The inauguration and farewell of the recent Winter Olympics in Sochi showed the beauty, antiquity and the vastness of the Russian culture. European history is inconceivable without that contribution. The power of the Viking Russ nation – whose presence stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and from the Vistula to the Volga – protected Europe from a Muslim Arab invasion from the southeast throughout the High Middle Ages. Since the Ninth Century, the Russians had a decentralized political structure that revolved around the Principality of Kiev.

In the thirteenth century, the Russians, with their resistance before succumbing, saved Europe from being overrun by the Golden Horde. When the Cumans, their eastern neighbours, were attacked by the Mongols, the Russian princes came to their aid but were defeated at the Battle of the Kalka River; however, it stopped the Mongols advance for thirteen years. In 1237 the Mongols returned, burned Russian cities and took Kiev in
1240; many Russians were Mongol vassals for three centuries, but Mongolian impetus arrived weakened to Poland and Hungary.

The Mongol invasion fractured Russian unity around the Principality of Kiev. To consolidate the common bonds while admitting obvious divisions, in 1253, the Pope proclaimed Danilo I as King of all Russias (Rex Russiae), a title in plural that was used also by Russian Czars. The Russ Principality of Kiev was replaced by those of Galitzia and of Volodymyr-Volynsky, which in turn merged later on into the Principality of Halych-Volhynia.

The name Ukraine comes from Krajina, frontier country, and indeed it is a place of borders. It is used since the mid-fourteenth century, when present Belarus and Kiev were invaded by Lithuania and the main part of modern Ukraine was invaded by Poland, without reaching Crimea, which was Turkish. Shortly after, Poland and Lithuania merged into a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ukrainian area was called Ruthenia, a Latinized form of Russenia.

In the mid-sixteenth century, the Cossack nobility and the peasants, with support from the Orthodox Church and the Muscovite government, rebelled against Polish rule, which had given many lands to the Catholic Church which were administered by Khazar Jews. The Eastern part of Ukraine formed the Cossack Atamath, which joined Russia, in 1614, through the Pereyaslav treaty. This political fracture was exploited by Charles XII of Sweden, when he invaded Ukraine allied with Ataman Mazepa, but was defeated at Poltava (1709) by Peter the Great.

Between 1772 and 1795 Austria, Prussia and Russia partitioned among them the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ukraine became part of Russia, but for Galicia and Bukovina in the West, that went to Austria. When the Czar was overthrown it became independent and then joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Galicia went to Poland and Bukovina was partitioned. After World War II, Stalin annexed Galicia to Ukraine and most of Bukovina. In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, took Crimea from Russia and gave it to Ukraine, as an Autonomous Republic. In 1991, Ukraine became a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Its constitution was proclaimed in 1996 and revised in 2004.

The relations between Ukraine and Russia

Ukraine has a complex and yet a simple past. For 500 years, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian history was the same, with Kiev as the axis. For 300 years, Ukraine was subjected to Poland and Lithuania. For 340 years its core was part of the Russian Empire. After World War II, all of Ukraine was part of the USSR.

The Ukrainian language is so close to Russian that they can understand each other and Russian predominates in Kiev, in the east and the south. The main religion is Orthodox Christianity (60 %), followed by a Catholic minority (10%) in the West and a Muslim group (3%) in Crimea. The list of scientists, musicians, writers, politicians and military of Russian history cannot be written without Ukrainians (Eugen Slutzky, Igor Prokofiev, Nicolai Gogol, Gregory Zinoviev, Kliment Voroshilov), nor Ukrainian history without Russian names.

Ukraine has 46 million inhabitants (2011 census) over its 603,000 km2 with seven borders: Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the south with a coastline on the Black Sea. It is of great strategic importance for Russia, and also for NATO, if it plans to attack Russia.

