© AFP Photo / Alexey Druzhinin
The leader of the Ukrainian separatists says that their
efforts to get Russia's President Vladimir Putin to accept their territory as being a part of Russia have been firmly rejected by Putin's Government; and, so,
"We will build our own country." (This important statement from the rebel leader Andrei Purgin on Wednesday, September 17th, was inconspicuously buried halfway through an AP news story that focused instead on "East Ukraine Casualties." It's common for propagandistic news reports, such as
characterize the U.S. media, to bury what's important in the news story, and not even to headline that crucial information, when that information
violates the regime's propaganda. So: this information was buried, and was not headlined.)
Russia's Government has thus made clear that it is not seeking to add to its territory. While Russia has accepted the approximately million refugees who have fled to Russia from Ukraine's civil war, Russia does not want any part of Ukraine's territory. Crimea was traditionally part of Russia, throughout the period 1783-1954, until the leader of the Soviet Union gifted Crimea to Ukraine (the nation that was called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1954, but
the residents of Crimea never accepted that, and they overwhelmingly considered themselves still to be Russians. Furthermore, the Russian Navy's lease on the Crimean port of Sebastopol for its Black Sea Fleet extended till 2042, and the
February 2014 coup-installed Ukrainian Government wanted to cancel it, which threatened crucial Russian national defense. Furthermore,
many of those new Ukrainian leaders wanted a nuclear war against Russia. So, Putin accepted Crimea back into Russia,
but he will not admit more than that as being added to Russian territory.
Crimea is viewed as not being an addition to Russia, but instead as voluntarily rejoining Russia, irrespective of the new
Ukrainian Government's campaign to eliminate ethnic Russians from Ukraine's southeast. No other part of post-1954 Ukraine had previously been part of Russia, and this includes the southeastern portion of Ukraine, whose residents ethnically descended from Russian immigrants who had settled there.
Comment: Fascism is back but with a mustache trim. The Catalonians fought against the psychopathic "Gladio" experiment of Francisco Franco the first time around, and still fight for their rights today: