On January 29th, the Washington Post<\/i> published an op-ed by the well-known Yale neoconservative Timothy Snyder<\/a>, titled "Putin\u2019s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths"<\/a>. Key passages in Snyder\u2019s article are:<\/p>\n Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the <\/i>mythical basis<\/i><\/a><\/i> for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." The essential idea is that Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv. \u2026 It takes some fanciful thinking to see here a reason for Russia to invade Ukraine in the 21st century, as it seems prepared to do. \u2026 Putin\u2019s idea is that Ukraine is a fraternal nation because of how he personally feels about the past. This is known as imperialism. It flies in the face of the basic legal principle of state sovereignty and the basic moral principle of democracy.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Putin\u2019s article<\/a> did NOT<\/b> assert that "Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv." It didn\u2019t even<\/i> assert that "Russia has the right to invade Ukraine." Furthermore, the allegation that Putin\u2019s view that\u2019s expressed there advocates "imperialism. It flies in the face of the basic legal principle of state sovereignty and the basic moral principle of democracy<\/i>" is likewise a boldfaced lie<\/b>. Moreover, Russia\u2019s Government has consistently denied<\/i> that it has any intention to invade Ukraine, but instead<\/i> asserts that if Ukraine invades Donbass, then Russia will not allow that invasion to conquer the residents there. Russia\u2019s position has consistently been that only<\/i> the people who live in Donbass have the right to determine whether or not \u2013 and the terms under which \u2013 they will be ruled by the government in Kiev that was installed (against the will of over 90% of them<\/a>) in February 2014 when the democratically elected President of Ukraine<\/a> was forcibly overthrown by what America\u2019s Government calls a "democratic revolution," and by what Russia\u2019s Government and the head of the "private-CIA" U.S. firm Stratfor<\/a>, and many historians, call a coup<\/a>, which was imposed by the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning US President Barack Obama\u2019s Administration<\/a>, in order to replace Russia\u2019s naval base on Crimea by a new US naval base there<\/a> (which Obama wasn\u2019t able to do, though his coup conquering Ukraine otherwise succeeded<\/a>). Several of the mercenaries that the US hired (some from Georgia<\/a>, for example, as shown in these videos<\/a>) subsequently confessed to having participated in it. (And, subsequently, the US regime charged Putin with \u2018aggression against Ukraine\u2019, and with \u2018seizing Crimea\u2019, and issued sanctions against Russia for that.)<\/p>\n Here are some key passages from Putin\u2019s article (the article that Snyder lies against):<\/p>\n The determination of nationality, particularly in mixed families, is the right of every individual, free to make his or her own choice. But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. \u2026 And I will say one thing \u2013 Russia has never been and will never be \u2018anti-Ukraine\u2019. And what Ukraine will be \u2013 it is up to its citizens to decide.<\/i><\/p>\n Putin, as well as Francois Hollande of France, and Angela Merkel of Germany, brought the Donbass government and the Ukraine government together in 2015 and got the Donbass and Ukraine to sign onto an agreement in Minsk, promising that those two then-warring parties would call a truce until both of them would agree to negotiate together and arrange some degree of autonomy for Donbass within the Ukrainian federation<\/i>, but after it was all signed, Ukraine (with backing from the US) steadily refused to negotiate at all with Donbass. Merkel, Hollande, and Putin, had worked together to get the Minsk accords agreed-to and signed by the two sides, but the Ukrainian side then stonewalled, refusing to comply with the agreement. Putin\u2019s consistent position has been the same as Hollande\u2019s and Merkel\u2019s, on this, and remains so to this day: BOTH sides must comply. (Donbass has always been willing, but Ukraine never.)<\/p>\n The rest of Putin\u2019s article is a history of the relationship that has existed between Russia and Ukraine. Snyder\u2019s article that alleges to be about Putin\u2019s article ignores that history, just as he lies about the rest of the article. And that\u2019s from a Professor at Yale.<\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/a>,<\/i> and of <\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On January 29th, the Washington Post published an op-ed by the well-known Yale neoconservative Timothy Snyder, titled "Putin\u2019s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths". Key passages in Snyder\u2019s article are: Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled "On the Historical Unity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-38847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38850,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38847\/revisions\/38850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38847"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=38847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}