The Euro -American Regime Change Coup

In 2004 Victor Yanukovich, who had been Governor of Donetsk (1997 -2002) and Prime Minister (2002 -2004) under Leonid Kuchma, won the election in Ukraine, but the so-called “Orange Revolution ” disorders, amplified by an international press campaign – the color revolution technique – pressured the Supreme Court to nullify the election and repeat it in
order to impose Brussels and Washington candidate: Victor Yushchenko.

In 2010, Yanukovich won the elections with 50 % of the vote against 45% of Julia Timoshenko, Yushchenko’s Prime Minister. At the parliamentary elections of 2012 Yanukovich’s Regions Party won 187 seats against Timoshenko’s 102; a clear increase in electoral support. Ms. Timoshenko, who had been convicted for corruption in Russia, was convicted in a case related to gas trade and sent to prison. The Western press began a smear campaign against Ukrainian courts and exaltation of martyr Saint Julia, of the aureole braid.

The next presidential elections in Ukraine were scheduled for December 2014. Since 2013, there was an international press campaign against Yanukovich to condition international public opinion for a coup against him. The U.S. “invested” $ 5 billion in organizing and training groups for Regime Change in Ukraine, as US Deputy Secretary of State for
Europe, Victoria Nuland, admitted at a meeting of the National Press Club, sponsored by Chevron.

From January, those groups invaded Kiev violently, took over public buildings while demanding the removal of the legitimate authorities, when there was less than a year for presidential elections. According to witnesses, their operational mode implied military training and coordination, something in which, according to Haaretz, Israeli personnel participated. Others reported American, German and Polish personnel managing the protest, while with Ukrainians groups there were Moldavian, Turkish, Afghan and Arab mercenaries.

The Big Press supported the violent actions. High European and American officials went to Kiev to show off their support of the revolt, like Victoria Nuland giving cookies to protesters. Obama requested “dictator” Yanukovych to step down. The press always reported from the protest lines; never from the police side that suffered many dead and wounded. Ukrainian opposition politicians manoeuvred for power not by appealing to Ukrainian masses but by talking to American and European officials, notably with Angela Merkel. We can speculate over what would happen if foreign government officers incited to violently occupy public offices in Washington and to dismiss Obama. If Yanukovych was guilty of something, it was indecision not violence or stubbornness. His government reached an agreement with the insurgents, warranted by EU foreign ministers, that the insurgents did not comply with.

The timing to overthrow a legitimate government with an artificial uproar, on Russia’s border, was obviously calculated: the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. Russia was busy playing the world host, and the world attention was fraternally focused elsewhere, as when during the Olympic Games in Beijing the Georgian army attacked South Ossetia.

There were dead and wounded among the police and the demonstrators. According to Urmas Paet, Estonian foreign affairs minister, who talked with Doctor Olga Bogomolets, the chief doctor at the Maidan mobile clinic when protests turned violent in Kiev, she showed him photos and said that both sides were shot at by the same snipers; that the same
type of bullets was used. She added that it was most shocking that now the transitional government didn’t want to investigate what had happened. When Mr. Paet talked about it with the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, she only said: Oh! How terrible! but did
nothing. Yanukovych and his ministers are now being accused of those murders.

It seems as if Washington and Brussels played in Ukraine – but for a military coup – all the techniques for Regime Change the Anglo-Saxons practised in Third World countries since Napoleonic times. First, the banks got Ukraine in debt for 138 billion (GDP 176 billion, 2012) with payments pending for 8 billion, which limits independent policies and is always a source of corruption. Second, there was financial support for very different political parties in order to convey them towards a common political goal. Third, a press campaign to discredit the
government and demonize its leaders. Fourth, the financing and training of groups to foment violent unrest. Fifth, the use of snipers to fire against the police and the protesters to create rage and violence, as in Syria. Sixth, the same trick practised recently in Honduras and Paraguay: Parliamentary Coup.

In the Ukraine case it meant invading the Parliament with armed thugs, which caused most of the government parliamentary support to flee. Then, under obvious menace and perhaps bribes, got the rest of them to demote the president overnight, without impeachment procedures. To NATO’s democratic standards it doesn’t matter that the “demoted” president had not been appointed by the Ukrainian Parliament but by direct popular vote; NATO governments recognised immediately the previously chosen “provisional government”.

