"Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 [2004] into a new cold war with Russia."
-Stephen Cohen
Things have been happening in the last several months whose importance really cannot be overstated. The new Cold War seems to be beginning to heat up and we could be closer to having the world's two primary nuclear-armed powers come to blows than at anytime since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
All of this stuff going on in Iraq and Syria, with the murderous Islamic fundamentalist group ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State or whatever the hell they keep changing their name to, is tragic and horrific and worthy of attention but let's not kid ourselves. For those countries that are neither occupied by ISIS nor are the immediate neighbors of those who are, the possible fallout from the tug-of-war in Ukraine is infinitely more important. Especially considering the events that may follow could turn my use of the word 'fallout' literal.
Like in the time period referred to in Cohen's above quote, the western mainstream media has not been doing very good work if their job is to objectively educate the public regarding important world issues. Just like during the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, their goal appears to be convincing the people of the West of the necessity of conflict with Russia. If you've been following the news, you probably know the general narrative being produced is that Russian president Vladamir Putin is the new Adolf Hitler and that the Crimean province in Ukraine that Russia took is Putin's Sudetenland.
For those unfamiliar with the history, Sudetenland was a piece of Czechoslovakia that contained ethnic Germans. Hitler said these Germans were being mistreated by the Czech majority and then used this as a pretext for invasion and annexation, eventually of the whole country. The logic follows that we should have stopped Hitler at this point and that Putin's taking of Crimea and interference in the Ukrainian civil war on the side of the ethnically Russian Ukrainians shows he has the same imperialistic goals as Hitler.
Now there is some truth to this. Putin has indeed sided with his own ethnic group in another sovereign country in a way that violates said country's sovereignty. He did take Crimea from Ukraine and is assisting the ethnic Russians in the east and south to fight the forces of the new government in Kiev. However, the argument starts to break down there.
First, a bit of history you probably already know. Crimea was actually legally part of Russia until relatively recently. The Crimean peninsula was given to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as a gesture of good faith to Ukrainian nationalists who did not want to be part of the USSR. Since both Russia and Ukraine were controlled by Moscow, transferring ownership seemed like a cost-nothing gift that would slightly shift the bureaucratic burden and hopefully appease the nationalists. In 1997, six years after the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine and Russia struck a deal that Crimea would remain as part of Ukraine but Russia would lease its military base there in Sevastopol, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Back to the Hitler comparison. People often note the failure of the appeasing Hitler's strategy as he just took advantage of the additional time to prepare Germany for what was to come. The opposite has been true for Putin. Putin had no issue leaving Ukraine alone as a sovereign state until the 2014 revolution took out Ukraine's democratically elected president, Victor Yanukovych, and replaced him with a western-backed group in Kiev, some of whom are vehemently anti-Russian. One of their first acts was to try and pass legislation that would delegitimize Russian as an official language including in parts of the country where it was the primary language of the majority.
Now, Yanukovych was certainly corrupt and I likely would have been amongst the rebels trying to boot him from office. The new Ukrainian chief prosecutor accuses him of having stolen $100 billion dollars from the government before being forced to flee. That number is probably inflated but even a fraction of that is way more than the bankrupt country can afford.
In addition, Putin didn't mind him in power since he was in many ways a Russian puppet. The most commonly cited reason for the revolution was Yanukovych bowing to Russian pressure to back away from a free-trade deal with the European Union as it would have brought Ukraine into the West's sphere of influence and farther from Russia's. It's hard to know if Yanukovych did this because his support base in Ukraine was primarily from the ethnic Russians or whether Putin leaned on him and threatened to once again turn off the natural gas that they rely on Russia for. What was clear was that in exchange for dropping this EU deal, Russia would provide Ukraine with natural gas at $268.50 per thousand cubic meters instead of the previous $465. This price reduction was undone when Yanukoyvich was ousted in February, 2014.
That Ukraine gets one-third of its natural gas from Russia speaks of the interconnectedness of the two countries. Ukraine has basically always been within Russia's sphere of influence. Ancient Kiev was considered the heart of Ancient Russia. Some people have compared Ukraine to an island in a sea of Russia. When Russia is strong and their sea is rising, Ukraine disappears as an independent entity. When Russia is weak, Ukraine emerges from the water. As of 2001, 17.3% of Ukrainians identified as ethnically Russian, about 8.3 million people.
