginning of the war. There is no arguing about the great cost to the USSR during the conflict, but how do you like such peace conditions for the “winner”? This might explain, though, why the author believes “Russia has lost it” regarding the Ukraine crisis.

We are in no position to give Kuo advice about loyalty and patriotism, but it appears only reasonable that if anyone was worried about not “getting caught with our pants down”, they would probably want to avoid passing pasquinades for analysis and prognosis in geopolitics.

Alexander Arefiev
Press-attaché, Embassy of Russia in SA

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