The usurper government

The Ukrainian usurper government could be better called the Oligarchs’ Government. Acting President is Oleksandr Turchinov, an Evangelical preacher, but the man in charge is Prime Minister Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk – a Ukrainian Jewish banker, chosen by Victoria Nuland to be the NATO puppet. Turchinov and Yatsenvuk imposed several oligarchs as governors in core Yanukovich constituencies. It is easy to assume that it was done because of their political bribing potential.

Igor Kolomosky, a banking, metal and media billionaire, prominent leader of the Jewish Ukrainian community and the third biggest Ukrainian fortune, whose newspapers gave a favourable coverage to the armed revolts, was appointed as a governor of his native Dnepropetrovsk. Putin called him a swindler and explained in an interview how Kolomosky had stolen 2 billion from his associate. Kolomosky is also a well-known ally of Julia Timoshenko, the former prime minister whose first call, once released from the prison, was to Angela Merkel.

Sergey Taratuta, the richest Ukrainian in 2009, according to Forbes, was named a governor of his home Donetsk region. On the 9th of March there was a popular uprising in Donetsk to reinstall a former governor Pavel Gubarev, a situation there that tends to be expanded to other provinces as well.

The political climate will get worse, because the International Monetary Fund sent a “fact-finding mission” to Ukraine last week. Ukraine’s foreign reserves, in the past four weeks, plunged from US$17.8 billion to $15 billion. After the IMF visit, Ukrainians of all creeds will learn what the IMF means by «structural adjustment».
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The Russian-speaking Ukrainian majority is as angry at the elite corruption, unemployment and economic inequality as West Ukrainians; but the people that were put in charge through the riots will not bring a revolutionary change. It is a return of the same faces known for their corruption and complicity in enriching Ukrainian oligarchs. This time, in order to serve foreign interest, they seem determined to wipe away the millennial Ukrainian cultural heritage. The unrest in central and eastern Ukraine has increased since the usurpers scrapped a law allowing Russian as an official language in those areas. It is a proof of the
anti-Russian pro-NATO bias. A proof of their authoritarian rule is the prohibition of the Communist Party, which got 13% of the vote in the last election.

Since independence, all polls in Ukraine have shown a majority against NATO membership, yet the “de facto” government wants to ignore it. During an electoral campaign, Viktor Yanukovich proclaimed himself against NATO and his Regions Party made non-alignment the country’s security strategy, as in Finland, Sweden and Ireland.

Crimea

Crimea was already an object of an Anglo-Saxon ambition in the Crimean War (1853 – 56) but remained Russian. The vast majority of the population there is still Russian; even when Khrushchev annexed it to Ukraine, he did so as an Autonomous Republic. After the Regime Change coup in Kiev, the locally elected Government of Crimea remained loyal to Yanukovich and stopped attempts to invade Crimea with mercenary thugs – as in Kiev- and to create a rebellion by local tartars. The “de facto” government started talking then about a Russian invasion of Crimea.

The press and the NATO governments pretend to ignore that Crimea is the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet and that according to the 1997 Russo-Ukrainian treaty, until 2040, Russia has the right to maintain there up to 27 thousand men, even if at the moment there are only 16 thousand. What Big Media reported as “people in uniform” guarding public
buildings are in fact local self-defence militias and Ukrainian army units loyal to President Yanukovych and to Crimea’s government.

The government of Crimea, faced with usurpers in Kiev that want to ignore their legitimate credentials, decided to consult the people over their future. It is called self-determination and is an impeccable democratic procedure, recognized by the UN; even if abused by the US to snatch provinces from countries, from Panama to Kosovo.

The energy issues

66% of Russian gas is exported to the EU and Turkey (86 bcm) passing through Ukraine, but it is losing its importance as a transit net. There are two new undersea pipelines, the Nord Stream and South Stream, which bypass Ukraine. The Nord Stream, finished in 2011, already links Russia with Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. The South Stream, beneath the Black Sea, will be ready by 2015.

Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly had reached an agreement with Yanukovych to lower the price for gas destined to Ukraine, from US$ 400 per 1,000 m3 to only US$ 268.5. The anti-Russian policy of the “de facto” government does not help the longevity of such a price. Present Ukrainian gas debt with Russia right now amounts to US$ 1.5 billion.

The dangerous geopolitical loop-the-loop

Russia is not going to beg indulgence or blessings from the West. Alea jacta est, the die has been cast, Crimea will be a lost figure in the Grand Chessboard of NATO. Now there is a triple tail challenge for the Euro-American plotters: a) to salvage their economic interest in Russia (EU has US$ half a trillion worth of trade; US 40 billion); b) to punish Russia or the masterminds of their failure; c) to continue EU integration expanding after this shock.

Herman Van Rompuy , President of the European Council, said at the Munich Security Conference, on February 1st: “because for Europeans and American, economies [are] based on rules, societies based on values – this is who we are, this is what we embody to so many, and what – together – we must stand for in the world”. Empty words, as neither their rules, nor their values have succeeded in liberating nations from the burden of the socio-conomic, political and intellectual decadence, nor restored their identities, morality or their spirit.

The tune that captivates the ears of the voters in Europe today is Euro-scepticism, as it offers a reassessment of vital matters for Europeans left outside the supranational dining table. The ‘democratic deficit’ is an inexorable reality and it becomes difficult to find people in Europe who support the gloomy perspectives depicted by the policy makers in Brussels.

There is a mental trap which is becoming a dangerous geopolitical loop-the-loop for the Euro-Atlantic style of manoeuvring; it is the fanfared “Global Political Awakening”, nourished by Zbigniew Brzezinsky. It was launched as a US Middle Eastern strategy but landed, as a Trojan horse, in the so called Euromaidan, in Kiev. It was articulated by Van Rampuy in Munich: “whatever the geopolitics; we have offered Ukraine a closer association with the European Union, the countries to its west… And we know time is on our side. The future of Ukraine belongs with the European Union”.

The policy-makers in Brussels are masterminded by Washington and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s paradigm which sees Ukraine as the “western outpost to prevent the re-incarnation of the Soviet Union, and that without the latter, Russia ceases to be empire.” Dr. Brzezinsky,
unfortunately, taught well how to hate and fear Russia, but, fortunately, his geopolitical legacy is outdated, because the modern world cannot bear two opposite concepts at once: unilateral globalism vs diversity of civilized dialogue.

The Euro-American propaganda artillery may blast against Russia today; but Russia showed that from now on the geopolitical agenda has new visions, strategies and meanings based, in essence, on the dialogue between civilizations.

Conclusions and Recommendations

US threats of economic and other sanctions against Russia are laughable. US economic power is waning and Russia alone has enough economic muscle to retaliate in London and New York. If things get warm, China, a Russian ally, can give a hand in melting the dollar. US military threats would make Europe pay a very high economic and political price.

Russia should declare unacceptable EU and US meddling in Ukrainian Affairs and help a return to legality by supporting Yanukovych, while approaching those Western Ukrainian nationalistic parties that would feel uncomfortable under Brussels stewardship.

A second option could be that Crimea and other Russian speaking parts of Ukraine integrate with Russia, while Europe absorbs bankrupt Western Ukraine, in a sort of devolution of territories annexed after the Second World War.

Russians and Germans should remember that – as Bismarck well proved – European peace is safe and European culture flourishes when both countries work in agreement.

Umberto Mazzei. Doctor in Political Sciences at the University of Florence, Italy, and Director of the Sismondi International Economic Relations institute in Geneva, Switzerland.

Roxanne Zigon. Master in International Economics at the Ljubljana University, Slovenia, and doctoral candidate in International Relations at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Geneva, Switzerland.

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