Seeing the removal of Yanukovych from government as a coup, many Russian Ukrainians in the Crimean peninsula, as well as in the east and south of Ukraine, did not support the new government and considered it a fraud. As they had not supported the Kiev rebellion against the leader that they had elected nor participated in the creation of the new government, the Supreme Council of Crimea voted to return to the Russian Federation in March, 2014. The West claimed the vote as invalid since there were Russian troops on the ground and stating that Crimea cannot unilaterally secede from its host-country. Russia vetoed any action by the UN to act against the secession, claimed the vote was legitimate and that Russia is allowed troops in Crimea under the current lease agreement with Ukraine.
Russia also used the western-backed unilateral secession of Kosovo from Serbia/Yugoslavia as precedent. As of 2001, almost 60% of Crimeans identified as ethnically Russian so while the vote can hardly be considered legitimate due to the high likelihood of Russian intimidation, it would not be surprising if they had chosen to return to the Russian sphere following the formation of the new Ukrainian government.
Why are these ethnic Russians so against the new government that they would want to leave the Ukraine entirely? It basically comes down to a split that had occurred in Ukraine during WWII. Many in the west of Ukraine had sided with the Nazi's when they occupied the country. Most of these were nationalists, like western Ukrainian hero Stepan Bandera. These nationalists originally sided with Hitler due to dreams of being free of the USSR coupled with a sympathy for German notions of selective breeding to achieve 'purity' which meant intense racism towards Poles, Jews and Roma people. They even formed an entire Ukrainian volunteer division of the SS. This German/Ukrainian nationalist alliance was mostly short-lived, however, as Germany did not provide the desired autonomy and deported many Ukrainians to become slave labor. A full 4.5 million Ukrainians would later side with the Red Army in their fight against the Nazis.
The interesting thing is that there are many Ukrainians today who still consider the WWII nationalists as heroes. This seems to include the celebration of their less savory aspects such as wearing swastikas and murdering large numbers of Jews and Poles. These people had allied with an invading Hitler because they hated the Russians controlling their county that much and that they found they had more in common with fascist thinking than communist thought.
Today, the western media has finally started acknowledging that the new Kiev government we've been supporting has some neo-Nazi elements to it, at least in the form of the shock-troopers being used to fight the separatists in the east and south. NBC reported on Germany discussing seeing SS battalion runes on the helmets of pro-government militias, a long New York Times piece passingly mentions the fact Kiev forces are flying a swastika, a Macleans piece discussing the Ukrainian pro-government paramilitary group, Pravyy Sektor (Right Sector), mentions they have a sign on their door reading "Nazis only."
The fact that the whole conflict has been blamed on Putin putting his own people into the east and south as part of a plan to conquer Ukraine without our media bothering to mention Nazi sympathies amongst the new government until now is troubling. Anyone paying attention to the revolution has been aware from the start that far-right nationalist groups had taken a disproportionate amount of power in the new government as they were the most disciplined and well-armed of the groups fighting the Yanukovych government.
Svoboda, the All-Ukrainian Union, emerged from an effort starting in 2004 by the new party leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, to tone down the rhetoric and moderate the image of the Social-National Party of Ukraine, a play on German National-Socialism (Nazis). Before the name change, the party had flown what appeared to be a swastika as their logo. Tyahnybok was booted from their parliamentary faction for calling for Ukrainians to fight the "Moscovite-Jewish mafia" and celebrated the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists for their fight against "Moscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state." In 2013, the World Jewish Congress labelled them as "neo-Nazis" and asked for them to be banned by European countries.
Worryingly:
In 2010, Svoboda’s official forum posted a statement reading: “To create a truly Ukrainian Ukraine in the cities of the East and South…we will need to cancel parliamentarism, ban all political parties, nationalise the entire industry, all media, prohibit the importation of any literature to Ukraine from Russia...completely replace the leaders of the civil service, education management, military (especially in the East), physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (fast, without a trial shot. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda), execute all members of the anti-Ukrainian political parties....”
In 2012, Svoboda managed to get just under 10.5% of the votes in the national election, giving them 38 of out 450 parliamentary seats. Following their usefulness in the 2014 revolution, Svoboda members came into several key positions including Vice Prime Minister and ministers of ecology, agriculture, education and most importantly, defence.
Clearly these are fairly scary guys in real positions of power. Is it any surprise that Russian Ukrainians would be scared of this new government overthrowing the one they had elected fairly? It seems they were justified in being so because the death toll from the fighting has reached about 36 people a day with some pretty horrific massacres occurring against civilians. Would this have happened if the east and south hadn't tried to secede? Hard to tell.
