This is a man who once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” a viewpoint which harkens to the days of Stalin’s Great Purge and Khrushchev’s missile diplomacy with Cuba.Īnd Putin’s already on round two. The problem isn’t that America and the UN will start tossing bombs into Russia the problem is that Putin knows they won’t. Obama initially warned that there would be “costs” to this invasion, but he won’t back it up-he can’t, not without a game of nuclear Russian roulette, which nobody wants. It’s a move to make parts of Ukraine decisively Russian, both culturally and politically. Though the UN, NATO, and the US have all gone on high alert, the Crimean invasion isn’t an act of aggression against the whole world. Photo credit: The Presidential Press and Information Office As one Ukrainian bitterly put it, “No one asked us. Russia sees this as good news, picturing much support from the country they’re invading. And historically, gray areas are reserved for the losers it’s the inflexible, dyed-in-the-wool believers in a cause who triumph in a conflict. This is a group of very assertive, very nationalistic people at arms over the one issue that holds paramount importance: heritage. Kharkiv and Donetsk are firmly in the blue, and represent two major Ukrainian cities with a strong industrial infrastructure-and both are historically Russian. The darker the color, the stronger the support. The purple areas voted for an opposing candidate, Yulia Tymoshenko. Blue represents areas that supported Viktor Yanukovych, so you can consider those regions comparatively pro-Russian. You can get a pretty clear view of the political alliances of Ukraine with the above map, which shows the results of the 2010 election. This video shows two men being beaten by a pro-Russian mob in Kharkiv, the USSR’s Bolshevik-run capital leading up to World War II-and that’s where Putin’s army looks headed next. Riots are flaring up all across the country as the two dominant political forces come to a head. Ukrainian nationalists are calling Putin’s invasion an act of war Russians in Ukraine are calling it an act of salvation. Aksyonov has declared that he will follow orders from the ousted Yanukovych, who is currently seeking refuge in Russia. The country has seen its Russia-sympathizing president, Viktor Yanukovych, become a fugitive, a Russian citizen become the Crimean city of Sevastopol’s mayor, and an emergency meeting of Crimea’s parliament elect Sergey Aksyonov as the new Prime Minister of Crimea-at gunpoint. Ever since 1783, Ukraine and Russia (for a time the Soviet Union) have played hot potato with Crimea, leaving a bubbling brew of split nationalism struggling to coexist on the little peninsula.īut the arrival of Russian troops is just the most recent step in a tumultuous few weeks for Ukraine. This is an invasion that has been a long time in the making, and it’s certainly not the first time Russia has made power plays in the Ukraine. As this is being written, roughly 6,000 Russian troops are moving across the Crimean peninsula and forcibly taking operational control of military bases, communications centers, and government buildings. On February 27, 2014, Russian soldiers strapped on their marching boots and took over several airports in Crimea.
0 kommentar(er)
