Chronic. The military operation announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Thursday morning February 24 at dawn, was denounced, from Washington, by his American counterpart Joe Biden as a “unwarranted attack”. This offensive will provoke “catastrophic human suffering and loss”according to the White House.
But Russia’s intervention in Ukraine does not date from today, or even from 2014, when the already very real war broke out in the territory of Donbass between pro-Russian separatists supported by Moscow and the Ukrainian army. .
Interference, pressure, cyberattacks, military intrusions, violations of borders and treaties, hostage-taking, capture of the Sea of Azov, until the recognition today of the independence of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, it is a permanent assault that Vladimir Putin has engaged for years against the neighboring country of Russia ” that does not exist “.
Even before he came to power in 2000, the head of the Kremlin was already delivering his vision of things on the ” gifts “ that Russia, claimed heiress of the former USSR, would have abandoned to the former Soviet republics. In 1994, when he was still only the deputy mayor of Saint-Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, he had thus evoked, during an obscure conference, the loss of “gigantic territories”, citing, in passing, in particular, the Crimea. Twenty years later, the Ukrainian peninsula was annexed by Russia. Putin does not improvise. He adapts his planned strategy to the circumstances.
Seen as recrimination “paranoid”, its vision on Ukraine exposed on Monday February 21, before its Security Council, then on television – a “creation of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”, as he said – is part of a well-rehearsed discourse that has infused, to the point of becoming embodied in a tragic reality, step by step.
The first took place in 2004, during the Ukrainian presidential election, which opposed Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych in a deleterious climate, against a backdrop of suspicion of poisoning of the first, while the announced victory of the second, supported by Moscow, triggered huge protests. The “orange revolution”, the color sported by Yushchenko’s supporters, ultimately ended in his victory after the organization of a new vote. Yanukovych is defeated, but only for a time.
For Vladimir Putin, the fact that Ukraine, with its 603,000 square kilometers and its 44 million inhabitants (18% of the population of the former USSR), is getting closer to Westerners is inconceivable. The color revolution that then ends, attributed to the West, calls for revenge.
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