I was invited by the governing United Russia political party of the Russian Federation in October and November 2018 for the 10th General Assembly of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) as the vice-president of the ICAPP Media Forum. On the sidelines of the four-day conference, I had plentiful talks with Russian politicians of all leading parties of the country as well as several high-level diplomats and high-rank soldiers. Of course, Ukraine, apart from Syria, was the major discussion topic for me. At a dinner the night before I left Moscow, we had a long chat with a talkative Russian general about Ukraine. He was gracious during our conversation but undebatable over Ukraine.

After he told me the story of the Russian traditional Napoleon cake I ordered, he suddenly asked me whether I knew the meaning of the word "Ukraine" in Russian, and answered directly. He said "Ucrania, Ukraine, Ukrania or Ocraine ... It is an adaptation of "Ukraina," writing on a tissue "Украина" and "Україна," and continued, "Its meaning is 'borderland,' 'frontier'."

I did not know that back then. When I got back to the hotel, I checked the etymological origins of the word. Although they are different theses, the most widespread theory is that the origin of the name of Ukraine comes from the old Slavic word meaning "borderland," "frontier region" or "marches."

Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians all claim that Kyivan Rus’ ("Rus’ land" in Old East Slavic), a federation in eastern and northern Europe between the 9th-13th centuries under the reign of the Rurik dynasty, which comes from the lineage of the Varangian prince Rurik, as their ancestors. Presumably, "Ukraine" referred to the border territories of Kievan Rus’ during that period. Maybe, with the ease of the empty bottle in front of him, the General became too vocal, and it seemed to me he was sure that "there is no such country as 'Ukraine!'"

"Little Russians"

I have always found it strange that many Russians refer to Ukrainians as "Little Russians," just like the Russian Empire had done in the past, while they call themselves "Great Russians." Until the nationalism wave of World War I, only a small group of Ukrainians had objected to this view. Ukraine declared its full independence from the Russian Republic at the end of the war, and yet, despite many tensions between Ukraine and Russia, from the nuclear disarmament after the dissolution of the Soviet Union to the division of the Black Sea Fleet or Sevastopol in the 90’s and the natural gas controversies of the 2000’s, Ukrainians were merely opposed to the word "Little Russians."

After the member countries of the former Eastern Bloc started to join NATO one by one as part of an ongoing enlargement process of NATO, Ukraine, which had tried to be a self-sufficient nation while seeking alignment in the West, made a bid for NATO membership and applied for accession to the European Union in mid-2000’s. Ukraine sees itself as a European country and Kyiv sees its future in the West. Although the EU and NATO, led by the United States, have said they are supporting Ukraine’s membership, neither of them have materialized yet.

Even so, Russia was infuriated. The Kremlin feared that with the assent of Ukraine’s applications, Russia would be ring-fenced with South Korea in the east and a Western wall of allied countries in the West, with restricted access to the Mediterranean in the south. As is known, Wikileaks’ diplomatic cable leaks revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, implying that they did not recognize the territorial integrity of Ukraine, said that it was an artificial formation founded by taking some parts of the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and especially Russia.

According to some reports back then, Putin told during a summit that Russia was "responsible for the ethnic Russians in Ukraine." In September 2008, then Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohrzko also accused Russia of providing Russian passports to Crimean citizens of Ukraine and warned the world over that Russia had declared a policy of military intervention abroad to protect Russian citizens.

"Little Green Men"

The highest risk of a conflict between Ukraine and Russia appeared once again in February-March 2014 as Russia annexed Crimea after the pro-Western events in Kyiv, in the aftermath of which then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.

It is my habit, I always say, that you should look at a country from outside of its capital if you want to know it. While traveling in the south and east of Ukraine in 2015, I met many Ukrainians in Donetsk, Luhansk and Odessa who refer to the Russians as, "Our elder brothers who have always taken care of us." That made me start to understand how Russia took control of Crimea and Sevastopol in 2014 so easily, and why there were so many Kremlin-backed militias known as "Little Green Men" who wanted to join Russia.

Russian-origin Ukrainians make up the largest ethnic minority group in the country. According to the statistics of 2006, more than 13% of the population is of Russian descent in Kyiv, more than 53% in the Donetsk region (Donetsk Oblast), more than 51% in the Odessa region and more than 71% in Luhansk. I do not even count the Crimea region with 58.5%, nor Sevastopol with 72% Russians. Particularly, the Crimean Peninsula was home to Ukraine’s largest ethnically Russian population even then, as its population consists of an ethnic Russian majority and a minority of both ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, unfortunately most of whom were exiled to Central Asia during the rule of Joseph Stalin while the others were exposed to the Russification policy of the communist regime, making them a minority in their own lands today. It was followed by the rest of the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine.

Pora!

