Ten years ago, a bloody coup d’état took place in the central square of Kiev (the Maidan), which resulted in tragic ramifications for Ukraine itself, as well as for regional and international stability. It is noteworthy that the preceding mass riots, which were nakedly nationalistic in nature, advanced under the slogans of European values, freedom and democracy, while afterwards, the country saw battalions clad in swastikas and SS divisions’ stripes.
As we have already indicated in the previous article “Western Manipulation to Turn Ukraine into a Russophobic Aggressive Nationalist State”, in general, the Maidan has produced extremely detrimental effects on the political and socio-economic development of Ukraine, resulting in declining living standards of the Ukrainians and shrinking population in the country. In many ways, these consequences were brought about by certain Western states, primarily the United States, by blatantly interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs.
The 2014 coup masterminds never succeeded in uniting the country, nor did they succeed in reaching a social contract at the national level. The political and social forces committed to the Pan-Ukrainian idea adamantly opposed any agreement with the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine that was unwilling to be totally Ukrainianized.
Following the Maidan, the United States and its allies placed at the head of the country the forces, which later on instigated a military conflict with Russia through rampant neo-Nazism and forced Ukrainianization. As a result, the slogan of the Banderites dating back to World War II that they were determined to decimate half of the Ukrainian population for the sake of power in Ukraine has become a reality.
Russia refused to tolerate the Kiev regime being used as a tool to pose direct threats to our security particularly given that these threats do not come somewhere from overseas, but stand directly on the borders of our country. Nor has Russia accepted the Kiev regime being used to launch a frontal attack on everything Russian – language, education, culture, people who have lived for centuries in that area, which was cultivated by their great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers and which has always remained Russian land and a part of the Russian world. Kiev has been intended to turn into a tool in order to destroy this history, shared memory and all the ties between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. This also poses a direct threat to our interests.
In response to the measures that we undertook to protect our interests, the United States along with their European allies have launched a full-scale hybrid war to “suffocate” Russia politically and economically and inflict “strategic defeat on the battlefield”. All of it has been publicly announced.
In the aftermath of the coup d’état in Ukraine, the West has not sought any constructive solution to the Ukrainian crisis and has been escalating it in every possible way, not only transferring the necessary weapons to Kiev, but also pushing it to launch strikes deep into the territory of the Russian Federation. This poses additional strategic risks, which is particularly perilous amid the further deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations teetering on the brink of plunging into the abyss.
The Western economic confrontation with Russia has aggravated the existing imbalances in the global economy. The growth rate of the global economy amounted to about 3% in 2023 and will decline to 2.3% in the current year, forecasts say. The main problems include record inflation, tight monetary policy of the central banks of advanced economies, and further escalating geopolitical tensions.
The European economy is noted to be adversely affected by the anti-Russian sanctions. Eurostat data for December 2023 indicate that compared to the second quarter, the third quarter saw the GDP of the Eurozone states decrease by 0.1%. A most drastic decrease happened in Ireland (by 5.6%), Estonia (4%) and Luxembourg (1.8%). The Eastern and Central European countries are experiencing economic difficulties. Hungary’s GDP declined to 0.7% in 2023, while the Czech Republic’s shrank to 0.4%. Most macroeconomic indicators of the Japanese economy were also downgraded.
The World Economic Outlook 2024 remains uncertain and pessimistic amid a slowdown in investment flows due to a breakdown in relations between some of the world’s most powerful economies. The IMF estimates the possible damage from a collapse in trade at 2.5% of the global GDP (about $2.5 trillion).
Crisis trends in finance are currently aggravating, too. Germany’s total public debt has surged to a record €2.4 trillion. In the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the UK budget deficit will reach £131 billion or 5.1% of its GDP. A similar figure in France has significantly exceeded the government’s calculations, amounting to 5.4% in 2023 and 4.8% in 2024, while the public debt for 2020-2023 has reached an unprecedented level of more than 11% of GDP (€3 trillion).
A crisis is also underway in the manufacturing sector. Primarily, it affects the Western European countries, whose energy-intensive sectors (petrochemicals, machine building and metallurgy) are losing their competitiveness. If German companies continue to outsource their production abroad, Germany will face deindustrialization.
The political crisis in Ukraine has long gone beyond a regular conflict of interests between various political forces vying for ultimate power in the country. It has abruptly unleashed a large-scale global confrontation, and struggle around, without exaggeration, historic processes that accompany the shift from the unipolar model to the polycentric world order.
We are witnessing a geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the “collective West”. Ukraine, which may find itself in the midst of a much greater confrontation to which the U.S.-Russia relations could descend, is obviously just one of the pieces on the chessboard for the Westerners, which can be either exchanged or sacrificed at any moment.
By bowing to Western wishes, Ukraine has lost its subjectivity and allowed to be turned into a lever against Russia. This is exactly what the Maidan has resulted in. But for our country, Ukraine has always been and will remain a half-sister with shared history, religion and culture, a place where our relatives and friends were born and live. It is precisely in order to preserve Ukraine that the aims and objectives of the special military operation are to be fully achieved.
