War is terrible and I understand the almost universal emotional reactions to events in Ukraine. But kneejerk demonizing stereotypes carried over from the Cold War are not helpful. You need to know the history that led to this. The invasion was not unprovoked, nor out of the blue.
The truth is being massively subverted. Remember the last Iraq war? There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq – but UN and media and politicians pushed that narrative.
We live in a post-truth world. Don’t take anything now on trust or bias. Use your critical faculties, look at the historical evidence, study the history.
Some Background On The Geography And History
European Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is an area of marshes, gentle slopes, plains, forests and grasslands. It has no natural borders. It has been invaded MANY times both before and after the coming of the Slavs. Before the Slavs – by the Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Scythians, Finno-Ugric peoples, Greeks, Goths (Ostrogoths and Visigoths), Huns, Bulgars, Khazars.
After the coming of the Slavs – by the Vikings, Pechenegs, Cumans (Polovtsy), Mongols (overlords for 240 years), Teutonic and Livonian knights, Timur of Samarkand, Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Poles, Swedes, Turks, French (Napoleon) and British and French again (Crimean War), and Germans (Hitler).
Borders Are A CORE SECURITY CONCERN
The first East Slavic state was a single polity – KIEVAN RUS’ – covering today’s Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The capital moved from Novgorod to KIEV in 886, then to Vladimir in the northeast from 1169.
There were many separate principalities (fiefdoms) , but all the princes were of same bloodline – the Riurik dynasty (up to 1598).
Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev took Eastern Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople in 988. This was a defining moment in the history of civilization, and the genesis of the split between Russia and western Europe. Yaroslav the Wise (Grand Prince of Kiev 1019 – 1054) created a hierarchy of princes with Kiev at the top, and princes moving up as a vacancy occurred.
The Old East Slavic Language covered the whole area, with an intergradation of dialects (as in England).
The Fragmentation Of Rus’
The Mongol invasion 1237-42 fragmented Rus’ into three areas:
• the Northwest in Novgorod and Pskov,
• the Southwest in Kiev, in what became the Lithuanian-Russian state, then Poland; and
• the Northeast – in Vladimir, then Moscow.
The NE and SW competed to reunite all the Rus’ lands. While all of Rus’ was Eastern Orthodox from 988, Poland and Lithuania were Catholic. Ukraine was in the Kingdom of Poland from 1569 – subjected to Western influences – BUT the Catholic Poles persecuted the Orthodox. The Ukrainian Cossacks persuaded Tsar Aleksei in 1652 to take Eastern Ukraine (E of Dniepr) and Kiev into Muscovy. After a long war, the Treaty of Andrusovo (1667) confirmed the split in Ukraine.
The Crimean Tatars (last independent descendants of the Mongols) were a military and raiding threat for hundreds of years, but Catherine the Great conquered and annexed CRIMEA in 1783. Sevastopol then became the Black Sea naval base for Imperial Russia, later for the USSR.
She added NOVOROSSIYA – New Russia – on land north of the Black Sea, founding Odessa and other towns in today’s southern Ukraine with planted Russian populations. Odessa today speaks 70% Russian. Mariupol also speaks mostly Russian.
“Sacrosanct Borders” ?
Borders in eastern Europe have been extremely fluid:
What About Crimea?
After the Bolshevik 1917 Revolution, Crimea was part of the RUSSIAN Soviet Socialist Republic. Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine in 1954 for geographic convenience. His son Sergei Khrushchev explains:
“the decision to give Crimea to Ukraine had to do with economics and agriculture – the building of a hydro-electric dam on the Dnieper River which would irrigate Ukraine’s southern regions, including Crimea. Not a political move, not an ideological move – just business.”
That was within the ONE COUNTRY, the Soviet Union. And NOBODY expected that after 1991, the Soviet omelette would be unscrambled! And when it was – the Russian Federation found its key Black Sea naval base IN ANOTHER COUNTRY! Completely unacceptable to national security, all the more so as the US pushed Ukraine toward being an American vassal.
Crimea had never historically been part of Ukraine or of Kievan Rus’. Crimea speaks overwhelmingly Russian, and its population wanted to rejoin Russia, and did by referendum in March 2014.
The Language Situation In Ukraine
While Ukrainian and Russian are now separate languages, Russian predominates in the east and the south, and very many people in Ukraine and Russia have extended family in the other country. This is a gutwrenching war for millions.
Now: To The CURRENT CRISIS
As already covered, BORDER SECURITY is very important to Russia.
Gorbachev was persuaded in 1990 to agree to reunification of Germany on promise that “NATO will not expand an inch eastwards.” NATO could have been disbanded. Instead, the US and NATO treated post-communist Russia as an enemy to be contained and suppressed. They destroyed the opportunity to build constructive cooperation.
• NATO membership has grown by 14 (plus Finland and Sweden now to join too). Its Bucharest Declaration of 2008 affirmed an “open door” toward Ukraine.
