Why the Guardian is wrong, and Soviet monuments should not be protected

EuroMaidan Press: 01. October 2014


Kharkiv, few nights ago...

In light of recent events in Kharkiv, Agata Pyzik of the Guardian took the task of explaining why Soviet monuments should not be toppled, but protected.

So, what’s the problem with this argument?

The first point addressed by Puzik is acknowledging that Soviet statues and memorials do act as “a powerful reminder of Soviet rule” and that “memories of Soviet aggression are just as raw today as they were when the USSR fell.”

Having said this, this fact is merely paying lip service (which reminds of a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm) as she proceeds to pile on the topic of ‘sacrifice’ to justify the statues’ salvation:

“Red Army monuments are a reminder of the astounding Soviet sacrifice during the war [...] The Soviet army played a major role in saving this part of Europe from the realisation of Hitler’s master plan in the east, which proposed the colonisation, enslavement and eventual extermination of the Slavic population.”

Certainly, many Ukrainians appreciate the sacrifices Soviet soldiers made in their efforts during the Second World War, especially in eastern cities like Kharkiv. Remember, Soviet soldiers were, in the words of Yale historian Timothy Snyder, “disproportionately Ukrainian.” The unit which liberated Aushwitz? The 1st Ukrainian Front. “The vast majority of Ukrainians who fought in the war did so in the uniform of the Red Army. More Ukrainians were killed fighting the Wehrmacht than American, British, and French soldiers — combined.” It’s for these reasons that actions are taken against Soviet symbols, but not necessarily symbols of native soldiers.

In a wider context, Soviet military memorials can be seen as either monuments to liberation or occupation, life and death. While Soviet soldiers did play a major role in stopping Hitler, their historical actions before, during, and after this moment in time are not without criticism, nor should they be.

While Hitler’s role in the 40’s was absolutely devastating (approximately 3 million non-Jewish Ukrainians were killed in the Holocaust under Hitler’s extermination plans, and over 2.3 million were deported for slave labor), Ukrainians will neither forget Stalin’s plans also realized colonization (see:Russification), enslavement (see: collectivization and dekulakization), and theextermination of the Ukrainian population. It also included the extermination of half of the Crimean Tatar population.

And not to let the man of the moment, Vladimir Lenin, off the hook. It was he who said of the Crimean Tatars: “We will take them, divide them, subjugate them, digest them.” Should Tatars need to be reminded of this in their society?

But certainly the author is focusing on the military effort, and not excusing leaders like Stalin, right?

“…two cities even feature quotations from Stalin, which remain in place without harassment. The degree of the Soviet sacrifice seems to be appreciated there.”

Moving on..

“Russia’s role in the second world war is seen largely through the initial collaboration with Hitler. But it is the Soviet Union’s later actions and subsequent role in the defeat of the Nazis in Europe that should be dominant.”

The issue here is telling victims howthey should remember their oppression and experience. For Ukrainians, Poles, or any other nation subjugated as a result of Moscow’s collaboration with Hitler, they and they alone get to decide how to remember their experience, and decide whether the narrative of ‘liberation’ agrees with their national discourse. As with monuments to this period, it is the people who live in these places that should decide whether they reflect the appreciation of the culture, and not those who made and imported them.

“Desecrating a statue of a Red Army soldier is different to toppling a Lenin memorial or painting the Ukrainian flag on the spire of one of Moscow’s Stalin towers. The latter can and should be separated from the events of 70 years ago. The people who died in Stalingrad shouldn’t get mixed up with people sending arms to Donetsk separatists. To see it otherwise is to fall into the irresponsible, habitual comparisons of Putin with Stalin and Hitler, conflating things from very different historical orders.”

This statement by Pyzik is particularly confusing as the latter (toppling a Lenin or painting a tower) are separated from WW2 events, and the ‘people of Stalingrad’ are hardly evoked when a Lenin statue hits the pavement.

