Bollocks, the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014 was kicked off by a covert Russian invasion - the 'separatists' were from the start created, armed and led by Russia. Unless you think Igor Girkin is a Ukrainian?
The idea that Ukraine was attacking 'Russian speakers' is a joke, but it is a consistent talking point of Kremlin media. In reality the Ukrainian president himself is a Russian speaker, and the most strident Ukrainian nationalists that Russia calls 'Nazis' (e.g Azov) are majority Russian speakers. The cities that Russia has completely destroyed (e.g. Mariupol, Severodonetsk) are majority Russian speaking cities. They were doing just fine as part of Ukraine until the Russians came to terrorise them.
PS 'Russian-speaking Ukrainian' does not equal 'ethnic Russian'.
The orthodox US account that Russia/ Putin alone is responsible for the new Cold War hangs largely on his alleged unprovoked “aggression” against Ukraine in 2014 and ever since. (The narrative is sustained in part by the near-total absence of American mainstream reporting of what actually happened in Kiev-controlled or rebel-controlled territories.) In fact, Putin’s actions both in Donbass, where an indigenous rebellion broke out against the overthrow of the legally elected president in Kiev and in Crimea, which had been part of Russia for more than 200 years (about as long as the United States has existed), was a direct reaction to the longstanding campaign by Washington and Brussels to bring Ukraine into NATO’s “sphere of influence.” That itself was a form of political aggression against the centuries of intimate relations between large segments of Ukrainian society and Russia, including family ties.
At the very least, it was reckless and immoral for Washington and the European Union to impose upon Kiev a choice between Russia and the West, thereby fostering, if not precipitating, civil war. And to flatly reject Putin’s counter-proposal for a three-way Ukrainian-Russian-EU economic relationship. In this regard, Washington and the EU bear considerable responsibility for the 10,000 who have died in the ensuing Ukrainian civil and proxy war. They have yet to assume any responsibility at all.
Oh and while we’re at it
@TillLindemann While we’re talking about the Ukrainian civil war (and US-Russian proxy war) , we need to recall some of the disgraceful episodes of the proclaimed “Revolution of Dignity.” That history includes the following episodes:
• The violent overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutionally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014.
• Kiev’s refusal to seriously investigate the “Maidan snipers,” whose killings precipitated Yanukovych’s ouster, assassins who now seem to have been not his agents, as initially alleged, but those of right-wing Maidan forces.
• The new government’s similar refusal to prosecute extreme nationalists behind the subsequent massacre of pro-Russian protesters in Odessa shortly later in 2014.
• And the new Maidan government’s unwillingness to negotiate with suddenly disenfranchised regions of Eastern Ukraine, which had largely voted for Yanukovych, and instead to launch an “anti-terrorist” military assault on them.
• Even Poroshenko’s subsequent election as president was questionably democratic, opposition regions and parties having been effectively banned.
