I have been watching the deterioration of relations between Russia and Ukraine for about two decades now. While Belarus has remained very much in Putin's camp, Ukraine has been trying to go its own way, very much to Putin's displeasure. By about a decade ago, with the departure of Yanukovych, Putin's puppet, I was pretty convinced that he would invade Ukraine, in order to bring it to heel.
In early 2014 it started, as I had expected, with the rapid annexation of Crimea. That was the easy bit. I had then expected Putin to attempt to annex the Donbas. Well, he disguised his operation there as a couple of local uprisings, but nevertheless this was essentially a Russian invasion. There were two things that surprised me:
1. That he took eight years to mount the all-out invasion.
2. That he decided to go for Kyiv and overstretched himself.
I had expected that he would go all out to take over the whole of the predominantly Russian-speaking east and south, using Crimea, the Donbas and Transnistria as jumping-off points. Russia had had "peace-keeping troops" stationed in Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway area of Moldova, since the early 1990s. I suspected, and I still do now, that Putin's ultimate aim was the port of Odesa. Capturing the entire coastline of Ukraine would give him control of the Ukrainian export trade, which we all now know is vital to world food supplies. Ukraine has some of the best soils in the world and grows vast amounts of agricultural commodities cheaply. I have noticed that the Ukrainians are doing their level best to keep the Russians away from Odesa.
Well before the all-out invasion, I had become part of an informal group of people commenting unfavourably on the social media posts of the Russian Embassy. The people there hate me. They argue against my comments, but their feeble rebuttals have only made me more convinced that they are lying routinely. On a number of occasions I have suspected that they have tried to disable my computer, but my security software has succeeded in minimizing the damage.
I have friends in both Ukraine and Russia, but, whereas the Ukrainians understand what is going on, the Russians haven't a clue. I asked one of them whether people were being unkind to them because of the war in Ukraine. They didn't answer directly, but I think the answer would have been "Yes". What they actually said was,
"I don't do politic. Is a game. I don't know why we have war with Ukraine. I thought we were friends."
I felt it was best to agree, so I didn't bother to point out that I had been watching the relationship going sour for the best part of two decades. I do not blame ordinary Russians for this war. The state-controlled media are lying to them and any free media have been banned.
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