Why? Well, this should be obvious: Lenin died 15 years prior to the Soviet invasion of Poland and the start of the war. He is not and cannot be related to the events of 70 years ago.

So why does the author think Ukrainians topple statues to Lenin?

“Somehow hatred for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych became confused with hatred of Lenin, which is strange because Yanukovych’s ally Vladimir Putin has criticised the Soviet leader for including Odessa, Donbass and Kharkiv (so-called Novorossiya) in the Ukrainian borders drawn in early 1920s.”

Putin argued, if anything, that Lenin was too generous on Ukraine when the Red Army annexed it and reasserted it under Moscow’s rule. This criticism started and stopped with a revisionist version of history and the demarcation of Soviet borders. Putin did not criticize anything tangible about Lenin, his rule, or the consequences of it.

“The destruction of Yanukovych’s Disneyland-like villa outside Kyiv at least aimed at the right target, the unequal economy. The Lenin statues have been a poor substitute for understandable anger.”

Yanukovych’s mansion, Mezhyhirya, was not destroyed – in fact, it was turned into a museum. That being said, if ‘destruction’ of the president’s monument of corruption would be justifiable, would not the same call be made for the destruction of monuments to authoritarianism? After all, Pyzik did admit to start that these statues continue to evoke memorialize Soviet aggression and rule.

Pyzik concludes by stating Ukrainians are “conflating the past and present” and “run the risk of re-enacting old battles.” But this is made all the more confusing, given that in a previous article she argued for “a new look at the east, which acknowledges the existence and importance of the Soviet past,” a notion which she called “absolutely necessary.”

So maybe the overall theme here is that Soviet history is worth remembering, so long as it’s not critical, and isolated to victory in a vacuum. The reality is that only the people can decide what monuments are erected and stand in their cities, as they are the ones who have to live with them and be reminded of what they represent. Opinions are varied and often divergent, and it is for this reason that monuments should be unifying and representative of figures or concepts that all of society can rally behind. In the case of Soviet monument to tyrants in Ukraine, that simply isn’t the case, and for many, history is still being written.

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Editor’s note: A user submitted a collection of Tweets entitled “Agata’s Crush on Russia.” The content displays the author’s pro-Putin sentiment and familiar connections to the Polish Communist Party. Since publishing this article, Agata Pyzik has made her Twitter account private, and changed her handle.

US sends 'Ironhorse' tanks to NATO's nervous Baltic front line

Reuters: 01. October 2014
By Peter Apps and Aija Krutaine

WASHINGTON/RIGA, Oct 1 (Reuters) - U.S. troops and tanks will deploy across the three Baltic states and Poland in the next two weeks on a mission designed to deliver an unmistakeable message of NATO resolve to Moscow.

The "Ironhorse" armoured cavalry unit, with around 700 soldiers, some 20 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks with Bradley and Stryker armoured fighting vehicles, is one of the most formidable U.S. military forces to be sent onto former Soviet soil. Several of the bases and training areas it will operate from were built for the old Soviet Red Army.

The aim is to convince Moscow that - unlike in non-NATO Ukraine - any Russian interference in Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia would put it at war with the Western alliance.

All three countries were once part of the Soviet Union and analysts say Moscow would dearly like to reassert its influence there, particularly in ethnic Russian areas.

Poland too, which was under Soviet domination during the Cold War and is now a NATO and European Union member state like the three Baltic republics, remains distinctly nervous and has lobbied hard for further U.S. forces.

"The purpose is to be a very visible demonstration of commitment to our allies," says Captain John Farmer, public affairs officer for the Ironhorse, formal designation of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.

"We may take slightly longer to deploy than lighter forces, but there's nothing like a tank if you really want to achieve effect."

The U.S. military says it is the first time it has had to ship armoured reinforcements to Europe since the end of the Cold War at the start of the 1990s.

The unit was given barely a month's notice it would be sent across the Atlantic from its Texas base to the Baltic states and Poland. Its personnel are now in Germany and starting to move east with their equipment.

They will replace a similar number of much more lightly armed U.S. paratroopers deployed at short notice after Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region in March.

The annexation was closely followed by the outbreak of separatist war in eastern Ukraine, where NATO accused Russia in August of sending in arms and troops to support pro-Moscow rebels, something the Kremlin denied.

NEW COLD WAR?

Faced with the gravest East-West crisis since the Cold War, NATO pledged at a summit in Wales in September to maintain a high level of exercises in Eastern Europe, as a tough signal to Moscow and a gesture of reassurance to nervous ex-communist member states that were once in the Soviet Union's orbit.

Outright conflict, most experts believe, remains almost unthinkable. More likely, they say, Russia might choose to destabilise the Baltics by stirring up dissent among ethnic Russians there and perhaps deploying covert special forces.

NATO states are discussing how they would react to such "ambiguous warfare" tactics in member states.

But deterring Russia means demonstrating an ability and will to fight it, military analysts say - hence deployments like Ironhorse. The symbolism of its tanks is all the more important given that none of the Baltic states have any modern tanks of their own, although Poland retains one of the largest such forces in Europe.

Permanently stationing U.S. and other units in the Baltics remains off the table, in part due to concerns this would breach a 1997 Russia-NATO agreement. For now, NATO and U.S. officials talk of a "rotational persistent presence" of overlapping units coming and going. A further new high-readiness force, likely to be headquartered in Poland, will also be able to deploy within 48 hours, officials say.

"We will have the right forces and the right equipment in the right place at the right time," Danish General Knud Bartels, chairman of NATO's military committee, said last week.

Several Danish Leopard-2 tanks deployed to the region for around a week for exercises earlier this year but the Ironhorse will stay much longer, likely three months.

Even after the troops return, some U.S. officials suspect the tanks and vehicles will remain, ready for use by other units, although no final decision has yet been made.

DECADE OF RISING TENSION

Military tensions between Russia and nearby NATO states have been increasing for the past decade, now supercharged by worries over Ukraine. Last year, some 6,000 personnel took part in NATO's "Steadfast Jazz" exercise in the Baltics and Poland.

That followed a major Russian exercise just across the border in Belarus that senior Western officials say concluded with a mock nuclear strike on Warsaw, a suggestion Moscow denies.

Having boosted its military spending some 30 percent since 2008, Russia has considerably stepped up its own military footprint and activity.

Last year, it reopened a Cold War-era air base near its border with Latvia and another in Belarus housing several dozen attack helicopters and Su-27 fighters.

According to a report earlier this year by an Estonian defence think tank, the International Centre for Defence Studies (ICDS), most Russian army units in the region have also received new armoured vehicles.

Russia also has several hundred main battle tanks in the region, according to Western and Russian analysts.

Russia's Baltic Fleet has also seen new warships and Cold War vessels upgraded, including with new missiles.

Perhaps most important, in the last four years Russia has deployed Iskander ballistic missiles and upgraded S-400 anti-aircraft missiles including in its Kaliningrad enclave, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Those missiles, ICDS said, would allow Russia to strike almost without warning across an arc from Poland to Finland while making it much more able to defend its own bases from air attack. Unlike jets or cruise missiles, the Iskanders could evade much of NATO's defences.

Their deployment, Moscow says, was a direct reaction to U.S. missile defence batteries being installed in Eastern Europe.

The Baltic states say Russian military aircraft have this year sharply increased the number of aggressive flights near their air space, although it is down slightly from its peak in May-June.

In response, the United States, Britain and others have also stepped up their commitment to NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission.

Down on the ground, there are no plans to send Ironhorse troops and tanks right up to Russia's border. But officials say that is as much down to practical considerations about churning up roads and causing disruption as to any diplomatic factors.

"Everyone loves tanks," said U.S. Army Capt Farmer. "But they can make a real mess."

