Twelve-Year War
Only Russia's full defeat will end it
(Russian forces in Crimea in early 2014)
Twelve years’ ago yesterday Russian special forces began to invade and occupy Crimea. Moscow’s long war to subjugate Ukraine never stopped. Away from the battlefields, drones and occupation zones, Russian aggression — launched while they were hosting the Sochi Olympics — today goes almost unnoticed.
This is not an accident. It is by design. Deception and deflection suffuse Russia’s war plan. The Kremlin has deliberately kept acts of sabotage against Europe below thresholds that would trigger retaliation. They carefully camouflage interference in allied elections and political decision-making through political corruption, manipulation of public opinion and other active measures. Moscow leans into distractions like Gaza, Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, tariffs and the Epstein files to push Ukraine out of the headlines and off of NATO cabinet agendas.
The Kremlin squeezes all the value they can out of their longstanding social media dominance to marginalize Ukraine on the major platforms.
(Marie-Philip Poulin scores against the US in overtime on February 20th, 2014 to give Canada the gold medal for women’s ice hockey at the Sochi winter Olympics.)
In my weekend newspapers, I looked in vain for mention of this anniversary of Russia’s first act of military aggression against Ukraine on February 20th, 2014 — the day Canada’s women beat the US for gold in ice hockey at Sochi, the day before Canada’s men’s hockey team beat the US in the semi-finals, and three days before our men beat Sweden for gold. This timing itself was a Russian active measure.
As Russia’s military takeover began, few were focused on Crimea. Violence was peaking in Kyiv, as Russian stooge Viktor Yanukovych used lethal force against pro-Ukrainian protesters. The Euromaidan revolution of dignity proved unstoppable. In the end, February 20th was the day Russian-backed forces killed the most protesters. Yanukovych fled the country the next day. On February 22nd the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s democratically-elected parliament, voted 328-0 to vacate the presidency, setting a date for new elections in May.
(Euromaidan, Kyiv, February 20th, 2014)
Some had noticed unidentified vehicles and Russian military units in plain-clothes moving into Crimea in January. But Ukrainians only began to report ‘little green men’ on the Crimean peninsula in the last days’ of February.
