The war in Ukraine February 2022

The war in Ukraine February 2022

/ Sources and driving forces /

The Ukrainian lands are the cradle of Russian statehood. In the ninth century, as a result of the unification of some of the East Slavic tribes, Kievan Rus was born. It is also known as the Kiev state, which lost its unity and disintegrated into many independent principalities in the second quarter of the twelfth century. A period of civil wars followed. A century later, the lands of the fragmented Slavic principalities became the target of deadly Tatar invasions. In early December 1240, under the blows of Khan Batu / a direct descendant of Genghis Khan /, Kyiv fell. This was the end of Kievan Rus. The lands of the Eastern Slavs fell under various forms of Tatar hegemony.

In 1263, the Grand Duchy of Moscow began to rise, which later united a significant part of the East Slavic lands under its rule. Moscow become a unifying center in the fight against the Tatars. The beginning of the end of the Tatar vassal dependence of the Russian principalities was set by the epic Battle of Kulikovo in 1380.

After the Tatar hegemony, politically unorganized, the Ukrainian lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Principality / Rzeczpospolita- meaning Commonwealth /, founded through the Union of Lublin in 1569 and lasted until 1795, when its lands were divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria. The principality included the lands of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. The resistance against the Polish political domination and cultural and religious oppression is carried out by the freedom-loving Orthodox Cossacks, located east of the Dnieper River – the so-called Zaporozhian army or Sech.

In 1648 a mass uprising broke out against the Polish oppression under the leadership of Bogdan Mikhailovich Khmelnytsky. The Hetmanate (a form of sectarian rule headed by a hetman) entered into an alliance with the Moscow state. In the course of the joint struggle against Poland, a rapprochement began between the Moscow and Ukrainian lands on the basis of Eastern Orthodoxy and common Slavic roots. In 1654, in the Preslavl Zaporozhian Council (General Assembly) elected the Sech to be placed under the rule of the Moscow Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich – the second Russian tsar of the Romanov dynasty, a son of Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov. Thus, the Ukrainian lands became part of the Russian state.

An unsuccessful attempt to revive the statehood in the Ukrainian lands was made by Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa – Hetman of the Zaporozhian army from 1704 to 1709. Initially Mazepa supported the political efforts of Peter I, but later, in order to break away from Russia, the Hetman, joined the Northern War / 1700-1721 / on the side of the Swedish King Carl XII. His effort did not find solid support from the Cossacks. Mazepa joined the Swedish army with only 1 500 Cossacks. After the defeat of the Swedes in the battle of Poltava / 1709 /, Charles XII and Mazepa were forced to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire, where the unfortunate hetman died the same year. The attempt at Ukrainian statehood also failed.

A new attempt to revive the Ukrainian statehood was made in 1917, when the February Revolution broke out in Russia. Several separate Ukrainian states emerged: the Ukrainian People’s Republic which lasted until 1921; the Hetmanate, created with the help of Germany- from 1917 to 1921; The Western Ukrainian Republic / 1918-1919 /.

With the establishment of a stable Bolshevik government, in 1921 the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established, which took part as a union republic in the creation of the USSR. The original project for the creation of the Soviet Union was developed by JV Stalin. True to the Marxist internationalism, he rejected nationalism as the basis for building the Soviet state. This project was sharply criticized by V.I. Lenin. In order to consolidate the position of Bolshevism on the periphery of the former empire, he unfolded the nationalist idea – a political “trick”, which later turned against Moscow.

The political “trickery” towards Ukraine continued during World War II. At the UN founding conference in San Francisco in April 1945, Stalin, heavily courted by his Western allies in order to involve his army in the defeat of Japan, succeeded in including the states of the Byelorussian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR as subsidiary founder-states along with Argentina and Denmark. A strange decision! Did he need these two votes in the General Assembly so badly, given that the USSR, as a member of the highest body of the United Nations – the Security Council – had the right to an iron veto, which invalidated any decision of the organization? Thus, these two satrap republics received international recognition, unlike the other allied members of the Soviet Union, which were admitted to the UN only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Stalin did not interfere in the specifics of Ukraine’s statehood. Ukraine’s modern borders were only randomly delineated under Khrushchev in 1954. Ukraine includes significant territories – in the east and south, including the Crimean peninsula, populated mainly by Russian-speaking population.

