2014 As Crimea and Russia Were Watched In Tel Aviv

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

  How did it affect the USA when Russia took Crimea?   NPR had learned  that two Ukrainian officers were shot when Russians stormed a Ukrainian military base in Crimea. One of those officers  died. This  happened on the same day that Russia signed a treaty to incorporate Crimea into Russia, a move that President Vladimir Putin described as a restoration of historical justice necessary to protect Russian citizens. 

Troops under Russian command fire weapons into the air and 

scream orders to turn back at an approaching group of over 

100 hundred unarmed Ukrainian troops at the Belbek airbase, 

which the Russian troops are occupying, in Lubimovka, 

Crimea on March 4, 2014. 

Sean Gallup—Getty Images

Russia pushed for the idea of the need to be protected against alleged ultra-nationalist groups that are operating in these parts of the country.          

       Protesters fighting government forces on Maidan    Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv on 18 February 2014.

 The Putin press corps line has been consistent: the government in Kiev is illegitimate. The Revolution of Dignity took place in Ukraine in February 2014 at the end of the Euromaidan protests, when deadly clashes between protesters and the security forces in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv culminated in the ousting of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.

Kiev Governorate was an administrative division of the Russian Empire from 1796 to 1919 and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1919 to 1925. the second-largest European country after Russia, covering approximately 600,000 square kilometres, and has a population of around 40 million people. Ukraine had to fight to free itself from the Soviet Union. Official independence was declared August 24, 1991 and with it came its own host of problems. 

There are these threatening signs of ultra-nationalist or Nazi-type groups operating in Ukraine that are armed and that are going to terrorize the Russian population. The only Nazi behavior seen has been from the Russians.   They have kept up this slander to this day.

There aren't good military options to defend Ukraine. What we're talking about at this point are steps to basically show Putin that his economy, that the health of his economy's role in the global system, all of those are now under threat.

The defiant Russians caused a crisis in Ukraine in 2014.  They were separating Crimea from the rest of the country, and the Middle East were on alert about it.  

                        THE WESTERN PLOT

In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.  Ukraine had held onto Crimea for 23 years.  This event took place in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian War.  There had been the Crimean War (1854-1856), so this was a replay of sorts.  

Zelensky, on TV as the Servant of the People, so honest a role that he got it for real as President of Ukraine, replacing a lot of mis-guided men who were not honest people.  Zelensky is honest, making him different;  Jewish, not a politician, instead an honest  lawyer.  In the second round, on 21 April 2019, he received 73 per cent of the vote to Poroshenko's 25 per cent, and was elected President of Ukraine.

Why did Russia need a Ukraine crisis?  At the time, there was an ongoing war in Syria.  It's Assad regime with its allies (Iranian officials, Hezbollah, affiliated anti-American pundits) were busy swallowing the Russian propaganda  of a Western plot to undermine Ukraine's legitimate history and bring it into the Western orbit.  So it's a tug of war with Ukraine-getting them on Russia's side or the American side.  

Syria's anti-Semitic-destroy Israel program was trying to survive with its thousands of rockets pointed right at Israel.  They didn't say much about Russia's take-over policy of Ukraine. 

Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin, both shunned by the West, are working on major weapons and nuclear energy deals that might grow into a long-term partnership between the two nations, Russia and Turkey.

 Turkey was keeping quiet. Recep Erdogan supported the Syrian opposition which didn't get very far.   He had family ties to Crimea's Muslim Tatar population, and this threatened to make Russia's actions a domestic Turkish issue.    This was a sticky issue as Turkey was dependent on Russian natural gas.   Erdogan was being compared to Vladimir Putin of Russia as a strongman. 

 The Akkuyu project, scheduled to be completed by 2023, will be Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. The Russian state nuclear company Rosatom is in charge of the funding, construction, and operation of the project. The Akkuyu NPP is Rosatom’s first project under the “Build, Own, Operate” scheme. So Russia will own and operate the plant, and effectively sell power to Turkey. The $20 billion Akkuyu NPP, with a capacity of 4,800 MW, is expected to provide 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity needs.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014. The invasion caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 9.1 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and a third of the population displaced. It only took Russia 8 years, right down to the month of February, to make their attacks.  

Putin's Russia of 2014 was not Yeltsin's Russia of 1991, or even Putin's Russia of 2003.  In 2014, Putin was acting  with a new large plan, brazenly challenging American interests when Moscow detected American irresoluteness to avoid further large-scale open-ended military engagements in the Arab and Muslim worlds.  Like a game of chess, a move in the front can affect a move in the back that might mean check-mate.

"What is new is that Russia's moves against Ukrainian sovereignty are the latest in a series of actions that are its support for separatists in Georgia and Moldava, but also the West's support for Kosovo's secession from Serbia that have challenged the legitimacy and durability of territorial boundaries enshrined in the UN Charter." Moldava has submitted a bid to join the EU.  It has received more than $720 million from them in aid since Russia's attacks.  

"The Middle East's centrifugal forces manifesting themselves in the failing states of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen fit right in. "

Russia has its fingers in 2 pies; the Middle East and countries around itself.  In many ways its in competition with China.  

updated 78/19/22 evening.  

Resource:

The Jerusalem Report, "Watching Ukraine' April 7, 2014, page 37.  by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, Research Fellow at Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv U. the Mideast Monitor.    

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

https://time.com/12142/russian-and-ukrainian-troops-in-tense-crimea-standoff/

https://adst.org/2014/03/ukraines-push-for-independence/?gclid=CjwKCAjwrNmWBhA4EiwAHbjEQI_5P_PYdrTlecSVCR-qYd647wI71uGxIvnIJwgFgwhtt0bRzle6DxoC99UQAvD_BwE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Governorate#:~:text=Kiev%20Governorate%20was%20an%20administrative,Republic%20from%201919%20to%201925.

https://www.aljazeera.com/where/moldova/