It’s been 3 and 1/2 years since Russia invaded Ukraine.

And whilst for a while there, everyone was changing their profile picture to a Ukrainian flag and making Volodymyr Zelensky the poster child of democracy and freedom.

Well, have you noticed how over the last year or so the war in Ukraine has been quietly forgotten? It’s slipped into obscurity, making way for far more important stories like the war in Gaza and the Kiss Cam controversy and Sydney Sweeny’s bra size, I guess. But what mustn’t be forgotten in all of this is that Australia has spent $1.5 billion helping out Ukraine because we were told Ukraine were standing for freedom and democracy in the face of authoritarianism and dictatorship in Russia.

Now I’ve made my position on this war very clear in the past but I have a lot of new followers these days. So let me briefly say it again. Russia should not have invaded Ukraine. I was surprised and impressed to see that the Ukrainians withstood that initial invasion. They recaptured their airport and I watched with surprise as Russia’s tank columns ground to a halt short of Kiev due to a combination of the rasputitsa or the mud season making the wheat fields impossible to vehicles and also the Russians making some rookie mistakes in their logistics and quite literally running out of fuel at the front of their miles long columns with their tankers down the back being unable to get through because well the roads were blocked by the columns of tanks and trucks that had run out of fuel, and going off-road wasn’t an option due to the mud. It was a spectacle.

And early on in the war, I was thrilled to see Ukraine holding their own against all odds.

And no, I don’t think that Putin is the good guy. Although, I’m sure that a few of my viewers will accuse me of that as a result of this video. What I said right from the start of this war is don’t look for a good guy here because there isn’t one. What I said at the time, from the very beginning, is that this is a war between one of the most corrupt autocratic nations on earth, a wash with money from black arms sales and human trafficking and global money laundering. It’s a war between them and Russia, who you could also describe in exactly the same way.

There was never a good guy in this war, and there was never going to be a winner, only losers. And three and a half years later, as Zelensky’s human rights record continues to be marred, including now new rounds of protests just last week against Zelensky for his dismantling of the independent anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine. I think it’s fair for Australians to be wondering whether our $1.5 billion has been money well spent or whether perhaps we should have just stayed out of it.

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Now, in this video, I want to cover two things. I’m going to give a quick overview of the aid that Australia has sent to Ukraine and some of the other non-financial forms of support that we’ve provided to Ukraine against Russia as well. And then we’re going to have a quick overview of Zelensky and just a few of the things that have been going on over the last 3 and 1/2 years of this war so that we can ask ourselves whether our $1.5 billion was money well spent or whether all we’ve done at this point is keep that meat grinder going for longer, chewing up the lives of countless young men on both sides as two autocrats duke it out.

Russia launched its invasion in February 2022 in what it said was a retaliation against various Ukrainian provocations and what was in practice just the next phase of a long-running war over some of the easternmost regions in Ukraine and also over Ukraine’s proposed membership of NATO. Now, I’m not going to dive into the history here. There’s lots of other videos that do that, but again, don’t look for a good guy. Including, by the way, don’t look for a good guy in NATO either because they certainly didn’t make things better. By the way, they kept pushing to expand eastwards in Europe despite having promised Putin that they would not do that. And they were also agitating by suggesting that Ukraine should become a member of NATO as well.

I’m going to say it one more time. There are no good guys here. None. Not even Australia in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean that the invasion was justified or that the lives lost were lives well spent. But the invasion happened whether we like it or not. And like I said, I was pleased that the invasion failed, that Ukraine was not immediately overrun.

Now, aid from Australia came quickly. $10 million in non-lethal military aid, that’s things like combat medical supplies and fuel and the likes, was announced in the very same month as Russia’s invasion.

And we joined many other countries in imposing sanctions on 300 high-profile Russians, for whatever that’s worth. By April 22, we were sending 20 Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles to Ukraine, expedited in their journey by the RAAF, who went and dropped them off.

Now, what’s extraordinary to me out of this is that we have since been treated to the spectacle of Russia displaying destroyed Australian military hardware, complete with a plaque showing the Australian flag on the front in a victory parade in Moscow. I’m not sure that that’s what Australians had in mind when we sent our vehicles halfway around the world. Now, to be fair, the vehicles have performed fairly well when kept in their intended role away from the absolute front lines and being used instead to transport troops and VIPs behind those lines. However, any decent anti-tank hardware, if it does get a shot on a Bushmaster, well, it makes pretty short work of them, and the necessities of war mean that these vehicles can’t always be kept out of harm’s way.

In all, we’ve sent 120 Bushmasters to Ukraine. And in 2024, just last year, and 2 years after the war began, we pledged 49 Abrams M1 A1 tanks. Although, I hope the Ukrainians didn’t get too excited about that when they heard the announcement because it took us 7 months to load the tanks onto a boat so that they could actually go to Ukraine. And it was 9 months from when the promise was made to when the first tanks actually arrived.

