EDITORIAL
Putin’s Lost Weekend
“He has a discussion there about Big Russia and Little Russia — Ukraine. He says that no one should be allowed to interfere in relations between us; they have always been the business of Russia itself.”
— Russian “prime minister” VladimirPutin, quoting White Army Commander Anton Denikin last Sunday while laying a wreath upon his grave
There he goes, again. Is he drunk, stupid, a maniac or simply evil? Any way you slice it, he’s a venal enemy of Russia’s future.
It must be so nice to live in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, mustn’t it? Everyone is a hero! It would be like living in the USA and feeling that Martin Luther King and David Duke both made equally important contributions to American success — just different, that’s all.
Josef Stalin, Bolshevik; Anton Denikin, Tsarist. Great Russian heroes, one and all!
We’ll come to the “Ukraine is just little Russia” remark in due course, but let’s focus on Putin’s lionizing of a racist, imperialist lunatic in order to justify Russian aggression against its peaceful neighbors and anyone who would dare to make alliance with them. Paul Goble, referring diplomatically to Putin’s “unreflective nationalim,” points out that while ostensibly opposed to the Bolshevik dictatorship “it was Denikin’s unwillingness to make any concessions to non-Russian groups, combined with Lenin’s false promises of respect for national self-determination that led to the collapse of the anti-Bolshevik cause and allowed the communists to triumph, first at the expense of the Russians and then of the non-Russians among and around them.”
At one stroke, the madman named Putin has alienated all those connected with Russia, both within and without its borders, who are not ethnically “Russian” as Putin (and Denikin) would define that term. Goble reminds us that Denkin was highly sympathetic with the Nazia attack on the Bolsheviks and consistently expressed a Hitlerian contempt for the rights of ethnic minorities throughout Russia. Worse, he considered people in places like Georgia and Ukraine to be nothing more than such minorities, living on Russian territory at the pleasure of the Russian Tsar. Goble cites a number of Russian liberals who believe that Putin’s remarks signal a desire to restore the Russian Empire and the subjugation of as many former Soviet slave states as possible.
Goble writes: “In April 2008, Putin notoriously said that ‘Ukraine is not a state! What is Ukraine? Part of its territory is Eastern Europe, and part, a significant part, was given to it by us!'” How do Russians expect Ukrainians to react to crazed imperialist rhetoric of this kind? Should they agree and submit? Is that what Russia would do if such rhetoric was aimed at it by the United States?
They are hardly likely to do so, but rather will be pushed even farther away from Russia, ever closer to NATO and the West. Russia will stand ever more utterly alone. Time magazine quotes Olexandr Paliy, a political analyst with the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Diplomatic Academy:
These comments by Putin should be taken very seriously. Russia is engaged in a propaganda war against Ukraine, designed to convince the West not to support Ukraine. Russia doesn’t understand cooperation with equals, only with subordinates.
So it’s clear: Russia is totally unable to deal with Ukraine by any means except brute force. When the U.S. tries to deal with Russia in that way, Russia calls such tactics dangerous and illegitimate. Yet Russia has no hesitation in adopting them to serve its own interests, chiefly because Russia has absolutely nothing to offer Ukraine at the bargaining table, much less by way of friendship.
Ukrainians can now clearly see the absolute contempt — race-based hatred– with which Russians regard them. They are, in fact, viewed by Russia as slaves of the Kremlin, targets of plunder and exploitation. Their only choice is to unifty against Russian aggression and stand with NATO and the EU against the neo-Soviet empire. Any other choice will only allow Russia to drag Ukraine into the black hole of neo-Soviet failure and ultimate collapse.
