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The Russian-held regions in Ukraine have a right to self-determination and the referendums organized by Russia here are as legitimate as the independence of Kosovo, reads a false narrative launched by a Romanian publication, which also reiterates the false claim spread by Russian propaganda regarding Russia’s military superiority over the West.
NEWS: “Why all the fuss about the referendums in the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which are all territories with a total surface of less than 2,000 square kilometers, compared to the 600 thousand square kilometers of Ukraine? What does Vladimir Putin seek to accomplish with his partial mobilization, or with his nuclear threats? He has already conquered over 100,000 square kilometers. These are questions that have riled up the Euro-Atlantic community in the post- “global warming” era. Yet Zelensky has already won. At least this is what the garrison media claims, all the NATO influencers and the band of adepts who sleep the slumber of bygone “Western values”. NATO partisans now speak of glaring breaches of international law, about violations of national borders and occupation forces air-dropping in Ukraine. But where were they when the wars for the “democratization” of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia started? On April 23, 1998, a referendum was held in the former Yugoslavia, and 95% of the population voted against the international community interfering to mediate the Serbian-Kosovo conflict. To no avail did the UN dispatch a peacekeeping corps. Even Russia deployed a few thousand troops, but Yeltsin lowered his expectations, once the Russian Federation’s scrawny budget got a few cash injections. Exactly a year later, in April 1999, NATO bombed Belgrade and other Serbian settlements. Why? The official reason was that the Milošević regime failed to observe the separatist rights of Montenegrins, Croats and Kosovars. No kidding. How so? Kosovo, a region with a total surface the size of the Szekler Land, is today a republic recognized by 91 states across the globe, whose independence was also declared unilaterally. The breakaway regions of Crimea also seek their independence. The West invokes Roman law and all its derivatives only when it suits its discourse. In Kosovo, 90% of the population is Muslim. The extremist party rules the country with the help of a local militia under the watchful eye of KOFR […] The Moscow strongman retaliates, reminding Western powers that “the Fatherland” (Russia) has weapons of mass destruction at its disposal, which are more advanced than those in NATO’s arsenal. “And if our territorial integrity is threatened, we will definitely use all means at our disposal to protect Russia and the Russian people. This is not a bluff”, Putin said in a televised speech. Russia’s arsenal includes long-range Iskander missiles, 12.400 tanks, 3,391 missile launchers (the USA only has 1,366, according to Global Fire), 30,122 armored vehicles (compared to the US’s 45,193), Sarmat 1 and Sarmat 2 intercontinental ballistic missiles, which the West calls “Satan” missiles, 81 nuclear submarines deployed in every sea and ocean across the globe, Zirkon hypersonic cruise missile, a whole fleet of fighter jets and a navy in Kaliningrad. Adding to these are FSB combat-ready special forces. Russia can mobilize up to 23 million reservists. It’s exactly what a military friend once told me, ‘once stirred up, these guys will only stop in London’. Does the West want to start a new world war? If so, then it should send NATO troops to Crimea. Putin will be waiting for these little Yankees”.
NARRATIVES: 1. The West attacked Yugoslavia to support separatism, although it denies the right to self-determination of the population of four Ukrainian regions that organized referendums in this respect. 2. The referendums in Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are legal. 3. Western powers are duplicitous because they recognized Kosovo’s right to self-determination and are now refusing to recognize the same rights of Ukrainian regions.
BACKGROUND: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-European administration took power in Kyiv, ousting Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian regime. The reasons invoked by Russia, namely that the far-right had taken power in Ukraine by means of a coup, turned out to be false. In fact, Russia invaded Ukraine because Vladimir Putin feared a liberal pro-Western democracy could be instated close to Russia’s borders. Moscow wanted to keep Ukraine in its so-called sphere of influence. In 2022, Russia launched a new invasion, this time claiming it was responding to an imaginary NATO eastward expansion. The new war has all the features of an imperial conquest, as confirmed by the large scale of the attack, which originally targeted the capital-city Kyiv.
The Russian army was incapable of defeating Ukrainian forces, despite the decade-long propaganda about the training of its military and the advanced weapons in its arsenal. The surprise attack designed to swiftly bring Ukraine to its knees turned out to be a failure. Russia forces advanced very slowly, sustaining heavy losses on all fronts. Then Russia lost the battle for Kyiv, which forced her to retreat. Russia grabbed a few hard-fought victories in Mariupol and in Donbas, which came with huge losses and resulted in the near total destruction of cities that were defended by clearly outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops.