Russia is actively preparing for war

BNE (Business New Europe): 01. October 2014
By Ben Aris in Moscow


From the middle of May to early of September 2014 the Russian Federation undertook several large command-staff exercises testing the realization of a local nuclear attack. According to military experts there were never such dense and extensive testing scenarios of nuclear war even in the Soviet Union.

Russia is actively preparing for a war that nobody wants and that will probably never happen. But its increasingly obvious commitment to real preparations for a potential military conflict with the West have been convincing enough to create trump cards in the diplomatic and sanctions war that has been raging for much of this year. On the eve of the Minsk summit that brought the shaky ceasefire to Eastern Ukraine, the US seemed to cave in.

What was sabre-rattling has become overtly aggressive military actions that are seriously destabilising the whole of the European continent and freaking NATO out. Russian fighter planes have made almost as many incursions this year into the airspace of the Baltic states, all NATO members, than they have in all of the last decade taken together. Russia has carried out the largest surprise military excises it is allowed to, without giving forewarning to NATO under the terms of its treaties with its old nemesis. And Russia has also started military exercises that include moving nuclear missiles about for the first time in two decades. 

NATO of course finds all this peripatetic armour extremely unsettling, but it is part of a larger aggressive policy Russia has adopted. 

"Putin's Russia today is ready and willing to go to war. Europe and the West are not ready and not willing to go to war. There is no leadership in Europe or in the world able to stop Putin," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, who lives on what could be the next front in Russian aggression, told the Washington Post in an interview on September 24. 

Not just Central European politicians but also military analysts are asking: will there be war? And increasingly the answer is not clearcut. "The slow, ongoing militarisation of the Russian state - not only in a purely military sense, but also economically - socially and politically, which has been observed at least since 2007 - raises questions about its long-term consequences," writes Polish military analyst Andrzej Wilk of the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW).

Despite the economic slowdown, Russian military spending will surge to 4.0% of GDP in 2015 – twice the level that NATO members are obliged to spend – according to the recently announced three-year budget. This compares with 3.5% of GDP in 2014, which was already a rise of more than 10% in real terms to around $84bn from a year earlier, according to Wilk. 

Along with the rise in spending is a rise in nationalist rhetoric and propaganda, according to which Russia must fight against the aggression of the West. "The spiral of militarisation which has been set in motion in Russia over recent years has already reached a critical 'point of no return': the ruling team in Moscow has become largely a hostage to its own policies." Wilk warns. "The consequence of the current activities may actually be that Moscow starts a full-blown regular war."

Long time coming

While the press is now full of reports of Russian military manoeuvres, the Kremlin has actually been ratcheting up its military preparedness for more two years already. As BNE reported in its cover story "Cold War II" in March 2013, Russia had already started rattling its sabre to display its increasing unhappiness with Western policies, such as the proposed missile shield initiative in Poland. 

"And with Russia now ratcheting up spending on re-equipping its military to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, plus the noticeably chillier tone in the security rhetoric in the last months, it could well be that historians will one day point to the current period as the start of Cold War II – though the proxy wars that characterised the first one are not much in evidence yet," BNE wrote at the time. 

And that has even changed. Russia at least has overtly put its military proxies into first the Crimea and then Eastern Ukraine. And the West baulked at responding in kind. 

While waiting for the first Russian uninvited humanitarian aid convoy to arrive at the Ukrainian border, on August 14 the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian correspondents witnessed some 20 Russian APCs blatantly crossing into Ukraine. That was a tense weekend as observers waited with baited breath to see what the West's response would be. The convoy was widely condemned as a Trojan horse, suspected of carrying arms into Ukraine, but most of the trucks were half empty and some completely empty. 

In retrospect it seems more likely they were simply a Kremlin probe to test the West's resolve. When there was no reaction from the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin assumed he had carte blanche to do as he pleased in eastern Ukraine. Notably in the days that followed, the White House failed to take any definite action other than issue a statement of condemnation. "And where in all this is America?" asked Tim Ash of Standard Bank in a note to clients at the time. 

