Dubbed by many pundits as “The Most Stupid War in the World,” the Ukraine conflict is one that hardly anyone saw coming back in 2010. However, it is close to a decade old already. In this conflict in the evenly divided Ukraine, brinkmanship by the local players in the country, by the West that wants to drag Ukraine into its orbit, and by Russia that fears losing Ukraine and its security in the process, is the norm. At the same time, the world watches in a seemingly helpless manner as Ukraine gets torn apart at the seams.
Most of the governments in the
West blame Russia for instigating this conflict, citing Crimea and Donbas, and
accusing Russia of invading them, even though the populations of most of the
Western countries are divided when it comes to the party that caused the
conflict and began the Donbas War in the first place.
Russia, meanwhile, blames the West for
triggering the conflict in that:
·
It accuses Western
Governments of openly siding with the opposition during their three-month
protests in the Maidan against the democratically elected Ukrainian president
Viktor Yanukovych because of his decision to suspend the signing of an
association agreement with the EU due to the misgivings he was having about the
proposals as a package deal.
·
It believes the
West reneged on a deal the Western- governments helped broker between
Yanukovych and the opposition that would have realized a smooth transition
through a union government and the holding of early elections.
·
Russia is
convinced the West approved the coup that chased Yanukovych out of power.
·
It blames the new
regime in Kyiv for failing to dialogue with those who opposed Yanukovych’s
ouster, mostly people from his support base in the Donbas and Crimea.
·
Russia holds the
new Kyiv authorities responsible for sending the military to crush this
protest, which as a result morphed into an armed- resistance, hence the
conflict today.
Apparently, this tug-of-war
between the West and Russia is portrayed by many in the political establishment
and the mainstream media in the West as the fault of Russian President Vladimir
Putin, who has been labeled a resuscitator of the USSR, a thug, another Hitler,
a tyrant, a communist, a homophobe, etc. Yet Putin has a popularity rating that
has persistently hovered between 65%- 85% in Russia, and he fares well even in
the West with a fifth of Americans viewing him favorably. So, what are readers
missing; what are we not being told; what are we being made to think; and what
is the way forward to realize a new and better Ukraine, and a better and safer
world for humanity?
We arrive at simple
conclusions after reading the accounts in this work.
By Janvier T. Chando, author of “ Ukraine: The Tug-of-war between Russia and the West https://amazon.com/dp/B0B2T4XWWD/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_YWGHMQF2P1RE0PPJXH0…
