Fiat justitia et pereat mundus!

(Latin phrase)

Tragic events in Ukraine have long ago transformed from the unprecedented inner crisis to the main topic of the deep international concern. And it is not a secret that principal causes of this unceasing tension are multiple international crimes committed by Russian Federation. Numerous violations of international laws and agreements called to keep peace, falsifying of information, military intervention and annexation that provide an example of how international diplomatic tools are ineffective against open aggression – all this are the threats, which Russia brings to the modern world. Not to mention that the biggest one of them is possibility of the real war between multimillion nations right in the center of Europe.

Just for reference, starting from here phrases like “Russian intentions” or “Russian policy” will mean only Russian President, Government, Vozhd’ or whoever holds the true power in this dictatorial country, as well as those, who blindly obey and support them. By no means has author of this article wanted to offend average Russians in any possible way. At the same time everyone should understand that there never was neither true democracy, nor durable opposition in Russia, so the future assertions will reflect the whole country’s policy in general. Regardless from the official Government statements, most of the people around the world, who are familiar with the current crisis in Ukraine, do understand present and potential threat of the Russian aggression.

Still there are lots of those, who continue to sympathize Russia and not all of them are Internet trolls or fans of Putin. It is very possible that they firmly believe that crisis in Ukraine has nothing special. In general, their statements can be formulated as follow: “US perform similar intruding policy in the inner affairs of other countries all over the world, so it’s ok at times for Russia to show them that they are not the only ones, who can do it”. Especially for those people, who thinks in the analogical way, will be provided a detailed explanation of why current Russian aggression in Ukraine significantly differ to the numerous political and military conflicts all over the world. First of all, there is no historical causality, not a single precedent or event, which can in any way justify Russian intervention to Ukraine. Every flashpoint throughout the world be it Middle East, East, Africa, Central Europe or Latin America has a whole complex of historical, political, ethnical, religious, economical and others circumstances behind them. Some of them last for many decades or even centuries. That’s why nearly each side of those conflicts has tremendous amounts of evidences for own rightness (mutual recriminations of human rights violations, persecutions, discriminations, hatred and in the worst cases – in beginnings wars and genocides). All those precedents are actually what make those conflicts so complicated and difficult to solve.

As for Ukrainian-Russian conflict (to be more precise – Russian one-sided aggression) hardly anything out of the mentioned above can explain current situation. Since 1991, when Ukraine gained its independence, there were neither disputes with Russia about territory matters (except island Tuzla case in 2003), no there were any incidents of oppression of the Russian community. Basically, the very meaning behind so-called “Russian community of Ukraine” is very ephemeral, because all of Ukrainians can speak Russian language; there is no compact groups of residing of pure ethnic Russians (all of them are mixed blooded with Ukrainians); as well as there is not a single large community in Ukraine, be it region or town, who would name themselves to be solely Russians. That’s why until recently Russian Government itself didn’t make any announcements or express worries concerning oppressions of “Russian minorities” in Ukraine. Even in the hypothesis, if any of those rights violations were real, the first thing Russia, as a co-founder of the UN, had to do, is to spread this information to the broader international community, then collect credible evidences and, finally, using specially designed UN tools and close international cooperation to influence on the inner processes of Ukraine.

Alas, what Russia has done was completely the opposite. Without any righteous or at least logical reason they started military intervention, proclaimed a war with Ukraine on March 1, annexed the Crimea on March 16, and, finally, organized terrorist movement in the Eastern Ukraine which Russia supported since then. Needless to say that till now, beside frankly false and absurd statements of Russian Government, there were not a single officially proven evidence or fact, which Russia can use as its excuse. To put it simply, it’s pretty much obvious that from Mr. Putin’s point of view Ukraine committed two main crimes: first – the very act of becoming independent in 1991 and second – revolution against former president, Mr. Yanukovych, who was doing his best for Russia to swallow up the Ukraine in the nearest future.

The second reason to not consider Russian – Ukrainian conflict just one of many others in the world has already been partly mentioned and lies in the historical relation between those countries. For the last three centuries, ever since Russia has conquered Ukrainian lands, there were just few rebellions and armed movements for independence from Ukrainian side. Today’s Russian politicians and historians do love to use this fact as supporting idea of brotherhood between two nations. In most extreme cases they even use it to claim that Ukrainians are only a small part of mighty Russian nation. In reality, why history went that way can be explained twofold.

The first reason, obviously, is assimilative processes, which took place on Ukrainian lands. Many Ukrainians were deported from Ukrainian lands and replaced with Russians from far-East regions. Same goes for natural process of blood mixing between native inhabitants and newcomers that are typical for all conquered territories. As for second reason why Ukrainians didn’t struggled for independence all the time, was due to the very effective imperialistic policy of Russia aimed to suppress any signs of national movement (prohibition of Ukrainian language and culture during Russian Empire and bloody repressions during Soviet Union). So, no matter how it was called: Tsardom of Muscovy, Russian Empire, USSR or Russian Federation, its policy towards conquered nations always remained the same: to assimilate or to annihilate. Anyway, for better or worse, for the last 300 hundred years Ukrainians were not able to bring any kind of significant harm or grievance towards Russia which can be used as today’s argument (be it national, religious, cultural, territorial or any other aspect), because in truth, Ukrainians are the ones who always suffered an were oppressed. Due to the fact that Russia, in its turn, wasn’t able to completely assimilate Ukrainian nation, in Soviet Union was established a proclamation of brotherhood and eternal friendship between all nations within USSR, and especially between Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. After few decades of all-out propaganda this proclamation became a common belief, which all three nations share till today. And now, while Russian Government keeps making different hypocritical announcements about friendship and peace, they actually began a war against their closest allies and “brothers” – Ukrainians.

The only thing that prevents them from all-out military invasion is international community. That’s why for now they have to resort for the other means – political and economic pressure, sending of saboteurs, organizing of terrorist gangs, kidnappings and contract killings. Can anyone imagine that US attacks Canada, because “Americans are oppressed in Quebec” or Great Britain attacks Australia, because “Englishmen are oppressed by Aboriginal Australians”? Such comparisons do look farcically and funny, but Ukrainians just a few months ago were thinking the same way about the possibility of Russian intervention. What happened after – just within few days an unbelievable assumption became a harsh reality. If someone still deludes himself that today’s events are only Ukrainian-Russian matters and will not make any influence to the far-away countries, it should be reminded that in the forties of the last century Soviet Russia was seriously planning to start World War II and conquer firstly the Europe and then the entire world. It didn’t happen simply because Hitler had made his move first. And now, Russian aggression in Ukraine means that Russia actually never refused from those intensions but rather postponed them. In the same way it means that Russia doesn’t appreciate own allies and can betray them in any convenient moment.

Another totally unprecedented aspect of Russian aggression is explanations and excuses, which they provide for international community for their actions. In modern Age of informative technologies and wide social networks, hiding and falsifying of information is close to an impossible task. That’s why all official government announcements usually have very general format and refer only to the provable facts (so not to be caught in a lie and to lose public trust). The same goes for all popular and well-known around the world news agencies, which build up their image as credible sources of information for years.

In case of modern Russia everything is quite the opposite. It seems that they have completely abandoned the very idea of high international image and made a bet on quantity over quality. Indeed, the amount of frankly false and often ridiculously absurd information about events in the Ukraine, which produce Russian mass media, has no limits. Almost every day for the last four month they were producing new and new twisted reportages about Ukraine by using all dirty means in existence: cut out phrases from the opposition leaders’ speeches and replacing them with others; demonstration on the central TV channels shots from places of events with obvious signs of Photoshop processing; providing video proofs of terror in Ukraine, which actually were chronicles from Chechnya; usage of ascribing, what seems to be their favorite method, to the “Praviy Sektor” the criminal actions committed by pro-Russian gangs (like lootings in the Crimea or Eastern Ukraine); denial involvement of Russian troops despite numerous photo and video proofs etc.

