Tovarich!
I write in love and sorrow.
You are, i’m sure, aware of the terrible press you are getting now in the Western media and worse yet, of the political sanctions being proposed by the Western powers, all over the handful of troops you sent into Crimea last week to help maintain order during the chaotic conditions in Ukraine caused by the recent coup that deposed their democratically elected president.
Oh, Vladimir Vladimirovitch, what were you thinking? By that rash action you ignited an international firestorm of anti-soviet feeling and may very well have shot yourself in the foot from an economic standpoint, as i cannot think of a single economic benefit that might accrue to Russia from your action.
If you had just backed off, everything would have worked out your way. I mean, you know better than i that Crimea has always been Russian (well, at least since the resolution of the Tatar Problem early in the previous century) and that until Khrushchev gave it to the Ukrainians in 1954, virtually nobody in Crimea even thought of wasting his time learning Ukrainian.
Even now, sixty years later, the vast majority of the Crimean population still considers itself Russian and speaks Russian, so there was absolutely no need to send a single Russian soldier in. The Crimeans would have seized with great joy their first opportunity to vote on which country they wanted to be part of, and an overwhelming majority would have still voted to join Russia without what the western media is calling your “coercion”.
Furthermore, it will come as no surprise to many of us if at least three of the eastern Ukrainian oblasts now start agitating to leave Ukraine for Russia, but of course now that you’ve sent those few soldiers into Crimea, people all over the planet will start accusing you of fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine. Oh please, you don’t need to foment unrest, the people in those oblasts are ethnically Russian, Russian speakers, and pro-Russian. And they were overwhelmingly supporters of Yanukovich. You don’t have to do anything to make them want to join you, especially considering that joining you will immediately improve their standard of living by getting them off the Good Ship Ukraine as it sinks into a maelstrom of debt.
Reflect, reflect, comrade. Yes, you’re a KGB thug, but you don’t have to act like one. It’s too late to undo the damage you caused by sending a handful of peacekeepers to Crimea, but don’t send any to eastern Ukraine. Just look at the election results for the last presidential election for Ukraine. Those folks are already in your camp and as soon as they get the chance, that part of Ukraine will quite naturally all by itself fall onto your plate like stack of Babushka’s blini.
Your friend,
Matte
Meanwhile, everywhere things fall apart:
