The Russian Spring

Not everybody was happy about the junta that usurped power in Kiev. Anti-junta demonstrations were held nearly everywhere in South-Eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian sentiments were very strong. Many people turned to the Russian brethren, calls for Russia to interfere were heard everywhere. Ukrainian TV showed the mayor of my native city of Zaporozhye at a loss for words when he addressed the people begging them to explain what they meant by bringing three-color flags of Russia to his office. What they meant was clear.

The polite men in the Crimea

Russia procrastinated as usual.

Nothing could have been more natural for Russia than embrace the passionately loyal Crimea, but Putin was never in a hurry to grab the chance. He was thinking hard in conformity with his sober-minded and cautious nature. He is always looking before he leaps.

Unfortunately, the leap had to be quick, and Putin must have been afraid to bite more than he could chew. As the history shows, it was a fatal mistake on Putin’s part to dump the idea of restoring the constitutional order in Ukraine in conformity with the Treaty of Friendship, the Budapest memorandum, the Declaration of Ukrainian Independence and other binding documents.

As an inhabitant of Zaporozhye, I saw with my own eyes demonstrations against the Kiev junta that protested against the Kiev self-appointed government under three-colored banners,  and I have good grounds to believe that at least half of the Ukrainian army would have joined Russian troops and Putin could have taken the whole of Ukraine without much opposition in 2014.

Unfortunately, history does not know the Suppositional Mood. In the long run, he agreed to give in to the pressure of the Crimeans and accepted the peninsula into the body of the Russian state in a bloodless, lightening and brilliantly executed operation backed up by the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian law-enforcement officers who quickly and open-heartedly swore allegiance to Russia.

The “civilized world” knew very well where Crimea belongs as a natural part for more than two centuries but was making opportunistic noises and mumbling something incoherent about international law. Apparently, Putin was in two minds about the rest of the Russian-leaning South East, and apprehensive of possible repercussions and unwilling to antagonize the West, he made up his mind to refrain from incorporating other rebellious territories into Russia. Besides, the government and the people of Russia were caught up in triumphalism paying little attention to other regions of Ukraine – the easy get-away with the Crimea seemed quite enough for now.

Other regions of Ukraine were less lucky. As soon as the Kiev junta understood that it was safe for now and the Russians were not going to take them to task, they cracked down on the people of Russian Ukraine the cities of which got drowned in violence organized by the Kiev junta: Odessa, Mariupol, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, etc. The much-advertised motto “we do not let our people down” (“Svoich nye brosayem!”) proved to be absolutely worthless for Russian-leaning Ukrainians.  Such was the ill-fated end of the Russian spring. People of Novorossiya were encouraged by an example of Crimea regaining its Russian status. Instead, they got ATO.