Crimea: Putin’s Triumph. Now the Confrontation Moves East to “New Russia”
Global Research, March 21, 2014
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimea-putins-triumph-now-the-confrontation-moves-east-to-new-russia/5374710
http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimea-putins-triumph-now-the-confrontation-moves-east-to-new-russia/5374710
Nobody expected events to
move on with such a breath-taking speed. The Russians took their time;
they sat on the fence and watched while the Brown storm-troopers
conquered Kiev, and they watched while Mrs Victoria Nuland of the State
Department and her pal Yatsenyuk (“Yats”) slapped each other’s backs and
congratulated themselves on their quick victory.
They watched when President
Yanukovych escaped to Russia to save his skin. They watched when the
Brown bands moved eastwards to threaten the Russian-speaking South East.
They patiently listened while Mme Timoshenko, fresh out of jail, swore
to void treaties with Russia and to expel the Russian Black Sea Fleet
from its main harbour in Sevastopol.
They paid no heed when the
new government appointed oligarchs to rule Eastern provinces. Nor did
they react when children in Ukrainian schools were ordered to sing “Hang
a Russian on a thick branch” and the oligarch-governor’s deputy promised to hang dissatisfied Russians of the East as soon as Crimea is pacified. While these fateful events unravelled, Putin kept silence.
He is a cool cucumber, Mr Putin.
Everybody, including this writer, thought he was too nonchalant about
Ukraine’s collapse. He waited patiently. The Russians made a few slow
and hesitant, almost stealthy moves. The marines Russia had based in
Crimea by virtue of an international agreement (just as the US has
marines in Bahrain) secured Crimea’s airports and roadblocks, provided
necessary support to the volunteers of the Crimean militia (called
Self-Defence Forces), but remained under cover. The Crimean parliament
asserted its autonomy and promised a plebiscite in a month time. And all
of a sudden things started to move real fast!
The poll was moved up to Sunday,
March 16. Even before it could take place, the Crimean Parliament
declared Crimea’s independence. The poll’s results were spectacular: 96%
of the votes were for
joining Russia; the level of participation was unusually high – over
84%. Not only ethnic Russians, but ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars voted
for reunification with Russia as well. A symmetrical poll in Russia
showed over 90% popular support for reunification with Crimea, despite
liberals’ fear-mongering (“this will be too costly, the sanctions will
destroy Russian economy, the US will bomb Moscow”, they said).
Even then, the majority of
experts and talking heads expected the situation to remain suspended for
a long while. Some thought Putin would eventually recognise Crimean
independence, while stalling on final status, as he did with Ossetia and
Abkhazia after the August 2008 war with Tbilisi. Others, especially
Russian liberals, were convinced Putin would surrender Crimea in order
to save Russian assets in the Ukraine.
But Putin justified the Russian
proverb: the Russians take time to saddle their horses, but they ride
awfully fast. He recognised Crimea’s independence on Monday, before the
ink on the poll’s results dried. The
next day, on Tuesday, he gathered all of Russia’s senior statesmen and
parliamentarians in the biggest, most glorious and elegant St George
state hall in the Kremlin, lavishly restored to its Imperial glory, and
declared Russia’s acceptance of Crimea’s reunification bid. Immediately
after his speech, the treaty between Crimea and Russia was signed, and
the peninsula reverted to Russia as it was before 1954, when Communist
Party leader Khrushchev passed it to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
This was an event of supreme
elation for the gathered politicians and for people at home watching it
live on their tellies. The vast St George Hall applauded Putin as never
before, almost as loudly and intensely as the US Congress had applauded
Netanyahu. The Russians felt immense pride: they still remember the
stinging defeat of 1991, when their country was taken apart. Regaining
Crimea was a wonderful reverse for them. There were public festivities
in honour of this reunification all over Russia and especially in joyous
Crimea.
Historians have compared the
event with the restoration of Russian sovereignty over Crimea in 1870,
almost twenty years after the Crimean War had ended with Russia’s
defeat, when severe limitations on Russian rights in Crimea were imposed
by victorious France and Britain. Now the Black Sea Fleet will be able
to develop and sail freely again, enabling it to defend Syria in the
next round. Though Ukrainians ran down the naval facilities and turned
the most advanced submarine harbour of Balaclava into shambles, the
potential is there.
Besides the pleasure of getting
this lost bit of land back, there was the additional joy of outwitting
the adversary. The American neocons arranged the coup in Ukraine and
sent the unhappy country crashing down, but the first tangible fruit of
this break up went to Russia.
A new Jewish joke was coined at that time:
Israeli President Peres asks the Russian President:
- Vladimir, are you of Jewish ancestry?
- Putin: What makes you think so, Shimon?
- Peres: You made the US pay five billion dollars to deliver Crimea to Russia. Even for a Jew, that is audacious!
Five billion dollars is a
reference to Victoria Nuland’s admission of having spent that much for
democratisation (read: destabilisation) of the Ukraine. President Putin
snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and US hegemony suffered a
set-back.
