May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022Liked by Edward Slavsquat
This is so true.
Right outside my window children are playing roadblock guards and moskals ("moskal" is a derogatory Ukrainian term for "Russian"). They have the mantra "moskal is your enemy" ingrained in their mind. To me, it looks almost surreal.
May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022Liked by Edward Slavsquat
As someone who was born and grew-up in what is called Ukraine now - then it was Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, I have to state that one should not underestimate the ability and actually propensity of Ukrainian society at large, we talk about 20 or so oblast' or regions of Central Ukraine on both banks of the river Dniepr, to go with the flow and as they call it "переобуватися на лiту" (change your shoes in flight). Today local elites calculated that going against the West will be more to their disadvantage, but tomorrow, when Russians come, the situation may change and they are going to change their rhetoric and actions, as we see with many local officials in occupied Kherson and Zaporozhie regions. Ukrainian blogger, Sharij made an interesting video in this regard about Khrarkov mayor Terekhov how his view of "special operation" was changing from 02/24 and forward. As far as population is concerned, Ukraine has some of the most naive and MSM trusting people on Earth, set the propaganda transmitters into a certain direction and 3 to 6 months later you have a completely changed public opinion. They key to Russia's victory in Ukraine is within Russia itself, they need to stop pretending this is some kind of small scale and limited scope operation, but an all out war with the West and act accordingly. This realization didn't get to the highest echelons of power there, but it looks like circumstances are going to make them realize that. As for the rest of us, we are heading into such turmoil globally that this skirmish between Russia and Ukraine won't seem important to us at all in a year's time. God bless us all!
Well, Russia needs to offer Ukraine something - a shared vision. I think that stating boldly and unabashedly that all Eastern Slavs ought to live together in one unitary state has a certain appeal. But that is a bit too ethnonationalistic for the ruling class of Russia atm. So, they decided to go with their current anti-Nazi liberation narrative. Shame.
Ukraine was ALREADY anti-Russian and Ukraine ALREADY disliked Russians so absolutely NOTHING was lost in that regard. Ukraine ALREADY forbid the Russian language in schools, media, etc. Ukraine keeps upping the ante and will lose more and more Russian language speaking territory. Ukraine should abide by their signature on the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015. Why didn't Ukraine abide by their signature on the Minsk agreements? My answer> Because Ukraine is controlled by USA/EU who wanted to up the ante against Russia.
Did anyone see Zelensky at the World Economic Forum? How pathetic Zelensky is! NO Russians were invited to the World Economic Forum! That speaks volumes! That means Russia is the good country and Ukraine is the evil country. Azov Sea is now Russian owned and land bridge to Crimea is accomplished. Russia never had colonies that exploited Africa, South America, etc. Russia only had an empire. And now Russia is merely protecting Russian speaking slavic people.
My take on what remains of Ukraine following the special operation. What remains of Ukraine will be a rump state. Once librated the people in those areas on the eastern side from Kharkov south to Crimea will vote on becoming independent from Ukraine and the various regions, Donbas, Luhansk, Kherson, Odessa, will form states that will become part of the Federal Republic of Novorossia. Poland will retake Lviv, and possibly the Carpathian region will be a contested area between Hungary and Romania.
The new areas will be recognized and supported by Russia and its allies.
I am not so sure that the general Ukrainian sentiment accords with those expressed by the various pundits, officials, and pretend-presidents of Ukraine.
I do foresee a period where the lingering derangements, caused by UKraine's recent decades of harsh rule and general political insanity, create civil unrest between loosely formed factions.
But in a few years, they'll realize that Europe is burnt toast and only their old fellow nation, Russia, can help them through the hard times we're now commencing in earnest.