What is clear is that the western media should have been informing us of this situation instead of simply blaming Putin. Ukraine is likely going to fragment in half now. If people had known the historical context, we could possibly have put pressure on our leaders to force the new Kiev government to agree to a diplomatic solution like Putin was suggesting and the separatists in Ukraine were demanding.
Of course, a revolution in a country doesn't give others a right to take pieces of it or to provide military support to people fighting the new government there, regardless of ethnicity. However, this is where things get a little RealPolitik because this wasn't simply a case of Russia punishing Ukraine for throwing out their man although I don't doubt that this appealed to Putin.
When the USSR was collapsing in '90, the Cold War was ending and the Warsaw Pact that held the Soviet countries under Moscow's control was no longer in force. This allowed former USSR states to become independent and negotiations were in effect to allow the reunification of Berlin and entry of Germany into NATO. Although denied later, Jack Matlock, the then-US ambassador to Moscow, said that in exchange for these concessions, they had given the Russians a "clear commitment" that the western alliance would not take advantage of Russian weakness by moving eastward. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister in 1990, was caught saying on a recording that "We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east." Just to be clear this applied to all of NATO, he added "As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general."
This promise, never put into an official treaty with the USSR, was broken and in 1999, the former Soviet countries of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were allowed in. In 2004, former Soviet states Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia were allowed in. Albania would follow in 2009. The West insists the promise was never permanent, Russia argues it was. Now the Russians fear that Ukraine will join NATO and they shall be completely boxed in on their west flank.
You may notice a good chunk of the countries, and the only two members who share a boarder with Russia, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO in 2004. Arguably the re-ignition of the Cold War was another tragic side-effect of George W. Bush's 2003 Iraq invasion. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia was no longer an ideological enemy of the West. Communism had failed and Russia's transition was to a crooked, oligarchic capitalism which the West could live with and that resulted in some profitable business opportunities for some of their companies. Russia's business community began to integrate itself with its European counterparts and NATO seemed to be finished, having completed its mandate of stopping the spread of communism and expansion of the USSR.
Following 9/11, Russia’s dealings with its own Islamic fundamentalist problem in Chechnya meant that they could sympathize with the attack on America and provided the US logistical support in their attack on Afghanistan. In 2001, Bush stated about Putin that "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship." This should have been the end of the potentially all-life ending conflict with Russia.
Unfortunately, this bonding moment was not to last. The Bush administration attacked Iraq and Russia would not support the move, correctly in retrospect, earning them some enmity and restarting efforts to box Russia in via a Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) spread throughout Europe. The US originally claimed the missile shield was to block Iranian or North Korean nukes but have now been blunt that it is also designed to prevent any attacks from Russia. Arguably they were never to stop Iranian or North Korean missiles as neither possess anything that could cross such distances.
The majority of NATO, including Germany, have opposed designing the shield to box in Russia after reassuring them for years that it was not Russian-oriented. They believe it is needlessly provocative and will throw off the balance of power that has so-far prevented nuclear war. Essentially, they are worried it will turn the balanced Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) into Russian Assured Destruction which could either trigger a preemptive strike by the US, believing they won't face retaliation, or cause Russia to strike out first before the shield is complete.
The attitude of the US towards Russia is explained in some key points of the original leaked Wolfowitz Doctrine:
[We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.]
[Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.]
[We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.]
The followup Bush Doctrine, drawing much from the Wolfowitz Doctrine, makes special emphasis on preemptive strikes as mentioned in one of Bush's speeches to US troops:
"Our security will require transforming the military you will lead — a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives [Emphasis Mine]."
Essentially, the goal was to maintain the post-USSR status quo with the US on top. Preemptive strikes were deemed an acceptable tool to protect US interests and keep other players from trying to grow above what the US deemed to be their stations.
Now, some of this is fair. Being on the lookout for reemerging Russian nationalism or any attempts to retake former USSR territories makes sense. However, while acknowledging that Russia still has the weapons necessary to destroy the US, and probably the whole friggin' world, the US seems bent on provoking them with missile shields aimed at them and the expansion of NATO and NATO weapons right up to their boarders. This destabilizes what has been a traditionally balanced situation that allowed the Cold War to remain cold. The USSR's ideology may have, thankfully, lost the battle for global domination. That doesn't mean that Russia was willing to lie down and be walked on and they have the nukes to ensure they don't have to be. This US notion that Russia should just accept they lost and allow unchecked US hegemony over them seems childish and unrealistic in addition to extremely dangerous.