In 2023, we sent an RAAF E7A wedge tale to Germany for the purposes of reconnaissance and surveillance so that we could protect resupply convoys and humanitarian work going into and out of Ukraine.

So, not for combat roles specifically, but still happening on the Australian taxpayers dime. We’ve also spent 28 M113 per armored personnel carriers as well as other vehicles, UAVs, air defense systems, air-to-ground precision munitions, anti-tank weapons, artillery, mortar, cannons, small arms ammunition, Australian defense personnel to train the Ukrainians, and the list goes on and on. $1.5 billion all up and counting, with over 500 million of that being in 2024, just last year, 2 years after the war began.

Australian taxpayers are paying just to keep the war going at this point to keep the meat grinder grinding. And we’re doing it because supposedly Putin is the bad guy and Zelensky, well, if Putin’s the bad guy, then Zelensky must be the good guy, right? But is he?

Put aside the history of how we got to this point, how we got to the 2022 invasion. Let’s put aside the 2014 color revolution that took place. Let’s put aside the NATO expansions. Let’s put aside even the security guarantees that were given to Ukraine when they agreed to give up their nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union. Let’s put aside all of that history and the thousands of years before and just look at the men that we’re spending all of this hardware, all of this money and hardware to support.

This is a man who has outlawed churches and arrested priests with the accusation that they had ties to Russia. Yeah, no kidding. Of course they had ties to Russia. They’re part of the Orthodox Church, you idiot. And by the way, your country is next to Russia. Of course, people are going to have ties with Russia. You could arrest just about anybody you wanted with that line.

Zelensky is a man who outlawed 11 different political parties who opposed him.

He did that in March 2022 because they had ties to Russia. Well, yeah. In a democracy, different perspectives and views get represented. And in Ukraine, there are Ukrainians who choose to vote for pro-Russian candidates. That’s how democracy works. One of the parties that Zelensky outlawed had 44 members of parliament, which was about 10% of the Ukrainian parliament at that time. But Zalinski suspended the party. Democracy be damned. Their views and ideas and attitudes are no longer acceptable in Zelensky’s Ukraine.

That is despotic. That is anti-democratic. It would have been denounced in no uncertain terms if it had been done by anyone else. So why do we continue to throw money and hardware at a despot? said that the activities of those politicians were aimed at division or collusion. Yeah, that’s politics. The opposition is going to try and divide your support so that they can gain more support themselves. That’s how it works. And that’s even how it works in wartime. Let’s remember that the British government did not outlaw their political opposition or suspend parliament during World War II because wartime is exactly when you need to have a functioning democracy. And opposition to the government is especially necessary in order to avoid the war becoming a pretext by which a dictator can rise.

And we’re talking about a man who just last month abolished the independent anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine, placing those bodies instead under the oversight of the prosecutor general, which is a position that is appointed by the president Zelensky, which means that they’re not going to be independent. They’re not going to investigate corruption if it’s the president of Ukraine who’s being investigated, which defeats the whole purpose of having an anti-corruption body in the first place.

And even the people of Ukraine are getting sick of Zelensky at this point in time. For 2 days after those anti-corruption bodies were neutered, there were widespread anti-government protests. The first in the 3 and 1/2 years since the war began as younger Ukrainians took to the streets despite the risk of Russia’s ongoing missile campaign targeting the capital Kiev and other cities. And I want to be clear, these were anti-government, but pro-Ukraine protests. These were not filled with Russian plants doing the bidding of the Kremlin. These protests were filled with young Ukrainians who love and care about their country, but they are no longer willing to put up with Zelensky’s crap.

Two days of widespread protests. And then Volodymyr Zelensky was forced to back down, promising to reverse his decision and return the independence of these anti-corruption bodies. Now, that’s been good enough to end the protests, at least for now. But it remains to be seen if Zelensky is actually going to follow through and give that power back or whether he’s just neutering the protests and he’s going to bide his time and let it peter out and then he’ll keep that power for himself in the long run.

What is clear is that at this point, Australia has thrown away $1.5 billion so that one corrupt autocrat can wage war with another corrupt autocrat.

For the enriching of them both, by the way, but at the expense of some 300,000 young men killed in action on both sides and a total of perhaps as many as a million casualties if you include the wounded.

Now, I’ll say it again. War is a tragedy, and in my opinion, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine in 2022. But even if you accept that as true, is this really a war that Australia should be involved in? And at this point, what has our involvement achieved? Our money, our ammunition that we’ve bought for them, what has it achieved except maybe keeping the blood bath going for a little longer?

And given that what’s done is done and can’t be undone, perhaps the more relevant question at this point is, should Australia continue to support Ukraine now? And given that the war is just a meat grinder, and given that Zelensky has not only shut down opposition parties, closed down churches, and arrested religious leaders because of the type of church they led, but now he’s also trying to neuter the very anti-corruption bodies which exist to keep people like him in check and to do things like, I don’t know, making sure all the foreign aid that is flowing into the country is actually being used correctly.

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