LETTER: West has stood aside from Russian recolonisation

The arch-colonialist Vladimir Putin is quite right — there are a number of people in Ukraine of Russian descent. During Russian imperial times the Tsars initiated a programme of “Russification” by moving large numbers of their people into Ukraine, among other conquered nations. Later, after the second world war, Stalin did the same and for the same reason — to establish a Trojan Horse population in each nation.

In Ukraine these Russian colonising settlers were concentrated in the Crimea and eastern parts of the region, this being of the most strategic interest because of a Russian desire for a Black Sea port. It worked in part, so that Putin first covertly promoted civil disturbances and then used them as the excuse for employing that nation’s overwhelming military power to seize control of the Crimea and Donbas regions from the independent nation of Ukraine. Sadly, the West stood aside from this Russian recolonisation.

However, in the largely “unRussianised” and so uncolonised central and western Ukraine, the Ukrainian people had battled long against Russian domination and were able to assert their nationhood in 1991. Putin’s objectives are to create an alternative focus to Russia’s impending economic collapse by pointing to his success in re-establishing the colonisation of at least this section of the former Soviet empire.

Robert Stone, Via email

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