I remember clearly that in 2013, the administration of the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych led by the Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, was not against signing the Association Agreement with the EU. However, they understood what it will do to Ukrainian economy and asked for some €300 billion to readjust the economy from oriented to the East to one that would be linked to the collective West. The major reason for Yanukovych not singing the agreement was Western refusal to foot the bill.
Instead of negotiating with Yanukovych, the West activated its agents in Ukraine to stage a several months long protest to remove him from office. I guess it was a cheaper to remove Yanukovych and his Party of Regions, and replace him with a compliant puppet. But little did they realize that the dancing and jumping troglodytes on the Euromaidan have awakened the Russian bear from slumber.
While this festival of life was going on in Kiev, Yanukovych was with Putin on the Russian Black Sea coast attending the Winter Olympics. It was a truly memorable winter. I bet that he told Putin everything about Ukraine, and Putin went like WTF?
You see, contrary to popular wisdom. Until roughly 2013, the Russian establishment barely noticed Ukraine. People like Kosachev and Chernomyrdin that were directly responsible for relations abroad treated Ukraine as if it was still part of the USSR. I could count Russian TV documentaries about Ukrainian nationalism and Svidomism on the palm of my hand. And they weren’t aired in prime time on state TV. Today there are several dozens of these documentaries, and Ukraine has become the most discussed topic on TV news, whereas in the days of old news about Ukraine were rather rare.
Ironically, the pro-Russian Ukrainians, who before 2013 were marginalized and abandoned by the Russian state have gained greater influence after they fled to Russia, the separatist republics of the Donbas, or took up arms against the post-Maidan regime. Before 2013, they were ignored by the Ukrainian media, chased by the Ukrainian secret service, the SBU, and thoroughly marginalized. It is not that their ideas weren’t popular among segments of the society but without organization and money, they were losing ground to pro-Western forces.
And even more ironically, today Ukraine is literally getting billions in military and humanitarian aid, and in simple financial injections. I mean, I don’t know the exact figures but the West must be spending the kind of money Yanukovych and Azarov demanded in 2013. Actually I think the Ukraine situation costs the West far more if you add damage from accommodating refugees, and sanctions.
So let me ask, wouldn’t it have been easier to just pay Yanukovych for the transition, use the fact that the Russian state completely neglected soft power, and slowly integrate Ukraine in a completely peaceful way, pulling the rug from under Russia? I mean, some Zapadniks believed Ukraine will become somewhat of an alternative to Russia to the chagrin of the Ukrainian nationalists. Or was the West interested in fomenting the violent standoff that we see today? Because quite frankly, the cost of the violent option is bound to cost much more at this point.
And in the end, if the choice was war from the get go, do the architects of this realize the impact this will have on the Ukrainian project, and Western hegemony? Now the West decided to put all the chips on Ukrainian victory. This is truly a drunkard’s gamble. Somebody will be thrown out of the casino.
Insomniac Resurrected 
I think the West did what it did, because of two things:
1. The Western elites care about weapon manufacturers’ profits and satisfying middle class’ sensationalism (even though middle class, left wing or right wing alike, is bound to be dismantled systematically by the very same elites, as the whole deal was spread throughout the West and East Asia as geopolitical weapon against Soviets and China back in Cold War, and they’re gradually losing useful values. It’s another topic of its own). Now, when they look at Ukraine, they see a population that’s supposedly anti-Russia, with the most extreme ones from western Ukraine and the Russian minorities being marginalized; and on top of that, it’s plagued by a serious case of corruption problem that can even rival some African countries; most of all, Putin seems not to be too aware of the situation (at least that’s what everyone thought before Euromaidan). They all thought that they can make a huge profit by exploiting Ukraine’s corruption problem and Russophobia through the usual method of color revolution and/or mind fucking the populations into believing in a mixture of ultra-nationalism, pseudo-traditionalism and sexual liberalism – same thing they did to everyone in East Asia. However, they’ve underestimated the seriousness of Ukraine’s corruption and how real things can get. At the end, everything leads to what we’re seeing.
2. As for why the West couldn’t choose a safer way to approach it, I believe it’s time for us to understand some basic mentality of Western world: Westerners, especially Americans, have one problem; they would rather spend extra efforts and risks of getting hurt just to beat the shit out of you than to come up with a safer alternative. Don’t get me wrong though, Americans are quite smart with tactics, but they use such previous and decent quality of brain power in that Tyrone way of “Yanukovych I’mma FUCK-YOU-UP you bitch ass nigga! Now suck my dick you bitch made trick! And yes, nigga I’mma take your mother fucking cash and have rioters torture you whole fucking family!” rather than actually sit their happy asses down and see what Yanukovych has to offer, which is actually a smarter way (but not by American definition though). Tyrone mentality basically sums up what Western world, particularly US, truly stands for. To simply put, Americans are hustlers. This is why Americans are very good at making massive amounts of short-term gains, but many decisions they made tend to lead to a disaster on the long run. Usually, Americans are very good at cleaning up their own mess and use the showmanship and distractions in conjunct of a really half-assed explanation to appease the world’s anger. However, with this Ukraine deal, it’s hard to say whether Americans can truly get out of this in one piece.
