“ Putin! What do you want?-For I want, PEACE in my life.
PUTIN! what do you want? For I want nobody to die.

Life is too short; Love is real long

Nothing belongs to anyone

Why we don’t strive; For a better world

For all the people and animals?- DO YOU?

Putin! What do you want?- For I want the world to smile.”

                                                                                     -Noy Thaitoolee

The Russian: Ukraine war; is this all that there is in the news today. I remember a time, not too long ago, when it was relaxing to watch the news after a long day. Now, only dare to watch it if you want to increase your metabolism a couple of notches.

War, crime, fraud, murder, and the like dominate to the point where some channels feel it necessary to include “30seconds of peace“, just to get our heads in order.

Well, it’s the start of another war. We always seem to be drawn into one, from invisible microscopic armies to the full might of the Fascist.

THE HISTORY

The shared heritage between Russia and Ukraine goes back more than a thousand years.

The current capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, was at the center of the first Slavic state, Kyivan Rus, the birthplace of both Ukraine and Russia.

In A.D. 988, Vladimir I, the pagan prince of Novgorod and grand prince of Kyiv, accepted the Orthodox Christian faith and was baptized in the Crimean city of Chersonesus. From that moment on it was considered that the Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

Ukraine is a country wedged between Russia and Europe with a thousand-year history of changing religions, borders, and peoples.

Ukraine first asserted its modern independence in 1917, with the formation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Russia soon took back control of Ukraine, however, Ukrainians continued to fight for independence until 1922, when they were defeated by the Soviets and became;

The Ukrainian Soviet Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) 

It was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, and since then it has been a divided democracy and a weak economy with a foreign policy that yo-yo’s between pro-Russian and pro-European.

The Holodomor

There are countless accounts about the genocide and suppression that took place under Soviet rule. The terror was used to get the Ukrainians to submit to the Russian leadership. The most famous of these was the Great man-made Famine.

Holodomor: A fusion of the Ukrainian words for Starvation and Causing Death.

This man-instigated famine claimed the lives of nearly 4 million Ukrainians. This amounts to approximately 13 percent of the 1930s Ukrainian population. Ukraine was home to one of the largest grain-producing states in the USSR and as a result, was hit particularly hard by the famine. This was a large-scale politically influenced effort to punish Ukrainian farmers who were opposing Soviet mandates and enforce the Soviet Government policy of Collectivization. 

The famine eventually subsided only after 1933. The traditional culture of the Ukrainian village was essentially destroyed and settlers from Russia were brought in to repopulate the devastated countryside.***

***(As we proceed with our understanding of Ukraine and its current geopolitical construct, this is an important point to keep in mind.)

The Soviets waved a double-edged sword by simultaneously conducting an intense “Russification” campaign, persecuting Ukraine’s cultural elite and elevating the Russian language and culture above all others. In the process, churches were destroyed culminating in the extinction of the church by 1930 and the arrest and exile of its hierarchy and clergy.

Read: The Great Famine

          Soviet Collectivization

          Russification Campaign

The Current Past Conflict

The fall of the mighty U.S.S.R, and the birth of Russia, was the opportunity Ukraine made the most of and broke away declaring itself to be a new entity. This was all well and good except for the irreversible changes that occurred in the intrinsic pre-Holodomor unified culture of Ukraine itself.

Remember the important point, how Russian settlers were brought into Ukraine post the Holodomor to repopulate the devastated regions. These settlers remained loyal to Russia. Over time this resulted in an unseen but virtually present divide of Ukraine into the East and the West. The Eastern parts of Ukraine favor Russia and the Western parts are more pro-European.

We understand now how Eastern Ukraine is pro-Russia but what about the western part of the country. How did they align themselves with Europe and away from the former country they were a part of for so long?

– This was due to the advancement of the German forces through Europe and into Russia during WWII. At that time, as we have already discussed, Ukraine was already long suffering under Soviet oppression and communism. The invasion of German forces was welcomed by many as a way out and a path to future independence. Post the war, the western part of the country became pro-European and the Eastern part of Ukraine being occupied by resettled Russians would obviously be loyal to Russia.

This is how the country was divided into two distinct ideologies.

Euromaidan Protests

In order to establish an irreversible and unconditional break away from the Soviet influence, Ukraine needed support and its inclusion into a Union that could stand up to the might of Russia. There was an ever-increasing pressure to be aligned with the European Union for this very reason.

The Euromaidan protests: beginning in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital on November 21, 2013, kicked off the entire crisis. Called the “Euromaidan” protests because they were primarily about Europe and took place in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).

This internal Ukrainian crisis erupted like a stifled volcano in November 2013 when President Viktor Yanukovych, a known Russian selected Pinocchio, rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union and favored a $15 billion bailout from Russia instead. Mass protests broke out and violence was used to break down the protestors and regain control by Yanukovych. Russia backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters.

By February of 2014, antigovernmental protests succeeded in toppling the government and it resulted in Yanukovych fleeing the country.

