UKR-TAZ

From Mykhailo Wynnyckyj, a political scientist based at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, who has been posting perceptive on-the-ground analyses of the Maidan and its aftermath:

“most western analysis of the motivations behind Putin’s military excursion into the Crimea (and his massive buildup of personnel and equipment on Ukraine’s eastern border) can be classified into two camps:

“Putin is a real-politik imperialist who is trying to recreate the Soviet Union [. . .].

“Putin is a Russian nationalist (some would say fascist) who is genuinely concerned about the fate of Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians living in former-Soviet countries on the borders of the Russian Federation.

[. . .]

“The key twist in logic used by Russia to seemingly generate a “legal” justification for its actions in the “near-abroad” involves conflation of citizenship with ethnicity. [. . .] The Kremlin’s ethnic nationalist argument for intrusion into a sovereign country could just as easily be turned against the Russians, and used to legitimize urban terrorism by Muslims in Moscow.”

See the entire article here.