Right, in Crimea Russia took advantage of a moment of weakness when nationalists staged a coup and moved in. Now that things have stabilized over the past few years, they are giving a clear warning to the current government rather than simply moving in and taking territory as they wish. A clear component of this is that increased autonomy for the region was supposed to be recognized in 2015, so there was at least there has been an attempt to settle this diplomatically, although the Ukrainian government arguably hasn’t held up its end of the deal.
I’m not familiar with the IED story, but there has been a high level of aggression from the Ukrainian government toward the region in question since 2015 which has further increased recently. These incidents have majorly increased in the last month which is the real start of the issue, and Russia’s response is step 2.
This isn’t to say that Putin’s motives are entirely pure, but I’d never expect him to pass on the opportunity to generate nationalistic enthusiasm among his base of support by moving to defend ethnic Russians against Ukraine. The territory would be particularly strategic for them too, so once again opportunity knocks from their point of view. “Genocide” is a stretch, but it’s closer to that than is talked about in English language media, and it plays well to rile up people there and back home.
Right, in Crimea Russia took advantage of a moment of weakness when nationalists staged a coup and moved in. Now that things have stabilized over the past few years, they are giving a clear warning to the current government rather than simply moving in and taking territory as they wish. A clear component of this is that increased autonomy for the region was supposed to be recognized in 2015, so there was at least there has been an attempt to settle this diplomatically, although the Ukrainian government arguably hasn’t held up its end of the deal.
I’m not familiar with the IED story, but there has been a high level of aggression from the Ukrainian government toward the region in question since 2015 which has further increased recently. These incidents have majorly increased in the last month which is the real start of the issue, and Russia’s response is step 2.
This isn’t to say that Putin’s motives are entirely pure, but I’d never expect him to pass on the opportunity to generate nationalistic enthusiasm among his base of support by moving to defend ethnic Russians against Ukraine. The territory would be particularly strategic for them too, so once again opportunity knocks from their point of view. “Genocide” is a stretch, but it’s closer to that than is talked about in English language media, and it plays well to rile up people there and back home.