Russia has not only ethno-linguistic but also historical claims to the lands along the Don River and the Northern Black Sea Coast. Peter I is the ruler who became interested in the south, to the Black Sea territories. Russia, which was economically prosperous at the end of the 17th century, needed to open up to the world and look for a way to the straits and warm seas. At that time the Black Sea was completely surrounded by territories of the Ottoman Empire. There were two campaigns against the Ottomans. The first, the Azov one / 1695 / was unsuccessful due to lack of fleet. After the construction of a fleet on the Don River near Voronezh – the southernmost Russian city at that time – the second Azov campaign was carried out / 1699 /. Azov fell and the road to the Black Sea was open. But Peter I abandoned the southern project and in the early eighteenth century reoriented his policy to the west. The Northern War (1700-1721) was begun, with the aim of gaining access to the Baltic Sea and opening Russia to Europe.

During the reign of Catherine II / 1762-1796 / Russia turned its attention to gaining access to the Black Sea. During the reign of Sultan Mustafa III in the war of 1768-1774, which ended with the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi Treaty, part of Crimea was annexed to Russia. Nine years later, in 1783, with the liquidation of the Crimean Khanate, the rest of the peninsula was annexed to Russia.
During the reign of Selim I, another Russian-Turkish war broke out – 1789-1791. According to the Yash Peace Treaty, the Crimean Peninsula and Ochagov, a fortress city on the Sea of ​​Azov, definitively passed to Russia. Upon the order of Catherine the Great in 1794 the city of Odessa was founded.

This did not put an end of the Russian-Turkish rivalry in the region. In the 19th century, four more wars broke out, which would eventually lead to the final consolidation of the North Black Sea lands to Russia.

The main question that currently troubles everyone (2022) is: how far can Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin go in his war with Ukraine? For the development of the historical processes shows unequivocally that access to the Black Sea is not the maximum program of Russian tsarism.
In the “Address to the Nation” of February 21, 2022, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has an important circumstance, which for some unknown reason, is not paid much importance to. And it is very important and revealing – as long as you are able to read between the lines of political linguistic equilibristic. It unequivocally states that all “Maidan members” who have committed gross assaults against people are known to the Russian services and will be punished. Then, apparently, the President of Russia felt that he has missed out a faux-pas and added awkwardly that they will be taken to court. But this in no way changes the essence that: firstly, Russia’s main goal is Kyiv, not just the protection of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and secondly, which already applies to Bulgaria and other states, that the extreme Russophobes / and not only in Ukraine / are subject to severe punishment! It seems that bills made without a bartender will be paid. / In thephilosophyofwar.com in the article “Anti-Communism and Russo phobia / published on March 27, 2020 / a warning was issued against the expansionist Russo phobia. /

Western analysts argue that Vladimir Putin is the new Stalin. Quite an impressive idea in terms of satanizing the Russian president. In fact, with his policy of irredentism (annexation of territories outside the state), he is more like Adolf Hitler, who in the second half of the 1930s pursued this type of policy before reshaping the world.

The forceful methods used by Putin are completely in line with the anaemic, reluctant reaction of the United States and the West.
Russian policy is based on a well-thought-out and planned strategy. While the West does not have such and is forced to improvise pieces by piece, blinded by its maniacal desire to oppose Russia, the latter being considered from Soviet times an enemy of democracy and freedom. That is, the United States and the West are dragging their feet after the events, without having an adequate policy. This is how the absurd situation in Ukraine happened: after the Euromaidan degenerated… the Obama administration began to tolerate the most radical, including neo-Nazi, groups… “/ B. Tsekov /. Practically, the so-called democratic world is turning a blind eye to the outright genocide perpetrated by Ukrainian ruling circles and the frantic atrocities of radical and revived (even more absurd) neo-Nazi groups.