From that point on, the Kremlin's pretence that it was not sending in regular troops to bolster the pro-Russian rebels in the east faded away in all but name. In the runup to the crucial Minsk Summit on September 5 to call an end to hostilities, eastern Ukraine was swimming in "vacationing" Russian regulars and the Ukrainian army's big push to retake the Donbass region had failed, leaving Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with a poor hand at the Belarusian negotiating table.

Call my bluff

Putin is playing a risky game, but has successfully called the US' bluff. The military exercises are getting more frequent and larger. There was another one last week, the snap Vostok-2014 exercises, a huge operation in Russia's Far East to test the mettle of Russian forces in the face of an attack over its eastern borders. 

"Even against the background of the systematic increase in the number and scale of the Russian army’s exercises, which have been effectively conducted almost without a break since February 2013, this project has been distinguished by its long duration and the size of the forces and resources involved, which allow them to be classified along with the largest Soviet army exercises," the OSW's Wilk noted. 

Military exercises are only one aspect of the preparations. Putin banned the import of agricultural goods from the EU on August 6, which was widely seen as a tit-for-tat economic response to sanctions imposed on Russia. Except the move also has the side effect of forcing Russia to become food-independent in a potential military stand-off. "A letter just went out to all Russia's farms and agricultural producers asking them how much food they have and how much they could supply at what cost in the event that Russia's borders were closed," says one agricultural fund manager who did not want to be named. 

The food ban comes on top of a raft of initiatives that could be put in place should Russia go to war with the West: 

• the government floated a road map of what to do should Russia be cut off from the internet at the end of September; 
• it is introducing its own national payment system to end its dependence on the US credit card majors VISA and MasterCard; 
• it is planning to build a messaging system to replace SWIFT after the UK suggested cutting Russia off; 
• the Kremlin is busy replacing European food supplies with those of its BRICS allies, amongst other things; 
• and the Kremlin has launched a general strategy of import substitution that is supposed to be ready within the next three years for all the key economic inputs. 

"Most technologies have their analogues and in the frameworks of the import substitution programme, Russian companies are able in the next three to four years to meet the challenge we are facing," said Deputy Minister of Energy Kirill Molodtsov on September 23. 

Given that no one actually believes there will be a war between the West and Russia – a war Russia would clearly lose – all these measures are as much a message as pragmatic preparations: Putin is signalling that he will not back down over Ukraine and is willing to go all the way, confident that the US and Europe will not. 

Europe breaks with Washington

The US had put Germany's Angela Merkel under pressure to tow a hard-line against Russia ahead of her summit with US President Barack Obama in August. Merkel was not given much choice, but she said explicitly that if she were forced to make a choice between protecting German economic interests in Russia and supporting her allies, she would choose the latter. 

Merkel was forced to make that choice at her meeting with Obama on May 2. Standing next to the US president, Merkel acknowledged that “further sanctions will be unavoidable” if Ukraine is unable to hold the May 25 presidential election, adding that this is “something we do not want”. But, she continued, “we are firmly resolved to go down that road."

However, as the body count mounted in the key eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, while the European economic recovery began to splutter, she made an about-face on the eve of the Minsk summit that brought a ceasefire to eastern Ukraine in September.

Merkel flew to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko the weekend before the talks in Minsk and clearly pressured him to strike a deal. Merkel said on August 25 that Ukrainian “decentralisation”, a deal on gas prices, and Ukraine’s “trade relations” with Russia are elements that could bring about an accord, but deliberately played down expectations. 

The Minsk meeting was key. At this point Merkel and the rest of Europe decided to cut their losses and go for a negotiated peace with Putin, conceding to many of the demands the Kremlin had been making: some sort of autonomy to the eastern regions, three-way talks on Ukraine's gas deliveries from Russia, and a 15-month suspension to many of the terms in the trade deals that Ukraine had just ratified with the EU.

