On his site, David Stockman explains the history of Ukraine’s association with Russia, including Russia’s purchase of Crimea from the Ottomans. He writes (abridged):
The messages are coming in loud and clear today—from the crashing pound, to repudiation of establishment governments in Italy, Sweden and more to come, to Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s call to end the Sanctions War and do so pronto.
So let’s be clear: Washington’s dunderheaded intervention in the intramural spat between Russia and Ukraine and the accompanying global Sanctions War is the surely the stupidest, most destructive project to arise from the banks of the Potomac in modern times. And the architects of this perfidious folly—Biden, Blinkin, Sullivan, Nuland et. al.—cannot be condemned harshly enough.
After all, this madness is being pursued in the name of abstract policy norms—the rule of law and sanctity of borders—that make Washington a laughing stock. More than any other nation on planet earth (and by a long-shot), it has serially and blatantly violated these standards scores of times in recent decades.
Prior to the end of WWI, there was no Ukrainian state. Like the artificial and unsustainable polities of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which were confected by self-serving politicians at Versailles (especially the domestic vote seeking Woodrow Wilson), Ukraine was a product of geopolitical engineering—in this case by the new rulers of the Soviet Union.
Indeed, the historical provenance of “Ukraine” can be described in a nutshell. What was to become Ukraine joined Russia in 1654 when Bohdan Khmelnitsky, a Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, petitioned Russian czar Alexey to accept the Zaporozhian Host into Russia. That is to say, Imperial Russia spawned the latter day polity of Ukraine by annexing into its service the fearsome Cossack Warriors who inhabited its central region.
The army and a small territory then under Hetman control was called “u kraine,” which means in Russian “at the edge”, a term that had originated in the twelfth century to describe lands on the border of Russia.
During the next 250 years the expansionist Czars annexed more and more of the adjacent territory, designating the eastern and southern regions as “Novorussiya” (New Russia), which territories included Catherine the Great’s purchase of Crimea from the Ottomans in 1783.
By David Stockman, David Stockman’s Contra Corner
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