Yanukovych fled on Feb. 22 and a mere five days later a chain of events was started off by an outside player.
Ukraine’s problems were no longer internal and that chain of events continues to unfold to this day and continue to have the active involvement of the same outside player.
The active phase of Operation Crimea started in the early morning of Feb. 27 when 60 heavily armed men occupied the Crimean parliament, that day a new Crimean prime minister was appointed and he soon moved to demand a vote on leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. That this was all wrapped up in less than a month is now a matter of history.
The outside player steering all of this, of course, is Russia.
While Russia initially firmly denied any involvement whatsoever in events in Crimea, those denials have since been replaced with smug admissions of responsibility. These post-factum boasts, which should be viewed as the admission of state-level dishonesty that they clearly are, are perversely a source of pride now for Russia.
After Crimea, Russian denials of involvement in eastern Ukraine were handled in accordance with principles of diplomatic politeness because they tenuously carried a fragment of plausible deniability. Russian denials of involvement in eastern Ukraine simply have no credibility because there is a mountain of evidence from a multitude of sources of Russia’s direct involvement. Three brief examples to prove this point are:
* The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe recorded the movement of 20,012 Russian citizens across the two border checkpoints where Russia allows them to monitor between Sept. 1, 2014 and June 1, 2015;
* Based on analysis of satellite imagery it has been conclusively proven that Russia shelled Ukraine troop positions from Russian territory in July and August 2014;
* A correlation between the sovereignty trashing Russian “humanitarian aid” convoys entering Ukraine and a subsequent uptick in fighting that an ammunition re-supply would allow for is blatantly obvious.
But, setting aside the sleight of hand and state-level attempts to deceive, what does Russia actually say, or claim, they are doing?
Russia has claimed that they are supporting the will of the people. This claim has been applied in the same way to both Crimea and eastern Ukraine. That’s pretty noble, of course. Who could question supporting the will of the people?
We need to step back and ask whether what has and is happening actually has anything at all to do with the will of the people or not; then we can judge whether there is any nobility in Russia’s actions.
In Crimea, on Feb. 27, the man appointed as prime minister in a parliament under armed occupation was Sergey Aksyonov. He previously led the “Russian Unity” party on the peninsula and they received a little over 4 percent of the last recognized vote to be held there. Was his appointment (or, indeed, “Russian Unity”!) the “will of the people”? No.
Did the people of Crimea demand a referendum about parting with Ukraine? No. It was forced on them.
In eastern Ukraine, now and at any time in the last year or so, has there been a single person outside of the territories under armed occupation who has asked to join or stated support for the self-declared entities that call themselves (in an attempt to portray that they represent the will of the people) the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk? No.
Has a single town or city that returned to Ukrainian control between May and August of 2014 asked to be reincorporated to the Donetsk or Luhansk “People’s Republics”? No.
Russia’s overt support for these self-declared entities is predicated on what? Is there any proof that a significant number of citizens of these regions made any claims to independence or made any demands for autonomy whatsoever in the last quarter of a century? No. None.
Vladimir Putin is not standing nobly in defense of the will of the people. The will of the people is to live in peace. The actions of Putin’s Russia are what obstruct the return to peace that is the true will of the people of eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s narrative of supporting the free will and self-determination of any group of people in Ukraine, be they in the east or in Crimea, is simply without foundation. Russia’s obvious involvement in Ukrainian affairs has nothing to do with the will of the people.
The very basis for Russia’s position – that they are in some way standing up for the “will of the people” – is yet another example of the “the Big Lie” tactic being used by Putin. A lie so colossal that nobody would believe that someone would have the audacity to make it up and hope to pull it off. Yet Putin does have the audacity, and has actually engineered a belief that people in eastern Ukraine are battling to secede from Ukraine when there is simply no evidence that this was ever something that those people wanted or asked for.
Russia must not be allowed to continue to pervert democracy in other countries. Russia’s involvement in the democratic process of sovereign neighboring states is unacceptable. Misrepresenting the will of the people is unacceptable, especially for the nefarious purposes this misrepresentation is being twisted to suit in Ukraine.
To believe Putin’s big lie in eastern Ukraine is to believe that along a line of separation on one side there are ordinary people living peacefully who would have the freedom to express their desire to join the “DNR” (Russian-separatist Donetsk People’s Republic) but don’t and on the other side, separated by a few hundred meters sometimes, resides a great majority who simply want to leave Ukraine, should have the right of self-determination to achieve this, but never mentioned any such desire until men with guns showed up about 18 months ago. To ask any rational person to believe that is indeed audacious.
