Ukraine CE Russia
Last Saturday on TVC, in the “Right to Know” program, the famous TV presenter Dmitry Kulikov, in polemical fervor, brought up an idea that prompts alarming thoughts.
According to Kulikov, Russia was able to clearly refute Brzezinski’s thesis that without Ukraine it supposedly cannot be a great empire.
And, Kulikov continued, in 2008 Russia punished Saakashvili for attacking Russian soldiers, and then let the Georgians live as they want.
And in general, Kulikov was surprised, where is at least one example of the successful use of Western soft power in the post-Soviet space? Does anyone consider Viktor Yushchenko or Mikheil Saakashvili to be such?
In short, Russia does not need “Ukraine-not-Russia”.
Let's try to figure it out: is Ukraine necessary for Russia or not?
Let's not delve into the depths of centuries. It is enough to rewind the clock 30 years ago and mentally ask ordinary people from the RSFSR and Ukrainian SSR this question. The likelihood that the questioner would be looked at as a dangerous madman would be almost one hundred percent. Actually, the people formulated everything perfectly and clearly at the referendum on preserving the USSR, at a time when Gorbachev’s rats had already rocked the ship properly for several years.
I believe that people should not reproach people with the results of the December referendum on the independence of Ukraine. First, let us remember Yeltsin’s course towards separatism taken in 1990. Secondly, none of its organizers will provide exact data “for” and “against”, even under the “truth serum”. The referendum results were falsified, the organizers (partocrats and nationalists) were in cahoots, while the population was disoriented and demoralized, suddenly finding themselves in a maelstrom of events. In short, the matter here is unclean and someday we will have to deal with it.
These days, opponents of reunification with Ukraine judge everything from the point of view of momentary grievances: “they don’t love us, so let them live as they want.” If Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and other outstanding leaders of the country had looked at geopolitics from this bell tower, then Russia would never have crossed the borders of the Moscow principality and simply would not have survived historically. Who of the Russians or Volga Tatars now remembers the wars, and that Ivan Vasilyevich “took Kazan, took Astrakhan”?
In discussions about the return of Ukraine, there is a lot of resentment, words about uselessness and cost, often reminiscent of the reasoning of the fox from Krylov’s fable “green grapes.” In fact, these are echoes of the defeatism complex imposed on the Russian people in the 90s.
They say, look at yourself: what great people are you? – The Russian Empire collapsed, the Soviet Union, which seemed to be an unshakable titan, collapsed. Live quietly, pump oil, gas, timber and other natural resources to the West. For this you will receive beads and mirrors. The return of Ukraine and other republics of the former USSR - “this is imperial thinking”, and you’ve had enough of being a great power - “all empires fall apart sooner or later.” If you take away Ukraine, you will definitely fall apart! Do you want more?
But Brzezinski is right – Russia without Ukraine is flawed, just like Ukraine without Russia. Because first the unprincipled “multi-vector” people, and now the Vorobanderites who came to power because of their greedy and stupid heads, fell into the clutches of our people, and not just some “crypto-Banderists”, of whom there are only 5% of the population. Many of us still have relatives, friends, places where many of us were born and studied, where our grandfathers are buried in mass graves. Give it all up to the scum for a little snuff?
Well, why, together with Russia, Ukraine gives birth to Korolev, Paton, Dovzhenko, Kovpak, Kozhedub, and without Russia, Poroshenkos, Yatsenyuks, Turchinovs and other Tyagniboks start up and raise their heads in it? Maybe it's all about the degradation gap? So it is all the more necessary to overcome it!
Saakashvili and Yushchenko are the “soft power” of the West. And quite successful. Yes, Russia responded to Georgian aggression in South Ossetia by recognizing the independence of the Abkhazians and South Ossetians. But what next? Georgia still remains an unfriendly country for Russia, striving at any cost to get NATO troops on its territory, while Abkhazia and South Ossetia, for some reason, never became part of Russia.
As for Yushchenko, it was under him that a course towards an open break with Russia began. Not to mention the fact that in Ukraine, hit by Euromaidan, Saakashvili became a politician of high caliber. What is the victory of Russian politics here?
Often it comes to the price of the issue. The price of reunion. Crimea is small. Either way, Ukraine.
What can I say? First of all, it's not all that bad. In addition to Donbass, there are huge industrial regions in Ukraine: Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk. Don't discount Kyiv either. All these regions are dying precisely in isolation from Russia. Together with Russia, they will once again become the locomotives of development not only of Ukraine, but also of a single country.