The Russians enjoyed the sight
of their UN representative Vitaly Churkin coping with a near-assault by
Samantha Power. The Irish-born US rep came close to bodily attacking
the elderly grey-headed Russian diplomat telling him that “Russia was
defeated (presumably in 1991 – ISH) and should bear the consequences…
Russia is blackmailing the US with its nuclear weapons,” while Churkin
asked her to keep her hands off him and stop foaming at the mouth. This
was not the first hostile encounter between these twain: a month ago,
Samantha entertained a Pussy Riot duo, and Churkin said she should join
the group and embark on a concert tour.
The US Neocons’ role in the Kiev coup was clarified by two independent exposures. Wonderful Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek showed
that the anti-Russian campaign of recent months (gay protests, Wahl
affair, etc.) was organised by the Zionist Neocon PNAC (now renamed FPI)
led by Mr Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria “Fuck EC” Nuland. It seems
that the Neocons are hell-bent to undermine Russia by all means, while
the Europeans are much more flexible. (True, the US troops are still
stationed in Europe, and the old continent is not as free to act as it
might like).
The second exposé was an interview with Alexander Yakimenko, the head of Ukrainian Secret Services (SBU) who had escaped to Russia like his president. Yakimenko accused Andriy
Parubiy, the present security czar, of making a deal with the
Americans. On American instructions, he delivered weapons and brought
snipers who killed some 70 persons within few hours. They killed the
riot police and the protesters as well.
The
US Neocon-led conspiracy in Kiev was aimed against the European attempt
to reach a compromise with President Yanukovych, said the SBU chief.
They almost agreed on all points, but Ms Nuland wanted to derail the
agreement, and so she did – with the help of a few snipers.
These snipers were used again in Crimea: a sniper shot and killed a Ukrainian soldier. When the Crimean self-defence
forces began their pursuit, the sniper shot at them, killed one and
wounded one. It is the same pattern: snipers are used to provoke
response and hopefully to jump-start a shootout.
Novorossia
While Crimea was a walkover, the
Russians are far from being home and dry. Now, the confrontation moved
to the Eastern and South-Eastern provinces of mainland Ukraine, called
Novorossia (New Russia) before the Communist Revolution of 1917.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his later years predicted
that Ukraine’s undoing would come from its being overburdened by
industrial provinces that never belonged to the Ukraine before Lenin, –
by Russian-speaking Novorossia. This prediction is likely to be
fulfilled.
Who
fights whom over there? It is a great error to consider the conflict a
tribal one, between Russians and Ukrainians. Good old Pat Buchanan made
this error saying that “Vladimir Putin is a
blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethno-nationalist who sees himself as
Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look
upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate
concern.” Nothing could be farther away from truth: perhaps only the
outlandish claim that Putin is keen on restoring the Russian Empire can
compete.
Putin is not an empire-builder
at all (to great regret of Russia’s communists and nationalists). Even
his quick takeover of Crimea was an action forced upon him by the
strong-willed people of Crimea and by the brazen aggression of the Kiev
regime. I have it on a good authority that Putin hoped he would not have
to make this decision. But when he decided he acted.
The ethno-nationalist assertion
of Buchanan is even more misleading. Ethno-nationalists of Russia are
Putin’s enemies; they support the Ukrainian ethno-nationalists and march
together with Jewish liberals on Moscow street demos. Ethno-nationalism
is as foreign to Russians as it is foreign to the English. You can
expect to meet a Welsh or Scots nationalist, but an English nationalist
is an unnatural rarity. Even the English Defence League was set up by a
Zionist Jew. Likewise, you can find a Ukrainian or a Belarusian or a
Cossack nationalist, but practically never a Russian one.
Putin is a proponent and advocate of non-nationalist Russian world. What is the Russian world?
Russian World
Russians populate their own vast
universe embracing many ethnic units of various background, from
Mongols and Karels to Jews and Tatars. Until 1991, they populated an
even greater land mass (called the Soviet Union, and before that, the
Russian Empire) where Russian was the lingua franca
and the language of daily usage for majority of citizens. Russians
could amass this huge empire because they did not discriminate and did
not hog the blanket. Russians are amazingly non-tribal, to an extent
unknown in smaller East European countries, but similar to other great
Eastern Imperial nations, the Han Chinese and the Turks before the
advent of Young Turks and Ataturk. The Russians did not assimilate but
partly acculturated their neighbours for whom Russian language and
culture became the gateway to the world. The Russians protected and
supported local cultures, as well, at their expense, for they enjoy this
diversity.
Before 1991, the Russians
promoted a universalist humanist world-view; nationalism was practically
banned, and first of all, Russian nationalism. No one was persecuted or
discriminated because of his ethnic origin (yes, Jews complained, but
they always complain). There was some positive discrimination in the
Soviet republics, for instance a Tajik would have priority to study
medicine in the Tajik republic, before a Russian or a Jew; and he would
be able to move faster up the ladder in the Party and politics. Still
the gap was small.
