Публікація на EUobserver

Russia’s massive deployment of troops in east Ukraine in recent days indicates an upcoming escalation in Putin’s covert war against Ukraine and the West.

Ever since a Russian military-led offensive in August captured the town Novoazovsk in south-east Ukraine, few had doubts about what would come next.

Novoazovsk is a bridgehead in the direction of Mariupol, a port town and a Ukrainian stronghold, which prevents Russian leader Vladimir Putin from securing a land corridor to Crimea, which he annexed in March.

Only two questions remain: When will the Mariupol offensive begin and on what pretext?

Публікація на EUobserver

Even as Russia’s covert war against Ukraine claims new victims each day, European and US leaders keep pushing back red lines on economic sanctions.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Bolshevik Russia in 1917 to 1920 also fought a covert war against an independent Ukraine.

It used the same tactics as today: denying legitimacy to the central government in Kiev; military incursion in support of marginal local elements; the formation of a puppet government in eastern Ukraine; instigating a civil war to cover up its engagement.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is undergoing a re-Sovietisation: parades with red flags, portraits of Stalin.

The terms ‘Russia’ plus ‘fascism’ have been added together to create a new word in Ukraine to describe this phenomenon: ‘Ruscism’.

It was only a matter of time until the KGB/FSB-ruled country attacked Ukraine’s sovereignty. Russia’s chauvinistic elite never came to terms with the idea of Ukraine going its own way.

The Ukrainian nation has survived more than 300 years of Russian occupation, genocide, linguicide, cultural assimilation, Stalinist purges, Stalinist forced migration.

We should have known that history will not end with Putin.