What do the conflicts in Vietnam and Ukraine have in common?

Authors: Nikolai Plotnikov, Head of the Center for Scientific and Analytical Information of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Political Science; Alexander Butko, leading specialist of the Center for Scientific and Analytical Information of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta

On April 30, the Vietnamese people celebrated the 48th anniversary of the victory in the war of resistance to American aggression, which ended on this day in 1975 with the liberation of Saigon. Recently declassified Soviet and Vietnamese archival documents make it possible to find parallels between the events in Vietnam and in Ukraine.

First of all, both conflicts were preceded by the violation of the agreements (Geneva and Minsk) and the pumping of American weapons and money to one of the parties (the Saigon and Kyiv authorities).

In 1954, after the victory of the Vietnamese People's Army over the French colonialists, with the participation of the heads of the foreign affairs departments of the USSR, China, the USA, England, and France, the Geneva Accords were signed, which assumed the temporary division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel, followed by the holding of general elections in July 1956 and unification of the country. The agreements prohibited the entry of foreign troops and military personnel into Vietnam, the supply of weapons, and the establishment of military bases. The US avoided signing the Final Declaration, saying it would "refrain from the threat or use of force to violate these agreements." Subsequently, the Saigon authorities abandoned negotiations on holding elections, and Washington began to provide them with military support.

According to archival data, from 1954 to 1964, US spending on so-called aid to South Vietnam amounted to $3.5 billion. Under the leadership of American military advisers, regular armed forces were created in South Vietnam, consisting of ground forces, Air Force, and Navy. Army corps became the highest organizational unit in the ground forces (before that, Saigon had only scattered formations no larger than a battalion), equipped with American weapons and trained in accordance with American standards. Before the provocation in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, which preceded the large-scale American aggression, there were already 16,000 American troops in the country.

Almost the same with some nuances were repeated in Ukraine. The United States and its NATO allies encouraged Kyiv not to comply with the Minsk agreements, at the same time they pumped up the Armed Forces of Ukraine with weapons and prepared them to resolve the fate of Donbas according to the scenario of Operation Storm by the Croatian army, which destroyed Serbian Krajina. This was recognized by the two guarantors of the Minsk agreements - the then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

As it once did to the regime in Saigon, Washington has provided Kyiv with massive "security assistance." Even if you believe the official data of the US State Department, from 2014 to February 2022 it amounted to $ 2.7 billion. Starting with the supply of "non-lethal assistance" (drones, radar stations, night vision devices, thermal imagers, In 2018, the Americans began pumping the Kyiv regime with weapons (anti-tank missile systems, grenade launchers, special small arms, etc.).

Just like in Vietnam, the number of Western military personnel has been growing in Ukraine since 2014. In December 2021, there were already 10,000 foreign military instructors there, including 4,000 from the United States.

Both in Vietnam and in Ukraine, the Americans showed complete indifference to the fate of other people. During the war years, the United States dropped more than 7.7 million tons of bombs on the Indochinese Peninsula, which is three times more than they spent in World War II. American aviation used 400 thousand tons of napalm in Vietnam and sprayed 70 million liters of defoliants and herbicides over its territory, including over 40 million liters of Agent Orange, which causes cancer and genetic mutations. In addition, the US military actively used gases such as CS, CN, DM, and others, which in small concentrations had an irritating effect, and in large concentrations often led to death.

In Ukraine, the Americans preferred chemical warfare to the so-called "peaceful" biological research, which is still working with dangerous biomaterials. The fact that they are still functioning was confirmed by the representative of the US National Security Council, John Kirby.

The head of the Vietnamese delegation at the talks in Paris in 1973, Xuan Thuy, speaking of the South Vietnamese wards of the United States, said: “They are just a gang of traitors selling the country and oppressing the people, only a tool of the American imperialists ... Every day their barbaric actions destroy the life of the people and the country, undermine its thousand-year-old national culture. There is not a single patriot who does not hate them."

A number of citizens of Ukraine think the same way about the Zelensky regime, but due to the widespread repressions and Bandera terror, few can openly declare this yet. The persecution of canonical Orthodoxy and Orthodox believers may increase their number. The religious front unleashed by Zelensky and those behind him is one of the few things that distinguishes the events in Ukraine from the Vietnam War.

Here is the time to remind once again about the allegedly sensational leaks of American intelligence. As many foreign partners of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences believe, they represent a mixture of real documents and specially fabricated ones. It is not yet known which of them are reliable. Obviously, the goal pursued in Washington is to conduct a strategic campaign to disinform not only Russia but also the world community. Apparently, the Joseph Biden administration is beginning to pave the way for explaining plausible reasons in the event of a possible fiasco in Ukraine on the eve of the 2024 presidential election. Didn't the experience of fleeing Vietnam, repeated in Afghanistan, teach someone in the US something?


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