This is a period when the pottery and its shed gets smashed. Little of the patterns we see now will remain or have impact in ten years. Imperial crashes and new world orders do that. THe Russian identity, forged through a millennium of triumph and tragedy, will endure and influence much more than the hungry ghosts of EUromerica:
Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians favouring a peace manifesto and he pledged to "reboot" peace talks with the separatists and continue in the direction of the Minsk agreement. Outlawing opposition parties who might disagree with him is one thing. Once Poland takes over its former western territory around Lvov, and the reality of so many futile deaths, and continued territorial losses hits home even further, there is going to be wave on wave of hatred and accusations at the west for breaking their end of the “deal” The reality of the demise of Ukraine itself is quite another thing altogether. We’re already seeing the extremely aggressive reaction to Kissingers WEF speech by his office basically calling for him to make good on the failed election pledge. The US neocons have done what they always do, lie, manipulate and cause death. How much of the $40 billion in aid has gone on food and supporting those in dire need? The palpable hatred of Russians in the west is scary to behold. Luckily the Ukrainians have large hearts to encompass even more hatred of their own leadership and the false promises of the west.
There may not be any Ukraine left when Russia gets through with them. Every Ukrainian from age 18 to 60 is being killed in the Donbas. Russia is going to retake Novorussiiya for good, Poland may claim Western Ukraine and Hungary will take Transcarpathia so there won't be anything left except a landlocked area in the middle. The only population will be children and their mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers.
I think that it was already too late. The brainwashing for the last 8 years, begun by Poroshenko, has been intense. Men of military service age now can remember nothing but contempt for anything Russian.
That pro-Russia party was doomed to failure, non anti-Russia politicians were shutdown and kicked out of the parliament. The Banderite Nazi movement had already taken root before 2014 with the help from US & Soros dollars.
Besides, do you really think that after 8 years of being bombed daily by Kiev that the Donbass was ever going to trust western Ukrainians?
The only thing left to do for Russia was cut its losses and salvage what could be salvaged. And that is exactly what what Russia is doing. Something it should have done 8 years ago.
Ukraine is getting what it deserves - To be a landlocked hateful little football of a nation that says "good-bye" to seaside vacations.
It's America that's doing this isn't it? Given half a chance there'd have been peace by now.
If 30% of Russians have relatives in the Ukraine there's a bond that won't easily be severed.
Political organisations should reflect 'people realities' and when they don't is when all goes wrong.
In this world of the future where we have one 'mass mind' because of our mutual interconnectedness and instant communications via the web and smartphones the people will have much more to say about how things are politically than ever was possible before.
So I wouldn't give up hope for any rapprochement, Ukraine/Russia.
It's patently obvious to all us watchers far, far away from Europe and Russia/Ukraine that the whole thing is a filthy American machination. It need never have happened. The USA made it happen. And the USA keeps it happening.
That knowledge will possibly permeate throughout the Ukraine when all the fuss dies down. It could be that then the whole of Ukraine & Donbas & Russia come together in a loathing of America and how it has manipulated them since before the end of the world wars.
'We were tricked' is a powerful trope.
More powerful I hope than 'Russians are all evil' when every family either has Russian relatives or knows one that does.
Sooner or later the 'mass mind' must begin to consider realities. Parts of it do now, of course but it hasn't reached 'critical mass', it is not the norm for it.
We can see it in the covid thing. Have seen it for two years. Still can see it.
Wherever we move in this mass mind we see clear irrationality, wild claims, false figures, perverted data, suppression of free speech, condemnation of people, abrogation of rights and freedoms, total non-science: it is all over.
And amongst it we can find areas of clear calm sense, data published for all to see, facts elicited, open speech by anyone welcomed, lack of vituperation and personal abuse.
But those little areas are widely distributed and they're tenuously networked and not at all organisationally interconnected - they do not operate as a coherent force.
But I cannot see that it will not happen.
And when it does the rational benefit and supremacy of truth in historical accounting of human affairs on the one hand and the rational benefit and supremacy of intentions towards harmonious relations and the goodwill of all on the other will just be so self evident they'll sweep the board clean. It will just become 'the way'.
All other ways are sicknesses. The overall good health will eradicate all sicknesses.
The people will come together and 'see the light', I think, for certain sure, all over the world in all respects.
