This is the third installment of what led to the invasion of Russia into Ukraine. We left off with the intention of NATO admitting Ukraine and Georgia into their fold at the Summit in 2008. At that Summit, the Bush administration wanted Ukraine and Georgia to be admitted over the protest of Putin. But France and Germany were against the admission because they fear it will cause Russia to be aggressive. So NATO decided to tabled the admission until December of that year.
Georgia, believing that it has the support of the U.S., felt that NATO admission was only delayed but was inevitable. Georgia had trouble in two of its regions: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Now that Georgia thinks that NATO will admit it, it felt it can be more aggressive toward the Russian separatists movements in these two regions. The Russians, on the other hand, wanted to show Georgia its displeasure of Georgia wanting to join NATO. It encouraged the separatists movement in these two regions. There were parallel joint military exercises at the same time. One was Georgia and the U.S. and one was Russia and the separatists. I don't know if Georgia attacked the separatists first or vice versa. But Russia sent in "peacekeeping forces" (sound familiar today?). Eventually, Russia recognized the separatists region as independent countries (also sound familiar today). So a war broke out. It is considered to be the first European war of the 21st century.
By this time Putin was not president any more due to term limits. While he still pull the strings, he let Medvedev run the show. Medvedev had no intention of occupying Georgia and so after pushing out the Georgian forces from the separatists regions, he accepted a cease fire. As it is today, NATO and the U.S. wanted no part of actually fighting Russia and so the war ended. While the majority of the world recognize the two regions as parts of Georgia, the reality is that both are run by Russians or people of Russian descent. So you can say that Russia won. Also given what happened in Georgia, there was no consideration of Ukraine joining NATO for several years after that.
Fast forward to 2010. Viktor Yanukovych was elected as president of Ukraine. While he was elected by winning the eastern part of the country where there were lots of people of Russian descent, he was considered a moderate candidate. He called for neutrality for Ukraine. He promised to work with both the European Union and Russia. That was seen as reasonable. But the country was not doing great economically and there were corruption charges against him.
Then in 2013 the European Union offered Ukraine membership. Russia responded by offering loan to Ukraine. Yanukovych decided against the EU offer. This led to protests from those who wanted to be part of the European Union and NATO. The protests turned violent. There are some evidence that the West supported the protesters with money and strategy. Yanukovych claimed that his life was being threatened. There was proceeding for impeachment against him. At this point Yanukovych fled to Crimea and eventually Russia.
So Russia then claim that Western interference with Ukraine is a threat against Crimea and Russia. Crimea had been part of the Russian Empire starting 1783. But in 1954, the USSR transferred Crimea to the jurisdiction of Ukraine in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's union with Russia. So to Putin, it was quite reasonable to take back Crimea since the coup means Ukraine will likely end up in EU and NATO. Also the Sevastopol Naval Base in Crimea on the Black Sea is very important to Russia. So there was no way that Putin will allow that to become a NATO base. With a Russian majority in Crimea, it was not difficult for Putin to send in troops and annexed Crimea.
Very interesting stuff. I don't have anything to add.
ReplyDeleteOn a different subject, I did come across this article about Covid numbers in China and HK.
I wonder how it's spreading so much when they've been pretty strict over there. Makes me think we will be back to restrictions in a few months since we are opening up again.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/597102-china-reports-highest-covid-19-tally-since-pandemic?rl=1
-LBOAYM
There is a big difference between what is happening in China vs in Hong Kong. China has had outbreaks several times but each time it was able to control things. Whether they can do this forever is unknown. Everybody else is opening up and unless China bans everybody for the near future, I don't know how they can keep things under control. Right now the cases are still very low and every other country would accept the numbers per million from China now.
ReplyDeleteHong Kong is a different story although today the cases are down to about half of the peak from 4 days ago. So will see if it continues to go down. The death rate is still increasing due to that stat being always behind the rate of cases.
Hong Kong has been blaming cases from abroad such as those from Cathay Pacific employees who came back from the U.S. and did not follow the quarantine protocols. But Hong Kong itself is to be blamed for most of the surge. Unlike China where misinformation and conspiracy theories are censored, Hong Kong people were getting a lot of false information from the internet regarding the vaccine. So the vaccine rate is much lower than those of the Mainland.
Hong Kong's vaccination rate is way lower than even neighbor Macau and worse yet, the lowest rate is among the elderly and those in nursing homes. Those that are the oldest and escaped from China during the Cultural Revolution have a big distrust of the government. The government also gave wrong messages when at the beginning told the elderly with chronic conditions to check with doctors before getting the shot. Unlike even the U.S. where the elderly, particularly those in nursing homes, get shots first, the elderly did not get the shots first. So when the waves hit, it is almost as bad as like the nursing homes in New York in the beginning.
Add this to the crowded conditions in Hong Kong where several people live in a small apartment, you can see it was disaster waiting to happen. Many people didn't even go to get tested when they have symptoms because there was no place for them to isolate anyway.
So the Hong Kong situation still need to be monitored. There are some in Western media saying that Hong Kong and China will fail. I don't think anyone can predict what will happen. This is all new and projections are hard to come by. Right now, despite Hong Kong's problem in the last few weeks, if the population of Hong Kong is the same as the U.S., it will still only have about 100,000 deaths vs 900,000 for the U.S. So I don't see how when history is written, that China or Hong Kong would have done worse than the U.S. and other Western countries.