Ukraine’s induction into NATO would be a strategic catastrophe for Russia. NATO would come within 425 kilometres of Moscow, cut off Russia from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and squeeze it out of the Caucasus. Conservative Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, whose ideas of Russia’s Eurasianism as opposed to Western ultra-liberalism increasingly resonate in the Kremlin, views the current upheaval in Ukraine as “the battle of the unipolar world of U.S. hegemony against Russia.” “Whereas in Libya we shunned the battle, because we had [President Dmitry] Medvedev at the helm, in Syria and Ukraine we have taken up the gauntlet,” Prof. Dugin wrote last month. In Ukraine, Mr. Putin made the same point he has been driving home in Syria: regime change by force is illegal. When Western nations hailed the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine as “a democratic free choice of the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Putin’s reply was: Crimea also has the right to make its own free choice...#Russia..#west..
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 02:28:11 +0000