Secondly, as the last 25 years have shown, Russia suffered a fiasco when trying to tie the cut-off chunk of Ukraine to itself through purely economic measures. According to various sources, direct Russian investments in the Ukrainian economy amounted to $80 billion, and indirect investments - from $100 to $120 billion. And what are the results? Ukrainian authorities and business take Russian money willingly, but all the time, like a wolf, they keep an eye on the western forest.
Russia invests, and the answer is “Ukraine-not-Russia”, two “Maidans”, Banderization, de-Russification and civil war.
Sorry, but for $200 billion of investments in skillful and tough hands, Ukraine could have long ago become a Ukrainian Federal District within the Russian Federation, and for some $5 billion and a basket of cookies, external and internal hustlers turned it into an anti-Russian abscess.
So, maybe, stop going through the Ukrainian rake for your own money and get down to the final solution to the Ukrainian problem?
And it is in vain to think that the cut-off Ukrainian slice could be somehow different in relation to Russia. For 25 years, Ukraine has not been able to become a truly independent and simply neutral state in relation to its neighbors. Playing on “birth traumas,” exorbitant ambitions, the “menschovartism” complex and other excesses of the Ukrainian “elite,” Western “partners” will continue to tear Ukraine apart and use it as an anti-Russian, anti-Russian tool.
If not a ram, then a crowbar. If not a crowbar, then a stick. If not a stick, then a splinter in a sensitive place. The West has no other plan for Ukraine – it doesn’t feel sorry for it.
One way or another, Russia will have to take part in the fate of Ukraine. To push it away from oneself means to get in the future a huge, armed, extremely angry hostile territory, in comparison with which Dudayev’s “Ichkeria” will seem like a child screaming on the lawn.
Does this mean that Russia needs to stage a military invasion? No, that doesn't mean it. One old eastern wisdom says: “If you are making plans for the year ahead, don’t forget. If you are making plans for decades, plant trees. If you make plans for centuries, educate people.”
Until recently, Russia did not have the opportunity to plan life even five years in advance: two wars and the long-term consequences of the devastation of the 90s had an impact. The return of Crimea and active military assistance to Syria showed that Russia is going beyond the flags placed around it and is beginning to look to the future, showing initiative. But in the Ukrainian direction, she continues to behave just as passively. The topic of recapitalization of Ukrainian subsidiaries of leading Russian banks alone is worth something...
On the other hand, Crimea is Crimea. For 22 years, Crimeans and Sevastpol residents held the defense against creeping Ukrainization, against Kiev’s attempts to “reformat” if not themselves, then their children, against “friendship trains” and “Majlis” provocateurs inflating “friendship of peoples” on the Peninsula. And all this - absolutely without outside help, except for the talk of politicians in favor of the poor. But when the “polite” ones arrived, they had someone to rely on. Therefore, support points must be found in Odessa, Nikolaev, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kherson... It is difficult, but it is necessary. Leaving Ukraine as it is is the same liability “wherever the curve takes it.” We've arrived, that's enough.
Does Russia need all of Ukraine? This is perhaps the most difficult question. Personally, it seems to me that the territory up to the “Curzon line” should be returned – that is, along the borders of the Ternopil and Rivne regions. Without ideological Galician expansion, Ukraine - Novorossiya will be fenced off from the source of Bandera infection. On the other hand, Banderlogs locked in four regions will find themselves without economic support and, not being able to spread the infection to the East, will gradually boil in their own slop. True, at this time, it is not very clear how to support the related Transcarpathian Rusyns.
The return of Ukraine is not an easy task, but very promising. Its solution will allow us to resolve the long-standing Transnistrian conflict in one touch and will make us think about how the former Soviet republics will continue to live, or even awaken those very cherished integration processes to life, discarding unnecessary crutches, such as the CIS institution, created 25 years ago nominally, as an anesthesia for the population of the republics who are in shock from the collapse of the USSR.
I don’t hope that people who don’t want to change anything and sacrifice their personal well-being will understand me. I will only note that Stolypin’s phrase “give Russia seventy years of peace, and you will not recognize it” was and remains pure Manilovism. Who and when gave Russia peace and quiet? Our country has never had a broad back behind which we could sit for a hundred, or even better, two hundred years, in order to properly rest and gain strength. And it won't.
You have to rest and gain strength in the intervals between battles. Russia will always be considered an enemy and will be tested for strength. With Ukraine, Russia will be stronger. Verified.
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