Below are two accounts of an important event that will not be noted much in the American press. Do you recall the “Orange Revolution” in the Ukraine in 2004 when a pro-western leader was elected in that nation and he wanted to join NATO? Russia was furious. Russian-Ukrainian relations nose-dived and the Ukraine even made noises about kicking the Russians out of their naval base on the Black Sea which was built by the USSR. For a time it seemed that the Ukrainians would switch sides and become part of the western alliance.
Those dreams have now been exposed as the pipe dream that they always were. The Ukraine elected a pro-Russian leader recently, and he moved quickly to rebuild Ukrainian-Russian ties and relations as noted in a previous blog. The new pro-Russian leaders have enacted a law forbidding the Ukraine from “joining new military alliances such as NATO, a move that is sure to please Russia…” Ostensibly, the Ukraine will be “neutral,” but the warming ties between the Ukraine and Russia mean that the Ukraine is tilting rapidly back into the Russian orbit. The Ukraine’s new leader has already “pledged to cooperate with Russia on key energy and military issues.”
The first link is from an American media source, and the second link is from a Turkish media source. While the opposition pro-western parties are opposed to the Ukraine’s tilt toward Moscow, I doubt that there is much they can do about it in the future. Once Russia gets “its man” in power in a nation that used to be part of the USSR, it is not likely that any future election will ever remove the pro-Russian party from power.
The rejection of NATO by the Ukraine is a Russian victory over NATO, and stops NATO’s eastward advance against Russia. Indeed, Russia has regained dominance over an important, major nation of the old USSR and it will now solidly control its Black Sea naval base on Ukrainian territory.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOAtVWc4V9RgBTgzKzYH3R4q0L7gD9EFTOA00
http://allturk.net/?mno=58149
