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Rethinking the Ukraine Crisis
A false narrative about the civil war in Ukraine prevails in the West — that this is a war between Ukraine and Russia. This hostile positioning of Russia is in line with the need to heighten tensions between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia, a phenomenon that has its legacy in the Cold War.
The prevailing interpretation of the Ukraine crisis in the West says that Russia — specifically President Vladimir Putin — started it and controls most of the military forces fighting the Ukrainian army. Martin Wolf of Financial Times, for example, claims that Russia started it because its leaders fear having a stable, prosperous and West-leaning democracy on their doorstep, and saw this as a distinct possibility after their ally, President Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted in a coup d’etat in February 2014. They will keep destabilising Ukraine to prevent such a democracy until stopped by Western force or sanctions (“Help Ukraine Seize This Chance”, Financial Times, 11 February 2015).
Financial Times editorialised: