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Why Is Nobody Saying The Obvious: Putin Destabilized Ukraine

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What is the single greatest cause of Ukraine's tragic strife, the primary cause of so much grief in the region and beyond? Take a look back at the Euromaidan timeline. Think how it began, this latest round of deadly instability featuring tanks, live gunfire, kidnappings, deaths, the state tweeting sinister mass threats - with lots worse to come. This time it began because President Viktor Yanukovych pushed through laws to criminalize demonstrations, in order to prevent a repeat of the first round. What triggered the first round of demonstrations? The greatest Lord of Misrule in our time: Vladimir Putin.

Putin has spent the last 15 years shamelessly berating America for destabilizing interventions around the world. Look at his record: Chechnya, Georgia, Moldavia, Ukraine, Syria. And all those Russian journalists and whistleblowers who paid with their lives. For some reason nobody holds Putin to account for the cumulative horrors of his rule. An American President with that record would be driven to derangement by his own media, let alone by global opinion.

A colleague of mine, in his current Forbes blog entitled “Putin Is Pulling All The Strings – And Obama Is Letting Him” talks about Putin's rack of recent dark triumphs against the US. He says “Syria? Putin in charge. Iran? Putin in charge. Snowden and the NSA leaks? Putin in charge.” I would add Ukraine, except that the Ukrainian people are not ready to be included in the list.

Euromaidan (Photo credit: jlori)

You have to wonder why the Russians allow Putin to commit such misdeeds as their leader. If they don't feel inspired by Euromaidan, they should at least feel ashamed. How often during the last century have they watched a neighbor being subjugated by Kremlin-controlled tanks? No no these are Yanukovych's tanks, and he's just restoring order in his own country, comes the reply. To which one must respond by,, well there's no point in responding.

There's always an excuse for it, but the picture remains the same, and the outcome too. Power to the Kremlin.

For a large chunk of the Russian populace apparently it doesn't matter what is being done to them, or to other countries in their name, so long as America and Europe aren't winning. That's the way Putin has successfully framed his actions and far too many Russians, because he hasn't given them any other cause for pride, take pride in it.

An overpowering question haunts any intelligent observer of the turmoil in Ukraine: what did Putin think would happen? When he bullied Yanukovych so publicly into ditching the EU and opting for the Eurasian Union, what did Putin think would happen? If everyone's right about Putin being a master strategist - the scorecard seems to prove it - he surely anticipated a sharp public reaction. He had watched the Orange revolution happen and hated it. He must have known this too would happen. Talk about destabilizing a country.

Another question inevitably follows: what did he think would (or should) happen next? Perhaps he just left that to chance, or to Yanukovych's competence. Or perhaps he had some advice to give in that area, having acquired some experience with such things. If so, what we've got is a conspiracy between the two to create instability, perhaps with a few agents provocateurs causing damage among the crowds, in order to crack down on democratic freedoms. Result, Ukraine becomes – or goes back to being - another supine satellite of Moscow, with a strongman doing the Kremlin's bidding.

Does any of this sound far-fetched? Does it sound unfamiliar? Is it clear, yet, to one and all, what manner of pitiless, blood-soaked, Machiavellian hegemon we're allowing to loom over the future of Europe and the Middle East, or that we're sharing tables with in deciding the fate of Iran's nukes and Syria's chemical weapons? Why are we allowing it?

That is intended as a genuine question. The foremost reason might be that we can't do otherwise unless we intend to go to war against him. And we've supp'd our fill of wars. Wars brought us to this powerless state. Another reason might be that Putin is an ally against Al Quaeda and we can use remorseless allies like him against a remorseless enemy. Never mind that he's banking on that, that he and his proxies oft-times fostered extreme Islamists so as to play that card. In Syria, according to recent British intelligence reports, Assad let Al Quaeda elements out of his jails, let them join the opposition, so he could alienate Western sympathy for the rebels. How strangely reminiscent of the second Chechen war that sounds, which Putin ultimately won by carpet-bombing the 'terrorists' in Grozny, reducing Chechnya's capital to rubble, killing tens of thousands of innocents. The West looked away. Al Quaeda types had overrun the area. Nobody asked how. Despite incessant local sightings of belligerents being allowed to pass through the border by Russian soldiers.

Conservative friends might ascribe to President Obama's timidity the growth of Putin's power. He certainly hasn't done anything to diminish it. But with all due respect to them, the decisive moment came when Russian tanks rolled into Georgia during President Bush's tenure and Putin saw that no repercussions followed. Indeed, most of the Western media blamed it on Georgia's pro-American President Saakashvili's hotheadedness. He had attacked first. Never mind that he had attacked an armed and bellicose separatist enclave that regularly shelled his troops. Apparently, Russia was allowed to war with separatists but not Georgia. It was under President Bush that the pro-democracy revolutions rose, but then wilted. Moscow's trade embargoes, fuel supply cut-offs, endless provocation and subversion, took their toll. That was in the Bush era.

Ancient history perhaps. President Obama certainly hasn't upped our leverage with Moscow. Meanwhile Ukraine burns. What can we do? We're in bed with our adversary as we negotiate over Iran and Syria.

We can start by acknowledging to ourselves that we are in a Cold War again. At least the other side is and we're not showing up. We can reinvigorate our side, our sense of identity as the Western World. Western civilization - these days the term gets used ironically or academically and Europe scarcely affects our emotions. In this regard, as in so much else, multiculturalism has confused us. The Russians know who they are. They're at the gates of Europe again. We have to begin there.