For average Ukrainian the only filings that cause Russian mass media today are antipathy and disgust. What makes this situation even more serious is the fact that Russian Government and Russian Ministry of International Affairs in their official statements are no different from Russian mass media. They don’t care that every single time within just a few hours after those false statements were announced, they were refuted both by Ukrainian side and international observers. And every time after that, instead of giving any apologies or at least acknowledging the fact that they were wrong due to the misinformation, Russia continues to produce its “own reality” without any room for objectiveness. As a result, no one in the world, who has at least common knowledge about what’s happening in Ukraine, will ever again believe to Mr. Putin or to his underlings.

Finally, for those who see the world only in grim colors, who claim that it is controlled by rich countries supporting bloody conflicts around the globe for own prosperity, and for those who firmly believe that United States, “Evil West” and Russia don’t differ from each other (in the way they treat other countries), an interesting analogy can be given. In times of greatest aggravation of the international conflicts between USA (“Evil West”) and other countries, the way they act can be compared to the professional hitman’s operations: firstly they will prepare a detailed plan, after that they will wait for the proper opportunity, and only then they will attack from ambush (on the international level this includes political and economic sanctions, political assassinations and in the extreme cases – sending of peacekeepers). At the same time, as the professional killers, the thing they fear the most – to be exposed. Continuous international reprobation, numerous public protests within their own countries, losses of economic and political benefits – all these can lead to the termination of the mission and retreat (like it was in Vietnam or Iraq).

According to this analogy, today’s policy of Russia can be compared to an armed psycho who will shoot in any passing people on the street, and, after realizing that there is no way to retreat, will gladly blow himself and all nearby. In fact, it is a very good comparison that describes the whole situation about Russia, because none of the expert all around the world can understand the way Mr. Putin thinks. There is nothing for Russia to gain from starting a war against Ukraine that could cover up for international isolation, economic collapse and other threats following after such decision. At the same time, immediately after the first criticism by Western politicians of Russian actions in the beginning of March, the first things Russian officials had said in response were something about resumption of Cold War and possibility of nuclear apocalypse (like psychopath would say in the analogy: “Don’t mess with me or I will blow up everyone”). Even Russian mass media has popularized this idea a lot recently, probably, in order to “prepare” Russians for the worst possible outcome (one of the most popular prognoses concerning World War III that figurate in Russian media states: “Even if we cannot win the war, our nuclear missiles can launch automatically and there are enough of them to bring down the entire world”. That is what so dangerous with Russian Government: not only do they ignore all international laws and it is hard to communicate with them, but also all their actions are unpredictable and devoid of common sense.

To sum it up, today the question about Russian foreign policy lies not in the reasonableness or necessity, but rather in how further they will go with theirs cynicism, hypocrisy and amorality. It should be emphasized again that Russia is a nuclear country as well as a state that has rather tremendous military. Also it is one of the founders of the UN and, finally, one of the countries that should guarantee peace and justice all around the world. An approach, which Putin’s gang keep using (playing dumb on UN Security Council’s meetings, ignoring international opinion and open falsifying of information), clearly shows that in aspect of international interactions Russia has stuck in the beginning of Twentieth Century, when force was practically the only way of influence and the very perception of reality of own citizens were a subject, which could be changed through brainwashing. To verify this, anyone can just look to the recent activities of the Russian Government in a field of freedom of speech: harassment of opposition news agencies; attempts to take under control the entire Russian blogosphere; plans for bans of foreign radio and TV channels, as well as numerous social networks and Internet services (including Skype and Gmail). And the most serious of them all is that Mr. Putin declared about beginning of the so-called struggle against “traitors of Russia”. It means that unprecedented by its scale for modern Russia witch-hunt will be held in the near future.

All these proof that Russian “democracy” continues to deteriorate further to the Soviet despotism together with the President Putin, whose mental health was a subject of numerous discussions, is becoming more and more similar to the bloody tyrants like Hitler or Stalin. To avoid repeating the catastrophe of the last century, preventative actions against Russia should be implemented immediately, because last time mankind has paid too dearly for not stopping mentally sick dictators on time.

Sviatoslav M.