generalspeaking

And ... Nothing But The Truth

"We never thought about severing Crimea from Ukraine until the moment that these events began, the government overthrow".
"We were ready to do this [place Russia's nuclear weapons in combat readiness]."
"[Crimea] is our historical territory. Russian people live there. They were in danger. We cannot abandon them."
"For us it became clear and we received information that there were plans not only for his capture [Yanukovych], but, preferably for those who carried out the coup, also for his physical elimination."
"Heavy machine guns [were placed in Donetsk] so as not to waste time talking".
Russian President Vladimir Putin

And of course the military men who looked suspiciously like Russian soldiers, called the "green men", without identifying insignia were volunteers, anxious to help support the campaign to save Russian-speaking (ethnic Russian) Ukrainians from the murderous intention of the government in Kyiv. Moscow's puppet Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych's life was in recognizable danger, and Russia owed it to a man loyal to them, to prevent his murder.

And the Kremlin recognized their honour was at stake, to support the people living in Crimea from the vengeance that the Ukrainian military would extract from them for their repudiation of the Kyiv regime. Russia had little option but to annex Crimea not only because of its heritage, inextricably linked with Russia, but to protect the people living there. Who, in the majority, when polled a year after annexation, state their preference to be under Russia's wing, not that of Ukraine. Mr. Putin said so.

Unstoppable events carried Russia forward, until it had little option but to deploy troops finally across the border on the peninsula to "stand behind Crimea's self-defence forces". Russia had an obligation that it simply could not shunt aside and still maintain its honour. And simply because the formal annexation of Crimea led to the Russian-speaking 'protesters' occupying buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv demanding independence coincided, to blame Russia for interference is misleading.

It was the separatists themselves, fed up with their oppression from Kyiv which denied them language rights and treated them unequally so that people felt threatened, that led them to declare independence from Ukraine. The outcome of the referendums gave them the authority to proceed, after all, to declare independence from Ukraine. And Ukraine has no one but itself and its corrosive policies to blame.

The authoritative documentary that was filmed and shown on state-run channel Rossiya-1 was produced by Andrei Kondrashov, a journalist whose own code of honour drew him to interview Mr. Putin and place the historic evisceration of Ukraine by Moscow in its proper perspective. Ukraine entirely blameworthy, a fascist state, with noble Russia rushing to the aid of the downtrodden who happen to speak Russian.

Labels: Aggression, Conflict, Crimea, Russia, Secession, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 15, 2015