Why is Vladimir Putin Referring to Eastern Ukraine as 'New Russia'?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

International Business Times:

In a new statement, the Kremlin has detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin's address to pro-Russian separatists battling Kiev's force in eastern Ukraine, which referred to the rebels as "the militia of New Russia" or "Novorossiya".

 

This term is not a new addition to the Russian leader's personal lexicon. In a televised question and answer session in April in the midst of the Crimea crisis, Putin told the audience, in reference to the restive eastern regions of Ukraine: "It's new Russia."

 

This phrase has raised fears about Putin's territorial ambitions in the former Soviet Union but what does this term really mean?

 

"Novorossiya", which translates as New Russia, is a historical term for a region conquered by the Russian empire in the 18th century and controlled by Tsarist Russia in the 19th Century.

 

In the same Q&A, Putin uttered "God knows" why the "New Russian" regions became Ukrainian territory in the 1920s.

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[Valin]

Why is Vladimir Putin Referring to Eastern Ukraine as 'New Russia'?

 

Because He Can?

[Valin]

War in Europe is not a hysterical idea
Anne Applebaum
August 29 2014

WARSAW

Over and over again — throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels — I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.

In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?

 

I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to U.S. or Western European readers. But hear me out, if only because this is a conversation many people in the eastern half of Europe are having right now. In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state — Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here — Novorossiya can grow larger over time.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Why does Putin wage war with Ukraine?

Boris Nemtsov

Sept. 1, 2014

 

At first glance, and from the point of view of a sane person, the war between Russia and Ukraine is some sort of a nightmare, a madness that only brings grief, conflicts and problems to all.

 

Half a year ago this scenario seemed unreal. It seems that it would take an enemy of both Russia and Ukraine to make enemies out of two peoples with centuries of common history.

 

However, current events indicate that the most nightmarish, the most bloody scenario of fratricidal war is already developing. This is not our war, this is not your war, this is not the war of 20-year old paratroopers sent out there. This is Vladimir Putin's war.

 

Why does he need it? Well, he has openly answered this question himself. We need to start negotiations about politically organizing a society and statehood in southeastern Ukraine.

 

He made this statement only now, but the sending of saboteurs-separatists, weapons, and a persistent desire of Putin to force Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to sit at the negotiation table with pro-Putin militants, many of whom are Russian citizens all of this betrayed his intentions long before the public confession.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Ukraine claims Russian military forces in major rebel cities

September 02, 2014

 

KIEV, Ukraine Russian military forces have been spotted in both major rebel-held cities in eastern Ukraine, an official said Tuesday, prompting Ukraine to declare it now has to fight the Russian army, not just the separatists.

 

The statement on the Russians by Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, came after the country's defense minister said Ukraine's armed forces are expanding their strategy from just fighting separatists to facing the Russian army in a war that could cost "tens of thousands" of lives.

 

Lysenko told reporters Russian troops had been seen in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as other locations throughout the east. The claim could not be confirmed independently. Lysenko also said 15 servicemen had been killed over the previous day.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Baltic States Fear Putin Amid Escalation in Ukraine
Daniel Arkin
Sept. 2 2014

n the latest chapter of the West's confrontation with Russia, President Barack Obama will travel to Estonia on Wednesday to stress U.S. solidarity with the Baltic states, the former Soviet republics rattled by Russian President Vladimir Putin's intervention in nearby Ukraine.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — the trio of tiny nations nestled against the western flank of the Russian Federation — only regained their independence from Moscow in 1991 amid the collapse of the USSR. But as Putin appears to tighten his grip on swaths of Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, the Baltics fear they may be prey for their former ruler, experts say.

 

"The turmoil in Ukraine has deeply unnerved the Baltics," James Goldgeier, the dean of the School of International Service at American University, told NBC News. "They feel extraordinarily vulnerable to Putin and they're seeking reassurance from the West."

 

(Snip)

 

 

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