In September, however, Ukraine managed to launch a swift counteroffensive in Kharkiv, capturing thousands of square kilometers within the space of a few days. It also pushed back Russian forces in the Kherson region, constantly attacking Russian positions on the ground. Facing the prospect of catastrophic losses, Moscow urgently organized referendums to annex the four Ukrainian territories that are now targeted by Kyiv’s counteroffensive: Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. A few days following the official announcement, Moscow organized the referendums without virtually making any preparations. The results were announced shortly afterwards, and Moscow took the next steps towards accomplishing the annexation. Apart from organizing the referendums, Moscow threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend these territories, once they have been integrated into the Russian Federation. Basically, facing a humiliating defeat, Putin’s regime sought a way to intimidate Kyiv and force it to withdraw its army, and came up with the idea of these referendums.
PURPOSE: To legitimize Russia’s abusive actions in Ukraine for the public at home by invoking the so-called “popular vote”. To promote the false idea of a strong Russian army that is superior not just to Ukraine, but to NATO forces too.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The comparison between the referendums in Ukraine and the one held in 1998 in Yugoslavia is indefensible. The referendum in Yugoslavia did not concern the autonomy and independence of Kosovo, and was anyhow boycotted by Albanians in this province. The only scenario where the two situations might suffer a comparison is if the rest of Ukraine organized a referendum consulting the population regarding the independence of the four regions partially occupied by Russia.
On the other hand, Russia tried to justify the annexation of Ukrainian territories, more specifically the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, invoking the “Kosovo precedent”. First of all, Russia itself has not officially recognized the Kosovo precedent. As a strong supporter of Serbia, Moscow refused to recognize the independence of this region. Kosovo proclaimed its independence in 2008, 9 years after the war. To this day, there are some countries that have not recognized its independence (not even all EU Member States). For this reason, Kosovo is not a member of the UN or any other international organization.
Kosovo’s fight for independence started in 1989, when on March 23 Belgrade abolished Kosovo’s autonomy as a Yugoslav province. The other two major events that paved the way for independence years later were in July 1990 and September 1991 through the elimination of political institutions from this province and the proclamation of the “Republic of Kosovo”. In February 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK) launched its first attacks. NATO intervened in 1999 in order to put an end to an ethnic cleansing campaign on the ground, once evidence of the massacre of the civilian population was confirmed.
In the case of the four Ukrainian regions, however, the referendums were held under Russian occupation. A large part of the population could not take part in the referendum as it was hiding from Russian forces or living in areas controlled by the Ukrainian army. Countless images and eye-witness reports show that the vote was basically held at gunpoint. The polling teams were accompanied by armed and masked Russian military. Moreover, no independent international observer was allowed to participate. For all these reasons, no international organization has recognized the pseudo-referendums in the four Ukrainian regions.
As regards the Russian occupation, the Russian army took control of the territories in the wake of a classical war of imperial conquest. The Ukrainian population was not the target of some cleansing campaign or persecution from the Kyiv authorities that should warrant an intervention. On the contrary, the large wave of refugees that fled the war and the pockets of civilian resistance that surfaced in a number of settlements confirm that a significant part of the population of the four regions identifies itself as Ukrainian. Additionally, prior to the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 with the help of the so-called “little green men” (which were actually Russian operatives) who launched separatist movements in Donetsk and Luhansk, there has been no pro-independence movement in any of the two regions, let alone in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson.
Marius Ghilezan’s article in România Liberă also stands out through the narrative regarding a possible Russian attack on the United Kingdom, a thesis that was launched in May by one of the Kremlin’s top propaganda men, Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov.
“One launch, Boris, and no more England. Gone forever”, Kiselyov said referring to the dreaded Sarmat nuclear missile, known as Satan 2. “The blast from this thermal-nuclear torpedo hitting the shores of the United Kingdom will give rise to a huge wave, a tsunami measuring up to 500 meters”, Kiselyov also stated.
Today, Marius Ghilezan makes a similar argument, overestimating the strength of the Russian army, which is vastly inferior to that of the United States, according to the same Global Fire Power website which the author deliberately misquotes.
“It’s exactly what a military friend once told me, ‘once stirred up, these guys [the Russians] will only stop in London’. Does the West want to start a new world war? If so, then it should send NATO troops to Crimea. Putin will be waiting for these little Yankees”, Ghilezan also writes.
In fact, Russia is incapable of defeating Ukraine and has been losing ground once Kyiv was delivered state-of-the-art military technology, admittedly in low volumes. The USA and their NATO allies however have more such weapons at their disposal, as well as a series of highly advanced military systems. Therefore, the war in Ukraine clearly shows that Russia’s military strength is inferior to the West’s military might, and the Russian Federation would never be able to engage in a conventional war with NATO. Hence Moscow’s rhetoric about its nuclear arsenal, the only thing capable of truly threatening the West.
Furthermore, Russia has repeatedly threatened to use weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear warheads, in the hope of deterring the West from assisting Ukraine during the Russian invasion. It’s worth noting that, even in the case of a nuclear war, the nuclear arsenal of the USA and other Western states, which is slightly more advanced than Russia’s, shows that not even this scenario would guarantee a victory for Putin’s regime, at best leading to mutual annihilation, an outcome that benefits neither side.
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