For its part, Washington was almost entirely silent in the days between Merkel's visit to Kyiv and the Minsk summit. A colleague in the White House press corps went into a press conference during this period and was told explicitly by the White House press handlers: "No questions on Ukraine. Today is all about ISIS. If you ask Ukraine question you will be excluded from the White House press list."

With the situation in the Middle East and Iraq spinning out of control, the White House decided it had bigger fish to fry. About to re-launch a full-scale military operation in Iraq, the last thing the White House wanted to do was get embroiled in what clearly would be a protracted military campaign in Europe, and so the US has cut its losses.

"There was a sudden bout of realism in Washington where they realised the situation was coming dangerously close to a military conflict with Russia and they backed down," says Tony Brenton, a former British Ambassador to Russia. 

Russian servicemen during one of numerous Navy exercise.

This was nowhere clearer than following Poroshenko's historic speech to Congress on September 18, when he made an impassioned appeal and called explicitly for "lethal and non-lethal weapons" from the US. “One cannot win the war with blankets,” he said. “Even more, we cannot keep the peace with a blanket,” he told Congress to resounding applause. 

Obama offered a $53m package – a rounding error in the US national accounts – of which only $7m was military aid, and a loan guarantee (not even a cash loan) of $1bn. Poroshenko left Washington with more blankets and little else. The US has decisively turned its back on Kyiv and left it to fend for itself. At most the US will impose more sanctions on Russia, which will inflict economic pain, but have been widely derided by observers as being totally ineffective when it comes to forcing the Kremlin to change its policy direction. 

Poroshenko has been left in a weak negotiating position, as he has been forced to concede that "the conflict in eastern Ukraine cannot be solved militarily," as he told Ukrainian media on September 21. 

Cost of victory

NATO is clearly a lot more powerful than the atrophied Russian military and would eventually win any war. But the issue is not the victory but the cost of such a conflict – Russia has a long history of cataclysmic military sacrifice like no other nation in the world. 

And while Russia's military is weak, it is still no pushover. Rearmament has been going on for several years. Russia has been testing its new Topol M and Bulava ICBMs and introduced new classes of military frigates. 

Topol-M testing range in Kapustin Yar, Russia.

Last week the Kremlin announced that the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk is to house submarines carrying cruise missiles with a range of more than 1,500km. 

“With Crimea’s return to Russia the relevance of this base has not diminished at all, because NATO ships are permanently present in the Black Sea, so there are plans for creating a naval base in the Black Sea area,” Black Sea Fleet commander Aleksandr Vitko told the president, newswires reported. "In Novorossiysk the secrecy of a submarine leaving port on a mission is far easier to maintain than in Sevastopol," he added, alluding to Russia's Crimean naval base. 

Perhaps more worrying is that Russia is now also actively upgrading its strategic nuclear force. "Russia will renew its strategic nuclear forces (SNF) not by 70% as expected now but by 100%," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told Rossiya-24 television on September 22. " Rogozin went on to say that in 2015 the army and the navy should switch to "cutting edge" weaponry by 30%, and in 2020 by 70%. At the same time, Russia needs a compact army, which, if necessary, can be relocated to "any threatening war theatre.”

Russia recently tested new 'Bulava' inter-continental ballistic missile which could reach distances over 3,500 miles.The new 'Borei' class ballistic missile submarine 'Yuri Dolgoruky' and Typhoon class sub in the backround. The Borei Class carries a newly developed 'Bulava' missile.

The West has not been totally inactive, it is just their commitment to follow through that is in question. The US said on September 23 that plans to sell 40 air-launched AGM 158-missiles to Poland strengthens its defence amid the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The joint air-to-surface missiles can carry 1,000-pound warheads and have a far longer maximum range than the ones Poland currently is equipped with. 

Likewise the Poles have formed a rapid reaction force together with the Lithuanians and Georgians designed to counter Russian aggression. And Poland decided to accelerate the process of upgrading its missile defence system in March as the situation in Ukraine deteriorated.