Crimea

A peninsula in the Black Sea with so strategically important a location that it has been fought over for centuries.

From the time of the break up of the U.S.S.R (establishing Ukraine’s independence in 1991), up through February 2014 (when the puppet government was overthrown), it was a self-governing Ukrainian region. There were, however, the presence of large Russian military bases. Similar to how some countries have their bases in other countries.

It needs to be emphasized though that before 1991, Crimea was a part of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire for a very long time, and consists of mostly Russians as its citizens.

A few days after Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president fled the country, after his government was overthrown, Russian military forces brought the entire peninsula under military occupation. Some citizens even held rallies in support of the overthrown president and called for Crimea to rejoin Russia.

Non-Legit Voting

March 16, 2014: Crimeans voted for their region to become a part of Russia.

This vote is not considered legit due to the fact that it was:

Conducted in haste,

The region was held by the hostile Russian military,

No international monitoring was present, and

It was illegal under Ukrainian law.

But, legitimacy does not matter if there is no one to enforce the Law, does it?

-Guess not, Laws seem to be only for the weak and the suppressed while the powerful and the feared can make their own Laws at will.

Crimea has effectively become part of Russia as the rest of the world did nothing but imposed economic sanctions on Russia. The result was exactly that, nothing, as there is no indication that Crimea will ever be a part of Ukraine again.

The Eastern Ukraine Conflict

The predominantly Russian-speaking eastern areas of Ukraine were seized by Russian-backed separatist rebel groups after low-intensity clashes with the Ukrainian military in April 2014. Since then it has silently escalated to a full-scale but globally ignored and private, war between Russia and Ukraine.

Shortly after the occupation of Crimea, Separatist rebels began to show their might in eastern Ukraine. Their confidence was boosted by the fact that the supposed Crimean separatists  were actually unmarked Russian special forces. The Separatists seized towns like Sloviansk and Donetsk. This is the eastern region known as Donbas.

Ironically, Ukraine’s pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych was himself from that same eastern region.

The rebels were armed and supported by Russia’s government and almost entirely consisted of Russian military veterans and unmarked special forces similar to those who occupied Crimea.

Then things got worse. The Ukrainian government aggressively launched an offensive to overthrow the rebels but was met with high-tech missiles launched by the rebels. These surface-to-air missiles resulted in the deaths of 298 people on board a civilian airliner flying over eastern Ukraine. The rebels were about to be overrun but were helped by the Russian military troops who openly invaded the borders in support of the Rebels.

The world’s patience was starting to wear thin and the US and Europe, although outraged and imposed economic sanctions on Russia, had no plans to involve their troops in direct combat.

Once again the fear of the rich and powerful prevailed as putting Western troops into direct combat with Russian forces could escalate into the start of the Third World War.

Remember the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq. Countries did not hesitate too much about involving their troops actively in that battle. 

Back to the Present

So what instigated and/or escalated the existing crisis into the current war?

The main issue Russia has with Ukraine is about the country breaking away from Russian influence. Although it has asserted itself as a country by itself post the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have always been Russian influences in the country. Putin’s vision is of a Russia brought back to the glorious might of the Soviet Union and losing countries permanently would not be a step in the right direction for that vision.

To understand the reason why the word “permanently” comes into the picture, we need to understand the functioning and presence of a very important Geo-political organization and the powerful union of countries.

N.A.T.O

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states, 28 of which are in Europe and the other 2 being part of North America. Established in the aftermath of World War II, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, signed 4 April 1949.

Article 5 of the NATO Charter states that an attack on any member shall be considered to be an attack on all. 

Watch: WawamuStats: The expansion of NATO

NATO constitutes a system of collective security, whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. It was established during the Cold War in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The alliance has remained in place since the end of the Cold War and has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. The NATO headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons, Belgium. 

Since its founding, the admission of new member states has increased the alliance from the original 12 countries to 30. The most recent member state to be added to NATO was North Macedonia on 27 March 2020.

NATO currently recognizes Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine as aspiring members. Enlargement has led to tensions with non-member Russia, with Russian President Vladimir Putin demanding that NATO provide legal guarantees that it would stop expanding east (to countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, or Moldova).

Russia identifies the expansion of NATO eastwards as a violation of the assurances given in the 1990s by several Western leaders to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand further east, and an ever-encroaching Western conspiracy to encircle Russia with hostile governments. Russia may well have seen this crisis as a no-going-back moment for its special connection to Ukraine and wanted to intervene lest it loses Ukraine permanently. The reason is that Russia could invade and oppress Ukraine when the country is just by itself like it is doing as this is being written. But, once Ukraine is part of NATO, Russia would be facing the wrath of Article 5 and would be facing direct military involvement from all member countries of the organization.

Ukraine would be well and truly lost and Putin’s dream of recreating the might of the former,

Union Of Soviet Socialist Republic,

would remain just a dream.

So Putin: We know what You want

What I want Is: 

♥The World to Smile♥