Kissinger: Ukraine Must Be Bridge Between East And West huffingtonpost/2014/03/06/kissinger-ukraine_n_4912573.html?ir=World&utm_campaign=030714&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-world&utm_content=Title > Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russias borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States. > The West must understand that ... Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Russian Black Sea Fleet -- Russias means of projecting power in the Mediterranean -- is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia. > Crimea, 60 percent of whose population is Russian, became part of Ukraine only in 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev awarded it as part of the 300th-year celebration of a Russian agreement with the Cossacks. ... To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West -- especially Russia and Europe -- into a cooperative international system. > Russia would not be able to impose a military solution without isolating itself at a time when many of its borders are already precarious. For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one. > Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests of all sides: [read the link]
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:47:48 +0000