For all its grandstanding, Washington has no intention of going all the way. The Washington Post reported that "administration officials say Mr Obama holds back weapons for Ukraine because of his oft-stated belief that there is ‘no military solution’ to the conflict with Russia and because he wishes to avoid an escalation.”

The thing with threats is they are useless unless you are prepared to carry them out. Putin has made it clear that he is willing to follow through on his threats out, while Obama has made it clear he is not.

Kasparov: Putin is 'the most dangerous man' in the world and a bigger threat to the U.S. than the Islamic State

Yahoo News: 01. October 2014
By Bianna Golodryga


Russian grandmaster-turned-opposition activist Garry Kasparov.

Arguably the world's best chess player ever, Garry Kasparov is on a new mission. He hopes to convince the world that the biggest threat to global unrest is not the Islamic State, al-Qaida or North Korea. Instead it is Vladimir Putin, Russia's president from 2000 to 2008 and then again from 2012 to today.

In an interview with Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga, Kasparov outlined his reasons for believing that Putin should be what keeps the world up at night. He chided President Barack Obama for being too late in addressing Putin's aggression in Ukraine — ultimately annexing Crimea. And while he views the president's speech at the United Nations — calling Russia's invasion into Ukraine and ideology of "might makes right" backward —he still believes that actions speak louder than words. Kasparov has extremely harsh words for what he views as European indifference to Putin's actions, and he compares the world's complacency with the lead-up to World War II.

Kasparov calls the Islamic State militant group (also known as ISIL and ISIS) a diversion for the world to focus on. He finds it hypocritical that the U.S. and other Western allies have agreed to supply Syrian rebels opposed to IS, while refusing Ukraine's similar request.

Garry Kasparov.

Regarding the current sanctions imposed on Russia, Kasparov believes that at some point they will hurt not only the Russian economy, but also Putin and his inner circle. However, for that to happen, he believes the sanctions will have to be in place through at least March 2015. He adds that Putin will use Russia's vast supply of natural gas as leverage ahead of what he calls the "upcoming cold winter," threatening to shut down supplies to Europe and other former Soviet republics and satellite nations. Kasparov fears that the threat will be enough to persuade an easing of sanctions. He also believes Putin is telling his inner circle of Russia's richest and most powerful business leaders, who are facing the ramifications of stiff sanctions that the western governments "will blink. As before, they will capitulate. We'll get what we need." Kasparov believes that Putin is calling the world's bluff. "He is playing poker while everyone else is playing chess."

Kasparov, who once expressed interest in running in the 2008 presidential race and who has in recent years become an anti-Putin activist, avoided the question of whether or not he would seek public office. Instead his response was a sobering one: "We should forget about power in Russia changing hands throughout the election process. I'm afraid it will be not a very lawful process and it may eventually end up with the collapse of the country."

His political views have affected his professional career and aspirations. Just last month Kasparov lost his bid for the presidency of the World Chess Federation, to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a controversial billionaire who had ties to Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi and Bashar Assad. (Ilyumzhinov also believes that not only was the game invented by aliens, but that he too was abducted by alien years ago. "Of course it was," Kasparov answered when asked if the election was rigged.)

As for the future, Kasparov sees dark days ahead as long as Putin is in office. He believes that the 2018 World Cup, now currently set to take place in Russia, should be relocated to another country. But that is down the line, Kasparov says, adding that he is currently focused on the upcoming "cold winter."

Some Russians blame Lenin and Stalin for Moscow’s problems in Ukraine

The Interpreter (Institute for modern Russia): 01. October 2014
Op-ed by Paul Goble

A pro-Russian protester waves a Russian flag next to a statue of Vladimir Lenin.

Following the Crimean Anschluss, Russians have stopped focusing their anger on Nikita Khrushchev, who transferred Crimea from the RSFSR to Ukraine, as a primary source of their problems with Ukrainians and shifted attention to the role Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin played in creating the current tensions between the two nations.

Some Russians, largely out of ignorance, Ilya Lazarenko writes in a commentary on Rufabula.com, believe that “Lenin created Ukraine, added Kharkiv to it, and so on.” But such views arise from the “one grandmother said to another” school of historical interpretation and need to be fought.

