“In the East and in Crimea, people want to
speak Russian. Leave them alone, just leave them alone. Give them the legal
right to speak Russian. Language should never divide our country. I’m of
Jewish heritage, I speak Russian, but I’m a citizen of Ukraine. I love this country
and I don’t want to be part of another [...] Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations.
I know thousands of people who live in Russia who are great people. We are one
colour, one blood, we understand each other, irrespective of language [emphasis
added].”[1]
Five years
before he ran for president, these comments were made in March 2014 by then
showbiz personality Volodymyr Zelensky. His reference to ‘one colour’ offends western
liberal sensibilities, but it perhaps isn’t worth getting too moralistic about.
Kiev and Casablanca are roughly equidistant from the UK, but who honestly believes
that a similar outbreak of violence in North Africa would generate as much
scandalised indignation in the Home Counties as the current conflict?
More
importantly, Zelensky’s plea on behalf of Russian-speakers in the East and
Crimea rings hollow in light of his actions since he became president. In essence,
this is because he’s been confronted with the hard reality of things he used to
joke about. Ukrainian leaders really have had their room for manoeuvre severely
constrained, since 2014, by the wishes of their masters in Washington. And neo-Nazis
and their sympathisers really are embedded in the political, security and military
establishment.[2]
Additional clarification was provided in March of this year by David
Hendrickson, Emeritus Professor of international politics and US foreign policy
at Colorado College:
“I think [the
US] bears a tremendous amount of responsibility. We’ve made a whole series of
decisions over the last twenty years, first to put Ukraine’s membership of NATO
on the table. That represented a departure from the solution of the 1990s,
which was neutrality. We sponsored the revolution in 2014 which was a really
serious breach of international law and Ukraine’s constitutional law, which had
the effect of violating the electoral law, and thereby handing power to
extremists. It split the country. In the most recent episode, NATO expansion
was a magic trick, a kind of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’. To the Russians,
‘Yes, you ought to understand this as a threat’, to the Ukrainians, ‘Yes, you
ought to understand this as reassurance’; to the American people, ‘We don’t
want to get involved’. Well that magic trick ended very badly, in the current
circumstance, and to say that we had nothing to do with it, is to say that
‘Well it was inevitable. He was going to invade anyway. He’s a monster and
will do what monsters do’, but I don’t think that’s a plausible reconstruction
of what happened.”[3]
Thus, in
spite of his sane 2014 remarks, President Zelensky was obliged to oversee
the implementation of the ‘Law on Supporting the Functioning of the Ukrainian
Language as the State Language’. Intended to ensure the long-term eradication of
Russian, it imposes Ukrainian throughout the education system and requires media
outlets to produce a Ukrainian-language version of everything they publish.
That English publications are exempt,
but not Russian, is absurd. Contrary to official figures, Russian is the native
language of at least 70% of Ukrainians (including the overwhelming majority of
Kiev residents). Ukrainian-speakers are concentrated in the area around Lviv,
in the far west.
And at the
same time, presumably under instruction from the White House, in March 2021
Zelensky declared Ukraine’s intention to retake control of the Crimea.
Colonel Volodymyr Baranyuk of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade is a patriotic and courageous officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For his exploits during the 2022 Siege of Mariupol, on 19 March Zelensky conferred him with the title of Hero of Ukraine; the highest honour that can be awarded to an individual citizen. In February 2014 he was one of 600 marines captured by the Russians in Crimea. Some weeks later he was among 140 who chose to return to Kiev-controlled territory – the rest stayed to serve in the Russian armed forces. Before leaving the peninsular he was interviewed by Simon Ostrovsky of VICE News:
Volodymyr
Baranyuk:
“Nobody is wounded. Everyone is OK. Nobody except me [Baranyuk had a cut above
his eye, a dressing on his cheek and blood on his uniform].”
Simon Ostrovsky: “How did you get
hurt?”
Baranyuk: “Well, let’s say these
are occupational hazards. This happens when you get captured.”
Ostrovsky: “Did you get into a
fight with them?”
Baranyuk: “It’s not that I was
fighting with them. It just happened.”
Ostrovsky: “Please describe how
the takeover went down. We haven’t spoken to anyone who witnessed it yet.”
Baranyuk: “They smashed down the
gates with an APC and entered from all sides. It was a classic move, so to
speak. They entered, blocked the building, and used tear gas grenades. Stun
grenades.”
Ostrovsky: “Helicopters?”