So how does this continued Cold War posturing involve Ukraine? Well, Ukraine shares Russia's largest boarder on its western side; 8 million self-identifying Russians live in Ukraine; they have a tightly linked history that makes Ukraine joining NATO an insufferable blow to Russian pride and finally, Crimea contains Russia's only Black Sea and warm-water port.
Of course, none of this makes Ukraine less sovereign or excuses Russian tampering in it. It does, however, give Russia some justification for their actions in the vein of self-defence. It was clear early on that the US was pushing for the ousting of Yanukovych. US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught on tape saying the US had spent $5 billion in Ukraine to "promote democracy." A released Wikileaks cable shows that this is standard operating procedure, the funding of non-government organizations within other countries to oppose and try and dispose of regimes they dislike. $5 billion in a country with an economy like Ukraine can buy a lot of government opposition.
Nuland was later caught again on tape, this time deciding the new Ukrainian prime minister should be Arseniy Yatseniuk only to have him, surprise surprise, wind up as the new prime minister. From this, it's clear the US had an agenda in Ukraine and wasn't simply a passive observer. Without going into whatever designs the US has for Ukraine (although it's worth noting that US Vice President Joe Biden's son now works for Ukraine's largest oil company), considering their recent moves to eliminate Russian ally Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, this seems to be just another attempt to follow the Wolfowitz Doctrine and corner in a potential opponent. The recent "pivot to Asia" also fits this mold by trying to militarily surround China.
What is scary now is that the US population is starting to believe it is the United States' responsibility to protect Ukraine from Russia and the media has allowed them to believe that Russian involvement there is simply imperialistic, an attempt to conquer their neighbor and eventually rebuild the USSR. The Hitler comparison is then brought up so people think that we have to be "tough" and "not appease" Putin since it will just make him stronger or something.
And let's just be honest about something here. Does anyone think for a second that the US would tolerate a foreign power messing around in Canada or Mexico like the US is doing in Ukraine? The answer is a pretty easy no. Heck, when there was a revolution in Grenada, that was seen favorably by the majority of the population there, the US invaded and restored the previous regime. The justification was that they felt some American university students there were at risk of being held hostage. Invading a country to defend your own people from a revolution that may be hostile to them. Sound familiar?
People are even suggesting letting Ukraine into NATO so that any Russian involvement would trigger article five of the NATO charter meaning full-out war. Another idea suggested is putting US tripwire troops there. For those who don't know, tripwire troops are basically sacrificial troops whose job it is to get killed when the enemy moves in, triggering war with the ones who killed them. There have been US tripwire troops between North and South Korea for years. The difference is that if North Korea attacked South Korea and killed US troops, the US would nuke North Korea and North Korea may nuke Seoul. If the same thing happened with Russia, that is quite likely the end of life on Earth.
The main problem here is a lack of diplomacy which seems to be intentional. Following the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH-17, the US government and western media began trumpeting that it was Russian-backed separatists and Putin's fault indirectly if not directly. They did this without evidence until a group of retired US intelligence officials calling themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity published an open letter to Obama. The letter asked him to can the accusations until there was proof since wild accusations designed to build the public into a frothing rage makes diplomacy impossible.
Just like when US Secretary of State John Kerry was accusing Assad of gassing his own people in Syria only to be proven incorrect, the intelligence veterans singled him out as especially irresponsible, stating: “In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence. His statements seem premature and bear earmarks of an attempt to poison the jury pool.”
When tensions are high between nuclear armed powers, diplomacy is the only rational solution to problems. However, Ukraine refuses to negotiate with its eastern and southern parts and the US refuses to negotiate with Russia. Fortunately, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been keeping communication lines open with Putin but she can't resist US pressure to apply sanctions to Russia. Which is dangerous. Remember the old saying, "When goods stop crossing boarders, troops will soon replace them." Europe's reliance on Russia's natural gas means they will try to limit the damage to Russia but stupid things can happen when the tension is ratcheted up this high.
When the media is trying to build a narrative that your enemy is Hitler in order to sell news, people start to become less rational and politicians start to believe it even if they know its not really true. Personally, I don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust because the media sensationalized us to war with Russia instead of providing needed context, rational voices and actual facts.