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Many years ago I read Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard in which he said that Ukraine should be integrated into NATO to basically leave Russia defenseless. This was written in late nineties. I think a lot has changed under Putin, and the Western strategists realised that Russia will resist such attempts. Furthermore, when Russia announced the creation of Eurasian Union, then still alive Brzezinski said Russia will encounter such conflicts that it will not recover from. I think since I think 2003, the strategy is to foment conflicts that Russia will become entangled in, with the purpose to weaken and hinder Russia, while fomenting unrest inside Russia such a through liberal opposition or the Islamists.
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From the looks of things, I’d say the West is following a really outdated strategy based on Brzezinski’s pathological hatred against Russia. Brzezinski has apparently underestimated Russia’s true capacity and overestimated NATO’s own capacity now shits are backfiring. Now, the question is whether the Western publics can realize the seriousness of it before the economic situation gets even worse.
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I think Brzezinski’s assessment of Russia was not far off the mark when he wrote his Grand Chessboard. That was in the nineties when Russia was in deep shit. Putin started to turn things around in the 2000s but simultaneously this is also when the US began colour revolutions in post-Soviet states. I believe the triumphalist attitude changed to confrontational. Honestly, the West still thinks it can defeat Russia but this time they will have to put some effort into it. Now, I believe the powers that be will impoverish us. There is no economic Cold War as there used to be so why not make the proles just as poor as the Russians? Also, I keep seeing fewer “Russia is shit” articles. Whenever they attempt to post such on FB, the people tear them apart in the comments by saying that we lack medicine.
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Brzezinski was ahead of the game when he wrote that book, but the problem here, is that US and NATO have to follow a strategy described in the 90s when Putin did a whole lot at making Russia functions as a self-reliant state; honestly though, Putin didn’t even really get to it until around the time of Arab Spring, especially after the death of Gaddafi. It was only then, that Putin realized the seriousness of it and the West’s possible intention.
However, Putin seems to be rather efficient in improving Russia’s self-reliance. It’s done at a cost of pissing off tons of young Russian middle-class, but as we’ve previously discussed, what Russia got is the social cohesion that’s unseen in neither US/EU nor China and other parts of East Asia, with way better ability at making its citizens feel belonged than all the aforementioned countries and regions. History, culture and things such as social consensus may play a huge role in it. At the end, Putin gets to transform Russia into a way more robust and way less destructible nation.
From the looks of things, the West is throwing everything it got into Ukraine. The only way to escalate it, is to send in troops to the front line or give Ukraine nukes and/or ICBM. However, things are a lot different now. The West is no longer the same ones we have known from back in 50s – 80s. Aside from East Asia, way fewer people are willing to trust the West that much – even though I wouldn’t necessarily call the relationship hostile. As for the proles…you know what, I have a theory: not sure if I told you that before, but the problem with middle-class, especially the ones generated since the beginning of Cold War back in 50s, is that they were used as weapons of geopolitics. If you study psychology and pay closer attention to the behavioral and thought pattern of average middle-class, you can see that without those economic booms, most of those middle-class families and their children would remain as poor peasants. Following the end of Cold War, the middle-class is becoming rather useless as geopolitical weapons for the West, and now Russia and China for that matter, are both coming up with their own brands of middle-class (which neither country seem to know what to do with it, but it’s another topic), perhaps the Western elites feel like using the middle-class in Russia and China, along with those highly depressed but still somewhat well-preserved middle-class across the non-China part of East Asia, along with the disgruntled Ukrainian peasants, self-important Poles and Romanians as well as Islamists as geopolitical weapons, while quietly and systematically eliminate Western middle-class.
At the end of the day, only East Asian middle-class’ dumb asses as well as the likes of Ukraine are that willing to follow Western elites’ command with such loyalty. Most of Africa, Latin America and even Middle East tend to have that “keep my eyes half-opened” attitude and wait to see what happens. Most of Western middle-class will become lower-class, and they’re not happy about it. As they’re turning into lower-class, many problematic events may stem from it. So far, the Western elite seem to be rather adept at manipulating public opinions and switch the public’s attention onto a target of desire through a series of blame-shifting and controlled oppositions. So far, it’s working really well, but how long can they go at it? The way I look at it, such methods are merely band-aid solution for the elites. Pretty soon, they gonna run out of lies to appease the dying middle-class…even if they managed to dodge the bullet over the dramas in Ukraine, they will run out of lies at some point in the future, probably the near future too. When that happens, things are going to get really ugly for the elites, which may result in some of the bloodiest uprisings in the history of mankind, with millions of casualties. However, before that, we should keep expecting chaos, as the Western elites are trying to manipulate things into their way.
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