La Russophobe 
Roosha will try to get Ukraine for the last time before Moskowschina goes down, and of little concern to the West. http://www.unian.net/eng/news/news-318117.html Roosha is rewarded in the G8 and the security council. as well as with a war in Central Asia. Not to mention that Obama’s state department has halted arms sales to Georgia. http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99322 Europeans in NATO are expecting the depleted and broke US, to continue supporting the “great powers” in the EU. So as long as the EU stays small, Germany Italy and France dominate it. Ukraine may already be facing the reality. Americans betrayed Ukraine in Yalta, and Operation Kealhaul. Georgia will be betrayed again next month when Rooskies launch the second wave attack. Germany is the worst with the Stasi Spy Commie Angela Merkal. When Hitler ordered the return of German Commies from the moscali, the Nazis then executed those rats. Must of annoyed Angela Merkals beliefs.
http://cryptome.info/0001/merkel-spy.htm
But wait, there’s more –
Pootler is fighting about the past – in order to influence the present. Russia reaches back to Denikin, and freaks out over Mazepa.
Ukraine is putting up a monument to one of its great leaders, Ivan Mazepa. There have been books, poems and an opera written about Mazepa. The Rooskies HATE Mazepa, view him as a “traitor,” and the Russian Halloween oily Orthodox church even excommunicated him for being a “traitor” to Russia, because he stood up for Ukraine.
Here’s the article – I hope, LR, you don’t mind my including the whole thing, but if only the link is allowed – it’s your blog.
http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/42387
Russia reaches back to Denikin, Mazepa in fight
Ukraine and Russia can’t seem to agree on anything of late. Natural gas payments, the Ukrainian language, Ukraine’s participation in European Union projects – everything seems to be annoying Moscow.
Debates over the complicated history between both nations are no exception. The newest standoff has been triggered by Kyiv’s decision to have a statue erected to Hetman Ivan Mazepa, a Kozak leader in 17th-century Ukraine. Political analysts say that Moscow’s protests over Mazepa’s rehabilitation reflect a deep desire to keep Ukraine within Russia’s cultural and historical orbit.
Mazepa was the hetman, or leader, of the Kozaks who inhabited the central and northeastern regions of modern-day Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries. He is credited with uniting the warriors from the left and right banks of the Dnipro River. When the Kozak Hetmanate came under threat from the Poles in 1708, Mazepa broke from previous ally Peter The Great, the Russian czar, who refused to supply a significant force to help with defense. Allied with the Swedes and the Poles, Mazepa lost a decisive battle against Russian forces at Poltava in 1709.
A statue in his honor will be unveiled on Independence Day on Aug. 24 in Poltava, two months after the 300th anniversary of the battle. “It’s not by chance,” said Valeriy Asadchev, chairman of the regional state administration in Poltava. “Mazepa played an extraordinarily important role in the formation of our nation.”
During the Soviet period, Mazepa was denounced as a traitor and a Ukrainian nationalist. But since the country declared independence in 1991, he has been portrayed in a more favorable light. On March 20, Mazepa’s 370th birthday, President Victor Yushchenko said that it was time to dispel the myth of his treason. He emphasized Mazepa’s wish for an independent Ukraine and his cultural achievements. “Ukraine was coming to life as a country of European cultural traditions,” he said.
Moscow is unimpressed. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week issued a statement condemning the rehabilitation of Mazepa, calling on Ukrainians not to be drawn into “an artificial and contrived confrontation with Russia.”
“We would like to remind the Ukrainian leadership that games with history, particularly with a nationalistic background, have never led to anything good. Trying to re-write the common Russian-Ukrainian history, Ukrainian authorities split society rather than uniting it,” the ministry said in a statement.
In recent weeks, Russia has made a number of moves to shore up the dominance of its views of history. On May 20, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the creation of a presidential commission “to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history.”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed in with his take on the two counties’ shared history on May 24. In an unusual exchange with reporters in Moscow, he recommended that they read the diaries of Anton Denikin, a commander in the White Army that fought the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution in 1917.
“He has a discussion there about Big Russia and Little Russia – Ukraine,” Putin said, according to Russian newswires, after laying a wreath at Denikin’s grave. “He says that no one should be allowed to interfere in relations between us; they have always been the business of Russia itself.”
Putin’s words were seen as an attempt to warn the West not to interfere in Ukraine. Experts say that Russia consistently uses its strong historical and cultural links with Ukraine as a justification for what Medvedev has called his country’s “privileged interests” in the region.