AS
-Stephen Cohen
Things have been happening in the last several months whose importance really cannot be overstated. The new Cold War seems to be beginning to heat up and we could be closer to having the world's two primary nuclear-armed powers come to blows than at anytime since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
All of this stuff going on in Iraq and Syria, with the murderous Islamic fundamentalist group ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State or whatever the hell they keep changing their name to, is tragic and horrific and worthy of attention but let's not kid ourselves. For those countries that are neither occupied by ISIS nor are the immediate neighbors of those who are, the possible fallout from the tug-of-war in Ukraine is infinitely more important. Especially considering the events that may follow could turn my use of the word 'fallout' literal.
Like in the time period referred to in Cohen's above quote, the western mainstream media has not been doing very good work if their job is to objectively educate the public regarding important world issues. Just like during the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, their goal appears to be convincing the people of the West of the necessity of conflict with Russia. If you've been following the news, you probably know the general narrative being produced is that Russian president Vladamir Putin is the new Adolf Hitler and that the Crimean province in Ukraine that Russia took is Putin's Sudetenland.
For those unfamiliar with the history, Sudetenland was a piece of Czechoslovakia that contained ethnic Germans. Hitler said these Germans were being mistreated by the Czech majority and then used this as a pretext for invasion and annexation, eventually of the whole country. The logic follows that we should have stopped Hitler at this point and that Putin's taking of Crimea and interference in the Ukrainian civil war on the side of the ethnically Russian Ukrainians shows he has the same imperialistic goals as Hitler.
Now there is some truth to this. Putin has indeed sided with his own ethnic group in another sovereign country in a way that violates said country's sovereignty. He did take Crimea from Ukraine and is assisting the ethnic Russians in the east and south to fight the forces of the new government in Kiev. However, the argument starts to break down there.
First, a bit of history you probably already know. Crimea was actually legally part of Russia until relatively recently. The Crimean peninsula was given to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as a gesture of good faith to Ukrainian nationalists who did not want to be part of the USSR. Since both Russia and Ukraine were controlled by Moscow, transferring ownership seemed like a cost-nothing gift that would slightly shift the bureaucratic burden and hopefully appease the nationalists. In 1997, six years after the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine and Russia struck a deal that Crimea would remain as part of Ukraine but Russia would lease its military base there in Sevastopol, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Back to the Hitler comparison. People often note the failure of the appeasing Hitler's strategy as he just took advantage of the additional time to prepare Germany for what was to come. The opposite has been true for Putin. Putin had no issue leaving Ukraine alone as a sovereign state until the 2014 revolution took out Ukraine's democratically elected president, Victor Yanukovych, and replaced him with a western-backed group in Kiev, some of whom are vehemently anti-Russian. One of their first acts was to try and pass legislation that would delegitimize Russian as an official language including in parts of the country where it was the primary language of the majority.
Now, Yanukovych was certainly corrupt and I likely would have been amongst the rebels trying to boot him from office. The new Ukrainian chief prosecutor accuses him of having stolen $100 billion dollars from the government before being forced to flee. That number is probably inflated but even a fraction of that is way more than the bankrupt country can afford.
In addition, Putin didn't mind him in power since he was in many ways a Russian puppet. The most commonly cited reason for the revolution was Yanukovych bowing to Russian pressure to back away from a free-trade deal with the European Union as it would have brought Ukraine into the West's sphere of influence and farther from Russia's. It's hard to know if Yanukovych did this because his support base in Ukraine was primarily from the ethnic Russians or whether Putin leaned on him and threatened to once again turn off the natural gas that they rely on Russia for. What was clear was that in exchange for dropping this EU deal, Russia would provide Ukraine with natural gas at $268.50 per thousand cubic meters instead of the previous $465. This price reduction was undone when Yanukoyvich was ousted in February, 2014.
That Ukraine gets one-third of its natural gas from Russia speaks of the interconnectedness of the two countries. Ukraine has basically always been within Russia's sphere of influence. Ancient Kiev was considered the heart of Ancient Russia. Some people have compared Ukraine to an island in a sea of Russia. When Russia is strong and their sea is rising, Ukraine disappears as an independent entity. When Russia is weak, Ukraine emerges from the water. As of 2001, 17.3% of Ukrainians identified as ethnically Russian, about 8.3 million people.
