James Doogue

Michael J Totten wrote well on this topic in Quillette, here: https://quillette.com/2022/03/14/ukraine-on-the-fault-line-between-east-and-west/
The following is a small extract:

Vladimir Putin clearly sees Ukraine as a part of greater Russian civilization. "Ukraine is not just a neighbouring country for us,” he declared in a speech recognizing the separatist regions of Donbass on February 21st, 2022. "It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us—not only colleagues, friends, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.” Putin wasn’t wrong to acknowledge that shared history, which goes back more than a millennium, but his statement was also self-serving nonsense. No one attacks cities where their dearest comrades live. You won’t see Americans invading Canada. But Putin doesn’t think Ukraine is a neighboring country. He doesn’t think it’s a country at all—he believes it belongs to Russia and therefore to him.

Ukraine begs to differ, and it’s hard to understand the Russian invasion without first understanding why the Ukrainians overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych during the Maidan Revolution in 2014. In 2013, Yanukovych broke a promise he had made and refused to sign a free trade and political association agreement with the European Union. Instead, he vowed to integrate the country with Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union that consists entirely of former Soviet "republics.” For that, and for deploying the sinister Berkut riot police against peaceful demonstrators, killing 108 and injuring more than a thousand, Yanukovych was ousted and tried and convicted in absentia for treason. Ukrainians fought and died in their own capital city for the right to integrate with the European Union, the first people in history to do so. Today they’re doing the same across the country.

They’re likely to succeed in the long run. On February 28th, the fourth day of the Russian invasion, Ukraine formally applied for fast-tracked European Union membership. The process usually takes years, but some European leaders backed Ukraine’s admission immediately. On March 10th, all agreed that Ukraine can begin the long process of joining. At the same time, at least some Ukrainian Orthodox churches want to break ties with their Russian patriarch for backing the Russian invasion (in part, the ludicrous figurehead says, because of Western pressure to allow gay pride parades.)

Ukrainian nationalism may have been muted before, smothered beneath Russia’s tyrannical internationalism as Belarussian nationalism remains to this day. But with the onset of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian nationalism and its clear expression as part of a larger European identity has burst into the open with the power of a hydrogen bomb. No matter what else happens, Ukrainians will remember this chapter in their history for hundreds of years. It’s difficult to imagine these people ever turning toward Russia and the East again.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:27 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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