Ukrainians Want the Soviet Union Again

maio 14, 2022 Postar um comentário

WASHINGTON —

Why is Russian President Vladimir Putin so obsessed with Ukraine?

That's the question on many minds as Russia'due south invasion of the former Soviet republic continues.

The answer involves a mix of history, geography, and Putin's desire to return his country to the celebrity days of Soviet Marriage superpower.

Putin mourns the Soviet Union

A former KGB operative, Putin has said the collapse of the Soviet Spousal relationship was i of the greatest disasters of modern history. He says he does not regard the onetime Soviet republic of Ukraine as a real state, nor Ukrainians every bit dissever people.

In what historians took every bit an extreme set on on history, Putin said in a rambling speech Mon: "Modernistic Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia."

The Ukrainian people voted overwhelmingly in 1991, in a democratic referendum, to leave the Soviet Union and become independent.

Much of the West, probably unwittingly, bought into function of the narrative by referring to Ukraine as "the Ukraine," the way Putin and Russian nationalists exercise. It'southward similar to how Americans refer to "the S" or "the Midwest," parts of the U.S., non separate countries.

No Russian empire without Ukraine

In that location's a Russian adage that y'all can't have a Russian empire without Ukraine, owing to its long cultural and economical history as the beating eye of the defunct Soviet Union. And Putin is hell-bent on re-creating a new empire to restore his declining country to superpower status.

To empathize how Putin views Ukraine, and why information technology's and then entangled in his national mythology, beginning look at a map.

Former Soviet republics

Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia — in that social club, n to south — are onetime Soviet Union republics that bankrupt away into ostensibly independent nations later on the communist power complanate in 1991. They sit like a massive land bulwark between Russia and Europe to the west.

But Ukraine is by far the largest, a minerals-rich vast land of fertile fields.

Tiny Georgia was invaded past Russia in 2008, and the two fought a brief war. So, as at present, Moscow accused Georgia of attacking pro-Russia breakaway enclaves like South Ossetia. France negotiated a cease-fire that ended well-nigh fighting, merely Georgia did non regain the disputed territory.

Demonstrators wear and carry Ukraine flags.

Ukraine'south move toward the Westward

Belarus, forth with several other old Soviet republics, accept, or had, Kremlin-friendly leaders. But Ukraine bankrupt from the pattern in a 2014 revolution that seated democratically elected officials and moved the country solidly toward the W. The and then-pro-Russian federation president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Moscow in what became known as the Maidan revolution.

But equally Ukraine sought to step out of Russia's sphere of influence, Putin increasingly sought to draw it back. Post-obit the Maidan revolution, he began eating away at eastern Ukraine, declaring swaths like the Donbas to be Russian because many people there speak Russian and take Russian passports.

It's also about the coin

Ukraine had likewise served as a lucrative source for Putin's coffers. A Russian gas pipeline crosses Ukraine en road to Europe, ginning large profits for Moscow — money that Putin used to co-opt friendly Ukrainian politicians as well equally to buy off his oligarch cronies, according to Russia experts and former diplomats.

A new Russian-backed pipeline, chosen Nord Stream ii, would circumvent Ukraine and take gas directly to Germany. This is the pipeline, not however up and running, now targeted by U.South. sanctions.

Honor guards open golden doors for Vladimir Putin.

Putin versus 'dominion of law'

Franklin Foer, a writer at the Atlantic magazine who traces family unit roots to what is today Ukraine, argues that Putin is less concerned about Ukraine joining NATO than he is about Ukraine becoming role of Europe "with its insistence on rule of law."

Ukraine signed an "association" understanding with the European union, on March 21, 2014, a month after the Maidan revolution and the same month Putin took command of Crimea.

Rule of law and a campaign confronting rampant corruption, both of which the U.Southward. and Europe have been urging on Kyiv with some success, further robs Putin of a tool to control or dispense the country and its potential quislings, analysts say.

A woman holds a drawing of Putin with Stalin and Hitler at a protest.

Fears of Ukrainian democracy

"What he feared nigh was Ukrainian democracy, which would deprive him of influence over the colonial possession that he felt was his birthright," Foer wrote last week.

U.S diplomats in Europe — including ambassadors to Russia and Ukraine — warned throughout the 2000s that showing whatever inclination toward incorporating Ukraine into Western organizations like NATO would be "neuralgic" for Putin.

Putin'due south goal? A submissive Ukraine

Putin at present may not want to take over all of Ukraine, but he certainly wants to swallow up enough of the country to return it a submissive ghost nation, experts and analysts say. Ane scenario floated by U.S. intelligence is that Putin would make the invasion swift and only long enough to install a new leader.

"The key crisis will not end," Carl Bildt, former prime number government minister of Sweden and at present a senior envoy in Europe, said on Twitter, "until Putin leaves the Kremlin and [Russia] finally decides whether it will build a modern nation state or whether it still seeks an empire."

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-02-24/why-is-russias-vladimir-putin-so-obsessed-with-ukraine-invasion