Seeing the removal of Yanukovych from government as a coup, many Russian Ukrainians in the Crimean peninsula, as well as in the east and south of Ukraine, did not support the new government and considered it a fraud. As they had not supported the Kiev rebellion against the leader that they had elected nor participated in the creation of the new government, the Supreme Council of Crimea voted to return to the Russian Federation in March, 2014. The West claimed the vote as invalid since there were Russian troops on the ground and stating that Crimea cannot unilaterally secede from its host-country. Russia vetoed any action by the UN to act against the secession, claimed the vote was legitimate and that Russia is allowed troops in Crimea under the current lease agreement with Ukraine.
Russia also used the western-backed unilateral secession of Kosovo from Serbia/Yugoslavia as precedent. As of 2001, almost 60% of Crimeans identified as ethnically Russian so while the vote can hardly be considered legitimate due to the high likelihood of Russian intimidation, it would not be surprising if they had chosen to return to the Russian sphere following the formation of the new Ukrainian government.
Why are these ethnic Russians so against the new government that they would want to leave the Ukraine entirely? It basically comes down to a split that had occurred in Ukraine during WWII. Many in the west of Ukraine had sided with the Nazi's when they occupied the country. Most of these were nationalists, like western Ukrainian hero Stepan Bandera. These nationalists originally sided with Hitler due to dreams of being free of the USSR coupled with a sympathy for German notions of selective breeding to achieve 'purity' which meant intense racism towards Poles, Jews and Roma people. They even formed an entire Ukrainian volunteer division of the SS. This German/Ukrainian nationalist alliance was mostly short-lived, however, as Germany did not provide the desired autonomy and deported many Ukrainians to become slave labor. A full 4.5 million Ukrainians would later side with the Red Army in their fight against the Nazis.
The interesting thing is that there are many Ukrainians today who still consider the WWII nationalists as heroes. This seems to include the celebration of their less savory aspects such as wearing swastikas and murdering large numbers of Jews and Poles. These people had allied with an invading Hitler because they hated the Russians controlling their county that much and that they found they had more in common with fascist thinking than communist thought.
Today, the western media has finally started acknowledging that the new Kiev government we've been supporting has some neo-Nazi elements to it, at least in the form of the shock-troopers being used to fight the separatists in the east and south. NBC reported on Germany discussing seeing SS battalion runes on the helmets of pro-government militias, a long New York Times piece passingly mentions the fact Kiev forces are flying a swastika, a Macleans piece discussing the Ukrainian pro-government paramilitary group, Pravyy Sektor (Right Sector), mentions they have a sign on their door reading "Nazis only."
The fact that the whole conflict has been blamed on Putin putting his own people into the east and south as part of a plan to conquer Ukraine without our media bothering to mention Nazi sympathies amongst the new government until now is troubling. Anyone paying attention to the revolution has been aware from the start that far-right nationalist groups had taken a disproportionate amount of power in the new government as they were the most disciplined and well-armed of the groups fighting the Yanukovych government.
Svoboda, the All-Ukrainian Union, emerged from an effort starting in 2004 by the new party leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, to tone down the rhetoric and moderate the image of the Social-National Party of Ukraine, a play on German National-Socialism (Nazis). Before the name change, the party had flown what appeared to be a swastika as their logo. Tyahnybok was booted from their parliamentary faction for calling for Ukrainians to fight the "Moscovite-Jewish mafia" and celebrated the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists for their fight against "Moscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state." In 2013, the World Jewish Congress labelled them as "neo-Nazis" and asked for them to be banned by European countries.
Worryingly:
In 2010, Svoboda’s official forum posted a statement reading: “To create a truly Ukrainian Ukraine in the cities of the East and South…we will need to cancel parliamentarism, ban all political parties, nationalise the entire industry, all media, prohibit the importation of any literature to Ukraine from Russia...completely replace the leaders of the civil service, education management, military (especially in the East), physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (fast, without a trial shot. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda), execute all members of the anti-Ukrainian political parties....”
In 2012, Svoboda managed to get just under 10.5% of the votes in the national election, giving them 38 of out 450 parliamentary seats. Following their usefulness in the 2014 revolution, Svoboda members came into several key positions including Vice Prime Minister and ministers of ecology, agriculture, education and most importantly, defence.
Clearly these are fairly scary guys in real positions of power. Is it any surprise that Russian Ukrainians would be scared of this new government overthrowing the one they had elected fairly? It seems they were justified in being so because the death toll from the fighting has reached about 36 people a day with some pretty horrific massacres occurring against civilians. Would this have happened if the east and south hadn't tried to secede? Hard to tell.
