Russian forces have started their attack on Ukraine at Thursday, about 5 AM local time. It was not unexpected, yet it caught the world apparently by surprise. Attack was opened with cruise and ballistic missiles, with Russia appearing to target infrastructure near major cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Dnipro. Shelling began near Mariupol, and a senior adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry said that it appeared Russian troops may soon move on Kharkiv, some 20 miles from the border. Russian military vehicles had crossed the border near Kharkiv in the north, Luhansk in the east, Russian-annexed Crimea in the south and from Belarus. Ukraine has declared a martial law and severed all diplomatic relations to Russia. Weapons will be given to whomever wants them. Several neighboring countries have begun preparations to take in a large number of refugees. Moldova alone said more than 4,000 people had come over the border from Ukraine.

Justifying the attack, Putin claimed that “A hostile anti-Russia is being created on our historic lands.”. Putin fell back to classical Communist rhetoric, claiming that the Kyiv government is controlled by the far right and that aim of the operation was “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine, and that Russia does not intend to occupy Ukraine. Putin further issued a warning: “To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history. All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me”.

Joe Biden has issued a statement that “The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.”

Offensive started after, on Thursday night, the leaders of the two Russian-controlled territories in east Ukraine sent an official request to Moscow for military aid to “help repel the aggression of the Ukrainian armed forces in order to avoid civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe in the Donbas”.

Putin will likely try to attack or capture Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. There were reports on Thursday evening in Russian state media that airborne troops had captured the airport in Boryspil near Kyiv. The Russian military claimed that all of Ukraine’s air bases were disabled in the barrage of missiles that began the Russian invasion. Russia had also claimed that its forces had entered Ukraine, with Ukrainian border forces not putting up any resistance to Russian invasion. Russian missile attack had targeted military infrastructure, headquarters and warehouses. But there is a possibility that civilian infrastructure had also been targeted. Even if not, even precision weapons cannot wholly prevent collateral damage.

In previous weeks, Putin built up 190 000 troops close to Ukraine’s borders while Europe’s leaders wasted time trying to find a diplomatic solution, just as they had done in 1939 and 1991. But this will not be successful. While Russia does have reasons to fear NATO’s expansion, its neighbors have even better reasons to fear Russia. Russian Empire had attacked its neighbors on multiple occasions, and Soviet Union did the same, only stopping its military expansionism after being defeated in Poland in 1920.

Putin’s expansionism is not an accident. He has called a collapse of the tyrannical Soviet Union “a genuine tragedy”, and has argued that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics were manipulated into declaring independence from Moscow by self-interested opportunists. More importantly, however, Russian strategic situation and thought is similar to that of the Soviet Union. Perceiving enemies everywhere (largely correctly, thanks to – ironically – victory of leftism in the West), Putin is aiming to establish a buffer zone ahead of the borders of the Russian Federation. This is exactly what Soviet Union did with the establishment of the Warsaw Pact, and United States did with the establishment of NATO. But EU and NATO had slowly expanded almost to borders of Russia, and had been eyeing expansion into Ukraine. This went directly contrary to US’ assurances about not expanding NATO eastwards. Russia’s paranoia must have been only increased after the Western-sponsored Orange Revolution overthrew the Ukrainian government and installed a puppet of the Western globalists.

Putin’s support of separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions bears resemblance of Milosevic’s actions in Croatia. After Croatia declared independence from the increasingly tyrannical and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic proclaimed that Serbs in Croatia are threatened and helped initiate rebellion, using the local Serbs as proxies for Belgrade. At the same time, Yugoslav Army invaded Eastern Slavonia and Dubrovnik areas. The ultimate goal was establishment of the Greater Serbia extending to Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag line. Much like Milosevic, Putin claims that Ukrainians do not exist as people, and are in fact Russians.

Even the rhetoric is same. Much as Serb regime claimed that Croatian government consisted of Nazis, the Russian president stated that he wanted to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Russians see World War II as a linchpin of Russia’s national identity, and questioning of Stalin’s genocidal regime is even forbidden by law. Thus, any opponents are automatically linked to Nazism. Ukraine’s slow and anemic moves to protect Ukrainian language had also been portrayed by Putin as an attempt to exterminate country’s Russian population, and thus Russian aggression had been given a veneer of self-defense.

It is not clear what, if any, action will be taken to actually help Ukraine. Words cost nothing but also achieve nothing, and so far only thing that Biden and NATO have provided to Ukraine is a load of hot air. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the head of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen had also condemned the attack. This is even more disappointing in the face of the fact that Ukraine has sought to join NATO for years, and maintains ties with the alliance. In fact, doing so likely helped provoke the current situation. The US since 2014 has provided Ukraine with billions in military assistance, including lethal aid like Javelin anti-tank missiles. But Ukraine cannot face Russia alone, and what aid will be forthcoming in the future is yet to be seen. UK, EU and other Western allies had already stated that they will not be sending troops. NATO itself is supposed to be a defensive alliance, and thus no state can legally require its members to intervene abroad. But a number of NATO countries that share borders with Russia had decided to launch consultations under Article 4.

Putin had provided hints as to his expansionist plans for years. Putin in 2008 told President George W. Bush that Ukraine is “not even a country,” and he’s referred to Ukrainians and Russians as “one people.” Last summer, in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine,” Putin argued the people of the two countries share a common history and identity and Ukraine had been unjustly severed from Russia through the work of anti-Russian forces and must be reunified. Thus, it is clear that not only this invasion is not an accident, but there is also a possibility of a larger invasion of Ukraine as a whole.

Again much Serb invasion of Croatia in 1990s, Russian invasion of Ukraine is justified through misrepresentation of history. Serbs called Croats to be Catholic Serbs. Meanwhile, Putin had stated that:

Since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians.

So, I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia — by separating, severing what is historically Russian land.

This myth states that Ukraine’s borders are an artificial creation of Bolshevik planners who unjustly cordoned rightful Russian land within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Yet internal Soviet borders reflected centuries-old cultural and political divides, as well as what Moscow’s own census takers found to be an ethnic Ukrainian majority throughout that territory, including in what is now eastern Ukraine.

Overall, both Russia and the West have to shoulder a fair share of the blame. What Putin is doing is wrong, but it is no completely baseless, and the behavior of the Western globohomo alliance did absolutely nothing to allay Russian fears.

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