From its vodka — born of Ukrainian Cossack horilka, to its very origins as a culture — insisting Kievan Rus’ is Russian not Ukrainian, Russia has envied Ukraine and claimed it as its own. In truth, the Ukrainian and Russian cultures parted ways some 1,500 years ago. But since Putin has claimed Ukraine is neither a separate country nor culture, we first had to make it clear that his claim is false.

The origin of Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine, however, is less one of cultural appropriation and more the culmination of a Russian campaign pre-dating Putin and originating prior to the dissolution of the USSR to

  • destabilize nascent democracies in the former Soviet orbit and, subsequently, to
  • re-integrate former Soviet territories back into Russia.

This campaign has been monumentally successful, spurred on in large part by three decades of minimal negative consequences to Russia for its territorial aggression against its neighbors.

Moldova’s Trans-Dniester — a template for aggression

February-March, 1990 — Moldova holds its first free parliamentary elections since having been joined to the USSR, Popular Front of Moldova wins landslide victory. Soviet loyalists “fear” Moldovan-Romanian reunification.

September 2, 1990 —  Russian-backed “separatist election” declares Moldova’s Trans-Dniester, aka Pridnestrovie (“by the Dniester”) or Transnistria, a strip of territory along the left bank of the Dniester river containing most of Moldova’s industrial assets, an independent republic.

November 2, 1990 — Armed conflict erupts in Dubăsari: pro-Transnistrian forces, including Transnistrian Republican Guard, militia and neo-Cossack units, and units of the Russian 14th Guards Army versus pro-Moldovan forces including Moldovan troops and police.

January 20, 1991 — Russian Black Beret OMON forces under the command of Vladimir Antyufeyev shoot freedom demonstrators in Rīga, Latvia, including killing cinematographer Andris Slapiņš by sniper fire.

August 19–22, 1991 — Soviet coup d’état attempts to remove Gorbachov from power, Antyufeyev is among the coup supporters; August 19th was the date Yeltsin stood on a tank in defiance.

September, 1991 — Viktor Alksnis sends Antyufeyev and his unit into Moldova to ensure successful breakaway of its Trans-Dniester region under Russian control.

December 1, 1991 — Igor Smirnov, Lenin wannabe complete with goatee, wins election as first “president” of Transnistria as residents simultaneously vote in a referendum to break away from Moldova. To “prove” victory, the PMR authorities show election results, every last person and who they voted for, to Pål Kolstø, Professor of Russian and Central European and Balkan Area Studies at the University of Oslo, who is horrified. Antyufeyev is appointed Minister of Security of Transnistria under the false name Vadim Shevstov.

December 25, 1991 — The hammer and sickle over the Kremlin comes down for the last time and the Russian tri-color goes up.

March, 1992 — Fighting escalates between Moldova and Transnistrian separatists.

Let us recount, for example, the events of the first days of March [1992], that had catalyzed the spring confrontation at Dubossary. In the night of the 3rd of March a tragedy occurred in the Grigoriopol region. Bandits gunned down an ambulance car that carried a pregnant woman to a hospital. A midwife was killed and the driver, the woman and other passengers were wounded as a result.
Smirnov blamed the deed on Moldovan volunteers and declared the state of emergency in the Dubossary district. The 6th of March 1992 was declared “Black Friday”, and on the central street of the city a [public] funeral was held for the dead. Smirnov was either insincere, or didn’t know the whole truth himself [because] the ambulance car with the pregnant woman was gunned down by Transnistrian security officers and former members of the Riga OMON: V. Nikitenko and S. Bubnov. The assignment was given to the executioners by their commander, Vadim Shevtsov [Antyufeyev], personally. R Sabirov, a witness to this heinous crime, told this to A.I. Lebed of it in 1993, and later recounted it on TV “ASKET”. [Lebed was commander of the Russian 14th Guards Army occupying Transnistria.] — translated from ВОЖДЬ В ЧУЖОЙ СТАЕ, by Mikhail Bergman

Fighting, interrupted by periodic ceasefires, lasts until a final ceasefire in July, 1992.

The Kremlin conducts a massive disinformation campaign to portray the Transnistrian regime as legitimate. (Read Edward Lucas’s two part series on Transnistria here and here.) Moldovan industry is privatized into the hands of Russian oligarchs, and despite acceding to multiple agreements to leave, Russian military still occupies the territory as “peacekeepers” today.

June 12, 1999 — British NATO forces at Pristina disobey orders to engage Russians and chest-thump to this day that they prevented WWIII. Putin, appointed as an acting PM less than two months later (August 9) and president at year end (December 31), takes the lesson to heart: NATO will never attack Russians or Russia itself in fear of precipitating WWIII.

How is Moldova relevant to Ukraine today?

Moldova established the model for intervention which Russia has used ever since: in Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Ukraine’s Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk; and now in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

  1. Stage elections = false proof of the Russophone “Russian compatriot” populace’s desire to leave non-Russian state
  2. Stage incidents = false accusations and/or false flag operations against the non-Russian state of terrorism, genocide,…against Russophones
  3. Cite #1 and/or #2 as the basis for “humanitarian” intervention to protect Russophones
  4. Manufacture “news” and diplomacy campaign associated with the justification of territorial break-away and of subsequent Russian protectionist intervention.

Completing the Moldova-Ukraine connection, 23 years after killing freedom demonstrators in Latvia, 22 years after killing innocents to precipitate martial law in Transnistria, Vladimir Antyufeyev is named “Deputy Prime Minister” of Donetsk in 2014 as the neo-Soviet Kremlin moves forward with its next operation against Ukraine having completed Crimea’s annexation. (The true results of the referendum to join Russia were accidentally released, then withdrawn, indicating less than 25% support to join Russia.)

A step too far

When Russia claims the heritage of Kievan Rus’ as its own, it also claims Sviatoslav I, who overextended his campaign of territorial acquisition, prematurely moving his capital southward to today’s Romania. The Pechenegs assassinated him in 972 and fashioned his skull into a drinking goblet.

Since Crimea, Putin has been cremating Russian dead in eastern Ukraine using mobile crematoria, eliminating evidence of direct Russian involvement. Families of the dead are threatened to never speak of their lost ones who “volunteered.” But by launching full-out war against Ukraine, Putin, too, has overextended himself and can no longer cover up Russian losses. Thousands will come home in body bags — unless Putin leaves them to rot in Ukraine’s streets and fields.

When, not if, the Russian offensive grinds to a halt, we might expect Putin to declare his “punitive” campaign concluded and withdraw forces back to eastern Ukraine as “peacekeepers”, and seek to make that situation permanent in “peace” talks with Ukraine. One can hope the Russian people will finally rise up and cast off the centuries-old yoke of despotic rule by which the rest of the world judges Russia and Russians, and Putin becomes the last of the Sviatoslavs. Regardless, Ukraine will not agree to ceding any of its sovereign territory to Russia.

The alternative, that Putin achieves total victory, then kills or jails/deports all of Ukraine’s leadership a la the USSR and the Baltics in WWII, and moves on to his next conquest in central-eastern Europe is one our faith in Ukraine and democracy cannot permit.