Viktor Yanukovich

Paul Manafort is closer than ever to having his day in court. However, according to this piece in Fox News, the hoped bloodbath for President Trump may never come to pass.

The events which led to the 2014 coup in Ukraine are generally blamed on anti-Russia actors including the United States and EU.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was recently in the EU where he said the following,

“The largely-provoked-from-the-outside Ukrainian crisis has become the direct consequence of such shortsighted policy of Washington and Brussels”.

He continued,

Prosecutors working for the Kiev regime are asking for a sentence of life imprisonment for the illegally ousted, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.
Yanukovich was ousted in an illegal coup on the 22nd of February, one day after he signed a deal with the would-be coup leaders which gave them much of what they demanded.
However, this was not enough to satisfy them and Yanukovich fled the country, eventually going to Russia.

The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then.
— Henry Kissinger, Washington Post, March 6, 2014
Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.

[NATO's goal is] to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
— Hastings Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
— James Madison (1751-1836), fourth American President

In ancient Rome, especially during the late Republic, oligarchs resorted to mob violence to block, intimidate, assassinate or drive from power the dominant faction in the Senate. While neither the ruling or opposing factions represented the interests of the plebeians, wage workers, small farmers or slaves, the use of the ‘mob’ against the elected Senate, the principle of representative government and the republican form of government laid the groundwork for the rise of authoritarian “Caesars” (military rulers) and the transformation of the Roman republic into an imperial state.

It is freezing cold in Kiev, legendary city of golden domes on the banks of Dnieper River – cradle of ancient Russian civilisation and the most charming of East European capitals. It is a comfortable and rather prosperous place, with hundreds of small and cosy restaurants, neat streets, sundry parks and that magnificent river. The girls are pretty and the men are sturdy. Kiev is more relaxed than Moscow, and easier on the wallet.