After 1991, this universalist
world-view was challenged by a parochial and ethno-nationalist one in
all ex-Soviet republics save Russia and Belarus. Though Russia ceased to
be Soviet, it retained its universalism. In the republics, people of
Russian culture were severely discriminated against, often fired from
their working places, in worst cases they were expelled or killed.
Millions of Russians, natives of the republics, became refugees;
together with them, millions of non-Russians who preferred Russian
universalist culture to “their own” nationalist and parochial one fled
to Russia. That is why modern Russia has millions of Azeris, Armenians,
Georgians, Tajiks, Latvians and of smaller ethnic groups from the
republics. Still, despite discrimination, millions of Russians and
people of Russian culture remained in the republics, where their
ancestors lived for generations, and the Russian language became a
common ground for all non-nationalist forces.
If one wants to compare with
Israel, as Pat Buchanan did, it is the republics, such as Ukraine,
Georgia, Uzbekistan, Estonia do follow Israeli model of discriminating
and persecuting their “ethnic minorities”, while Russia follows the West
European model of equality.
France vs Occitania
In order to understand the
Russia-Ukraine problem, compare it with France. Imagine it divided into
North and South France, the North retaining the name of France, while
the South of France calling itself “Occitania”, and its people
“Occitans”, their language “Occitan”. The government of Occitania would
force the people to speak Provençal, learn Frederic Mistral’s poems by
rote and teach children to hate the French, who had devastated their
beautiful land in the Albigensian Crusade of 1220. France would just
gnash its teeth. Now imagine that after twenty years, the power in
Occitania were violently seized by some romantic southern fascists who
were keen to eradicate “800 years of Frank domination” and intend to
discriminate against people who prefer to speak the language of Victor
Hugo and Albert Camus. Eventually France would be forced to intervene
and defend francophones, at least in order to stem the refugee influx.
Probably the Southern francophones of Marseilles and Toulon would
support the North against “their own” government, though they are not
migrants from Normandy.
Putin defends all
Russian-speakers, all ethnic minorities, such as Gagauz or Abkhaz, not
only ethnic Russians. He defends the Russian World, all those
russophones who want and need his protection. This Russian World
definitely includes many, perhaps majority of people in the Ukraine,
ethnic Russians, Jews, small ethnic groups and ethnic Ukrainians, in
Novorossia and in Kiev.
Indeed Russian world was and is
attractive. The Jews were happy to forget their schtetl and Yiddish;
their best poets Pasternak and Brodsky wrote in Russian and considered
themselves Russian. Still, some minor poets used Yiddish for their
self-expression. The Ukrainians, as well, used Russian for literature,
though they spoke their dialect at home for long time. Nikolai Gogol,
the great Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, wrote Russian, and he was
dead set against literary usage of the Ukrainian dialect. There were a
few minor Romantic figures who used the dialect for creative art, like
Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.
Solzhenitsyn
wrote: “Even ethnic-Ukrainians do not use and do not know Ukrainian. In
order to promote its use, the Ukrainian government bans Russian
schools, forbids Russian TV, even librarians are not allowed to speak
Russian with their readers. This anti-Russian position of Ukraine is
exactly what the US wants in order to weaken Russia.“
Putin in his speech on Crimea stressed that he wants to secure the Russian world – everywhere in the Ukraine. In Novorossia the need is acute,
for there are daily confrontations between the people and the gangs
sent by the Kiev regime. While Putin does not yet want (as opposed to
Solzhenitsyn and against general Russian feeling) to
take over Novorossia, he may be forced to it, as he was in Crimea.
There is a way to avoid this major shift: the Ukraine must rejoin the
Russian world. While keeping its independence, Ukraine must grant full
equality to its Russian language speakers. They should be able to have
Russian-language schools, newspapers, TV, be entitled to use Russian
everywhere. Anti-Russian propaganda must cease. And fantasies of joining
NATO, too.
This is not an extraordinary
demand: Latinos in the US are allowed to use Spanish. In Europe,
equality of languages and cultures is a sine qua non.
Only in the ex-Soviet republics are these rights trampled – not only in
Ukraine, but in the Baltic republics as well. For twenty years, Russia
made do with weak objections, when Russian-speakers (the majority of
them are not ethnic Russians) in the Baltic states were discriminated
against. This is likely to change. Lithuania and Latvia have already
paid for their anti-Russian position by losing their profitable transit
trade with Russia. Ukraine is much more important for Russia. Unless the
present regime is able to change (not very likely), this illegitimate
regime will be changed by people of Ukraine, and Russia will use R2P
against the criminal elements in power.
The majority of people of
Ukraine would probably agree with Putin, irrespective of their
ethnicity. Indeed, in the Crimean referendum, Ukrainians and Tatars
voted en masse together
with Russians. This is a positive sign: there will be no ethnic strife
in the Ukraine’s East, despite US efforts to the contrary. The decision
time is coming up fast: some experts presume that by end of May the
Ukrainian crisis will be behind us.
A
few days later, upon the establishment of the interim government,
Stepan Kubiv was put in charge of negotiations with Wall Street and the
IMF.