Outwardly, Putin made the mistake of A. Hitler, who was late in opening the hostilities against the USSR. The Wehrmacht attacked in the east at the end of June 1941. Provided that in September in these latitudes the rains turned the land into an impassable swamp. The German generals constantly whine in their memoirs and apologize to General Mud. It is as if they forget that the mud is just as impassable for the Russians themselves. However they also whine a lot from General Winter. As the saying goes: “Algae hampers with the good-for-nothing sailor!”.

The conditions were similar in the spring. The Russian attack was launched in late February. In March the intensive melting of the snow begins and the land turns into an impassable swamp again. For this reason, viewed in historical depth, Russian military operations are planned for the winter and summer. Based on this circumstance, I was inclined to initially assume that there were no conditions for total war. Spring is coming! It is not possible to deploy large military forces on a large perimeter in the soaked Ukrainian soil. The conclusion to be drawn in this case is that the Russian military action may be more of a preventive nature.

But things are not as simple as they seem at first glance. The cardinal question that needs to be clarified is whether Vladimir Putin seeks a speedy resolution of the military conflict.

It is noteworthy that the Russian army acts with equal perseverance in all directions. Starting from Belarus through Kharkov, Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea. As if the bypass maneuver and the application of concentrated strikes in order to break the enemy’s resistance on certain sections of the front and open operational spaces for the offensive in the strategic rear have not yet been invented. And – of course – the Russian troops stay at one and the same place, which is certainly not to the merit of the Ukrainian resistance.

War is a phenomenon in which socio-economic processes make a significant leap in their development. Any elementary statistics tracking post-war processes can easily illustrate this.

Russia has amassed vast quantities of weapons, the maintenance and storage of which requires enormous resources. There is literally no room for new weapons and ammunition. It is much more effective to burn these funds in a war. As for the other face of the war – the victims, as Stalin cynically puts it: one that has lost life is a tragedy, several thousand are statistics.

Someone will rightly say, “Why don’t they just melt old weapons when they’re useless.” This approach is humane, but in practice it is a pure loss from a political point of view. It is much more effective to destroy these stagnant weapons in the pursuit and achievement of certain political goals. It is not in vain that the United States is constantly at war in different parts of the world!

As can be seen, looking at the development of processes in depth, it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question: how far will Putin go.

The isolationist measures, dominated by the United States and Western Europe, are unlikely to impress Russians. After the Bolshevik October Revolution, Russia was placed in complete isolation. In addition, during the Civil War / 1918-1921 / it was attacked by 14 countries. And yet Russia resists, and that is not the fault of the Bolsheviks. They just take advantage. The real reason is that Russia is under threat. As early as the end of December 1917, the main powers in the Entente – Britain and France, agreed to share spheres of interest in the former Russian Empire. Britain received the Cossack and Caucasian regions, Armenia, Georgia and Kurdistan. And France gets Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea. The countries of the Central Powers were advised to avoid direct clashes with the Bolsheviks. However, the German-Austrian intervention (1918) led to the occupation of Ukraine and southern Russia. It is open interventionism that mobilizes Russian resistance forces.
Vladimir Putin can turn international public opinion in his favor at one scoop. It is enough to order a retreat. Namely retreat, not withdrawal. With this retreat, euphoric Ukrainian forces will be drawn into Russian territory and will then reveal the true face of the regime in Kyiv, unreservedly supported by the West. It will not be a novelty to attract the enemy to its territory – an ancient Scythian military tactic of the so-called “Burnt Land”. And there, on their territory, the Russians are the strongest and practically invincible.

Besides, quite honestly, I’m a little sad about Jones Stoltenberg. Solomon Passy certainly no longer regrets the missed opportunity to lead NATO. The Swedish had already had an idea about a nice, calm, prestigious position, which he could have got after the end of his mandate as a General Secretary of the North-Atlantic Alliance when Vladimir Putin impudently messed with his easy-living! What to do? … This is politics in action, not a nursery! Some can’t stop growling about such things happening in the 21st century. They are happening, as we can see, and there is nothing surprising about the fact that such had happened in the previous, no less “civilized”, twentieth or nineteenth centuries. Even in the impressive Renaissance era!

Comments

No comment yet.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *