Ukraine: Battlefield of Major Powers

A reader’s perception of how Washington’s military ambition is creating a hotbed of war in the backyard of both Europe and Russia.

By a reader of Russian Accent

It has been more than a year since Ukraine started hitting the press, and it still dominates the front pages of global media. Why is there so much fuss about a poor post-Soviet country on the outskirts of Europe? Someone made it a chessboard where at least three world powers are trying to outgame each other. I cannot claim the absolute truth about who cracked the whip on the whole country. I want to focus on what political aims the rivals are trying to achieve.

So let’s name the dissenting camps. Obviously, on the one hand we have the United States leading its military bloc NATO closer to Russia’s borders. Let’s look at the map. After three Baltic countries Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joined NATO in 2004, Belarus and Ukraine remained the only buffer zone hampering NATO’s possible ground offensive on Russia.

Petro Poroshenko’s regime denounced Ukraine’s non-aligned status and aims to join the military alliance, therefore Washington is like never before close to deploy its rockets along the over-2000 –km border between Ukraine and Russia. That would be a catastrophe for Moscow.

Moreover, there is another colossal aspect. Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians are all East Slavs and have considered each other as brother nations despite any political disagreements. Washington would greatly benefit from tearing the family apart. Is Minsk, the Belarusian capital, the next place where Victoria Nuland will share cookies with “pro-European activists” on a local “Maidan”?

“We will defeat Russia when Ukrainians and Belarusians believe that they are not Russians”, Hitler said. Obviously, the Maidan’s orchestrators spent due time studying Hitler’s strategy.

So the US is fighting for a position of advantage to attack Russia.

One may say that I have paranoia about the NATO menace for Russia, but come on: we all know the bloc’s ultimate purpose.

Sleepless Nights in Moscow

The other party that has been racking its brains over Ukraine is of course Russia. Do you guys know what surprises me the most in media reports of why Russia is so concerned about Ukraine? Journalists either hush up or ignore or don’t know a simple, but powerful statistical fact: every second Ukrainian has relatives in Russia. This was revealed by a sociological poll conducted by Research & Branding in 2011 in Ukraine. There is a village in Donbass that is divided by the border into two parts: its residents sleep in Russia but go to school in Ukraine; it happens in the same village. This is just one example of how interconnected the two countries are. I think now you understand why Russian media can’t ignore the mounting death toll of the civil war in neighboring Ukraine.

As for geopolitics, the Kremlin understands that Russia is losing one of its closest allies and a salient is being driven between Russians and their Ukrainian brothers. Seeing NATO (read: American) troops near its border in Ukraine is a nightmare for Moscow. Again, just look at the map. The worst thing for Russia is that Washington and its European servants close their eyes to Poroshenko’s crimes against his own people and exert no pressure on him. Why should they worry about as little as thousands of killed people if the nation’s president is eager to welcome rockets and guns, and hates Russia, Washington warmongers’ target? Whether the Kremlin has any feasible plan remains a question.

Sovereign Europe. Really?

And now Europe, the most interesting player. From the military point of view, NATO is the EU + USA, which means that Brussels has to push Washington’s policy across Europe. But Europe does not benefit from the conflict; it does not want to suffer from trade war with Russia. Europe is the player that cares about economy, which is in contrast with the US-Russian geopolitical rivalry. Europe wants to solve the conflict and restore its mutually beneficial economic ties with Russia. Recently the European Commission president Juncker voiced an idea of creating a European Army, which is a strong indication of Europe’s desire to get military independence from the US and NATO, and pursue its own policy. Europe may finally dare to maintain its attitude and stop blindly following Washington’s orders.

So I think that it is Brussels that may tip the scale in one’s favor.

The views and opinions contained in this article are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views of Russian Accent.

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