And amongst them will be the Ukrainians and the Russians.
Things are moving very very fast in the world I think. At unprecedented pace. So fast commentators, pundits etc. just can't keep up. They still think in terms of the old paradigm: peoples essentially without a voice, divided from each other, victim to whatever propaganda machine upon which they relied for all news of the nature of reality.
Nope. That's on its last legs. The 'mass mind' IS a thing. But it's just a bit inchoate right now. Like a baby waking up.
As we say in Australia: 'She'll be right, mate, it'll all come good.'
I reckon.
:)
p.s. It is hard to get out of the old way of thinking. I just had a realisation. In this new world we can often communicate with the soldiers in the front line, can't we? I realise the armies wouldn't like it and they'd try their best to stop it. But it is a possibility. We don't need to think of the soldiers as 'over there' and out of our reach and us limited to whatever news the propaganda ministries of each side feel like giving us.
We're still doing that. But we shouldn't. I glean a little 'news' from 'independent journalists' who bravely visit war zones because I'm steeped in that understanding.
But no. We should be phoning their smartphones, their twitter accounts, their facebook accounts - doing everything we can to contact any and every soldier on any and all sides in these conflicts and affirming for them that we are on THEIR side - i.e. individual human being - and in this particular conflict telling them if they're in any doubt that the USA is doing ALL this.
But yes, mainly it is new paradigm. A new human race. Those soldiers, our people, representatives of 'us', the masses, the dumb masses, are now part of this 'mass mind' and are NOT lost to us, cut off, they are here and now at all times. Yep. The military will do all they can to stop that. Like stopping the sea. But stopping the sea doesn't remove the sea and it waits endlessly to breach your defences. We are the sea. And we should be exerting relentless pressure against the military and political firewalls that lock us away from our own people - the suffering soldiery, pawns in the game.
WE have the 'sovereign right' to communicate with our soldiery in fact, is the truth. And now, for the first time in all human history it becomes possible.
I'd say that Putin has had Ukraine in his sights for a long time - as has his mentor, Aleksandr Dugin, who wrote, presciently, 25 years ago, that:
"The further existence of a unitary Ukraine is unacceptable. This territory should be divided into several zones, corresponding to the gamut of geopolitical and ethnocultural realities.
1) Eastern Ukraine (everything that lies east of the Dnieper from Chernigov to the Sea of Azov) is a compactly populated territory with a predominance of the Great Russian ethnic group and the Orthodox Little Russian population. This entire territory is undoubtedly close to Russia, culturally, historically, ethnically and religiously connected with it. This well-developed, technically advanced region may well constitute an independent geopolitical region, with broad autonomy, but in an unconditional and strongest alliance with Moscow. Here, meridian integration is preferable, the connection of the Kharkov region with the more northern (Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions) of the Russian territories proper and the spread of the structure to the south.
2) Crimea is a special geopolitical entity, traditionally characterized by ethnic mosaicism. Little Russians, Great Russians and Crimean Tatars settled in Crimea in a very complex configuration and represent three geopolitical impulses that are quite hostile to each other. The Great Russians are oriented emphatically pro-Moscow (more aggressively than the rest of Ukraine, even Eastern). Little Russians, on the contrary, are extremely nationalistic. In general, Crimean Tatars are oriented more towards Turkey and are rather hostile to Russia. Taking into account the geopolitical orientation of the Crimean Tatars is out of the question, since Turkey is in all respects a direct geopolitical adversary of Russia. But the presence of Tatars in Crimea cannot be ignored either. Direct annexation of Crimea to Russia will cause an extremely negative reaction of the Little Russian population and create problems of integrating this peninsula into the Russian system through the Ukrainian territories, which is hardly realistic at all. Leaving Crimea to "sovereign Ukraine" is also impossible, since this creates a direct threat to Russia's geopolitical security and generates ethnic tension in Crimea itself. Taking into account all these considerations, the conclusion suggests itself that it is necessary to give Crimea a special status and ensure maximum autonomy with direct strategic control of Moscow, but with taking into account the socio-economic interests of Ukraine and the ethnocultural requirements of the Crimean Tatars.
