Politics is a wonderful subject. Everybody knows everything and nobody really knows anything. It is rarely about the facts, and it is always about perception.
I communicate with quite a number of friends, and former students back in Russia. Everything was fine until Russia annexed the Crimea.What seemed obvious to me was not obvious to my Russian friends. It was a surprise that I was calling it the Anschluss. I tried to explain, but I was hitting the wall. Very quickly I lost some of the followers, and got some good enemies from a few so-so friends :)
Then came the conflict in the Eastern Ukraine. Russia is trying to keep the Ukraine. After all, they were together for centuries. And my Russian pen-friends are surprised, that Ukraine is past the friendship part. Why are they apart now?
I believe the answer is very easy.
Russians consider taking the Crimea the act of historic fairness. Crimea was Russian for a long time, before it was transferred under the jurisdiction of the Ukraine in 1954. So, Russians feel overwhelming pride. The pride obscures everything. Nobody cares about the costs, political ramification...
And yet, they want the Ukraine be as attached to Russia, as it was before.
Ukrainians see it very differently. In 1954 Crimea was pretty much a desert, and now it is a developed area with resorts, industry, etc. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Russia agreed not to seek any changes in Ukrainian borders in exchange for Ukraine giving up their rather sizable arsenal of nuclear warheads. Funny, but the guarantors of their borders were US, Great Britain and ... Russia.
Ukraine now does not have the Crimea, and it does not have the nuclear warheads, and the country, that violated their borders was the guarantor. The funny part is that Putin is surprised that there are sanctions. He is a lunatic if he believed that there would be no sanctions. The choice for two other guarantors is to either declare a war, or put pressure on Russia with increasingly tougher sanctions. And that's exactly what they are doing. So, this should have been expected by Putin, but it wasn't. After a war with Georgia, when the world closed their eyes, he was sure he would get away with it easy.
Ukrainians see it as humiliation. And also as an attempt to keep them under Russia's control, where Russia can at any time declare any part of the territory their own, which they are trying to orchestrate in Eastern Ukraine right now.
Imagine that you come home and you see your best friend in bed with your wife. I am sure you lose a friend (and, probably, wife).
Now imagine that this friend wants to be you best friend, because you were friends for a long time. And when you say "hell, no", he is upset and threatens you.
This is what happened in Ukraine. Now Russia is trying to tell Ukraine that they have always been like brother and sister, and should keep it this way.
So wise… But you do not f… your sister.
If Russia really cared about 45-Mil brotherly nation, they shouldn’t have taken Crimea, and then pretend that nothing happened.
Alas, there is no love left… Unless, of course, Russia brings it on the bayonets.
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