LETTER: Not all black and white in Ukraine

Douglas Mason’s article was another attempt to reduce the Ukraine crisis to a black-and-white picture of a standoff between an emerging “democratic” Ukraine and a malign, “authoritarian” Russia (“Ukraine conflict highlights fight for future governance in Global South”, August 10).

Let us translate some of Douglas’s points from propaganda language into plain English. “Ukraine moving slowly but unevenly towards Western democratic standards since the 2004 Orange Revolution and 2013-2014 Euro-Maidan protests” is the way he describes the beginning of the rapid transformation of Ukraine into “anti-Russia” by an aggressive nationalist regime, including restrictions on the Russian language, the persecution of those sympathetic to Russia, and outright genocide against the Russian population in Donbas.

A vast number of repressive laws have been adopted by this regime, which directly contradict Ukraine’s international commitments. Moreover, political opposition in Ukraine is now outlawed: all political parties except the far right wing. Oppositional media outlets, including TV channels, have been closed. Opposition journalists are being outright murdered, for example the charismatic Oles Buzina, killed in 2015. This happened long before Russia’s special military operation. Is this the “democracy” root Mason roots for?

The “centuries of Russian colonialism” allegedly endured by Ukraine put forward by the author as a “fact” is yet another cliché forced upon people by Western propaganda to substitute for real history. In fact, it was Kyiv that colonised some territories of present-day Russia.

Most of the major cities of the present-day southeast Ukraine were founded by Russian emperors. Ukraine got the historically Russian Donbas after the 1917 October Revolution thanks to Vladimir Lenin and his associates, and its western regions after World War 2 thanks to Joseph Stalin.

Ukraine got the historically Russian Crimea in 1954 thanks to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Speaking of Soviet leaders, Leonid Brezhnev, who was head of the Soviet state for 18 years, was born in Kamenskoye village ... in Soviet Ukraine. This is what “Russian colonialism” was about.

Soviet Ukraine was a co-founder of the UN, and was amply involved in the political, economic and cultural life of the USSR. Does that look like the slave trade and plunder of natural resources by “civilised” Europe in Africa?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union “Russian colonisers” supported the independent Ukraine’s economy with cheap gas while Ukraine was “moving towards Western democratic standards” and eradicating everything Russian.

This was all either ignored by, or done with the approval of the West, which openly claimed Ukraine could be either with Europe or with Russia, with no third option.

Douglas gets an F for history.

Alexander Arefiev 
Embassy of Russia in SA

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