3) The central part of Ukraine from Chernigov to Odessa, where Kiev also falls, is another complete region, where the Little Russian ethnos and language dominate ethnically, but Orthodoxy is the predominant confession. This Orthodox Little Russia is an independent geopolitical reality, culturally related to Eastern Ukraine and certainly part of the Eurasian geopolitical system. ...
The Ukrainian factor is the most vulnerable point in the western belt of Russia. If in other places the danger of destroying the geopolitical consistency of the heartland is potential, and the positional struggle for the Eurasian geopolitical system sets itself only preventive goals, the fact of the existence of a “sovereign Ukraine” at the geopolitical level is Russia's declaration of a geopolitical war (and this is not so much Ukraine itself, but instead Atlanticism and Sea Power). The point is not that Ukraine itself deliberately chooses the role of the Atlanticist "cordon sanitaire", although in some cases this cannot but be a deliberate step, but that in practice it begins to fulfill this role, so that Ukrainian problem is the main and most serious problem facing Moscow." Dugin, Foundations of Geopolitics 1997
If there's to be an independent Ukraine, it must include Donbass and Crimea, otherwise this all begins to look like Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, and Putin (and Dugin), like Hitler, have more territorial expansion in mind, only to stop at the shores of the Atlantic and Mediterranean, if not stopped at the Russian and Belarussian borders of Ukraine.
Spot-on analysis, Riley. There were still bad feelings left from over a century of suppression of the Ukrainian language and culture, indeed even the name "Ukraine," during the last 100+ years of the Czarist period, and then the mass killings during Stalin's time. This was has just brought them right back out.
This is so true.
Right outside my window children are playing roadblock guards and moskals ("moskal" is a derogatory Ukrainian term for "Russian"). They have the mantra "moskal is your enemy" ingrained in their mind. To me, it looks almost surreal.
The best analysis of the situation, hands down. I'd even say it's bigly. You are becoming very Russian!! :))
As someone who was born and grew-up in what is called Ukraine now - then it was Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, I have to state that one should not underestimate the ability and actually propensity of Ukrainian society at large, we talk about 20 or so oblast' or regions of Central Ukraine on both banks of the river Dniepr, to go with the flow and as they call it "переобуватися на лiту" (change your shoes in flight). Today local elites calculated that going against the West will be more to their disadvantage, but tomorrow, when Russians come, the situation may change and they are going to change their rhetoric and actions, as we see with many local officials in occupied Kherson and Zaporozhie regions. Ukrainian blogger, Sharij made an interesting video in this regard about Khrarkov mayor Terekhov how his view of "special operation" was changing from 02/24 and forward. As far as population is concerned, Ukraine has some of the most naive and MSM trusting people on Earth, set the propaganda transmitters into a certain direction and 3 to 6 months later you have a completely changed public opinion. They key to Russia's victory in Ukraine is within Russia itself, they need to stop pretending this is some kind of small scale and limited scope operation, but an all out war with the West and act accordingly. This realization didn't get to the highest echelons of power there, but it looks like circumstances are going to make them realize that. As for the rest of us, we are heading into such turmoil globally that this skirmish between Russia and Ukraine won't seem important to us at all in a year's time. God bless us all!
Well, Russia needs to offer Ukraine something - a shared vision. I think that stating boldly and unabashedly that all Eastern Slavs ought to live together in one unitary state has a certain appeal. But that is a bit too ethnonationalistic for the ruling class of Russia atm. So, they decided to go with their current anti-Nazi liberation narrative. Shame.
It is surprising that Putin is still widely regarded as the actor/aggressor. The US was pushing East hard and was escalating until Russia replied.
The special military operation has alienated many Ukrainians, but what was the alternative?
Ukraine was ALREADY anti-Russian and Ukraine ALREADY disliked Russians so absolutely NOTHING was lost in that regard. Ukraine ALREADY forbid the Russian language in schools, media, etc. Ukraine keeps upping the ante and will lose more and more Russian language speaking territory. Ukraine should abide by their signature on the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015. Why didn't Ukraine abide by their signature on the Minsk agreements? My answer> Because Ukraine is controlled by USA/EU who wanted to up the ante against Russia.
Did anyone see Zelensky at the World Economic Forum? How pathetic Zelensky is! NO Russians were invited to the World Economic Forum! That speaks volumes! That means Russia is the good country and Ukraine is the evil country. Azov Sea is now Russian owned and land bridge to Crimea is accomplished. Russia never had colonies that exploited Africa, South America, etc. Russia only had an empire. And now Russia is merely protecting Russian speaking slavic people.
My take on what remains of Ukraine following the special operation. What remains of Ukraine will be a rump state. Once librated the people in those areas on the eastern side from Kharkov south to Crimea will vote on becoming independent from Ukraine and the various regions, Donbas, Luhansk, Kherson, Odessa, will form states that will become part of the Federal Republic of Novorossia. Poland will retake Lviv, and possibly the Carpathian region will be a contested area between Hungary and Romania.
The new areas will be recognized and supported by Russia and its allies.
I am not so sure that the general Ukrainian sentiment accords with those expressed by the various pundits, officials, and pretend-presidents of Ukraine.
I do foresee a period where the lingering derangements, caused by UKraine's recent decades of harsh rule and general political insanity, create civil unrest between loosely formed factions.
But in a few years, they'll realize that Europe is burnt toast and only their old fellow nation, Russia, can help them through the hard times we're now commencing in earnest.
This is a period when the pottery and its shed gets smashed. Little of the patterns we see now will remain or have impact in ten years. Imperial crashes and new world orders do that. THe Russian identity, forged through a millennium of triumph and tragedy, will endure and influence much more than the hungry ghosts of EUromerica:
https://youtu.be/42Tah0DCubg
Just swap the USA flag with the Ukrainian flag, and drop the USS from R.
Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians favouring a peace manifesto and he pledged to "reboot" peace talks with the separatists and continue in the direction of the Minsk agreement. Outlawing opposition parties who might disagree with him is one thing. Once Poland takes over its former western territory around Lvov, and the reality of so many futile deaths, and continued territorial losses hits home even further, there is going to be wave on wave of hatred and accusations at the west for breaking their end of the “deal” The reality of the demise of Ukraine itself is quite another thing altogether. We’re already seeing the extremely aggressive reaction to Kissingers WEF speech by his office basically calling for him to make good on the failed election pledge. The US neocons have done what they always do, lie, manipulate and cause death. How much of the $40 billion in aid has gone on food and supporting those in dire need? The palpable hatred of Russians in the west is scary to behold. Luckily the Ukrainians have large hearts to encompass even more hatred of their own leadership and the false promises of the west.
There may not be any Ukraine left when Russia gets through with them. Every Ukrainian from age 18 to 60 is being killed in the Donbas. Russia is going to retake Novorussiiya for good, Poland may claim Western Ukraine and Hungary will take Transcarpathia so there won't be anything left except a landlocked area in the middle. The only population will be children and their mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers.
I think that it was already too late. The brainwashing for the last 8 years, begun by Poroshenko, has been intense. Men of military service age now can remember nothing but contempt for anything Russian.
That pro-Russia party was doomed to failure, non anti-Russia politicians were shutdown and kicked out of the parliament. The Banderite Nazi movement had already taken root before 2014 with the help from US & Soros dollars.
Besides, do you really think that after 8 years of being bombed daily by Kiev that the Donbass was ever going to trust western Ukrainians?
The only thing left to do for Russia was cut its losses and salvage what could be salvaged. And that is exactly what what Russia is doing. Something it should have done 8 years ago.
Ukraine is getting what it deserves - To be a landlocked hateful little football of a nation that says "good-bye" to seaside vacations.