In November 2013, Ukraine was mobilized in Kyiv by the youth movement "Pora!" – meaning "It’s Time!" in Ukrainian – with street protests that led to looting and police violence, sarcastic slogans and huge social media activity. The events in Kyiv, the so-called "the Revolution of Dignity," were a Western-backed movement, reminding us of the successful "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine back in 2000, or the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003. The Kyiv events, also known as "Euromaidan protests," resembled several other events sparked in some countries in 2013-2014 that were allegedly peaceful and pro-democratic, but which ultimately became revolutionary that brought riots, violence and instability. To exemplify this, the Kyiv events were almost the same as the June 2013 Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square of Cairo, which was started by a group depicted by the media as a new grassroots movement, namely Tamarod, a word meaning "Revolt" in Arabic. No need to say that a bloody coup d’état followed the protests, and the military junta overthrew the country’s first democratically-elected President Mohammad Morsi. The Kyiv events resulted in the deaths of nearly 130 people, including 18 police officers.

The Kyiv events were also no different from the Gezi events in Taksim Square in the largest city of Turkey, Istanbul, which started as an environmental protest and suddenly turned into a movement to overthrow then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan was indeed right when he said that those mobilizations in several countries were related to then-U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration and that pro-Obama institutions and media were related to all three incidents.

Egypt could finally have been a democracy after decades of dictatorship, but they were labeled as "Islamists." Ukraine was a European country and neighbor of the EU; however, the West’s support to Kyiv was not enough against the Russian influence. Turkey, on the other hand, was a NATO country and a military ally of the United States, and yet, it was isolated. So, was Yanukovych also a leader who had been slandered and hit by headlines as "suddenly a dictator" of Ukraine, just like Morsi and Erdoğan? He, too, had received support from the West when he was elected. We do not know, but we are sure that what has been tried in all three countries was not "democracy engineering."

Democracy engineering?

The incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden was vice-president at the time. He visited Kyiv more than usual, speaking to the new government on the phone many times. As is known, Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, whose name appeared on the news over the same issue during the 2019 U.S. presidential election campaigns, had become a member of the board of directors of a gas company in Ukraine in 2014 for $50,000 per month and he made millions in total. Interestingly, Biden wrote in his memoirs in 2017 that Ukraine was a chance to make his childhood dream real, which is making a difference in the world. There is no doubt that the Biden family has built an "emotional" connection with Ukraine, but also the Kyiv events were not just a social-engineering program run by Washington and supported by the EU only for the sake of democracy. By looking at the outcome, there were also geostrategic goals behind the scenes.

The protests broke out after Yanukovych abruptly refused to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. The bill, which aimed to shift Ukraine – at the time hailing Russia as its second-largest trading partner –out of the Kremlin’s orbit, was about to pass through the parliamentary, and Yanukovych, shocking the EU, ordered the suspension of preparations for the pact between Kyiv and Brussels, after he met secretly with Putin. Of course, the Ukrainian U-turn was a humiliation for the EU envoys.

Yanukovych’s main motivation was economic, as always it had been. Moscow offered a new trade and economic cooperation to Kyiv and presented an association with the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan as an alternative to the EU deal. At that time, Ukraine was in a severe crisis and negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $4 billion rescue package. But the IMF’s loan terms were too harsh and not acceptable. That was how the West gave the reins to Russia.

Russia’s countermove

A treaty was signed in December 2013 whereby Moscow would buy $15 billion of Ukrainian Eurobonds to be issued by Ukraine. In addition to that, the cost of Russian natural gas supplied to Ukraine would be discounted from $400 to $268 per cubic meter. Putin was the winner of this round, but not the champion yet. And the "revolution" in Kyiv exploded right after that.

Let’s now turn back to the beginning and remember what Putin said in the 2008 NATO-Russian Council summit. He had clearly stated that Moscow is uncomfortable with NATO's expansion policy by adding the former Eastern Bloc countries to the military alliance. Knowing that Ukraine was the first country that would be exposed to the greatest risk in the middle of serious problems with Russia, in 2008-10, the U.S. included Poland and Romania in the missile shield project, which Washington first pressured NATO for. After Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, it was clear to Russia that there was an attempt to implement a Western-backed government in Ukraine. As a result, the Kremlin got ready for the long-awaited assault. After a night meeting with the ministers, Putin ordered a start to the operation.

To summarize, Russia’s invasion of Crimea can be explained with the Turkish proverb, "The arrival of Thursday was evident from Wednesday." Following overthrowing a president, forming a puppet government and abandoning Kyiv all alone against Russia, what did the U.S. expect?

So now, what will Biden and his family do, who have not lost their interest in Ukraine despite Obama saying to him "not to go too far" back then? In addition to that, would Russia, which annexed Crimea six years after 2008 and has also signaled that it can easily annex Ukraine's south and east, where the Russian-origin population is high, make a new move eight years after 2014?

And more importantly, who can stop a full-fledged war? Let’s discuss it in the upcoming column.