What is clear is that the western media should have been informing us of this situation instead of simply blaming Putin. Ukraine is likely going to fragment in half now. If people had known the historical context, we could possibly have put pressure on our leaders to force the new Kiev government to agree to a diplomatic solution like Putin was suggesting and the separatists in Ukraine were demanding.
Of course, a revolution in a country doesn't give others a right to take pieces of it or to provide military support to people fighting the new government there, regardless of ethnicity. However, this is where things get a little RealPolitik because this wasn't simply a case of Russia punishing Ukraine for throwing out their man although I don't doubt that this appealed to Putin.
When the USSR was collapsing in '90, the Cold War was ending and the Warsaw Pact that held the Soviet countries under Moscow's control was no longer in force. This allowed former USSR states to become independent and negotiations were in effect to allow the reunification of Berlin and entry of Germany into NATO. Although denied later, Jack Matlock, the then-US ambassador to Moscow, said that in exchange for these concessions, they had given the Russians a "clear commitment" that the western alliance would not take advantage of Russian weakness by moving eastward. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister in 1990, was caught saying on a recording that "We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east." Just to be clear this applied to all of NATO, he added "As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general."
This promise, never put into an official treaty with the USSR, was broken and in 1999, the former Soviet countries of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were allowed in. In 2004, former Soviet states Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia were allowed in. Albania would follow in 2009. The West insists the promise was never permanent, Russia argues it was. Now the Russians fear that Ukraine will join NATO and they shall be completely boxed in on their west flank.
You may notice a good chunk of the countries, and the only two members who share a boarder with Russia, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO in 2004. Arguably the re-ignition of the Cold War was another tragic side-effect of George W. Bush's 2003 Iraq invasion. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia was no longer an ideological enemy of the West. Communism had failed and Russia's transition was to a crooked, oligarchic capitalism which the West could live with and that resulted in some profitable business opportunities for some of their companies. Russia's business community began to integrate itself with its European counterparts and NATO seemed to be finished, having completed its mandate of stopping the spread of communism and expansion of the USSR.
Following 9/11, Russia’s dealings with its own Islamic fundamentalist problem in Chechnya meant that they could sympathize with the attack on America and provided the US logistical support in their attack on Afghanistan. In 2001, Bush stated about Putin that "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship." This should have been the end of the potentially all-life ending conflict with Russia.
Unfortunately, this bonding moment was not to last. The Bush administration attacked Iraq and Russia would not support the move, correctly in retrospect, earning them some enmity and restarting efforts to box Russia in via a Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) spread throughout Europe. The US originally claimed the missile shield was to block Iranian or North Korean nukes but have now been blunt that it is also designed to prevent any attacks from Russia. Arguably they were never to stop Iranian or North Korean missiles as neither possess anything that could cross such distances.
The majority of NATO, including Germany, have opposed designing the shield to box in Russia after reassuring them for years that it was not Russian-oriented. They believe it is needlessly provocative and will throw off the balance of power that has so-far prevented nuclear war. Essentially, they are worried it will turn the balanced Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) into Russian Assured Destruction which could either trigger a preemptive strike by the US, believing they won't face retaliation, or cause Russia to strike out first before the shield is complete.
The attitude of the US towards Russia is explained in some key points of the original leaked Wolfowitz Doctrine:
[We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.]
[Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.]
[We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.]
The followup Bush Doctrine, drawing much from the Wolfowitz Doctrine, makes special emphasis on preemptive strikes as mentioned in one of Bush's speeches to US troops:
"Our security will require transforming the military you will lead — a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives [Emphasis Mine]."
Essentially, the goal was to maintain the post-USSR status quo with the US on top. Preemptive strikes were deemed an acceptable tool to protect US interests and keep other players from trying to grow above what the US deemed to be their stations.
Now, some of this is fair. Being on the lookout for reemerging Russian nationalism or any attempts to retake former USSR territories makes sense. However, while acknowledging that Russia still has the weapons necessary to destroy the US, and probably the whole friggin' world, the US seems bent on provoking them with missile shields aimed at them and the expansion of NATO and NATO weapons right up to their boarders. This destabilizes what has been a traditionally balanced situation that allowed the Cold War to remain cold. The USSR's ideology may have, thankfully, lost the battle for global domination. That doesn't mean that Russia was willing to lie down and be walked on and they have the nukes to ensure they don't have to be. This US notion that Russia should just accept they lost and allow unchecked US hegemony over them seems childish and unrealistic in addition to extremely dangerous.
