Ukraine: War has started

You should mark today, 2nd May 2014. This is the day that the Ukraine/Russia crisis escalated into inevitable war.

I have been writing about this situation for a while now as you can see in a previous article I wrote here. Today in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk, the Ukrainians have been on a major operation to take back control of key city buildings from pro Russian supporters. There are early reports of many of these Russian supporters being killed or captured. I’m not here to talk about the rights or wrongs of the situation, I’m simply going to talk about what is going to happen next and some of the wider implications.

Now that pro Russian supporters have been pushed back in some areas, they are either Russian military or trained by Russian military. Considering some of the heavy weapons they have been using today, ordinary civilians they most definitely are not. The next step will be for them to integrate into the civilian population from where they will attack the regular Ukrainian army, provoking them to shoot back. This will give the appearance that the Ukrainian army is attacking unarmed civilians and the final excuse Russia needs to intervene. I have always felt this is the Russian objective, the armed Russian separatists are being used by Russia as little more than a provocation to test Ukrainian resolve, the next aim is to make it look like civilians are being attacked. When this happens, things are going to get quite loud.

What is happening is as much about the USA wanting this situation to develop as a way to make Vladimir Putin pay for his support of Iran and Bashar al Assad of Syria and stymy their power. The USA is not free of guilt when it comes to how the situation in Ukraine has developed. The Russian economy is very fragile, as I have written before, its banking system is on the verge of collapse as it is being drained of liquidity, the price of oil has fallen so the income from that is not enough to support Putin with the money he needs to pay the people closest to him and maintain him in power. We are looking at an explosive situation. A war with Ukraine is a useful tool for Putin to fan the fires of Russian nationalism and keep the minds of the general population away from the real reasons why their country is about to hit very severe problems. The Russia/Ukraine situation is as much about Geo-politics as it is about domestic politics. This is part of the game that goes back to the cold war, Russia and the USA can’t help but antagonize each other but this time things will not settle into a cold war. The world has changed and the nature of war with it. Ukraine is being used as a proxy in order for both of these enormous countries to challenge each other.

It is the same situation in Syria, which became a proxy war a while ago. On the one hand there is Russia and Iran who support Bashar al Assad and on the other there is the USA and Saudi Arabia and even more importantly in the near future, Turkey. I wrote about how Turkey is going to start a war with Syria here You can be sure that Turkey is waiting for the Ukraine crisis to escalate even further before going in, the way things are going it will be soon. It already has a heavily armoured brigade inside Syria, supposedly to simply secure the tomb of Suleyman Shah the grandfather of Osman 1, the founder of the Ottoman empire. Their real objective is to take over northern territories of Syria and create a Sunni-Shia Muslim wedge but you will have to read my article I linked to, I don’t see any point in covering the same ground, in depth, twice.

As an aside and I wrote about this before, the Orthodox church under Patriarch Kirill is deeply nationalistic and keen to see ‘Holy Russia’ have Ukraine fully re-integrated with Russia. The Russian Orthodox church and Putin are like peas in a pod, they are so close in their ambitions. Putin and Kirill are long standing friends. I wrote about it here. I think you will find it interesting.

The point is this. What is happening between Ukraine and Russia is linked to so many other things. There will be global implications to this crisis. There are so many things I have yet to show you but the time is not yet right. Watch this space.

Please take some time to read the articles I have linked to, they will give you a deeper insight when taken into consideration with this article.