All good news on this topic you may read by PaulCraigRoberts on his blog in his new text Mistakes of Putin.
It's America that's doing this isn't it? Given half a chance there'd have been peace by now.
If 30% of Russians have relatives in the Ukraine there's a bond that won't easily be severed.
Political organisations should reflect 'people realities' and when they don't is when all goes wrong.
In this world of the future where we have one 'mass mind' because of our mutual interconnectedness and instant communications via the web and smartphones the people will have much more to say about how things are politically than ever was possible before.
So I wouldn't give up hope for any rapprochement, Ukraine/Russia.
It's patently obvious to all us watchers far, far away from Europe and Russia/Ukraine that the whole thing is a filthy American machination. It need never have happened. The USA made it happen. And the USA keeps it happening.
That knowledge will possibly permeate throughout the Ukraine when all the fuss dies down. It could be that then the whole of Ukraine & Donbas & Russia come together in a loathing of America and how it has manipulated them since before the end of the world wars.
'We were tricked' is a powerful trope.
More powerful I hope than 'Russians are all evil' when every family either has Russian relatives or knows one that does.
Sooner or later the 'mass mind' must begin to consider realities. Parts of it do now, of course but it hasn't reached 'critical mass', it is not the norm for it.
We can see it in the covid thing. Have seen it for two years. Still can see it.
Wherever we move in this mass mind we see clear irrationality, wild claims, false figures, perverted data, suppression of free speech, condemnation of people, abrogation of rights and freedoms, total non-science: it is all over.
And amongst it we can find areas of clear calm sense, data published for all to see, facts elicited, open speech by anyone welcomed, lack of vituperation and personal abuse.
But those little areas are widely distributed and they're tenuously networked and not at all organisationally interconnected - they do not operate as a coherent force.
But I cannot see that it will not happen.
And when it does the rational benefit and supremacy of truth in historical accounting of human affairs on the one hand and the rational benefit and supremacy of intentions towards harmonious relations and the goodwill of all on the other will just be so self evident they'll sweep the board clean. It will just become 'the way'.
All other ways are sicknesses. The overall good health will eradicate all sicknesses.
The people will come together and 'see the light', I think, for certain sure, all over the world in all respects.
And amongst them will be the Ukrainians and the Russians.
Things are moving very very fast in the world I think. At unprecedented pace. So fast commentators, pundits etc. just can't keep up. They still think in terms of the old paradigm: peoples essentially without a voice, divided from each other, victim to whatever propaganda machine upon which they relied for all news of the nature of reality.
Nope. That's on its last legs. The 'mass mind' IS a thing. But it's just a bit inchoate right now. Like a baby waking up.
As we say in Australia: 'She'll be right, mate, it'll all come good.'
I reckon.
:)
p.s. It is hard to get out of the old way of thinking. I just had a realisation. In this new world we can often communicate with the soldiers in the front line, can't we? I realise the armies wouldn't like it and they'd try their best to stop it. But it is a possibility. We don't need to think of the soldiers as 'over there' and out of our reach and us limited to whatever news the propaganda ministries of each side feel like giving us.
We're still doing that. But we shouldn't. I glean a little 'news' from 'independent journalists' who bravely visit war zones because I'm steeped in that understanding.
But no. We should be phoning their smartphones, their twitter accounts, their facebook accounts - doing everything we can to contact any and every soldier on any and all sides in these conflicts and affirming for them that we are on THEIR side - i.e. individual human being - and in this particular conflict telling them if they're in any doubt that the USA is doing ALL this.
But yes, mainly it is new paradigm. A new human race. Those soldiers, our people, representatives of 'us', the masses, the dumb masses, are now part of this 'mass mind' and are NOT lost to us, cut off, they are here and now at all times. Yep. The military will do all they can to stop that. Like stopping the sea. But stopping the sea doesn't remove the sea and it waits endlessly to breach your defences. We are the sea. And we should be exerting relentless pressure against the military and political firewalls that lock us away from our own people - the suffering soldiery, pawns in the game.