So how does this continued Cold War posturing involve Ukraine? Well, Ukraine shares Russia's largest boarder on its western side; 8 million self-identifying Russians live in Ukraine; they have a tightly linked history that makes Ukraine joining NATO an insufferable blow to Russian pride and finally, Crimea contains Russia's only Black Sea and warm-water port.
Of course, none of this makes Ukraine less sovereign or excuses Russian tampering in it. It does, however, give Russia some justification for their actions in the vein of self-defence. It was clear early on that the US was pushing for the ousting of Yanukovych. US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught on tape saying the US had spent $5 billion in Ukraine to "promote democracy." A released Wikileaks cable shows that this is standard operating procedure, the funding of non-government organizations within other countries to oppose and try and dispose of regimes they dislike. $5 billion in a country with an economy like Ukraine can buy a lot of government opposition.
Nuland was later caught again on tape, this time deciding the new Ukrainian prime minister should be Arseniy Yatseniuk only to have him, surprise surprise, wind up as the new prime minister. From this, it's clear the US had an agenda in Ukraine and wasn't simply a passive observer. Without going into whatever designs the US has for Ukraine (although it's worth noting that US Vice President Joe Biden's son now works for Ukraine's largest oil company), considering their recent moves to eliminate Russian ally Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, this seems to be just another attempt to follow the Wolfowitz Doctrine and corner in a potential opponent. The recent "pivot to Asia" also fits this mold by trying to militarily surround China.
What is scary now is that the US population is starting to believe it is the United States' responsibility to protect Ukraine from Russia and the media has allowed them to believe that Russian involvement there is simply imperialistic, an attempt to conquer their neighbor and eventually rebuild the USSR. The Hitler comparison is then brought up so people think that we have to be "tough" and "not appease" Putin since it will just make him stronger or something.
And let's just be honest about something here. Does anyone think for a second that the US would tolerate a foreign power messing around in Canada or Mexico like the US is doing in Ukraine? The answer is a pretty easy no. Heck, when there was a revolution in Grenada, that was seen favorably by the majority of the population there, the US invaded and restored the previous regime. The justification was that they felt some American university students there were at risk of being held hostage. Invading a country to defend your own people from a revolution that may be hostile to them. Sound familiar?
People are even suggesting letting Ukraine into NATO so that any Russian involvement would trigger article five of the NATO charter meaning full-out war. Another idea suggested is putting US tripwire troops there. For those who don't know, tripwire troops are basically sacrificial troops whose job it is to get killed when the enemy moves in, triggering war with the ones who killed them. There have been US tripwire troops between North and South Korea for years. The difference is that if North Korea attacked South Korea and killed US troops, the US would nuke North Korea and North Korea may nuke Seoul. If the same thing happened with Russia, that is quite likely the end of life on Earth.
The main problem here is a lack of diplomacy which seems to be intentional. Following the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH-17, the US government and western media began trumpeting that it was Russian-backed separatists and Putin's fault indirectly if not directly. They did this without evidence until a group of retired US intelligence officials calling themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity published an open letter to Obama. The letter asked him to can the accusations until there was proof since wild accusations designed to build the public into a frothing rage makes diplomacy impossible.
Just like when US Secretary of State John Kerry was accusing Assad of gassing his own people in Syria only to be proven incorrect, the intelligence veterans singled him out as especially irresponsible, stating: “In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence. His statements seem premature and bear earmarks of an attempt to poison the jury pool.”
When tensions are high between nuclear armed powers, diplomacy is the only rational solution to problems. However, Ukraine refuses to negotiate with its eastern and southern parts and the US refuses to negotiate with Russia. Fortunately, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been keeping communication lines open with Putin but she can't resist US pressure to apply sanctions to Russia. Which is dangerous. Remember the old saying, "When goods stop crossing boarders, troops will soon replace them." Europe's reliance on Russia's natural gas means they will try to limit the damage to Russia but stupid things can happen when the tension is ratcheted up this high.
When the media is trying to build a narrative that your enemy is Hitler in order to sell news, people start to become less rational and politicians start to believe it even if they know its not really true. Personally, I don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust because the media sensationalized us to war with Russia instead of providing needed context, rational voices and actual facts.
AS
