Pro-Moscow insurgents in eastern Ukraine declared independence Monday and sought to join Russia, undermining upcoming presidential elections, strengthening the Kremlin’s hand and putting pressure on Kiev to hold talks with the separatists following a referendum on self-rule.
(Associated Press, May 12, 2014)
While President Vladimir Putin gobbles up even more of Ukraine, Western leaders are fiddling tunes about the referendum not meeting their political and legal standards – as if that means anything to anyone in Russia or Ukraine.
Not to mention that these are the same tunes they fiddled after Crimea held a rigged referendum, declared independence, and sought to join Russia. Now all that’s left is for Putin – who promptly annexed Crimea, despite saying he had no intention of doing so – to annex Donetsk, despite insisting that he has no intention of doing so.
Again, Putin clearly intends to occupy and/or control as much of the former republics of the Soviet Union as Western leaders will let him get away with. The only question is at what point Western leaders will do anything to stop what he’s doing, instead of waiting in each case to slap him on the wrist (with more penny-wise, pound-foolish sanctions) after he has done it.
He can certainly be forgiven for calculating that, even if he takes all of Ukraine, these same Western leaders will be anxious to normalize relations with him, after duly venting their outrage for posterity, if only to ensure Russia’s uninterrupted supply of oil and gas.
This is why former republics that, like Ukraine, are not members of NATO have just cause to fear Putin doing to them what he’s doing to Ukraine. More to the point, assurance of support from Western leaders would mean even less than the paper Chamberlain’s assurance of support to Poland was written on — as Ukraine is finding out to its demise.
And so history continues to repeat itself.…
Indeed, on the cover of its May 3 edition, the European-based Economist magazine posed the galling question, “What would America fight for?” Whereas the far more relevant question is: What will Europe fight for?
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