WE have the 'sovereign right' to communicate with our soldiery in fact, is the truth. And now, for the first time in all human history it becomes possible.
I'd say that Putin has had Ukraine in his sights for a long time - as has his mentor, Aleksandr Dugin, who wrote, presciently, 25 years ago, that:
"The further existence of a unitary Ukraine is unacceptable. This territory should be divided into several zones, corresponding to the gamut of geopolitical and ethnocultural realities.
1) Eastern Ukraine (everything that lies east of the Dnieper from Chernigov to the Sea of Azov) is a compactly populated territory with a predominance of the Great Russian ethnic group and the Orthodox Little Russian population. This entire territory is undoubtedly close to Russia, culturally, historically, ethnically and religiously connected with it. This well-developed, technically advanced region may well constitute an independent geopolitical region, with broad autonomy, but in an unconditional and strongest alliance with Moscow. Here, meridian integration is preferable, the connection of the Kharkov region with the more northern (Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions) of the Russian territories proper and the spread of the structure to the south.
2) Crimea is a special geopolitical entity, traditionally characterized by ethnic mosaicism. Little Russians, Great Russians and Crimean Tatars settled in Crimea in a very complex configuration and represent three geopolitical impulses that are quite hostile to each other. The Great Russians are oriented emphatically pro-Moscow (more aggressively than the rest of Ukraine, even Eastern). Little Russians, on the contrary, are extremely nationalistic. In general, Crimean Tatars are oriented more towards Turkey and are rather hostile to Russia. Taking into account the geopolitical orientation of the Crimean Tatars is out of the question, since Turkey is in all respects a direct geopolitical adversary of Russia. But the presence of Tatars in Crimea cannot be ignored either. Direct annexation of Crimea to Russia will cause an extremely negative reaction of the Little Russian population and create problems of integrating this peninsula into the Russian system through the Ukrainian territories, which is hardly realistic at all. Leaving Crimea to "sovereign Ukraine" is also impossible, since this creates a direct threat to Russia's geopolitical security and generates ethnic tension in Crimea itself. Taking into account all these considerations, the conclusion suggests itself that it is necessary to give Crimea a special status and ensure maximum autonomy with direct strategic control of Moscow, but with taking into account the socio-economic interests of Ukraine and the ethnocultural requirements of the Crimean Tatars.
3) The central part of Ukraine from Chernigov to Odessa, where Kiev also falls, is another complete region, where the Little Russian ethnos and language dominate ethnically, but Orthodoxy is the predominant confession. This Orthodox Little Russia is an independent geopolitical reality, culturally related to Eastern Ukraine and certainly part of the Eurasian geopolitical system. ...
The Ukrainian factor is the most vulnerable point in the western belt of Russia. If in other places the danger of destroying the geopolitical consistency of the heartland is potential, and the positional struggle for the Eurasian geopolitical system sets itself only preventive goals, the fact of the existence of a “sovereign Ukraine” at the geopolitical level is Russia's declaration of a geopolitical war (and this is not so much Ukraine itself, but instead Atlanticism and Sea Power). The point is not that Ukraine itself deliberately chooses the role of the Atlanticist "cordon sanitaire", although in some cases this cannot but be a deliberate step, but that in practice it begins to fulfill this role, so that Ukrainian problem is the main and most serious problem facing Moscow." Dugin, Foundations of Geopolitics 1997
If there's to be an independent Ukraine, it must include Donbass and Crimea, otherwise this all begins to look like Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, and Putin (and Dugin), like Hitler, have more territorial expansion in mind, only to stop at the shores of the Atlantic and Mediterranean, if not stopped at the Russian and Belarussian borders of Ukraine.
That last paragraph, Lol!
Spot-on analysis, Riley. There were still bad feelings left from over a century of suppression of the Ukrainian language and culture, indeed even the name "Ukraine," during the last 100+ years of the Czarist period, and then the mass killings during Stalin's time. This was has just brought them right back out.