The facts, the Ukrainian commentator continues, are these, “the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) appeared as a result of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic (UNR),” had borders which “corresponded with the borders” of that earlier state, and was demarcated according to regions which were “predominantly” Ukrainian in population.

But those historical realities were overwhelmed in the minds of many Russians by government propaganda beginning a year or so ago which claimed, among other falsehoods, that “Lenin was the creator of Ukraine,” a claim that not only denigrated the Ukrainians as a nation but implied that Lenin had made a mistake and that Moscow must “correct” it.

The events of 1917 and the years following are complicated but not that difficult to understand, Lazarenko says. Two days after Nicholas II abdicated, the Ukrainian Central Rada was set up in Kyiv as a coordinating council for the Ukrainian national movement which at that time was pressing for the autonomy of Ukraine within a Russian federal state.

Even when the Bolsheviks ceased power in November 1917, Kyiv did not immediately declare independence because it was placing its faith in the Constituent Assembly. But even before the Bolsheviks suppressed that body, they issued an ultimatum to Kyiv to subordinate itself to their regime, something the Ukrainians rejected.

Even then, however, Kyiv did not declare its independence, but its refusal to recognize the Bolshevik regime led a group of Bolshevik deputies of the All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets to go to Kharkiv where they proclaimed what was in effect a marionette state, the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Soviets.

When Lenin dissolved the Constituent Assembly, Lazarenko continues, “the legitimacy of statehood on the territory of the former Russian Empire completely broke down.” And as a result, the Ukrainian Peoples Republic declared its independence. Although later destroyed by the forces of the Bolshevik regime, it continued to exist de jure in the emigration until 1992.

That summary should make it clear, he says, that “the USSR was not established by the Bolsheviks from nothing” as some Russians think, “but was the result of the recognition of the right of Ukrainians to self-determination under the pressure of objective circumstances — a strong Ukrainian national movement and a Ukrainian statehood recognized even before the Bolsheviks.”

More intriguing are Russian commentaries about Stalin’s role in creating the current situation in Ukraine as a result of his decision to annex Western Ukraine, something that became possible as a result of his alliance with Hitler and invasion of Poland but that, as many Western specialists have pointed out, has had serious consequences for Ukraine and Moscow ever since.

In an article on the Russian nationalist site Stoletie.ru, Mikhail Slobodskoy argues that by annexing Western Ukraine, the Soviet leadership allowed into the USSR “a Trojan horse” that ultimately played a key role in the destruction of the USSR and the radicalization of Ukrainian nationalism.

“The events in 1939 developed so rapidly,” he says, “that the Soviet leadership apparently then simply was not able or not able correctly to calculate all the negative consequences connected with the unification of Western Ukraine to the USSR,” given that the different historical experiences of Ukrainians there who were now to be tied to Soviet Ukraine.

It is very likely, Slobodskoy says, that “the leadership of the USSR” – his euphemism for Stalin – “simply did not have any other geopolitical possibility” and may have been driven by a desire for “the triumph of historical justice” by the inclusion of lands that in most cases had been part of the Russian Empire.

“But by including Western Ukraine within the country, the leadership of the USSR by its own hands allowed in a unique ‘Trojan horse,’ which was absolutely alien socially and historically on what was then the common territory” of the Ukrainian SSR and of the USSR as a whole.

Moscow first encountered this reality when following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, people from Western Ukraine were among the first to join the German forces to fight the Soviet ones. But even after the war and until at least 1953, Western Ukrainians continued their armed resistance to Soviet power.

But the destructive influence of the Western Ukrainians re-emerged with the beginning of perestroika, Slobodskoy continues, during the discussion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, something which “literally” became a Pandora’s box for the USSR. “The unification of Galicia to the USSR on the whole played a negative role in the fate of the entire former Ukrainian SSR and, as we see, Russia” as well, he says.