UKRAINE - RUNNING ON EMPTY TO AN INEVITABLE, ALMIGHTY CRASH

Prior to the coup in Kiev during the winter months of 2013-2014 Ukraine was a corrupt but reasonably prosperous nation. The corruption involved the top echelon of politicians and their oligarch friends. These were predominantly the figures of the right, some of them connected to those of the even further right who carried guns and had trained hard for the day when they would be put to use by one of these elites. In that winter they realised that their moment had come. The first protesters who had gathered on Maidan Square in Kiev sought movement of Ukraine toward the EU. In that direction they saw a better life for themselves. Those far in the east of the country however, knew they would not share in this newfound bounty. 

In the east where the industrial plants and mines predominantly are the people look east, not west, they by majority speak Russian and know well that their prospects as a people within the region of the Donbass hang on their relationship with Russia. For the initially peaceful protesters on the Maidan those in the east were not important in the slightest. They had always voted for the politicians that were in opposition to those they favoured. And to the extreme right in western Ukraine they were ‘Moskals’, Russians, their deadly enemy from WWII and the years preceding it. Here we have the three allegiances within these three groupings and a president and government attempting to reconcile them.

1. The predominantly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass living and working  in eastern and south-eastern Ukraine.

This group of several millions, the majority of them never having travelled to western Ukraine worked hard for low wages and resented that their hard work never seemed to benefit their region, all the proceeds going to the capital in western Ukraine. Russia was right next door with a porous border for them to go back and forth, inter-marry and conduct trade.

2. The predominantly Ukrainian-speaking people of western Ukraine.

This group who would only travel to eastern and south-eastern Ukraine during summer holidays on the Crimean peninsula, looked toward the west and increasingly saw joining the European Union and NATO as their best bet for a more successful future. As in the case of the Ukrainians of the Donbass their primary concern was earning a living and improving their standard of living.

3. The ultranationalist minority of exclusively Ukrainian-speaking western Ukrainians.

These are the neo-Nazis that you will have heard of, predominantly young, skinhead types who demonstrated their power through hate-speech and violence and who formed notions of allegiance to certain mythologies concerning Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the rabid, extreme desire for Ukrainian nationhood that would drive all Russian-speakers from within its borders and ban the use of the Russian language entirely. This group stands for Ukraine alone, unconnected to either the west or east, ‘Ukraine Over All’, ‘Ukraine for the Ukrainians’ and to hell with all others.

These forces would create the toxic mix that has brought ruin onto the entire nation, beginning with the ultra-violent events cheered on by the leaders of western nations in Kiev in the winter of 2013-14.

This was and still is a nation pulling itself apart. The solution, to let the east join Russia where its affiliations of all kinds, cultural, historical and through marriage and those Ukrainian of the west who see themselves as Europeans, enabled to go their separate ways, was unacceptable to the western powers. The people of eastern Ukraine was to be brought kicking and screaming into the EU and NATO no matter how they might protest about it. The USA and the leaders of the EU nations wanted it. So it must be brought about.

The people of Crimea and the Donbass didn’t need degrees in rocket-science to see what significance the Maidan riots had for them. They saw the president and government they had overwhelmingly helped elect brought down by a gun, Molotov Cocktail, toxic spray and brick-wielding mob having been infiltrated by the young men in category 3. above. They knew what that group wanted, it wanted them gone. Any by any means. The first target was their language. Then came the Ukrainian army to put down their reaction to what they saw going on and the knowledge of what was to come. The Ukrainian army largely did not have the heart to attack the Russian-speakers of eastern Ukraine. But those who found their way there from those in category 3. relished the thought of attacking them and wherever and whenever possible, killing them or driving them out.

So it was that an eight year war begin from the Spring of 2014. The villages, towns and cities of the Donbass were besieged and mortar shells flew at random into them. High rise apartment blocks suffered the greatest damage, then came hospitals and schools. The shells that somehow avoided hitting the high buildings landed among suburban homes and in town centres. In all around fourteen to fifteen thousand died during that time and are still dying to this day. Families, men, women, children, the elderly, to the most extreme haters they were all ‘Moskals’, ‘Russians’ and for them, legitimate targets.

This began the war in Ukraine, not the actions of Russia in February of 2022, but the actions of the Ukrainian hard right with their ultra-violent attacks on the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass who, having been denied entry to the Russian Federation sought safety in gaining the autonomy of their region as their second-best option. This was denied them however, through the combined efforts of successive Ukrainian regimes and the leaders of primarily, Germany and France. The Minsk Accords were the vehicles within which Russia sought a peaceful and fair security for the Donbass WITHIN Ukraine. It became clear that only Russia had in truth sought this goal. All others had merely used the Minsk Accords as a way of buying time in which to build up the Ukrainian regime militarily.

The wrecking of the goal within the Minsk Accords of reaching a peaceful and amicable solution, ratified as it was at the United Nations, ended all Russia’s hopes for a peaceful outcome to the Donbass question. No way through to the peaceful and amicable solution now existed. In its place was a growing threat from a Ukraine rapidly becoming a de facto NATO state that would present a growing threat on Russia’s border and an imminent threat to the Russian-speaking majority of the Donbass.

The violent seed of all that has come to represent the conflict in Ukraine can be seen all the way back in that awful winter of 2013-14 on Kiev’s Maidan where violence, not debate posed as the acceptable way forward. The killing of seventeen lightly-armed young policemen did not faze American or European leaders one bit. An organised false flag massacre perpetrated on the protester’s side against their own people through a group of Georgian mercenaries was made the catalyst by all who lauded the mob as “peaceful protesters” and condemned those not guilty of the massacre to be overthrown.

Anyone who has seen the “democratic process” of the Maidan with police burning, being attacked with every weapon imaginable, knows without a shadow of a doubt, if they are fair-minded, that this was the genesis of all that was to come. Right down to the present day where Russia seeks the only road forward left to it, to destroy every extremist, either military or political, that exists within western Ukraine and finally bring the peace it has worked toward for so long now. It acts to END the war that the Ukrainian extremists began in the winter of 2013-14. It does so with huge reluctance. The almost infinite patience with which Russia sought a peaceful end to all this though Minsk demonstrates this. 

Russia WILL achieve her goals because she has no alternative but to do so. All else would leave her vulnerable and open to attacks both covert and overt, by saboteurs, provocateurs, western intelligence and military agencies and above all by NATO. This is an existential issue for Russia. It must achieve making Ukraine a normal (and neutral) state where its ethnic minority, the Russian-speaking population can live in peace and security. And now, having embarked on the only course left to it by both successive Ukrainian regimes and their western backers, it must take the present path through to a comprehensive conclusion that delivers every Russian goal being hard fought for now.

Due to ALL of the above Ukraine is now a nation without a viable economy. It is a nation utterly reliant on financing of all aspects of Ukrainian governance from outside. Without the billions coming in from outside it is insolvent, unable to pay either debts, bills or wages, bereft of any meaningful economy with which to survive, destined to be run by others in perpetuity. It is a ghost state, an empty shell of a nation, a failed state that has become a simpering beggar, always looking for the next hand out from its sponsors. Those sponsors are now showing signs of self inflicted damage due to attacks on the Russian economy which have completely backfired. In due course Ukraine will simply become too great a burden on them, those presently in office will be replaced… the flow of money will dwindle, leading to an inevitable and almighty crash.

UKRAINE - RUNNING ON EMPTY TO AN INEVITABLE, ALMIGHTY CRASH