Baranyuk: “[Yes,] helicopters…”
Unsurprisingly,
the Kremlin considers its 2014 Crimea operation as the gold standard
for operations against Ukraine, since only six people died (three pro-Russians
and three Ukrainians). Loss of life – even
Ukrainian military loss of life – is bad practice and bad PR. Atrocities such
as massacres of civilians can be faked, as veteran BBC correspondent Allan
Little discovered in 1999-2000. Over the course of a seven-month investigation
of the Račak massacre in Kosovo, he came to realise it had been staged by the
Kosovo Liberation Army and falsely validated by CIA-linked William Walker.[4]
This gave embattled president Bill Clinton a pretext to start bombing the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; just as the Bucha massacre has given Joe Biden
a pretext to ramp up the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Returning though to
Baranyuk:
Simon Ostrovsky: “Now you’re heading to
Ukraine to serve there?”
Baranyuk: “Yes. We’ll serve in
Ukraine now.”
Ostrovsky: “How many of you are
going to Ukraine and how many are staying?”
Baranyuk: “As of yesterday,
there were 140 soldiers who were going. But right now I don’t know.”
Ostrovsky: “And what was the
total amount?”
Baranyuk: “Somewhere around 600
people.”
Ostrovsky: “Why are so many
soldiers staying here?”
Baranyuk: “I have no idea. It’s
their choice.”
Ostrovsky: “What do you think
about what’s happened in Crimea?”
Baranyuk: “I think the Ukrainian government is partially responsible, and the
Russians took advantage of this moment. It’s not a secret that Crimea has
always been pro-Russian. They’ve been dreaming of joining Russia for a long
time [emphasis added].”[5]
It’s worth
noting that you can’t really dispute the legitimacy of Baranyuk’s point of view.
If he – a Hero of Ukraine – can hold to this, it can
certainly be held by an outside observer. Someone like Andrew Lambert for
instance: Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's
College, London, and distinguished author (he has also taught at the Royal
Naval Staff College and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst). In a September
2017 lecture entitled ‘The Other Crimean War’ he explained:
“For the
Russians Sevastopol is a ‘hero city’, from the 1850s and from the 1940s. At least a million Russians died fighting
for Sevastopol in two major wars, and the idea that they were going to let
anybody else have it, I think is laughable. I had the good fortune to be in Main Building[6]
on the day Putin marched in, and I reminded them that this was far too
important an issue to make a fuss about [emphasis added].”
Queen Elizabeth II showed an inclination to see Crimea in a similar way in September last year. One of her ladies-in-waiting was given permission to reply to
a letter from an English-language schoolteacher in Sevastopol. Naturally, that
meant addressing the envelope “Sevastopol, Russia”, and it was picked up by
Russian media.[7]
The Queen’s
excellent grasp of the situation seems to have been further manifested in a
little-publicised episode just after the major escalation in February. Her
first public engagement of this year was expected to take place on 2nd
March; a reception of all the ambassadors accredited to the Court of St James.
““The
Queen has accepted the foreign secretary's advice that the diplomatic reception
at Windsor on March 2 should be postponed,” Buckingham Palace said in a
statement.”
Reading
between the lines, there’s surely a fairly high likelihood that she was urged to
snub the Russian and Belarus envoys, but refused.
“The Times
newspaper reported that [Foreign Secretary Liz] Truss and her officials
considered it was the wrong time to hold the event, while others said it could have been used as means of humiliating
Russia and Belarus, which has provided assistance in the invasion of
Ukraine, by uninviting the diplomats [emphasis added].”[8]
HM’s commendable
attitude is in sad contrast to that of almost the entirety of Britain’s
political class, and indeed of her eldest son. During a May 2014 visit to
Winnipeg, Canada, Prince Charles was thinking of recent events in Crimea when he
told a lady whose family had fled Europe just before WWII:
“…now
Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler”.
In the previous month, Volodymyr Baranyuk had recounted the storming of his Crimean garrison to a Ukrainian newspaper:
“I clearly
knew what exactly we should do and how to behave. There was not even a thought
about changing the oath [of allegiance]. Not before the assault, not during,
not after. But those officers who
remained to serve Russia, I also do not blame. I don't consider them traitors.
In order for someone to have the right to condemn them, you need to be in their
shoes. Many have families there, children, a well-established life. They’ve
lived all their lives in the Crimea [emphasis added].”[9]
Baranyuk’s commitment to his country can hardly be doubted – yet he understood that the people of Crimea wanted to be part of Russia. Maybe that’s the difference between a Ukrainian willing to sacrifice his life in defence of his homeland, and British politicians (and pseudo-politicians) willing to sacrifice Ukrainians for their own selfish purposes.
[5]https://twitter.com/SimonOstrovsky/status/1515760036085182474?s=20&t=a-YrLonWAyqEU2oX7Wi5Ng
https://twitter.com/Striemond/status/1515753382941708296?s=20&t=qhSWaS4Wi32yHqoJzSGpxQ
[6] A reference to UK Defence HQ, Whitehall
[7] https://primechaniya.ru/koroleva-velikobritanii-ukazala-rf-v-adrese-pisma-shkolnikam-sevastopolya/
