The Red Jackal

The Modern Day Sudetenland Situation

I don’t think we have ever seen in American history a President achieve so much in their first six months as President Trump has. With his landmark achievement of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the shutting down of border and basically cleaning up the mess from the Biden administration. The one topic though Trump has come up short in is the Ukraine situation. Trump’s flawed view is to believe that Vladimir Putin is a partner for peace and that he does not have grander ambitions.

So why did I title this “the modern day Sudetenland”? Back in World War II (WWII), Hitler’s pretext for annexing this part of Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) was that it was historically German and that there were German speaking people being prosecuted there. Similar to this, Putin’s reason for going in (disregarding the whole NATO farce) is that Russian speaking people were under threat in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. But most of Ukraine speaks both Ukrainian and Russian as they were occupied by the soviets until the early 1990’s and were forced to learn Russian.

Once Luhansk and Donetsk were annexed, just like Hitler going into Poland, Putin will continue his march to not only take the rest of Ukraine, but to take back the countries that made up the former Soviet Union. If Putin cannot put in a puppet in any of these countries, he will take them over. Remember, Putin was quoted as saying “the worst disaster in the last century was the fall of the Soviet Empire”.

The narrative that Ukraine and Russia is one and the same is also incorrect and most likely promoted by Russia; It would be like saying America and UK are the same as they have similar philosophies but forget that little thing called the American revolution which broke us free from the UK.

Ukraine was the center of the Kievan Rus empire which was established well before Moscow. The Kievan Rus empire (9th century to the 13th) consisted of an area between Moscow and the Polish border (east to west) and from Baltic to Black Seas (North to South) . At the end of the empire, Kiev Rus had become weak and was conquered by the Mongols which broke up into three major principalities which would become modern day Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. So even though they descend from the same group, after the Mongols, each developed into their own culture.

Though all three have had relations with each other over the centuries, the Soviet Union annexed part of Ukraine after WWI and then completely with the fall of the Nazis and rule over them for the next 60 years. During this time it is estimated that millions of Ukrainians were killed under the Communist regime (mostly under Stalin) with the most notable tragedy being the Holodomor. The Holodomor was a period of time when the Soviets essentially starved the population of Ukraine. It was alleged that Stalin ordered this to quash any Ukrainian independence movement.

With the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the first country to break free, with the population overwhelmingly voting to break free from Russia. Russia has been trying to get it back ever since.

Russia has tried to play the game that these new countries were free by installing or backing people that were sympathetic to Russia. For example, in Belarus, Lukashenko is considered an elected official, but the elections are rigged. In the last Belarussian election, it was well known that the election was fraudulent, but Russia protected him from being overthrown. It has been reported in the next couple of years, Russian will be the official language of Belarus; a country conquered without a shot being fired.

In 2004, Russia made its first attempt to bring Ukraine back into the fold in Ukraine’s presidential election. Viktor Yanukoyvich, backed by Russia, won the election which many considered rigged against Viktor Yushenko. Not only was the election deemed corrupted but it alleged that Yushenko was poisoned by factions from Russia. As most in the country saw the election as fraudulent as well as wanting to establish more relations with the west, the orange revolution started and Yushenko took over.

Putin’s first attempt failed, but he bided his time for his next window of chance which would occur in 2014 and Yanukoyvich returns to the scene.

To be continued…..