“Russia sees Ukraine as a large threat,” said Olexandr Paliy, a political analyst with the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Diplomatic Academy. “For 300 years they have tried to take Ukraine’s history as their own. Ukraine’s independence destroys the imperial myth of Russia. They need to keep the myth going.”
The Kremlin accuses Kyiv of tearing the two countries apart with its promotion of a different approach to history. But Moscow’s bad mouthing of this approach and any steps made towards the West, primarily through state-controlled TV, is seen as itself having led to a dramatic worsening in relations between Russians and Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s ambassador in Moscow, Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, noted with concern on May 17 the recent rise in anti-Ukrainian feeling in Russia. A poll by Russia’s Levada Center in January and February showed that 62 percent of Russians have a negative attitude towards Ukraine, whereas 91 percent of Ukrainians expressed positive feelings towards Russia.
“An information campaign is being carried out against our state by the Russian media,” the ambassador said.
Russian media also give Moscow’s views a wide airing in Ukraine, as Russian TV is particularly popular in the south and east of the country, where pro-Russian sentiment is strongest.
“Propaganda on the [Russian] state-controlled TV channels is a tool for influencing people within Ukraine,” said Valeriy Chaly, head of international programs at the Razumkov Center think tank. He added that Moscow’s aim is to prevent the consolidation of a political nation in Ukraine.
But while such propaganda may be disruptive, analysts said that attempting to mobilize Ukrainians along ethnic lines is not a political trump card. “People don’t have a clear understanding of their own political identity,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the International Institute for Democracy. “If you ask people on the street about their identity they will say they are Ukrainian, but they will speak Russian. People cross barriers.”
But although arguments over history may not, as Moscow claims, be tearing Ukrainian society apart, the Russian response to the rehabilitation of Mazepa reflects a more worrying trend: increasingly aggressive Russian rhetoric. While many analysts see this as threats to try to keep Ukraine in line, Paliy said that – in the wake of Russia’s war in South Ossetia last August – a modern-day Battle of Poltava shouldn’t be ruled out. Paliy said: “The Russian leadership’s words show very serious intentions. Russia can change its position in a second, and it could lead to war if they can find a pretext.”
Three cheers for Mazepa, Mohyla and Kosiv! Long live a free Ukraine! While Ukraine struggles with its identity, at least we have the consolation of watching Kyiv’s small steps towards cohesion causing ulcers in Moscow, and flushing the imperialist bigots out from the Kremlin’s shadows. Mazepa’s service to Ukraine is manifold…
> While Ukraine struggles with its identity
A Freudian error, indeed! :-D The problem with Ukraine is that it choses traitors (like Mazepa) and losers (like Petlyura and Bandera) as its “national heroes”. Mazepa ended up eaten alive with lice. The “Independent Ukraine” will follow suit.
Typical kremlin mentality. Enybody who does knell and pray to the kremlin is a loser?
Petlyura and Bandera were kicked out of their country and murdered abroad. Kneeling and praying to the Germans and Americans did not help them.
Hi eugene,
They were not kicked out. They had to leave because the KGB was hunting them. Unfortunately, their work in exile was terminated when the KGB assasinated them on the territories of other countries, just like the KGB assasinated Litvinenko in England.
PS I am glad that you understand that Ukraine is a seperate country that has been occupied by the moscali for centuries.
The idiot Denikin, instead of going on Moscow, fought the Chechens and other Caucasians, burning villages and cities. And you know what? The first Caucasus Emirate defeated him (but then was in turn defeated by the Reds in 1920).
Most of the White warlords were either stupid or mad (like Ungern) or maybe rather both. Trotsky was was a real genius compared to them. (Stalin was an idiot too, as evident in the disaster of his Polish campaign.)
Fun fact: Stalin fled Poland dressed as a woman.
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
Did he show a flair for fashion?
I hear he was a romantic poet. Maybe he recited as Josephine Stalin. In the days before the mustache, I hope.
You confuse Stalin with Kerensky who fled from Russia dressed as a woman.
I hope he waxed his moustache…but then again…