Peace in Our Time - Part 7 — Parks, Presidents and Parks

This series of articles has been investigating similarities between Germany's 1938 annexation of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia and Russia's recent aggression against Ukraine.

Part 1 of this series, reviewed Hitler's 1938 speeches justifying acquiring the Sudetenland. Hitler's justification for taking the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia resembles Putin's for invading Ukraine.
In part 2, we looked at British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's defense of the appeasement of Germany.
In part 3, we looked at the opposition to the 1938 appeasement policy.
In part 4, we reviewed Ukraine’s historical development.
In part 5, we examined Putin’s justification for the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

And in Part 6, we looked at Putin's 2021 speeches, setting the stage for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In this post, we look at Putin's 2021 speech, setting the stage for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Putin's February 21 Speech

Leading up to the February 2024 invasion, Putin gave two speeches justifying his use of force. He repeated his claim that Ukraine wasn't a separate nation from Russia. He also repeated his claim that Russian ethnics were mistreated in Ukraine. Putin argued that Ukraine's attempts to join the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were active military threats to Russia. For a full transcript of the speeches, click here and here.

Here are some highlights from the first of the two speeches, given on February 21, 2022, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine isn't a separate country:

"…Ukraine… is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us – not only colleagues, friends, and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties."
"…modern Ukraine was entirely created by Bolshevik, Communist Russia...Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by separating, severing what is historically Russian land…After the [1917] revolution, the main task of the Bolsheviks was to maintain power, at any cost." *
"…the Bolshevik policy led to the emergence of Soviet Ukraine, which even today can rightly be called "Vladimir Lenin Ukraine." *
"…it is a great pity that the vile, utopian fantasies inspired by the [1917] revolution, but absolutely destructive for a normal country, were not promptly removed from the basic, formally legal foundations on which our entire statehood was built."

*Putin is referring to the 1920's foundation documents for the Soviet Union which granted secession rights to the republics, something, for example, which was not included in the US Constitution. As covered in this earlier post, Ukrainian nationalists declared the first Ukraine nation after the 1917 Communist revolution, but lost control to the Communists during the Russian Civil War. According to Putin, Lenin felt the need to compromise with different factions by granting a secession right to the republics comprising the Soviet Union. Putin felt granting those rights back in the 1920s allowed the USSR to collapse in 1991.

Ukraine is a failed state and economy; Russia provided aid:

"…the volume of preferential credits and economic and trade preferences granted by Russia to Ukraine amounted to about $250 billion for the Ukrainian budget from 1991 to 2013."
"USSR's debt obligations to foreign countries… amounted to about $100 billion. Originally, it was assumed that these loans would be repaid in solidarity by all former Soviet republics in proportion to their economic potential. However, Russia assumed the entire Soviet debt and repaid it in full."
"…the volume of Ukraine's trade with all EU countries in 2019, before the pandemic, was below [trade with Russia]."
"According to international organizations, in 2019, almost six million Ukrainians, I emphasize about 15 percent of the total population… were forced to go abroad in search of work…since 2020, more than 60,000 doctors and other health workers have left the country during the pandemic."
"…the collapse of the Ukrainian economy is accompanied by outright plundering of its citizens, while Ukraine itself is simply placed under foreign administration."
"Corruption, which is undoubtedly a challenge and a problem for many countries, including Russia, has taken on a special character in Ukraine. It has literally impregnated and corroded Ukrainian statehood, the entire system, all branches of power."

Putin never states why a corrupt government justifies an invasion. And, of course, war will only worsen Ukraine's economy.

Oppression of Ethnic Russians Inside Ukraine:

"Those people who deem themselves Russians are told to know that they do not belong in Ukraine."
"They [the world] prefers not to notice this, as if there was nothing like this happening, no genocide perpetuated against almost 14 million people…" [referring to the Donbas region]
"Ukrainian cities were overtaken by a wave of pogroms and violence, a series of spectacular and unpunished murders. The horrific tragedy in Odessa, where peaceful protesters were brutally murdered and burned alive at the Trade Union House, makes one shudder."
"Kyiv also continues to massacre the…Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate." [the Russian and Ukrainian branches of the Orthodox Church split in 2018]
"De-Russification and forced assimilation continue."
"Russian is banned from schools, from all public areas to ordinary stores."
"The killing of civilians, the blockade, the mistreatment of people, including children, women and the elderly [in the Donbas], continues unabated."
"Ukrainian society was confronted with the rise of extreme nationalism, which quickly took the form of aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism.
"People who consider themselves Russians and want to preserve their identity, language, and culture have received a clear message that they are strangers in Ukraine."
"And the so-called civilized world…prefers not to take note of this…genocide, to which almost 4 million people are subjected… they are fighting for their most basic rights: to live in their own country, to speak their own language, to preserve their culture and traditions." [referring to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine]

Ukraine and NATO are a military threat to Russia:

"In March 2021, Ukraine adopted a new military strategy…almost exclusively dedicated to confrontation with Russia and is aimed at drawing foreign states into conflict with our country."
"…there have already been statements that Ukraine will develop its own nuclear weapons."
"…military contingents from NATO countries have been almost constantly on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises…The regular joint exercises are clearly anti-Russian. It is obvious that such events serve as a cover for the rapid buildup of the NATO military force in Ukraine."
"Kyiv has proclaimed a strategic course toward NATO membership. Yes, of course, every country has the right to choose its own security system and enter into military alliances…[but] the choice of security should not be a threat to other states, and Ukraine's accession to NATO is a direct threat to Russia's security."
"… they keep trying to convince us that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance. They say that there is no threat to Russia whatsoever… they suggest we take their word for it." [Putin explains that the West broke its word regarding expanding NATO eastward from Germany. He says the West promised not to expand eastward, but now NATO now includes Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and Northern Macedonia.]
"[If Ukraine joins NATO]…the military threat to Russia will increase many times over.."
"…we will never compromise our sovereignty, our national interests, and our values."
"How long can this tragedy continue? How much longer can we endure it? Russia has done everything to preserve Ukraine's territorial integrity…."

Putin concluded this speech by recognizing the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Lugansk People's Republic – [both in Eastern Ukraine].

In the next post in this series, we'll look at Putin's February 24 speech announcing the 'special military operation' in Ukraine.