I recently read a Romanian blogger’s interpretation of Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview.
The man was nothing but adamant that TC was pussyfooting around Putin and that Russia and Ukraine were like an abusive husband and his abused wife engaged in a domestic dispute.
He said and I paraphrase that a man (Russia) doesn’t have the right to force a woman (Ukraine) to stay in a relationship she doesn’t want.
The problem with this analogy is that it’s false.
Russia and Ukraine are not two different entities. Russia and Romania have always been two different entities. But Russians understand Ukrainian and vice-versa. Polish people understand Ukrainian too, especially those from the border lying areas of both countries.
Do you know why that is? Because people inhabiting a border, which is a
transition area between two countries, tend to do business on both sides of the
same frontier. Accordingly, even the languages change on the limes, thalweg,
or whatever you want to call it.
FYI, Ukraine means borderlands in Russian. In case you didn’t know. The region of Krajna in former Yugoslavia means the same thing in Serbo-Croatian. You get the gist.
No, siree. Russia and Ukraine belong to the body of the same person. Russia is the body and Ukraine is a pre-gangrenous foot, attacked by an autoimmune disease. Now, Russia may need to sever the foot if it turns gangrenous. No choice there, eh! But right now, Russia is pumping red and white cells and is undergoing an aggressive regimen of anti-auto-immune medication to destroy the auto-immune disease that threatens to consume it.
So, if you need an analogy to understand the conflict, look up auto-immune diseases. You will soon realize that the Collective West fits the bill, as Dr. House would put it. Let me explain.
America is that nasty infection that set off Lupus in the Ukraine. The EU are the toxic chemicals that exacerbated it. And the hundreds of billions of dollars of Western military aid are the dietary components feeding the goddamn disease. Oh, but what about the Genetics, right? I mean the patient (Ukraine) must have been predisposed to develop Lupus because of the parents, eh?
Of course, one cannot cherry pick in life and why should one do it now?
In this analogy, historical background stands in for the Genetics.
Ukraine has always been predisposed to separate from Russia. It happened when the Poles invaded and took it away. It happened when the Russians came back and made Ukraine a part of all the Russias (plural). It also happened when Hitler invaded Russia. In fact, between 1941 and 1944 it was very bad for you to be anything other than pro-Nazi Ukrainian during that time. Jews, Poles, Romanians, Russians, you name it, were killed in the UKR pogroms during WW2.
So, when USSR returned, non-Nazi Ukrainians were happy to see the Red Army. This was not the case in all the countries of the Eastern Bloc. But in Ukraine, the Red Army were saviors.
So, yeah, Ukraine has always had a genetic predisposition to secede from Russia, sometimes willingly, most times unwillingly and at gunpoint. But the language, people, culture, history and traditions, are Eastern-Orthodox and Slavic, at least for the central and eastern parts of Ukraine.
Western Ukraine has some things in common, including religion, with Poland. Part of it, you see, was Polish territory before; some of it for a long time. Western Ukraine is more an artificial construct of recent history than it is the result of the organic passage of time.
But Ukraine is not Russia’s wife. Ukraine is Russia. And whether you like it or not, its future lies with Russia not the West. All you have to do, is look at a map.
But if you do not understand that, you may need to have your eyes checked.
Götterdämmerung 