• NATO put bases all around Russia’s periphery – interpreted by Russia as aggressive and hostile. Putin made this very clear, from back in 2008, saying categorically “Ukraine and Georgia are not going to join NATO.”
Putin was asked in an interview: Why do you react so vehemently to NATO’s expansion? His answer was:
* A country in NATO can’t resist pressure from USA
* A country may get missile defence systems and other potentially hostile institutions – new bases, new missile strike systems.
Consider this:
The Ukrainian government subjected the breakaway Donbas areas to severe “anti-terrorist operation”. Donbas became a war zone. 14,000 have died in the 8 years since 2014 – 80% in the Donbas republics. And the West has been completely silent. Russia officially recognized the two republics on 21 February 2022, and on 24 February launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
WHY DID PUTIN INVADE NOW?
Continuing pressure from within Ukraine to join NATO – not denied by the US and other NATO members. Reports, unconfirmed, that Ukrainians were working on a plutonium bomb. The Bio Labs allegedly developing weapons of mass destruction.
US using Ukraine as a vehicle for advancing their own power and globalist interests of the New World Order to constrict Russia’s national security and economy.
Neo-Nazis! The Azov Battalion
Putin claimed one of the reasons that Russia invaded Ukraine was to eliminate the Nazis in that country.
The Azov Battalion is a paramilitary unit of the Ukrainian National Guard known for white supremacist neo-Nazi ideology, use of Nazi symbolism and violence against marginal groups and immigrants. The Azov battalion led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics in Donbas and retook the city of Mariupol from separatist forces.
The Azov Battalion controlled the Mariupol theater building and the territory around it.
Was bombing of the Mariupol theatre on 16 March 2022 – blamed on Russia – a false flag attack staged by Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention? Locals in Mariupol warned of this three days before the incident.
Corruption In Ukraine
Corruption is widespread in Ukrainian society. In 2012 Ernst & Young put Ukraine among the three most-corrupt nations of the world—alongside Colombia and Brazil.
In 2015 The Guardian called Ukraine “the most corrupt nation in Europe”. … Ernst & Young in 2017 considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation in the world.
According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Ukraine ranks the second most corrupt in Europe, ahead of Russia.
Who Is Vladimir Putin?
A Russian nationalist, fiercely independent
Anti-globalist: opposes the New World Order
Has kept the Rothschilds and Georg Soros out of Russia Affirms Russian traditional culture and values, and believes that Russia is different from the West and must make her own way.
Opposes Cultural Marxism and all the “woke” gender and identity nonsense.
Believes in strong leadership – sees himself as a tsar, custodian of the nation – and does not like opposition! [Neither did Peter the Great, or Ivan the Terrible, or Catherine the Great, or Nicholas I – strong centralized leadership is the Russian tradition, and most Russians support this.]
Sees collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragedy, not because of the loss of communism, but because Russia lost status as a superpower.
He rejects a unipolar world dominated by the United States, as predicted by Francis Fukuyama in “the end of history.”
He believes Russia should be a Great Power, but not a spreader of ideology. He’s not a messianic communist, and is also not like the American “manifest destiny” neo-cons who want to “spread democracy.”
Russia must include Ukraine to be a superpower. NOTE: Combined Russia, Ukraine and Belarus population is 200 million.
Putin also sees all the Eastern Slavs – Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians – as one people, who should be in one state – as in Kievan Rus’ 1000 years ago: separate principalities but all under the one Grand Prince.
While I certainly understand the apprehensions of the three Baltic republics who were forcibly incorporated in the USSR under Stalin, I don’t believe Putin’s vision includes them. They are NOT SLAVS.
The same idea was advanced by Solzhenitsyn in his 1990 book “Rebuilding Russia.”
SO … Who Is Volodymyr Zelensky?
Like Justin Trudeau, Zelensky is an acolyte of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF), the globalist organization behind the ‘Great Reset’. He has pushed hard for full digital identity and making Ukraine a field test for the Great Reset. Read this:
https://gatesofvienna.net/2022/03/ukraine-field-test-of-the-great-reset/
Accused of corruption, and has become very rich. Named in the Pandora Papers (documents leaked in 2021 exposing secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders). Linked to offshore shell companies.
Since 2014, Ukraine has become the world’s most popular money laundering state. Oligarchs run it and chose the then actor Zelensky to be their presidential puppet.
His government is known for shutting down the media, for arresting political opponents, and for banning the Russian language in education for Russian speakers – half of the Ukrainian population.
But … “Ukraine Is A Democracy!”
Zelensky will go down in history as the president who intentionally led citizens of his country to a horrible bloodshed, when the best option was to propose a negotiated peace agreement. The existing borders of Ukraine are not sustainable, borders in the region have never been sacrosanct, and if Ukraine thinks it will ever take back Crimea, they’re dreaming.
This article was first published in The Freedom and Heritage Society
